Miscelleneous

Website

2009-07-15T06:19:00.001-07:00

Hurray!

I shall post on the website and perhaps only create link shere with titles. I think that will be a better organization...

http://sites.google.com/site/yogeshbua/home

Life Quote

2009-07-15T06:12:00.000-07:00

I made friends with a boy who collected strange creatures, and once he invited me over to see his snake. He said it was in the closet. Then he opened the closet door, soved me into the darkness, slammed the door shut, and told me I was in the dark alone with the snake. I wasn't, thank goodness, but I was sure scared to death. I learned that what seems funny to the strong can be cruel and humiliating to the weak.

-- Bill Clinton in 'My Life'

A Guide to Effective Scientific Communication

2009-07-11T15:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.danielsen.com/jokes/sciencephrases.txt

Good one!

How to Do This and That with LATEX

2009-07-02T14:18:00.001-07:00

Look it up here…

My internet connection is down

2009-07-01T04:43:00.001-07:00

Time and again, whenever my internet is down, and thank goodness that is only five times a year on an average, I am reminded of how crippled I am… The wiki and Google revolution have made themselves so central in the quest of knowledge that I turn to the internet for each minute matter; be it looking up phrases/ meanings on answers.com/ free dictionaries, or googling a term in the texts, or writing t0 friends looking for answers, or be it for news, discussions and banking needs.
All that we require daily is facilitate by the web, and my, what a dependence that is!

What I couldn’t do:

Look up the Greek alphabet.
Discuss with professor and friends a doubt.
Check on the news.
Get myself a image of ‘Google’ and ‘wiki’!

Before I can fill in the fifth, I’m back online… Thank goodness!

ELU

2009-06-29T15:11:00.001-07:00

Henceforth, I shall form some sentences using new words, nay, words whose meanings I have come to grasp. Each such post will be titled ELU standing for English Language Usage.

Here’s the first…

growl (verb)
One can hear the aircraft engines (Boeings) growling right up to Hiranandani, Powai, which is at least 3 kms away from the airport (along a line)!

Experiments with the Windows Live Writer

2009-06-29T02:50:00.001-07:00

Seems easy enough to use… Trying out the features…

Commonplace	Rank
Name	3

View Full Album

My preferred search engine...

Can the spam

2009-06-29T01:42:00.000-07:00

Green.view

Jun 15th 2009
From Economist.com

Spam is not only irritating, it is bad for the environment

ON JUNE 12th a judge in California referred a lawsuit against Sanford Wallace, who styles himself “the king of spam”, to the United States Attorney’s office for possible criminal proceedings. Mr Wallace is being pursued by Facebook, a social network, for allegedly gaining fraudulent access to Facebook accounts and using them to distribute unsolicited messages. He has already been ordered to pay $230m to MySpace, another social network, for using that company’s site to promote pornography and gambling. Mr Wallace filed for bankruptcy on June 11th.

Such behaviour is not only antisocial, it is also bad for the environment. According to a report from an environmental consultancy, ICF International, commissioned by McAfee, a computer-security company, some 62 trillion unsolicited e-mails were sent in 2008, using 33 terawatt hours of electricity. That is equivalent to the energy consumed by 1.5m American homes or 3.1m cars over a year. If generated by coal-fired power stations it would release 17m tonnes of carbon dioxide, some 0.2% of global emissions of this greenhouse gas.

AFP

The consultants estimated the quantities of carbon dioxide emitted at various stages of spam production in 11 countries: America, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, India, Mexico and Spain. They found that the early processes were relatively benign. Harvesting e-mail addresses, creating spam, sending it over the internet and storing it on mail servers each accounted for 2% or less of the emissions.

It was only when people became involved that the figures soared, because dealing with spam is a waste of their time and of their computer’s resources. Viewing spam accounted for about half the emissions. Scanning in-boxes to identify unsolicited messages and delete them accounted for a quarter. Running software that filters such messages accounted for a sixth.

The study looked at the consequences of closing down spammers. On November 11th 2008, an American web-hosting service called McColo, which helped distribute spam, was disconnected by its internet-service provider. Overnight there was a 70% fall in the number of spam messages. For every unsent message, there was a benefit to the planet. The consultants reckon that the reduction was the same as taking 2.2m cars off the road, albeit temporarily, until the spammers re-established themselves elsewhere.

Because people, rather than automated software, create legitimate e-mail messages, the emissions associated with these are higher than for spam. Each personal message generated by your correspondent produces four grams of carbon dioxide, as she takes time in front of her computer to draft a message, and its recipients consider the missive’s contents. By contrast, spam messages generate just 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide. But their sheer quantity makes them noxious: more than 80% of e-mails are thought to be spam.

Should your correspondent consider offsetting the carbon-dioxide emissions associated with writing this column, itself a consequence of the deluge of spam? Perhaps. The chances of persuading Mr Wallace to do so look slim indeed.

After the Dance by Leo Tolstoy

2009-06-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

"--And you say that a man cannot, of himself, understand what is good and evil; that it is all environment, that the environment swamps the man. But I believe it is all chance. Take my own case . . ."

Thus spoke our excellent friend, Ivan Vasilievich, after a conversation between us on the impossibility of improving individual character without a change of the conditions under which men live. Nobody had actually said that one could not of oneself understand good and evil; but it was a habit of Ivan Vasilievich to answer in this way the thoughts aroused in his own mind by conversation, and to illustrate those thoughts by relating incidents in his own life. He often quite forgot the reason for his story in telling it; but he always told it with great sincerity and feeling.

He did so now.

"Take my own case. My whole life was moulded, not by environment, but by something quite different."

"By what, then?" we asked.

"Oh, that is a long story. I should have to tell you about a great many things to make you understand."

"Well, tell us then."

Ivan Vasilievich thought a little, and shook his head.

"My whole life," he said, "was changed in one night, or, rather, morning."

"Why, what happened?" one of us asked.

"What happened was that I was very much in love. I have been in love many times, but this was the most serious of all. It is a thing of the past; she has married daughters now. It was Varinka B----." Ivan Vasilievich mentioned her surname. "Even at fifty she is remarkably handsome; but in her youth, at eighteen, she was exquisite--tall, slender, graceful, and stately. Yes, stately is the word; she held herself very erect, by instinct as it were; and carried her head high, and that together with her beauty and height gave her a queenly air in spite of being thin, even bony one might say. It might indeed have been deterring had it not been for her smile, which was always gay and cordial, and for the charming light in her eyes and for her youthful sweetness."

"What an entrancing description you give, Ivan Vasilievich!"

"Description, indeed! I could not possibly describe her so that you could appreciate her. But that does not matter; what I am going to tell you happened in the forties. I was at that time a student in a provincial university. I don't know whether it was a good thing or no, but we had no political clubs, no theories in our universities then. We were simply young and spent our time as young men do, studying and amusing ourselves. I was a very gay, lively, careless fellow, and had plenty of money too. I had a fine horse, and used to go tobogganing with the young ladies. Skating had not yet come into fashion. I went to drinking parties with my comrades--in those days we drank nothing but champagne--if we had no champagne we drank nothing at all. We never drank vodka, as they do now. Evening parties and balls were my favourite amusements. I danced well, and was not an ugly fellow."

"Come, there is no need to be modest," interrupted a lady near him. "We have seen your photograph. Not ugly, indeed! You were a handsome fellow."

"Handsome, if you like. That does not matter. When my love for her was at its strongest, on the last day of the carnival, I was at a ball at the provincial marshal's, a good-natured old man, rich and hospitable, and a court chamberlain. The guests were welcomed by his wife, who was as good-natured as himself. She was dressed in puce-coloured velvet, and had a diamond diadem on her forehead, and her plump, old white shoulders and bosom were bare like the portraits of Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great.

"It was a delightful ball. It was a splendid room, with a gallery for the orchestra, which was famous at the time, and consisted of serfs belonging to a musical landowner. The refreshments were magnificent, and the champagne flowed in rivers. Though I was fond of champagne I did not drink that night, because without it I was drunk with love. But I made up for it by dancing waltzes and polkas till I was ready to drop--of course, whenever possible, with Varinka. She wore a white dress with a pink sash, white shoes, and white kid gloves, which did not quite reach to her thin pointed elbows. A disgusting engineer named Anisimov robbed me of the mazurka with her--to this day I cannot forgive him. He asked her for the dance the minute she arrived, while I had driven to the hair-dresser's to get a pair of gloves, and was late. So I did not dance the mazurka with her, but with a German girl to whom I had previously paid a little attention; but I am afraid I did not behave very politely to her that evening. I hardly spoke or looked at her, and saw nothing but the tall, slender figure in a white dress, with a pink sash, a flushed, beaming, dimpled face, and sweet, kind eyes. I was not alone; they were all looking at her with admiration, the men and women alike, although she outshone all of them. They could not help admiring her.

"Although I was not nominally her partner for the mazurka, I did as a matter of fact dance nearly the whole time with her. She always came forward boldly the whole length of the room to pick me out. I flew to meet her without waiting to be chosen, and she thanked me with a smile for my intuition. When I was brought up to her with somebody else, and she guessed wrongly, she took the other man's hand with a shrug of her slim shoulders, and smiled at me regretfully.

"Whenever there was a waltz figure in the mazurka, I waltzed with her for a long time, and breathing fast and smiling, she would say, 'Encore'; and I went on waltzing and waltzing, as though unconscious of any bodily existence."

"Come now, how could you be unconscious of it with your arm round her waist? You must have been conscious, not only of your own existence, but of hers," said one of the party.

Ivan Vasilievich cried out, almost shouting in anger: "There you are, moderns all over! Nowadays you think of nothing but the body. It was different in our day. The more I was in love the less corporeal was she in my eyes. Nowadays you think of nothing but the body. It was different in our day. The more I was in love the less corporeal was she in my eyes. Nowadays you set legs, ankles, and I don't know what. You undress the women you are in love with. In my eyes, as Alphonse Karr said--and he was a good writer--' the one I loved was always draped in robes of bronze.' We never thought of doing so; we tried to veil her nakedness, like Noah's good-natured son. Oh, well, you can't understand."

"Don't pay any attention to him. Go on," said one of them.

"Well, I danced for the most part with her, and did not notice how time was passing. The musicians kept playing the same mazurka tunes over and over again in desperate exhaustion--you know what it is towards the end of a ball. Papas and mammas were already getting up from the card-tables in the drawing-room in expectation of supper, the men-servants were running to and fro bringing in things. It was nearly three o'clock. I had to make the most of the last minutes. I chose her again for the mazurka, and for the hundredth time we danced across the room.

"'The quadrille after supper is mine,' I said, taking her to her place.

"'Of course, if I am not carried off home,' she said, with a smile.

"'I won't give you up,' I said.

"'Give me my fan, anyhow,' she answered.

"'I am so sorry to part with it,' I said, handing her a cheap white fan.

"'Well, here's something to console you,' she said, plucking a feather out of the fan, and giving it to me.

"I took the feather, and could only express my rapture and gratitude with my eyes. I was not only pleased and gay, I was happy, delighted; I was good, I was not myself but some being not of this earth, knowing nothing of evil. I hid the feather in my glove, and stood there unable to tear myself away from her.

"'Look, they are urging father to dance,' she said to me, pointing to the tall, stately figure of her father, a colonel with silver epaulettes, who was standing in the doorway with some ladies.

"'Varinka, come here!' exclaimed our hostess, the lady with the diamond ferronniere and with shoulders like Elizabeth, in a loud voice.

"'Varinka went to the door, and I followed her.

"'Persuade your father to dance the mazurka with you, ma chere.--Do, please, Peter Valdislavovich,' she said, turning to the colonel.

"Varinka's father was a very handsome, well-preserved old man. He had a good colour, moustaches curled in the style of Nicolas I., and white whiskers which met the moustaches. His hair was combed on to his forehead, and a bright smile, like his daughter's, was on his lips and in his eyes. He was splendidly set up, with a broad military chest, on which he wore some decorations, and he had powerful shoulders and long slim legs. He was that ultra-military type produced by the discipline of Emperor Nicolas I.

"When we approached the door the colonel was just refusing to dance, saying that he had quite forgotten how; but at that instant he smiled, swung his arm gracefully around to the left, drew his sword from its sheath, handed it to an obliging young man who stood near, and smoothed his suede glove on his right hand.

"'Everything must be done according to rule,' he said with a smile. He took the hand of his daughter, and stood one-quarter turned, waiting for the music.

"At the first sound of the mazurka, he stamped one foot smartly, threw the other forward, and, at first slowly and smoothly, then buoyantly and impetuously, with stamping of feet and clicking of boots, his tall, imposing figure moved the length of the room. Varinka swayed gracefully beside him, rhythmically and easily, making her steps short or long, with her little feet in their white satin slippers.

"All the people in the room followed every movement of the couple. As for me I not only admired, I regarded them with enraptured sympathy. I was particularly impressed with the old gentleman's boots. They were not the modern pointed affairs, but were made of cheap leather, squared-toed, and evidently built by the regimental cobbler. In order that his daughter might dress and go out in society, he did not buy fashionable boots, but wore home-made ones, I thought, and his square toes seemed to me most touching. It was obvious that in his time he had been a good dancer; but now he was too heavy, and his legs had not spring enough for all the beautiful steps he tried to take. Still, he contrived to go twice round the room. When at the end, standing with legs apart, he suddenly clicked his feet together and fell on one knee, a bit heavily, and she danced gracefully around him, smiling and adjusting her skirt, the whole room applauded.

"Rising with an effort, he tenderly took his daughter's face between his hands. He kissed her on the forehead, and brought her to me, under the impression that I was her partner for the mazurka. I said I was not. 'Well, never mind. just go around the room once with her,' he said, smiling kindly, as he replaced his sword in the sheath.

"As the contents of a bottle flow readily when the first drop has been poured, so my love for Varinka seemed to set free the whole force of loving within me. In surrounding her it embraced the world. I loved the hostess with her diadem and her shoulders like Elizabeth, and her husband and her guests and her footmen, and even the engineer Anisimov who felt peevish towards me. As for Varinka's father, with his home-made boots and his kind smile, so like her own, I felt a sort of tenderness for him that was almost rapture.

"After supper I danced the promised quadrille with her, and though I had been infinitely happy before, I grew still happier every moment.

"We did not speak of love. I neither asked myself nor her whether she loved me. It was quite enough to know that I loved her. And I had only one fear--that something might come to interfere with my great joy.

"When I went home, and began to undress for the night, I found it quite out of the question. held the little feather out of her fan in my hand, and one of her gloves which she gave me when I helped her into the carriage after her mother. Looking at these things, and without closing my eyes I could see her before me as she was for an instant when she had to choose between two partners. She tried to guess what kind of person was represented in me, and I could hear her sweet voice as she said, 'Pride--am I right?' and merrily gave me her hand. At supper she took the first sip from my glass of champagne, looking at me over the rim with her caressing glance. But, plainest of all, I could see her as she danced with her father, gliding along beside him, and looking at the admiring observers with pride and happiness.

"He and she were united in my mind in one rush of pathetic tenderness.

"I was living then with my brother, who has since died. He disliked going out, and never went to dances; and besides, he was busy preparing for his last university examinations, and was leading a very regular life. He was asleep. I looked at him, his head buried in the pillow and half covered with the quilt; and I affectionately pitied him, pitied him for his ignorance of the bliss I was experiencing. Our serf Petrusha had met me with a candle, ready to undress me, but I sent him away. His sleepy face and tousled hair seemed to me so touching. Trying not to make a noise, I went to my room on tiptoe and sat down on my bed. No, I was too happy; I could not sleep. Besides, it was too hot in the rooms. Without taking off my uniform, I went quietly into the hall, put on my overcoat, opened the front door and stepped out into the street.

"It was after four when I had left the ball; going home and stopping there a while had occupied two hours, so by the time I went out it was dawn. It was regular carnival weather--foggy, and the road full of water-soaked snow just melting, and water dripping from the eaves. Varinka's family lived on the edge of town near a large field, one end of which was a parade ground: at the other end was a boarding-school for young ladies. I passed through our empty little street and came to the main thoroughfare, where I met pedestrians and sledges laden with wood, the runners grating the road. The horses swung with regular paces beneath their shining yokes, their backs covered with straw mats and their heads wet with rain; while the drivers, in enormous boots, splashed through the mud beside the sledges. All this, the very horses themselves, seemed to me stimulating and fascinating, full of suggestion.

"When I approached the field near their house, I saw at one end of it, in the direction of the parade ground, something very huge and black, and I heard sounds of fife and drum proceeding from it. My heart had been full of song, and I had heard in imagination the tune of the mazurka, but this was very harsh music. It was not pleasant.

"'What can that be?' I thought, and went towards the sound by a slippery path through the centre of the field. Walking about a hundred paces, I began to distinguish many black objects through the mist. They were evidently soldiers. 'It is probably a drill,' I thought.

"So I went along in that direction in company with a blacksmith, who wore a dirty coat and an apron, and was carrying something. He walked ahead of me as we approached the place. The soldiers in black uniforms stood in two rows, facing each other motionless, their guns at rest. Behind them stood the fifes and drums, incessantly repeating the same unpleasant tune.

"'What are they doing?' I asked the blacksmith, who halted at my side.

"'A Tartar is being beaten through the ranks for his attempt to desert,' said the blacksmith in an angry tone, as he looked intently at the far end of the line.

"I looked in the same direction, and saw between the files something horrid approaching me. The thing that approached was a man, stripped to the waist, fastened with cords to the guns of two soldiers who were leading him. At his side an officer in overcoat and cap was walking, whose figure had a familiar look. The victim advanced under the blows that rained upon him from both sides, his whole body plunging, his feet dragging through the snow. Now he threw himself backward, and the subalterns who led him thrust him forward. Now he fell forward, and they pulled him up short; while ever at his side marched the tall officer, with firm and nervous pace. It was Varinka's father, with his rosy face and white moustache.

"At each stroke the man, as if amazed, turned his face, grimacing with pain, towards the side whence the blow came, and showing his white teeth repeated the same words over and over. But I could only hear what the words were when he came quite near. He did not speak them, he sobbed them out,--"'Brothers, have mercy on me! Brothers, have mercy on me!' But the brothers had, no mercy, and when the procession came close to me, I saw how a soldier who stood opposite me took a firm step forward and lifting his stick with a whirr, brought it down upon the man's back. The man plunged forward, but the subalterns pulled him back, and another blow came down from the other side, then from this side and then from the other. The colonel marched beside him, and looking now at his feet and now at the man, inhaled the air, puffed out his cheeks, and breathed it out between his protruded lips. When they passed the place where I stood, I caught a glimpse between the two files of the back of the man that was being punished. It was something so many-coloured, wet, red, unnatural, that I could hardly believe it was a human body.

"'My God!"' muttered the blacksmith.

The procession moved farther away. The blows continued to rain upon the writhing, falling creature; the fifes shrilled and the drums beat, and the tall imposing figure of the colonel moved along-side the man, just as before. Then, suddenly, the colonel stopped, and rapidly approached a man in the ranks.

"'I'll teach you to hit him gently,' I heard his furious voice say. 'Will you pat him like that? Will you?' and I saw how his strong hand in the suede glove struck the weak, bloodless, terrified soldier for not bringing down his stick with sufficient strength on the red neck of the Tartar.

"'Bring new sticks!' he cried, and looking round, he saw me. Assuming an air of not knowing me, and with a ferocious, angry frown, he hastily turned away. I felt so utterly ashamed that I didn't know where to look. It was as if I had been detected in a disgraceful act. I dropped my eyes, and quickly hurried home. All the way I had the drums beating and the fifes whistling in my ears. And I heard the words, 'Brothers, have mercy on me!' or 'Will you pat him? Will you?' My heart was full of physical disgust that was almost sickness. So much so that I halted several times on my way, for I had the feeling that I was going to be really sick from all the horrors that possessed me at that sight. I do not remember how I got home and got to bed. But the moment I was about to fall asleep I heard and saw again all that had happened, and I sprang up.

"'Evidently he knows something I do not know,' I thought about the colonel. 'If I knew what he knows I should certainly grasp--understand--what I have just seen, and it would not cause me such suffering.'

"But however much I thought about it, I could not understand the thing that the colonel knew. It was evening before I could get to sleep, and then only after calling on a friend and drinking till I; was quite drunk.

"Do you think I had come to the conclusion that the deed I had witnessed was wicked? Oh, no. Since it was done with such assurance, and was recognised by every one as indispensable, they doubtless knew something which I did not know. So I thought, and tried to understand. But no matter, I could never understand it, then or afterwards. And not being able to grasp it, I could not enter the service as I had intended. I don't mean only the military service: I did not enter the Civil Service either. And so I have been of no use whatever, as you can see."

"Yes, we know how useless you've been," said one of us. "Tell us, rather, how many people would be of any use at all if it hadn't been for you."

"Oh, that's utter nonsense," said Ivan Vasilievich, with genuine annoyance.

"Well; and what about the love affair?

"My love? It decreased from that day. When, as often happened, she looked dreamy and meditative, I instantly recollected the colonel on the parade ground, and I felt so awkward and uncomfortable that I began to see her less frequently. So my love came to naught. Yes; such chances arise, and they alter and direct a man's whole life," he said in summing up. "And you say . . ."

Web slows after Jackson's death

2009-06-26T11:45:00.001-07:00

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

The sheer number of queries concerned Google

The internet suffered a number of slowdowns as people the world over rushed to verify accounts of Michael Jackson's death.

Search giant Google confirmed to the BBC that when the news first broke it feared it was under attack.

Millions of people who searched for the star's name on Google News were greeted with an error page.

It warned users "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application".

"It's true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page," said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker.

It was around this time that the singer was officially pronounced dead.

Google's trends page showed that searches for Michael Jackson had reached such a volume that in its so called "hotness" gauge the topic was rated "volcanic".

The BBC news website reported that traffic to the site at the time of Jackson's death was 72% higher than normal.

Fail

Google was not the only company overwhelmed by the public's clamour for information.

The microblogging service Twitter crashed with the sheer volume of people using the service.

Searches for topics related to Michael Jackson peaked at 3PM Pacific

Queries about the star soon rocketed to the top of its updates and searches. But the amount of traffic meant it suffered one of its well-known outages.

Before the company's servers crashed, TweetVolume noted that "Michael Jackson" appeared in more than 66,500 Twitter updates.

According to initial data from Trendrr, a Web service that tracks activity on social media sites, the number of Twitter posts Thursday afternoon containing "Michael Jackson" totaled more than 100,000 per hour.

That put news of Jackson's death at least on par with the Iran protests, as Twitter posts about Iran topped 100,000 per hour on June 16 and eventually climbed to 220,000 per hour.

Early reports of Mr Jackson's death and the confusion surrounding it caused a rash of changes and corrections to be made on his Wikipedia page as editors tried to keep up with events and the number of people trying to update the page.

TMZ, the popular celebrity gossip site that broke the story following a tip-off that a paramedic had visited the singers home also crashed.

There was a domino effect as users then fled to other sites. Hollywood gossip writer Perez Hilton's site was among those to flame out.

Keynote Systems reported that its monitoring showed performance problems for the web sites of AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo.

Beginning at 2.30PM Pacific "the average speed for downloading news sites doubled from less than four seconds to almost nine seconds," said Shawn White, Keynote's director of external operations.

He told Data Center Knowledge that "during the same period, the average availability of sites on the index dropped from almost 100% to 86%".

The Last Leaf by O'Henry

2009-06-26T11:24:00.000-07:00

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!

So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony."

At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'hôte of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.

That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places."

Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.

One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray eyebrow.

"She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?"

"She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue.

"Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?"

"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."

"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten."

After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime.

Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.

She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.

As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle of the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside.

Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting backward.

"Twelve," she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight" and "seven", almost together.

Sue look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.

"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.

"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now."

"Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie."

"Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?"

"Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's see exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self."

"You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too."

"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I would draw the shade down."

"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly.

"I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves."

"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves."

"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come back."

Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above.

Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker.

Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings.

"Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy."

"She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old - old flibbertigibbet."

"You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes."

Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock.

When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.

"Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper.

Wearily Sue obeyed.

But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from the branch some twenty feet above the ground.

"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time."

"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, "think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?"

But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed.

The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.

When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.

The ivy leaf was still there.

Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove.

"I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring a me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook."

And hour later she said:

"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."

The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.

"Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. "With good nursing you'll win." And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable."

The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You won. Nutrition and care now - that's all."

And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all.

"I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it, and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell."

O'Henry...

You have to laugh

2009-06-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

Maggie Smith is often seen as austere, but most often she plays comedy. A contradiction? Well, the fact is she excels at high drama and, as Suzie Mackenzie discovers in a rare interview, she's funny, she's a great mimic, and has an unexpected gift for intimacy

'We're still here'... Maggie Smith. Photo: Getty

There is a story that, at the end of his life, when Sir John Gielgud was 96 and pretty reclusive, a friend asked him if there was anything he could do for him, anything at all that he wanted. There was something, Sir John replied. He longed for one last glimpse of Maggie Smith. Why Maggie Smith?

Why not, for instance, Vanessa Redgrave, with whom he had worked much more? Or Judi Dench, with whose classical style - intellectually and emotionally - he had more in common? Maggie Smith is quite unlike anybody else, and everyone in the theatre knows it. You never feel that you have had quite enough of her.

Probably more than any other actor of her generation, she has straddled the extremes. She can be wickedly, caustically funny in a small cameo role; or she can carry the entire emotional depth in a one-hander such as Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. Yet somehow the great classical roles, the usual backbone of any acting career, have eluded her, whether through choice or bad timing is not clear. Still, this has made no significant impression on her reputation. Neither has her inclination to perform extremely badly given a part that she considers dross. It is well known that Smith is not one of those actors who will attempt to resuscitate a drowning script.

Like all great performers, she is built around a mix that is part extreme self-discipline and part unruliness. When she is great, she comes at a part with that immense intelligence that sees in real depth. And when she is bad, she is a parody of her worst self, and all those adjectives, wrongly to my mind, associated with her - aloof, austere, snooty, arch - come into play. But even then, she will make you laugh.

Laughter is at the heart of Maggie Smith. "I tend to head for what's amusing because a lot of things aren't happy. But usually you can find a funny side to practically anything." Comedy is not the antithesis of tragedy. As she says, it's just a different way, detachment, of looking at the same material. No actor excels at revealing, comprehending, and never judging the insecurities of life like Maggie Smith. Which is why I imagine at the end, it was her name for which Sir John reached.

To meet Maggie Smith is good fun. She has a gift for intimacy - a short time in her company and you feel you have known her all your life. She is happy to chat about her two sons by her first husband, the late actor Sir Robert Stephens. Toby and Chris are doing well: Toby is married and currently playing Hamlet at Stratford. Chris, also an actor, is about to get married and is off to Thailand to work. She hopes she may be a grandmother soon. ("I think that may be the bright side of life.")

And she has turned self-deprecation into a comic art. When I say she looks great: "Oh please," she says. "Please. I did look greater." In fact, I'm not sure she did - her gawky, angular elegance suits better her 70 years. Vanity is a favourite subject. I asked about her time at the National Theatre in the 1960s working with Olivier - was he really as vain as they say? "Darling. Larry was an actor."

And she is equally content to turn this against herself. She has recently opened in a new film called Ladies In Lavender, the directorial debut of actor Charles Dance. Set in the war, it is the story of two spinsterish sisters living together in Cornwall whose lives are transformed when one common morning they find a young man, barely alive, washed up on the beach. To "Charlie's annoyance", Smith insists on calling his film Lavender Bags.

As in: "Jude (Dench) and I play two old bags in grey wigs, not a blade of make-up between us. Jude saw the film recently and I asked her did the audience find it funny or just terribly, terribly depressing." Only Mags, as she is always known, could begin to find the film funny, I think: it is a film about the brutal compromises imposed by life.

It is hard to convey a voice that can time the drabbest sentence and render it as pure gold. Smith is also a brilliant mimic. There is always something intriguing and attractive about women who are gifted at imitation (it's traditionally a male domain - though the wonderful Ronni Ancona would be another example here). The attraction is partly the intellect required in observation that is ferocious in its accuracy without seeming ungenerous. But it also implies a lack of vanity - there is never a sense with Smith that she is an actress who has ever relied on her looks.

It was her former husband Robert Stephens who used to say that Smith's singular talent was the ability to turn on a sixpence. And she does so, quite unexpectedly, now: "Still. We're here, darling. We are here." The "we" is inclusive. She means everyone fortunate enough to be here - and with due reverence to those gone - among them Bev, her "lovely" second husband who died of heart disease in 1998, and, naturally, Robert, who died of alcohol-related disease in 1995. This is delivered in a tone - crisp, theatrical to the point of mannered - which manages to be funny and heartbreaking at the same time. It is sometimes said that to be a star of real magnitude is to be able to do one very difficult thing supremely well - and Smith has been a star of international repute since her Oscar-winning performance in The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie in 1969. What she does, and uniquely well, is empathy.

She has never quite fitted the theatrical mould. She has never considered herself a tragedian, a word to make her giggle. "I wanted to be a serious actress, but of course that didn't really happen. I did Desdemona [at the National, opposite Olivier] with great discomfort and was terrified all the time. But then everyone was terrified of Larry." She is commonly considered comic - someone who can skewer a type. She came up in the theatre in the 1950s and 60s, the time of the satirists - Beyond The Fringe - and of revue. Tragedy was meant to be dead, we were all ironists now. Her first West End appearance was with Kenneth Williams and others in a 1957 revue written by Bamber Gascoigne and called Share My Lettuce. "All I remember is that there were eight of us, we were all different colours - I was orange and Ken was lettuce green. I then did some Restoration with Bill [Gaskill], the greatest teacher of all time. But that was comedy and if you do comedy, you kind of don't count. Comedy is never considered the real thing."

Yet the distinctive feature of Smith's acting is precisely that it feels real. It is the contradiction that her career is built around, that she is generally considered a highly stylised comedienne, someone with a bag of tricks, when she is as accomplished and outstanding as a serious actor prepared to go to extremes. She will say herself, "My career is chequered. Then I think I got pigeon-holed in humour; Shakespeare is not my thing." And you could play a sort of party game, even excluding the classics, of all the writers she should have done and hasn't. Imagine her Pinter, shooting the lines point blank. The immense confusion she could bring to Beckett. It's still not too late to play one of the tramps. And her edgy, claustrophobic intimacy with her audience makes her a very modern actor.

All her great performances have been in contemporary work - The Lady In The Van, Three Tall Women in the theatre; on celluloid, Brodie and The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne are built around a tension which you could call embarrassment - the exposure of the self at its most defenceless. Her women are frequently pathetic, desperate - and, of course, women no longer young. Ms Brodie's irony is that she enjoyed no prime. Judith Hearne is an ugly drunk, a secret romantic, an object of ridicule. Mrs Delahunty in her latest film My House In Umbria - adapted from William Trevor's 1990 novella and a part you feel he might have written with her in mind - is yet another of Smith's cunning and expert blend of tones. Mrs Delahunty is a former prostitute who has made a fortune, late, from writing slushy romantic novels and is now living in some splendour in Italy. She finds herself the surprising heroine of the hour when a terrorist bomb explodes in her railway carriage and she invites the three survivors - a little girl, a general, and a young German man - back to her home to recuperate. When the girl's youngish uncle, an expert on ants, comes to take her away, Mrs Delahunty goes to his room at night to try to use all her skills to dissuade him. Drunk, given to ornate speech even when sober, and with a tense memory of her former sexual self - Smith shows us an agony of humiliation, barely bearable.

The subtle balance between the laughably florid and the admirably stoic makes you regret she has never played Mother Courage or Blanche DuBois or Isabella in Measure For Measure.

Dame Maggie was born in 1934, in Ilford, Essex, a place she remembers not at all. "We moved to Oxford when I was four." Her father Nathaniel was a Geordie and a pathologist, her mother Margaret a Glaswegian and a secretary. "So they were Nat and Meg." As a child they used to tell her the romantic story of how they had met on the train from Glasgow to London via Newcastle. "Though I don't think that can be right because the Glasgow train didn't stop at Newcastle. Still, that's what they said." Her twin brothers, Ian and Alistair, were six years older, fiendishly clever and both grew up to be architects. (In fact, she tells me, her brothers are the reason that we have Ronnie Barker as an actor. He studied architecture with them at a college in Oxford but gave it up because they were so much better than he. "Luckily for us.") Her parents, though uneducated, were also bright. Surrounded by such superior intellects, she sometimes wondered what she would grow up to be. "I longed to be bright and most certainly never was. I was rather hopeless, I suspect."

Having "scraped" through some O-levels, she enrolled in a local drama school at the suggestion of a teacher who must have seen something in the 16 year old. "I don't know what. I think I was just very odd." There was no history of acting. She didn't ever go to the theatre. Films were frowned on, though books allowed. But there does seem to have been some familial tendency towards imagining drama where there was none. She says her father was a gentle man. "But there was an incredible nervousness about him. You couldn't do this, couldn't do that. Mustn't ride a bike, you'd be bound to fall off. Couldn't swim, you'd most certainly drown." And, as she explains, in a child this created a tension, "an expectation of imminent disaster". One day, her mother confided to her that her father's nervousness had begun when he accidentally injected himself with something intended for research animals. "After this he was never the same."

She met Beverley Cross on the steps of the Ashmolean when she was 18 and playing Viola in Twelfth Night at the Oxford Playhouse. He was "a bit older", "lovely" and a playwright. He asked her to marry him, but since he was already married she agreed to wait. It was while waiting for his divorce to go through that she met Robert Stephens. "Which was entirely Bev's fault. Because he made me go to the National Theatre when I had already said no."

She says now that her in-built safety mechanism didn't help her. She never saw Stephens as dangerous, though he was married and had a child. "Everyone else did. God knows, Larry tried hard to persuade him not to go anywhere near me. So maybe it was me who was seen as the crazy one." Or maybe it was Olivier identifying himself with Stephens: this was the same time that Olivier was extricating himself from his relationship with Vivien Leigh. (In 1967, the year Smith and Stephens married, Leigh died.) For the first few years, Smith says she was unaware of his drinking, everything seemed fine. In 1969 they made The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie together, Stephens' studied sliminess as the amorous art teacher scratching away at Brodie's inner frustration as, gradually, she turns into a fascist crackpot. Watching the film now, as Brodie's carefully structured personality unravels before our eyes, it's as if you can sense in Smith's performance an awareness of her own precariousness. No, she says. She hadn't a clue, not at that stage. She didn't realise until a year later.

It was in 1970, while playing the lead in Billy Wilder's The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes that Stephens tried to commit suicide during the filming.

"And after that it was just hopeless. We had two little boys. He didn't understand. I sure as hell didn't understand. It got worse and then it went on getting worse and worse. In the end it was destroying everybody. And he was having so many affairs." They tried for a while. He saw medics. "I remember when he was diagnosed as hyper-manic asking what it meant and the doctor saying violent moods swings and indiscriminate sexual activity. And I thought 'that about covers it really'." And she laughs. Not because the memory is funny but because that is what comedy sometimes is - the ability to pull back from a tragic situation and see it as if from the outside. After six years, in 1973, she got out. "I said 'It can't go on' and he said 'No, it can't.' Honestly, I don't think I could have mattered less to him by then. But by then, nothing mattered to him."

In 1975, she married Bev. They went to Ontario, Canada where she worked for five years. She never heard from Stephens and he never tried to contact his sons. Bev, "that lovely man", brought them up. And she spent the next 23 years of her life with him. She used never to talk about Stephens. "Not while Bev was alive. It seemed somehow wiser. But I can talk safely now, now that there's nobody left to be hurt." Not the boys? No, she says. "Chris and Toby are far too sane to be upset any more." She says also that she never stopped loving Stephens. "I don't see how you can, really. I have two wonderful sons and he is the reason for that." And towards the end of his life they were all friends again. Toby was playing Coriolanus at the RSC in 1993 when Stephens was playing Falstaff and Lear. She rang him in his dressing room the night he was to open in King Lear. I asked her what she said? "What you always say when it's Lear," she replied. "Good luck."

She has a reputation for being rather fierce. "It's true I don't tolerate fools but then they don't tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that's why I'm quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies." The classic of this type was, of course, her portrayal of the countess in Robert Altman's Gosford Park where she played Constance apparently armour-plated, rigid - imperiously keeping her inner anarchy at bay. On the whole, she says, she has always found filming rather cold compared with theatre. "I remember one of the first things I did was The Pumpkin Eater with James Mason and Peter Finch and in the whole of the filming I never clapped eyes on either one of them. I thought that was odd." But Altman, she says, runs his sets "like a big family". "He is the patriarch so it's all rather comforting and fun." The theatre is her natural home, "or hermitage". "I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone." And just when you think it's going to be hard work, she says, it's not. David Hare's Breath Of Life, a two-hander that she recently played in the West End with Judi Dench was like that. "I think we were dreading it - that thing of 'in an hour's time we'll still be here talking away.' But actually it is much better than those longueurs where you're waiting to go on and you lose the thread of why you've come to the theatre in the first place." And so she destroys the mystique surrounding the entire canon of western classical theatre.

She loves working with Dench and they are good friends. They first met in the 1950s, but then lost touch and were reunited when they did A Room With A View together in 1983. She admires her, she says, for all the things that they don't have in common. "Jude is the most incredibly level person. Generous, understanding. All the things I'd have to work very hard at, Jude is like all the time. I would love to be like that. And working with Jude you have to try to remember that you ought to be like that."

She is working now on Harry Potter, playing Professor Minerva McGonagall with colleagues Michael Gambon and Miranda Richardson. "It's hilarious. You feel such a berk. There's this wonderful first assistant and he'll be saying, 'Now Harry goes down among the dragons.' You have to hold yourself together. Because if you lose it for a second then you're sunk." She can talk like this because she has never for a moment bought into the idea of celebrity. "I think it must be hell." Acting, she says, is a job of work. "I love it, I'm privileged to do it and I don't know where I'd be without it." But the whole idea of being a star, she says, "That's in other people's eyes. You never get to the top of anything. How can you say anything you do is finished?" In this sense, she says, acting is like life. "The performances you have in your head are always much better than the performances on stage." You start off in life, she says, with not much of an idea. "Of course you don't expect it to be straightforward. But who would have thought it would be quite so complicated? Or rather that one makes it so complicated oneself."

Ladies In Lavender appears, at first, to be a story quite opposite of this. It is about two elderly unmarried sisters whose lives together seem to have been entirely uncomplicated - domestically tranquil and emotionally restrained. Ursula, the younger one, played by Dench, has never had a love affair. Janet (Smith) lost her lover a long time ago. Habit, old age, familiarity, we might think, have inured them to any further experience. This is the dawning of old age and we imagine that they imagine nothing will ever happen to them again. So when Ursula wilfully falls passionately in love with the young Polish man they save on the beach, it is many things - shocking, laughable, pathetic. In the original short story, by William J Locke, the two sisters were younger. "Which may have made more sense," Smith says. "But Charlie wanted to do it with us, so we had to be older." Dance's decision was a good one. At first I thought he should have cast them the other way round, Smith being the better at conveying quiet desperation. But the film needs her nonjudgmental intelligence. We see her sister's insecurities through her eyes. She watches at first with some embarrassment because, as she knows, we are all implicated in the weakness and absurdity of growing old. Slowly this turns to sympathy and sympathy to empathy. Only Maggie Smith, with her profound sense of all our ridiculousness, could so magnificently transform mockery into love.

She talks about old age and death as familiarly as she does about her friends or her children. She has never got over the loss of Bev, she says, and never will. "I still miss him so much it's ridiculous. People say it gets better but it doesn't. It just gets different, that's all." The other night she dreamt about him. "Even in my dream I kept saying to him, 'You are dead. You can't be here.'" And just a few weeks ago she found herself filming in Oxford. "That weird place that changes every three years and yet remains always the same." She went back to her old childhood haunts and to the steps of the Ashmolean where she met him all those years ago. For a moment I thought she was going to cry, and then she burst out laughing. "You know what's awful? What's awful is that it is all all right."

· Ladies In Lavender is on release now; My House In Umbria is released on November 26.

By:

Suzie Mackenzie
The Guardian, Saturday 20 November 200

Can we wipe off our memory?

2009-06-19T03:35:00.000-07:00

How I wish we can. I wish I can forget who Daniel Radcliffe is. I wish I can forget who Rupert Grint is. I wish I can forget who Emma Watson is. I wish I can forget everyone and anything that has had to do with Harry Potter. Just so that I can watch the movies again and experience the thrill, before I read the books! Just so that I live that world in the movies...

We should do justice to what the movies are... They've been done beautifully...

Tictocq - A Short Story by O Henry

2009-06-17T12:51:00.000-07:00

What the hell do we make of the following story? I have some views... but is this some kind of English writing, where exaggeration is a tool...?

Accessing Linux (Ubuntu) folders from Windows Remotely

2009-05-30T08:09:00.000-07:00

Suppose we have 2 comps. C1 runs on Windows and C2 on Ubuntu.
And I want to access folders on C2 from C1.
This is quite easy... One way is the following...
Download a SFTP (SSH) client. I personally did

WinSCP from http://winscp.net/eng/index.php (free) and
SSH Explorer from http://www.sshexplorer.com/ (paid).

Install SSH on Ubuntu (C2) through Synaptic/ terminal command 'sudo apt-get install ssh'.
Now simply put C2 on. (No need to login...)
From C1, run either of the above programs.
Type in the IP address of C2. Port 22. Username (used to login on C2). Then Password. And enjoy the connection!

Connect 2/more computers through ssh...

2009-05-24T08:41:00.000-07:00

On Ubuntu, we can connect computers having unique IPs alloted to them by using ssh. Follow the link given - to get a simple guide to achieve the same!

Here it is, reproduced... You don't have to go through the entire post! First few steps are more than enough!
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If you have two computers running Ubuntu on the same network, it could be an good idea to use openssh to share files between them.

The setup shouldn’t take more than 2 minutes.updated for Ibex.

On all the computers you want to share files with copy/paste the following command.

Ubuntu 8.04:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server openssh-client

Ubuntu 8.10:

sudo apt-get install ssh

Then you need to figure out the ip of each the computer you want to connect to.

Most of the time it’s something like 192.168.1.2 or something in that line.

(kde, cli and another option is presented in bottom of thread)

Right-click the network-manager applet on the top panel and choose “connection information” to find it out.

On the computer you want to access the files from, go to “Places -> Connect to Server”.

You’ll get greeted by this window.

Service type should be “SSH”"

Server should be the “ip” adress of the pc where the info is on.

Port, enter “22″

Pick the folder you wish to share (could take some time to connect depending on the size of the folder).

The user name of the pc you are connected to

The bookmark will be the name of the folder in nautilus

After that you’ll get a windows where you have to enter a password. That would be the password of the pc you are trying to connect to.

And that’s it.

You should have read/write permissions.

You can also connect to your Ubuntu pc running openssh from windows using “Putty” or from OSX using “Fugu”. It should work the other way around too.

Note: It might be a good ideo to turn of root logins (for security reasons).

In a terminal

sudo gedit /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Change the line “PermitRootLogin yes” to “PermitRootLogin no”.

————–

This won’t be possible for all people (for instance when you use fluxbox), then you could try the things below here or just use “gftp”. It has an easy to use UI.

————–

If you are using Kubuntu, you can connect to the ssh server using konqueror.

Just type

fish://user@server/path/to/folder

So in reality it could something like this

fish://rw@localhost/home/rw

This would bring you to the /home of the server or

fish://rw@192.168.1.3/

This would bring you to / of the server.

—

If you are on fluxbox, openbox, … nautilus won’t be able to handle ssh (or smb). You could still use konqueror but you most likely won’t like that.

Then you could use the cli client of you choice and do

ssh user@server

For me this would be:

ssh rw@192.168.1.3

And you would be able to browse the server using the terminal.

Some basic terminal commands are given here.

However, you could use sshfs to mount the the ssh share as a filesystem.

There are instructions to get it working on the official website, but ubuntu.wordpress.com has a nice how-to.

Dreams...

2009-05-24T03:33:00.000-07:00

There are too many ifs to consider to say that life could have been better then, than what it is today... But yet I wait for the day to dawn when the ifs will not matter...

- YSSP

IIT, Bombay fees for UG students of JEE 2009...

2009-05-23T16:27:00.000-07:00

The total fees to be paid by the 2009 entrants is INR 400076!
:D (From www.jee.iitb.ac.in/fees.htm)

(Of course it's not! It's one zero lesser... Nonetheless...)

-YSSP

Inspirational Stories... Courtesy: ICICI Bank Website

2009-05-23T15:38:00.001-07:00

Building Your House

An elderly carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house-building business to live a more leisurely life with his wife and enjoy his extended family. He would miss the paycheck each week, but he wanted to retire. They could get by.

The contractor was sorry to see his good worker go & asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter said yes, but over time it was easy to see that his heart was not in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior materials. It was an unfortunate way to end a dedicated career.

When the carpenter finished his work, his employer came to inspect the house. Then he handed the front-door key to the carpenter and said, "This is your house... my gift to you."

The carpenter was shocked!

What a shame! If he had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so differently.

So it is with us. We build our lives, a day at a time, often putting less than our best into the building. Then, with a shock, we realize we have to live in the house we have built. If we could do it over, we would do it much differently.

But, you cannot go back. You are the carpenter, and every day you hammer a nail, place a board, or erect a wall. Someone once said, "Life is a do-it-yourself project." Your attitude, and the choices you make today, help build the "house" you will live in tomorrow. Therefore, Build wisely!

THE OBSTACLE IN OUR PATH

In ancient times, a king had a boulder placed on a roadway. Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock. Some of the king's wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked around it.

Many loudly blamed the king for not keeping the roads clear, but none did anything about getting the big stone out of the way. Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables. On approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. As the peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been. The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the king indicating that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway. The peasant learned what many others never understand.

Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve one's condition.

Sharpen your Axe – Story contributed by Ms. Nandini Jagannarayan, faculty, Ramniranjan Jhunjhunwala college

A very strong woodcutter asked to work for a timber merchant, and to which the merchant agreed. His salary was really good and so were the working conditions. For that reason, the woodcutter was determined to do his best.

His boss gave him an Axe and showed him the area where he was supposed to fell the trees.

The first day, the woodcutter brought fifteen (15) trees.

He was appreciated for his performance and was highly motivated by the words of his boss, the woodcutter tried harder the next day, but he only could bring ten (10) trees. The third day he tried even harder, but he was only able to bring seven (7) trees. Day after day he was bringing less and less trees.

The woodcutter thought that something must be terribly wrong with him and he went to the boss and apologized, saying that he could not understand what was going on.

"When was the last time you sharpened your axe?" the boss asked.

"Sharpen? I had no time to sharpen my axe. I have been very busy trying to cut trees..."

ICICI Bank Scholarship for 10th Pass

2009-05-23T15:12:00.000-07:00

Eligibility:
Family income < 1.5 lacs/annum

Check other details out on their website.

Ubuntu 9.04...

2009-05-21T17:35:00.000-07:00

An OS par expectations. Repositories are better managed. Proprietary hardware support is excellent. Aesthetics in design , visual and technical, is commendable. And definitely seems faster...

A very satisfying experience, especially following the 8.10 'disaster'!

Along with the current...

2009-05-20T08:31:00.001-07:00

...I'd never understood how closely things are connected to one another... We humans are only a part of something very much larger. When we walk along, we may crush a beetle or simply cause a change in the air so that a fly ends up where it might never have gone otherwise. And if we think of the same example but with ourselves in the role of the insect, and the larger universe in the role we have just played, it's perfectly clear that we are affected everyday by forces over which we have no more control than the poor beetle has over our gigantic foot as it descends upon it. What are we to do? We must use whatever methods we can to to understand the motion of the universe around us and time our actions so that we are not fighting the currents, but moving with them...

-Arthur Golden (in Memoirs of a Geisha)

On The Latching Mechanism in a ‘Springed’ Ball-pen

2009-05-18T13:41:00.001-07:00

Firstly, I hope the ball-pen referred in the title is clear. Recall those ball-pens in which we have to push the little button on the pen-top (with usually our thumb/ index-finger) to ‘on’ and ‘off’ the pen? Yes, that’s what this article refers to. . .

Oh! The joy of learning music...

2009-05-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

How I'd enjoy just now to learn the violin and the piano... But Mumbai's not the place for it! (Not at Powai/Parle , Mumbai, anyways!)
If you know better, please please inform!
Y

Dr. Homi Bhabha quote

2009-05-17T04:50:00.000-07:00

“I know quite clearly what I want out of my life. Life and my emotions are the only things I am conscious of. I love the consciousness of life and I want as much of it as I can get. But the span of one's life is limited. What comes after death no one knows. Nor do I care. Since, therefore, I cannot increase the content of life by increasing its duration, I will increase it by increasing its intensity. Art, music, poetry and everything else that consciousness I do have this one purpose - increasing the intensity of my consciousness of life.”
Homi Bhabha

My new Dell Desktop Config!

2009-05-17T01:50:00.000-07:00

Have to endure the wait till it gets here!

-Dell Studio XPS Desktop
-Dell S2409W 24 " Full HD Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor
-Dell(TM) Consumer Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Bundle
-Intel(R) Core(TM)i7-920 Processor (2.66GHz, 8MB)
-Integrated 7.1 Audio
-Dell(TM) A525 Stereo Speakers with Subwoofer (UK)
-McAfee(R) Security Center(TM) - 15 Months OEM
-512MB ATI(R) Radeon(TM) HD 4850
-Genuine Windows Vista(R) Home Premium 64 bit SP1 Edition (English).
-Added performance for entertainment and movie making. Features the new 3D Aero-graphics interface. Includes Windows Media Centre functionality
-6GB (6X1GB) DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz Memory
-Integrated Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000
-Blu-ray Disc Drive Burner (BD/DVD/CD burner w/dual layer write capability)
-Power DVD 8.1
-19-in-1 Hi-Speed Media Reader with Bluetooth(R) 2.0
-500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive with Native Command Queuing

Installing .bin files in Linux

2009-05-17T01:12:00.000-07:00

.bin stands for 'binary', of course. All that it means is that the file is storing data in binary format.
OSs cannot execute a data file. It has to be an 'executable'. To make it an executable,
1) Open a Terminal and using the cd(change directory) command, navigate to the folder containing the .bin file.
2) Type 'chmod +x nameoffile.bin' and press enter. (The chmod instruction is to change read write permissions for the file...)(The +x means 'add' to the permissions an 'x', i.e. make it 'x'-e-cutable!
With that done, run the .bin program...
3) Type './nameoffile.bin' and press enter.

Bingo!

Did Congress know that it was to win? How?...

2009-05-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

An insider from Air-India, the National carrier of India, which is responsible for operating the AI-1 flight, for the President of India and the flight for the Prime-Minister of India, has informed that instructions for arrangements for an official visit of the Prime-Minister, who is usually accompanied by his/her spouse, scheduled for June second week, included special instructions for an ambu-lift (A lift used for boarding a wheel-chair when the air-craft is parked off bay, as is for Presidents and Prime Ministers to save their time). The ambu-lift has been used to board Ms. Kaur, the current Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh's wife...
So was UPA so confident that it would win the elections and retain Dr. Singh as the Prime Minister, that they made arrangements for an ambu-lift for the second week of June?...

On the Uncertainty Principle

2009-05-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

I have read the following many times, but had never analyzed it before today... We ended up getting delta-x for a golf-ball/ bullet to be much smaller (order -33 of 10) than that for an electron (order -9 of 10) many times. What exactly does that mean? That we can determine the position of the bullet better than we can that of the electron? Certainly NOT! The bullet is way bigger than the electron... Millions of atoms larger! What we concluded was for a point-mass of the mass of the bullet... I never realized that! So, the calculation is actually useless... No meaning to it... We can't use the concept of 'centre of mass' or the like... The uncertainty principle simply isn't what these deceptive calculations make it seem to be!

UPA wins...

2009-05-16T05:06:00.000-07:00

There's nothing more to say, actually...
Go progress!

New Technology...

2009-05-15T23:31:00.000-07:00

Dear all,
Here is some stuff one may like to check out...

Blue Ray Disc

On Leonardo da Vinci

2009-05-15T11:51:00.000-07:00

I was reading a 'Historical Perspective' of modern science where I came across the following piece worth sharing:
... Then, there was Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)(67 years), Italian painter, architect, sculptor, engineer and philosopher, whose greatness as a scientist has come to be appreciated only in recent years, for his works were left in manuscript form and were probably not widely known among his contemporaries - for which reason his influence on early science is comparatively insignificant. His belief in the value of experiment is worthy of the twentieth century: " Before making this case a general rule, test it by experiment two or three times and see if the experiment produces the same effect." Although expressed in the vague language of his time, some of his ideas concerning what we refer to as 'force', 'inertia', 'acceleration', the 'laws of motion', etc., were qualitatively correct. Concerning perpetual motion, he wrote: "Oh, speculators on perpetual motion, how many vain projects of the like character you have created! Go and be the companions of the searchers after gold." Rejecting the Ptolemaic theory, he held that "the sun does not move." That he was not persecuted or even burned at the stake, as was Bruno a century later, for holding such revolutionary and, therefore (!), heretical views is probably due to the fact that his doctrines were given little publicity; for, holding no academic position, he did not teach, and he published nothing...

Air-India CMD changed

2009-05-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

It is rumored that Mr. Raghu Menon did not last long as the CMD (Chairman and Managing Director) of Air-India because he worked towards maintaining brand Air-India independently of the brand Indian/ Indian-Airlines.
One of his initiatives, successfully completed during his tenure as CMD, was to rename the international 'division' of NACIL (National Aviation Company of India Limited) (the merged entity of erstwhile Air-India Limited and Indian Limited (Indian Airlines)) to 'Air-India International', a name used during the early years od Air-India's international operations.
The company is, as of date, named 'Air-India International', with Arvind Jadhav as its CMD.

The Satyam Farce

2009-05-11T17:12:00.000-07:00

The entire Satyam episode has been desribed as no less than 'shocking', 'unethical', 'consequential to Brand India' and what and what not! But there is a silver lining to it!
In the coming years, President (now, elect) Obama may cash in on this untrustworthiness of Indian IT comapnies to promote his stance against outsourcing jobs (in US) to such firms.
Let us wait and see if this episode is leveraged to that end...