Perception of taste and size of serving:

I will start with a little example:

When I was younger, I used to live in a culture where green tea was cherished. We used to get green tea servings in very small cups. A cup of tea looked like the one above. It was pretty satisfactory a size for a serving.

In 2000 I moved to US. A few years down the line I was at a QT gas station and had my first iced "green apple green tea". They had that offered in 44 Oz cups (1.3 Liters), and I had that fairly often. That messed up my perception of green tea servings forever. Now I can't feel satisfied with a little cup of green tea, and I get my green tea served in at least 250ml cups now.

Similar is the case with coffee. My friends here in Spain have coffee in little cups, whereas my system requires coffee to be served in 250ml or so. I do not know if I am pleasing the taste buds or I am filling up a more primitive desire of filling my stomach with it.

There is a primitive psychological connection that governs the desire to eat with the pleasant taste. Maybe the connection gets reinforced by habits, and once reinforced it's really difficult to go back to enjoying small servings just for the sake of taste. In words of an ex addict "when you have tasted excess, everything else tastes bland".

And that might be one of the biggest reason for obesity in America. The perception of taste is so strongly linked with the desire to fill stomach that it's very difficult to feel satisfied with a small serving size. Is it possible to break that connection just by changing habits alone, or would any drug maker have to make a blocker for that connection? if someone does, that could become the medicine that saves America.

The "Draw Mohammad Day"

Some chicken shits, while hiding behind fake IDs are putting a lot of lives at risk by insulting a lot of people.

Lets assume that the number of 'extremist' Muslims is more than the entire Chinese army. Is that a good start? Fine, that makes them 0.2% of the Muslim population. Lets assume that 6 MILLION Muslims go out in protests etc.. that's 0.4% of the Muslim population.

So these guys just offended more than 99% of Muslims just to make their point to 0.2 - 0.6 % of the population. And they provided ammo to those 0.2% to recruit more, to convert more towards extremism.

So, mr whoever were behind these acts of insulting 99% of otherwise peaceful, moderate Muslims, while you, chicken shit, are hiding behind a computer screen with a fake ID, some soldiers will get killed because of the hatred you spew.

Unfortunately the movement's organiser is a German. I guess Islamophobia is the new 'IN' thing there.it's been a while since they last hated people based on a religion.

Yes I am doing the same thing these 'draw Muhammad' idiots did. I'm offending / insulting the entire German populace based on the actions of a few. Get the point.

Schwarz zu Blau ..

I like this one.

Robert Novak eats dirt.

I always thought of him as a cancer... maybe it was that cancer in his head?

Good riddance. About time. I wish he had died before he committed the act of treason.

Off-Topic: Thanks for making me smile.

Every once a while something comes up that brings you some kind of inner joy, that you can't explain in words.

Matt Harding, Thank you for making me smile. I don't know if I got the message you intended to give, or you just wanted to sell me some stride gum.

The world is such a beautiful place. I wish we could all dance like that, without hating our fellow men.

Where the Hell is Matt <-- click

Setup for this Aerospace Engineer.

I like my system. I've had it for more than 2 years now. Yeah it's not the fastest machine out there but I've not felt the need for a faster system yet. Here's a little run down of what I run.

Hardware:
Dell Latitude D620 laptop.

Intel Core2 Duo T7200. 2Ghz x 2 | 64 bit.
2 GB ram.
100 GB 7200RPM HDD.
1440x900 14.1" wide screen.
NVidia graphic card with some built-in ram etc.
Other stuff includes BT, Cellular, Wifi, dvdrw, and other irrelevant stuff.
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OS: Linux - Ubuntu 9.04 x64.

Software:

OpenOffice: This is the alternative to MS Office. I like the format, and the fact that certain things are closer to LaTEX in formatting. You can open any MS Office document in OpenOffice. Converting equations from OpenOffice to MS Office messes them up. More information on: http://www.openoffice.org/

OpenOffice is available in the linux repositories, and is installed in the default installation of Ubuntu 9.04.

SciLab: It's a scientific / mathematical software, an alternative to Matlab.
Yes, I used to work on Matlab when I had access to it. I think it's overpriced and I had to switch to Scilab for windows. Now I'm using Scilab for Linux. Here's more information about Scilab. http://www.scilab.org/

Scilab is in the repositories. In order to enjoy full functionality of scilab it's imperative that the original NVidia graphics drivers are installed. I'll jot down how to do that later.

It can be installed by the command : sudo apt-get install scilab


Octave & QtOctave: Another high level language for numerical computations. It's easy to use, and is compatible with Matlab. Here's more information on Octave: http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/about.html

QtOctave is octave with a nice front-end designed in Trolltech's QT language.

It's available in the repositories. Installation is by : sudo apt-get install qtoctave

In order to enjoy full functionality one must install gnuplot (sudo apt-get install gnuplot)


OpenFOAM and ParaView.

I will cover these two softwares in my next blog. Till that time I shall chat with some friends on pidgin, and call some folks up using qutecom VOIP phone.

A Couple of screenshots.

eh. No I don't do too much eye candy. That 'Macslow clock' is not a regular feature. I keep 3 desktops, in a prism configuration.

I do use Compiz for some effects. I do not use macslow, or awn, or that monitor thing etc. Hey it's a laptop and I don't need all that stuff.

Theme : Slickness-Black.
Icons etc: Black-white 2.

I keep most of the stuff dark on the laptop, with the contrast between black - n - gray.. helps keep the eye-strain to a minimum.