Deepthi's Blog

Heaven of Freedom

lookwelltothisday — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:29:07 +0000

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

– Geetanjali, Tagore

Are you proud to be an Indian?

lookwelltothisday — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 13:11:38 +0000

How many of you are proud to be Indians?: Mr. Michel asked. Almost every one in the class raised their hands. Why are you proud to be Indians?: Again Mr. Michel - Complete Silence!!!!!

This question really struck my heart. Even though many of us tell “Proud to be Indians”, we are ignorant of our great culture and history. We are taught history for many years in school. But how many pages in our history text book are dedicated for the Indian culture and the great Indus valley civilization?

As a person who respects Indian culture and heritage, I was very keen to know more about it. So I attended a three day session by Mr. Michel on this topic. His lectures were very much informative and inspiring and created a whim of desire in me to learn more about ancient India.

There are some people who are excessively proud of India who think that ancient Indian texts and scriptures has everything that mankind can ever invent or discover. But this is not true. Ancient India has contributed a lot to astronomy, mathematics, arts, medicine and other fields in science. But that does not mean that there is nothing more to be done in these fields. It is necessary to know what is India’s contribution and what is not.

The development in science in ancient India was the effort of many scientists and mathematicians who worked day and night without even having any modern tools and equipments. The great cultural and spiritual heritage in India was supportive to these scientists, unlike most of the contemporary civilizations. The people had the freedom of thought and had freedom to oppose things. This paved the way for progress in science and other fields.

The greatness in Indian culture is freedom of thought which many other cultures didn’t have. We know about many great scientists in ancient times who had been imprisoned and sentenced to death because their discovery was against the religious belief. But the ancient Indians were never like that. They were open to new ideas. The spirituality and science were no different at that time. As the new generation of India we have the responsibility to retain the great culture of India. For that first we need to know about it. I hope that every citizen in India will get an opportunity, as I got, to learn about the greatness of Indian culture and heritage.

Peace Pilgrim

lookwelltothisday — Thu, 27 May 2010 10:39:30 +0000

How many of you dare to give up all that you own- your job, money , house and other properties. I don’t think normal humans like us will ever even think about it. But there is a lady who forfeited all properties she owned. She walked over the land of America for making peace in the world. “25000 miles for peace” – this is what she has written on her shirt. She walked more than 25000 miles during her peace pilgrimage penniless.

The aim of her pilgrimage was to make peace in the world. Her message to the world is “overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth and hatred with love”. I came to know about her from the book, brought out by her friends, named “Peace Pilgrim: Her life and work in her own words”. In that book she narrates her experiences when she set out for the pilgrimage. During her pilgrimage she met many people. She inspired many people to leave a self-centered life and to lead a God-centered life. She taught people to experience happiness and peace through love and service to others She helped many people in trouble.

There are many lessons to be learned from her life. She shows us from her experience how she was able to save herself and others with her courage and faith in God. Through this book her teachings continue to inspire thousands of lives. This is a must read book for all who are interested in the well being of the world and well being of yourself. There are many spiritual teachings that has to be imbibed from her life and implement it in our lives.

To know more about her : http://www.peacepilgrim.com/

Quote of the day

lookwelltothisday — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 09:37:28 +0000

“Ralph, like us, was willing to be a fool. And the way to get to the top of the heap in terms of developing research is to be a fool, because only fools keep trying. You have idea number 1, you get excited, and it flops. Then you have idea number 2, you get excited, it flops. Only a fool would be excited by the 100th idea, but it might take 100 ideas before one really pays off. Unless you are foolish enough to be continually excited, you won’t have the motivation, you won’t have the energy to carry it through. God rewards fools.”

-Martin Hellman

Extracting words from a text file in a C program

lookwelltothisday — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:06:06 +0000

I was trying to write a C program to extract only words from a text file. By a word, I mean a string of only alphabets. So I have to skip all non alphabetic characters such as “,:. newline whitespaces etc…from the input. It is easy to strip out white sapces by using fscanf.

while(fscanf(file,”%s”, str))
{
printf(“%s\n”,str);
}

The output of the above code snippet will be a list of strings which contain all characters except whitespace characters.

If the file contain “HAI!Good Morning” , the output of the above program will be

HAI!Good
Morning

My aim is to get the output as

HAI
Good
Morning

After an extensive search in the internet I didnt get much help to do this, except to know the exact working of fscanf.

This is the code that I wrote to extract WORDS.

int count=0;
while((count =fscanf(file,”%[a-zA-Z0-9]“,s))!=EOF)
{
if(count>0)
fprintf(stdout,”%s\n”,s);
fgetc(file);
}

The format specifier given as argument %[a-zA-Z] will take care of preventing other charaters from being read. I had to struggle a lot before I found out that I have to use fgetc() inorder for this code to work properly. When fscanf reads from the file and reaches a delimiter(non alphabetic character in this case) it stops reading and returns. But now the file pointer is pointing to that delimiter. Pointer is not automatically moved forward. As a result when fscanf is called next time it tries to read again the same delimiter and being unable to read it returns. So inorder to make pointer move forward I used fgetc() which reads that delimiter and moves the pointer forward.
The output is written to the stdout after checking whether count > 0. This is to avoid multiple writing of same word if it is followed by more than one delimiters.

Back home…

lookwelltothisday — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:20:35 +0000

Back home in a few days… That thought itself is exciting me. When we are at home we find faults in each and every thing- “Amma! Food is not good.. make something tasty… Acha ! I want to go abroad and study.. Here education system is not all good “ Like this there is a big list of complaints for all of us. Isn’t it? But now, been in another country for 5 months, I badly wanted to go home. It is good to visit a new country and to mingle with new people. But still there is something that bond us with our home land and our beloveds. There is something that always call us back like a magnetic attraction.

For the last 5 months in Sweden, I am having food cooked by me. I am not a bad cook. But still Iam craving for “dosa” made by my mom. I have high speed internet connection 24X7 which connects me to all my friends via gtalk, skype, orkut and many more services. But now I want to see my friends and talk to them. It is not that I regret that I have come here. I had a very nice time here in Sweden. New country, new people, new culture and different climate was a good experiene which will be a golden page in my life. And I am sure I will miss Sweden once I go home. Life is like that.. grass is always greener on the other side.. Even then “my” home, “my” place, “my” friends and all other “my” things are always special….

So now I am all set to head home…. waiting for that day to come….back home !!!!!

Looking for Master’s??

lookwelltothisday — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 10:41:20 +0000

Are you doing final year of your bachelor’s degree? Do you want to do your Master’s?

Here I’m writing something useful (I think) for those who are aiming for a Masters degree.

If you have not written GRE or any other tests, don’t worry, you can still apply to many European universities. Hurry up, if you don’t want to waste one year after your degree. Many of the scholarship applications close before March, some in January also. Here are some links to the funding agencies.

http://www.inlaksfoundation.org/Inlaks-Scholarship-Abroad.html#Scholarships

http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/erasmus_mundus/funding/scholarships_students_academics_en.php

UK Scholarships

http://scholarship-positions.com/category/uk-scholarships/

http://www.britishcouncil.org/india-scholarships-chevening.htm

http://www.scotlandscholarship.com/

Netherland Scholarships

http://www.nuffic.nl/international-students/scholarships

Be prepared with your SOP (Statement of Purpose or Letter of Motivation) and start searching for the courses of your interest. Don’t be late!!!

Hello world!

lookwelltothisday — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 09:50:58 +0000

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

-Kalidasa