Turbo time? I don't have a clue how to remove the white highlights. Time to migrate to wordpress, perhaps.

“The greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is nature’s payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering. Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses; people have become woolly mice. They still have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights through a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one-hour bicycle ride. ‘Good for you’. Instead of expressing their gratitude for the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lady with few friends these days, and those who wish to make use of her charms, she rewards passionately.”
A beautiful paragraph, that. So true. And it made me feel so guilty for missing the training ride today. 
I have ridden through blinding heatwaves and crushing hailstorms. It's not the physical suffering that bothers me. In fact, whenever an auto putters by, or a truck rumbles past, I give them a 20 second head start, put my head down, get on the drops, clench my abs, force myself to take slow, deep breaths and shoot after them like a bat out of hell. Man against machine, meat against metal. Often they get away, sometimes they don't. A smouldering fire slowly seeps into my legs. It's a nagging, dull ache that demands to be felt. It can't be blocked. It hurts. It hurts a lot. But I love it. I'm an endorphin junkie through and through. 
What really bothers me is that I am required to share the road with a horde of multicoloured air-conditioned tin cans running on dinosaur juice, carrying obese woolly mice with alcohol oozing out of their ears (I exaggerate, but sometimes that is how it is.). I have seen Adi Kaul's scars. Didn't like the look of them. Heading out on the highway in the half-light of a cloud-covered, drizzly dawn is not the best of ideas.
 But I don't want to lose the power that took so much pain and sacrifice to build. Time to get a turbo, perhaps?

I copied the opening paragraph from The Rider by Tim Krabbe. It is often said every cyclist worth their salt should read it. Follow this link for a review of the book and some pithy excerpts from it.

A book I'd not read since high school: Check!

I don't need a stupid reading challenge! Half my day is spent poring over obscure crystal packing diagrams and dubious interaction parameters in tediously written research papers (got to rant about them someday); while the other half goes into plotting world domination. It's bloody hard. The hour with my Kindle before drifting off to sleep is what keeps me ticking. (Yeah, yeah, I'm a total loser.)
The checklist did one good thing, however. It got me thinking. Which book have I always wanted to pick up again in the eight millenia since I passed high school? The answer was clear as daylight- I wanted to study the three laws of robotics again.

'The Complete Robot' is about as science fiction-y as it gets, minus spectacular space battles with the pew-pew-pew, zap-zap, booms and crashes.
I can sum the book up in a single word: logical. It's brimming over with logic and delightful reasoning that titillates the scientifically inclined mind. Even more delightful, perhaps, is that the reader gets to follow the gradual evolution of  robots from children's playmates to beings possessing genius-level intellect that far surpasses that of their creators'.
I have not decided which story I like the best. 'Victory unintentional' had me chuckling to myself for one full hour. Again.
Poor Powell and Donovan deserve a special mention. I mean, almost being fried to a crisp under the cruel Sun of Mercury? Seriously? I would have quit my job the moment I got out of that fix. But these guys? They stay on; and get zapped through hyperspace to somewhere near Orion, in a spaceship packed with nothing but baked beans and milk, remotely controlled by a thinking machine with a ghastly sense of humour! Willingly! They are my heroes!
Then along comes the frigid Susan Calvin. I keep wondering how the book would have turnrd out if Asimov had not thought of her character. I don't like the conclusions I arrive at.
Overall, the book draws a wistful picture of a Utopia where the Earth is not the dying planet we know, but home to a vibrant civilisation and neatly balanced ecology. The problem of interstellar travel has been solved and possibilities of interplanetary war have been nipped in the bud; all thanks to the robots. Despite the terrible, terrible Frankenstein complex that plagues humanity throughout the book, our mechanical analogues continue to serve us selflessly, working for the betterment of life on Earth without expecting anything in return. For, thanks to the three laws of robotics, they're indistinguishable from the very best of human beings.

The taste the book left in my mouth was somewhat bittersweet. I have plodded through more than my fair share of fairy tales and fantasies, but this is the only fantasy I honestly wish were real.

P.S. I'm scrapping that idiotic reading challenge. I like the looks of the previous years' Man Booker prize shortlists a lot better. I'll read whatever the heck I want.

And rest easy, friend, this will be the last entry in my bothersome blog for some time to come. I've got to unleash my writing skills on the unsuspecting scientific community. Pity them.
<end/rant>

Electronic versions of the book are available for download and viewing if you're interested; but do yourself a favour- buy the hard copy. :)

Old flame (Contd.)

 I was facebook-stalking a certain lady (10/10 would do it again. A fellow bookworm is a gem of a find! :) ) when I came across a conversation debating the relative merits of the smells of old books and new ones. And BLAM! My authorly itch was set off again! I would tend to agree completely with that certain lady, having grown up among shelf upon shelf of dusty volumes myself. A book is not just the squiggles, more squiggles and even more of the black squiggles; the texture of the pages on your fingers, the musty aroma wafting into your nostrils, the warm weight of it- all add up to complete the experience.
But what do you do when the cupboard of your tiny hostel room threatens to overflow? Do you remain a stubborn purist, and pray for the damned souls roving the Stygian darkness of the electronic world? Or do you take a deep breath, loosen your muscles and take the plunge?
Well I took the plunge a couple of months ago. I found the water inviting; in fact so much so that it was only today that I realised that I have not ranted here in forever.
Amazon could not have chosen a better name for their product. My old flame has been Kindle-d into a roaring blaze in the last two months.  It is light, it is sleek, handles really well, and the use of electronic ink  and electronic paper tech in the display gives you the illusion of turning the pages of an actual, physical book! Too bad the 160 books in my pocket all smell the same!
end rant

P.S. Would love a critique if I do manage to work up the courage to share this on facebag. Aaand a book-chat and a reading-list suggestion would not be too bad, either.
There are plans to baby-talk about some of the science I have been trying to do as well.

Old flame

I honestly have no idea how many books I have. I'm too lazy to count. Some books I hold very close to my heart (Yeah, I have one. Beats at the rate of 49 per minute!), some maybe I will pick up again some five years from this point of time, and some I have not the faintest idea how I could have bought, unless I had been intoxicated with alcohol or the blissful fumes of hashish! I'm joking about the hashish! And the alcohol.
      Well the bottom-line of this rant is: I own too *add expletive* many books! I'm not very sure they have worked their magic on me. As a grumpy grad schooler, I still have those terrible moments when I seriously believe my brain growth somehow stopped at the age of 13. And quite frequently, too. The number of books I possess has not ceased to grow, however. My 'wardrobe', if you would be polite enough to call it so, is at the point of starting to overflow. I am a poor student. I don't own a bookshelf.
     Apparently, there are quite a lot of people with fully and admirably functioning CPUs who have faced, and continue to face the "bookshelf dilemma" (I love the way this lady writes. Pity her blog has had no entries in over a year now.). So, um, why not do the smart thing for once in my life?
    My seniors say I looked like a lovesick idiot with that parcel from amazon.com. I suppose I might have.This would not be the first time; I am told that smile of mine lends me a rather unfocused and foolish look. The object it contained was, well, sleek.

   On came the 3G hotspot on my battered and sweat-stained Lumia 520, passkeys were entered, a connection to the swirling whirlpool of information promptly established. Aaaand I'm reading Bram Stoker's Dracula now. The original. I admit I miss the musty aroma of the old copy dad has at home, the fragile feel of its age-browned pages; but I never knew how I had missed those small, warm flips my stomach used to do at the thought of returning to an unfinished story when I was younger. Until now. The fire is re-Kindled.