Are You a Pro Gmail User?

While you were in a restaurant have you ever wished there was an interactive display menu on your table which displayed items like hot-water/sugar/sauce/salt/finger-bowl/bill-please/spoon and some other frequently asked items by the customers? Well, I atleast have!, It is a pain to make an eye contact with the serving community in the restaurant (atleast in bangalore). Who wouldn't benefit with such an interactive system? It clearly folds the time and effort of both the customers and the food servers. Agreed?


Hello anybody there....., can I please have you for a minute? I am not doing very well, can you please help me with a glass of hot-water? *coughs*

Vs

At the press of a button the server gets you a glass of bubbling hot water. 

I am not making an attempt to landscape our over popu-polluted Bangalore onto Sion. This blog is an effort to convince 99.99% of the computer literates to understand the power of using keyboard shortcuts in an application such as gmail.  We spend most of our time (or should i say all our time) toggling between the inbox/chatbox/searchbox of gmail and we seldom make efforts to sharpen our axe of locomotion within gmail. My estimated-estimation is we can save 3.5 times our time if we deploy the keyboard shortcuts in the gmail battlefield. It is right to call it that, isn’t it? Place where you e-breakup, e-makeup or even e-makeout at times ;-) (or should I replace the letter e with g, just like how the word e-mail today means g-mail.)

Cut-the-Crap and get to business:

1. In your Gmail window enable settings>general>keyboard_shortcuts_on
2. Sign out from Gmail and Sign in back.
3. Tantadaaaaan! there you are ... your gmail is now ready to interact with you using keyboard shortcuts.
4. Press ? key on your k/b and you will get a list of keyboard shortcuts.
5. Learn a shorcut or two a day and you can master all of them in 1 month.
6. This is such a value addition --you won’t believe-- that you will save a few years in your life from now. Mouse is to key board shortcuts is like using a king-fisher airlines in place of BMTC - which unfortunately isn’t a service that can either be replaced or improved in Bangalore.
7. If you find keyboard shortcuts nightmarish, just learn these 3: 'c' for compose, 'q' for chat box, '/' for search box and finally 'Alt+F4' to close gmail and get some real work done :-)) !!!!

Would love to see your comments telling me how employing k/b shortcuts added so much to your life span :-)

How to Type Math Equations in your Email/Blog/Website

Latex is a markup language used by scientists/academicians to type math equations. I have attempted to explain how to include math-equations in your email/blog/site. Drop in a mail at sudarshaniisc at gmail in case of problems.

Point your browser to http://codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php . You can now type your equation (you can use the buttons on the top if you are not acquainted to latex). For example if you type (a+b)^2 = a^2 + b^2 +2ab in the equation box the following appears . In the tiny window in the middle bottom you will see the corresponding html code. Note that you can also copy the equation as an image or a weblink by right clicking on it.

1) Email: If you are using gmail, you must first enable "insert picture option". You can do this in your gmail account by enabling settings-Labs-insertingimages. Once this is done, you are ready to insert images into your email. Use the above method to type your equation and then copy the weblink of the equation. You can now use the insert image feature to insert the weblink of the equation.

2) Website: To include an equation in a webpage, just copy paste the html code.

3) Blog: Pasting the html code works fine for blogs. If you are using blogger.com--as an alternative--you can consider doing the following: 

• Go to your blog homepage and click on design.
• You will see something like this:

• Click on add a gadget and select "html/Java Script" (there are several places where you can add gadgets, you must select the one in the bottom. (look at the figure above)
• Paste the following code :
  <script src="http://www.watchmath.com/cgi-bin/mathtex3.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> replaceMath( document.body );</script>
  
  

There you are, you can now type latex equations in your blogspot blog by enclosing your latex code between $   $. You can now complicate your webpage/blog with equations and math structures. Please note that the rendering is a little bad. The equations tend to get misoriented from the line of text. Wonder if someone knows how to fix it. Until a fix arrives, lets use  and appreciate what we have :-)

A letter from a physicist : Skepticism about Darwin's legacy

My brother-in-law and me had a detailed discussion on the theory of evolution. He is very suspicious of the claims made by the theory of evolution and thinks that the biologists should think a step beyond it. Take a look at his letter to me and do voice your opinion in the comments section of this blog.

Abhi happens to be a physicist (Associate prof) from Duke university and his interests include Theoretical nuclear physics, Theoretical particle physics and string theory and Theoretical condensed matter physics.

Sudarshan

Dear Sudha,

The following analogy from physics might help clarify what
I am referring to. In the late 1600's when Newton discovered
patterns in planetary motion and proposed his laws, everyone
thought we had discovered how the universe functions. In fact
by the mid 1800's, armed with many physicists had assumed
we understood almost everything about the laws governing
nature. But they were all shocked in the late 1800's and early
1900's that they had not appreciated a completely new approach
to physics described by quantum mechanics where classical
mechanics was merely an "effective" approach. Ofcourse
quantum effects are rather subtle and Newton's ideas are still
valid almost in all daily experiences. So Newton certainly
deserves a lot of credit.

In the same way, I feel the theory of evolution of Darwin,
could be a very useful first step in our understanding of life.
But there may be many surprises on the way! And as scientists
we should be ready for it. In my opinion there are already many
questions that evolutionary theorists should be asking. Hopefully,
they are building more realistic models and testing the theory
of evolution rigorously. Trying to poke holes into the theory.
I would be surprised if they are not!

For example, some of the subtler questions could be related to
the quantum mechanical effects that govern the probabilities in
the evolutionary mechanism. I have heard that the physics of
protien folding is an open problem in biochemistry and I some
people believe quantum mechanics is playing an important role
there.

Finally, I am sure you will agree that human emotions and feelings
are "observed facts". At some point of time we should address them.
How do they arise? We cannot just say "these arise from "complex"
connections in the human brain"! You can almost explain anything
away through the use of word "complexity" these days and you
are not allowed to ask any more questions! Why? "Because it is
complex"! Sounds very much like religion to me!

Why did evolution create a human brain that is capable of "sacrifice" for the sake of others that by very nature goes against preserving the "gene"? Why did evolution create many human brains that thinks that "sacrifice" for others is an admirable trait in a human being and respect those people rather than "kill" them at first site! These are some questions I wonder about. I hope scientists just dont use "complexity" to explain away these observed facts and shut me up!

The bottom line is that some people become happy with an explanation about the observed phenomena. Others do not. People who accept an explanation easily are always happy. The question always is where do you draw the line? We scientists have developed some bit of arrogance as compared to non-scientists. We think we understand something better. That may be! Unfortunately, we too have to draw the line somewhere else and say, I am happy with the current explanation since I cannot go beyond this. It is too complex!

Abhi