We do what people we care about tell us to do. They cite several reasons, and many of them are pretty sensible. But that doesn’t mean you have to be convinced of doing anything.

We’re all born in a different place, with different economic means, different intelligences, different everythings. And we all die differently too: naturally, by disease or by accident. But we’re all born, and we all have to die.

Accepting that, after a time in the future, we would not exist is something that most of us don’t think about (and those who do are tagged as having “suicidal” thoughts). Even though we know the fact that we’re going to die one day, we live our lives as though we’d live forever.

Then, when there are only a few minutes left before we stop existing, our whole lives flash before us, and we evaluate ourselves for the very last time. It’s like getting the result of the last test you’ll...

A very, very versatile tool.

Writing is something that only humans can do. And the pencil is the perfect tool to exercise this ability. It’s better than pens because you can erase pencil marks and reuse the same space.

Drawing is another thing that pencils are often prefered for. You can shade, make technical drawings, or just scribble something up to help you understand something.

Diagrams are one of the most effective ways of learning and understanding anything. Pencils are the best thing to draw diagrams with, for they aid not only in improving memory, but also in the conceptualisation of complex phenomena.

This page is too small to express how much I love using a good pencil. It makes me feel like I’m in control, and that I have a clear determination to achieve what I’ve decided to set out to do.

The solution to the world’s problems starts with understanding the problem. And...

It means HB.

I wrote this because of the SAT exam. It’s conducted all over the world, but they really can’t understand that except the US, the rest of the world calls it HB.

In fact, Faber Castell has capitalised on this, by rating HB as a No. 2 ½ pencil, so people buy a “No. 2” pencil when an HB pencil is referred to by that name. Just good business, they call it.

I call this distinction a complete waste of time and energy.

“No. 2” pencil, the name itself sounds so odd.

“HB” makes more sense than “No. 2”, because the word HB is based on how (i) hard and how (ii) black the pencil is.

Since the lead of a pencil is a mixture of clay and graphite, their differing proportions is what decides the kind of pencil. More graphite makes the pencil rougher and harder, but less blacker. Corresponding to that, more clay makes the pencil softer but blacker too (since more graphite is left on...

You have to do it continuously. And you have to use English everyday in order to learn it. By use, I mean reading English, listening to English, speaking English, writing English, thinking in English etc.

And please use a dictionary to learn new words and the internet to learn their usage. Collocations – words that go together – are an important aspect of English that you must learn if you want to sound natural like a native speaker.

I can’t give any more advice, except the following: just start.

This post is again on limits.

In my class, somebody asked our Maths teacher a question about a function that was continuous but not differentiable.

But first, a little backstory.

Our teacher taught us about continuity and differentiability in the following manner:

At a point,

1. the limit exists.
2. the function is continuous.
3. the function is differentiable.

If 1 is true, it’s akin to the function passing its matriculation exam (the 10th grade). If 2 is true, it can be thought of as the function completing its undergraduate course at IIT (Indian Institute of Technology). If 3 is true, it corresponds to the function completing its graduate course at IIT.

If 1 is false, there is no point in talking about 2 and 3. Similarly, if 2 is false, there is no point in talking about 3.

By the same logic, if 2 is true, there is no point in inquiring whether 1 is true or false, and if 3 is true...

I think this is becoming too much. I already have Flat and white, Canamla, Svbtle and Medium. And now you can add The Chronicler to that list. All of my blogs are listed on my Google+ page.

I’m just writing this here so that those reading this go to http://chronicler.tk and read my first blog post there. Even though it’s a little small (not to mention completely off-topic), it’s one of the first blogs I started using with Tumblr.

So now I have a presence on Blogger, Tumblr, Svbtle, Medium, Twitter (although I don’t use this much – not at all, actually) and Google+. I think Facebook is the most prominent thing missing from this, because I choose not to have a Facebook account (it’s too shabby and mixed up for my interests, which Google+ takes care of perfectly).

So, this is just a message to those reading this, to check out The Chronicler, where I will be posting some interesting stuff...

And that’s what’s the most awesome thing about Science.

You can never predict how it’s going to change in the future, and it’s always better than anybody’s wildest imaginations. Isn’t that why movies about the future made in the past seem very cheesy in the present?

There are countless examples of the real thing being stranger, mystical, more interesting, and just plain unbelievable than science fiction – an imitation of what’s really to come. So I’m going to list out three:

1. The personal computer is an innovation that nobody could have foreseen. Imitations of a computer-laden future are only mediocre in the face of the ubiquity of these devices today. We have phones, tablets, laptops and desktops that are at least ten times more powerful than the computer that got the first human to the Moon.

2. The world wide web – the ultimate interconnected network – is something nobody could have...

Those are the very best kind of presents.

Some presents are those which you really didn’t need, but appreciate greatly.

Some other presents are those which you really didn’t want, so they just while away in their covers at home, and are eventually forgotten in some corner of an almirah. Thankfully, I didn’t get any such gifts this birthday.

Then there are those presents which give you something that you knew you really wanted. For me, that was a good quality Rubik’s Cube. It was something that I’d wanted, but not really thought about much.

And then there are some gifts that just make your heart happy. I didn’t even know I needed it. But it really made me feel nice once I got it.

A really great thank you to the person who thought of this. Thank you for The Lost Symbol (the author is Dan Brown), dear person who bought me this gift.

And thank you for all the gifts I got, because each...

The definition of homework changes as we grow up, but it never becomes easier or smaller with time. On the contrary, if one plotted an amount-of-homework vs. year-of-school graph, it is sure to resemble that of an ever-increasing function. And the slope is also ever increasing, because the degree to which homework becomes larger per year itself increases over the years, so that the increase in homework from Class 1 to Class 2 is smaller than the increase in homework from Class 11 to Class 12.

In Class 12, we get mountains of homework. Doing so much homework requires persistence and perseverance, but keeping up with homework is an entirely different matter.

The only way to keep up with homework is to set apart a fixed amount of time for homework every single day.

In Computer Science, there’s are various operating system scheduling algorithms. One of them is called FIFO, which stands...

I found this poem somewhere, and i thought it was beautiful, so I’m reproducing it here.

Our generation will be known for nothing.

Never will anybody say,

We were the peak of mankind.

That is wrong, the truth is

Our generation was a failure.

Thinking that

We actually succeeded

Is a waste. And we know

Living only for money and power

Is the way to go.

Being loving, respectful, and kind

Is a dumb thing to do.

Forgetting about that time,

Will not be easy, but we will try.

Changing our world for the better

Is something we never did.

Giving up

Was how we handled our problems.

Working hard

Was a joke.

We knew that

People thought we couldn’t come back

That might be true,

Unless we turn things around

(And now read this bottom to top, to turn things around)