A new book I found about total Solar Eclipses.

I am reading Totality: Eclipses of the Sun. Finely written book, if you're interested in why people around the world cross seas to view solar eclipses. Infact, this book has one of the finest first chapters.

I am going to end this post by adding a beautiful image of Baily's beads. The red paint you're seeing are called prominences which consists of very hot gases.

A Realization

Note to anyone interested: it is my first blog post written from a library. The library mentioned here is in BIT Mesra.

When I started using Facebook in 2011, things were a little bit different for me. I was surrounded by many friends, had shallow tastes and thought of myself as the greatest genius walking on the face of Earth. Things have probably changed for the better in all those years (atleast I like to think so).

I shouldn't bore with those uninteresting details of my life (or should I, Random Reader?). So, many things in short, I thought Facebook as something which was purely meant for entertainment. Entertainment for my previous self was goofing around practically doing nothing. So, I couldn't really understand why Mark Zuckerberg's motto for creating Facebook was to connect people. Or was there really a use for social networks?

But things changed when I started reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality(you should try it preferably after reading the original version by J.K. Rowling). As over the years, my interests have become increasingly unique and different(my friends say so), I found that no one in my batch or immediate circle of friends was reading it(as far as I know). But, as it was so beautifully written, I had to discuss it. With someone.

Within the last few days as HPMOR was ending, I have discussed the plot and the characters with people from Melbourne, Bangalore, Sydney, Boston, Chicago, Kharagpur, Warsaw and Mumbai. It didn't matter whether the person I was talking to was a guitar player or an AI researcher or a mother who recently gave birth to a son. We were in for a cause - to have a great time by discussing a thing that we loved.

It was such a great experience. Playing games like "Not Paranoid Enough" with people from opposite the globe, is a thing I seldom do - infact it was my first.

All because of Internet. All because of social networking sites like Facebook. And, most importantly because of people.

I am studying engineering now. One year left of my undergraduate studies. I sincerely hope that I am able to do justice here by creating something that makes someone's life a little bit better and happier.

Solar System: is it stable?

During my first year at BIT Mesra, at a C language workshop, I asked one of my seniors:

"Can I simulate the Solar System?"

He said that it was probably a hard problem, but you can try it if you want. As my attention span is low, I forgot about the problem till now. Two years later.

Here is the article I am referring to. It is still a hard problem.

Spelling Mistakes

You may remember all those books, we used to read in childhood. One of them was about common spelling mistakes.

As a child, I never had problems with spellings. I saw a word, memorized it and never committed mistakes while spelling it. I wondered what was the necessity of such books if I never committed mistakes. Till now.

I realized that the authors of those books were adults - not kids (how could adults know what were the common spelling mistakes done by kids?). And, it was not so long for me to reach the conclusion that it is the adults who committed those mistakes, they are teaching the kids not to do.

I can safely say that I am an adult. I was born in 1994. And, I commit spelling mistakes while writing - frighteningly close to all those given in the books. I should thank Google search and automatic spell-checkers for saving me from embarrassment. If you're wondering about which words am I talking about, here they are - achieve, receive, there, their, embarrassment, commitment and so on.

Now, when I reached that conclusion, I thought about why I was committing mistakes now when I was a spelling pro as a child.

I think it has something to do with how our brains process information. As children, our neurons were not overloaded with tons of information. We were new to world and were learning about our surroundings. Getting new information and storing/retrieving it was a fairly easy task. But, things changed as we grew. Our brains have soaked in years of articles, images, movies and sounds. It is natural that we sometimes commit mistakes in the most basic of tasks such as spelling.

P.S: I am no neuroscientist. I came up with a possible explanation. If you think it is incorrect, then do inform me.