Nothing is Sacred

One of the biggest goals in each one of our lives is to figure out our purpose. Why do we exist? Not how ... because the answer to that is known, but why? Explanations involving God just result in the question being modified to: Why does God exist? Now, I recognize that I am making an assumption here (which, if proven false, would render this entire chain of thought invalid), justified by the lack of convincing evidence to the contrary, but this is what I fundamentally believe as of now: there is no greater purpose.

The universe, as a result of the fact that it is logically consistent, can exist. But so can any number of other logically consistent universes with different histories or different laws of physics altogether. And why should anything exist at all anyway? Well, the principles of justice that I have been conditioned to think according to (yes, I know that it sounds evil, but if you think about it objectively, the definition does apply) make me want to believe that all possibilities are (withholding the word: equally) feasible, and exist as a superimposition which happens to be most closely described by the term: Multiverse. But essentially, we exist, because we can.

Computation using Time Travel

Time Travel is one of the most fascinating subject I have ever encountered. Having spent an unreasonably large amount of time thinking about it, the following describes one of the ideas I had regarding how we can use it.

Consider for a moment that humanity has somehow managed to develop the technology for Time Travel, and confirmed that the universe abides by the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle. For the purposes of this discussion, you may assume (although the specific details of how it is done don't matter here) that this is done via a Wormhole (stabilized using exotic matter with Negative Mass/Energy), one end of which (through Time Dilation effects) lies in our future. Now, we can establish a communication link across this wormhole, which allows us to send data into the past or receive data from the future. Additionally, let's assume that we can transfer information over this link via two specific functions in a computer program:

void send(data) # Sends data back into the past. data receive() # Receives data from the future.

Facebook Selection

Coding Round

• I do not remember the specifics of the question, but essentially, we were given a Graph (in the form of an adjacency list) with a designated source and destination. Assuming that one node could be visited only once per path, we were supposed to calculate the total number of unique paths that could be taken to get from the source to the destination. While my solution was not optimal, it was well commented, properly indented and resonably fast.

Based on the Coding Round, which was conducted on InterviewStreet, 4 students including me were shortlisted from BIT Mesra.

Directi Selection

The following is an account of the selection process that I went through when Directi had come to our college for placements for the Software Developer profile on 25th July.

Aptitude Round

• 30 question, 45 minutes from Number Theory, Logic, Networking, Operating System, Programming, Servers, etc.
• A lot of these question were repeated from the aptitude round conducted when Directi had come for Internships, so I'd seen a lot of them before. However, I hadn't really bothered finding out the solutions after last time, so I was able to answer exactly only those that I had answered the last time. Somehow, I still had the highest score as compared to all the other people in this round. Helped a lot later.

Hi!

I've spent over a considerable amount of time trying to figure out what to write here. As in, the ideas that I need to express are quite clearly formed in my mind, but finding the right combination of words to express them is a completely different thing. Now, when I say "right", I mean something that I will not feel like laughing at or get all embarrassed about when I read it years from now. And based on my past record, it isn't easy. In fact, every line in this paragraph has undergone something like 3 revisions already. And I'm pretty sure this particular post will make me go :oh-god-why: not too long after I publish it, but then, I must start somewhere ...

It has been a really long time since I have done any creative writing. I suppose some of you might remember that I was planning to write an awesome science-fiction story about 3 years ago, but that unfortunately has still not happened. But now that I have the free time, I hope to start again, and this blog is the first step. Training, if you will, to get the words "right" within a couple of attempts so that I can start working on larger projects without getting stuck. So, hopefully, in a couple of months, you should start seeing results ...

As for what I shall be blogging about, you can expect everything from random personal thoughts and interesting stories all the way to philosophical arguments, technical descriptions and plans to take over the world. Ah ... you weren't supposed to know that. Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy reading and I urge you to leave comments with feedback.