Helmet Teachers and +2 Colleges in Nepal

In the recent edition of online Himalkhabar, there was a panel discussion on  "which kind of teachers are good". Of course, there was a recurring topic of "Helmet Teachers" as expressed by the participants.
"Helmet Teacher" (HT) in Kathmandu valley is the name given to the teachers who are the visiting teachers without full time commitment to the institution. Helmet teachers are basically invited to teach one or two classes. Since they usually have to cover many such campuses, they usually come in motor-bike (and thus with helmet in hand); teach and go.

Problems:
The bike Helmets can be lost in critical time, or traffic jam can prevent on-time arrival of such teachers.
Since HT are not fully responsible, the load shift from class to class can disrupt the learning environment. Even some of the time, the fulltime teachers may have to share the load for HT's absence.

Solutions:
10+2 should be obliged to hire certain number of full time committed faculties.
HSEB is now a very big institution. I wonder why it is still not going under hiring HSEB branded teachers. With proper training and HSEB affiliation, the quality of teacher can be assured (if there is any question on it).

The rest is out for discussion. One needs to note that planting the guilt into somebody does not solve the problem.
http://himalkhabar.com/news.php?id=3381

My Favorite Ten Nepali Blog posts

One of the Suggestion on Third Nepali Blogger Bhela was to have a post of 10 fav. posts by Nepali bloggers. This is not top ten blog list. Just ten posts that I liked and remembered as nice posts by fellow bloggers. Posting such favorite posts may help to cross correlate the feelings among the bloggers. 


Amazingly, it ranges from politics, satire, fun, travel diary to daily life instances captured in the words of the bloggers. 


My source of updated nepali blogs is hamrocircle. However, I do wander out of circle and find blogs that are equally compelling.

I have many posts that I like a lot, and selecting 10 is hard job.
However, My Favorite Ten Nepali Blog posts are:


अनन्त बाँदर सिद्धान्त
http://chapagain.blogspot.com/2008/11/blog-post_18.html

भेजिटेरीएन माछाको कथा
http://dacharya.blogspot.com/2008/10/blog-post_21.html

Why the hell can’t we follow any rules?
http://brazesh.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/why-the-hell-cant-we-follow-any-rules/

भूकम्प-अब हाम्रै पालो त होईन?
http://www.basantagautam.com/2010/01/blog-post_16.html

वाह ! दृष्टि
http://www.aakarpost.com/2010/02/blog-post_16.html

विकल्प @ कोपनहेगन
http://onlinekhaskhas.blogspot.com/2009/12/blog-post.html

Time For Kids Go Back To School (After Dashain Holiday)
http://wagle.com.np/2007/11/06/time-for-kids-go-back-to-school-after-dashain-holiday/

Having Nepali flag on the Blog
http://ajabgajab.blogspot.com/2008/08/having-nepali-flag-on-blog.html

A Google Widget for Nepali Bloggers
http://www.nabinkm.com/2009/06/google-widget-for-nepali-bloggers.html

तपाईं किन कमेन्ट गर्नुहुन्न?
http://www.milanl.com/2010/03/blog-post.html

and a bonus!!
SLC को रिजल्ट
http://giri25.blogspot.com/2010/07/slc.html

Congratulations to Dautari.org for organizing third successful Global Nepali Blogger Bhela.
All the best to Nepali Bloggers.


PS: please feel free to post your favorite ten in your blog. Please do leave some comments :)

Packing for Mars?

This is definitely not a book review, just my wild speculations into travel into Mars.

When you travel for cross Atlantic travel, how cozy was it? Seating at one confined place while waiting for long destination has so many side effects. Physical, psychological so and so.

Well, we are talking about months of isolations and painful travel. This should shakedown your enthusiasm for space travel. :P  

How about adding some humor to the pain? 
It is said that

"Pain + time = humor".

"Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void" by Mary Roach should be a good read. I would definitely love to have a chance to read it. Actually, I have added it to my wish list@Amazon. ;) Reviews are saying that there are a lot of LOL moments in the book.

I know the saying, "No pain, no gain". However, I am curious why send humans to the deep space? The recent advancement in robotics allows us to do the same thing at less cost and less insurance value than pushing humans to such harsh environments and posing fatal risks involved.

Side note:

Download the pdf to have some idea on how tricky it is to travel to sister planet Mars:

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/educators/mars_packing.pdf

Bayes' Theorem in \LATEX

I am learning Latex. Using Texnic Center and other similar softwares. I wish that Kile was available on Windows...
Anyways, everytime I start a new file, I have to search for the barebone of the file which needs to be there before anything can be done.
So, here I am collecting some skeleton for latex files:
I think they are free from any (c).


\documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{article}
\usepackage{amsmath} % need for subequations
\usepackage{hyperref} % use for hypertext links, including those to external documents and URLs
\title{Your Title Here}
\author{Your Name here \thanks{Email: adf@gmail.com}
\\University}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
Abstract goes here...
\end{abstract}
\tableofcontents{} % comment: just in case... it can be commented
\section{One}
Here we start...
Oh, why not start by writing Bayes Theorem in Latex ?
... we use Bayesian method to infer the model parameters in question. We learn from the available data. The process of arriving at the posterior from the prior in the light of given data can be accomplished by using Bayes' theorem.
As a general statement, we can state Baye's theorem as follows\\
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:bayes}
P(\theta|\textbf{D}) = P(\theta ) \frac{P(\textbf{D} |\theta)}{P(\textbf{D})} ~~~~~|| I,
\end{equation}
where we have adopted Skilling--Gull convention of writing $I$ as the generally accepted term in the conditionals. The data are represented by \textbf{D} and parameters are represented by $\theta$.
\end{document}








Thanks to the Blogger platform which do not convert latex command into symbols. (That was a satire :P )
Note to self: I believe I have seen Gull using the conditional out of bracket... where, where ???

Bus Resistance of a Code or Program

Last year I was on a training for a operating computations on grid at Cornell. Our instructor from Texas threw a Joke: "Do you know the bus resistance of your code?"

Everyone was surprised to hear the question. The Joke is interesting because it indicates one thing and tells you something else. While some people were thinking of how the string of 1's and 0's that travel through the computer data bus might come across such bus resistance, he explained in a funny way.

Here we go:

Imagine one fine friday evening you are grabbing a beer and walking down the road, and you are hit by a bus. What happens to your code? The next day the project manager decides to give your code to your colleague to continue the project. If your code is not properly commented, he will be completely lost in there. 

So, the bus resistance is given by the amount of comments in a code and the readability of your code by someone else.

Let us wish that this happens to no one. However, for the continuity of the project in your lab, your code must have very high bus resistance value.

The moral is: comment your code as much as you can.

Cheers!

Are your codes bus resistant?