Para-Streams - A New Fad

Note:
Most of the definitions that follow have been entirely thought up by me, other than the actual story cited, and the phrase "tandem story".


Definition
Para-Streaming: The art of writing a complete story as a round-robin group effort. Each person in the group writes only one para at a time. The next paragraph will be entirely at the mercy of the next person in the group.

Para-Stream: A paragraph stream that is usually loosely attached to the earlier paragraph context, thus allowing the author to maintain artistic license in an otherwise group Novel.

Para-Streaming, the final frontier. These are the annals of the men who rode the para-streams. Their continuing mission: to explore strange new storylines, to seek out new life and new founts of creativity, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Here is an example para-stream...A.K.A. Tandem Story Writing

(Note: I received this story in a forwarded mail. I don't know who has actually written this story, but I'm presenting it here anyway. If you are the author of this story, please comment with the original link)

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The professor told his class one day: "Today we will experiment with a
new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person
will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As
homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short
story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another
copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add
another paragraph to the story and send it back, also sending another
copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on
back-and-forth.

Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep
the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the
e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The
story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."

The following was actually turned in by two of his English students:
Rebecca and Gary.

THE STORY:

(first paragraph by Rebecca)

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The
chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now
reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he
liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind
off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about
him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out
of the question.

(second paragraph by Gary )

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron
now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about
than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with
whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A. S. Harris to
Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar
orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could
sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a
hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent
him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

(Rebecca)

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt
one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who
had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its
pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4.
"Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel,"
Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously
excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her
youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no
newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of
innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one
lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

(Gary )

Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live.
Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched
he first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks
who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through the
congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien
empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours
after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for
Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With
no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The
lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President,
in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off
the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which
vaporized poor, stupid, Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The
President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow
this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow 'em out of the sky!"

(Rebecca)

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My
writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.


( Gary )

Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centered tedious neurotic
whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. "Oh,
shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F--KING
TEA??? Oh no, what am I to do? I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads
too many Danielle Steele novels!"

(Rebecca)

Asshole.

(Gary )

Bitch

(Rebecca)

fuck you - you neanderthal!

(Gary )

Go drink some tea - whore.

Rock on Dude!

The glasses belong to Subhakar (the guy behind me). I was curious to see how they'd look on me. I thought the best way to see this would be to take a photo. The photo was taken by 'DevilBoy'. On seeing the photo, I thought this would be better used in my blogsite, rather than the stiffly informal photo "My Mug".

My experiments in Robotics

I've always been interested in making cool stuff, especially in tweaking instruments and planning the construction/invention of some hi-tech gadgets. Many are the days, when I've pored over the description of how some particular gadget/device works, and I've spent a lot of time/energy wondering how that particular device could be improved. However, most of the solutions I think of have an electronic leaning, so even though the idea has been clear in my mind of exactly how to improve the device, I've never managed to turn that idea into a concrete implementation. I even went to an electronics repair course in BDPS, but the course really sucked. It was just mechanical rote of some particular circuits, and I did not think that that kind of course would enlighten my designs.

I've always wanted to make a robot. One of the first robots that I've ever seen was R2D2, a cute and really smart robot, featured in the Star Wars Trilogy. I spent countless childhood days copying the outer shell/look on paper, and was intent on cramming all the features in this galaxy into it's body. But I never did get around to making it into a reality.

However, recently I was just looking into some robotics sites, and I found out that MIT (Massachussets Institute of Technology) regularly hosts a robotics competition. And guess what! Most of the robots are made from.... Lego! I went at once to the Lego Bricks website.
where I found that a lego robotics kit costs around 10,000 Rs. to buy. Whew! that's expensive!
But I found that the types of robots that you can build with this kit are really good, and more than the actual functionality, the logic that you can program into these robots is just as challenging/interesting. I was sold on the kit...

As luck would have it, my very good friend Naren was in Boston, Massachussets at that very time. I immediately mailed him to ask whether he could order the kit for me, and bring it along with him when he returned. He immediately did the needful, but there was a seven month wait for me to land my hands on the kit.

However, now I've finally done so, and here are some pictures of my first robotic model. It's a Walkerbot, and I really love it. Somehow, in my opinion, a Robot with tracks/wheels just doesn't capture the essence of robotics. Walking. Now that's something else.

Here's a video of my WalkerBot.



Some photos of my WalkerBot for those who want a good static look at the Robot.

The Golden Lining to the clouds

This photo was taken at around 6 am, just before I started out on my daily joggin round. I had just woken up, and I was standing in my balcony. I was so fresh, and my mind was very peaceful. That's one of the great things about getting up early in the morning. Everything is so tranquil, and one can really find relaxation in this time.