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Review: The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne My rating: 4 of 5 stars Quite a short tale. I liked the philosophical and social dilemma Hester Prim and the Reverend go through throughout the story. The insights on their inner turmoils is what has made this book a classic literature. The retribution sought after by the tale's silent antagonist is appalling and yet, one can but feel a connection with them. Author's poignant account of Hester's life moves the reader's heart to pause a moment and ponder. The ending is what I would have liked it to be. The Audible narration, as usual, was mesmerising. View all my reviews

Review: Mr Dodge, Mr Hitchcock, and the French Riviera: The story behind To Catch a Thief

Mr Dodge, Mr Hitchcock, and the French Riviera: The story behind To Catch a Thief by Jean Buchanan My rating: 5 of 5 stars Nice story about how the critically acclaimed "To a Catch Thief" by Alfred Hitchcock came out to be. Some of the outré aspects of the way Mr. Dodge came upon the plot were interesting. And the French Riviera seems to be an enchanting place. View all my reviews

इस देश में बसंत

Copied from the Diary from last night बैठ मुंडेर पर नीहार रहा है पथिक भ्रांत दृश्य एक ‌‌‌‌‍ सामने उसके रचा हुआ है रचनाकार का बसंत विशेष दिवास्वप्न-सा आगंतुक अविचल है ऋतुराज का दृश्य नवल नवीन मानो शाख शिखरों पर जा बैठा हो सूरज चाँद का कोई दर्पण रंगीन उधर समुद्र किनारे दूर क्षितिज पर चुंबन करता नीर गगन को इधर तलैया तीरे उथले जल में मछली भी अतुर आलिंगन को हरे हुऐ हैं पीले पड़े थे पतझड़ पे पत्ते जो खिल उठे हैं सिमटे हुए थे कमल के पुष्प लो घन-घन करती छा रही है चारों ओर घनघोर घटा टप-टप करके टपक रहा है इधर-उधर जल वर्षा का सर-सर करती बह रही है साए से बौराई हवा राहगीर भी लौट रहे हैं राह पर से यदा-कदा हौले-हौले से आ रही है निशा की लाली समीप सिमट-सिमट कर उड़ रहे हैं पक्षी भी पेड़ों के बीच इतने में विस्मित होकर उठता है वह पथिक भ्रांत जाग उठी है भीतर मन के अभिलाषा की एक क्रांत हो ना हो इन आभूषणों का कारण है कुछ यूँ ही नहीं प्रकृति करेगी धारण ये सब कुछ शायद इंकित करता अंबर पर अंकित यह नील रोशन होगा किसी समय पर नाम तुम्हारा भी बिस्मिल चलता है फिर धैर्य धरा का धरके वह भेश बैठ मुंडेर पर नीहार रहा था यश

Why do my poems be?

Why do my poems be like water rushing in a rapid I seem to love four four letters in a row four lines in a tow Why do my poems be like joyful bursts of sporadic laughter short sweet fragrant after as if they need reader till writer greets Why do my poems be like dreamy sunrise on mountain summit I seem to have taken the road hither nobody seldom goes thither Why do my poems be like hazy reflections upon silent sea roaring rolling beneath before perhaps the one sought perhaps the one aft

astropy@GSoC Blog Post #6.5 - Week 10, Final Evaluations

Hey there, How you holding up? So, this is the end of astropy@GSoC  time period. There was a time growing up when I used to wonder about Astropy people. About those science wizards who worked on writing computer programs for an esoteric software thing that made calculations of the universe, with a bizarre portmanteau of a name, astro-pie . Haha, and now, as the project finishes up, I am one of those fabled wizards. Well, it has been quite a ride, hasn't it? Let's first take a step back to recap what the context of my Google Summer of Code project was and then have a detailed look at what has been done. Below is part of the short project synopsis I had submitted during the application process back in April. One important feature of Astropy is reading and writing tabular data in a wide variety of useful formats. One such astronomical data storage format is the CDS-ASCII format employed by Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg (CD

astropy@GSoC Blog Post #6, Week 8&9

Heads-up about the Progress of #11897 In summary the situation of the concerned PR a few days back was 4 types of CI test errors, one bug and possibly a need for modification of part of the code copied from pycdsreadme. All these have been taken care of as detailed below, but for the numpy depreciation warnings that keep coming up. I don't think we can do anything about the latter's persistence as of now. I shall comment more about it on GitHub as well. File not found error : Moritz's HW, i.e. using get_pkg_data_filename import, directly took care of this. Error in coord col decimal places : The precision of the coordinate component columns was getting set arbitrarily, which created difference in the output for 32-bit and 62-bit machines, and possibly between different operating systems. This has been corrected by having a fixed number of 12 digits after decimal for RAs,   DEs and the

Review: The Dead of Jericho by Colin Dexter

The Dead of Jericho by Colin Dexter My rating: 5 of 5 stars This was the first Colin Dexter book I took up, indeed only after we had obtained a paperback of it. This is per se the sixth book in the Inspector Morse series, but I am glad I started off with this first. Because, this is a mighty likeable book. Also, the first episode of the Inspector Morse TV series is based on the Dead of Jericho, so another plus point. In the book, Morse cunningly, albeit with hick-ups here and there, solves the Murder of Miss Anne Scott, previous employee at Richards Publishing shifted now to giving private Greek lessons owning to her previous exposer to it, and that of her nosy sixty-something neighbour Mr. George Jackson, who pries over others affairs and wanted to make a buck or two out of it. Events take place mostly in the Oxford sub-urb of Jericho, which is a real place on the map. I liked the complexity of the plot and the level of familiarity the author shows about the vocabulary of the E