Notes & Readings

Selected notes & readings on literature, cinema and technology

Written by Jasdeep Singh

My Shell history

Shares an awk one-liner that analyzes shell command history to humorously reveal procrastination habits.

A poem by Jaswant Singh Zafar contrasting the raw, radical true image of Guru Nanak with the sanitized portrait society prefers to worship.

A Punjabi poem by Harpreet Singh about educated rural youth trapped in a cycle of degrees, unemployment, and shattered hopes.

Translation of Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s poem where a woman likens herself to a lonely, unwanted thorny cactus scarred by ill-fated love.

A Punjabi folk song about a lonely woman fashioning a clay doll into a child, lamenting her husband’s long absence abroad.

A poem using a girl’s fear of an approaching storm as a metaphor for fear of change that ultimately brings renewal and growth.

A technical post comparing Lisp, Python, and Java implementations of a simple SICP exercise on summing squares of the two largest numbers.

Muhammad Iqbal’s Urdu poem urging the soul to rise like a falcon beyond worldly limits toward higher goals and the trials of love.

A Gurpreet Kaur poem urging youth to shed fear and complacency and rise to save their country as a new year begins.

A year-end 2007 roundup of favorite Punjabi poetry, books, magazines, and films, paired with reflective verses on the year’s ups and downs.