HELLO 2012, Farewell 2011 you have been EPIC

We cannot clone, perforce; instead, we split
Coherence to protect it from that wrong
That would destroy our valued quantum bit
And make our computation take too long.

Correct a flip and phase – that will suffice.
If in our code another error’s bred,
We simply measure it, then God plays dice,
Collapsing it to X or Y or zed.

We start with noisy seven, nine, or five
And end with perfect one. To better spot
Those flaws we must avoid, we first must strive
To find which ones commute and which do not.

With group and eigenstate, we’ve learned to fix
Your quantum errors with our quantum tricks.

– ‘Quantum Error Correction Sonnet’, by Daniel Gottesman
I can't believe that as of tomorrow I will have no more Quantum Computation assignments :| *I hope so*...

I have been accustomed to celebrate  new years with this comic
 

I remember last year's, it was the first time to stand khedma khargeya (the outer doorman ?) which was just perfect as with it I could sleep and stay all night reading 2 papers (CUDA, and SBSE) for the courses next day. The day after in the morning a passerby said "kol sana wenta tayeb" (with the awful look of *poor soldier*), and only then I remembered it was new year's eve.

Let us unite, evolve

So Long, Lonesome (& Soundtrack of my life 4)

since I'm here I wanted to mark the end of my military service which was a hell of a surreal year+ for me, starting with ~2 months in training facility and then a 12 months in my unit, passing through exams and the 25Jan revolutions then exams and studying new fields I have always wanted to study, this was the year from my interest point of view, but from the military POV it involved lots of queues, cleaning, kehdma (doorman), sitting in a very hot office, cleaning, eating, kehdma (doorman), queues, and sleeping this sums it up pretty much with some days of takdeer (getting punished) in between.

So The soundtrack of my life for this shit would be:

for every single day we had to sing this.
Listened to lots of Sigur Ros which was as epic as my life there, explosions in the sky, Beirut, classic Coldplay , Radiohead,
and many many indie

(will be adding titles as I remember what I used to listen to that year)

New SMS from Amr Atia

Just woke up 9:30 AM in Cairo to find my bro Amr in Mansoura sending me this SMS

يا أخويا يا مظبطنى

ايه القاموس الجامد ده

ده فشيخ فشيخ يعنى

بس انت كده خلتنى

فاهم مش حافظ بتعمل فيا كده ليه

الواحد كان قاعد

يزاكر من الورق يحفظ و خلاص

ربنا يستر السنة ديه

You can't believe how hard I laughed and happy that I finally changed his mind, he is studying civil engineering. I also hopped to help him with his project to get something extraordinary done, but looks like that won't be true due to his freakn department regulations sticking only to a certain set of projects that they redo/redesign every year.

Thoughts on morals 1

Why is it that bravery/courage is always related to breaking rules or being rude in here
Is it courage and strength to cut yourself from life restrains once and for all to live freely with nothing to worry

Village Boy 2: We're ashamed to live here. Our fathers are cowards. 

O'Reilly: Don't you ever say that again about your fathers, because they are not cowards. You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there's nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee anything will ever come of it. This is bravery. That's why I never even started anything like that... that's why I never will.

Another example that hit my mind but I really really can't remember the source:
in a a sci-fi context: Is it courage that will make you sacrifice your soul protecting people from a virus that you carry, or bear with its burden to live away from people and despised every single day

The Soundtrack of my life (3)

Since I haven't posted anything here for a very long time, I wanted to leave something before going to the military service in the next few days, so the least I could think of was a new "Soundtrack of my life" and maybe some updates.

and many other songs for the tumbled sea are very good mellow listen: melody ii, summer v


And have been rocking to the mars volta:

With Twilight As My Guide

 Maroon 5's new album, and The world's end girlfriend new album (AWESOME):

My most deserved updates: Going to military service and studying for MSc in Engineering faculty, Ain Shams university.