A heady trip to the office.

Yesterday evening I decided that I needed to ride my bike again. And preparations began.

Like I'd mentioned earlier, I'd lost my helmet, so on my way back home, I stopped at "Deo Sports" and picked up a brand new Studds Ninja. The best of both worlds. It splits down the front so that you can use it as a half face helmet while cruising around (upto around 60kph) and shut it down to make it a full faced one for going faster. When I got back home, I took it out to the grocery store. She started on the third kick. Topped up the gas tank and repressurized the tires. Ready to go. Yay!!!

Today morning, I put on my motorcycling gear (boots, jacket, helmet), and off we went. The laptop bag is a bit bigger than I like. In the sense that it doesn't fit the side boxes that I've put on my bike. So the laptop was hanging from my shoulder (and that was a bit of a downer). Nevertheless, I had a very exhilarating time. I did feel like I was holding back a little. I was riding like I would drive. Carefully and courteously. But I don't mind. I am free.

On the way to office, I'd stopped at a signal, and saw considerable commotion in the centre of the crossing. Some chap and his pillion had fallen of their bike in the middle of the crossing, and people were rushing to help them. Neither was wearing a helmet, and though the pillion looked okay, the rider was in shock or something, and couldn't stand up. Idiots... wear a helmet guys. Those anti-helmet lobby people should be put on the rack!

Nikhil has an amazing snap of me on the bullet. The bastard is currently vacationing in Goa, so I'll put that snap up when he gets back.

I'm looking forward to the ride back home :).

Blogging just became easier

There is a new plug-in for Firefox 1.5 that lets you blog directly to your livejournal and blogger blogs. Its called Performancing. Check it out.

Satirical Religion

So that Kansas state shit was over ruled. The judge said that teaching "intelligent design" was a just a subvertive way of teacinng "creationism", and the hoorays from my side were aplenty.

I've a saved post that I'm not going to post, that delves heavily into the realm of religion as such (and mostly its bad aspects). I'd later posted the Pastafarianism entry instead. But Now I think some of those viewpoints need to come out into the open.

Question 1: Do I believe in God? Yes, I do. But not in the same way that most people who believe in Him do. I don't, for example, believe in a God that looks like a Human Being (notice caps). I instead believe in a non-functional God. I believe that for starting the universe, one needs a God. Because I believe in causality. Basically, I exist, the earth exists, the solar system exists, the particular arm of the galaxy exists, the galaxy itself exists, neighbouring galaxies exist, the universe exists. What started the universe? God. Yeah, yeah, yeah... the strong anthropic principle... but still... I've read enough from "A brief history of time" to know the difference, and to know the theories involved in not requiring a God for me to exist. But still, that thought is comforting... that there's somewhere that the buck stops and that I can stop thinking further.

Question 2: Does God believe in me? No. I am what I've made myself. I can't let lose my follies on to Him. Neither will I accord to Him my greatnesses (if and when I have any). I am content, in the realization that if anything needs to be fixed, I'll have to fix it. And that while Hiesenberg's Uncertainity Principle will continue to throw a rod in my spokes, it is far more probable that it will pass straight throug.

Question 3: Will it end? I hope so!!! Something, sometime (a billion years from now?) needs/wants to end this just because It is tired (Notice the pronoun used). But the question to really bake ones noodle about this is whether you, I, or anybody else for that matter, will be around to witness it. Most creationist philosophies start with the creation of Man, and end with it. I find that extremely forbidding. What, for example, will happen to the White Mice then?

Quesion 4: Will I go to heaven? Regrettably yes. And unfortunately, so will all the others. While it makes me wonder what happens to one after he/she/it dies, it does seem an awful waste to just turn all that energy into entropy. I'd rather something happened with all of it... like heaven :). So everyone goes to Heaven. Even the rapists. The good thing is that they are all sad there :).

Question 5: Is Christmas for real? Ofcourse it is. So is Diwali, and Id and Buddha Jayanti (especially that one). We all need our pound of vacation time don't we?

So you still think that God will/has anything to do with anything. Of course He does. Who do you think keeps the roll call up there :).

And I'm back - many weird things happened

God, its good to be back home. Sorry folks, but I had to soak in a bit of India before I got around to this page again :).

I had a great time over the weekend. And yesterday, a kind of a party at Nikhil's place where we all got seriously sloshed and spent a considerable amount of time trying to give Nikhil advice about his choice over getting married :). Its a regular thing I guess. Whenever we drink, someone ends up getting a lecture :).

Anyways, I have so much to talk about. I'm driving again, though I haven't gotten around to riding my bike yet because I seem to have misplaced my helmet. And to answer those with the question about how one goes around doing something like that, the answer is that I haven't the faintest notion. Hmm... how does one go around losing something the size of a basketball :D? So I was saying, I got around to driving again. And it was weird. I had to relearn the clutch-accelerator basics because I tended to be too light on the clutch. Took me like five minutes to do that. It took me a lot longer to understand the clearances once I was on the road. Had gotten too much used to the empty spaces around while I was back there (even though I didn't drive :-/). It was weird that's all :)

I tried to set up my router without an internet connection, and somehow my laptop seems to have forgotten that it has a NIC. It probably has something to do with using the wrong kind of cable to connect to the router :(. I'll have to check it out tomorrow. In the meantime if anyone has any idea about what I'm talking about, please leave a comment.

Its good to read the newspapers again. The stock market is going through the roof. It had hit 9400+some yesterday, and my portfolio is showing quite a healthy profit. India is thrashing Sri Lanka at the (third?) test.

Basically life is good. Tum is asleep after a very hard day and Mr. Sandman has come calling at my eyes as well. Goodnight folks.

UPDATE: The network port is back. It appeared again when I connected up the laptop to the office network.

I'm coming home

I'm more than halfway home now. Just finished an excruciating 20 hours on a plane. I'm tired and sleepy and dirty, but I'm going home :).

Never again are the words. Two and a half months are too long to spend away from ones wife.

Isn't technology amazing? I'm sitting in a bar at Singapore Airport. Its called Harry's Bar, and its the only smoking bar around. I opened my laptop, and searched for a wireless hub to connect to. There is one that is provided by the airport itself. I connect and try to load my home page, and instead another page loads up that facilitates payment for its services. So for around USD 5.00 I get an hour of internet time. So here I am, making a blog entry because I have a six hour stopover.

A nice bacardi+pineapple juice is making its way into my bloodstream, making me feel fresher and sleepier at the same time. Can't get over the tiredness. Can't wait to get home and meet my wife and cats and friends. Can't wait to drive again... seems like I've said all this in some other blog entry earlier :).

Okay looks like I've got nothing more to say. I'll spend some time watching some google videos while my hour runs out. G'night folks.

I had a very cool weekend

Literally. This is the first time in my life I've been in sub-zero temperatures. I was at Lake Tahoe for the weekend :).

I had some work to finish, and am I glad I managed to finish it. I'd almost cancelled the trip because of it. But there I was, at 3 in the afternoon, waiting impatiently for Manish to arrive. You must understand that I was a little apprehensive about the trip. Basically because I'd already spent way past my blanket and my toes were starting to poke out. Any more expense would only have led to further cold.

Manish and Priyanka arrived just 15 minutes late, and off we went. I'd spent most of the day sleeping, so I was wide awake and ready to click some photos. Unfortunately, darkness fell, and opportunities had to wait for the next day. We arrived at our hotel after a mid-journey coffee break, and some meandering to find our hotel. That was 7:00pm.

At 8, we left for Harvey's, a casino across the California border, into Nevada. And boy what a night we had. We started well enough.

I won some $50 on the slot machines and another $50 on the roulette table. Then we set off for dinner at the Hard Rock cafe. Excellent ambience and good music can do wonders for the soul. A great steak and a long-island-ice-tea later, we decided to gamble some more. We spent some time at the blackjack table, and Manish made a few dollars and Priyanka tried her luck too. After that I wandered back to the slot machine. I ended up losing all but $20 of my profits.

I took what was left, went to the roulette table with a $40 start, and as they say, the rest was history. My escalating sine wave looked something like this:
-20 > 100 > -40 > 150 > -60 > 300 > -80 > 540 > 480

Then I bailed out :D. With a little bit (read big) of help from Manish and Priyanka. With around $400 more than I arrived with. Manish however had a streak of good and bad luck at the poker table, ending with bad, consequently losing around $40.

We went back home after that. I was so happy that I couldn't sleep until 4 in the morning.

The next day was for some snow fun. Unfortunately there hadn't been much snow yet, though we did manage to find a few spots where I could careen dangerously down wretched slopes, as the photo here clearly shows :). Hey it was my first time in snow. My nose didn't take to it too favourably, unfortunately, and we decided to call it a day from there on.

We made our way back. We stopped at Manish's friends' place for some tea (something I was sorely in need of), and an hour later I was back home, a weekend well spent.

Thanks Manish and Priyanka for a great weekend. I'll really remember this one :).

About application development

I'm a veritable virtuoso at JFC Swing, and I have no qualms about saying so myself (notice that I don't say it about core JAVA though I'm pretty good at that too). And all of it I've learnt from Mr. Manish Parekh & Ms. Darshana Daga. When I joined Veritas Software India Pvt. Ltd. fresh out of campus nearly 5 years back I had lofty ideas about what programming was. I've grown from there. Now I know what software is, and what it should be too. I've some idea about what the business of software development is, and what are the constraints and problems that one would typically face in this industry as a handler of this business. But I'm straying from the topic at hand.

Like I was saying, I'm pretty good at Swing. And in an industry devoid of Swing professionals, it was not difficult to find my place, once I started looking for it. I got a big fat package, but with companies moving towards web technologies, I'm destined to become another antique, like one of those mainframe or COBOL programmers (or am I, maybe I just haven't found the calling). But again, I'm straying from the topic at hand.

So getting back to the topic that's not at hand, is desktop application development a dying industry? I do have some views about the subject. Firstly it is not. But it is surely becoming more and more specialized. I've had a great idea for a utility application for for fitness enthusiasts, but I can't really think of a single reason why it should be a desktop application. Or even a desktop application with a parallel mobile computing interface. It should be a web application. At least for the real mass market. For kiosks in big gyms and the jet set crowd who has no time to sit at a computer.

I'll have to start learning new skills. I'll have to abandon, atleast for the time being, all that I've learnt about application usability, and learn about web usability instead. Or I have to cling on to a rapidly diminishing market as a specialist and hold my own. There's a certain charm about application development that web development doesn't offer. I'll be the first to admit that it is superficial, but it is still there. Its the smell. Its not based on utility computing. The business side also makes better sense. Basically, if you develop a public web application, you have so much invested that if your idea goes for a toss, the services that you've managed to sell are also of no use. Because your infrastructure costs will bring you immediately down (well not really, that's the beauty of utility computing, but still, atleast in the small scale).

My meanderings here have no other purpose than feeling sorry for myself, in a way. I don't have to worry for another 10 years, I think. There's plenty of great software being developed in Swing, so I'll definitely keep my job. Application software is here to stay. If everything else goes there are always IDEs and instant messengers :).

Aston Martin DB9 vs. the TGV

Okay so some of you couldn't see that Google video that I posted a couple of days back. But you'll like this. This was the first race that I'd talked about in this posting I'd made 2 days back. Jeremy Clarkson races Richard Hammond and James May from Surrey to Monte Carlo. Jeremy drives a Aston Martin DB9, whereas the other two are going to take public transport, esp. the TGV train that "flies" at 200mph. Watch the broadband or narrowband version. And this is Real Audio. So you'll need the plugin, but at least everyone can watch it :). Enjoy.

"That's enough!!!" is usability

I found an article about usability and the need for simplicity to make things usable. I find the commentary quite pertinent in the job that I do. I am a UI guy. And before you ask me whether I'm a designer or a coder, let me answer that I'm the latter. But I do design UIs as well. Or at least I used to.

I worked on several features in my earlier product that were redesigned from ground up to make things to make things more usable. And basically, this article says exactly what I feel. Infact, sometimes I feel that the products at my present company need a bit of that treatment. Hmm, let me learn what it does first :D.

The title of this entry reflects the main theme of the said article. It talks about why more and more consumers and customers are daunted to no end by the ever increasing technological advances in the products they buy because these advances are not packaged nicely. It compares MSN's and Yahoo!'s home page with Google's and goes on to explain exactly what's right with Google's home page.

Great technology doesn't necessarily mean that you need to expose it all to the user in one go. The product should give access to the seven main tasks that the user wants to perform, and all the rest should be hidden away, to explore when the user feels up to it. To give an example of what user interface should not be, you should look at a popular accounting software called "Tally". The folks who've made this monstrosity have forgotten about all the small businesses who'd like the help of a great accounting software, but can't afford to hire accountants to run it!

Winzip 8/9, Ahead Nero 6/7 and blogger.com are all examples of places where this concept is put to good use.

You can read the original article for more insight and examples here, it's titled "The Beauty of Simplicity".

Is a car faster than a plane?

Now you all have probably seen the Top Gear episode where Jeremy Clarkson races against his colleagues from Surrey in England to Monte Carlo. Jeremy drives an Aston Martin DB9, whereas his friends Richard Hammond and James May take the TGV (200mph train). And he beats them.

In this episode though, he's going to take a Ferrari Scaletti 612 (yes, the blue car here), and race the other two from Surrey to Verbier in Switzerland. And they are flying in a jet aircraft.

Click on the image to see what happens. The movie will play in Google's webpage.

P.S. You folks in India will hate me, but I found out that if your internet access is being routed through the US, you can still watch Google video. So try to get through some way. Its worth it.

Ariel Atom

That car is the Ariel Atom, featured in BBC's Top Gear. Jeremy Clarkson gives the car a bit of a go around... and what a car!!! You folks back in India are really unlucky that this won't play there (You esp. Nikhil). And the car is street legal too :).

Just click on the image to take you to Google movies where it will play in Google's page.

Enjoy :).
Update: This car ended up second in the list of the fastest road cars as done by the Top Gear team. It is faster than the Carrera GT and second only after the Ferrari Enzo!

Smoking is a bad habit

For the last 2 months my smoking has gone through the ceiling. Back in India I used to smoke around 6 cigarettes in the day and around 5 in the night. Now I smoke around 6 in the day and 15 in the night.

I started smoking when I was 16. I must've smoke for around 3 months before I moved to a town that made it impossible to smoke without being noticed. That was a good thing. I was off cigarettes for around 4 years after that. I started again when I was in college. An I've been a smoker since. So that's almost 8 years of smoking.

The reason I started was peer pressure. That's the truth, even though I don't like to believe that. It makes me feel weak because I wasn't able to control my own life. But there it is. That realization comes in retrospect. I didn't know at the time that it was peer pressure that was making me hook on to something that's as tough to give up as this. And it wasn't active peer pressure like the type they show in those silly TV ads. Its not that someone is calling you uncool because you're not smoking. It's more of a deficiency in yourself, that causes you to think that you need to try out this thing that everyone else is trying out.

It is sad that most countries in the world allow smoking for people 18 and over. At 18 one isn't old enough to make the decision of whether they want to smoke or not. Or rather they aren't old enough to make the decision that they want to smoke. That age should be 21. But when has the law detered this kind of thing.

I did quit for a year after my post-graduation. But then slowly it returned. First pipes ( I must've spent around 3000 rupees on that ), and when i ran out of tobacco in Goa once, I switched to cigarettes, saying I won't inhale. You know how long that kind of thing lasts.

Now that I'm hopelessly addicted and disabled... I'm continuously thinking of a way out. Mostly it consists of resolutions that don't last beyond noon. But I'm planning. Some time next year. Last time I quit (for a year), it took me 3 months to get off them. This time, the best idea will be to go the same way. Reduce gradually, and then quit.

Saddest thing is that I remember all the things that I started tasting and smelling and feeling good about the last time I quit smoking. So this time I wouldn't even have the luxury of that support. It'll take some hard planning and thought. And resilience and responsibility. And I'll have to get over the question I keep having, "what will I do with my free time?".

In the mean time, before the plan kicks in, wish me luck... I'll need it. Thanks folks, in advance.

There's no such thing as spyware... It's user personalization

I found this story on Wired.com about the transformation of Gator into Claria. It gives a new insight into what people think about spyware and how the assholes at ex-Gator, now Claria, are combatting it. Makes you think about those not so innocuous toolbars that MSN, Yahoo! and Google are trying to dish out. I don't know where I found the intelligence never to install them.

This makes me think that the Internet is a big political bandwagon. They basically operate on the same principle, don't they... The web business people.

Think about it. What would you think would be the perfect democratic system? A place where you would be a part of every decision made, and also, where you had the choice whether or not to make the decision, and where, at some time you had the choice to reverse your decision. Now those things are not practical except in one case... when you are the entity about whom you're being democratic. That means when you're making decisions about yourself

If you still don't see where I'm tying all this in, listen to this. If you installed some software, and you weren't careful enough to scroll through the entire license agreement and read it, and lets say this software said in its license agreement that at an arbitrary time in the future it would decide to format your hard disk.... God, wouldn't you be fucked!!!

And that's what most spyware does. It takes advantage of the fact that you don't read the license agreement and consequently goes on to install a bunch of stuff that will gather information about how you surf the web, what things you buy, what sites among a group of competetors you visit more than others, and generally being quite a spy. Then it goes and sends all this information to the "Mother Ship" that then proceeds to use this information to deliver advertisements to you.

Now if you're like me, you'd never click on a popup ad. No matter how good it sounds. If you were like my mother, you wouldn't be able to resist. And there you start falling into the hole. The non-intrusive text ads that google places on your web pages are still harmless enough. But banner ads and popup ads... never. Clicking on those means that you're paying for web content. And that's a thing that you should never need to do. The only payment you need to make for web content is that you make for going online.

So take a hint. Move to firefox, quit IE, quit all toolbars, quit those desktop helpers, quit those wallets. Remember your passwords, or let Firefox remember them for you, use the google search box in the Firefox browser to search, instead of the deadly toolbar. Try to take control of what your computer is doing. Install AdAware and other such utilities. Install a good virus scanner and firewall... And take control of your PC.

Paper Engine

This is what I call art. The link is http://www.yeesjob.com/v8engine.htm

Thanks Manish for this. Enjoy. Check out the other stuff too. There is an amazing cathedral around twice the size of a coke can. Just click on Home and procede.

P.S. Folks who own the original site... Please don't sue me. I love what you've done :).

You said shoot me!

I wonder what the whole idea of the concentric rings was? Shoot here to kill?