Let us improve

I remember a particular passage in a story in "I, Robot" (the book) where Dr. Susan Calvin says that it is easy to prove that an individual is human, but not that he/she is a robot. Basically, based on the three laws of robotics, it would be impossible to tell between a robot and a very decent human being.

Now, this post isn't about artificial intelligence. Far from it. What I want to talk about is culture. I'd once read somewhere that it is wrong to say that someone is uncultured. What one really wants to say is that the person in question is not of the same culture as I am. What I really object to is the use of the word 'culture' in the collective.

I know, I know. It's there in the definition of the word. Why I object to it is because I resent being grouped together with a bunch of people who, I think, have vile behavioral patterns. I mind being denied my individuality and uniqueness. I mind being given a label.

Tolerance, one of the qualities which today's "culture" sorely lacks, can come only when individuals can begin acting like individuals. I am Manjit. I stand alone. I don't give or take anything from a culture that decides that it owns me.

To understand it, become associated with the assholes who brought down Babri Masjid. The idiots who were responsible for the Godra violence. The imbeciles resposible for the Bombay blasts. Become the rich man who evades taxes. Become the Delhite who is materialistic. Become the shameless Puneri or the uneducated Bihari. Become the Indian responsible for that unemployed firang. Become the Allied citizen responsible for that homeless, orphaned Afgani or Iraqi child.

I resent being told that choosing my music brings about the decline of traditional Indian music, and that that is a bad thing.

I want freedom. I want to thank the people around me for having allowed this freedom that I have in parts. I hope that some day people will learn to be decent individuals before becoming decent groups. Only then can there be a single world, and only then will we all be us.

Singing or something like it

I don't like my voice. Or rather, it sounds perfectly alright when I'm talking, as in through my bones and all, but when I record it and play it back, or if I'm listnening to myself on the phone :D, it sounds nasal and really belies the fact that I'm a big guy.

Other people feel otherwise. Especially this guy I had an accident with a couple of weeks back and I came out of the car all guns blazing and screaming my head off. He was really scared. So I must be hoarse and manly, huh?

But these things aside, its about singing that I want to talk about. I know a few people who can sing quite well (Tum, Fuzzy, Darshana, Parvinder, and a guy in my team(Vishal), not to mention the scores of relatives who prepare to sing at each other's marriages ). I sing okay.

I usually know what note to sing at, and always notice when someone makes a mistake (which is why I love American Idol so much). I also know how fast or slow to sing. I can remember and reproduce vast lengths of guitar solos (Red House rendition by Eric Johnson in G3 Live). But I still maintain that I can't sing. The only time that I think that I sounded well was when my Bullet club had a party in which I sang "Turn the page" and I think it turned out quite well, but that's such an easy song to sing. I'd once tried "It's probably me" and embarassed myself considerably.

I wish I could limit my singing talents to make an appearance only in the bathroom, but sadly it doesn't happen. My only redeeming point is that I'm not completely tone deaf. And that I'm thankful for.

So the next time one of you hear me singing away in my car, or in my office cubicle, please excuse.

Hangover cures for the average Indian

So you've just woken up late in the morning, expecting it to be another normal day where you work some, play some? Well, sorry. No such luck. That sandpaper in your mouth is an indication to something else entirely, isn't it? It's going to be a horrible morning. And depending on how much you enjoyed last night, it might very well last into early evening or late night.

So are we defenseless against this scurge of the fires of hell? Well, there are some things that don't cost too much, and will help you.

So, without much ado, here goes:

1. Eat before you start drinking. This will not only help the hangover, but also how drunk you get. A high carbohydrate, high protien diet (chicken sandwiches, daal bhat) will help you retain sanity on the day after.
2. Have drinks with juices rather than cola. The goodness of all those vitamins helps. Also, when you have effervescent drinks, they get absorbed faster (neat shots are the slowest, but that helps only if you're having them at the rate of one every hour). If alcohol gets in your bloodstream faster, the faster you'll lose control of how much you drink, and consequently end up drinking more alcohol.
3. Avoid the bar feed. The free goodies that come with your drink are high in salt and contribute significantly towards your thirst. So you end up drinking more, faster. Order a green salad instead. You'll have it slower, and the nutrients help in reducing the intensity of the headache you'll have the next morning.
4. If you couldn't eat before you started drinking (which will often be the case if you headed for the bar from office), remember to do it after your drinks. Before you hit the sack, have something with a lot of carbohydrates and protiens (chicken sandwich, daal bhat? :)). Basically the weakness and the listlessness that you feel has a lot to do with low energy levels
5. Have a Crocin (tm) before you sleep. Even if you don't like taking pills just for the sake of it. This is not for the sake of it. Drunken sleep is hardly ever restful. And this contributes a lot to the listlessness you feel in the morning after. Believe me, if the headache isn't there, you'll feel a lot more normal that you'd otherwise do.
6. Drink water. Alcohol is a diuretic. It makes your body believe that it has too much water and therefore the body counteracts by making you pee a lot. So you'll have lost copious amounts of water by the end of your session, and more by the time you sleep off. So you wake up severly dehydrated and very badly off. Drinking around a litre of water before you sleep and a glass between every 2 drinks will do wonders to ward off this devil.
7. So you didn't do all those things before sleeping off, and already have a hangover. So what do you do? Best thing is to still drink that litre of water and take a crocin and sleep for a couple of hours more. It helps.
8. Eat some sugary stuff. Your body will be very low on glucose, and that is the cause of the weakness that you feel. Drink a couple of glasses of fruit juice or a couple of tablespoons of glucose dissolved in water.
9. If you are a smoker, don't smoke until after lunch time. You'll notice that that cotton mouth feeling will cause a aftertaste that you can't shake off, and will cause a lot of misery.
10. And for those adventurous readers, please remember: the hair of the dog concept doesn't work here. You cannot consume more alcohol to cure a hangover. It will only delay some of the symptoms, and you can't go to work anyways (you'll be smelling more like a vat of whisky than anything else).

So enjoy responsibly, and beat that hangover. Its a trick that needs practice. You'll have to find out what works best for you and then stick with it. Ciao.

New Noteworthy Link

I came across this one in the blogs of note list on Blogger. Nice cartoons. It's called Savage Chickens. Quite entertaining, especially given the bird flu scare doing rounds.

Welcome!!

I noticed in my site stats, that I'm getting a few regular visitors from the US and the Czech Republic. Welcome, and feel free to comment :). Thanks for visiting.

MS Office 2007

This link here shows the new look of MSOffice 2007. Mindblowing indeed. I really like the way that they've classified toolbar buttons, and done away with menus and added tabs instead. Impressive.

The provocation of the Matrix

There are lots of people who don't like the Matrix series because they don't understand it. "What's there to understand? It's just a bunch of special effects.", you might say, except that it makes that beautiful series of science fiction into something as obnoxious as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".

There are themes that run through each of the three episodes of the Matrix. As far as I can see, these are:

1. Freedom
2. Choice
3. Purpose

The first episode is about how Neo finds out that he is The One. And, in the process of doing so, he realizes several things. At each stage, each degree of his freedom, he has to conquer a new peak. You see him take on physics, self, emotions and finally death. You really have to listen to the Oracle's predictions in order to really understand the movie. The Oracle didn't predict anything. She just set the mood so that when misfortune befalls Morpheus (which happens rather in a hurry) Neo finds himself compelled to oblige. But the real expression of freedom comes when Smith has him in a lock on the railway tracks and calls him Mr. Anderson. He goes on to reply that his name is Neo, and thereby establishes his identity and his freedom.

The second episode is about choice. The conversation that Neo has with the Architect of the Matrix has a lot to do with this. He tells Neo that either Trinity dies, or everyone dies. And to him, the choice doesn't exist. "Hope, the quintessential quality that's simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness". And Neo makes a choice. He goes to save Trinity, thereby going contrary to the the plan that was laid out for him as the owner of the title bestowed upon him (The One).

The third episode is about Purpose. Smith takes over the matrix, and since he's a rogue program, it can be argued that he has exercised (nay, made) a choice. But in my mind it is quite apparent that what he's actually done is to just change his purpose. Ever since he was "changed" because of his being anhiliated by Neo in the first episode, he has taken on a new mission. That of destroying Neo. And there comes the real problem for him. Because when he assimilated the Oracle, he got her eyes, and he could "predict" the future. Unfortunately for him, he didn't count on choice, and that became his undoing. Neo exercised the choice of, at first, not giving up, and then of submitting. In doing the latter, he destroyed Smith because he finished off the Purpose of Smith's existence.

There are other really philosophical angles in the movie that are worth mentioning, but this post is getting quite long. I'll reserve them for a later post. However, I hope that I've given some reason to appreciate the second and the third movie for things other than their special effects.

Some people are so good

Here's a photoblog that has done a lot to dispel my doubts about camera-phones. This guy(s) is amazing: The best of K750i.

Zen and the art of starting a bullet

Starting a bullet is an art. I remember that my uncle, at one time, had a diesel bullet. This was supposed to be so difficult to start that it didn't have a handle lock or ignition lock. If you had it in you to start it, you were welcome to take it away.

The petrol driven bullet is a lot easier. In fact, when I'd broken my foot, but had recuperated enough to ride my mean machine, Tum used to start my bike. This had been particularly embarassing for one of the well meaning bullet club members who'd happened past us just as she was just about to start the bike up. The story of my broken leg had spread far and wide, and he made an obviously noble gesture by stopping to help us along, just to discover that Tum was equally well equipped to start the big bike.

So what does it take to start a bullet. Three words: decompress, TDC, swing. The first step is to decompress the engine. The bullet has a big combustion chamber, and so is liable to develop a pressure on the wrong side of the piston. To remedy this situation, the engineers at the Chennai factory have provided the bull with a little lever that can be depressed so that the piston can be brought to TDC, and air be driven out of the wrong side of the piston.

The second step is to ensure that the piston is TDC. This is usually a natural outcome of decompressing. TDC stands for Top Dead Centre. It means that the piston is at its highest point in the cycle, and can compress the maximum about of fuel-air mixture in the next compression cycle. This is necessary because of the unusually long bore that the bullet has, so it achieves only a couple of cycles in one kick instead of the usual 5-6 that a 100cc bike will achieve.

The third step is to swing. One doesn't kick the 'kickstart' lever. For a bullet, one has to swing it in order to take the piston through 2-3 revolutions. Swinging implies a constant rather than an impulsive force. The engine offers little resistance.

And that, my dear friends is how to start a bullet. The zen part of it is ofcourse the fact that the purpose of the kick is to start the bullet. If all your being is behind the endeavour of starting the holy bike, it will have no option but to roar to life.

Superstition

I admit to having one superstitious kink. I carry 2 coins in my wallet at all times. One is a silverish coin that a fakir gave me while he was trying to beg my skin off me (and he was quite disgusted to know that I only had Rs. 30 on me, I'd just bought 2 pints of beer for my morning routine). The other is a 10 cent coin that somehow landed in the same place that the other superstitious coin is kept, and stayed there.

Oh yes I have one more. My bed's head always points north. Since I have rather small bedroom, and a rather large bed, it basically means that my bed has been in the same position for the last two years. Almost every other bit of movable furniture in my house gets mercilessly displaced every 6 months or so, but the bed stays put.

And the kinds of superstions that adorn the minds of some of my most esteemed colleagues and friends still continues to amuse me. Like when Nikhil (Khade) bought his laptop. He bought a Compaq that was exorbidant for the features that it offered, when there was a much cheaper local brand (Zenith) to be had. I'd have understood if he'd have admitted to having a bad experience with Zenith computers, or that he'd imported his laptop from abroad, in which case he'd have been getting a better deal.

Then there's the obsession with odd numbers that Tum has. She has to do some things 3 times. Even numbers are the worst. I'm sure that if I open and close the door (while counting the number of times I'm doing it) an even number of times, I'll have to do it one more time.

There are other modern superstitions: not writing cds on a saturday night, waiting for 3 drinks before going to the loo, saving one's work every n minutes even though you have power backup, not turning on the AC in the first few minutes of starting the car, not lighting up more than 2 cigarettes in a single flame, never passing a cigarette in any other way other than thumb or forefinger.

This guy in the plane took the cake. He looked both ways before crossing the aisle.

Obscene songs

I've come into the posession of six songs that were written and orchestrated by various bands in the enterprising B-schools and IITs. The common factor in all these songs is their inherrent collegeness, and their liberal use of profanity.

To name them, they are: Sabka katega, Ga** mein danda, Nadia, Bhench** sutta, XLRI ki kudiyana, and Yeh 'kundum' hai.

I rather like these songs. They display an amazing penchant for creativity and coolness. So much so that I've put these songs on my mp3 player and regularly play them when I'm in the car.

Funny results have ensued. Like the other day I was at a traffic signal with "Bhench** sutta" playing loudly in the car, and a traffic cop was doing his end of the month rounds to collect his quota of "fines". And just as he was crossing my car (they don't usually bother cars, just the non-bullet bikes), the speakers blared out the final stanza, "bhench** mach** ..." going on and on. He gave me the queerest of stares before telling me to reduce my volume.

And then there was the time when I was late in picking up Tum from college owing to some pain-in-the-a** politician doing his rounds, blocking traffic for his motorcade. And I saw more than a few smiles (and one very stolid stare) from the numerous rickshaws and commuters on bikes as they wandered past my stuck car while it was blaring out "Teri ga** mein danda de". The stolid one had a kid in tow.

But Apurv takes the cake. All through the Friday night rock show, he kept telling me how Indian Ocean was a better band than Parikrama because it had original music. But just when we got back to the car and the chosen tracks of collegeness started crooning their choice of profanity, he was all chaste like a little nun, saying that he didn't like them and to put on something else.

I happily obliged, knowing that originality didn't really figure on the top of his list of criteria for judging bands :).

I'll be 30 next year

Life does like to throw googlies at you. I wish I had a pact with God like the one that Joey (of the Friends fame) had, where I'd never turn 30. I wish I'd keep on oscillating: 27-28-29-28-27-28....

Life differed with me. I'm quite sure that I'll be 30 next year instead of 28 :(.

But being 30 brings along with it a new horizon. Call it a question of sour grapes, but for all the good things that have happened to me in my 20s, there has been a bug infestation of the juvenile kind has been my constant companion for the last 10 years.

There has been that independent and rebellious (read lazy) streak in me that has prevented me from showing my potential. All things said and done, this one aspect of my personality has been my greatest enemy. Basically, if I'd been hardworking, I'd have been a much richer man.

But maybe not happier. Apurv mentioned to Tum the other day that while I was sitting in office proclaiming to learn about web technologies, I was actually watching a move (I plead guilty - Aeonflux, don't watch it). At other times my various colleagues would have caught me at playing games, catching up with different blogs, reading funny news from around the world, and chatting up with many of my capital former colleagues.

The intention isn't there. I'd much rather be an industrious worker and finish off my stuff before it is ever asked for. I'd like to be a Subho or a Santosh (and I really admire them for their brand of faithfulness, neither of them read my blog, I think), but I'm sadly built without that particular switch that'd make me both fun-loving and hard-working at the same time.

But I don't mind. I work great under pressure. And that brings me to my point of contention (there is a french sounding phrase for that, but I can't remember it for the life of me). I am getting old :(, and I probably won't be as good under pressure as I used to be. Then what do I do?

Apartments and hand-me-downs

When Tum and I had started living in together around December 2001, we had a bare apartment. And bare apartments need filling up. So even though we did manage to get some basic kitchen utensils (worth around Rs. 5000) and a computer (5 months later) on our own, most of the stuff that we had around the house was garnered by pillaging my parents place.

Consequently, we acquired a rickety bed that used to be mine when I used to live with them (and it probably wasn't rickety then, but I'm sure that two people 'living in' didn't fit its terms and conditions for warranty ;). That bed and its mattress now adorns our guest room and is living a retired life by mostly enduring the burden of a host of washed clothes and being the sleeping place of choice for Hobbes and Tequila.

My sister's steel cupboard was next. This one is also still doing time. Since she got married went off to her beloved UK, I was free to pick that up. My own collapsible fabric cupboard also came with me, and between the two of them we had plenty of space for clothes, files, books and what not.

There were a bunch of cane patio chairs that Dad had bought around 15 years back in Delhi. They were in good condition, and were the host of many a boozing sessions in both our rented and owned apartments. They were finally thrown away after 3 cats had been through their cane like a borers and termites spoiling woodwork.

All the rest of the stuff that we garnered lives in the lofts. An inkjet printer that's never been used (never could be used, ink dried up), a makeshift shelf's iron rods, a vaccum cleaner that's so noisy that we could've woken up the dead with it, an ancient aluminium oven that was only good for baking potatoes, a electric heating plate and a gas 'shegdi', loads of airbags that the cats used as so many scratching posts. The list is endless.

I have to say that apartments are good at this kind of stuff. They easily lend themselves to an untidy life.

Basic Carpentry

The elevator in our building used have a handle on its door that was attached using four screws. Now it so happened that it is very boring to actually wait for the elevator to come down from the top floor, or to wait at (my) sixth floor foyer for it to come up from the ground floor.

I'd gotten into the habit of loosening the screw (always the top right one) on both floors with my thumb (nail) while I was waiting out my wait. It provided me with immense satisfaction to know that I could undo a screw that people had to use a screwdriver to place there, with my bare thumbnail.

I guess, the other day, I'd gone too far when I came round the corner and grabbed for the handle, and by hand closed around nothing. That's right. Just because I'd loosened the screw too far and dropped the screw, that then proceeded to roll under the ground floor door and disappeared into the elevator well, someone had taken a screwdriver to it and made off with the other three screws and the handle to boot as well.

What came as an even bigger surprise was to find, a couple of days later, that all the door handles on all the floors had now been replaced with ones fixed in with nails rather than screws. Someone obviously took the missing screw too personally.

But the anecdote apart, this incident taught me how little even carpenters know about basic carpentry. When you want to put a screw into wood, the way to do it is to make a thin (2mm across) and just as shallow hole in the wood, and then to let the screw do the rest of the work. Not make a 4mm hole the length of the screw just to make the job easier for yourself. It is no wonder the screw didn't hold.

Which leaves me as to what past-time I should now resort to while waiting for the elevator to arrive. Grow a claw hammer out of my toes?

Because cricket is a very funny game

Cricket -Field Placings
By Ruskin Bond

Long leg has a cramp in one leg,
Short leg has a cramp in two;
Twelfth man is fielding at mid-off,
Because mid-on's gone off to the loo.
As short leg has a long leg
Long-off has been moved further off;
Silly-point goes back to gully
Cover-point backs off a pace or two.
Every one is thinking of the drinks' trolley
When first slip lets a catch through his fingers,
Forgetting the old ball is now new.

Arctic Fissure

Quality (example)

When I made my earlier post, I realized immediately after posting the post, that I'd missed an important name. Needless to say, my internet connection went kaput, and I was left with my useless GPRS connection (with a transfer speed of 1KB/s) to make ammends with.
I did manage to do it, and I'm making this post throught the same browser... Lynx running on Cygwin. And here is an example of a quality product. Blogger.com runs on Lynx. To give credit where it is due, it might entirely due to Lynx's abilities. Eitherways, it is an example of really good quality.
Because it works.

Quality

Quality

For some obscure reason, a conversation I had with Sumit and Nikhil a long time back came back to me just now. The meat of the talk was revolved around Sumit saying that games did not have to be picture perfect (pun not intended) and Nikhil and I saying that he was wrong. Sumit's contention was that games are made for a breed that are adamant on playing the bloody thing so gamers would go to any length to make the game work. Nikhil and I were saying that there was a certain level of quality that is required of any product, and that games in general had one of the lowest levels of quality in commercial products that we'd ever seen. It was actually Sumit's heartfelt belief that in the case of games, some kinds of quality are superior to others and that games that look better, and play better, and feel better, and provide more fun, were more important than games that can be played easily (you know the way I mean that). He knew of so many consumers working their asses off to get to play a game on their chosen hardware platform, for example, that it blinded him into believing that all games have the same kind of cult following that Half-life, or Doom have.

Long story short, the conversation died out somewhere in the middle of one rum and another half beer.

I will not pretend to know about quality control in games. I do however know a little bit about kind of people that are involved in persuing that elusive goal of making the quality of their product a matter of their personal prestige. It is this knowledge that has provoked me to write this particular post.

What is quality? It is the description given to that facet of a product, the facet that is shown to everyone, that when seen by whoever is using the product, causes them to judge the product. That's quality, the description. How it is judged decides whether the quality is good or not. Good quality is like good ethics. Both are so predominantly required that the opposites don't make sense.

Given that particular lecture, here are 5 things that I need for great quality of the products that I design and build:
1. A great quality control guy. He should be shameless, nitpicking, and not afraid to be unpopular (in that order).
2. A great management. To say no to releasing a product that doesn't meet the mark.
3. A great team. That thinks, like the great quality control guy, that an incident is a mark of every time that their mother slept with a bug.
4. Great tools. To help me to find and diagnose problems.
5. Great consumers. To point out to me my deficiencies.

Aatish, Manish, Darshana, Parvinder and Khushboo, I salute you.

Gallows Pole

It seems that not many people have heard this excellent song about how life treats you :). Incidently it is the excitement of going to a rock show tonight that explains the sudden enthusiasm. Check out the lyrics below. The song is by Led Zeppelin:

Gallows Pole
by Led Zeppelin

Hangman hangman hold it a little while
Think I see my friends coming
Riding a many mile.
Friends did you get some silver?
Did you get a little gold?
What did you bring me my dear friends
To keep me from the Gallows Pole?
What did you bring me to keep me from the Gallows Pole?
I couldn't get no silver I couldn't get no gold
You know that we're too damn poor
To keep you from the Gallows Pole.
Hangman, hangman, hold it a little while,
I think I see my brother coming,
Riding a many mile.
Brother, did you get me some silver?
Did you get a little gold?
What did you bring me, my brother,
To keep me from the Gallows Pole?
Brother, I brought you some silver,
I brought a little gold,
I brought a little of ev'ry thing
To keep you from the Gallows Pole.
Yes, I brought you to keep you from the Gallows Pole.
Hangman, hangman, turn your head awhile,
I think I see my sister coming,
Riding a many mile, mile, mile.
Sister, I implore you, take him by the hand,
Take him to some shady bower,
Save me from the wrath of this man,
Please take him,
Save me from the wrath of this man, man.
Hangman, hangman, upon your face a smile,
Pray tell me that I'm free to ride,
Ride for many mile, mile, mile.
Oh, yes, you got a fine sister,
She warmed my blood from cold,
She brought my blood to boiling hot
To keep you from the Gallows Pole,
Your brother brought me silver,
Your sister warmed my soul,
But now I laugh and pull so hard
And see you swinging on the Gallows Pole
Keep-a-swingin'!
Swingin' on the gallows pole!

A picture is worth a thousand words

It is so much easier to post pictures than it is to write anything in this blog. When I want to write something I have to first sit and think about what I want to write about. I have to ruminate, and an unfortunate habit of mine makes the job even more painstaking. I do everything with a top-down approach. Which means that I will sit write one title after another until I get one that seems promising.

I think the problem is in remembering what happened in the day. I usually have no idea what I did all day. Most of my days are uninteresting and boring. Nothing memorable happens, and even if something seemed funny at the time it happened, by the time I sit down to make an entry my brain turns blank. Like I have nothing to say.

The solution is obvious. Whenever something interesting happens, jot it down. And that's exactly why posting pictures is so easy. Because when you are out taking photos of things all day, at least a couple of them will be nice, worthy of gracing the eyes of those who read this blog. The same probably cannot be said of all the sludge that gets posted in the form of words.

I did try jotting things down when it happens, but it turned out to be quite awkward. You can't really stop a conversation in the middle (like hitting the pause button), and start storing a note on your mobile phone, can you? And imagine the chargin of your unlucky other half (of the conversation), if it turned out to be particularly good, and several points worth mentioning came up.

So when I started this post it was starting to get dark. You know, the orangish light in the sky, and I had the itch to go down to the parking and click a few snaps of my bullet in that light. But I resisted the urge with infinite determination, and have come out with this string of words that say it all:

Summer evenings, lazy power-cuts, hot shower, meeting friends, smoky bar, lots of wood, golden beer, glistening condensation, comfortable talk, long night, nice picture, no camera.

A couple of more wallpaper snaps

We had an office day out on Sunday, and we all headed to a place called Splendour Country. Excellent view and lots of oppurtunities for good wallpaper snaps. Here are a couple:

On the moon

Well I did say earlier (a long long time ago), that I was a capable wallpaper photographer :p. The fact remains that I need to be under the influence to click them. That's when the creativity flows. Some people might disagree, but the fact remains...

To be a good wallpaper guy, one needs to see the micro side of stuff. It's pretty simple really. The way one goes around doing that is by seeing things minutely. That means that you take a macro scene and recognise a small part (if you are lucky) or the whole thing (if you are extremely lucky), to be something that you'd want on your desktop. You need to see it.

The question is how you do it. The following picture is an example of the macro kind. No cropping or manipulation needed. The subject is pretty ordinary, but the overall picture makes a good wallpaper.













Then there are those photos which would make good wallpapers if cropped. It's not as easy as it sounds. More often than not, one needs to recongnise that only a small part of the "bracket" is going to look good. That "bracket" is often hidden in the noise that surrounds it and wit a little bit of practise, one starts looking for it.

An example of the cropped kind follows:













I'm particularly proud of this one becuase it didn't need much cropping. Let me give you a hint... "just the corners". A free beer to any one who can guess what the object really was. By the way, I call it "The Crevice".

P.S. hese photos aren't wallpaper quality. If you want 1600x1200 images, either post a comment (for those who know me), post a comment with your email address (I won't spam you, I promise).

Like father like son

I can't believe it. After all that there is for the sake of difference, I and Hobbes are a lot similar. We both like to lounge around, we prefer to rest rather than work, we regard sleeping as one of the way that we are contributing to the world's betterment, and we both love Tum.

And if we were normal human beings, there would have been some jealosy and resentment between us. But luckily, Hobbes is a cat. And I don't mean just any cat. Hobbes is one of those feline creatures that have perfected the art of living without earning anything more than love.

He's a cute creature. And arousing "aaawwwww" feelings is in his nature. I wonder what it takes. No one ever said "aaawwwwww" to me the same way that they say it to Hobbes. Maybe I need to grow some fur.

But jokes apart, there are certain attributes that he does have that really endear him to anyone. The way he says "meeeeeeeaow" in this high alto voice that he specially reserves for his begging. I wish I could "meeeeeeaow" my way through my appraisals... if it worked it would have a double meaning, wouldn't it? Not only am I not hungry, but so is my cat :D.

And I really don't want to mention how caring he is. When he was really young (less than 6" long), he and Tequila used to sleep around their Mom. In the middle of the night, Tequila would get it into her head that she wants to bother Mommy. So she'd start biting her. Hobbesey to the rescue. Despite being tiny, the little runt would go and plop himself on top of her, and refuse to let go until Mommy finally woke up and acknowledged her debt to him ;).

Bole to ekdum apne baap pe gaya hai ;).

Cycling in Nagpur

Quite a few of my readers know that I've studied engineering in Nagpur for two years before I was forced to quit due to eligibility problems and ended up doing my graduation and post-graduation in Pune.

Well, I was a different type of person when I was in Nagpur. I used to study for one ;). Another of my traits was cycling. For two years I rode my bicycle of Japanese origins a lot. I would peg it at around 15-20 kms a day on average.

It was a beauty of a bicycle, if I may say so myself. I'd bought it in Colombo when Dad was posted there, and it was one of those all-terrain things. With a light MgAl frame (the same stuff that's used in making airplanes), I could lift it from the hub with no effort at all.

I used to ride pretty fast. I remember once, when I was cruising down a road, pumping my legs hard as usual, I'd chanced to look at a motorcycle's speedo while passing it. It showed 40kph. :) Still brings a smile to my face. I remember his face as well... no smile there :D.

Once when I was visiting my classmates on the other side of town (hell I don't remember the names of places anymore, its so long ago), I'd bragged to my sardar friend (Harpal) that I could race him to the south-indian fast food joint around a km away, and would beat him. The bet was on. I'd been slightly lucky. The traffic was a bit heavy, and I had access to the footpaths that he couldn't get onto :). I got a free milkshake.

I'd had a couple of accidents on it. Nothing serious (serious means broken bones). I'd a habit of always skidding to a stop. It used to work like this. My front brake calipers were slightly loose. So when I used to apply the front brake even slightly, it used to cause the calipers to go inside the fork so that the front wheel used to lock. This used to cause the rear wheel to go light. If I hit the rear brakes at that instant, the result used to be a beautiful skidding stop.

My tyres always wore out pretty fast. One other time I'd claimed to the aforementioned Harpal and his roomie Sanyam that I could do a 360 degree skid. As chance would have it, a patch of loose sand on a smooth road happened at the right time, and I managed to perform the only 360 degree skid in my life :). More milkshake :D.

Nice memories actually. I left the cycle back in Nagpur along with some other of my stuff, intending to go back and pick it up a couple of weeks later. Never went :(. I don't even have any photos of those days, only memories. But as I said, nice memories actually :).

Look Ma, extra heads!

A colleague in office (Navneet, methinks), responded to my fire writing post with an idea of his own. The result is here for you to see. The trick is to set the camera steady on a 8sec exposure in a dark room and use a flashlight to light up your face in different locations. Cool no?

The cartoons of yesteryears

I have a recurring dream. There's a hole in the ground from which animated bugs are coming out. I can't see what kind of bugs they are. But they are of different shapes, colours and sizes. They all seem to be in a trance. All except one, who is helplessly shouting away to glory at all the others, telling them not to do it. And they all take to the sky... one after the other soaring towards the sun. Just to fall back dead.

I have this dream once in a while actually. When I say recurring, I mean once every 3 or 4 months. But it is there for the remembering. I saw it the first time after watching it in a cartoon. And the scene stuck. The cartoon was one of those Japanese variety dubbed in Arabic, so I don't even know the words. Just the images. Must've seen it when I was around 6 I think.

Another cartoon I remember is the Thundercats, about whom I've blogged at length already, so I won't bore you with them.

Then there's Tom & Jerry. Absolutely the best comedy pair ever. I know their cartoons down to each scene. Touche Mr. Pussycat :).

And there's Bugs Bunny. I really like him. And I hate Mickey. Wiley Coyote. Elmer Fudd. What a set!!!

And last but not the least, my video cassette of Pink Panther cartoons, that my Mom and Dad recorded the movie Masoom over. I hated the movie for 4 years, and watched it 25 times before I finally understood it. Then I didn't hate it as much, but I'd still love to have those Pink Panther cartoons back.

Dead ant, Dead ant :p.

The sanity of numbers

He waited for the star to fall. Which one was it to fall next? Maybe it is that blue one that he can see only from the corner of his eye. What's that smell? He turns his head around... The stink of treason, cunning, betrayal. He had almost learnt to stop anticipating it. Seeing shadows and ghosts at every turn, at every step. He turned and took a step. And fell. And fell...

He was rising. Fast. Faster... Everything was a blur. All the stars. Except one. It was blue.

A different world

The recent hulabaloo about the Prophet's cartoon has prompted me to think how different the world might be if instead of having just one dominant species in this world, there were two. Imagine for an instant, for example, that the dolphin too had an opposable thumb and an underwater fire. It would really have been a very different world wouldn't it?

There would probably have been no countries. Mankind would have been united against dolphin-kind, regardless of whether dolphin-kind were a threat or not. Or maybe there would be dolphin-countries that were defined in the oceans just like ours are defined on land.

There would have been bilateral agreements to curb land and water pollution.

The olympics would have had a different meaning.

Dolphin-kind would have offended humans by depicting walking bombs, and humans would have offeded the dolphins by drawing cartoons of swimming ones.

Guns would be quite useless in wars.

There would be underwater rock shows.

There would be seaports/airports at the same place, or maybe planes that turned into submarines.

There would be a cigarette that can be smoked underwater.

Spying would always be treason. You can't have human disguised as a dolphin, can you?

Beaches would be high security places.

A whole new range of salty cocktails.

Inter-species marriages anyone? (Hell that happens even now, remember that woman who married her dog or something :) ).

The possibilities are endless aren't they.

A Power Outage and a Camera

Things that run on batteries are the only entertainment when the power goes out. But this time it was quite a bit more than that. It inspired creativity (what little I had :p). A candle in a dark room with a digital camera set on a 3sec exposure. I moved the camera during the exposure for the desired effect. Presenting the new "Pyro"!!!

Clicking on that intelligent button

I often have this conversation with Tum after a few drinks. The topic is: What constitutes intelligence. The one I had today had two entirely new outcomes:
1. I agreed with her for the first time that eventually artificial intelligence will be possible (even if it doesn't arrive). I usually used to get stuck on the point where I argue that no amount of programming can ever create useful or otherwise emotions. Today I agreed that if we make a silicon based "brain" with enough connections, intelligence will automatically become a secondary venture. Infact if you let such a "brain" sit around long enough with basic circuits for getting energy when needed, it will eventually be intelligent because our own brain turned out to be so.

2. I came to the horrific conclusion that since our brain has been the same for the last 30000 years or so, we have effectively had the same intelligence potential for that much time. That means that if someone picked out a baby from those prehistoric times, and raised it here, it would not only survive in the world today, but it would also have the dubious potential to perform in our "intelligent" software industry. Horrors of horrors. You know why? Because that means that what's missing from today's artificial intelligence is a certain 'X' factor that time can certainly bring.

Hmmm, I'm probably not making sense. I'd had this conversation around 2 hours back and I've already forgotten the key points. So much for intelligence, huh?

Aniket's B'day Bash

We had a nice party on Friday night. It was Aniket's birthday on the 15th and we all had reason to celebrate. Aniket got a nice b'day surprise when his valentine wish turned up at the party. The faux-pax that ensued had better stay unsaid :). Some snaps from the party follow.










All the party people in the house sit tight :).










Gautam and Vai (the only married folks around, I was a married folk :p).










The camera-man and the host (Happy B'day Aniket!)










Khushboo saying "Wassup?"










Aniket, Aatish and Gautam (Oh no!!!)










B'day boy Aniket with Nikhil.










The Man.











Nikhil and I say "This is life!"

Creams

It has become an everyday thing, I guess. I prefer to wake up around half an hour after Tum. (Background story: I drop her off to college everyday, so my in-time in office is linked to the time of her first lecture). Even with my unusually long (half an hour) toilet routine (that's how long it takes me to finish reading the news), I can get ready in 40 minutes. Tum takes half an hour longer.

"Why?", you might ask. Well, its the creams. And moisturisers, and foundations, and brushes and selecting what to wear!!! I know these things are the culprit because I know someone else who takes just as long to get ready (ring a bell Nikhil? Okay, no brushes and foundations, but definitely more creams ;) ).

"So we take some care to groom ourselves!" And I'm branded as uncouth and as having no sense of what's good-looking.

Creams, its the creams. The unholy God of tardiness resides in its moist innards. And He casts a spell on all people who are otherwise good, making them forget that they have classes to attend!

Give me a can of deo anyday... and a newspaper :).

Ten Thousand!!!

We crossed 10000. And if you're not Indian, and quite possibly if you're not Indian, you won't know what "We crossed 10000" means. The BSE index crossed 10000 points a couple of days back.

What does this mean. The P/E ratio is good, so this isn't a bubble at all. What this does mean is that a lot of people stand to make money merely by investing in mutual funds. It also means that it really does help to have an educated person at the helm of our country. Okay, Atal Behari Vajpayee was educated, but he was a far cry from being an economics guru. What the Sardar and the Anna have done is established India as the financial destination in Asia, and nudged numerous small-time investors into trusting their money into this great economic destination.

I'm a Speedking, see... me... type!!!

Check out this really cool (and slightly nerdy ;) ) game that wants to know how fast you can type out the alphabet, and then ranks you in the world at it.

My current rank is 1403, and my time is 3.164 seconds. Can you beat me?

http://frenzy.morpheme.co.uk/frenzy/index.jsp?gameId=0

Banking blues

I have ended up having like a gazillion bank accounts. And I have loan installments being deducted from 2 of them, my salary comes in a third one and the fourth one is just sitting there doing nothing because I can't figure out how to change the ATM pin :o (right, I can't find the option anywhere!)

So you can imagine my predicament. I have to juggle the money around from one bank to another so that none of the direct debits default (I usually love alliterations but this was too much). Besides I had happened to bump into someone from my previous company on the road the other day. Well if you want to split hair, I bumped into his car... with my car. So I wrote him a cheque to cover the damage. And it's the beginning of the year, so I had to pay my building maintainence. And the Life insurance premium, my car insurance premium, the list goes on and on.

The result is that I've gone and written a host of cheques in all directions, and I realized just now (literally 10 minutes back) that one of my bank accounts is short by some :p. So tomorrow morning I'll have to rush to the said bank and deposit some cash before one of the cheques bounces.

And I haven't even started cribbing about my credit cards yet. It's going to be a gorgeous year.

A question of probability

Over our smoking breaks ;), I and Tum have had quite a few discussions. 2 of them stick out right now because my mind was mulling over probability and chances:

1. Is there any difference between a pair of dice thrown together and one after the other? Well, this question arose when I was telling Tum about how easy it is to make money at the roulette table when you only bet on the outside. You know, odd-even, red-black and first-second-third-twelve. If you don't know what I'm talking about you can read this article about roulette on wikipedia. Anyways, what I was saying was that since the last 15 outcomes are displayed at the table, it is easy to be right about which way the ball is going to fall. She insisted that each game played is a purely random event, and as such does not depend on the previous results (obviously). I was talking about trends.

We simplified the problem to the roll of a die. If a die is rolled a hundred times, and the die is fair, each face should have come up on top ~16 to 17 times. Now if you were shown a streak of 6 even rolls (2, 4, 6) what would you bet your money on for the next roll? Odd or even? The real answer is that it doesn't matter which way, because it's a purely random event. But what I kept maintaining was that I'd keep putting more and more money (doubling it every time) on an odd roll, because an odd roll is bound to come up sooner or (rather than) later.

Eventually we decided that we are talking about different problems. But actually it boils down to the statement of the problem. She was talking about the difference between a pair of dice being thrown together, and the same die being thrown in subsequent throws. In the former you it is a single event (as it would be if a line of roulette tables were spun together), and the latter are distinct events and the bet depends on pure chance and no trends can be set.

2. The Monty Hall problem. Tum was reading "The curious incident of the dog in the night time" by Mark Haddon. This puzzle presented in the book as follows (pasted from wikipedia):

In this puzzle a player is shown three closed doors; behind one is a car, and behind each of the other two is a goat. The player is allowed to open one door, and will win whatever is behind the door. However, after the player selects a door but before opening it, the game host (who knows what's behind the doors) must open another door, revealing a goat. The host then must offer the player an option to switch to the other closed door. Does switching improve the player's chance of winning the car?

Now think about it before reading the next sentence, the answer is there.
.
.
Okay, the answer is yes. We had a lot of fun discussing this problem. While Tum got it instantly, I took some convincing. The answer is counter-intutive because most of us tend to think of the event as "choosing the door" instead of thinking of the event as switching. So...

• The player picks goat number 1. The game host picks the other goat. Switching will win the car.
• The player picks goat number 2. The game host picks the other goat. Switching will win the car.
• The player picks the car. The game host picks either of the two goats. Switching will lose.

So if you switch the probability of winning is 2/3 as opposed to 1/3 when you first chose the door.

You can read more about the Monty Hall Problem on Wikipedia by clicking on the link.

Quotable Quote

Caught this on a web clip in GMail.

Joe E. Lewis - "I distrust camels, and anyone else who can go a week without a drink."

Cheers! :)

Subho's Bachelor Party

I wanted to post these for some time now, but somehow kept forgetting to get the photos off the camera. Well here they are:



Kiva before the party











The bachelor boy














People having fun (Clockwise: Darshana, Subho, Aatish, Pramahtesh & Aniket's censored finger).









More people (Clockwise: Subho, Gautam, Pramathesh, Me, Aatish)









Click on the photos to get the larger picture (heh heh, I hate myself).

What fashion does to all things nice

I really like the Motorola Razr. It is one of my likely future phones (along with the D600). So when I saw this I really had to share my agony with my fellow bloggers and blog readers...































Pink???!!!

Attitude Songs

Today, on the way to the gym, I happened on a particuarly bad traffic light, where there was such a line in front of me that I had to wait, and wait, and wait... for eternity. The CD playing in my car at the time was a compilation of antiwar songs that I have. And I got to thinking... It'd be great to have a lot of theme songs. Theme songs, mind you, not mood songs. So a CD containing songs like Burn, Stormbringer, Speedking, Fuel, Whereever I may roam etc. would be a 'speed' CD. What I was thinking about at the time was attitude.

So the first thing I have to do is compile a list:
1. The attitude song - Steve Vai ( no words, but the sounds say "No I won't do it")
2. No rain - Blind Melon (I hear this song saying "Nothings going to bring me down")
3. I shot the sheriff - Eric Clapton (No, I'm innocent)
4. Bad obsession - Guns 'n' Roses (Do I have to say anything?)
5. MI2 theme song - can't remember whodunnit, was it Limp Bizkit?
6. Killing in the name - Rage against the machine (F*** you I won't do what u tell me...)

I need more. Let me know.

Me and my bike

Here are few snaps of me on my bike. Remember that these were taken a couple of years back. She's just as pretty, I've put on some weight since then :).

Tag, I'm it

Tag, I'm it...
First there were chain letters. Then there were chain emails. And now, this. In the name of being a good sport:

Four Jobs I've Had
1. Chief sister irritater
2. Chief mother irritater
3. Chief irritater :)
4. Software Professional

Four Movies to Watch Repeatedly
1. Matrix
2. Terminator-2
3. Ocean's Eleven
4. Pirates of the Carribean - Curse of the Black Pearl

Four Cities of Residence
1. Pune, India
2. Nagpur, India
3. New Delhi, India
4. Colombo, Srilanka

Four Favorite TV Shows
1. Tactical to Practical
2. American Idol
3. Friends
4. Junkyard Wars

Four Vacation Destinations
1. Goa
2. Goa
3. Goa
4. Goa

Four Web Sites I Visit Daily
1. Gmail
2. Aniket's Blog
3. HSBC Mutual Funds NAVs
4. Kristi's Blog

Four Favorite Foods
1. Smokin' Joe's Mexicana Pizza
2. Garlic steak anywhere
3. Butter chicken + roti
4. Chicken shezwan noodles + garlic chicken with gravy.

Four Places I'd Rather Be Right Now
1. Baga Beach, Goa
2. In bed with my wife ;)
3. On my motorcycle, going somewhere far away
4. In some bar, having a beer with my buddies

Four Bloggers Who Have to Answer These Same Questions, or Kittens Will Die. Or Something.
1. Aniket
2. Darshana
3. Vrigo
4. umm....

Cats

A few photos of my cats. Hobbes is the black & white tom, and Tequila is the ginger one.


One of the rare snaps in which both of them are sleeping near each other. This situation usually deteriorates into one sending the other one scooting.







Have you ever seen a cat that sleeps like this? :)













What's on your mind?










Yeah, what is on your mind?










Cute no?

A tool for multi-tasking - Synergy

Are you one of those poor souls who have multiple PCs, but have switch keyboards and mice around because your company is too stingy to afford a CPU switch? Well fear not. Enter Synergy. Synergy allows you to use a single keyboard and mouse with multiple CPUs+monitors connected over the network.. This is ideal for the situation where you have laptop and a desktop, and like to use both in office. Since no visual data is exchanged between the machines (since both use their own monitors), it is pretty fast. Will be really useful for people with Dell flat screen monitors with dual inputs.

Enjoy.

GDL

GDL stands for General Depression in Life. We (I and Sumit) invented this term way back in our first term in BCS, when both he and I were overcome by the extreme lethargy of the situation around us. The moroseness of existence and the futility of all things play on the mind and I remember not feeling like doing anything, but wanting life to take a new turn, both at the same time.

Needless to say, I hate the feeling. It is the same kind of emotional state that is shown in comics as a raincloud just for a person. Makes me sick. Though I haven't had one in ages, I know what the warning signs of the onset of one is. And I've been feeling those for some time now, almost three weeks. Feeling like I need a vacation despearately, and not seeing the chance of one anywhere in the near future was threatning to push me over the edge into that abyss.

Thankfully, I've seen the warning signs and acted accordingly. The first step is to put a bit more order into my life. So, I sleep at an earthly time, wake up early, get to office early, and, and, and, :D I've joined a gym (yay!). I've working in office for nearly a week now (as opposed to needlessly whiling away my time, waiting for the deadline to approach, so that I can kickstart myself). The starting gym is actually the second step. Physical activity adds some much needed tiredness and a sense of well being to life. The third step, and I still have to do this, is put in some adventure. Maybe a weekend ride to Lonavla or something. I'm sure that'll help too.

Yes, the warning signs are abating, and life's looking up. Say NO to GDL :D.

Where the streets have no name

Anyone who's been in Pune for even a couple of months will know the deep dark jungle they call the "Peth". Abandon hope, all ye who enter here... and all that jazz.

Not for the faint hearted, only a person who's wants to take the ultimate test in driving will take a vehicle with more than two wheels into the shopping cesspool called Laxmi Road. Either that or a complete imbecile. And I'd be the first to say that I've been both.

Traffic in Pune is what I want to talk about today. And how to beat it. After ten years of experience in what I prefer to call stampede sense, I want to return the favour and publish a few tips about how to make your way around Pune in a safe and sound manner:

1. Stay put. The rationale is simple. Your impact velocity is likely to be lower when you are stationary.
2. The shortest distance between two points is the longer route. I have found that one can always find a route that has less traffic, less signals, less trucks, less buses, and so will get you to your destination faster, and within reason, will use up less gas. Confused? Most vehicles have an optimum speed in top gear that will give the most fuel economy. Moving at a snail's pace uses more gas.
3. You always have the right of way. The operative word here is "right". As in correct. Remember that you are always right. Especially at ambiguous places like unsignalled crossings and traffic islands.
4. If you can't beat them, join them. Pune is not a city for the righteous. Everyone and their grandmother (oh the irritating grandmothers) want to ride/drive in the "fast" lane. So you need to do what everyone else does. Honk them out of your way, or overtake from the left. Want another example? Those who ride bikes will remember how irritating it is when some idiot in a car tries to get past the bus at the signal through that tiny space... and then gets stuck. How much have you suffered because of this? So when you get a car, get your own back... try to get through the same tiny space everytime you find one :).
5. There are only two kinds of good vehicles, those that can get around obstacles, and those that remove obstacles. So either a small car or an SUV. Either a scooty, or a bullet. And ofcourse there is the everpresent rickshaw. If I can't get through, no one else will....

I can think of plenty more words of advice, but I guess you get the gist. When in Pune, drive like the Puneites do :).

Naming your new machine

In the place where I work, there's a trend of naming all the desktops/laptops/servers with names out of the "Asterix" comic books. Once those were all over (yes there's one named justforkix), people started inventing names ending with "ix".

Due to obvious lack of creativity, machines end up with names like karvix, utix, and other such nonsense. Now I got a new machine yesterday. A 3.4GHz, dual core, 2GB Ram and 2 80GB HDDs, 128 MB graphics card (of unknown origin as yet). All in all a very nice desktop (understatement of the year :) ). So I decided to get a little creative with the name and christened it "matrix". Yup that was unused.

Then I got thinking of all the nice names that people could give their machines ending with "ix". It took a couple of hours and a lot of vetoed (by my wife) attempts to come up with this list:
1. idlidosamix (idli dosa mix)
2. shittingbrix (shitting bricks)
3. bugsnofix (bugs no fix)
4. stonesnstix (stones and sticks)
5. cameraclix (camera clicks)
6. ihitasix (I hit a six)
7. ihaterix (I hate ricks)
8. newyorknix (New York Knicks)
9. nakedpix (naked pics)
10. madebygix (made by geeks)

You guys are welcome to add more, let the list continue :).

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?