EAT IT

Flatmate Wanted

2009-10-24T01:42:00.000-07:00

Wanted a male flatmate for a 1BHK flat in BSK 3rd Stage in Bangalore. Preferably a cricket fanatic geek. House is well equipped with broadband, instruments of personal fitness, washing machine, telly, a hard drive full of films, basic kitchen paraphernalia and a flatmate that takes a fancy to cooking once in a while. The place is already in the contact list of most restaurants so all one has to do to place an order is state a particular phone number. The place is well connected via BMTC and autos. Parking place is also available for a bike or car.

If you are interested, please mail at ujjwalgrover@gmail.com. First person to mail gets to see the Anil Kumble signed cricket ball.

PS: Special discount if you are on twitter ;)

Last four and a half minutes

2009-10-05T23:47:00.000-07:00

One of my entries for the RCB Chief blogger.

He does what he has been doing for the last three balls. He follows the cycle. The cycle of looking at his partner, looking at the dug out, looking at the field and looking at his bat. None of it is planned. He knows his partner at the other end isn't the man for the job. He might as well expect the bowler to get possessed by that bowler from college he so wacked around. Its nine needed off three. He's always dreamed about living in a moment like this. To be given a chance to prove that he's that proverbial stuff that legends are made of. But its one thing wanting to be at a particular place at a particular time for a particular purpose and another to score nine runs off three balls. That too off someone who has bowled three yorkers out of three, all of which he somehow managed to hit away for a couple each. Nine off three. Thats three per ball, three runs to run of every ball to follow? His legs shake at the thought of it. He takes his stance, eyes mid on. Yes mid on it is. His best chance. Dammit, its another one of those ankle breakers, but he's gotten it away to mid on. Its racing away to the fence, his heart is pounding as he sets off for the second, hoping against the hope that the outfield helps him. In comes the throw. Its two. Dammit!

Seven off the last two. His legs are giving up now, he's run eight runs in the last four balls and plenty before them. He knows now for sure that he hates the game. May be his dad was right. May be Physics Honours isn't so bad. Ah his mind digresses. He follows the cycle again. Its seven off two now. He can hear his heartbeat now, but he isn't complaining, at least its suppressing the noise from the stands, at least he can now hear himself think. He contemplates peddling it over the short leg or better still over the keepers head like Dilshan. Yes thats perfect, he's practiced that in the nets and he's almost certain he can pull it off. Almost certain! Dammit! Two balls, what the hell is he thinking, this isn't a time for some childhood excuse of a shot, this is the deal, the deal he grew up dreaming of being a part of. He knows he will either win it or lose it for his team now, nothing else matters to him, his personal best score, the fact that he's been running all those doubles with cramped legs, nothing. He knows he cannot run another two and he knows his partner isn't an option. It is this ball or its over. He has to get it away. Yes, thats his plan. He will get this one away. He wont eye a region. He will play it as it comes and get it away to the boundary. He takes his stance, looks at the dug out through the corner of his eye. He can see most of them have given up. The joy, they say, in life lies in doing stuff that other people say you cant. He clears his head, looks straight ahead, the bowler runs in, its a tad short and wide, just the way he likes them. He rocks back, a little further than he normally would to give himself a few extra milliseconds to place it perfectly. And perfectly he does. Nobody's cutting this one off, he knows it from the moment he hit it. The fielders don't move. The stands erupt. The dug out is on its feet and cricket again feels like another day in office. His partner comes and pats him, says another one of those and we can spend the rest of the night drinking and that he'll buy. Sweet proposition.

Three more off the last one. His heart is a bass drum now. He's almost certain that the stump mic will pick his heart beat. He breaks the cycle. He just looks at the field once. Nothing unexpected. He's going to keep it simple. It will be another boundary. He cannot run anymore, thats for certain. He takes his stance, tries not to predict where the ball is going to land but he can't help it. He is anticipating. He knows it. He knows its going to be a yorker. The guy bowling is a genius. He's bowled four in this over already. Its going to be another one. He cant possibly get it away to the boundary. Hands begin to shake. Eyes blur. Heart has already broken his ribs. He finds himself clueless. The bowler runs in, shoots in another one of those yorkers, he gets it away with a flick towards mid on but places it exactly where he wanted it to. He's quick of the blocks, knows he's good for two, he has tied the game, a game that was lost, that has got to be enough but he notices the fielder will need to change the arm to throw the ball back, he leaves the crease for the third, the most important third in his life. Twenty yards more and he is legend. Sixth sense tells him the ball has been thrown and will win. He is really stretching those cramped legs, one final push, he dives, fully stretched lands in the crease, the throw comes in. He is safe. His legs are bruised but his spirit isn't. Not anymore it isn't.

Next thing he remembers is being fed all sorts of liquids in the dressing room, people chanting his name in the stands, the scorecard reading his teams victory and his teammates delirious. A twelve year career and all he remembers now are those four and a half last minutes. He doesn't want to think about it. He just wants to sleep. The sleep that beckons one after a job well done.

Be nice to others willya

2009-09-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

I have recently begun commuting about 10 kms daily to and from my new workplace (more about the change later) by bus (this is Bangalore btw) and apart from acquiring interesting data showing insight into the co-relation between brands of cars and traffic violations, I have come to realize that our cities are developing with complete disregard towards its citizens. And you know what, its not just the infrastructure thats cold to people. Its people too. I daily see youngsters like myself sitting comfortably in the buses while the old stand and revisit practical inertia. I know they're tired having looked at Dr Chaudhary on youtube all day long but its people of their own parents' age we're talking about here. The drivers of the buses care more about waving to their friends driving pass them than the safety of the passengers inside the bus or waiting to get down. The autorickshaws deny taking people to where they want to go, probably only because they can. Basically the whole analogy of city and jungles that I once thought was so over poetic (especially with no news of a Cafe Coffee Day sighting in a forest), it actually makes a lot of sense. After all almost every person is hostile to every other person in their struggle for more comfort and unfortunately its a zero sum game.

Someone needs to stop this development of utter disregard for the other. Someone needs to, for the lack of a better expression, show everyone some Animal Planet and explain how close we are in our behavior to the four legged vertebrates. Someone needs to be out there telling people about the forgotten values of extending courtesy to their kind. I really hope someone starts a campaign for 'being good to the other'. Something on the lines of Gandhigiri but much more elaborate and reaching out to more people and hopefully a little more prolific.

The idea is to build better cities, cause its the people that make cities. Cities that offer a life worth working hard for. Cities that treat all men equal (the one driving a hummer and the one getting down of a BMTC bus and crossing the road). Cities that are safe for citizens and hard on law breakers. Cities that offer free wifi, cheap food, open air theater shows and ..ah well I digress.

An Open Letter to MSD

2009-06-16T01:43:00.000-07:00

Dear Dhoni,

Shit happens.

Not so long ago, a young captain, under whose leadership the Indian cricket team (yes the whole one billion of it) realized they could win on hostile territories abroad, was made responsible for everything bad that happened to Indian cricket thereafter. His personal form suffered and reached an all time low, giving free reign to the people who wanted to crucify him. In my humble opinion you have a lot to learn from the way your predecessor was treated.

Unfortunately this is India, where people who once named their kids after you burn your effigies, media that followed you as you rode the streets of your hometown, air every piece of unconfirmed news about you, some of which is extremely personal to you and even the useless excuse-for-an-ex-cricket-player finds fault with your technique and strategy.

Fear not, they don't matter. Yes it may seem like an easy thing for me to say, but really, they don't matter. What matters is, you and your men winning again. Do not take any of the bullshit thrown at you personally, its a matter of time the same people will start loving you again. Have faith, not in the people of your country but in their love for the game and your team. Just keep up the good work and this will all pass.

Hope you run over South Africa tonight and clean sweep the coming West Indies tour.

Sincerely Yours
An Indian cricket fan since 1986

PS: I am supporting Pakistan for the wt20 now, hope you're cool with that.

Are women over unfriendly?

2009-04-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

Yes. I hate to be the one to break it to you but yes they/you are, most of them/you are. Don't draw a picture of a chauvinist, women hating, multiply dumped, frustrated software guy, living alone with his pet dog who swears to never marry and learn cooking. I am none of these, except the software guy part (to which I will just say, generalization is a sin). I completely understand the need for a woman to be careful, cause lets face it there are desperate men out there who take so much so as a random look to be a sign for 'phas gai! yay!'.

I understand it, but I have to say women overdo it. They just do it several times over. For instance the other day, this new guy in our company bus asked this lady about the timings of the buses to his place, route details, drivers phone number, number of stops, alternate buses, drivers' managers number and he also asked something that sounded like 'what if I miss all the buses'. Stupid set of questions I agree, more so because they were all asked together and a somewhat non helpful answer that ended with a full stop communication punctuation was expected, but the response was a virtual middle finger and abject rejection of his proposal to marry him that was somehow encrypted in all those questions. The thing I didn't like about the whole incident is why the outright rejection of the thought that the guy was just stupid? Why was he being treated like a womanizer when all he wanted was a fool proof travel plan?

May be women can put up that 'id much rather go and marry a bulldog than go out with you' look on their face, on a case by case basis? Trust me, not everyone who tries to talk to you is hitting on you or wants to take you out or has enough money to take you out or is stupid enough to choose going out with you against watching the first five overs of a t20. It might be difficult to believe and all but men DO like other things and DO have other interests and at times DO find themselves in a situation that demands them to open their mouth and utter a sentence or two in a swearwordless language to a woman. Uncomfortable as it may be for them, they just have to do it because nobody from the same gender or having some part of the same gender is there around them at that particular moment of time. Least you could do for a fellow human being (yes men are your fellow human beings) is ask yourself once whether he actually needs the information he is seeking or did that question come from '100 indirect ways to get a girls phone number By anonymous'.

Really 'can you please watch my bag for a sec' is not a guy asking you out, its a guy asking you to watch his bag while he goes out to get a pen to fill out his reservation form. Its okay, just say 'No I have to go somewhere' if you dont want to watch his boring bag but don't give him that look. That look that makes men feel they committed the greatest most sinister act of all times and are a disgrace to other men.

PS: the author has never hit on any woman indirectly and he wasn't staring at that girl in Massala on Sunday, he was just drooling at the tangdi kebab she was having.

24 magic hours to Search Spin

2009-02-16T00:27:00.000-08:00

Ingredients: @dkris, @enginerd, @jerrymannel and @privarma and for dessert our @ujj

hour 1: Discuss the idea again, everybody convinced its going to be a serial killing app. Heard someone say snacks, off to get some. Back to the table. Back end design in progress. Dkris and Anand take up UI. Jerry, Priyanka and I are on algorithm and database.

hour 2: A simple workspace for search spin up and running, does nothing but serves as a platform for further development. Integrated Boss Mashup framework with GAE, so far so good.

hour 3: Stuck, bloody stuck in getting related keyterms for a searchusing BOSS. Bad bad documentation, no help for you and here comes @t3minator, a guy from yahoo who says he doesnt know BOSS, comes and spots a minor bug in our python function call and there we are. good to go. now we've got all we need from BOSS (never thought id say this about any BOSS)

hour 4: Coke and hot dog, FTW! and @daaku, @ashwin make their way in. Its going to be a long night. the valentine party's about to begin so we want to be done with the keyterms algorithm before then. Jerry's on it assiduously.

hour 5: Database implementation now in progress. Heres what I like and dislike about App Engine, makes it easy to create and manage the tables but its not relational, lot of the stuff you know, you have to un-know to survive here. Priyanka and I are on it, Anand joins in. Dkris is taking help from Chris on Yui.

hour 6 & 7: party time! dance performance by Shadow 1, couples dancing and wait! whats that? is it a monkey with one leg, is it a large chicken, no its Dhempe FTW! he's dancing! that has to be the funniest moment of my life. Thank you God for the food we eat and the stuff we see. Meanwhile some basic data entry/retrieval api's in progress. Btw theres one beer a person today.

hour 8 & 9: food! more food! and a round table conference with all the bangalore twitterati. Discussions generally around Dhempe and Dkris and how procoder always wanted to dance. Laughter is the best stress buster, the next hour passes away just like that.

hour 10: Now writing a simple javascript for showing search results and integrating with v1.0 of jerry's algorithm for keyword matching. Things getting to move ahead now. Now we can see something happening. not much but something.

hour 11: Coke and Red Bull keeping people up and working. Some people who had other people's beer too, fallen around wasted. Mediamama (m not n) AKA @narayananh next to our team's hack place and Dhempe goes and sleeps next to the stage that made him the man of the moment for 60 seconds. Those suckers!

hour 12: Testing out the basic features, a test url set up. Good habits coming in handy today. Spotted a major issue in the db queries, now fixing it, will take time, but better late than later.

hour 13: Out for a walk, its becoming gloomy, half of the room now sleeping. Its become very silent. Good time to get everything done. I want to have a fully functional UI-less version up and running in the next two hours. Everyone agrees, Anand and Jerry finalizing on the v 2 of the algorithm. Dkris working on UI and me and Priyanka on the backend.

hour 14 & 15: Coffee for some, coke for some, sleep for the rest. Found another issue with the database updates, we're all becoming slower now. Dkris is over and out. I am at my slowest best and cant think of a simple workaround. Advise from Jerry and Anand is to catch some sleep but Priyanka and I decide to keep going.

hour 16: Done! a simple UI version up which works the way we want it to. Few high fives and I decide to catch an hour of power nap. Priyanka decides to do a small code review, Anand and Jerry too get some sleep.

hour 17: woke up, did one round of testing. It is working! time to freshen up and get some breakfast! Another round table conference is in order! with discussions on some nice pics taken by the bangalore twitter group of people sleep-working.

hour 18: UI integration on with some slight optimizations on the algorithm. It all seems cool now. We've made it. Anand working on the final CSS and Priyanka and Jerry doing a final code review. Me and dkris having a chat with @Daaku, @narayananh and @Dhempe.

hour 19: Done, now final testing and submitting our app to the final list. We're no 13 on the list. The lucky 13. All done now, time to just hang around and help jerry prepare for the presentation.

hour 20-24: Fun and masti, another round of round table conference during lunch. This was the awesomest weekend of my life. Worked like an exploited dog and had a great time with the twitter group.

As soon as Jerry went for presentation, the bangalore twitter group screamed their intestines out. Everyone knew who the most popular team of the hack day was. It was grand! jerry wrapped the presentation in 88 seconds and it just couldnt be better.

We didnt win anything but after having worked for 24 hours, all we needed was a 12 hour sleep and nothing more. Some really cool apps were on demo and hope some from them makes it big. Do check out our app Search Spin.

Not another Ghajini review

2008-12-28T01:31:00.000-08:00

Ghajini isnt the name of the actress, just in case you were dumb enough like me to think that way. Besides what sort of a name is that for a guy. I am not going to talk about the story of Ghajini or its plot (a lot of other films have done it in the past), but let me tell you (and warn you in advance that I am not being sarcastic when I say) that Ghajini was an out an out entertainer. In fact it was hillarious. It was Mr Khan, doing, at times a Daniel Craig, and at times a Rajni saar. Asin was awesomly cool and Jia Khan was kind of hot.

The songs were very colorful, not metaphorically, really, visually colorful. All of them. Not a color was missed. From clothes to hair to cars to background walls, even a lighthouse, all were colored. It could make an ad for Asian Paints. Picture this, a family went out to watch Ghajini, saw these songs and started yelling mera wala pink, mera wala naples yellow, mera wala tangy green. I digress.

The background score for all fight sequences was deafening. It was the sound of two iron bars hitting each other, so much so that after a while, each punch of Aamir Khan seems to hurt you. Speaking of hurt, my legs were hurting by the time I walked out of Urvashi Cinema, now Ive traveled in buses with little leg spaces but Urvashi Cinema is a legend among cramped leg spacy environments. If you cared to recline you would be in the lap of the person behind you. In my case there were guys both in front and back and all three of us never reclined. I just randomly looked around and it was the same everywhere. Guys behind guys, girls behind girls. What a plan ! anyways I digress.

I loved the college in which Jia Khan went. It was the coolest college one can go to. Imagine you telling a professor that you want to do some project and he tells you, dont do it. Well, it happens in that college. Is that cool or what. Also you should check out that college's cultural festival. It makes any God damn Cine awards look like the birthday party of the poorest guy in class.

One thing I want to just tell out loud to Bollywood is "stop using the surname Singhania for rich people". It is so bloody overused. Let me tell you about a Singhania who studied with me in school, he was dirt poor. He was like Kenny from South Park. He would collect broken small pencil pieces. He would eat from my lunch box, every single day. Horribly poor,or atleast so he behaved. Why dont you use some new surnames like ..say Grover. Then again, I digress.

I also saw Sreesanth in one of the scenes for almost 3 seconds until he's dead on the ground after taking a punch from Mr Khan. Ok so all Im talking about are the fight sequences, thats unfair even for a film like this, but honestly thats about all I remember. I sincerely hope you haven't seen Memento and liked it. If you haven't, do go and see the film, you wont regret it (unless you are paying for it yourself).

Btw Ghajini, the bad guy (in case you haven't been told that already) had an iphone! that son of a phone.. its haunting me ! !

An ode to the Google Phone

2008-12-08T07:26:00.000-08:00

प्रिय गूगल,

आपके फ़ोन के बारे में पढ़ा, अच्छा लगा। बड़े दिनों के बाद मार्केट में ऐसी चीज़ आई है जिसे देख कर दिल में उई उई हुई, अगर सच कहूँ तो iphone को देख कर भी ऐसा ही लगा था पर वह साला बहुत मंहगा था। मेरे तो क्या, मेरे और मेरे दो साथियों को मिलाकर भी औकात के बाहर था। बड़ी चाह थी की iphone के लिए applications बनाऊं पर सारे ख्वाब, ख्वाब ही रह गए।

इस कारणवश आपसे विनती करना चाहता हूँ की आप अगर अपने फ़ोन को भारत में लॉन्च करें तो इन बातों का ध्यान ज़रूर रखें, ताकि हम जैसे गरीब (यद्यपि शौकीन) लोग भी इस तकनीकी अजूबे का मज़ा उठा सकें

१ कृपया कर किसी टुच्चे सर्विस प्रोविडर के साथ टाई उप न करें। सर्विस प्रोविडर ढूँढने का सर दर्द लोगों को ही उठाने दें
२ फ़ोन सभी बड़ी दुकानों में उपलब्ध होना चाहिए।
३ फ़ोन के साथ एक CD में development software ज़रूर दें
४ बंगलोर जैसे शहरों में हमारे जैसे वेल्ले लोग बहुत हैं, वहां एक developer conference ज़रूर रखें और अच्छा होगा अगर ये किसी ५ सितारा होटल में हो तो, क्यूंकि येही एक मौका होता है जब हम जैसे लोगों को ऐसे होटलों में घुसने मिलता है
५ और अंत में मैं इतना ही कहना चाहता हूँ की पैसा तो हाथ का मैल है, अगर हो सके तो इस फ़ोन की कीमत १५-२० हज़ार के बीच में ही रखें, वरना मुझे और मेरे जैसे कईयों को वोह पैसे खर्चा करने पड़ेंगे जो हम अपनी अपनी बेहेनों की शादी के लिए बचा रहे हैं

उम्मीद करता हूँ आप हमें निराश नहीं करेंगे। Larry और Sergei को मेरा नमस्ते.

आपका सेवक
एक फुक्कड़ भारतीय नागरिक

Google Friend Connect - initial thoughts

2008-12-05T07:37:00.000-08:00

Google Friend Connect is a way for sites/blogs to go social without having to build registration process, user authentication, maintain users profile data and their social connections. It basically gives you these functionalities in a gadget that you can paste on your website. I am not going to spend time on how to set it up and all, its really child's play, what I am going to talk about is my initial feelings about it and what I feel it holds for us in future.

Google Friend Connect has a lot of obvious advantages. It allows people to invite their friends over to your site and allows people to maintain their profile and add friends all from within a small gadget. This obviously gives your site a slight viral functionality as people can invite more people to join your site. This also means the visitors of your site can view your site's members, their profiles and their friends' profiles, which are again engaging social features, but lets face, it this might get a few extra eye balls to your site but is definitely not going to make your site a social sex bomb.

Lets go a few steps back, why are you interested in friend connect? I take it that you want to socialize your site's content which would probably be a way to get more attention or to explore new channels for your content's distribution. Either ways you want your content to go out and reach its target audience. Thats where friend connect is bigger than just those few gadgets that are available right now. Since it is built on the Open Social platform, everything that your sites' members (people joined into the friend connect gadget of your site) do on your site can be basically called an open social activity. This means that if I join tempostand as a member and write/post a review on song, it can be sent as an activity feed to my orkut account. So all my friends on orkut will see that update in their friends' updates list. Thereby pushing my activity (my review on a song on tempostand) to my friends on orkut and thus getting across to more people than just those who are joined to your site via Friend Connect.

I think with Friend Connect's launch, we will see more generic gadgets being developed that can be used across all sorts of sites/blogs. One such simple gadget that Id love to see is one that is able to push excerpts of my comments/reviews/ratings etc that I do on a site, to my twitter stream. So that I tweet everything I do on any site, but this should come with functionality to turn it off, we don't want another beacon now do we?

Where Google App Engine rocked and where it dissappointed

2008-11-23T22:48:00.000-08:00

When GAE was released I was jumping on my seat (to the extent that my fat ass nearly broke it), literally, not because I thought it was a great, fantastic, never thought before idea that gave developers the freedom to forget about scalability and get on with their stuff, but because it was something I always wanted to build.

Okay not exactly that but a similar system but which would run on the LAMP stack and give the developers a freedom to use any framework. Don't get the title of this post wrong, GAE is a great dev environment and all but there are some issues that I faced recently when I was writing my app called Cricroar.

It took me about 6 hours to build a first version (the current one online), that included a simple CSS, a simple database model, few simple javascripts, the core data entry/retrieval code (business logic if you may) and finally the interface.

Rocked

The fact that you do not have to set up a server. ftp, give away accounts to people is just simply awesome. You can simply concentrate on development, uploading the code, configuring etc is just Allohomora.
If you have basic working knowledge on python, building a simple datamodel classes (your database) and the code to enter/retrieve data wont be a problem. The database model syntax is very intuitive.
Using static files images and CSS is very easy.
GAE uses Django templates for rendering html, even if you are not exposed to Django, understanding templates is very easy and quick to implement. Moreover it imposes the practice of not filling in your logic in your interface, helps you keep things clean.

Disappointed

Theres a lot of limitations with the Database model. You cannot "count" more than 1000 records. sad, i know.
No Joins allowed, enough said.
Theres no phpMyAdmin like app to view/edit the data in the admin panel.
I think analytics could have been built in but for some reason the admin panel only gives you an idea of the cpu usage and queries.

I think GAE does provide a great head start if you want to develop your apps quickly and add features but it has serious implementations as far as database is concerned but definitely worth considering if you have not yet begun development on some other platform. I am definitely going to spend more time on cricroar, especially since I love cricket :)

Being different

2008-11-02T23:05:00.000-08:00

The really strange thing about our country's youth is that every single one of them wants to be different, doing exactly what everyone is doing (which is, trying to be different). Every college goer I meet dresses pretty much the same way, talks in pretty much the same accent, aspires to be pretty much the same rich person, likes pretty much the same music/films, dislikes, or atleast claims to dislike, pretty much the same things, is pretty much the same in terms of intelligence if you grade them on a scale of 1-10 and have pretty much the same opinions about issues. To cut a very long story very short, most of the young people are pretty much the same, in almost all aspects. What this means is, most of the people running our country in some years to come, will behave pretty much the same way. Does this mean we'll have little diversity left? The answer in my humble opinion is yes.

I think we're reducing our diversity every generation. Assimilation of thoughts borne out of our differences is reducing every generation. Why? I don't know why but it could be linked with our attitude to emulate the same people, follow the same school of thought, play the game by the rules others are following and walking at a pace so that we are not left behind nor are we too ahead. We're one large herd of similar people who think and respond to similar stimuli similarly. What this in turn means is we have very few things left to which we will respond differently. Things like faith, demographics, conversions, reservations. Ever wondered why politics is so defined in our country by these terms?

we're all copies of copies of copies..

The ever expanding human being

2008-09-29T04:37:00.000-07:00

We (me and my karmic healing roommate) moved to a new locality a couple of months back and its about time I wrote a little piece on the "experiences of a hostel lifer when kept in Big Space". It is actually quite strange, people who know me (friends, family, the security guards of college and the bakery shop owner from the locality) would know that I am quite used to staying in a hostel room. Where everything you owned (including yourself) could fit into half a room, which already had a bed, table and a chair. So when we moved into a serviced room on coming to Bangalore, and saw the 'extra' lamp tables by the bed side, we went, woah.. lamp tables cool..

Human beings are gaseous, we have this tendency to expand to fill the space available. With time we filled the tables with unnecessary objects like books, candles and photo frames, so filled them and over filled them that they no longer seemed like 'extra', it felt like 'how were we ever living without it'.

When we moved into this flat recently, each of us had a room for ourself. We said to each other 'woah one whole room.. cool..' It seemed like we both had a town for ourselves, so much so that I would wake up every morning, walk between the rooms a couple of times and feel exercised. Alas, with time we expanded further, we bought unnecessary stuff like more books, more candles, laundry bags and small table on which to keep our laptops, extra bed sheets, a bicycle and I even went home once (which resulted into tripling the double of my wardrobe).

Now its back to the same lame life

A: get your socks off my bed
U: Oh i forgot its your bed
A: oh yeah, how did you forget its my room?
U: what so now I have to see whose room I get into?
A: ?
U: what?
A: shit man..
U: yah fk it, its the place, its so small, we need to get a bigger place man !
A: totally, lets find a bigger place

A startup is so much like a bank heist

2008-09-15T22:49:00.000-07:00

Only that its legal.

If you pull it off, you've done some serious stuff and gotten yourselves rich, otherwise in all probability you are fucked. Having wasted some serious productive time of your life, not to mention the opportunity cost (as a bank robber you could be working for some mafia king instead of venturing into something of your own). Okay you may not end up in a jail but if at the age of 33 you have no savings and have to ask your college friends to pass on your resume (reminding them of how they got you to do their assignments), it IS pretty bad (of course not as bad as having Big Bob sleeping in the same cell but pretty bad none the less)

In fact the preparations of a bank heist are very similar to that of a startup.(I haven't done the former but seen plenty of films on the theme).

You have to create a suitable, trustworthy team, collect necessary equipment.
Both need some work to be done on shares and decisions made on the exit strategy.
The team needs to gel with each other, but if theres a woman on board, its important to keep business and pleasure apart.
There are various strategies available online but theres a high chance that a totally original one will work.
Most of them work out, when the stakeholders work in total social isolation.
Usually, the productivity is the highest at around 2 am for either of them.
Both need backup plans for every plan, even for the backup plan.
Its advisable for stakeholders to keep their mouth shut when talking to people in the similar business, especially when drunk.

You got something else to add.. feel free to add to the list.

Barcamp Bangalore 7 - seeya there !

2008-09-12T02:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, Im neck deep in work with shitloads of debugging to be done on the new PC104 based embedded device ive been working on over the last few days. Its as bad as working on some nitwits' 2500 line object oriented code written in a single file without a single class, with a 600+ line function. That bad. So let me just say, as fast as I can, barcamp bangalore seven's happening tomorrow, some cool sessions registered, head to barcamp bangalore sessions. Looking forward to the mobile VAS in India by Ashish, theres this another one, Bridging the Industry - Academia Gap through Facilitated Project Management, which makes a lot of sense. Photography and digital media distribution. Meself doing a little something. Plus I dont have my regular camper group, except for privarma. So its time to meet those twitterers in real life.
Seeya there.

Photo courtesy ganuullu's photostream on flickr

Will be live blogging and twitting, (when not eating).

WTF is the deal with smart people?

2008-08-31T03:56:00.001-07:00

I dont know whats the big deal with being so smart. In fact I dont know whats the big rush for people to emulate smart people? I remember how they looked at class toppers in school, like they were some different kind of species with more strands in their DNA. Even 7-8 year old kids would write a will to sit next to their class toppers, spend time with them, study with them. I didnt get it then, I dont get it now. Why is everyone so crazy about people who are smart? Do they really add any value to the society by just being smart? Take a look around you, most things you see are born out of common sense, not a cause of brilliant cell rich cerebrum's work. The majority of the world is trying their best to *become* smart but no one thinks about 'what then'. What do smart people do?

Cause thats the root of the problem really. We all want to become smart, thats it. What then is not a question often asked. We blame it on the education system but the education system is just satisfying the needs of the society. Society wants smart people, since not everyone can be born smart, we try to engineer smart people and end up creating a machinery that produces mediocre people who follow a set of rules in their quest to become smart, strangulating all reason why they are doing it in the first place and killing whatever acumen they had for something else in the process. In effect the society loses common sense and gains smartness, which as you would recall has helped us very little.

Why society wants smart people is a question still unanswered. I mean id rather want hard working, honest, funny people around me. They'd help. I dont know what to do with a smart person though.

I think a group of people decided long back that they'd create a restricted group of smart individuals. With time it became so exclusive that people wanted to join it. It was the second chapter of Tom Sawyer - Whitewashing a fence, at work. In order for people to feel a craving for a particular thing, its only necessary for the thing to be made difficult to achieve.

Hence we sit for tough exams, hence we buy expensive stuff, hence we always have a crush on someone who is way out of our league, hence we spend our lives trying to attain, difficult to attain things, that once we achieve look or seem rather ordinary, but we keep doing that.' Why', doesnt even cross our mind. because our common sense that asks such common questions as 'why' and 'how' , was carefully artificially removed from our smart selves by a network of brain sucking bodies of knowledge.

Thats such a fucking sad life.

an obituary to the Iphone dream

2008-08-12T01:30:00.000-07:00

It is with great displeasure that I inform you that our friends' dream of reading daily news and blogs while commuting to work on his touch screen enabled slick Iphone, met with an unfortunate accident today. It happened around 1:20 pm while our friend was having a very bad meal with his two friends. Something was not right he felt but that the world would come to such an abrupt end, that he could not have imagined in his wildest dreams, which are indeed head over heels cats pajama's wild. On logging on to his computer at 1:25 pm and while going about friendfeed normally, our friend noticed a breathtaking link, calling itself “iPhone 3G Pricing Out”. During the short 4 seconds between which our our friend clicked it and the page was about to load, he felt more anxious than he felt while checking his IIT-JEE score. Millions of emotions crossed his mind, the top few being having a Vidya Balan wallpaper on his iphone and checking his emails (even blocked ones) while at work. Then the blow fell.

Like all bad things that happen to good people, it took a while before the news sank in. He first stood up, murmered a few expletives, lent out an internal cry that hummed out of his stomach and then sank back into his chair with a thud and closed his eyes. Everyone around him came to him asking him what had happened but he never opened his mouth. A senior collegue read the news on the screen and explained to others and asked others to leave him alone.

It is said that a dream destroyed is more painful than a dream unfulfilled. He would have lived with the fact that Iphone is not available in India for the next ten years in as good spirit as he did his flunking in school and college but the fact that it is available and not affordable, that he could not bear. You would understand that, he wasted quite a few words on the Iphone on his blog and when his mother looked at his paleontological phone and asked him to get a new one or she'd have to buy him one, he just said, "Im waiting for the Iphone Ma" ( he also said but you can buy me one anyways). Cutting as this story may sound, it is the truth and hopefully our dear brave friend will come over it. The fact that a human being could have such a strong attachment with an inanimate object, is a proof that human beings are indeed unique and people like our friend, differentiate us from the rest of God's creatures.

Apologies for having brought such a bad news indeed but it is at moments like these that a man needs his friends the most. Kindly attend Iphone dream’s formal cremation ceremony today on the 30-A bus route at 6:40 pm. Please be on time, as the bus gets filled with people awefully quickly.

One gone forty nine more to go

2008-07-15T21:16:00.000-07:00

I met a young inspiring leader a few days back. In fact saying I met would be exaggerating, let me put that again, I heard a young inspiring leader a few days back, sitting amongst fifty other inspiration seeking douche bags like myself. He said that we were lucky since probably by the time we are forty, the life expectancy would cross a hundred years, so retiring at the age of sixty would be total BS (he used another phrase, escapes me). We will probably retire after a career of 50 years at 75 odd years of age! Hmm !? well sounded pretty convincing until the news of a co-worker who died of heart attack at the age of thirty five, arrived. Things like this happen I think. Believing, I will have a career of fifty years is still reasonable I think. Anyways, I completed my first year of professional life a few days back. I am too sleepy to recall the exact date, besides you couldn't care less. It was fun for some, hard for some, total waste for some. For me it was one big shock.

I always heard urban legends of people acting like total zombies. Waking up, shitting, getting ready, going to office, shitting metaphorically, having lunch, pretending being awake until a phone calls wakes for real, bullshitting, coming back home with packed food, eating it while hypnotized by the TV, sleeping to the sweet sound of honks on the road outside. The most exciting part of the day being unpacking the packed food.

Well.

Here it is, it happens. It is a true. People are living their life like that, believe it or not they are. So that monkey man might also be real you know.

Now wait a second, just so you know I am not talking about myself. I am still the same. Almost so. Sleeping late is still on, waking up has improved a lot though. Appetite has suffered multiple fractures but the palate still has the old shine. Watching at least a film per week. Reading is gaining some momentum back and am becoming more presentable (in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word), all thanks to the frickin formal wardrobe. Shirts sucks but people like it. Though the downside is I have gained couple of kilos more (may be a couple more), so take that presentable thing a little down. Been doing some traveling also, seen some really cool places.

Friends are doing great all around. Some are doing fabulously, going around the world managing businesses. One has started boozing. Some are getting ahead in life and learning important lessons and all. One even lost a girl friend. So its all cool. Though we talk once in a while but we are fairly in touch with each other.

Oh and did tell you I quit swearing? For the benefit of those who missed it, let me say that again, I quit swearing. Crap ! I have started using these totally fd up phrases like 'for the benefit of those that missed' or 'lets make this conversation interactive' or 'lets keep the loop small and try to up the engagement with full force'. Total redundant business BS.

I have one worry though, days are passing way too fast. Two days passed since I started writing (shit I know man ! don't start that 'dude whats with your sense of humor' thing). Already 22 and a half now. No sign of that maturity thing my dad talks about. Still the same, sophomore and I am not entirely sure I intend to change that soon.

Why I like Friendfeed

2008-06-18T22:47:00.000-07:00

The same reason I love twitter. It helps me connect with some dumb, crazy, interesting, boring and at the same time brilliant people, I would have never known and met and talked to otherwise. When I started with blogging in May 2005, apart from becoming a new medium for me to express myself, it opened me to a completely new source of information. At that time I remember I referred to four newspapers everyday and three magazines a week. I passed hours in the library but my hunger for the printed word was still not satisfied. I finally found the source of all the information I would ever need and some information that I would have never known I need. If you look at it that way, Blogging gives people a mouth but it is applications like twitter and friendfeed, that give the readers the ears. Now I start my day with my Google reader and friendfeed. Newspapers next and I have almost stopped reading magazines.

Saying that Blogging is becoming an extremely strong and influential medium for public opinion would be an understatement but I cannot help say that the blogosphere suffers from the same problems that any other conventional source of information does. Its becoming way too centralized, something that it totally opposite to what the web is evolving towards. If blogging too makes a bunch of folks stronger then there is this medium loses all its credibility that comes with the long tail. Blogging is supposed to be a way to utilize long tail content but almost every other reader who gets hooked onto blogging, eventually ends up consuming the same top forty content sources and this defeats the whole purpose of blogging altogether. What people must realize is that theres so many interesting people in the world writing such frickin good stuff that it'll take several lifetimes for a person reading 24X7 to complete even a small percent of it.

Thats why I love friendfeed and more specifically the public time line of friendfeed. It has connected me to so many people who produce such super cool stuff on twitter, pounce, youtube, flickr and blogger. I think giving people a power of expression was the first step, the next step is to help people discover other people's content.

Why Bums rule

2008-06-01T10:27:00.001-07:00

Bums are people who are more worried about the price of a mango milk shake than gas or petrol. Future planning for them means planning for what they will have for dinner. Relationships are interest-less sources of money. Religion implies taking bath on a Sunday and retrospection, they would guess, is an inspection of a roto something. They are very strange people and if you ask an average person with brain and self respect, what they think of a bum, they would even go far and say that bums are the unwanted scum of this country's unproductive consumers. Pretty much right Id say. The good thing about being a bum though, is that you can always say 'that's like your opinion sir' and forget about it.

The biggest perk that comes along with being a bum, is that it comes with no responsibilities. Bums are odd entries into a family. I am yet to see a family of bums, but every family has one or two. These are the one or two people that everyone in the family loves. Yes I mean everyone, even that witch aunt or that perv uncle. What they do for a living is not often quoted as examples of successful people in the family but everyone loves them and that's the second best perk of being a bum.

Bums are not really into sports, in fact they are not really into anything that much, but especially not into sports. Watching, may be, but definitely not into it, for being in sports would imply a commitment of some time that they would rather spend doing nothing, which in itself is not exactly a small thing to do. Nothing here, does not imply nothing, its just that these are those sort of things that ordinary people would call 'nothing'. Things like cutting nails, surfing television channels or lying on bed thinking about how big those toes are and whether telekinesis can be mastered by practice.

Bums specialize in making conversations, actually if you look at it that way, they are extremely sociable people. Sometimes so much so that even liked by a few. I think they are very good listeners. This could be attributed to the fact they are always ready to learn from new people, since they know so little themselves. But on the whole, not many people like bums, perhaps because they are not the emotional types. Most of their decisions are cold mathematical solutions to human problems. Solutions that have no scholastic value whatsoever.

That's why when one day Dude Lebowski came in my dream and asked me whether I was the Dude, I said yes. I am a bum and bums rule.

The SmartTechie Startup City

2008-05-07T10:29:00.001-07:00

The SmartTechie is organizing Startup City on Saturday May 24, 2008 at Nimhans Convention Center in Bangalore. This is a technology showcase event wherein cool startups demo the products they are building. There will be over 60 startup companies. So if you're working on your startup or want to work for a startup or jump into the startup world or if you just want to hang out with some geeks on a fine Saturday, you should definitely be there. This is what all you can do there,

- Watch live product demonstrations

- Get a peek into cutting edge technologies

- Lay hands on the best-of-breed solutions

- Meet young, energetic, passionate geeks

- Experience the culture of innovation

- Learn new technologies

Some of the speakers include Ajit Balakrishnan, founder & CEO, Rediff.com, Sharad Sharma, CEO, Yahoo! India, Paul Murphy, Director of Innovation, Microsoft India, Suresh Vedula, Head - Business Mobility, Nokia India, Rajendra Mishra, Change India Movement, Ashish Gupta, Managing Director, Helion Ventures.

You can register for the event (free of course) at http://www.thesmarttechie.com/startupcity

Technorati Tags: bangalore events,startup city

220 bucks for a film

2008-05-05T10:45:00.001-07:00

There was a time, not long back, we just waited for someone to utter the word 'film' and we took off. We just took off, took an autorickshaw to the nearest multiplex to watch a film without second thoughts. Which one you ask? who cared ! It was more about spending two hours in a comfortable reclining chair, in a nicely air cooled theater over soda and popcorn. The film was a side order. A reasonable amount of money was required for the whole affair and even if the film starred the likes of Lara Dutta, Salman Khan, John Abraham or Bipasha Basu, the outing was well worth the money. This is Ahmedabad, a few months back.

Now going to watch a film is a conscious, well thought out decision, driven by a basic understanding of the law of diminishing marginal utility, the Engels law, fuel charges and increasing price of aspirin. After having exhausted options like 'chai', 'window shopping in the mall' , 'big bazaar food court', 'rent a DVD', someone whose shares are doing well, once in a while, utters, 'film'? He/She is greeted with burning faces like urchins starving for days just saw alu parathas on the roadside they cannot afford. Then, bedlam breaks down. Reviews, phone calls inquiring experiences of distant relatives, checking out offers on bookmyshow and exploring various credit card offerings, all are undertaken to understand the risks of the investment. To add insult to the forthcoming injury, the multiplexes here are far below quality so the film watching experience is not even a part of the deal. The only object one pays for, is the film. So unless its a Quentin Tarentino directed Aamir Khan, Vidya Balan starrer written by Scorcece with Morgan Freeman as the narrator, one has to practice due diligence before getting oneself involved. To add to the misery, Bollywood has surpassed its previous best of releasing one garbage film every week of 2006 to 2 garbage films every week this year.

The film along with the snack and transportation costs about 500 bucks which for most people is a lot of money and it gives plenty of reasons for one to lead to the temptation of buying a 50 Rs DVD that has 4 films of reasonable good quality and watching it on their laptops running pirated Windows XP with cheap pizzas and cokes in the comfort of their homes with countless friends. The 40 odd Rs Moser Baer Cds and DVDs are also a good substitute and go easy on ones conscience as well, much better and safer than going to a multiplex with the impossible hope.

Bangalore Twitter Meet

2008-04-20T12:04:00.001-07:00

I don't know about other twitter meets but this one was exactly in the spirit of twitter. Short. Everybody had very little to say. Most had nothing to say. I mostly browsed and checked my mails on whatever little connectivity I could get. We had this meet as a part of barcamp bangalore 6. We circulated a nice chart and wrote our 'twitter handles' (someone called our twitter ids 'handles', everybody kept using the same term). We spent a few minutes talking about each others' 'handles'. The official bcb6 twitter account has all these ids written. We started discussing about other twitter meets and what people did there (much to our disappointment nobody knew exactly). We also spent a minute or two on how one guy wanted to sell his twitter account. Some nerds started talking about twitter API and stuff which was like Greek to most others. People also shouted some interesting questions like what do you use twitter for but it was too interesting to hold anyone's attention. We also discussed IPL, Formula 1, a major software firm and how some folks get lost finding Church Street standing on MG Road. I am sure if we had stayed for a few more minutes, we would have also discussed if Sachin will play the opening game, has Tulsi Veerani put on some weight, how to make banana vodka and other such related topics.

We also pulled in a couple of folks who did not know twitter and my friend Jerry took the initiative of explaining to them, what it was. I wanted to write an email to twitter management telling them about this (and why they should get people like Jerry eliminated) because now I can bet Sanath Jayasuriya's forearm they will never join twitter.

Someone also suggested that we introduce ourselves in 140 characters or less but again it was too interesting to hold anyone's attention so we moved on to other stuff. But one thing came out of the meet, we all saw each other and realized how interesting we all were really ;) (no pun intended).

Back to twitter, that is much better you know.

Technorati Tags: barcampbangalore6,barcampbangalore,twitter

Live from Barcamp Bangalore

2008-04-18T22:42:00.001-07:00

Its begun, a little late but started and in good spirit too. Two of the banners that we (Arvind, Amit Singh, Abhishek, myself and some others who I don't know as yet) put up.

I am not receiving any SMS updates from BCB6 which was powered by MyDuniya. The BCB6 mugshots are up on Flickr

[6:15 pm] On my way out. Not sure If Ill be here tomorrow, got loads of stuff to do tomorrow. I missed that session on girl child education. I was an utter fool not to attend it and while away my time instead. Pissed off with myself.

[5:23 pm] Sitting at the Bangalore twitter meetup which is turning out to be one helluva boring affair. Just realized many of the interesting people I follow on twitter are not really all that interesting ;)

[4:23 pm] Sitting at the same place, now getting an introduction to NGO Post by Rajesh and Parul. My first impression is that its a digg like app focused on NGO's and for a change its not a local app. Interesting. Also has a few basic networking features.

[3:35 pm] Lalit Mangal and Sumit Jain, talking about Social Networks 2.0 and going to give a demo on CommonFloor.com. Lalit talked about networks specific to vertical which was more about social objects. Now Sumit is giving a demo of their app. The revenue model is a premium service based model and looks quite promising imho. Tonnes and tonnes of features are also available for people to network according to their social objects. All in all an exciting and very scalable product.

[2:31 pm] Attending a demo of a product called LifeInlines.com. The presentation looks rather rugged and is one of the best examples of worst color schemes. Its an app wherein "you build an archive of your life's moments". It has networking features but is more like a diary. Not bad actually but I am sure I wont use it. People asked them a lot of questions. I wonder why don't people come to barcamps with ideas, instead of demos. Would help them so much more to identify their USP's and get an idea whether people really want their product or not.

[2:14 pm] after a rather long break, which included my lunch (terrific dal). I am back live. Blogging from L 22, the startup and demo place for BCB6. The plan is to see a few demos and attend the twitter meet that aDeSe is moderating at 5. Lets see how it goes. Ill also probably hang out at the social networking 2.0 . Also uploading some pics Amit took to flickr.

[12:11 pm] Session on search engines at L12. Starting to generate a lot of interest. Talking about basics of search engines, algorithms, indexing and spiders.

[11:22 am] : 100rabh introducing blogathon. Starting tomorrow, one topic will be introduced everyday and people will blog about it. Sanjukta talking about why do a blogathon. She says Blogathon is trying to archive distributed opinions given by people. There will be prizes (not material, just badges) and special prizes for senior bloggers. Sanjukta getting a lot of questions. Common doubt, irrespective of the topics everyday.

[11:00 am] : Now sitting in L12, waiting for the introduction of the much awaited Blogathon. Sanjukta, Jerry, 100rabh are here. Waiting for the dude who forgets people all too quickly - Mohan.

Technorati Tags: barcampbangalore6,barcampbangalore

India's Ycombinator - iAccelerator

2008-04-13T06:12:00.000-07:00

IIMA's incubation cell CIIE recently launched their startup summer school, the iAccelarator. iAccelerator is a short duration (3 months to be precise) incubation program for the IT Professionals and Students from across the country. IIM is by far the most prestigious business school in the country and I know what most hackers are thinking - 'what has that got to do with hacking'. Well here's the thing. You will get an opportunity to work on your idea for 3 months and you will get a stipend of 8K a month. I have studied in Gandhinagar and I know Ahmedabad inside out. Its a brilliant place for you to startup, in fact my startup is also based in Gandhinagar, incubated in my engineering school. If I had still been an undergrad now, you could bet your ass, I was going to apply. It offers everything you need, an office space, legal advise, a lot of time and a little money to keep you going. If you're looking for an internship then also its a good place to work in a real startup environment.

Its built on the lines of Ycombinator which was started by Paul Graham and I like almost everything they say about themselves on their site.

..Our aim is to build a few good products out of India. We think its a noble cause and makes sense to customize the YC model to suit the Indian requirements. ) The iAccelerator would comprise of intensive monitoring of product development, mentoring by VC, business and technology experts..

and

We don't want you to go to your accommodation before 12 midnight - so we provide you mattresses near your workspace for resting. There's anyways a security guard outside your work-area - so you don't get to leave the office before 12 midnight and you don't get to sleep in the office. Attendance happens at 9:30 am every morning. Sundays are off if you have met your weekly goals!

Gives one an impression that they know what they are talking about. You'll also get a sleeping bag in your office, what more do you want !

If all of this excites you, download the application form from the website and send it to iaccelerator@iimahd.ernet.in. Queries can be directed to Deepika at deepikan@iimahd.ernet.in or to Aditi at aditigupta@iimahd.ernet.in.

Feed Problem with Wordpress

2008-04-12T13:00:00.001-07:00

Wordpress has one of the most active community of users in the open source world. There are hundreds of millions of blogs parked on wordpress.com and millions of people around the world using wordpress on their hosted blogs. Solutions to almost any problem you come across would be present in the forums, but there are still a select few which bug a php developer. I have managed 4 wordpress hosted blogs since June 2006, and in one case I could never get the feed to work. The <your domain>/feed/rss which is the same as <yourdomain>/wp-rss.php always generated an incorrect rss feed. So if you use this address for people to subscribe to your feed, it will not work. The problem is that wp-rss.php adds an extra line before the start of your feed, which invalidates it. This problem has been discussed on the forum but no solution could be found. In fact the problem seems to be from the hosting providers end, so even if you reinstall your wordpress or set up a new wordpress on a subdomain, most likely that your feed for the new wordpress installations will also not work.

Banged my head over it a lot but no luck yet. One way to solve the problem is to download your incorrect feed file (use IE, it will display an incorrect xml feed, you can use 'save as' then) and remove the blank line(s) at the beginning of the <xml ... > and then upload it on to your server as rss.xml and provide the link to this file as your feed. manual and a little trouble, but works and takes about thirty seconds everyday.

However google reader will always be able to read your feed since it will ignore the blank line(s) at the beginning of the file. Talk about gracefully written feed readers ! no other feed reader will validate it.

Technorati Tags: wordpress,hacking,feed,hosting