Neha Narula

Records

2012-01-09T17:05:00.005-05:00

I got a turntable for Christmas! I don't know much about vinyl but I'm excited to explore. So far I've just been buying used records from record stores and craigslist. I have to admit, I don't completely understand the appeal -- I know a lot of music snobs will say that it sounds better, but I find that hard to believe given the quality of my DAC and lossless digital files. Is it just nostalgia? Novelty? Mastering? Maybe the art and concreteness of being able to hold your music.

Any advice on where to buy records and what to get would be greatly appreciated! I think it would be fun to build out a jazz collection on vinyl.

2012 Predictions

2012-01-03T17:44:00.000-05:00

Cause, why not?

Here are some ruminations on what might happen this year.

Silicon Valley continues to be surprised the other half of the population exists.

More and more "surprising" success stories (like that of Pinterest or Fab.com) will surface. There's so much room for growth in areas involving fashion and lifestyle design. The shopping process for clothes, makeup, personal care products, shoes, jewelry, and home decor is still so flawed. People who are interested in those areas currently don't have the buying experience that someone who wants, say, a camera would have, and the thought process of the consumer when purchasing those items is usually more irrational -- a random post on a small blog or a picture in a magazine can lead to desire and products selling out.

The explosion of curation and information management applications.

Things are getting crazy. It's too easy to constantly spend time dipping into the firehose of information coming from friends, email, facebook, blogs, twitter, and other sources online. We're already seeing the growing popularity of private information management tools like Evernote and Instapaper, and what will come next are even more sophisticated tools to enable a user to quickly skim through a deluge of information, saving the bits and pieces that seem relevant, and then providing contextual results on whatever device when it's relevant.

And editors and curators will become even more important. We'll start to place a growing proportion of trust in the most popular voices, simply because there's too much to deal with and we need help filtering.

Local businesses will wise up.

Local businesses will start spending smarter to advertise online. The good businesses will only offer deals when it makes sense to them -- during down times or to get rid of surplus inventory. Only low quality businesses that have trouble getting customers will continue to offer blanket deals like we see now. We will also see a lot more dynamic pricing.

Several major security breaches.

In terms of security, things are going to get worse before they get better. Web application security is still full of holes. I predict more major companies will experience data loss, and more rogue groups will cause trouble -- and I don't just mean groups like Anonymous defacing company websites, I mean malicious hackers (who might be nationally supported) disrupting food supply chains, utilities, or other major services that aren't properly protected.

Fall!

2011-09-10T13:52:00.000-04:00

It's a new school year! Remember the first day of school? Nothing beats that feeling of new notebooks and overwhelmed freshmen. It's times like this that I love the east coast, and Cambridge in particular. This is the center of the world for education and you can feel everyone getting ready for the new semester. In the past I've limited the amount of non-research things I did, but I decided this semester I would take classes in anything I found interesting, regardless of how it connects to my work. So far I've tried out six classes (about five too many):

6.893, Philosophy and Theoretical Computer Science, taught by Scott Aaronson. I am *really* excited about this class! I tried taking philosophy classes in undergrad and got really turned off, but I like the idea of approaching it from TCS. In theory we rarely get to ask what this stuff really *means* and what its implications are to what can be done or known in the world, and I like the idea of indulging in that. It's 3 hours a week of interesting reading and discussion, and it looks like Scott is going to record lectures, so you can listen in!

9.29, Introduction to Computational Neuroscience and 6.804 Computational Cognitive Science, taught by Michale Fee and Josh Tenenbaum, respectively. People who study brains and AI here at MIT are starting to ask the big questions again -- there's a new Intelligence Initiative, bringing together people from neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, economics, and biology to get at how intelligence works. So interesting! My background in physics and statistics is pretty terrible, so I don't think I'm going to take these classes for credit, though it's nice to learn a new vocabulary and see how other fields operate.

9.S915, What is Intelligence? Are you seeing a theme here? This course meets once a week and does a huge survey over all the areas mentioned above -- I'm skeptical about how valuable it will be, in the first class we spent two hours going over statistical learning theory really, really fast. I still have no idea how to make a good learning algorithm.

6.853, Topics in Algorithmic Game Theory, taught by Costis. I miss math soooo much, and I find game theory pretty fascinating -- in fact I wrote my NSF planned research essay on game theory, but then proceeded to do something completely different. I'd like to think about applying game theory to security! There's a pretty cool systems security class being taught this semester too, but I think I might have picked up a lot of what's being taught in my past research.

After a long summer of trying to do one thing and not being very effective, I'm really excited to take classes, go to colloquia, and in general try lots of new things this semester. It's funny how trying to force one project can be demotivating, devolving into a cycle of trying to work harder/getting less done. One of my goals this year is to learn to work in a very minimal, effective way. Last summer I remember being so sad when the days started getting colder, but this year I can't wait for fall. It's seriously the best season ever (and we need something to brag about weather-wise on the east coast):

trees exploding in color and crunchy leaves everywhere
apple picking, apple pies, apple cider, and cinnamon in everything
cozy sweaters and corduroy
crisp mornings where you can see the steam on your coffee
scarves
the feeling of starting over you get with the new school year

It's funny, I'm actually starting to feel like I'm in the right place. I've spent three years here unclear on what I was doing and worrying that I was missing the boat on other things -- being able to program and create products is a huge privilege and I worried I was wasting it. I believe technology (in particular software and the internet) is the fastest, most powerful source of transformation we can harness, but the thought of spending my time on a local-mobile-game-coupon thing never seemed inspiring.

So far I feel good about what I'm doing this semester. It feels nice.

Edit:

cider doughnuts
boots
new coats
PUMPKINS (in all forms: pumpkin beer, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin chai)

MemSQL

2011-07-12T12:32:00.000-04:00

MemSQL Raises $2.1 Million, from Techcrunch: http://t.co/AlaVV0b

But just what is it about this young startup that has investors fired up? MemSQL is a scalable in-memory database that, according to co-founder and CEO Eric Frenkiel, is up to 30-times faster than relational databases on disk.

I'm a bit confused about this company -- it's nice to see people focusing on solving the scalability issue for those who choose to stick with SQL, but getting a 30x performance over disk-based solutions with an in-memory solution is laughable. Was something lost in the interview?

TV Box Update

2011-01-06T20:34:00.001-05:00

I was trying to decide if I should get a set top box or make my own home theater PC. Here's the list of things I want to do, in decreasing priority order:

browse and stream videos and music I've downloaded onto a computer on my TV
browse and stream videos from a networked file share on my TV
watch Netflix Instant and Hulu
watch the occasional youtube video
use a remote-like interface to do this, not a keyboard and mouse

I don't care about TV capture or DVR capabilities, and I don't really want to browse the internet much on my TV. I have been evaluating all the options out there but not paying a lot of attention to little technical details like what inputs/outputs are available or how much processing power a box has. Mostly just features.

I settled on getting a dedicated HTPC and running Boxee, and like an idiot, I tried to save money doing it. I am going to describe my experience so you can avoid my pain.

The pros of a set top box, like Roku, Boxee, Popcorn Hour, WDTV, or Google TV are that they're fairly easy to set up, and they do what they're supposed to do pretty well. If you just want to watch Netflix Instant on your TV instead of your laptop, I'd go with Roku. If you are already a gamer, then the PS3 and Xbox come with a lot of nice features as well.

The biggest limitation is flexibility. The streamers (like Roku) tout a variety of "apps" which basically means arcane forms of web content you probably don't want to waste your time on. The major ones people care about are Netflix Instant, Hulu, and Amazon VOD. These get you pretty far, but don't get you everything. The streamers are not designed to play content off your local network (aka files you've ripped or bittorrented), and though some of them have hacked in ways to do so, I don't want to deal with that. There are issues with codecs and installing software on your computer which contains the content which sound annoying. Things like WDTV only play content off local drives, and do it well, but do nothing to solve the problem of moving internet-TV to your TV.

Unfortunately, I don't know what GoogleTV really does. The features page doesn't say anything about local content.

Apple TV, obviously, locks you into Apple's world, and it's underpowered. You can theoretically play any local content, but only if you go through the hassle of converting it (using something like Handbrake). If you mostly live in Apple's world, this is absolutely the choice I'd recommend. It's $99, Youtube and Netflix Instant work. If you use iPhones and iPads there will be nice integration. And who knows, maybe Apple will reach an agreement with Hulu in the future, since there is an app for Hulu Plus in the app store. Don't hold your breath on Amazon VOD, but of course you have the iTunes store.

The Boxee box sounds like the closest thing to what I'd want to use, but based on the CrunchGear and Engadget reviews, it's still rough around the edges, and I'd have to have faith that they'd iron out the issues. Also, I couldn't justify buying the box when I could get an actual fully powered machine which can do anything for a similar price and just run Boxee on that (oh, how naive I was). In addition, I worry about Boxee cutting off content. They have to reach agreements with Netflix and Hulu in order to show that content in their software, and because they control the box, I'm subject to that. With my own system, I can just run a web browser and do it outside of the media software. Agreements could be reached or cancelled on a whim. They're unreliable.

There are downsides to getting an HTPC, and interestingly enough many of them are psychological. There's a lot of choices to be made, and just having options causes me stress. I have to evaluate all the specs and decide which features I want. I have to evaluate, buy, and connect my own remote. There's a lot of temptation to buy a TV tuner card and an antenna, set up Mythbuntu or other DVR software, and cut out my cable provider entirely, even though this is something I'm pretty sure would cause me a lot of headaches. Probably the cheapest way to get an HTPC is to buy the parts and assemble it yourself, which gives a combinatorial explosion of choices.

So, I went the route that involved purchasing the least amount of stuff. I found an abandoned case and parts around the lab, put them together, and installed Ubuntu, Boxee, Hulu Desktop, and Rhythmbox. I haven't done the work to see if I can make Netflix Instant work (it might with Wine or Moonlight). Boxee has this really cool feature where you can hook up twitter and facebook accounts, and it shows you a feed of all the videos your friends are sharing on those networks. I really really like this, because usually when I'm browsing twitter or fb I'm on my phone or I don't feel like watching videos, so I miss a lot of content. It also has a bookmarklet you can use in your browser to bookmark videos which get queued up in Boxee for when you're back in front of it later.

Lifehacker has great guides on how to set up an HTPC using hardware that costs < $250, with either Boxee or XBMC. Lifehacker also has some guides on automatically getting shows (for XBMC, but it should work for Boxee) for what isn't available through the usual Boxee interface.

Ok, so I have managed to successfully create a box without spending any money. Instead I spent like a month of my time. Go warped Indian value system.

This might save someone pain -- Google keywords here -- nvidia boxee can't play local video choppy video fullscreen full screen hulu flash ubuntu maverick osx remote desktop. End keywords.

First off, I had an on-board video card. Boxee was slow. Really slow. And I couldn't really watch videos full screen. Hulu desktop and watching stuff in Chrome, however, was fine. I have concluded that Boxee uses a shit ton of CPU for its fancy application graphics.

Also, flash was warped. I downloaded Flash Square 10.2 (64bit) and copied that over to the appropriate Boxee directory. That fixed flash, and I could watch Comedy Central. I still can't watch ABC Family (what? leave me alone. there are some good shows) but Fancast works too, and now even Hulu if you follow these instructions to fake your user agent. That keeps you in Boxee's world, but Hulu Desktop is quite nice too. NBC seems ok but freezes a lot.

I also installed a new video card. That involved adding a whole bunch of drivers, as well --

sudo apt-cache search nvidia

and see what's what. I think I added jockey-gtk and nvidia-current

There were a bunch of tricky things where I couldn't play local .avi files unless I turned off weird things like Media->Advanced->Enable hardware assisted decoding when possible and set Render Method to Software. Then I installed libvdpau1, and reverted those settings. search for that too.

You have to restart to let the drivers take over hardware support, and let nvidia write an xorg.conf file. Once I did that, Boxee got *much* snappier, probably because there was CPU left over for it to waste rendering its pretty buttons.

What is really nice is playing all my music through this server, and by extension, through my fancy speakers. Boxee has a few android apps for a remote, which I haven't used too much, but I found that someone wrote a server for Rhythmbox so that you can use the android banshee remote app. It is annoying, however, because you have to manually sync a db file of your music metadata to your phone in order to do more than play, pause, next, previous. Anyway I don't even know why I'm using Rhythmbox. I need a decent music app for Ubuntu.

In Ubuntu, I enabled remote desktop and turned off the password to login. I use ChickenVNC on my mac laptop to VNC into display :0 and control the mouse and keyboard. All of this took a lot of futzing, and I don't even remember all the details. But now I actually feel comfortable killing my Comcast cable.

updates

2010-10-21T15:49:00.000-04:00

I have been horribly delinquent on this blog but in order to push some of the other posts down I am doing this random list of thoughts:

MySQL is way faster when you take out the MySQL part. And you can use it both ways. So all you NoSQL people let it go.
I completed my master's thesis at the beginning of September (a system called Dixie), and submitted a paper to Eurosys which probably won't get in, but that's ok!
Despite that, I am not quitting grad school, so everyone stop asking me when I'm leaving.
I have seen the following artists recently: Sinden, Rusko, Crystal Castles, Holy Fuck (twice), Caribou, the Drums, Sleigh Bells, LCD Soundsystem (twice), Four Tet (twice), Miike Snow, El Ten Eleven, !!!, Die Antwoord, Deadmau5, and Connector (friends' band).
After months of auditioning, I bought a pair of kickass new speakers, a new amplifier and a DAC which probably deserves its own post. I am officially an audiophile. My soundsystem is amazing and I love it.
I just got back from a week long trip to SF and it was fantastic. I stayed with Niniane which was awesome (slumber party!) and realized that I could live there again. There are so many things I love and hate about San Francisco. Hard decisions in my future!
I'm going to India for three weeks in November. New Delhi for most of the time, Goa, and then either Rajasthan or Mumbai. Advice on SIM cards and internet connectivity would be greatly appreciated!
I am trying to figure out what new computers to buy. I want a very lightweight laptop, and am thinking one of the new Macbook Airs pending reviews. But then I also want some kind of home server/media center, and I'm not sure if I should buy one of those little boxes or get a massively powerful linux server or what.

finally learning how to cook indian food

2010-05-01T14:49:00.002-04:00

So I made one of my favorites, baingan bharta. Or as I like to call it, bangin' berta.

Onions, garlic, jalapeno, and tomatoes. The base for any indian sabji.

roasted eggplant. I baked it in the toaster oven for 45 minutes at 450 degrees. I think it could've gone a little longer.

the mush

done! By the way, this is the first time i have EVER COOKED INDIAN FOOD by myself. I only had to call my parents from the grocery store and beforehand to get the recipe :). Not bad.

Edit: Here's the requested recipe.

1. Bake 1 large or 2 medium sized eggplants in the oven at 450 for 45 minutes to an hour. Poke holes in them first to vent, and line the tray with aluminum foil because they will leak a lot. My dad wanted me to roast them over an open stove flame for 30 minutes but I used the toaster oven which was way easier. When it's done remove the skin and mush/chop it all up.

2. Chop up 2 onions (I did 1.5), 2 tomatoes, 3 cloves of garlic, and 1 jalapeno pepper

3. Add a few tablespoons of oil to a pot, brown the onions. At the halfway point add the garlic and continue browning.

4. Add the tomatoes and jalapeno, stir and cook for a few minutes

5. Add (this is really rough) salt to taste (half a teaspoon?), half a teaspoon of tumeric, and however much red pepper you want

6. Add the eggplant. Cook for a little while longer, stirring frequently. Add some garam masala at the end and garnish with cilantro if you have it. Done! Serve with naan, roti, pitas, or rice.

fat robot

2010-01-19T21:56:00.001-05:00

i am going to rename this blog "crazy shit my family says"

Megan: my friend has an android next to their name

ODES THAT MEAN THEY ARE GCHATTING FROM THE NEXUS

me: or an android like yours

Megan: DO I GET AN ANDROID

WHEN I AM GHATTING FROM THERE

9:47 PM me: yes

Megan: OMG

OMG

me: oh dear.

Megan: I DO

me: well try it now

Megan: why didn't you tell me

i signed in

but i'm also online on my comp

which does it choose

HAVE YOU SEEN AN ANDROID NEXT TO ME

me: sign off your comp

no.

9:48 PM Megan: it won't sign me in

for some reason

something is wrong :(

me: well fix it.

Megan: omg i want an android

next to my name

he is so CUTE

do you see any

me: no.

9:49 PM oh, any?

yes

Megan: oh

me: i see 2

currently.

Megan: there is an option to show mobile indicator to friends

perhaps that is it

9:51 PM me: well?

did you do it?

Megan: no

phone is unhappy

me: no android for you.

there is an android on the back of my nexus

waving a flag

Megan: i know

i have one too

he is fat

me: with a FLAG?

Megan: ok now i'm on

NOW I"M ON

WHAT DOES IT SAY

me: and a qcode

you are a fat robot.

9:52 PM Megan: I AM

I AM

!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!

AM I REALLY

don't lie

me: yes.

Megan: sawweeeeeeeeeeeet

me: how do i take a screen shot on a mac?

Megan: i dunno

oh man

this is awesome

how come i'm not a fat robot on my screen

kind of disturbed

2010-01-07T15:17:00.001-05:00

My dad:

my car
2 messages

Neha Narula

Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 2:55 PM

To: anarulamd

is on its way!!!

also, i lost my MIT id a few weeks ago and had to get another one, and i just found the old one. do you want it?

neha

arun narula

Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 2:58 PM

To: Neha Narula

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[Quoted text hidden]

--
Arun Narula

three words to describe 2009: an analysis

2009-12-28T17:41:00.005-05:00

I was looking at Richard Wiseman's* blog, and noticed these two posts where he asked male and female commenters to post three words that describe 2009 for them. I'm sure he's going to do some kind of analysis on it eventually, but because I am supposed to be writing a paper, I couldn't resist downloading the posts and checking out the differences. I haven't run my grep-awk-uniq-count magic on it yet, but it's interesting that right off the bat the women-post mentions "stress" 26 times while the man-post mentions it 7 times.

Men's post: If you are male, read this!

Women's post: If you are female, read this!

*Note: It is not really clear to me who this guy is.

Edit: I calculated word frequencies. I made a half-assed attempt to get rid of non-applicable text in the page. This is probably inaccurate but gives a general gist.

Women:

15 love
13 stressful
11 sad
11 hope
11 fun
10 stress
10 new
10 busy
9 change
8 growth
8 frustrating
8 friends
7 challenging
6 work
6 sex
6 life
6 fast
6 family

Men:

31 change

18 love

15 hope

11 work

11 fun

8 happy

7 science

6 unemployed

6 stress

6 friends

6 death

5 travel

5 success

5 struggle

5 obama

5 climate

5 busy

4 words

4 twitter

Edit 2: I should so be working instead of mucking around with this.

Edit 3: Comments were broken on my blog? Thanks niniane for telling me! Should be all fixed. Comment away.

Edit 4: Dude. At least I called tolower() in my half-assed attempt to clean things up. The original author's generated word clouds.

procrastination

2009-12-17T22:54:00.000-05:00

I am supposed to be working on my master's thesis proposal. So of course instead, I am reading twitter (among other completely wasteful things), and in addition to seeing rumors that Google might buy Yelp, I saw that Groupon was valued at 250 million dollars.

Um, holy crap. This company is a year old! And apparently they are making money hand over fist! This is brilliant in so many ways. First, it plays off people's irrational desire to buy something just because it's a deal. Then, it works on our instinct to grab something because it's expiring soon. Finally, it takes advantage of our laziness, because what percentage of people actually go redeem the thing they pre-bought? And does Groupon get to keep that money if they don't go redeem the coupon? Cause I have a page sitting on my desk that's supposed to get me a year long pass to the Brattle ($30 for a $104 value!) which has been sitting here for over a month. And will definitely be sitting here for at least another 3 weeks. If I were them I would play like the airplanes and oversell a deal a little in anticipation that some people will never go redeem it.

Brilliant.

music i've been listening to over and over

2009-12-03T14:55:00.003-05:00

This Matt and Kim song

This Fischerspooner song

It is really weirdly 67 degrees in Cambridge right now. 2 days ago it was in the 30s.

Edit: Embedded objects disappeared? Replaced with Grooveshark links.

organizing background research

2009-11-18T10:28:00.001-05:00

I've been fuddling around with Zotero and a basic .bib file, but I think I found something more awesome: Mendeley. I found it looking for a PDF annotator, and it looks fantastic! I'll update later after I've used it a while. It even syncs with Zotero and can watch a folder for new PDFs.

the importance of urban design

2009-10-26T17:49:00.005-04:00

Today I was walking down Vassar St. and Mass Ave and I was struck for the zillionth time how ugly the MIT campus is. My parents were visiting this past weekend, and they thought MIT was very impressive, but that Harvard was much more beautiful. Not only do many buildings have that this-was-trendy-in-the-70s architectural aesthetic going on (mine, of course, excluded), the campus is very badly laid out. I associate college campuses with cute cafes, a wide variety of cheap international food, hippie stores selling nag champa and tie-dye that couldn't survive anywhere else, and lots of culture. MIT has one crappy diner that no one goes to (maybe cause it closes at 4 PM) and a gay dance bar*. Seriously. That's it. These are the businesses in the center of campus. Oh, aside from the parking lot and Bank of America ATM.

I don't understand how this happened! Is this because they moved to Cambridge in 1916? It takes 93 years and counting to develop a proper urban landscape? We have over 10,000 students. 1,000 faculty. There are countless biotech firms in the area. Don't you think we could support a cafe closer than Central Square? Berkeley has Euclid and Telegraph (among others, I'm sure). Harvard has the entire square, even Dartmouth had a lot of great stuff in Hanover (I actually miss Dirt Cowboy Cafe and Rosey's was a great place to hide away).

I'm not really sure what to do about this, since I'm not about to get into the cafe business. But if you are, and you are thinking about opening something new, put it near MIT! I feel like a late-night source of caffeine would be totally packed. Better yet, a cafe that turns into a bar at night, European-style. Raze the BoA ATM. My last-ditch hope is that Clover ends up closer to campus. I think they are amazing and their truck is a really great addition to the area -- food that is healthy, organic, tasty, and fun.

* i have no issues with gay dance bars. I have a lot of issues with crappy diners serving boring food.

Crazy with Cuteness

2009-10-08T16:48:00.005-04:00

Something is wrong with me today.

Also, yesterday my mom and dad were fasting for Karva Chauth. Only the woman is supposed to fast, for the well being of her husband, but whatever. My dad was doing it out of solidarity. In the afternoon we had the following chat conversation:

dad: u have no concern for your starving parents!!!!!!!!!

3:58 PM me: what

of course i do

how are you

4:01 PM hello did you faint

how are you

4:05 PM dad: We just did puja and had cup of tea since 5am.No water,food till 8.30pm.

what time moon is visible?

me: i don't know

you'll have to go outside and look

4:08 PM dad: It is visible around 8.30pm.

4:11 PM me: http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Slideshows/_production/ss-091007-tea-cup-pigs/ss-091007-teacuppig-09.ss_full.jpg

4:13 PM dad: guinea pig?

me: piggy pig

long time no blog

2009-09-26T19:44:00.003-04:00

but this picture landed in my inbox from Unicon Investment Solutions.

Let's celebrate the victory of good over evil, with great joy and enthusiasm. Everybody now.

conversation about our father

2009-07-08T12:58:00.002-04:00

Megan: dad said "both of you were bff, and now again bff"

me: where did he learn that word.

Megan: i do not know

i was gonna ask YOU

me: we need to put parental controls on the tv

tweet tweet

2009-06-29T18:20:00.005-04:00

If you don't use twitter, you won't care about this post. FYI.

I wrote a little python commandline script to tell me followers I've gained and lost. The gained part twitter already implements (you can get emailed or just visit your follower page; new followers are at the top) but it doesn't give me a way of seeing who has stopped following me, and I got curious when I saw the numbers fluctuate a lot. I have been meaning to hook this up as a cron job to email me once a day; that way one could theoretically track if certain tweets are making people unsubscribe :) I need to install some mail server thing on my machine though.

This was a tiny little twitter-related project to poke at the API when i was sick, not something i did because i'm really crazy about who is following me (i realize you probably don't believe that). If anyone knows how to adjust the code so that I don't constantly run into the 100 requests/hour limit, please let me know. Oh, and I did not pay attention to performance, robustness, or portability when writing this so don't make fun of me.

If you want to use it, download the script, make a subfolder called "gold" and run

python tw.py gen neha

to generate a gold file of who is following neha, and

python tw.py diff neha

to see followers neha has gained/lost since the last time you ran it. After the initial gen you will not need to run it again unless you want to fastforward a lot.

http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~neha/tw.py

Update: Added error checking and it continues if a twitter id returned as a follower is bogus (which happens, interestingly enough)

harsh but true

2009-05-24T00:27:00.001-04:00

Wow.

People -- particularly if they're under 40 -- have news priorities other than those of the editors of The New York Times or producers of the "NBC Nightly News." A new tablet from Apple -- or last night's episode of "Gossip Girl" or the adventures of the hipster grifter -- is a bigger deal than the latest petty scandal in Albany. You think that's a damning indictment of modern society and a recipe for idiocracy? Fine. Start a nonprofit to cover all the local-government news you think a healthy society needs. But don't expect advertisers -- or commercially-minded publishers or readers, for that matter -- to share your interests.

- Nick Denton, interview on Advertising Age

comics hitting too close to reality

2009-04-27T00:50:00.003-04:00

compare the XKCD comic making fun of twitter and swine flu and the actual twitter search results page for swine flu.

ha!

SIM cards in Germany

2009-04-10T00:47:00.002-04:00

I am doing this out of the goodness of my heart. And also because I enjoy complaining about it but people have stopped listening to me.

So, you're going to Germany. Great! Oh but you're worried about not having a mobile phone? No problem! SIM cards are easy to purchase and you can probably google around and figure out how to unlock your phone. Unless you have Sprint or Verizon, in which case go hide under a rock until you feel ready to join the rest of the modern world on GSM. Do not just "use" your regular US phone abroad (it will probably work), unless 1) you are very rich and 2) looking at ridiculous bills doesn't give you a splitting headache. If you're fine with that, then go right ahead.

If you hate actually talking, then clearly a phone is not enough and you also need a data plan. I recommend blau.de. Setup is a little tricky though, as all instructions and messages and the entire website are in German.

You can purchase a blau.de SIM card at places that sell ePlus once you're in Germany, which is nice. It's about 20 euros, but that comes with 20 euros of credit. The shop keeper can set it up for you, but he will need an address in Germany for the form.

Once set up, you basically just need the first PIN to activate the SIM card and be able to make calls. You can turn off the need to enter it over and over in your phone. At the time of this post, blau.de had 1 GB of data in a month for 9.90 euros, a pretty good deal. I even used it to tether to my laptop and I didn't use anywhere near the whole GB in two weeks. You order it by calling 1155, and following the menus: press 8, press 1, press 2, and then (THIS IS IMPORTANT) pressing 1 again to confirm. Do not use data until you receive TWO text messages (the first will come immediately and say that you ordered it, the second will come within 2 hours and say that it's ready).

To enable data, set up a new APN. APN internet.eplus.de, username eplus password eplus. Especially if you are using the G1 (google phone), DO NOT DO THIS UNTIL YOU GET THE SECOND TEXT MESSAGE. Otherwise your stupid phone will churn through your credit eating data while it downloads a whole new android operating system. Sigh.

Notice that I haven't told you how to reload your credit. At the time of this posting, they wouldn't take credit cards with an American address. I managed to convince them to do it once but I still had to call customer service number (which costs like 0,30 euro per minute) every time I wanted to recharge, and my friend couldn't do it at all. If you have a credit card attached to a German address, you can do all of this through the website. Run it through google translate.

Good luck and have a great time in Germany!

hallo von deutschland

2009-03-25T19:22:00.002-04:00

Smaller pictures this time in an effort to save some of my limited 1 GB of bandwidth provided by blau.de! They have no English customer service and couldn't aufladen my guthaben (recharge my credit) over the web, but that's a whole other post.

In case you didn't know, I'm in Berlin! One of my favorite cities. I lived here for 3 months in 2001, and it's been cool to come back and see how things have changed in eight years. I still wish it were warmer.

A delicious way to start the day. Schokolade Croissant and a Kaffee at Cafe Impala.

Our neighborhood is fantastic! we rented an apartment near Nollendorfplatz, in Schöneberg. It's gorgeous and I never want to leave.

A bit of the Berlin wall at Checkpoint Charlie. The history of Berlin is absolutely fascinating; one of the things I love about this city is the confluence of old and new:

The Jewish Museum. An amazing piece of architecture by Daniel Liebeskind, and a must if you're visiting. I have never seen architecture so aptly represent pain and darkness:

The main hall at Hamburger Bahnhof, a contemporary art museum. It had a seriously amazing exhibit titled "Murder of Crows", which was a soundscape. 98 speakers and 30 minutes. It was incredible. We all loved it and I listened to a lot of it multiple times.

Tschuß for now!

baking

2009-03-08T22:13:00.000-04:00

More cooking I've been up to. I had some bananas that turned brown, but I vaguely remembered that's the best for banana bread! I found an amazing recipe that involved cinnamon, chocolate chips, and candied ginger. oh yes. i am going to devour the remaining candied ginger soon.

Doesn't it look delicious? Check out the chocolate!

Crap. I have to get rid of this before I eat all of it.

research dilemmas

2009-03-05T12:10:00.002-05:00

I'm blocked.

Most of the people in my group are furiously trying to finish a paper for SOSP, and I'm off on my own thinking about web security.

It's not that I don't think this is an important problem -- I truly believe that the security model in today's browsers is a patchwork of brokenness, and could perhaps benefit from being rethought from the ground up. However every time I try to do that I end up meandering off into nothingness, or reading a blog. And it doesn't help that it seems like the problems are getting solved as I meander -- the Gazelle browser, from Microsoft, seems like a step in the right direction.

Also, I'm taking two classes this semester, Natural Language Processing and UI Design, which seem to be taking up increasing amounts of time. And of course there's my other job. It's so much easier to hack on Native Client than try to come up with a viable research project. By the way, we're having a security contest. If you're interested in security, or just interested in that sort of mechanism for validating your self-worth, go try to find some bugs!

I'm thinking of switching. To multicore, which the rest of PDOS seems to be working on, or something scalable-webapp related. I'm not sure how this research thing is supposed to work -- are you supposed to keep beating your head against a wall until something happens, or is it sometimes appropriate to give up and move on? How do you tell? Thoughts are appreciated.

learn to share, or, we all forgot kindergarten

2009-02-26T19:27:00.003-05:00

I went to Pecha Kucha Boston last night, which is totally awesome. I highly recommend finding/starting one in your city. It's 20 slides X 20 seconds, so if something is boring, fear not, it will be over soon! Plus it's fun to watch the speaker get flustered cause their slides are blipping along. Yay emax for organizing!

Anyway, there was one talk that I haven't been able to get out of my head. Robin Chase from GoLoco gave a talk about sharing. What is totally awesome is that by just trying to find her name right now, I found out she was the former CEO of Zipcar! Her talk totally mentioned them and now I know she really knows what she's talking about.

Anyway, she believes that sharing is integral to sustainability. And I totally agree with her. I don't own a toolkit, so I usually borrow my roommate's hammer when I want to hang a photo. It's annoying to go find him every time I need his hammer, but it would be more annoying to buy one. What I realized is that we probably don't even need a hammer per house -- we could survive with a hammer per 4 houses or a hammer per block. How often are you using your hammer? Would it kill you to have to wait a couple of hours for one? How much stuff could you get rid of if you knew you could borrow it, no problem, from a neighbor?

Our culture has way too much stuff -- everything is all about getting your own, new things. That "new car smell". Old mattresses have bedbugs. I want a new computer so I know there's nothing wrong with it. Thrift stores are gross. Ew, eating food out of a dumpster is disgusting (sometimes, it's not!)

We don't need all this new stuff! There's so much out there to reuse. The problem is figuring out a way to share, and to distribute ownership responsibilities fairly. My car is sitting in SF right now, unused. Why should I ship it to Boston when there are already so many cars here, and I don't even need one all the time? I've been using Zipcar, but it's kind of pricey, and not good for regular, short trips. I would like to let other people use my car in SF, but dealing with the insurance is a hassle. And what happens if something breaks? How do we figure out who should pay for repairs? Similar problems pop up with me leveraging other people's cars in Boston. I get that slimey feeling asking to borrow someone's car.

The other day I was walking down 6th street in Cambridge, freezing, and I found myself wishing I could hitchhike a ride with one of the people driving down the street past me (warm and snug in their cars), to MIT. Maybe I could set up a regular arrangement -- they drop me off at MIT (3 minute drive, 18 minute cold freezing walk) and I could make them coffee. Or a bagel. I would totally bring someone a bagel every morning if they'd drive me to school (I make good coffee too).

Food for thought. I want to live in a community where we all have less stuff!