Nerve Endings Firing Away

The Missing Likes on your Instagram photos

Patrix — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:15:20 +0000

There are two ways you can ‘like’ a photo on Facebook when shared with Instagram. One is when you click the photo to enlarge it and click on ‘like’ and the second is when you just click ‘like’ in your News Feed without enlarging the photo. Strange, right? Especially since both ‘likes’ are for the same photo.

Instagram lets you connect to Facebook and share your photos on your Timeline the same time you publish it on Instagram. You can also go back to a photo in your Instgram and click Share on Facebook and enter a different caption than the one you used on your original image within Instagram. These two methods worked seamlessly before but nowadays are at best unreliable. You choose to share on Facebook and for hours nothing shows up on Facebook so you go back to Instagram and explicitly share again and now two copies show up. At other times, the first method works as advertised.

Back to the original problem of two sets of ‘likes’ on the same photo. Facebook changed the way Instagram photos showed up on the News Feed. Earlier it just showed up as a photo upload and marked it as Via Instagram just like it would if you uploaded it using iPhoto or Lightroom on your desktop. Now it classifies Instagram as an app and says, ‘XYZ took a photo with Instagram’ with XYZ, photo, and Instagram all hyperlinked. So if you like this ‘activity,’ you end up liking only this activity that has one photo, akin to liking an album versus liking a photo in that album. Only if you click the photo, you end up liking the actual photo. People in a hurry end up liking the Instagram activity involving just one photo whereas others like the photo. But strangely, those two types of ‘likes’ never meet.

Why would Facebook make this so confusing? If only they bought Instagram and made photos uploaded via the app, part of Facebook…oh wait!

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Other Places for Conversation

Patrix — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:15:12 +0000

It’s that time for the year again when The New York Times dusts off its archival pages and rehashes a column written when the telephone or even the telegraph was first invented. It is a column that continues to be popular even if most of its readers will go back to doing what the column laments. Technology as a conversation and real-world interaction killer; sounds ominous and even real except it never has been.

A businessman laments that he no longer has colleagues at work. He doesn’t stop by to talk; he doesn’t call. He says that he doesn’t want to interrupt them. He says they’re “too busy on their e-mail.” But then he pauses and corrects himself. “I’m not telling the truth. I’m the one who doesn’t want to be interrupted. I think I should. But I’d rather just do things on my BlackBerry.”
A 16-year-old boy who relies on texting for almost everything says almost wistfully, “Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation.”
Source: The Flight From Conversation.

People are intrinsically social animals and they seek interaction. Technology especially innovations like Facebook has made it possible now to extend that interaction across geographic borders. You need not be limited by geographic constraints to seek people that you may or may not get along with or rather just do because you have no choice. You can share as much or as little as you wish with your friends without being rebuked because chances are they are doing the same too. Even in real life, whatever that means, not all friendships are equal much less soul-baring so why hold on to this ephemeral idea that ‘real-world’ friends are the real deal.

Some of my prized friendships have been with people that I met online and nope, I did not sign up on eHarmony. My then girlfriend and now wife read my blog (when I was more prolific) and knew more about my thoughts on things we didn’t talk about in real life and then ended up talking about them. As a graduate student, I wasn’t as close to some of my classmates in class as I am to them on Facebook. Technology, in fact, has been a boon to introverted personalities like me and has allowed us to reach out to the world in ways that were inconceivable in the past. So let us cut out the sanctimonious rebuke of holding on to our communication past in which everyone waved each other hello and wished everyone good morning in person. We all still wish each other and tell what we had for breakfast except we do it with far more people and across borders. So why is that a bad thing?

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End of the Brown Era

Patrix — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 16:29:08 +0000

Sepia Mutiny is shutting down. Whether you liked them or not, the blog was a prolific and informed source of opinions on everything brown-related on this side of the pond. Admittedly, I too rarely read it nowadays but back in its heydays, it was the place to be. The comments section was a great place, even for a lurker, for thought-provoking discussions and dare I say, sometimes better than the original post itself. Many people wrongly compared DesiPundit as a FOB-version to Sepia Mutiny’s ABCD roots. DesiPundit linked to content but Sepia Mutiny created content which in my opinion is at least slightly higher in the hierarchy of blogs.

But as Abhi points on in the post announcing the shutdown, the discussions have moved elsewhere; mostly to Facebook and Twitter. While this may be more convenient and quick, it has restricted access for everyone who wished to follow such discussions. When it happened in the comments section of a blog, anyone whether they read the blog regularly or not, could browse to and start reading. But with Facebook and Twitter, you either have to be as on Facebook, ‘friends’ with the person on whose ‘wall’ the discussions are taking place or as on Twitter, be ‘following’ all the discussants. This is not ideal but complaining about it is not going to change things and it’s what we got now.

One of the primary complaints about Sepia Mutiny that I had to sometimes defend them against was, they use the term ‘South Asian’ to encompass people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc. when in fact there is no such thing as South Asia, SAARC notwithstanding. Largely true but as Amardeep, one of the more erudite and interesting bloggers on Sepia Mutiny, in this post says explicitly:

South Asian vs. Indian. Sepia Mutiny was always somewhat divided over its function and focus. On the one hand, the directive from Abhi and the other founders was quite clear: the point was to create a space for a South Asian American perspective. The “South Asian” part was important and essential (and we had many fights, mainly with skeptical readers, about whether it wasn’t after all just an “Indian American” blog). Also important was the “American” part of the equation; Sepia Mutiny was never intended to be an “Indian subcontinent” forum.

I’m afraid most readers from the subcontinent or even FOBs never could wrap their heads around this fact. Of course, at times, Sepia Mutiny didn’t help its cause by often over-analyzing current affairs in India but last I checked, many of us are hardly qualified to either but that never stopped us from posting angry blog posts each time there was a terror attack (we’ve had plenty of opportunities to over the years, unfortunately). Just like in Bombay, we don’t care if our friends are Maharashtrian, Tamilian, or Bihari (Ok, Raj Thackeray does but he’s an ass), ABCDs perhaps don’t care if their friends are Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, etc.

From what I read, Sepia Mutiny was always an American blog that posted from the perspective of brown people in America. Even the opinions of brown people in England might not match with theirs let alone the billion-plus in India. I don’t suppose the objective was to create a South Asian lobbying group to argue for the interests of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc. But in fact, they were writing about shared experiences of brown people whose parents came from those countries. ABCDs, as we call them, often have other brown friends from India’s neighboring countries and they are often more similar in culture than their white peers and hence are easily to be friends with. These ABCDs have never grown up with the intense India-Pakistan, cricket and otherwise, rivalries that we know in India. Most of ABCDs haven’t even visited their ‘home’ countries until their late teens or early adulthood. From what I have heard, they are as confused as any other white tourist when they see hordes of people upon landing. We make the mistake of assuming that just because they look like us, they are expected to have similar identities when in fact, they are Americans. Even Czech Catholics in College Station, Texas seek out other Czech Catholics so why wouldn’t ‘South Asians’ seek out other ‘South Asians’? In fact, these identity-sleeking instincts are a function of supply and demand too. When there are too many desis in the region they live, people narrow down and start seeking out people from the same region hence all the statewise associations.

Well, now that they are shutting down, all these tensions seem moot. Heck, the arguments stopped long time ago as commenters and linkers that made Sepia Mutiny and DesiPundit interesting left for more convenient pastures. All we can do is be thankful for the tons of content they created over the years and gave brown people all over something that they love to do most – argue.

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Galveston Spring Break 2012

Patrix — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:20:35 +0000

[Image: Stewart Beach; edited to remove people in the background].

We spent spring break in Galveston this year. We hoped this would be Ruan’s first experience of the sea. We stayed at a historic revitalized hotel in downtown Galveston, The Tremont House Hotel which gave us easy access to the historic district and the main street. For all practical purposes though, the Seawall Boulevard along the coast is the primary thoroughfare for Galveston. But it can get very crowded with cars and beachgoers. Galveston doesn’t really have much of a beach but it is the closest we can drive to. Corpus Christi has a better beach especially along the North and South Padre Islands.

As far as the experience of seeing the sea went, Ruan was quite perplexed with the whole water rushing up to his feet. He had never seen waves and the largest water body he has been is our neighborhood pool which was last summer when he was a mere four months old. He crimped his legs up and dangled in his mom’s arms as the waves washed below. Eventually he let his feet down and let the water run over his legs. But I could tell he was more comfortable on the sand which he explored to his heart’s content and even sat watching some college kids on spring break play catch. He is quite the people watcher so the spring break crowds on the beach was enough to keep his roving eyes busy.

I can’t wait for him to stand up freely and walk around. Wading out to the sea and playing the waves will be much more fun. He doesn’t seem afraid of the water but we will know for sure when we take him for regular swims in our neighborhood pool over the summer. I’m not a good swimmer and it is something that I regret not learning to do well as a kid so I hope Ruan doesn’t make the same mistake.

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Usability: Windows 8 and Mac OS X Lion

Patrix — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 01:26:38 +0000

Chris Prillo’s dad, a Windows XP user is shown the Consumer Preview of Windows 8:

Change is good but as I mentioned in my quick review, it shouldn’t be that drastic as to alienate your base. It is like Google+ trying to imitate Facebook, Windows is letting Mac’s modest gains among consumers scare it into trying some radically different. Windows 8 would’ve been great on a MSFT-recommended tablet and once you get people used to the interface, you port it to the desktop. This also gives you time to iron out any usability bugs.

Taking cues from the feedback on his video and also from the last word by his dad, he gave his Dad a Mac to use for the first time. Although the following video is 30 mins long, it is fascinating to see someone who is not at all familiar with the Mac interface potter around trying to figure stuff out.

Like Chris says, “there’s no such thing as a perfect operating system. They all have their strengths and weaknesses; it’s how we navigate around them to suit our needs that makes the difference for each of us.” But it does matter if a computer works hard enough to make the user interface easier and more intuitive.

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New Symbols for Content Aggregation Online

Patrix — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:08:58 +0000

The Curator’s Code will use a symbol resembling a sideways S to express that a piece of content came directly from another source, and a different figure — a curved arrow-like symbol — to signal what is commonly known as a “hat tip,” or nod to a source that inspired a further thought. The Curator’s Code supplies the appropriate symbol and then the blogger or writer simply puts in a hyperlink behind it as they normally would.

Via NYTimes.com.

Content aggregation gets a bad name these days due to a few overzealous sites like the Huffington Post ^[1]. But done right, it is the basis of the Internet. Content has always been shared and linked. Most of us do it the right way. I try to always excerpt a short paragraph (less than 50 words) that makes the reader click through to the original source. I think my experience with DesiPundit helps me do it the right way most of the time. So any code for conduct is a good thing. It is important to codify the etiquette for people who don’t have bad intentions.

I’ll take this opportunity to plug my links blog — Favorites – again. Thanks to requests by couple of readers, I managed to figure out a way to point the post titles directly to the original link source, like it is done on Daring Fireball. Unfortunately due to my limited PHP knowledge, this link behavior is feed-only but considering that’s how most of the readers — all half dozen of them — access the feed, I think it is the best solution. The blog thus clearly has no pageviews motivations, like most content aggregators too. Feed subscription is not only preferred but also strongly encouraged. If you have moved away from feed readers then I also mirror all links I post to this Twitter account; that’s the only content on that Twitter account.

Update: Marco’s post made me change my syntax a little. I shall now use ‘source’ instead of ‘via’ to point to the original link source. Also, he makes several excellent points on the etiquette of linking and attribution. I tend to be generally generous in attribution but to each his own. If I have missed attributing someone, it is probably coz I’ve forgotten where I first read it. This happens especially with viral links.

Footnotes:

I stopped reading HuffPo more than a year ago and thanks to the branded URL shorteners, I don’t even accidentally click on a HuffPo link via Twitter or Facebook

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Modesty or self-praise? The choice is already made

Patrix — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 18:38:24 +0000

@patrix @_riotous they are bad at #SelfDabba unlike the apple rascals. Paavam ra whattodo but the piece is real good
— maxdavinci (@maxdavinci) March 8, 2012

For context, Maxdavinci was talking about the Asus Transformer Prime tablet that he considers a thing of beauty. But this post isn’t about the Apple-Android fights or maybe not directly. What he said reminded me of one thing I have learnt in America, that is, if you don’t consider yourself good then no one else will. Indians (or rather Asians) have a sense of modesty wherein we try to downplay our achievements or capabilities lest we are considered arrogant. But often in graduate school and professional life here in the U.S., I have seen Americans be extremely confident and at times boastful of their abilities. No American will ever admit that he or she can’t do anything; they’ll beat around the bush and offer external influences beyond their control as excuses but never admit personal failings as a reason for not getting the job done. This has its pros and cons. And someone who often doesn’t get the job done will often be known as such soon by their colleagues. But more often than not, every little achievement is embellished and made out to be like the next best thing since sliced bread. I have never seen any American colleague say that, oh! That thing you asked me to do was no big deal. I have seen people tell me that they have worked over the weekend for something that I know took them less than an hour. I guess the more you make it seem like a arduous task, the more you get appreciated. If an Indian even remotely self-promotes, he is mocked and hated (Ask Kiruba).

This has a tangential angle to parenting in the U.S. too. No matter how much of a brat someone’s kid is, you will never see a parent say that his kid is no good (not always a good thing). If not effusive praise then they’ll at least not saying anything negative about their kid. Indians do say that, ‘humara bachha ton bahut shararthi hai’ even if he really is not. This is probably done for the ‘nazaar na lagge‘ reason. Indian parents are more likely to criticize their kids than openly praise their kids. Personally, we are trying to break from that habit and if not overtly praise him, we have vowed not to say anything negative about our kid in public.

So getting back to the Apple and Asus thing, perhaps Asus being the nice old Asian company is not ingrained with the, as MaxDavinci says, ‘self-dabba’ whereas for Apple as an American company, it comes natural.

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Windows 8 Preview

Patrix — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 20:24:13 +0000

There is a new version of Windows out there. Right now, it is at a Consumer Preview level. Regardless of my infamous Apple fanboi status in the Twitterverse, I had to try it out. I managed to installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview on my now-six-year-old Lenovo Thinkpad. That by itself is commendable since I couldn’t install Windows 7 on it. Of course, I had to uninstall almost every program on my Windows XP machine since the hard disk is a mere 50GB (my first computer had a whopping 0.54 GB). It took couple of hours to install but I blame my old slow machine.

So what do I think of it? It is…well, as everyone says…different. Not to be mistaken with the Maggi Hot-n-Sweet commercial of the 80s, the Metro interface is indeed a bold step by Microsoft to redefine the Windows experience. It looks well designed and make it more accessible to technophobes. It focuses on large widgets with even larger text. You can be forgiven for mistaking that you may have ventured into the computer lab of an old age home. Now even Microsoft has an ‘app store’ where you install apps for the Metro home screen but you have to scroll horizontally to see more apps. Strangely no murmurs of protest yet about this transposing of scrolling behavior.

One more important distinction about Windows 8 is the increased push to create a Hotmail or Live account. I no longer have a Hotmail account since Microsoft wiped my account clean after I didn’t log in for three months taking all the emails from my ex (perhaps a good thing). So I went ahead and created a Live account to use Windows 8. Microsoft thus already won Round 1; just like Google and Apple makes you create IDs to use their services. Another change is the push to use the Skydrive which in my opinion is a good idea. Skydrive gives you 25 GB free compared to Dropbox’s 2 GB. However, Skydrive is different from iCloud since it still uses the legacy file management folder system but nevertheless a welcome change.

Although there are plenty of things to like about Windows 8, I’m not sold on it. I still Windows at work since the two primary programs I use at work – SAS and ArcGIS – are still Windows-only. I don’t see anyone at work or rather at the Enterprise level being that enthused about Metro. I don’t customize my work PC like I do my home PC. At work, everyone is busy using Office and other enterprise-level programs on the local network (so no Skydrive at work). So it is clear that Microsoft is going about the consumer and not businesses but have they already lost that race to Apple? To maximize the new Metro experience, it is best if you have a Windows phone, tablet, and PCs. Apple fanboys are more likely to own all three Apple products than Windows users to own all three Microsoft products. It is going to be tough for Microsoft to imitate the Apple strategy of convincing users to buy all three of their products to maximize the Metro experience. And oh yes, the stores. Microsoft needs to have cooler stores to showcase the Metro and let people play around with it and not leave it to a Geek Squad employee to convince you.

The Metro experience is also best experienced on a tablet but almost everyone I know has installed it on their PC. I’m not sure if Microsoft is promoting a particular tablet as optimal for their OS. Without the supporting hardware, selling your OS is going to be difficult. I don’t see the primary customers of Windows (at least the high-end paying ones) – the businesses – going in for tablets any time soon for their primary work. Also, if installed on a PC, the way Metro is structured, it seems that a trackpad would be better than a mouse. If you use a mouse, most of the interaction on Metro seems counter-intuitive, right from the scrolling up the login wallpaper to reveal the login window to the horizontal scrolling of the Metro page. Perhaps they are making a superior trackpad now but I haven’t seen anyone apart from Apple make a good trackpad. It would be ironic if the best device to install Windows 8 would be a Macbook Air via VMWare Fusion or Bootcamp (Apple would not like it but wouldn’t mind it if hordes of users bought MacBook Airs).

Lastly, the whole goodness of Metro falls apart when you click the Windows Explorer tab. You are immediately taken to the familiar legacy interface of previous Windows system. It is almost like they didn’t even try to design a Metro look for the Explorer. If they had pulled that off, I would be visibly impressed because I feel even Apple hasn’t managed to master their own Finder. As soon as you click Windows Explorer, you feel like the Metro look is just a skin on a spruced up Windows 7. How many people will ooh-aah at the Metro interface and then go back to using the legacy interface? I fear quite a few at least in the business and corporate world.

Anyway, since my use of Windows is currently restricted to at work only, it will be a while till we get the official release. The system administrator tends to wait several months for Microsoft to iron out the bugs. Once he waited so long that we completely missed out on Vista. I’m told that is not a bad thing.

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Documentation of Jejuri

Patrix — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:56:18 +0000

[Photoset on Flickr] These are the moments when Facebook comes in handy. I got a notification that one of my undergrad juniors had tagged me on a photo album. Generally when this happens my heart sinks as my retro ugly mug is broadcast to everyone on my current friends list (that’s why Tag Review rocks) but this time it was a pleasant surprise. Back in, what seems another lifetime, architecture college I led a team of my classmates in the Louis Kahn Trophy for the National Association of Schools of Architecture (NASA) annual conference. The brief is to document a historical structure in its entireity notably from the perspective of architectural drawings. This was seen as a way of creating architectural records for structures that potentially didn’t have any including laying them out from perspective of their historical, social, and cultural context.

Although Jejuri has tremendous significance among those living in Maharashtra, even the Wikipedia doesn’t have much information online let alone detailed architectural drawings. So you can imagine the enormity of our task when we picked Jejuri…in early 1998. As we expected, there were no drawings on record so we made couple of visits to the temple town, stayed for a week each time, and literally measured every square inch of the temple complex. We were the source of puzzlement and wonder among devotees who often mistook us for a film crew thanks to our large circular measuring tape and hippie-like tattered jeans. We brought those measurements along with thousands of sketches back to our college where, with the help of a large team of classmates, stayed overnight after college hours for more than a month creating these drawings. Of course, we receive no college credit for this work and was done purely for altruistic and architectural cred reasons.

There are many memories associated with this project that made me friends among my college mates that I wasn’t close to before and helped me learn many things about architecture and historic preservation. More importantly, the camaraderie that we enjoyed either during the visits to this rural part of Maharashtra or the long sleepless nights we spent in our studios listening to hard rock and old Hindi songs in equal measure crouched over the drawing boards was the thing I remember the most. Now, I regret being a teetotaler at the time.

Our efforts were rewarded in part that we won a special mention at the national level for our work; the first accolade for our 8-year-old college that led to several national trophies at subsequent NASA competitions.

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Post tags: architecture, drawings, historic preservation, temple

The problem with Flickr

Patrix — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 16:00:38 +0000

The Home view is also quite un-interesting. Some recent activity is displayed, as well as a few recent photos from your Contacts, but it’s just not done in beautiful way. And these are photos we’re talking about! What’s with the miniature thumbnails?

[via Flickr's upcoming makeover]

After Vimeo’s impressive UI update, I cribbed about Flickr’s lack of updates so I was glad to hear about the upcoming changes. But apart from making changes to the single photo page, I don’t see any major overhaul in the way the site is designed. I hope I’m wrong and BetaBeat didn’t report on the entire list of changes. But as Ryan points out, Flickr, especially after being bought by Yahoo, has lagged. I still consider it a superior photo hosting site compared to its competition. It still offers plenty of options in terms of customization and privacy; the recent geofences privacy was especially brilliant.

But the way I use it now is more of a photo storage in the cloud with almost no interaction with the community that it was known for when Flickr launched. I receive almost no comments or favorites on the few public photos I upload but then I don’t comment or favorite others’ photo as well. Flickr Home is a total disaster; cluttered, filled with unused features, and worst of all, scant focus on the photos. Almost all social networking sites have or at least are working on presenting the recent activity in more pleasing terms. Facebook’s News Feed updates constantly and hence fosters more interaction. Flickr’s idea of recent activity is showing recent photos from your contacts in the smallest thumbnail size possible at the bottom of the Home Page. If one of your contact has uploaded several photos at once, like most of us do, then all you see is that person’s photos. Why isn’t the much vaunted ‘Interestingness’ photos promoted on the home page? Where are the photos that inspire you to shoot better photos, like the way 500px does?

O HAI!

On the other hand, 500px is an excellent site if you want to get inspired (or intimidated) by people’s photography skills. But more importantly, their UI is excellent and so is their iPad app. I nearly purchased their ‘Awesome’(pro) account until I realized 500px doesn’t allow private photos (to be fair, they want you to only upload photos that you want to share with everyone else). Checking out the Popular and Editor’s Picks on 500px is something I do every night before I sleep. It helps to end the day looking at wonderful art disguised as photographs.

Flickr doesn’t even have an iPad app; I hope they do especially after the retina display iPad 3 launches. But they’ve already lost the market to apps like Flickring and Flickr Studio that tap into their public API. Talk about a lost opportunity.

PS. I hop over to 500px site to get their URL and am surprised by an overhaul of their UI to make it even more impressive (just look at the size of the thumbn…err…photo previews). Flickr indeed has a steep hill to climb.

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Apple’s FoxConn Factory in China via Nightline

Patrix — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:28:13 +0000

[via Nightline on YouTube; Original here]

Apple recently allowed ABC News’ Nightline to tour their FoxConn manufacturer to give American viewers an inside look into the working conditions. It is balanced and fair reporting and touches on several aspects unique to China. The reporter even visits the villages the young workers come from to contrast the working and living conditions there. The hunger to work long hours is palpable among the thousands who line up everyday outside the FoxConn gates and from what I saw, the conditions although arduous seem to be safer than any place in India I have seen. It can be likened to migrant workers who come from U.P and Bihar and live & work in Dharavi. There were similar reports about warehouse employees working for Amazon in potentially unhealthy conditions…in the United States!

Of course, the working conditions could be better but as long as no one is enslaved, misled or duped from their honest wages, there is not much here to complain about. As consumers, we too are similarly free to not buy products that we consider, as per our relative standards, are made in unsafe conditions.

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Favorites Links Stream

Patrix — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:36:49 +0000

I want to re-plug my Favorites blog (RSS feed) once again. This is a blog which is my archive for interesting stories, writing, videos, or photos. Actually, it is more of a personal archive but if I’m collecting interesting content, why not share it?

The reason for my re-plug is that I’m discontinuing my Asides or quick links on this blog and instead will just post those links on my Favorites blog. I don’t post sundry links there and update it only infrequently throughout the week; only exceptional content makes it on there. I also collate my sources. I have a widget on the front page (below the first post) of this blog that will show the five most recent links. I hope you enjoy them too.

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Kindergartens or Daycares?

Patrix — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:51:34 +0000

In this endeavor, Chandresh Maithil, 28, who will be graduating this year, is channeling his skills and knowledge in setting up kindergartens for children. Maithil’s kindergartens, which will be called ‘Naani Ka Ghar’, will operate with the help of the retired and elderly people.
“These kindergartens will be a self-sustaining social platform that would allow a two-way exchange of benefits between the children and the elderly,” said Maithil, who has four years of work experience before coming to study at IIM-A.
He explains that this is a model based on the arrangements of nature. As young parents go out to search food, the elderly stay at home to take care of the children, passing on traditional knowledge and values as they play with them. With changing lifestyles and emergence of nuclear families, there is an emerging gap between the traditional past and the children which needs to be bridged.
“By playing with and learning from elderly people, the kids will be exposed to lot of love, gentleness and knowledge.

[via The Times of India]

I’m confused. Are these establishments kindergartens or daycares? If they are the latter then Maithil may be on to something but if they are kindergartens then he has a distorted view of early childhood education. I say this from the perspective of having seen my mother run an excellent and successful kindergarten for the past 25 years. Using nature as a model for modeling education ignores the fact that we have moved past the hunter-gatherer stage in our evolution and it seems like Maithil is more concerned about instilling moral values than imparting education.

Although this may be well intentioned, it assumes the fact that nuclear families are incapable of instilling such values in their children and as the last line implies, Maithil seems to believe that only elderly people are capable of imparting love, gentleness, and knowledge. The IIM-A tag (note the use of buzzwords – “self-sustaining social platform”) might be why this story even made it to the pages of a national newspaper. The elderly may have much to teach us but I prefer qualified teachers, elderly or otherwise, delivering education fit for the modern age. The headline of the article seems to suggest that Maithil’s primary objective seems in employing elderly people and not educating children but I may be wrong. I’ll worry about instilling moral values in my kids and rather not rely on a stranger for what may be an integral part of being a parent.

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Twitter Screen on the Wall

Patrix — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:22:01 +0000

[via Joshua Topolsky - Google+]

Joshua Topolosky, editor of the tech website, The Verge shared his office workspace. Apart from being clutter free for a guy who probably reviews a dozen gadgets a day, the first thing that you notice is that large vertical monitor displaying tweets. The app I assume is Tweetdeck with its multiple columns. With the needs of his job, I’m sure he needs to be constantly updated on the latest but I have always wondered if something like this would be a normal accessory in a household.

Before you scoff, hear me out first. There is no denying that news often breaks on Twitter first and more often than not, people post personal updates of immediate interest on Twitter. So why not have a photo frame sized digital display on our wall at home? Probably not in the bedroom but somewhere you usually hang out like the family room.It will perhaps not be as detailed as Joshua’s screen and perhaps will have only one column that constantly updates its stream without having you to scroll it down. It will simply display either your timeline or any Twitter list you choose to view on the wall e.g. news sources like Breaking News, etc. A quick glance at the screen as you go about your business should be enough instead of having it reside as an app on your computer especially if you are the lurking Twitter user.

Obviously, there are downsides to certain content that Twitter shows like links that you have to click or embedded images that you have to click to view large but I’m sure there can be either pointer devices or voice commands that can let you do so. Or not.

Sounds like an idea worth exploring? What? Your wife threatens to kill you if you ever do that? Ok then, all you single guys out there, make a mockup and share please.

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Two Killer Features of Mountain Lion

Patrix — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 21:39:30 +0000

Apple unexpectedly announced the next version of their Mac operating system, Mountain Lion. Unexpected because it has been mere seven months since Lion, the previous major upgrade was released. Also, surprising because of the way it was announced. Apple’s VP for worldwide marketing along with two other PR and Marketing guys gave personalized briefings to prominent tech journalists and bloggers; something that the usually secretive Apple had never done before. It was told that they are trying to do things differently after you know what happened in October last year. You can get the rundown of all the interesting features of Mountain Lion on Apple’s website or Andy Inhatko’s review. Messages (SMS + chat) on the Mac apart, this post is about the two killer features that I consider very important.

AirPlay

As I mentioned few weeks ago, we ditched cable and are now completely reliant on online streaming options. Most of the problems in this solution lie with content providers playing hardball with either not providing easily accessible digital content or restricting the content to their websites only instead of making it widely available on apps. In some instances, even if the content is available on apps like Hulu, the AirPlay option is not available which is absolutely befuddling. We’re willing to sit through ads but prefer to watch them on the big screen instead of crowding around the iPad. Of course, we simply mirror our iPad to the TV via AirPlay and use the ‘Scale to Fit’ option on our HDTV’s picture options. There is very little loss of quality but it does make it a bit cumbersome since I can’t use my iPad while watching TV (cue #FirstWorldProblems).

However, the main problem is with content providers offering content on their websites only and sometimes using only *shudder* Flash. We can watch such content on the Mac but apart from hooking your Mac to the TV using two sets of cable (HDMI + Aux for audio), there is little option to watch it on your TV. But now with AirPlay mirroring, you simply mirror your Mac to your TV and hit the fullscreen option on the videos you want to watch. Content providers now can try to resist the digital revolution by restricting access and short of not providing their content online, they can do little to prevent us from streaming it to our TV. So the natural question would be, why not make it easier and convenient and let the consumer pay for that convenience? But I assume, candle makers will be always around until they are driven out of business.

I think this AirPlay mirroring option as a systemwide option for the OS is a giant FU by Apple to the traditional media and may just be part of their negotiating strategy in the rumored iTV.

Documents in the Cloud

As Andy Inhatko points out, this might be a stealth change in the way we work with documents. Although iCloud has already been in our lives for a while now and Apple tried to get us to ignore the file system structure in our OSes, it didn’t really catch on. In our traditional system, we can see files in Finder or Windows Explorer and then choose to open them with their respective applications. Of course, the Recently Opened files within applications don’t require us to know where the files are saved but traditionally only 5-10 recent files are available.

Instead Apple wants us to not bother with the file system or Explorer-Finder type utilities. It merely wants us to open the apps and get started on the files we are working on while saving them continuously to the iCloud. So when we want to continue working on the same file on our iPhone or iPad or any other connected Mac, we don’t have to worry about copying files over or syncing them. This subtle yet drastic change is a step beyond the Dropbox solution. Dropbox still requires us to install a physical folder on our hard drives and keeps them synced across devices. Apple wants you to forget that file and folder structure and go directly to the files.

Obviously, since this is a drastic change, you will still have the option to save the file physically to your local drive if you choose not to save it to the cloud. Also, non-Apple apps like Lightroom that don’t yet have a hook to iCloud can’t use this feature yet but for day to day word processing, editing, and spreadsheet stuff, this would work great. If only MS Office would follow suit and if not hook to iCloud would at least sync to its Skydrive (iPad and iPhone apps for MS Office are already rumored to be in development).

Other

Apart from these two game-changing features in Mountain Lion, there are other changes that bring the Mac OS X (now just called OS X) closer to iOS. Features like systemwide Notification Center, Share Sheets for seamless sharing of photos, videos, and URLs (Twitter is now Apple’s social network), Gaming, and of course, Messages. Gatekeeper gives third-party developers the shivers but the three options to run apps make it fair to all. Obviously, since it is still in development, there might be other changes planned (Siri?) that we will only know in the months to come.

All this iOS-ification of the Mac will only help Apple sell more Macs and as we know, Apple is primarily a hardware company so those profits will just keep going up but only if the Mac experience remains constant. These Mountain Lion changes are aimed just to do that.

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Why am I an atheist and a naturalist

Patrix — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:56:46 +0000

I’m going to tell my entire story; from my religious experiences in early childhood, to my rejection of religion and God in my mid-twenties. The backstory is important, as my skepticism isn’t something new, but something that has been a lifelong struggle.
Next, I should warn you that if you are a person of faith, I’ll probably offend you gravely with this tome. Make no mistake: I have no compunctions about doing so. I’m not one to hide the truth behind deferential embroidery. Still, if you are the type who is likely to take offense and refuse to continue reading, it would be most courteous of me to offend you early on, so as to respect your valuable time.
To that end: God is almost certainly a lie, religion is a scourge upon the world, and you are wasting your life with a cultish devotion to nonsensical superstitions and soul-crushing dogmas. Also, you don’t have a soul.
Now that I’ve dispensed with the discourteous courtesies, and we are rid of the chronically hyper-offendable, let us begin.

This [long] essay by Mark Jaquith is one of the best personal accounts I have read on one’s transition to atheism. My transition was hardly this gradual and introspective but then my earlier experiences hadn’t been that religious either. For whom it is longer, it is also much harder which makes the transition all the more liberating. Perhaps I should write about my transition too but it is neither as introspective nor as dramatic.

via Tempus Fugit.

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For Founders to Decorators, Facebook Riches

Patrix — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:55:40 +0000

The graffiti artist who took Facebook stock instead of cash for painting the walls of the social network’s first headquarters made a smart bet. The shares owned by the artist, David Choe, are expected to be worth upward of $200 million when Facebook stock trades publicly later this year.

So, how much did you pay your painters?

[Source: NYTimes]

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The Super Bowl Ads begin…

Patrix — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:32:38 +0000

Now that’s an ad.

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Sex, Lies, and Hit Men

Patrix — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 02:40:04 +0000

As they say, only in Texas.

Jeffrey Stern was a wealthy personal injury lawyer who drove a Maserati. His wife, Yvonne, was a stunning carpool mom who loved Fendi dresses and Hermès handbags. Together they were the envy of their exclusive Bellaire neighborhood. Then came three bungled attempts on her life, the revelation that Jeffrey had taken a mistress, and the bombshell that investigators had accused the lovers of plotting to kill Yvonne.

[Source: Texas Monthly]

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Burgled in Philly

Patrix — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:55:32 +0000

When John Davidson’s apartment gets robbed, he learns that the easiest way to get his stuff back is to have one drug dealer lie to another drug dealer while he lies to the police.

[Source: The Bygone Bureau]

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