Pico.... The metamorphosis of a Hacker

Thank you Team In Training

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 20:34:00 +0000

This has been one of the most productive year for me so far.. working on an awesome project in Cisco, got few paid gigs as a photographer, and ran a marathon.. that's right ran a friggin marathon!.. Everything else I did this year pales in comparison. I still choke up when I think of crossing that finish line, no matter how abysmal my finishing time was..

It all started in May. I was pissed off at someone (and lets just leave it at that), was driving back home and stuck in traffic, there was a radio ad for Team In Training, a team that trains people for marathons, triathlons, crazy hikes, century bike rides etc to raise money for Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.. I thought..fuck it.. I'm going to run a Marathon. It was just a whim, I had no desire to be an athlete, nor had any relation to the cause.. it was a Forrest Gump moment for me where I just wanted to run.. for no apparent reason..

Now you guys have to remember that I used to bunk PE/games classes back in school and spend my time in the lab/library.. the last 5K I did was about a year ago, when I just woke up one morning, wore a sketcher shoe, and ran a 5k organized locally.. no practice etc.. i.e. I was in as good a shape as an average engineer is. Every rampup weekend run, which started at a measly 4 miles, was followed with me lying on the bed for 2 days, limping, and bitching and moaning for the rest of the week.

I don't really think my words can do justice to what the staff of TnT (Team in Training) has brought into my life. I know it is a cliché but they really did change my life. I'm normally a pretty distant guy with an EQ of a dead cat, so I thought that I'd be pretty thick skinned to whatever they had to say.. I just thought that I was there for the run. Coming in contact with all the honorees, cancer survivors & people still suffering from cancer has given me a different perspective of life. When you see a grown man cry after he exclaims that he was told that he'd be cancer free after 15 years, or when you realize that the person running & motivating you for the past 10 miles had cancer and was going through chemo just few months ago.. or when you find that a bubbly, high spirited lady decided to run 3 marathons, one for each kid she had, after she was told that she was in remission.. it puts things into perspective. Life is fragile and we take so many things for granted.. we tend to be lazy and jaded & stop aspiring for greatness and just settle for mediocrity. That finisher's medal hanging in my room, doesn't remind me of my accomplishment, but my time & experience with the team, which I'm going to cherish for ever, and if life permits, return next year.

The training was kind of harder than I expected, more so because of the time commitment it needed. I was running on Tuesdays, Thursdays & Saturdays and was supposed to cross train on Monday & Wednesday.. this meant that I couldn't go out with my friends on friday because I had early morning runs the next day..or Sunday because I was sore from Saturday. I think most people at my work don't remember me walking straight :P now. It was also a revelation to me that it was much easier to build stamina than the musculoskeletal system. What that means is that for longer runs, I used to hurt my legs faster than I used to get tired. It is no secret that I have a huge ego, so on any given run, I had a choice of either hurting my ego or hurting my leg.. I obviously went with ego.. against all the warnings from my coaches.

I've hurt my IT band, hamstring, medial shin, lower shin, ACL & Achilles tendon running.. (of course few months ago, I'd have said that I hurt my leg.. but you pick up stuff when you are on the first name basis with your massage therapist). I've bled from my nipples, and yes it is funny until it happens to you.. guys wear something called nipguards, which actually make you look like the models on paid only porn sites which put a star on the unmentionables (come on.. every teenager with access to a computer has been to those sites).. I don't remember any body part below my neck that hasn't been hurt at one point or the other. The remedies to these ailments are as weird as the ailment itself.. the best being icebaths.. it is exactly what it sounds like. You fill the bathtub with as much ice as you can manage, and dip yourself in it for 15 minutes.. you might yell obscenities for the first few minutes, but your legs will thank you later. But nothing hurts more than random advice from people who have never run in their entire life..

The way training works is that you ramp up your distance every 2 weeks, but run half the distance of your longest run during week in the middle to rest, so when I was up to a 20 miler, I was supposed to run 10 miles.. just to rest. A masochistic moron that I am, decided to replace it with hike, it was a 11.3 mile hike with 2.5K feet elevation! Even if you feel ok, your body would still be in recovery mode.. so when I ran 20 miles the next weekend, I pulled something.. and was kicked out of track the next tuesday. I couldn't really walk and although the possibility of stress fracture was dismissed by a quick visit to the doctor, running was out of the question.. I just had 3 weeks to go for the race. With a lot of ice cupping, compression wrap, ice bath, foam rolling, massages and intense cardio at more than 1hr/day, I tried to make up for the lost training runs. I was still limping a bit, but atleast it didn't hurt, which was a good sign.. It would have been a wise decision to just back out and live to run another day, but as I said, my ego hurts more than my leg, so I pushed on and made it to the marathon.

I was following the Jeff Galloway's method of running and was doing a 4:1 interval ( 4 minute run and 1 minute brisk walk) & based on my training, I was expected to finish in 5hr50min...well that didn't happen. At mile 18 I started falling apart, my limp became more pronounced and I could feel my legs locking up.. still kept on going till mile 21, but couldn't keep up my rhythm. They say that you run a marathon in 3 parts, first with your mind, second with your body, and third with your heart. I was at the last leg and lost my heart! I became deaf to all the cheers, all the bands playing, all I could think was to just jump of the bridge and end the misery (and Emily Dickinson's "Success is counted sweetest" playing in my head meant that I sure as hell wasn't going to quit the race and live). Suddenly like an angel, one of my coaches came and started running with me, she told me to run only if I could run faster than I could walk.. so I ended up just walking the remaining distance.. she stayed with me till the finish line.. I zoned out everything else and just zeroed in on her continuous chants of "Lift your legs, tighten your gluts".. After which I just became more or less an automaton and finished the race. I don't think humans have the capacity to assimilate greatness without going overboard.. but I'd say this.. I cried like a baby for 30 minutes after I finished the race.. It was not because I considered finishing a marathon an overwhelming accomplishment, but because I was overcome by the gesture of my coach.. Thank god for those Oakleys, I didn't look too different to the onlooker than any other marathoner in pain. It was not even a cool guy cry.. well it was at first.. but then I started tearing up so hard that I had to gasp! They say that starvation during any extreme sport does weird things to your mind.. but I don't care.. I don't care if I was out of my senses.. but I don't think that I can thank my coaches enough for what they did.. Coach Meghan.. if you are reading this, you ROCK!!

The other important aspect of the race was fund raising. I was supposed to raise $2900 in donations. I was able to raise $2400 just by shooting two events!.. the rest came from my facebook friends.. not only did it make me more confident as photographer, but it also reaffirmed my faith in my friends (those who paid anyways :))

It has been 2 weeks after the race, I'm still limping, but I can't wait to get back track and experience it all over again... GO TEAM!!

A philosophical discourse..

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 04:46:00 +0000

I don't know if its my intelligence :P or my innate desire to pick a fight that I seem to get into flame wars on almost all the social networking sites I am on.. Here is the latest pearl of wisdom from a google Buzz conversation I had with a friend Elan.. (I hope I don't incite another flame war by posting this :) ...

Elan's Blog, God - The Outdated Theory

God - The Outdated Theory WARNING: The following essay might sound like ATH101: Introduction to Atheism. Agnosticism is Meaningless If you know me well or if you have not hidden me from your Facebook...

Sridhar Iyer – now you are just being rude to agnostics :P Nov 1, 2010

Elanchezhiyan Elango – :P just trying to push the envelope.. You guys should just makeup your mind one way or other.. Agnostic towards God is like saying you are agnostic towards 'a flying teapot' :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot Nov 1, 2010

Sridhar Iyer – Atheism= believing in "no god", Agnosticism= not believing in god, but keeping an open mind..
Believing in something that you cannot prove or disprove (existence or non-existence of God..) is just as bad.. doesn't make a difference if you follow the Bible or the God Delusion.. Nov 1, 2010

Elanchezhiyan Elango – Nope.. Atheism is 'not believing in God'.. You don't believe in any form of personal god and don't pray to him.. if you don't believe in a personal god you are an atheist.. Even Richard Dawkins will never say there is no God.. He just says 'there almost certainly is no god'. Agnosticism is the state where you believe there is possibility for a God.

"Believing in something that you cannot prove or disprove (existence or non-existence of God..) is just as bad"
Not always and not for God. Just because you cannot disprove god does not mean there is a equal probability for the existence or non-existence of God. Just because you cannot disprove the existence of a 'Flying Spaghetti monster' or 'Pink Unicorn' doesn't mean that you need to be a agnostic towards them. No one is agnostic about them. You don't have an open mind about their existence. The God followed by all humans is as improbable as a 'Flying Spaghetti monster' or a 'Pink Unicorn'. Nov 1, 2010

Sridhar Iyer – Well.. there is always a non-zero probability for everything unless proven otherwise. Flying Spaghetti monster or Pink Unicorn are probable unless proven otherwise.. I guess we have our own definition or Atheism/Agnostism. God might be like the complex number 'i'.. every mathematician knows that it is not a real number, but that doesn't make its existence any less important for solving complex equations.. and all related fields...
I strongly believe that Atheism is believing in "no God".. why? Because you always see atheists and religious people preaching about their beliefs.. be it God or !God.. its just as faulty.. How is your writing a blog post any different from a Bible thumper you meet on streets? .. you both are prisoners of your own beliefs.

Agnostics are cooler and don't really care which team wins :).. Mathematically speaking unless life is turing complete, it will not be possible to explain life using life (or any living being).. not matter how advanced the life form is.. Nov 1, 2010

Elanchezhiyan Elango – I do agree that the semantics of Atheism and Agnosticism overlap.

But comparing religious fundamentalist to atheist is just a gross error. This is tiresomely often repeated statement especially by agnostics. It is like saying a blog post vigorously supporting/preaching 'Slavery' and one vigorously opposing slavery are the same. To quote from my bible, god delusion :P

"when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal force, the truth does not necessarily lie midway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong. And that justifies passion on the other side"

Agnosticism from this perspective is not cool.. You are just being lazy and apathetic.. :) Nov 1, 2010

Sridhar Iyer – ok.. lets establish one thing.. whether or not you believe in God, do you like the concept? if you do.. then concept of God is not the same as concept of Slavery.. all the hatred in the world is due to the conflicting concepts of God and "my daddy strongest" complex in humans..
And if you think that concept of God is worse or just as bad as slavery.. then you have sunken to the same levels as religious fundamentalists..

I never said that truth lies midway..I'm just saying that neither can say what the truth is without being any kind of a fundamentalist.. Agnosticism is just not drawn to the polarizing forces..
You are right in pointing that I'm apathetic.. I could care less about what is the truth here (existence/non-existence).. not sure if that is true for all agnostics..
For me it is similar to vi/emacs, windows/linux, canon/nikon flame wars.. I don't care which is better .. I'll continue to use vi, linux and canon because they get the job done and if you use emacs, windows and Nikon.. I won't write a blog article writing why your choices suck.. I just don't care as long as you get the job done.. Nov 1, 2010

Elanchezhiyan Elango – yes the religion followed by many humans is as bad as slavery, if not worse.. If you don't think so then you are misinformed.. Let's make clear what God we are talking about.. I am not talking about the God that Einstein refers when he says "I am convinced that God does not play dice". I am talking about the god followed by major religions like Christianity, Muslim and Hindus. I don't like those GODS! This whole fight is because religion motivates people to do some terrible things and gives a false world view..

Extreme examples: 911, Ayodhya dispute, genital mutilation on children.
Not-so extreme or violent but still terrible: Girls wearing Burkha, people thinking earth is few thousand years old, people building creation museums saying that evolution is totally false and giving alternate explanations from religious texts.

These are all serious issues, comparable to slavery, to the society motivated in the name of God. I don't think these are okay and I will present my opposing honest opinions against these believes.

I don't mind you calling me a staunch or fundamentalist atheist as long as you don't say I am as 'bad' as the religious fundamentalist. My intentions are to inform people about the more realistic view of the world. I can never do anything harmful, in the name of non-existence of God.

And come on.. the God problem is definitely not same as emacs/vi problem although I would say emacs is better. :) Nov 1, 2010

Sridhar Iyer – Now now.. you are confusing God with Religion.. I'm referring to Einstein's god (as you mentioned above).. Religion is a whole different ballgame.. I just think that religion would have evolved as sort of teams in gameplay.. having teams fosters team work and feeling of belonging.. then somewhere down the line you got rowdy fans (football/cricket etc etc.. ) who throw trash at the other team.. it is the same concept.. Religion can be a google group for all I care.. and given enough time, people will fight over which google group is better..
God is a concept.. it is an idea.. Religion tries to give it a shape.. might not be a good idea..

Agnosticism/Atheism has nothing to do with religion.. it has to do with God.. the concept.. not a version/manifestations of god put forth by humans..

Acc to some article, religion might have given us evolutionary advantage by using human psychology against human to help in the evolutionary growth.. concepts of adultery/murder/theft/greed etc are deemed as sin by the religions.. by doing something that is not hardwired in human brain, we made sure that we lasted longer than other species.. Also if the concept did not serve humans well.. it would have been outdated and dead eons ago... of course we have examples of all the bad things religion has done.. but what about all the good it has done ,lokmanya tilak and ali brothers used religion to unite people in India to fight for independence.. it gives hope to tons of drunks, drug addicts who need some mental support..

I'm not saying that the concept of religion has done more harm than good or other way round.. I'm just saying that rather than rejecting the concept outright, it should be left alone. Taking religion from people would mean taking hope from a lot of people and leave a void in their life... even if there is no god and all the religions are bullshit.. doing that is not a noble deed. Unless you have a better idea to replace religion/god with, there is no point bitching about it.. then aren't you as bad as religious fundamentalists who think their belief is superior?

Would you rather tell a 2 year old kid that there is no Santa or would you just let him be happy and later tell the kid about it when he grows up or realizes it himself?.. Most of the people on the planet are like that 2 year old kid.. Nov 1, 2010

Elanchezhiyan Elango – Dude you just butchered the definition of Atheism.. Atheism has everything to do with religion.. And religion has everything to do with God. Without the religious God there is no scope for something like Atheism to rise and people like Richard Dawkins to write a book like 'God Delusion'.. They don't care about the Einsteinian god that you like.. that is just a metaphor.. And no one follows such a god religiously..

You just oversimplify by calling a religion as football team or google group.

And regarding the evolutionary advantage of Religion there is a field called Evolutionary Psychology. Richard Dawkins being a evolutionary biologist does discuss about it. The fact that religion has survived so many centuries doesn't mean that it has a survival advantage. His theory is it could be a evolutionary by-product of something else that has a survival advantage like being 'obedient to your elders'. He gives the example of a insects that seem to willingly fall into fire and die. Obviously this behavior does not have a survival advantage. But investigation shows that the insects have evolved to use the light from celestial objects like (moon) to travel in a straight line and hence they mistake 'candle fire' for celestial light, fall into them and die. Anyways he doesn't argue that this theory is true or false and neither do I. These are just interesting theories.

And all the good things that you said about religion is refutable.. You don't need religious scriptures to have morality, for mental support, etc. The religious texts are just outdated.. There is still some morality left in the world because majority of us don't follow the morality from religious scriptures literally. So if you pick and choose morality from religious texts our morality should be coming from somewhere else! Same way one can give numerous arguments that religion is causing mental stress instead of giving support.. Instead of me giving all points it would be better if you read 'God Delusion' :)

I am okay with my 2 year old playing with Santa. But I am not happy about 20 year olds in the world thinking like 2 year olds. It is NOT OKAY. And when my kid is old enough I would be careful enough to give him scientific literacy without imposing any belief system on him. The problem with the majority of religion is the kids don't have a choice. The terrible thing is a kid is born as a 'Hindu' child or 'Muslim' child or 'Christian' child. He is taught that his GOD is better. By the time the 2 year old becomes 20 it is too late.. You don't need a replacement for religion. People can live a happy fulfilling life without religion if they are educated and if they can think the right way. Religion is not a necessity. Nov 1, 2010

Elanchezhiyan Elango – "Unless you have a better idea to replace religion/god with, there is no point bitching about it"

I can't believe you actually said that!!! So you mean to say I don't have the right to bitch about 'genital mutilation on children', 'girls wearing burkha', 'people calling earth as 6000 years old', etc All these are directly derived from people believing in their GOD. I don't care if there are 1000 good things that can come out of religion. Just give me on valid good outcome which cannot be achieved without religion which can justify the horrific deeds I have listed above. Only way to refute these stupid things is to tell people that "Your religious texts are bogus.. Your god is bogus.. Just throw away your religious texts and start thinking!!" The only way to eliminate slavery is not to search for a replacement.. just reject it..

"then aren't you as bad as religious fundamentalists who think their belief is superior? "
YES.. How many times should I say you.
"when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal force, the truth does not necessarily lie midway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong. And that justifies passion on the other side" Nov 1, 2010

Sridhar Iyer – Yes.. more or less I agree with you.. religion does have everything to do with god.. but god has nothing to do with religion.. ok.. so we have just established that you hate Religion as an institution.. (and I agree with you)

Your last paragraph can be summarized as :"People should be sensible and should get along and not use God to fight with each other".. people are not sensible, they never will be, they will never question god/religion..
Human brain is not that evolved yet.. nobody is taught that their God is better.. they are taught about their god.. they just don't know anything about the other gods.. this misunderstanding causes conflicts.. Religion is not the problem here.. people are..
People have killed for money, love, real estate, power.. doesn't mean that these are bad..people are..

This topic have been discussed by tons of philosophers over the centuries.. I doubt we will find a solution in a book or on google buzz :) ..

Let me clear in saying that we have similar opinion and that concept of religion is dated.. I just don't know whether taking it away from people is such a good idea.. (this has nothing to do with atheism/agnosticism). If I were to eliminate religion, I'd do a study of controlled group of individuals who are brainwashed to believe that there is no religion and then comparing the before/after happiness index. ..

>"then aren't you as bad as religious fundamentalists who think their belief is superior? "
>YES.. How many times should I say you.
then..my friend.. we have nothing to discuss :) Nov 1, 2010

Sridhar Iyer – BTW.. do you mind if I cut paste this discussion on my blog? Nov 1, 2010

Elanchezhiyan Elango – "People have killed for money, love, real estate, power.. doesn't mean that these are bad..people are.. "
Like I point in my blog, people have killed based on race, language, etc too. That is no excuse for religion. And I don't agree that people are not evolved yet to live without religion. It is not that complicated. When people can be taught to follow religion, they can be educated to not follow religion blindly too. We just need some revolution in education systems and the way we bring up our kids. I can totally imagine a society whose kids were not labelled with any religion, no religion imposed on them, no religious text taught literally and taught good science where people live happily without the religious gods. The concept of God will always be there. People will just stop believing in some stupid gods. Everyone will be invoking Einsteinian God which is totally harmless and 'God Delusion' will become irrelevant like the 'Bible'

"BTW.. do you mind if I cut paste this discussion on my blog?"
Sure.. It's a honour! :P Nov 1, 2010

Sridhar Iyer – haha.. good luck with this revolution.. forget other people, we can't even convince our parents :P Nov 1, 2010

A new era in technology..

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 04:11:00 +0000

If you have tapped the pulse of the tech industry, you would have smelled the winds of change. This is an exciting time to be in the bay area.. rarely does anything makes me come out of my blogging slumber (blame it on twitter).

Let me list a few facts to start with and then we'll extrapolate the trends (just google them to verify):

Intel bought Infineon's wireless division.
Newer Android smartphones sport 720p hdmi ports, 1GHz processor, 20GB memory (more or less), 512MB memory, some have a separate graphics processor. A phone with a dual core processor will be a reality before the end of this year.
Google is pushing forward on web apps, use case of these is still not obvious.. they don't really believe that someone will open a browser and then click on a button rather that type the web address.
Google is working with Verizon and Motorola to push out new android phones.
Google worked with Verizon to support net neutrality *excluding* wireless networks.
IP TV/Hulu is becoming more and more popular.

Clearly all the big wigs are in on this (whatever this is).. everyone except Microsoft that is. Google has positioned itself as the next Microsoft.. not by coming up with a new OS and trying to displace Windows from the computers, but by just making Windows irrelevant. Android is now what Windows was 20 years ago.. By making Android freely available to the hardware vendors as the kitchen sink mobile OS that can run on any hardware (by totally leeching off Linux, but that's not the point here), Google has made sure that Android will go farther than what WinMo or iOS can ever dream of.

Most of you reading this blog will agree that the phones we have now are more powerful than the first computers we owned (even if that was just 10-12 years ago).. ofcourse we don't need a 1GHz processor to make phone calls or play small games.. where is this all going?

I believe that smartPhones ( or lets call them just phones because single purpose phones might soon be in museums) are set to displace our computers and even our cable connection. Why would we need a cable connection if we can view all the content online? and if we can view the online content on TV?! Why would we need an internet connection if our phones are connected via 4G(in a not too distant future). What if when connected our phones to our television sets and desktop environment were to magically appears?!

Let me describe a device that has been cooking in my head (not too radical). This device is an android phone.. just a run off the mill evo or droid. As soon as you connect it to your TV (via some micro usb dock), you desktop automagically appears.. running android or some variant of chromeOS. You can run android apps or some apps that are not suited on a cellphone like google Docs, photoshop etc. I'm guessing Google will be releasing a web app store just for this platform. Open the verizon Vcast app or some app from one of the network houses to watch streaming television (maybe via some sort of "tv" mode).. Throw in a bluetooth keyboard/mouse if you wanna use it like a regular computer. Once 4G becomes prevalent, this sort of device can easily be as pervasive as a toaster.

Google has positioned itself well.. It owns the whole content delivery mechanism and if Google and Verizon's recent proposal is accepted, it's own content will get preferential treatment. In one fell swoop it would have monopolized multiple markets.

Intel knows this very well.. it also knows that majority of its revenue comes from desktop market, so it acquired Infineon to get itself in the mobile game. It went a step further and acquired McAfee. If android's market penetration reaches the same level as that of MS Windows.. it will unfortunately suffer the same fate.. which is.. become the main target for malware/viruses etc. Acquiring McAfee was just a logical step to ensure that it has a safe ride when android has its "Windows 95/Windows Me" phase :) .. plus since more and more of our data is moving onto the cloud, cloud security is still a new and emerging market.

Well.. all you can do now is grab some popcorn and enjoy the ride.. some day you'll be telling your kid about computers that just sat on a desk or that needed a separate bag.

Picking a bone with google buzz

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:50:00 +0000

Love it or hate it; people are using Google buzz... mainly because they don't have a choice (or are not aware of it). For the record, I like it, but mainly because I'm an egotist..
Google came up with Google wave couple of moons ago. Even though based on a solid concept, it failed to generate any traction because people were not really interested.. well they might be interested, but if they are anything like me.. they were mostly lazy and didn't want to build up a circle they can wave with separately. I've tried couple of social networking sites; hi5, 360, orkut, facebook.. they only cater to the people who are interested in social networking, and even if something new came along, which is much better than say facebook, people won't switch because all their contacts are still on facebook.Google seem to acknowledge this fact.

Google has employed gazillion PhDs, but what a waste it would be to not have the products they designed be used by the public. Gmail user base is waay bigger than facebook's, so it makes sense to pork down the products down the existing user's throats... whether they want it or not. They might add a disable button once the media hullabaloo dies down and stupid bloggers stop blogging about it :P. Although the strategy is nothing short of genius, it is somewhat similar to forced labour. The end user is forced to beta test their products, whether they want to or not. (In Google's defense, they own you because you use their awesome free email service).

Another issue the GBuzz exacerbates is "parallel posts" (a term I just made up). To get more visibility, people typically plug their contents on various websites (facebook, Buzz, twitter etc). When I post my pictures on flickr, they are pulled by Buzz and facebook automatically, and sometimes I post links to them on twitter too. People leave comments for the same content on flickr, twitter, facebook and Buzz; I have to follow 4 threads of conversation, which is more or less redundant. Same issue with my tweets that are pulled by Buzz, Orkut and facebook. All these websites have their own API, why don't they use the api's of the other websites to post back the comments to the original source (more work but better for the users).

People have been shouting about privacy issues in GBuzz (and for that matter in any famous webapp).. here's the truth, if you care about privacy, don't log in... and nobody really cares what you do in your basement. You can always disable your profile, filter "label: Buzz" directly to your trash/archives if you don't want GBuzz..

That been said, Google, if you are listening, here are few feature requests:

Some sort of a RBAC (Role based access control), at the very least let me separate my contacts into groups and make my buzzes public to only the group I choose. I want to discuss my weekend at Vegas with ONLY my friends and my cousin's report card with ONLY my family.
The buzz page is a mess right now, I have no idea which buzzes are new and which are old and which are the old buzzes with new comments. Some sort of color coding would be great.
Add a Gbuzz pane to the bottom of Inbox and have the buzz notification skip the inbox by default.
Integrate twitter/blogger/wave/facebook/orkut/flickr api so that the comments on the original site and buzz are always synchronized.
Send me that Nexus 2 you've been working on.

You know what Google, even if you choose to ignore these requests/gripes, I think you are gonna be alright.. don't worry.. the force will always be with you.

What does the new year promise me?

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:16:00 +0000

It is pretty late to post a new year post, but.. meh..

I made tons of resolutions last year. Of course, I didn't follow up with all of them, but some of them did stick. Notably I read 4.5 books, made $3K in the stock market, started cooking regularly, hiked regularly and backpacked across Europe. And few of them I failed miserably to keep up (got two speeding tickets :P). So all in all, 2009 was a good year for me.

I have been blogging alot less lately, mainly because I'm tweeting more and because I have to censor some contents (politics, culture, religion etc). To vent it out, I've been maintaining an anonymous blog where I can bitch and moan about all the issues I want.

This year I just have one resolution: to make 2010 more dynamic that 2009, to grow more, to do more, and to be more. Growing up is a strange process; people tend to develop tunneled vision (they see what they want to see and shut everything else out), become more cynical, throw their ideals for something more practical and short term.. needless to say, I hate growing up. In 2010, I promise myself to keep open to ideas, stay optimistic about the future and never ever compromise on my ideals for any sort of instant gratification.

Does that mean I'm not putting anything concrete on paper for 2010?.. Absolutely not. It means that my 2010 resolutions are the same as my 2009 resolutions. I'll just learn from the mistakes I made in 2009 and attack the list with new found experience.

2009 was also a year of profound realizations. Over the years I've gradually been turning into an atheist/agnostic. My belief system is somewhat closer to what Deepak Chopra preaches, which simply put, says that if God is divine, humans can't imagine what God would look like or even want, so there's no such thing as "acting on his behalf". Since religion is so closely tied with "culture", I had dismissed it as another construct used to divide human society... I was mistaken. Culture is snapshot of the society; loosely put, it is just an average of the phenotypes. If you think of cultures as states in a state machine (human evolution), you can almost plot the evolution of the human society. There are hundreds of cultures on this planets, which are constantly evolving, effecting each other and in contention with each other. This will always be the case and is some what necessary for cultural evolution, but at the very grass root level, all humans are the same; they hate change, want to be loved, and want to be happy. As long as we accept these facts and not care too much about where the culture is heading or how "cultured" we are (which seems more like the std deviation now :P ), we'll be fine as a human race. If you don't agree with me, I'd suggest that you travel more :).. Once you break your cultural boundaries, it is easy to see that everyone is the same. I've been really lucky to have experienced it first hand..

So 2010, here I am with an open mind, free of prejudice, knapsack full of dreams and a list of what needs to be done this year :).. help me become a better, more accomplished man.

Eurotrip: Prologue.. with 20/20 hindsight

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:22:00 +0000

So as most of you know, I had been planning a Eurotrip earlier this year. Well.. I did it. Backpacked across western Europe.. had a crazy schedule. Covered 6 countries(1 city per country :)) in 15 days. Here's something for people who are planning to do so too but just couldn't get off their collective asses or think its too expensive or think its dangerous or don't know how to go about it.

Things I did right, and thing you SHOULD do too:

Get a good backpack. Can't stress this enough. You have to carry something equal to twice the size of your torso, about 15-20kg, on your back. You might have to walk a mile or two(unless you are rolling in money, in which case don't backpack). Get a good backpack.. I got a 65lt Osprey Waypoint.. worth every single penny.
If you are directionally retarded(for the lack of a better word), like I am, get a friend to tag along with you who isn't. Frankly, I need a GPS to walk to my restroom(that's bathroom for the non-American junta), so treading my way across the cobbled streetways of Prague was an unlikely possibility. My friend just used to look at the map and used to guide me to all the places like a local.
Buy a guidebook. There's no shame walking around with the fat book in a foreign place. I just used to mark the places we HAD to visit and we MIGHT visit, factor in the time to travel, and time allotted to the city, and use TSP to do the rest :)
Concentrate on soaking up the culture and the history, not just looking at buildings. Just go to all the small alleyways, drink the local wine, taste the local favourite dish in a bistro. Look for places that are not really close to a touristy place (like the restaurant right next to Eiffel tower or on the Old town square in Prague). Its fun talking to complete strangers in a different country.. the language barriers just fade away.
Surprise yourself. I'm not the artsy/emo sortta guy, try to analyze everything, so I was vary of visiting any museums. But boy was I wrong. Went to about 3-4 museums, took the audio tour in each one of them. It is one thing reading about it in history books and quite different experience altogether to really see them. You have no idea how human you feel after seeing/touching artifacts from 2000BC, paintings of Van Gough, Remembrandt and Da vinci, pages from the diary of Anne Frank ( I can go on and on about the things I saw and felt.. if you care to listen just call me and I'll eat you head off with my long philosophical rant about humanity and mankind in general). Bottom line, don't judge yourself.
Suck it up when need be. I'm a lacto ova vegetarian, that been said, I had meat in Europe. Not that I couldn't find Subway/Salad bars/Indian vegetarian restaurants in Europe.. I just didn't want a superficial view of the cities. As I said earlier, I wanted to soak up the local culture and custom. After all, what Eurotrip is complete without the German currywursts. :)
Relax when you need to. Backpacking is a hectic affair. If you are not a marathon runner, backpacking tires you out soon. Just kick back and call it a day early on.
If you are into photography, carry lots of memory card. I carried 10GBs in CF cards, filled about 8GB. Shoot some artsy good pictures, but when push comes to shove, shoot anything and everything. You are making memories here, not trying to sell prints. That being said, a non-photog friend helps. I used to study the composition, look at photogenic stuff and angles and then take the pics. The non-photog friend used to cry "photo please" at every damn place, so sometimes I used to shoot photos, begrudgingly, without properly composing the picture. Although irritated then, I'm thankful to him for pushing me take all those photos. Shot about 650 photos.
Check out craigslist and other local websites to find cheap accommodation. Some people let you crash on their couch or just rent a room for a night for pretty decent price. Hostels again are not that expensive. Avoid backpacking in summer.. just too many tourists in Europe during that time. I went in autumn.. just the right weather.. just the right crowd.
Any backpacker should know the importance of a towel (what? you haven't read hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy?.. what are you doing here). Please O please don't carry a thick towel, its hard to dry and gets stinky pretty soon.

Things I did wrong. Learn from my mistakes:

I booked accommodation and inter-country travel tickets just 3 weeks before the departure date (that too when I HAD to because I needed it for the shengen visa interview). Ideally you should always travel at night so you can sleep on the bus/train/plane and keep the days for sightseeing. Unfortunately we were cursed to travel during the day, which made our days shorter by 4 hours.
If you are a photographer, carry all your gear, all your lenses, even your big ass tripod, the backpack is gonna be heavy anyway, but atleast you wont crib about needing an extra 5mm of focal length to get the perfect shot, or about not having a tripod for capturing the eye popping nightlife in Europe (unless you like the shitty ISO 1600 pics of course).
Get a proper shoe. I had a relatively new Nike Air, but all the cushiony, airy, squeaky comfort goes for a toss when you are lugging 20kgs around and walking for miles at end. Within 2-3 days, your feet will conspire against each other to kill you. Research shoes before you get one for backpacking.
Get lots of socks, lots. Atleast get a pair for each day (or you can use the laundromats which are easily accessible from the hostels). Failure to comply to this advice might result in a "biohazard" symbol sutured on your forehead.

So what I did in Europe, i.e Paris,Zurich,Munich,Prague, Brussels, Brugge and Amsterdam, is a completely different blog post.. stay tuned in.

The Buildbot Experience..

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:57:00 +0000

I've had been pushing myself to submit a patch to buildbot and then write a post about it, but days,weeks and months have passed by and I haven't even read the source code (let alone writing some of my own).. well what can I say, I've been incredibly lazy (the word "busy" can be substituted here.. but that would be a lie). Let me spread some buildbot love rather than just be yet another leach.

Now what is buildbot? According to the website:

The BuildBot is a system to automate the compile/test cycle required by most software projects to validate code changes. By automatically rebuilding and testing the tree each time something has changed, build problems are pinpointed quickly, before other developers are inconvenienced by the failure. The guilty developer can be identified and harassed without human intervention.

It's a build/test automation system that can run on a variety of platforms. Well there are a variety of free and commercial apps out there which do the same. I chose it because it was relatively light weight and was written in python (an impressive list of clientèle was a factor too).

As the relatively small company (note "small" here just means employee strength) where I work in grew; software maintenance, integration and the task of porting the code to all the platforms and then testing them just became an incredibly arduous task. We already had a semi-agile system in place and were using version control, but it was just not enough. In a small firm, even a single dev day spent on anything other than coding/design is a day wasted (and we devs are known to be lazy and don't really like doing the same things again and again).

Our product is supported on many different platforms, ranging from the ancient(linux 2.2, mac 10.2, Sun Sparc 5.8 etc) to relatively new ones(freebsd7, macosx-universal, windows 2008 etc) totaling to about 13 different platform. Commercial systems were out of the question because none of them supported all the platforms that we had, so were any .NET based ones (not possible for *nix systems) and we preferred python based system over java because our test bed was completely in python and we just didn't think that adding another language to the mix would be a good idea in the longer run. Setting up buildbot on the newer systems was a breeze (just apt-get/yum/portage etc was good enough in most of the cases, a rare recompile on some others). The older systems and Windows were a bit messy (big surprise there!). Some of the systems didn't even have python (or had a really old version), let alone twistd (a buildbot dependency). After 3 days of hushed cursing, head banging and a lots of ugly hacks, I got buildbot to run on all of the *nix platforms. Windows kind of made me feel completely handicapped because once the install failed, I had absolutely no idea how to get around the situation. I ended up setting up a proxy Linux system for windows (credit for the idea goes to one of my colleagues), which identified itself as a windows machine and just did the needed compilation over ssh on Windows (using VS2008).

Once the crude system was setup, we started adding bells and whistles. Every svn update now triggers a build on all the 12 different platforms, sends emails to a group of people who want to be notified if something is broken and to the person who broke the code. Another process triggers a nightly builds which updates the code,does a clean build, run a set of core regression tests, creates a package(tagged with date and revision number) and posts the status on a pretty page. The status page (html and css) was also hacked to list the tests that failed on particular machines. It also uploads the package to a different repository which can then be used by the QA team. Later some more hacks were done to maintain just a small history of packages (nightly builds, not the production builds) and then some (idiosyncratic to the product)... Check out Google Chrome's buidbot page.. now imagine that for 12 different platforms!!.

We did get the obvious benefits:

no integration downtime.
no downtime to port the product to different OSes.
continuous integration made the development process more robust/agile.

There were some not-so-obvious benefits too:

Since creating a package on all the platforms just involved clicking a button on the web interface, debugging->packaging->testing cycle was made a lot faster as the QA didn't have to wait for developer to create the package (who would normally try to include all the fixes in a package before creating a package), which means faster feedback on the remaining issues/builds, which means a happy PM :)
Automating build across different platforms meant that all the platform specific hacks would have to be cleaned up, which meant a more elegant build process, which lead to faster build time and did point to some issues that were being overlooked.
The green color signals a "pass" on the buildbot status page. Surprisingly we(all the devs) find it rewarding to see a green on the status page with our names beneath it, I think I can safely say that our productivity has gone up and our favorite color is "buildbot green" :) .

The whole system works so well and has relieved me of so much of repetitive/boring work, that I was guilty of using it for free. And since I am a poor developer, all I could do was offer some CPU cycles on my home machine (did that for about 4-5 months, until the summer heat forced me to switch off my PC) and offer my help to write some code (which I'll get around to doing one of these days).

On a totally unrelated note, I'll be taking a trip to Europe (Paris, Zurich, Munich, Prague, Brussels, Brugge, Amsterdam), so drop me a line if you've been to any of these places and would like to recommend me something that I should not miss.

Some Sci-fi love

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:29:00 +0000

Sci-fi and fantasy as a genre have few patrons, the rest however are non-appreciative, or just downright insulting.

I not only love the out worldly experience that can only be communicated by these genres, but also the profound depth and messages these deliver. Yes, it's not real and yes it can never happen, but when has that stopped it from being communicative of human values.

I'm making a case for sci-fi movies like The Matrix trilogy, The Watchmen and television shows like Battlestar Galactica. Let me tell you by saying that I'm a big.. I mean really big fan of these shows, so it really grind my gears when people just go and watch these for special effects or just dismiss them as "kids category". The beauty of these genres is that they are the only ones successful in mixing socially relevant messages with entertainment. Others don't even come close..

Today BattleStar Galactica aired its final episode and I was in tears (yes geeks do cry, you just need to know how to make them cry). On the cover it deals with a race of humans (preceding our own, but somewhat still futuristic) in conflict with cylons (androids, which are almost humans), but at it's crux it spotlights human nature, both its dark and bright side, and tries to stretch the morally grey area in the middle to include everyone of its audience. The show was carefully engineered to instill hate against the cylons into the audience, the show then had the "good guys" commit justifiable crimes against the cylons, like torturing/suicide bombing (socially relevant ones at present), which although as I said, were justifiable but unethical, thus making its audience a part of the show. Its shows like these that make you introspect and helps you discover yourself.

BSG presented me with same moral dilema as The Fountainhead, and hands down, has been the best thing I ever saw on the tube. If you can look past the FTL drives, the dilithium crystal, the mental projection of cylons, i.e. all the jargons that alienate some people (mostly non-geeks), the message conveyed is pretty strong, you just need an eye to spot it out. This message is ofcourse hidden, if it wasn't, it would be a documentary. At some level, sci-fi/fantasy movies are documentaries after you peel the onion. Plot in these movies/tv shows is so thick, that it almost pains me to find people talking about it at a totally superficial level.

Take Matrix: The Revolution, the last fight sequence, when Neo is walking amidst darkness, rain and hundreds of Smith copies, and fights one of them at the end. The fight ends with Neo fighting Agent Smith and ending the war between the man and the machines, but how many of you noticed what the director wanted you to see? The song in the background was ancient Vedic hymn "Asatoma Sadgamaya", which signifies the victory of good over evil, the multiple copies and the darkness signified multiple faces of evil in dark times and the song itself points to the fact that Neo had already won the war by making his choice and knew the outcome. The choice, that architect was advocating in most of second sequel. The movie worked on so many levels, and each time I see it, I discover a previously uncoverd hidden meaning in the movie.

Coming back to BSG, well, that is the only sci-fi piece I know of that married belief, faith and science. It talked about angels & daemons, about gods, about prophecy, while still being mostly a sci-fi show.This show made some startling plot twists by projecting one of its main protagonist as a real angel, while couple of others as some sort of agents of "God", who play major role in turn of events. It tried to perpetrate the existence of destiny, of hope, of human values.. kudos to the BSG team, when they could have just got about same TRP ratings, had they shown a nonsensical, visual effects loaded series.

Watchmen, is another such movie. I read the book about two years ago, and I must say that although I don't really like the casting (except Silk Spectre ofcourse), it conveys the real essence of the book (not what Harry Potter movies did to the books). The book is more detailed, of course, but movie comes quite close. It makes you see the world from the eyes of the demented comedian, the omniscient Dr Manhattan, the genius..yet human Veidt, the idealist Rorschach, the observer Night Owl. I really love how the actions of each superhero is justified by their portrayed viewpoints, and forces the reader/viewer to agree with writer.

Sci-fi has come a long way from "Attack of Mars" to BSG/Matrix, it deserves prime time... definitely more than the mind numbing reality shows and soaps. Isn't it time the kirks, spocks, jon shephards, adamas, starbucks,trips, gaetas,McCays etc got more attention than "gossip girl" or Simon Cowell?

Happy New Year.. so whats the game plan??

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:25:00 +0000

2008 was an interesting year. Definitely less geekier ( which I sort of did not prefer.. but was ok). All the personal goals I set for myself were met with relative ease.. learned to swim, learned to drive, got a car, got more involved with the local meetup groups (hiking and photography). Due to apparent lack of time, I had lesser time to update this blog, I however have gotten active on twitter.

I didn't believe in New Year resolutions until last year, but hey... if I can follow a deadline at work, I can definitely set a deadline for myself too right.? I just shouldn't be vague and should put concise goals (like it's done monthly at Mailshell). So here they are:

Conservative goals (Must be done):

Read 5 books.
Make two marketable arduino prototypes.
Practice atleast 1 topcoder challenge each week.
Cook atleast twice each week.
Earn atleast $5000 in the stock market.
Release ver 1.0 of my personal project.
1 Personal goal (undisclosed)
1 Professional goal (undisclosed)

Aggressive goals (Should be done, but .. ):

Exercise atleast once a week (yeah right..)
Have a new blog template... maybe move it from blogger to my own website.
Limit monthly spending to $X, where X < Salary. It is currently true, but I want to smoothen the spikes.
Drive carefully.
Write atleast one blog entry per month.
Attend atleast 1 LUG meets in two months.
Attend Entrepreneur meetup every month. The amount of info you get about new technologies and the number of like minded people you meet there is amazing.
Check out atleast two noisebridge events in SF.
Atleast one hike every two months.

I know it seems like a lot even for one whole year, but the list is concise, either it will be done or it won't be done. I just hope that am better at time management this year and meet my goals. I am a big believer of Pavlovian theory, so to make sure I get these things done, I'm gonna gift myself something everytime I hit a schedule (another concept borrowed from Mailshell's work culture). Of course, awards for weekly/monthly goals would be cashed in at the end of the year (hmm.. I'll buy something really *nice*)

Anyhoo.. hope the new year brings new joy in your life and I do hope that you achieve all the goals you set for yourself. Have a *groovy* new year.. WOOHOO!!

So.. what's next??

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:41:00 +0000

Unless you live under a rock.. you know about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Here are the events that happened prior to that:

November 26: Mumbai terrorist attacks kill over 100, 287 injured
October 30: Explosions kill at least 64 in north-eastern Assam
September 30: Blasts in western India kill at least seven
September 27: Bomb blasts kill one in Delhi
September 13: Five bomb blasts kill 18 in Delhi
July 26: At least 22 small bombs kill 49 in Ahmedabad
July 25: Seven bombs go off in Bangalore killing two people
May 13: Seven bomb hit markets and crowded streets in Jaipur killing 63

(Source: http://www.andhranews.net/India/2008/November/27-India-eight-bomb-attacks-76148.asp)

Do you see a pattern? Apart from destabilizing Kashmir, terrorists have attacked the other three corners of India (North:Kashmir, East: Assam, South:Bangalore, West:Mumbai and Center:Delhi). What the hell is the Indian Intelligence Service up to? But I won't rant on the state of Indian Union and the politicians, or the eminent lack of crisis management. I want to ask why.. why on earth did the terrorists do it? Was there something they needed? When they held hostages at Taj in Mumbai, they didn't ask for money.. they didn't mention Kashmir, they didn't mention religion.. then what might they possibly want??

Now, am not an intelligence expert or a conspiracy theorists, but I do have a brain which constantly needs to connect the dots. Can't anyone see that these are not terrorist "attacks".. this is an act of war. No.. not between nations, but between India and the "terrorist" (if that's what they choose to call themselves). These are well known guerrilla tacts to overcome a bigger, more sophisticated army. The kind of war which we never have seen before. Of course.. they won't challenge us in a "real" battle. The art of war is to play according to your strengths, not weakness, which is exactly what they are doing.

Let me take off my Indian hat, and look at the situation from a perspective of a third person. (you get good at it if you play AOE/Caesar et al.). Lets call the terrorists X. Now we have to work the facts and have a strategy to understand what they do and why they do it.

Lets have some facts:

America is to increase its military presence in Afganistan.
India doesn't hate anyone. It has a neutral attitude, ergo it doesn't hate the west, so it is not on the good books of the terrorists.. I mean X.
India and Pakistan have a very sensitive border.
India and Pakistan are densely populated and diverse, plus being from the same chunk of the continent, its hard to differentiate Indians, Pakistanis and Xs from each another.
X is loosing its stronghold in mid-east and Afganistan and is being forced into the Indian subcontinent.
India is doing absolutely nothing to resist this.. and seems unaware of this incursion.
Pakistan appears to be doing something, but is overwhelmed by religious extremism.. for every forward step it takes, it seems to go back two steps.
The whole world is suffering an economic depression and doesn't want to be bothered.
High profile outfits remain untouched while their human-bombs, the pawns, continue to wreak havoc on the whole world, continue to get caught, continue to die. Just imagine a chess game in which you have unlimited pawns to gambit..
India, Pakistan and US are the most visible players in this game, and they should each verify the authenticity and innocence of the other two countries and ascertain if they are being double crossed.

Feasible actions that can be taken (if and only if none of the major players are helping X out):

Put India and Pakistan on a state of war with X and declare emergency in both the countries. Dispense any logistical bureaucratic crap, that has so often hampered progress in both the countries, till the issue is resolved.
Let India and Pakistan co-ordinate attacks with USA. Let USA push the X overlords from the west periphery while India and Pakistan do it from the east end.
Put the whole world on vigil in case one of the X overlords try to hole up in one of the other countries. (I wish it would be as easy as sending a text message to get some action taken)

Well.. it's all easier said than done. I hope that atleast a common enemy brings India and Pakistan closer to resolve their personal conflicts.

Desicow.com: Review

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:19:00 +0000

Couple of days back, I received the following email:

Hi Sridhar,
I'm the co-founder of a startup, DesiCow.com http://www.DesiCow.com.
I recently went through some of your blog entries and find your blog
interesting. I would be delighted to have you review this startup -DesiCow.com
on your blog. Here is a description of how this website serves people:
....

You need not necessarily provide a positive review on the site,
we would like your honest, unbiased opinion. However please
do add our URL in the review, that will make it easier for the readers to
see the site for themselves.

Thanks in advance,

Amit Meckoni

So here's one for you Amit.. you owe me one :)

Desicow.com is a novel idea. In a nutshell:

You enter your trip details and ask for a rate quote.
Travel Agents (mostly desi ones) bid for lowest price.
You buy tickets directly from the travel agent quoting the lowest price.

Many Indians (in America) know that travel agents are the most inexpensive way to get your tickets to India from. Travel agents even suggest you the dates when you can travel to avail certain benefits/schemes in order to get the cheapest flight home. Although being the geek that I am, I don't see why one cannot write a script to automatically query sites like Orbitz , Travelocity , Priceline etc to get the cheapest quotes.. I dont have the inclination or the energy to write one... Calling a travel agent saves a lot of time and energy. Typically I get some travel agents name from friends/google, call them and get the quotes, and settle for one which suits my needs. Desicow.com automates this process.

Desicow is still in its nascent stages but am sure it will grow when it sees alot of end user participation. It depends on user generated content. You can browse through the listing of requested quotes and directly contact the travel agent offering that quote.

How does it compare to other online websites? .. well it doesn't. There is no possible way a travel agent can give you cheaper tickets than that available at orbitz.com (http://www.epinions.com/content_26195693188), or negotiated using priceline.com (reverse bidding site)... PROVIDED you buy the tickets at the right time, you will pay more if you buy the tickets a bit earlier or bit later. Travel agents block the tickets when the price is just right (the process is a bit shady) , so it's worth getting quote from one when you are buying a ticket. The best way would be to get quotes from orbitz and desicow/travel agent and then ask for a lower price at priceline.

The review process: I asked for a rate quote for a flight from SFO to Bangalore and compared it with the rates available on other websites. The turnaround time was a day and only one travel agent responded (something which would change if it gets alot of traffic).. The rate quoted was higher than that on orbitz. Both the rates and the turnaround time were abysmal (in this age of instant "getification"). However it would unfair to judge this service it its nascent stage.. its got potential but still has a long way to go.

Some features I'd like to see implemented though:

Searchable requested trip list: I don't want to wade through the list to get find the quote. This would make the website more scalable.
I would like to see existing quotes of the trips that I requested (which were requested by someone else).
Trip details along with price quotes: I don't want to wait 20 hours in some god forsaken airport..
I want prices from various sources like orbitz etc to be listed alongside the quotes.
Travel agent ratings: There should be a way for the user to rate a carrier and travel agent. I have burnt my fingers couple of times.
Faster turn around times: Do what ever you need to do to get it done fast, even if it means calling the travel agents yourself to get the quotes.
Add more travel agents.
If a user finds a cheaper deal elsewhere, then he should list his sources.

Final verdict: Any startup that depends on user generated content needs to be jump started. To start generating large amount of data, one needs to spent alot of time selling this idea to a lot of people and getting them involved. All that needs to be done is a lot of boring marketing stuff (well.. i find it boring :) .. I think for the website to be of any use, it needs more data and definitely more travel agents. Although I dont really know what the future has in store for desicow, I certainly do hope that it would be a lot more useful next year when I book my tickets to India.

How we change..

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 04:09:00 +0000

8 years back: Pack a week early to go from Kanpur to Lucknow (77 miles)
5 years back: Start shopping a month before travelling from Kanpur to Bangalore (945 miles)
2 years back: Pack a day early to go from Syracuse to Boston (261 miles)
1.3 years ago: From Bangalore to Goa(267 miles).. friends shouting: "dude pack lets go."

Now: Leaving for India tomorrow morning (8000+ miles).. and am writing this blog.. god bless me..

US Economy crisis explained..

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:30:00 +0000

Found this presentation that explains the economy crisis in a clear jargonless format... enjoy:

Subprime Primer

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: subprime mortgages)

PS: View it in full screen.. better that way

Another car related stupidity..

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 02:08:00 +0000

Yes.. I know.. another car related post.. but bear with me.

This morning I stepped out only to find one of the car tires flat.. well no worries I said, I have road side assistance; called the number to change the flat ( cuz I paid for it!!).

A guy in a large trailer/truck (the kind that carry 3-4 cars on their back) came and changed the tire with a smallish spare tire.. when leaving he told me that the tire was not flat, was infact fine but looked like that because it was parked so close to the curb .. Duh!!

I was so embarrassed to ask him to change it back again and I had no idea how to change it. Asked my room mate for help again who showed me where the jack was stashed in my car ( I sound like a retard :( ), showed me how to use it and the way to screw the tire etc (for even torque distribution). After huffing and panting and sweating profusely on a windy evening.. I changed the tire back.

What a pathetic misadventure on a weekend!! On the bright side, I did discover a nail in the wheel and that I had banged my wheels on the curb so badly that I would need to get them checked... damn.

Car hack..

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:03:00 +0000

As all of you know (if you read the earlier post), that my car has a Bose audio system. It sounds really awesome with 7 speaker surround sound and 9 subwoofers and/or pods (the term am not sure of but my car geek friends refers to.. sort of the refers to the speaker design that moves back and forth alot, so if you are standing close to it, you get a different feedback for the beats.. these pods are fixed next to my legrest, so the whole experience is pretty rad when you are driving).. ofcourse, I'm no audiophile.. the only speakers I ever purchased were the cheap Rs300 speakers in India, so my perception of the sound quality might be skewed.

Ok.. back on track. The only thing that this audio system lacked was an auxillary input to which I could plug in my mp3 player to (which is NOT an iPod). I went to the dealer and was told that it would cost me $700 to replace the sound system, of course he had to bear with my loud WTF sigh.. there was no way on earth I was gonna do that. Next I went to some random car-audio store and asked him for a relatively inexpensive solution, and he showed me some gizmo for about $140 that interfaced directly with iPod, but did expose an auxillary-in.. but I didn't wanna pay for an iPod interface that I would never use, so I searched around for a simpler/similar solution.

Now fm transmitters were totally out of question, I had tried them and the sound quality sucked. Using that on the bose system was like tying a gold chain to a monkey. I noticed that there were tape/MD drive buttons and slots on the dash, but no tape drive, which led me to believe that there would be way to directly hook up a mod chip to that interface and get clean unadulterated music directly from my mp3 player (which is creative zen sleek iPhoto.. i know, it's relatively unknown, but it was the only mp3 player in my budget with a fm reciever in it). I googled "tape/md drive auxillary input mazda6", and voila! found Mazda6 forums where people were discussing exactly the same issues, and I discovered AuxMod in one of the archives, which was exactly what I needed.

Needless to say, I ordered it (but was definitely vary about the shady site), got it in a week by UPS, wrapped in torn magazine pages! Well, at $60, I wasn't exactly expecting a well wrapped manual with funky CDs that I would just toss into the trash. Next roadblock was installing it, the car-audio mechanics were charging about $200 for installation (I checked at two differnt places and they both gave me similar quotes.. another classic WTF moments), so I decided to install it myself (against the advice from all my friends/roommate and the ridicule by the car-audio mechanic who gave me a "yeah right" look ). My housemate let me borrow his tool set for my little adventure.

Had to rip open the cup holder, the gear interface, the glove compartment and the whole dash to reach the damn radio. Took me 4 friggin hours to install it and route the auxillary cable inside the armrest. After battling through some unmodular interfaces, weird sockets, mind numbingly complex plugs and being almost starved, dehydrated and exhausted to the point of unconsiousness, I pulled it off. This was one hack, not for the faint hearted.

It worked like a charm and was a totally rewarding experience. Finally.. took a long cold shower, took her out for a spin and treated myself with some bhel-puri and jal-jeera at Lucky Dhaba :)

got Wheels!!

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:46:00 +0000

Zoom Zoom Zoom..., originally uploaded by SridharV.

So after mulling over for over 2 years, I finally got a car. Its a 2004 Mazda 6i, with TRS, ABS, sunroof, spoilers, sports suspension, 6 cd changer, bose surround sound system etc etc (these are not included in the base model).

I won't go gaga over the specs, I know as much about cars as my grandma knows about computers. There were plenty of reasons why I waited so long to buy a car (or for some ppl out there.. too early). I never needed it in India or in NY.. but the public transport in CA sucks (for the lack of a better word). Being a geek/nerd and all, having a car was never a priority on my list.. but waiting for random ppl to reply to my car pool pleas on meetup groups was getting unbearable, plus I was missing some serious action in the Linux community as I was always too lazy to make it to the meetups using public transport... Also I was hopelessly dependent on my friends for the "mandatory" weekend outing (not that I'm complaining.. but sometimes I just used to go to get out of the house.. and do mindbogglingly boring stuff).

Now comes the question of choosing the particular car, the model etc etc. Why did I go for it? As I said earlier, I know zilch about cars, so the main things I was looking in a car were:
- Is it trendy and kewl :P
- Does it give a decent gas mileage.
- Is it sporty enough
- Its not toyota/honda
Let me explain the last point first. Toyota/Hondas are one of the best cars available in the US. Infact I came to US dreaming of getting a Honda Civic someday (just because I cleared few rounds of NFS with it :P) . Even my analysis factoring the depreciation rate, fuel efficiency, rate of fuel increase, total cost of ownership, resale value etc rated them the highest of the lot... but ever other person in US drives a friggin Toyota or Honda, and I would rather not get a car than get those cars (yeah.. call me a non-conformist if you will).

Now American cars were out (ford, chrysler, chevrolet etc).. they are supposed to be marginally better than trash cans, Italian cars were way outside my budget (ferrari, bugati etc), Korean cars were just too crappy and simple for my taste, and I was not ready for a German car yet (although I came really close to buying a BMW).. they are infamous for their maintenance cost. Indian cars in US are too expensive too (little known fact.. Jaguar is now an Indian car :)). That left only Japanese cars..

Toyota/Hondas were out of consideration (I did consider Prius for the eco-friendly factor.. but dropped it later for its shitty shape and a puny 76hp engine).. this left Acura, Lexus, Nissan and Mazda. I test drove Acura RSX and really liked it.. but was not getting a good deal on them.. and frankly the dashboard looked like an oven counter with all those gaudy knobs. Next car I considered was a 2008 Nissan Altima Coupe.. I was hell bent of buying one.. but the insurance was taking a toll on me ( who knew that new drivers with almost new black coupes are statistically predisposed to be in an accident).

I spend the better part of two days haggling/bargaining the price of that Nissan, called about 10 friends, called my dad.. and finally decided that I should not go for it.. the exasperated and frustrated dealer showed me and asked me to test drive this Mazda 6i.. and in an instant I knew that it was to be my first car. It fit snugly into my budget, had sporty looks with power to match, had decent fuel efficiency and I really felt good driving it.. finalized the deal and paper work the same day and got the car+insurance the next day.

In retrospect, I might have paid a bit more than the car was worth, but you have to understand my condition.. I had been staring at code since 8 am that day, left work at 6 pm and was haggling with the dealer for over 4 hours. At that point I had lost all the care.. yes.. I know I should have gone the next day.. but no point now.. the deed is done. And believe me, you possibly cant get a really good bargains from a person who has been trained to not give you good bargains and is in business for over 20 years.

Bottomline, I love the car.. it's everything I needed in the car.. panache, power and style (and decent fuel efficiency).. so next time you are in the Bay area and need a ride, give me a call.. (no..I'm not starting a cab service :)

H1B issues.. the jargons and the laws surrounding it

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Sat, 03 May 2008 21:02:00 +0000

Let me start by stating that this entry is based on my perception of H1B laws and jargons. They might not be accurate (if so, do correct me). That being said, this entry is specifically for family and friends in India, who might not exactly understand my erratic/fluctuating travel plans or my "headless chicken" rant about immigration laws which is usually high on jargon. I know they are not alone in feeling helpless halfway across the globe.. there are atleast 32,000 people with higher US degrees who might be in similar situation (Based on the tentative figures released by USCIS).

Starting with basics, keep these acronyms/jargon in mind as you go through the rest of this post (I have tailored this entry to my specific case, so I won't be going into anything that doesn't concern me.. life is complicated enough as it is):

F1 Visa: Just ignore the word Visa, and think of the word status. Having F1 visa means, having student status.
H1B Visa: This visa means that my primary purpose of stay in the US is to work for a US based firm.
OPT: (Optional practical training) You can think of it as apprenticeship or some sort of a project work that you do after graduating from a US university. After graduation, a year of OPT period is allotted to every student when he can work in a US based firm. Even though the student has graduated, he is still in F1 visa (i.e. he is still considered a student). It is during this period that he can apply for a change of Visas ( from F1 to H1 => student status to working status).
POE: (Point of Entry). This comes into picture when you apply for a change of visas (F1 to H1). If you apply for H1 under POE, then you'll have to leave the US and get your Visa application stamped at the US Consulate in another country for the visa to come into effect(Mainly your home country.. i.e. India, else you have high chances of getting stranded in a different country :) ... seriously!!)
COS: (Change of Status). This means that you don't have to leave the country to get your Visa stamped for the visa to be effective.. you can get it stamped whenever you want (when you are in India).
1 April-1 October: H1B applications are accepted from 1 April each year till the quota of 65,000 for regular candidates and 20,000 for candidates with higher US degrees is reached. Once the visa application is accepted, it becomes effective from October 1(I think).

With those out of the way, until the last year, things progressed in following fashion for an International student with higher US degree:

Secures a job while he is still a student(under F1) atleast two months before graduation.
His prospective company applies for H1B Visa in advance in April.
He graduates in May (taking the generic/my case in consideration).
He joins the company which had applied for his H1 and starts working on his OPT(still on F1.. remember)
Visa gets approved and his Visa status changes smoothly from F1 to H1. Note that he still has a good 6-7 months of OPT remaining.. but since he is no longer in F1(i.e. not a student), those 6-7 months doesn't matter now.

Since I have been know to have a knack of getting myself in highly complicated situations, Here's what happened with me. ( Note that parts of this will be exactly the same for those who didn't make the H1B lottery last year).

Got a job in mid April. H1B Visa Quota already full :(
Graduated in May.
Joined Mailshell in June'07 (on OPT, still F1 status)
Mailshell applied for my H1B Visa in April 1'08, but OPT only valid till June'08. So essentially June'08-October'08 without a valid status in US. Of course, H1B visa was applied under POE since I had to leave the country. (I hope you remember all the jargon I explained earlier). There were 32,000 applicants for a quota of 20,000.
Mailshell agrees to have me work remotely from India for 4 months. ( and I booked the tickets, planned out my stay etc etc.. )
Near about April 3'08, new bill passed allowing for the OPT to be extended for another 17 months (a total of 29 months now provided that Mailshell registers for some e-verify program).
Another ammendment stating that OPT for students(like me), who have gap between OPT expiration dates and H1B start dates, will be extended automatically to cover the gap(provided that they get their H1Bs), comes into effect... This applied to me since I got a reciept for my application(meaning that I made the lottery and had chances of getting a Visa approved).
Remember my application was filed under POE... well if it is POE, the ammendment I mentioned above wouldn't make much sense since I would have to leave the country anyway to get visa stamped. (Folks, you see the conundrum here.. to cancel the fligh tickets or not to cancel.. aaah!!)
Lawyer applied for an ammendment in my application to change it from POE to COS which means that I wont have to leave the country before October...(only now I wanted to).

Now no matter how advanced US may seem to the rest of the world, its not (no offence here).. there's still lot of beareucracy and paperwork involved (although much much less than India :) ), the dhs(who manage immigration at the borders) might not have access to the updated USCIS records, and they would need papers to prove that I have the right visa to get through.. in other words, person leaving the country might as well get a one way tickets.

After talking to my lawyer, and friends ( some of whom have access to huge law firms specializing in immigration) , I was convinced that leaving country at this point would be really risky. So there goes my plans for a India trip.. (I intend to take the first flight to India in October.. On the bright side, I will be celebrating my birthday with them after 8 years)

If you think that I got the short end of the stick (which I did).. think about my friend who had to postphone his marriage!

Hopefully I explained this well enough without assuming too much about the reader while remaining within acceptable limits of verbosity :).

PS: To all Indian readers of this enty: It would be great if you could translate this article to Indian languages of your choice (need atleast hindi and tamil).

Tweet tweet..

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:44:00 +0000

If you are reading this blog and are !(family||friend) then chances are that you would have heard of the microblogging platform known as twitter. It was released about 2 years ago. I had previously rejected the idea as a ludicrous waste of time and unnecessary invasion of privacy.. but digg and slashdot have rammed the idea down my throat and I have finally given in to the idea of using twitter.

The main reason I have joined the twitter bandwagon is because I don't have enough time to update this blog, be visible on social networking websites like orkut and facebook or even keep in touch with enough friends. Twitter solves the problem by letting me broadcast a one liner to all these places with just a single IM message to twitter@twitter.com... nifty.

Twitter provides a javascript/json based script to update the status badge on blogger. This badge occupies a rectangular area and if I was forced to use it, I would have put it in the sidebar. Not only does it messes with the Feng-shui but also eats a chunk of my screen estate. People hardly even notice the sidebar (according to the stats by various analytics).

After messing about 30 minutes with the badge code, I came up with the following fully functional twitter status line(not badge) which has all the functional elements of the badge. The title links to twitter's follow me and a mouseover action would display the update time as a tool tip.

Here's the code:



<script type="text/javascript">
function twitterCallback2(obj) {
var twitters = obj;
var statusHTML = "";
var username = "";
username = twitters[0].user.screen_name
statusHTML = '<span title="'+relative_time(twitters[0].created_at)+'"><b>
<a href="http://twitter.com/codeyman">Twitter Update:</a></b>&nbsp;'+
twitters[0].text+'</span>';
document.getElementById('twitter_update_list').innerHTML = statusHTML;
}

function relative_time(time_value) {
 var values = time_value.split(" ");
 time_value = values[1] + " " + values[2] + ", " + values[5] + " " + values[3];
 var parsed_date = Date.parse(time_value);
 var relative_to = (arguments.length > 1) ? arguments[1] : new Date();
 var delta = parseInt((relative_to.getTime() - parsed_date) / 1000);
 delta = delta + (relative_to.getTimezoneOffset() * 60);

 if (delta < 60) {
   return 'Updated less than a minute ago';
 } else if(delta < 120) {
   return 'Updated about a minute ago';
 } else if(delta < (60*60)) {
   return 'Updated '+(parseInt(delta / 60)).toString() + ' minutes ago';
 } else if(delta < (120*60)) {
   return 'Updated about an hour ago';
 } else if(delta < (24*60*60)) {
   return 'Updated about ' + (parseInt(delta / 3600)).toString() + ' hours ago';
 } else if(delta < (48*60*60)) {
   return 'Updated 1 day ago';
 } else {
   return 'Updated '+(parseInt(delta / 86400)).toString() + ' days ago';
 }
}
</script>

<div id="twitter_div">
<div id="twitter_update_list" align="left"></div>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript" 
src="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/codeyman.json?
callback=twitterCallback2&count=1">
</script>

Of course, since I am not a web developer by a mile, I agree that this code might still be ugly and can still be optimized, but hey.. its smaller than the older code, doesn't do any lookups for external javascripts.

If any web dev out there could optimize it even further.. do let me know.

vim sorcery: read/write pdf files

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:10:00 +0000

I hate switching windows to refer some manual while coding.. completely breaks the flow. I was browsing through some vim tips, which had an entry for reading MS Word docs in vim and wanted to do the same with pdf files... and then decided to take it a notch higher. By adding the following entries to your .vimrc, you can read/write pdf files transparently, as if they were just regular files. Of course, you can also open these pdf files in regular pdf viewers.

Here's how to do it:

Get xpdf and cups-pdf. On Ubuntu this should do the trick:
sudo apt-get install xpdf cups-pdf
cups-pdf prints the pdf files and saves them in ~/PDF/ by default. I am assuming that these settings wont be changed.
Add the following lines to ~/.vimrc
autocmd BufReadPre *.pdf set ro nowrap autocmd BufReadPost *.pdf silent %!pdftotext "%" -layout -q -eol unix - autocmd BufWritePost *.pdf silent !rm -rf ~/PDF/% autocmd BufWritePost *.pdf silent !lp -s -d "%" autocmd BufWritePost *.pdf silent !until [ -e ~/PDF/% ]; do sleep 1; done autocmd BufWritePost *.pdf silent !mv ~/PDF/% %:p:h

BTW, I have also added this tip to vim Tips. Once setup properly, you can open, save, write pdf files in vim as if they were regular text files.(I guess I already said that earlier.. but what the heck)

Changing times...

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 06:17:00 +0000

1998:
me: Hey am getting a new computer.. 8.1 G hard disk, 64 MB ram for about $1000
friend: What!! are you gonna live inside it?? Why would you need that much storage??

2002:
me: Hey am getting a new computer.. P4, 40 G hard disk, 512 MB RAM for about $1000
friend: neat man.. NFS will rock on that.

2005:
me: Hey dude... I got a new laptop.. P4, 80 G HDD, 1 GB RAM for $1000
friend: I guess that should be enough for a student.

2008:
me: Hey I got a laptop for my uncle: Dual core Pentium centrino 2 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 160 GB 7200 RPM with collision sensors for about $1000
friend: Good deal... will that be enough though?

Based on above conversations, my corollary to moore's law: Human expectation and dependence on technology is directly proportional to the rate of growth of technology.

And on a totally unrelated note.. I have already decided on my next desktop that I will be purchasing next year: a dual quad core Intel Xeon with atleast 4G of RAM. This is the sweetest machine at my workplace and should be inexpensive this time next year... but based on my proposed corollary above, my friend might declare me a retard.

Lens Fetish

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 04:11:00 +0000

I think its time I introduced you to my new love.. Canon Rebel XT. I had iffy affairs with couple of point and shoots and one really prehistoric film camera but there was something always missing in our relationship. I purchased this camera at a black friday sale last year and have never looked back since. I know I know.. she is not as good looking as Nikon D200 or as smart as Canon 5D.. but she gets me and I know that we are meant for each other. We had couple of lenses, filters, a tripod and a remote control together.. we are really settled now for some time.

Jokes aside.. I am still an amateur photographer.. infact I can safely say that I know most of the theory that goes into photography (after reading few books, manuals, articles and watching some videos)... but still suck at executing them. Exceptional photographs take a lot of patience, skill and time. If I take a 100 pictures in a day.. only 5 to 10 of them are worth keeping (which eventually make it to my flickr page). I have the most inexpensive gear that one can get and all individual items are less than $200 (thats dirt cheap if you ask any photographer)... This does mean that I have compromised alot on the build and optical quality of the lenses, but come on.. you don't learn drifting on a BMW with traction control :P .. and hey thats just my way of looking at things. Am showcasing two of my favorite pics to add credibility to my self proclaimed "amateur" photographer status.. the mistakes in these will be obvious to a seasoned professional.

A lot of my friends are into photography at some level and often ask me about it. Since SLRs are not cheap and the hobby isn't really meant for casual photographers who just buy cams and toss them aside for "occasions", they are wary about getting into it. Here are my two cents to those who are just planning on purchasing an SLR (from a point of view of a hobbyist.. not a professional):

If you never owned a camera before, DONT buy an SLR. Get a point and shoot.. experiment for atleast an year before getting into it.
Decide on the brand: Canon, Nikon, Kodak, Olympus, Sony etc etc.. its really important that you do your research before choosing a brand. Lenses are more expensive than the camera itself, so even if you go for a low end camera, you will eventually buy some decent lenses and quite obviously lenses meant for one brand are not compatible with others. (There are convertors, but you dont want to go down that road).
Dont buy a high end professional camera.. go for the inexpensive one first. I say this for two reason: Firstly, higher end SLRs are heavy and huge.. you dont want one strapped around your neck all the time.. unless you are making money off your pics. Lower end SLRs like Canon Rebel XT are lighter.. though it still takes some time to get used to the fact that you cant shove it in your jeans pocket; Secondly you might not wanna go all the way.. believe me, photography gets to the point where you have to get into science and physics involved to get a good effect. It takes more effort than you think. Be kinder to your pocket and start with a cheaper camera.. if you are not able to take good pictures with a cheaper SLR, an expensive one wont do you any good.
Buy a good tripod, but don't go overboard. Bogen Manfrotto 728B is perfect for beginners.
Be a flickr group regular.. atleast be a passive listener there. The information and help you can get from people in these groups is phenomenal.. Find out a group that gels with your needs. You can find many experienced professional to help you with your problems.
Read, read, read.. Read manuals, articles, tutorials on anything related to photography.
Learn to use a photo manipulation software like Gimp or Photoshop.. and no, picassa wont do.
Keep clicking.. I cant belabor the point enough.. probably the first few hundred, even thousand photos you click from your SLR will be worse than those clicked using a point and shoot.. don't give up hope.
Explore pictures on Flickr, look around for photographs.. see their EXIF information. Set those values on your camera and try reproducing the shot. I find this the best way to learn.

Also accept the fact that a decent picture of you will never be taken once you get good behind the camera :)

Different?

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 05:12:00 +0000

I have always made a conscious effort to stay away/above from the crowd.. yes I know I sound snobby.. but thats the way it is. I am not questioning my morality or my intellect but the fact that I like the idea of being unique... thats 1 in 6 billion people.

While skimming through my blogroll yesterday I had an epiphany: How different is my life if all of my academic life can be generalized by the PHDComics, my work life by Dilbert and my thought process by XKCD?.. My reaction: D'oh.

Tiddly oooo...

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:19:00 +0000

First of all let me introduce you to my foray into the world of javascript : http://sridharv.net .

I was never too much of a web enthusiast (from a developer's perspective).. the reasons being that presentation is a big part of a web application and I hate spending hours on a wysiwyg editor to get the right look. Also there does not seem to be any consistency in the way the pages are rendered on various browsers.

This website began as an exploratory project into the tiddly world when Paul Reiber introduced me to it at an SVLUG installfest. The prospect of an all javascript website sounded alot more interesting than spending hours on dreamweaver/quanta/bluefish/frontpage etc etc. Tweaking a few if and for statements was all I needed to get the right look (and some occasional div tweaks).

There were a lot of different technologies that went into this website that I had no or little experience with:

TiddlyWiki: This is a microcontent wiki created by Jeremy Ruston. Here's an extract from tiddlywiki.com:
TiddlyWiki is fundamentally different from a conventional Wiki because it is not based on separate, entire pages of content, but rather items of MicroContent referred to as Tiddlers that live together on the same page.

this

tiddlytools

DNS Management: Although this is pretty easy and does not take more than 20 minutes; setting up sub domains, CNAME records, forwarding etc is interesting in many respects (not fun though). It was sort of an educational experience for me. Apparently if you use meta tag information on a page for redirection, Google considers the page as a duplicate and penalizes the page which will reduce its page rank and thats as bad as it can get... who knew.
RSS management: Ok.. I cheated here. I used yahoo pipes to join couple of feeds, imposed limits on the number or elements, made a few cosmetic changes via feedburner and plugged it into the website. Yahoo pipes is one great tool that you have to check out.

One thing that was quite evident while testing the websites on different browsers was that they still have to go a long way towards standard compliance. I developed this website on firefox, IE put quite a fight, Opera was the official looser and Safari turned out to be a ringer. There was a big difference in the way iframes were rendered.

Anyhoo.. do check out my website and let me know if you stumble upon some bug or irritating feature.

Happy new year!!

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 07:11:00 +0000

Happy New Year to all you folks.. lets welcome the "Age of Sridhar". I think if I market the phrase enough, people might actually start referring to 2008 as "Age of Sridhar" (Something like Conan O'Brian's JabJab) .. Leaving the weird, obscure humor aside.. Happy new year..

Last year was full of twists and turmoils.. I completed my MS, got a job, moved to CA, skydived (in that order) and took my photography to the next level(which is still very amateurish ). Hopefully this year will be more exciting and dynamic.

Here's my New Year's card to you all.. (esp since social networking websites disabled mass messaging).

PS: This was clicked by me and edited using GIMP. FOSS ftw...

Problem 1: IP

noreply@blogger.com (Sridhar) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 07:46:00 +0000

I have started a small series about the problems I think about regularly and have found no answers yet. Here's the first installment:

For all the non-ComSci folks out there, IP= intellectual property. Its the buzzword used by everyone these days to protect their innovation.

Intellectual Property is the basis of patents, licenses, copyrights and everything guarding unauthorized use of knowledge. If I be audacious enough to proclaim that knowledge should not be hoarded and should be made freely available to all, the age old argument of "reward for innovation" crops up.. nobody can innovate with an empty stomach and it would definitely be bAAAAd to have some smart ass marketing guy steal your years of research and create a million dollar startup out of thin air.

The situation is worse than it seems to be. This became visible to me when I left the academia. Without the academia's massive library at my disposal I need to have ACM and IEEE subscription to get a decent article on any advanced topic. If all the work done by the academia is such a closely guarded secret, how can they even complain about the growing divide between the industry and itself? I refuse to pay $20 for a single paper!! I have been meaning to check the latest in digital search trees and all google, ask.com and yahoo search engines leads me to is some totally shallow ppt or to citeseer, which inturn redirects me again to ACM/IEEE.... Arrrghh

Let me stop picking on academia for a second and focus on the rest of the world. Piracy (of ideas, content) exists when supply does not match the demand. Apple is cribbing about fake iPhones in China, had they launched it there(one of the fastest growing economies), they wouldn't have lost the market . Software piracy falls in the same category.. its very rampant in India, being an Indian I can tell that no one would pay $300 for a genuine copy of Windows on $400 machine that they assembled at home. Most of the sales guy tend to concentrate on only the local markets.. bad strategy in my opinion.

We live in a predominantly closed society. If everything was open, we would have a better chance of surviving the future... Just like Maemo and Ubuntu were spawned off from Debian, some new and better OSes would have spawned from Windows(XP?) and OSx. We would have better algorithms and the knowledge distribution would have been uniform rather than spiked throughout the world. This is not to say that you wont have cheap knockoffs of a Macbook pro.. but atleast it will give Apple/MS an incentive to innovate.. it will be a tougher competition, not lack of it.