tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65557642024-03-08T00:55:23.119+00:00Whirled PeasAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.comBlogger309125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-61777277623848853092013-07-27T20:16:00.001+01:002013-07-27T20:27:30.844+01:00Why people think what they think and do what they do<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Three years of living in a foreign country (actually this is closer to eleven, but I'm only counting years of having any brains, i.e. adulthood) and interacting with people from different walks of life have given me some perspective into cultural differences.<br />
<br />
My key data points here are admittedly limited to my social circles (both personal and professional) in the UK and India, but as a faux-intellectual blogger, I will take the liberty of generalising to the Western "developed" world and the subcontinent/China-type "developing" world.<br />
<br />
<hr />
<br />
There appears to be very fundamental cultural differences between someone who's brought up in Britain and someone who's brought up in India. This might seem quite obvious on the face of it, but it is important to emphasise that these differences are more than just superficial, and cannot just be understood by consuming television shows, films and literature.<br />
<br />
One could go into <a href="http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/art-culture/kill-the-indian-first" target="_blank">tedious reams of details on the way Indians are more likely to jay-walk, break queues, are generally more undisciplined and have scant regard for rules</a>, but I won't bother. If you've lived in London and been to areas like Wembley and East Ham, the difference between them and the more "UK"-ish parts of London are obvious. After about a year of feeling embarrassed and apologetic for my country-folk ruining perfectly nice parts of the host country (and basically forcing the local government to pass immigration laws that in-all-but-name target people from the subcontinent), I thought it might be interesting to think about <b>why</b> this happens.<br />
<br />
At the same time, I was also struck by deep-rooted cultural "propaganda" (for lack of a better word) in the developed world structured around things like looking beautiful, having nice things, wearing exactly the right attire for any possible occasion and basically being "first-world" beyond just an average amount of presentability.<br />
<br />
Then one fine day a couple of theories struck me that just refused to leave. It all made sense -- there appear to be three key interdependent factors that drive a person to behave the way he does:<br />
<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs</li>
<li>Scale</li>
<li>G.A.S Capital</li>
</ol>
<hr />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
</h4>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs</h4>
<br />
The biggest genius of understanding people's motivations has to be Abraham Maslow. While the levels themselves in the hierarchy may not lend themselves to being neatly defined with clear boundaries, the general concept of a gradual layering of a person's motivations (and a subsequent cognitive difficulty in realising differences between them) is quite brilliant.<br />
<br />
The simplest explanation for the differences between a typical Indian and a typical Briton is that they're on different levels in the hierarchy.<br />
<br />
This need not necessarily be the case for a specific individual -- the layers of the hierarchy can be applied more generally to the society in which one is brought up. Indian society is at a lower rung of the Hierarchy of Needs than British society. This automatically slots someone brought up in either society into the same corresponding level (at least to begin with -- this obviously changes over time and circumstances).<br />
<br />
Consequently, the typical Indian is more focussed on survival-promoting or security-promoting actions. Anything that doesn't implicitly -- and immediately -- threaten any one of those can be regarded as Not Very Important™ in the larger scheme of things. Being resident in this level of hierarchy results in:<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1. Doing only the bare minimum necessary to get by<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2. Not Giving A Shit about anything else (somewhat exaggerated, but we will come back to this later)<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3. A complete failure to understand the actions of people in the "developed" world, w.r.t money, morality, art, food, literature, film -- anything!<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
This is the reason you have people who just can't understand why someone might pay a lot of attention to their looks. This is why someone would just break a queue without fearing the dire consequences of looks of disapproval and annoyed tutting.<br />
<br />
On the other side, you have the developed world completely failing to understand why parents force their kids into becoming engineers, lawyers or doctors, or why children continue to live with their parents after leaving college and getting jobs.<br />
<br />
As somewhat of an aside, this also explains why the unemployed youth of the developed world due to generally poor global economic conditions are so much like a fish out of water. I posit that the biggest cause of their struggles is coming to terms with suddenly being asked to jump down a couple of rungs in the Hierarchy of Needs. A guy who could self-actualise by doing a graduate degree in English literature or medieval history is suddenly faced with the onerous task of having to secure his food and shelter needs by dint of having employable and marketable skills.<br />
<hr />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Scale</h4>
<br />
The developed world simply isn't used to handling massively large numbers of people. A lot of the laws and societal guidelines in place presume quite low numbers of people, which would mean that as a percentage of population, the actual absolute number of people breaching guidelines remains low enough to be manageable within even a comfortably inefficient framework of laws or bureaucracy.<br />
<br />
Once you have a certain amount of scale in terms of sheer numbers of people, any such social contracts are bound to break down in the absence of a rigorous framework of rules that are strictly enforced.<br />
<br />
Or, to paraphrase something I head a Googler say on Slashdot: "You encounter problems at scale that you didn't know existed."<br />
<br />
Rules and laws as merely social contracts simply don't scale very well. If one were to view a social contract as a cartel of sorts, then the larger the group gets, the greater the incentive for chiselling.<br />
<br />
As a rather simplistic example, the UK has great roads -- they're well built and maintained. But would they stand up to the relentless weather and traffic conditions of most major cities in India? I very much doubt it.<br />
<br />
Similarly, the UK has great institutions like the NHS, and reasonably comfortable socialist safety nets like unemployment and senior citizen benefits. Companies in the UK have great maternity leave policies, and reasonably lax Internet filtering. And of course, there is always a small minority that take unfair advantage of such goodies.<br />
<br />
But in India, the massive numbers of people involved means that the percentage of people who will abuse such privileges remains untenably high. This links directly back to the first point -- because people in India are pretty much embedded in the lower layers of the Hierachy of Needs, they will not mind breaking the spirit of a law or rule or guideline as long as they are either not caught, or don't face any "real" consequences, i.e. those that threaten survival or security.<br />
<hr />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
</h4>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
</h4>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
</h4>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
<br /></h4>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
G.A.S Capital</h4>
<br />
This factor brings together the Hierarchy of Needs and scale, and hopefully puts some explanatory power into how and why the previous two points interact.<br />
<br />
Every person, regardless of ethnicity or upbringing, inherently has only a limited number of shits to give. I call this figure the <b>Give A Shit (GAS) Capital</b> of a person, and this can only be distributed among a finite set out outlets, with each outlet having a certain fixed minimum cost to the person.<br />
<br />
When a person is on the lower rung of the Hierarchy of Needs, they have to focus on distributing their GAS capital on survival essentials like food, shelter and a stream of income to enable a continued base quality of life, and don't have as much to expend on things like consideration for fellowmen. And this obviously gets compounded when there are simply far too many fellowmen.<br />
<br />
Curiously in the latter case, even when the person may be on a higher level, their GAS capital gets spread too thin among too many people. And therefore, even people who are relatively well-off in over-crowded places appear "callous". This implies that scale and GAS Capital end up in a sort of a positive feedback loop.<br />
<br />
Due to this feedback loop, it would appear to follow that there is a rough correlation between population density and GAS capital -- the more people you pack in together in close quarters, the less of a shit they appear to give.<br />
<br />
So this can be used to explain why competition in countries like India and China is so cut-throat, and also why corruption is so widespread and prevalent there.<br />
<br />
Using this relationship between population and GAS capital, one could also arguably posit that the USA is at a reasonably balanced level of population: crowded enough that competition keeps people on their toes and scrambling towards the "American Dream" with sporadic bursts of unethical behaviour, but not so overcrowded that you basically have to cheat to even survive.<br />
<br />
Admittedly, these are some pretty large generalisations about large swathes of very diverse countries and populations, but I believe you can see curious little localised effects of GAS capital as well. Take the UK, for example. Anyone who's lived and been brought up in a small to medium-sized town (or even distant suburbs of big cities) complains about the rudeness and over-crowding in big cities. From personal experience as well, a random person on the street in a place like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worth_Matravers" target="_blank">Worth Matravers</a> is more likely to be "nicer" than a random person on the street in London.<br />
<div>
<br />
<hr />
<br /></div>
Ever since these ideas popped into my head and sat there developing, I have a different sense of perspective when I see things happening around me. It might be a simple case of everything looking like a nail for this hammer framework, but it's frankly far more interesting that complaining or hand-wringing. Additionally, now that I am gainfully employed, the offices of the large online fashion retailer are a shocking contrast to my previous work environments of mostly banks. This gives me even more fodder for my theory, and so far I see little things everywhere that reinforce my ideas (like a little sign above free fruit basket politely reminding people to take <b>ONLY</b> one fruit per person).<br />
<br />
One important aspect of the framework remains unresolved though: a catchy name. MSG theory? The Three Thinking Trilbies? Oh well, let the jury be out on that one.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
<i>(If you've read this far, feel free to <a href="https://twitter.com/shr1k" target="_blank">drop me a line on Twitter</a>.)</i></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-61715493733128636572013-04-17T14:09:00.000+01:002013-04-24T14:10:20.900+01:00On advertising - a Banksy rant<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://anjalir.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/banksy-on-advertising-via-negativeneil/" target="_blank">Transcribed from here:</a> <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.<br /><br />You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.<br /><br />Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.<br /><br />You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.</blockquote>
A little violent for my delicate sensibilities, but the underlying sentiment is about correct.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-77031213769512065792013-04-16T13:08:00.000+01:002013-04-24T13:08:29.338+01:00Not quite Pixar, but nearly there<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
After a harrowing Saturday that involved poor
scheduling and dinner planning and thereby subjecting ourselves to
having to suffer through A Good Day to Die Hard, it was with great
relish that the wife and I looked forward to watching Wreck-It <span class="il">Ralph</span> on the following Sunday.<br />
<br />
I had been following the general positive buzz on the
interwebs about the movie, but had successfully steered clear of any
major reviews or discussions about it so that I could go in with a
completely open mind.<br />
<br />
We ended up thoroughly enjoying ourselves, starting from the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pDbVPL6YTw" target="_blank">delightful Paperman short </a>right up till the credits rolled. (One
complaint we had here is that we were eagerly awaiting the credits to
see the cast of voice actors, but this took far too long in coming as
Disney had decided it was more important to credit nearly everyone in
the technical crew first.)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/1pDbVPL6YTw?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
I
believe with this movie, Disney has finally successfully integrated a
Pixar-like quality to their output by incorporating several Pixar-ian
touches:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Right from the beginning, an animated short as a
prelude to the main feature. (Incidentally, fans of Disney -- like me --
will instantly notice the similarity between the girl in Paperman to
the Disney princesses, and between the Paperman guy and Mowgli from
Jungle Book -- one of my all-time favourite Disney films)</li>
<li>The trope of 'make someone want to subvert the status
quo in their world' -- toys, cars, insects, monsters, fish, superheroes,
and now video games.</li>
<li>The animation is distinctly Pixar -- the ray-tracing and rendering appear to have been done using <a href="http://renderman.pixar.com/view/renderman" target="_blank">Pixar's RenderMan software</a>.</li>
<li>One of the executive producers is John Lasseter (who's
come full circle -- he started his career off with Walt Disney, moved
to LucasFilm, then Pixar and now back as creative head of both Pixar and
Walt Disney Animation Studios)</li>
<li>The sound design (which is absolutely gorgeous in this film) is by Gary Rydstrom, also a long time Pixar sound designer.</li>
</ol>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsQTA_GPYiY" target="_blank">To echo the good doctor</a>, it isn't Toy Story, but nevertheless, both of us
completely loved the film and wouldn't mind going around to watch it
again.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://img.youtube.com/vi/rsQTA_GPYiY/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/rsQTA_GPYiY&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/rsQTA_GPYiY&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-17813653248784504702013-04-15T10:31:00.000+01:002013-04-15T09:43:27.896+01:00Mmmbop<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr">
Sensory overload. Sounds are louder and more distinct. Lights are brighter. Things feel more tangible. Sweets taste sweeter.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
This is where I get off.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
...and then climb back on and continue from where I left off. Personal challenge to continue this line of investigation even when the investigatory incentives have worn off.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Much better, but only by a little. Running around in the sun does one's constitution a world of good. It's so beautiful today that I think I'll head to the park instead of stewing at home?<br />
<br />
No no, IPL changes to be made. Park can come later.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
And the stream of consciousness continues. Trippy trippy trap.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
IPL ditched, park idled in, lake walked by. And most of the day is still left to enjoy. Been a great Sunday thus far. People must be thanked, activities and recipes must be repeated, and further fun must be had.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Over and out.</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-45934814076170053182013-04-13T10:31:00.001+01:002013-04-15T09:43:37.270+01:00Last night<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr">
All these ideas floating around. They all seemed brilliant at the time, but are nowhere to be found now.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
No sounds or voices, but the suggestions came over in a thick waterfall anyway. Not much food was eaten.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Oblivion. Thought it was Moon with a soap opera thrown in, but turned out to be The Matrix as well. And then seemed to swerve into a time loop of sorts. Really need to watch the movie again while in a less... profoundly analytical frame of mind. Maybe on Monday?</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
The train is at Knightsbridge now, and I need to get off at King's Cross. The attempt is to make it to the game successfully and then NOT run around with arms flailing wildly. And hopefully not forget and leave important stuff behind.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Everyone in the tube seems to be eyeing my backpack. I'm suddenly glad I didn't leave the wallet in it. Any minute now somebody could grab it and run. I'm hyper aware of the avenues of possibility around this event, and fully prepared to indulge in fisticuffs with the potential perpetrator.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Like the Peep Show title song, exactly! I'm not good but I'm not well, 'cause I'm in hell. Not entirely sure those are the words, but it'll have to do. But the key line is "paranoia paranoia, everybody's out to GET me!".</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
I'm actually literally amazed I've managed to ramble on this long with very few spelling mistakes. I could credit the reasonably OK predictive keyboard on the Nexus 4, but screw that. It refuses to predict profanity, even when the words are added into the dictionary. That's messed up, and another unfortunate example of Google overstretching in imposing their values on their users.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
However, I, for one, welcome our smartphone overlords and don't particularly care for the underperforming, underpowered and one dimensional dumbphones of yore. Progress is a good thing, even when it isn't.</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-83817874942046130292013-04-12T01:45:00.000+01:002013-04-15T09:43:45.703+01:00Kurt Vonnegut was right<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr">
Tralfamadorians are real. I am one now. The doppelganger watches from a safe distance the miracles on the revived bodies.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Only one difference. They can see all points in time at once. I can do the same, but have no credible way of communicating across to you chaps that my extortionate pricing may not cause the ever seeked elusive retail footfall and heavy walletted poseurs. Buy outside of that you're actually quite nice.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Early in the morning.</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-89842496084279735512013-04-11T01:28:00.000+01:002013-04-15T09:43:53.928+01:00Just to continue<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr">
It never ends. Just comes and goes. But then all the stories come true and bounded rationality is violated.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
It would be almost interesting to put these up on tumblr but enough.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
How can I unify identity while still maintaining the decentralisation aspect of many identity providers?</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Everyone always seems to have strong opinions on everything. I feel quite envious of such thorough convictions held about an entirely new field. Either genius or successful self deluders. Same reasoning as the .. .</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Will sleep help? Don't want to, can't let go just yet. Tripolata. Lots of food, but tandoori chicken was missing. Would've gobbled that up by the bucketful.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Football is OK, NBA is OK. But playing is definitely better than simply reading and commenting.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Some people just sit and eat. They can be watched with interest too, because they may magically turn into zombies. Then we have to place plants that spit seeds out to kill the psychotic attacking flower army.</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-82259623725937949562013-04-10T01:18:00.000+01:002013-04-15T09:44:04.532+01:00It's all good.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr">
Posting this from the blogger app on android.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
One is not entirely of sound mind. But one is of fun mind.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Repeal everything. All is well. You may say that I'm a dreamer. So... Wonderful and naïve.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Great weather today. Great for the indian good that was gorged on. Sleepy now, but still attempting to document all this.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Actually not sleepy. Somehow everything is more.. Everything stands out more. Smell, hearing, pain, sight. All existence is magnified.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
Seems late, but so much to do, so little time. The woods are lovely dark and deep.</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-77528456288846115352013-04-09T18:41:00.000+01:002013-04-10T20:41:47.475+01:00Hagrid never had these problems<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Why is is that I'm so absolutely indecisive when it comes to facial hair?<br />
<br />
The only serious attempt I've made has been to <a href="http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/4/40126/1507121-spock_20goatee.jpg" target="_blank">"wear" a goatee</a> for a few months. All other experiments with beards and moustaches have been cut short for various reasons.<br />
<br />
For the most part these reasons are borne out of a general "fear of the unknown" -- save for aging, my appearance has remained pretty much static for most of my life. Right at the beginning of adolescence, there was a brief period of a year or so when I was "rockin' a 'stash", as the kids call it these days. (Do they..?) But after I discovered the wonders of a good razor, it was wiped out.<br />
<br />
Since then the only sort of facial hair I've allowed has been the occasional overgrowth of stubble due to (usually) laziness, (less usually) convenience, or (not applicable any more) religious reasons.<br />
<br />
The other times I had to abort any experiments, has been due to "human error". I'd be on the path to an interesting new appearance, when the razor blade would go astray and lop off a crucial piece of carpeting. Initially, the attempted method of dealing with this was to balance out the mistake, but that -- without exception -- always led to merely doubling the error. This would force me to stop fixing errors and just wipe the slate clean. Eventually I gave up drawing on the slate altogether.<br />
<br />
During the goatee period, I also realised that maintaining a consistent appearance is just as hard as remaining clean-shaven. This further levelled the playing field, as the amount of effort wasn't a deciding factor any more.<br />
<br />
I wonder when I will come around to giving the whole facial hair thing another shot. I suppose the best time is now, unencumbered by professional requirements. Will I, won't I?</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-28773000602842648172013-04-08T20:11:00.000+01:002013-04-10T20:12:56.985+01:00Go learn something new!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Over this recent period of "underemployment", I have been attempting to do multiple things.<br />
<br />
The major effort here has been to acquire new technical skills, primarily around data analysis. One thing which I was unsure of was the approach to take, and this is where <a href="http://httpl//www.coursera.org" target="_blank">Coursera</a> has been immensely helpful.<br />
<br />
Initially, after I had signed up for a few courses, I was a little doubtful about them -- particularly because I have tended to find classes largely boring throughout my life.<br />
<br />
The first couple of courses were quite hard to stick with, especially because I was travelling in India, and access to the Internet was patchy. There was a block of a few days in Bangalore when I was practically disconnected from the world, sustaining myself with the occasional borrowed hour of Internet.<br />
<br />
The real turning point was when one of the quiz submission hard deadline coincided with a day on which I was flying out to Bombay. This was after I had used up all my "late submission" days, so missing this would mean the grade getting docked.<br />
<br />
The submission was due by 11.30, and my flight was leaving at 13.30 on the same day. The house that I was leaving from didn't have any Internet, and tethering was out of the question on a ridiculously limited short-term mobile data plan. I left for the airport way earlier than I needed to, reached at about 10.00, rushed through all the formalities and finally took a seat at the gate, and connected to the airport Wifi. (On a side note: the number of power outlets in Bangalore airport is abysmally low.)<br />
<br />
By this time it was 11.00, and as it turns out, this was just exactly the right amount of time to ram a perfect attempt through (each quiz in the course allowed 3 attempts, with a varying set of questions each time!).<br />
<br />
After I boarded the flight, I had some time to think over my actions. I had put in a <b>lot</b> of effort to maintain a solid level of what effectively amounts to imaginary Internet points, and all because I really enjoyed the course I was doing, and was genuinely learning. In pretty much every other class experience before this, the focus was more on figuring out "the system" to maximise test performance, petty one-upmanship and sometimes just remaining awake through a monotonous drone.<br />
<br />
It now appears that self-study is the best course of action for me, with the occasional group interaction. <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5994125/" target="_blank">Using this approach</a>, I've managed to pick up the fundamentals of <a href="http://www.r-project.org/" target="_blank">R</a>, <a href="http://www.python.org/" target="_blank">Python</a>, <a href="https://www.djangoproject.com/" target="_blank">Django</a>, and <a href="https://github.com/shr1k" target="_blank">git</a> over the last 3 months. Now, all that remains is to focus all of this into an appropriate work environment...</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-48296611768128143852013-04-06T20:51:00.000+01:002013-04-09T20:59:20.350+01:00Figuratively speaking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Just a quick post to make a collective note of some of the few graphing libraries I am attempting to try out over the coming weeks. Base frameworks like D3.js and Raphael.js appear great, but might just be involve too much work if all I want to do is throw together a quick few visualisations.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<a href="http://nickqizhu.github.io/dc.js/" target="_blank"><b>dc.js</b></a><br />
A multi-dimensional charting library built to work natively with crossfilter and rendered using D3.js.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://github.com/novus/nvd3" target="_blank"><b>NVD3</b></a><br />
Re-usable charts and chart components for D3.js. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://github.com/polychart/polychart2" target="_blank"><b>Polychart2.js</b></a><br />
Graphing library that takes many ideas from the Grammar of Graphics and the R library ggplot2, and
adds interactive elements for usage on the Web.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.highcharts.com/download"><b>Highcharts</b></a><br />
Interactive charting library supporting many, MANY types of visualisation!<br />
<br />
<a href="https://github.com/nnnick/Chart.js"><b>Chart.js</b></a><br />
Simple HTML5 Charts using the canvas element. Currently doesn't support interactivity, but looks great.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.flotcharts.org/" target="_blank"><b>Flot</b></a><br />
Plotting library for jQuery, with a focus on simple usage, attractive looks and interactive features.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/" target="_blank"><b>Rickshaw</b></a><br />
JS toolkit for creating interactive time series graphs.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/charts/" target="_blank"><b>YUI Charts</b></a><br />
A charting module based on the YUI library.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://tenxer.github.io/xcharts/" target="_blank"><b>xCharts</b></a><br />
Yet another D3.js based library. Some of the examples don't appear to work currently.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://github.com/HumbleSoftware/Flotr2" target="_blank"><b>Flotr2</b></a><br />
A fork of Flotr which removes the dependency on Prototype and a few enhancements.<br />
<br />
Now it may turn out that most of these end up going unused, but hopefully that means I would have found the best fit library and will stick with it!</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-208018245420647172013-04-05T21:09:00.000+01:002013-04-09T20:52:06.638+01:00Editors of the textual kind<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The one key component of any computer system I could call "mine" has been a solid text editor. Not a word processor -- most of the time, unless I'm working with "official" (work or school) stuff, I have no need for mixing fonts faces, sizes, colours, or inserting images into the document. I would just like to read information, or type out something without wasting time on bells and whistles.<br />
<br />
Kudos to Microsoft for shipping such an absolute lemon of a text editor in Notepad, which couldn't open large text files or acknowledge that text files can be produced and used in non-Windows environments. This pointless truculence spurred on some great little projects in the Windows world.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.notetab.com/" target="_blank"><b>NoteTab</b></a><br />
This was the first ever Notepad replacement I discovered. It wasn't particularly lightweight, but solved the annoying problem of the standard Notepad being unable to handle large or binary files.<br />
<br />
<b><a href="http://liquidninja.com/metapad/" target="_blank">Metapad</a></b><br />
Metapad was the Notepad replacement I used, while in Windows 95/98. It was super light, opened everything in sight, and the ideal candidate for text file management on my <a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/desktops/compaq-presario-4620-pii/4505-3118_7-30578925.html" target="_blank">underpowered (and -- although I didn't think so back then -- somewhat ugly) desktop</a>. Syntax highlighting was for wimps, and on the occasion when it was badly needed, <a href="http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html" target="_blank">SciTE</a> appeared to suffice.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html" target="_blank"><b>Notepad2</b></a><br />
Once I managed to scrape together enough competition winnings and had the security of a job assured (this was in 2004), I decided it was time to get my hands dirty and build my own desktop. While not quite from scratch, some reasonably smart hustling for parts meant I was able to put together a very decently powerful machine at a tight budget. This resulted in Metapad getting the boot from the brand new Windows XP install, and making way for Notepad2 (after a brief period of <a href="http://www.scintilla.org/ScintillaRelated.html" target="_blank">experimentation</a>). This still-awesome marvel of a tool had a few more text manipulation features, and bundled in syntax highlighting, for the same relative load on the system as Metapad.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://notepad-plus-plus.org/" target="_blank"><b>Notepad++</b></a><br />
Ah, what can I say? This is <i>the</i> most indispensable tool for anyone using any flavour of Windows. Syntax highlighting, code-folding, lightweight project management, session management, powerful regular expression searching, file comparison, and an FTP browser. Everything anyone could ever want when dealing with text files, and then some more, aided by the rich ecosystem of available plugins. It's still around, being actively improved, and a permanent fixture on any Windows install I have to use.<br />
<br />
<b>Honourable mentions</b><br />
<a href="http://www.editplus.com/" target="_blank">EditPlus</a> and <a href="http://www.textpad.com/" target="_blank">Textpad</a> -- these two somehow kept cropping up on a lot of other tech people's computers, and I had cause to use them sporadically. It was a little weird because these weren't free tools, but the nag screens were easily dismissed and no functionality was crippled. I would call them the WinZip of text editors -- mostly competent, gets the basics right, nags you to buy, but gets out of your way if you don't want to.<br />
<br />
<b>Current situation</b><br />
<a href="http://projects.gnome.org/gedit/" target="_blank">gedit</a> (the Notepad++ equivalent for Ubuntu) in the GUI, and <a href="http://www.vim.org/" target="_blank">vim</a> otherwise. Not much exposition is called for here, except perhaps for smirking at emacs.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-86158939202795270742013-04-04T17:16:00.003+01:002013-04-04T17:16:44.102+01:00Deliberations on giving interviews<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Giving interviews is hard.<br />
<br />
I used to think interviews are a breeze, but this was before realising that "being yourself" in an interview is not an optimal strategy. Till date I'd been fortunate -- for the most part, my interviews had been conducted by somewhat like-minded people. In such situations, being "true" to oneself works quite well.<br />
<br />
However, the trick is in sizing up precisely what the interviewer is looking for, in asking the questions that he is. The response then needs to be tailored to match the interviewer's expectations -- not the role's. and not the organisations, even though they should ideally be aligned.<br />
<br />
In the case of a question looking for a factual answer, while the core of the response can stick to the facts, the language it is couched in can make a big difference (firm? conciliatory? with gusto? with a sense of distaste?). This also applies to the length and approach of the answer (curt? concise? rambling? detailed?).<br />
<br />
Of course, the most correct, internally consistent, and confidently stated responses won't do you any good if the initial read on the interviewer is completely off-base. If your approach to validate a hypothesis is Bayesian when the interviewer is a fanatical frequentist, it may not matter at all that you were entirely right. Back in the day, expounding the virtues of JSP in an interview where the interviewer was an ardent PHP fan didn't work too well.<br />
<br />
If you aren't applying to roles that are clearly out of your league (claiming knowledge of a tool or technology that you've only read about, or only dabbled in), then the associated interview should be a piece of cake. But humans being what they are, and ridiculously susceptible to biases, the best strategy for an interview is always to get a read on the interviewer(s) and manipulate said biases in your favour. If you're unable to do this -- ceteris paribus -- the chances of making it through the interview are entirely 50-50, which is really quite low.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-39316259200561826982013-04-03T20:14:00.000+01:002013-04-04T16:52:27.816+01:00Corking it up<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One of the life changes I attempted to make recently is to clean up my usage of Twitter.<br />
<br />
Up until now it was mostly irrelevant junk. Some of it was interesting links and the occasional stimulating conversation, but the stream pretty much ended up being dominated by random uninteresting and malformed brain dumps and running commentary on sports events.<br />
<br />
One of the effects of this obviously an impact on the quality of the network -- a large number of followers were bots and spammers. The more invidious impact, however, was on blogging. Owing to ready access to a Twitter client at pretty much all times, every time I'd think of something, it would immediately get posted on Twitter. There might have been a modicum of thought applied to figure out the optimum way to optimise the information density in the tweet, to make it pithy, funny and/or link-baity. After this, the tweet and its contents would mostly be forgotten -- unless it was really memorable, which weren't very many.<br />
<br />
An instant means of vomiting a thought out meant that any germ of an idea would remain just that. It wasn't nurtured and allowed to develop into something more substantial. And this phenomenon wasn't just restricted to me -- a lot of my favourite bloggers noticeably slowed down or outright stopped posting on their blogs once they got on Twitter.<br />
<br />
All this combined with the gradual flexing of Twitter's closed-platform muscle meant that I no longer wanted to rely on Twitter as a log of my thought processes. I ended up unfollowing a lot of generally pointless "celebrities" and actors, and cleaned up my lists to include a healthy number of people aligned with my more useful interests (science, data science, programming).<br />
<br />
But more importantly, I am learning to bottle up my thoughts and let them age, till they're developed enough to be written down. I can't say that I've succeeded in doing this quite yet, but hopefully, these are steps in the right direction.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-11645626342594089412013-04-02T20:13:00.000+01:002013-04-03T09:17:56.229+01:00Broken thoughts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li><span class="comment"><span style="color: black;">"<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5477855" target="_blank">[O]ur modern notions of wealth, money and currency are built on a type of social proof pyramid.</a>" </span></span></li>
<li><span class="comment"><span style="color: black;">Depending on good behaviour from participants doesn't scale well.</span></span></li>
<li><span class="comment"><span style="color: black;">Labels are stupid. It is perfectly fine to hold opinions that span a political spectrum, as long as they are orthogonal and don't contradict each other in weirdly hypocritical ways.</span></span></li>
<li><span class="comment"></span>How do you deal with a situation where a job has low desirability, great
demand, but very low pay because it just doesn't provide more value just
about minimum wage? This appears to be a problem with the "caring for the elderly" sector, and will only continue to worsen as the average age of the developed world keeps increasing. More importantly, <b>who</b> deals with this situation?</li>
<li>Don't tell me to "hate the game, not the player". I am well capable of hating both equally strongly, TYVM.</li>
</ol>
<br />
Some day, maybe I will be able to string together a more cogent and
developed position on some of these, but till then, this will have to
do.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-60332791633590481652013-04-01T14:36:00.000+01:002013-04-02T07:48:07.137+01:00Aches can be blamed on footwear, right?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Everything aches.<br />
<br />
That's been the constant refrain over the last couple of days as 4 of us climbed hills, descended into valleys and lost our way in woodlands in the course of hiking the South West Coast Path.<br />
<br />
We had picked the 3 legs <a href="http://www.southwestcoastpath.com/multi-day-trips/short-breaks/3-5-day-breaks/minehead-combe-martin/" target="_blank">starting from Minehead and ending at Combe Martin</a>. The first day wasn't a walking day, and would see us get to Porlock by a combination of buses, taxis and <a href="http://www.west-somerset-railway.co.uk/" target="_blank">steam trains</a>. We then proceeded to walk about 45 kms over the next two days (<a href="http://www.southwestcoastpath.com/walksdb/137/" target="_blank">Porlock to Lynton</a>, <a href="http://www.southwestcoastpath.com/walksdb/138/" target="_blank">Lynton to Combe Martin</a>), fuelled (for the most part) by a healthy combination of carrots, apples and water.<br />
<br />
Swayed by their sleek appearance and a little marketing-speak, I (and another member of the party) had decided to don <a href="http://www.vivobarefoot.com/uk/mens/evo-ii-dk-grey-red-8615.html" target="_blank">"barefoot" trail-running shoes</a> for the trip, instead of the usual <a href="http://woodlandworldwide.com/productdetails.aspx?id=656" target="_blank">pair of hiking boots</a> that's been a trusty ally so far in such endeavours.<br />
<br />
The only problem with the boots had been that my feet would get sore after walking in them for long-ish durations, because they were quite heavy. So it was with great excitement that I had trialled the barefoot shoes on the treadmill in the week just before the trip. They performed fabulously well -- I ran faster, the legs didn't hurt and most importantly, the modified style (minimalist running) was plain more fun.<br />
<br />
So it seemed like a reasonable idea to attempt the hike in the new shoes.<br />
<br />
Well, I can honestly say I'm never doing that again.<br />
<br />
While the shoes themselves didn't detract too much from the overall experience, they do have a rather unique characteristic of letting you feel every tiny irregularity on the "road". This meant that every time we hit a rocky -- or even just gravelly -- stretch, it would be an exercise in focussing intently on the path to avoid landing a foot on any slightly incongruous looking stone.<br />
<br />
Additionally, because feet encased in these tend to land "naturally" towards the front and middle parts, my calf appeared to have become the primary load-bearing structure. And my load is not inconsiderable, so my legs had to heft me over hill and dale without any assistance from the feet at all.<br />
<br />
All of this resulted in every muscle in the legs crying out in complaint at the end of both days of walking. Moving forward through pain is perfectly fine, but hobbling around at the same B&B where significantly older hikers flit around happily having completed the same trail is intolerable.<br />
<br />
The next coastal hike I go on (and I plan to go on lots more!) , it's back to the old and comfortable Woodlands for me. The Vivo Barefoot Neos can -- all multi-terrain claims aside -- remain relegated to the treadmill.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-15910582080558431372013-02-06T08:41:00.005+00:002013-02-06T08:41:57.507+00:00Attempting some Respectful Insolence on the Tiranga Bangle nonsense<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
I
figured <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/" target="_blank">Orac</a> might like to heap a steaming pile of insolence and
generally name and shame a couple of prominent members of the Indian
parliament, who have l<a href="http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/marketing/tiranga-bangle-healing-with-a-tinge-of-patriotism/article4344606.ece" target="_blank">aunched and promoted</a> a
metallic band called the "<a href="http://www.flagfoundationofindia.in/tiranga-bangle.html" target="_blank">Tiranga Bangle</a>".<br />
<br />In addition to being a shameful attempt at capitalising on the
general patriotism of Indians (the Indian flag is called the "Tiranga",
which means "tri-colour"), the manufacturer of these bands is a
marketer called Dr. Anton Ungerer. He runs a company called TriVortex, which makes these bands
and <a href="http://www.flagfoundationofindia.in/Summary%20tri-Vortex.pdf" target="_blank">claims</a> [PDF warning] that these bands can relieve arthritic pain, help lower
electromagnetic sensitivity, synchronise internal and external energy
flows, and that eternal woomeister favourite: detoxification.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
As you may well have guessed, none of these claims are backed
up by anything resembling competent or legitimate studies, and instead
rely on cherry-picked anecdotes, dubious marketing and <a href="http://www.flagfoundationofindia.in/Tri-Vortex2013-FFOI.pdf" target="_blank">general woo about "trinity in duality", "light, sound and geometry", and "bio mimicry"</a> [PDF warning].</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
The saddest part of all this is that the two MPs in question
(Shashi Tharoor and Naveen Jindal) are considered quite young and 'intellectual' in
comparison to their peers, and widely regarded as being future prominent
faces in Indian politics.<br />
</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
In his very vague defense, Tharoor (a PhD,
incidentally) <a href="http://tharoor.in/press/letter-sent-to-those-enquiring-about-mr-tharoors-launching-of-the-tiranga-bangle/" target="_blank">put up a post attempting to dissociate himself with the entire kerfuffle</a>, but still ended up resorting to mental contortions
like, "my launching the product does not in any way amount to an
endorsement of any of the claims associated with it."</div>
<div>
</div>
The latter, however,<a href="http://naveenjindalblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/in-response-to-the-trivortex-issue/" target="_blank"> has doubled down on his support for the 'technology'</a>. He obviously has a vested interest in its success as the bands
are being sold and distributed by his "Flag Foundation of India".</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Finally, I was surprised to <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NewDelhi/Experts-slam-Naveen-Jindal-s-pain-relieving-bangles-as-bogus/Article1-1006379.aspx" target="_blank">find this</a>, but there has already been a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19942103" target="_blank">randomised controlled trial showing NO effects towards arthritis pain relief by wearing magnetic or copper bracelets</a> -- <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19942103" target="_blank">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/<wbr></wbr>pubmed/19942103</a>.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-39910959437461347932012-09-19T19:58:00.002+01:002012-09-19T19:58:57.273+01:00Stephen Fry on dancing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Stephen Fry on his fear and loathing of dancing, from his podgram - "<a href="http://www.stephenfry.com/2008/03/07/bored-of-the-dance/" target="_blank">Bored of the dance</a>":<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I hate dancing more than I can possibly explain. I hate doing it
myself, which I can’t anyway, but I loathe and resent the necessity to
try. [...]<br />
<br />
If I listen to music, I like either to do it completely alone, so
that if I am taken by the desire to move my feet and body (which is
inevitable with so much music) I can do it unwitnessed, or I like to
LISTEN to it, to hear the line of it, to follow the lyrics and to allow
it work inside me. [...] I do
not want to use music as the medium for a mating or courting ritual. No
one would ever select me as a sexual partner on the basis of my ability
to froth, frolic and gibber in time to music anyway, and nor would I
ever choose a partner by such desperate and useless criteria.<br />
<br />
I can’t dance. It may well be true that guilty feet have no rhythm,
but it is also true that perfectly innocent feet can also be unable to
move persuasively or happily to the beat. I can’t dance and I SO do
not want to. Or is it that I don’t want to because I can’t? No, I don’t
think so. I can’t play football, golf, cricket to anything like a human
standard and I want to desperately. Desperately. It really isn’t a
question of being truculent and captious about it.<br />
<br />
The unhappy self-consciousness of the adolescent on the dance floor at
school, or in the village barn dance or local disco is too well known a
standard hero of rueful dissection for me to need to describe myself
in that guise in too much detail. Here were boys and girls my age
twisting, spinning and jumping at each other and they all seemed to know
what they were doing. Had I been confined to the sick room with an
asthma attack the day disco dancing was covered in the syllabus? How did
they know which way to move,when to fling up a hand, when to spin, when
to jump? When to look into their “partner’s” eyes, when to look at the
floor? There was nothing written down, did it accord to some chord
change or eight bar measure that I, in my hot discomfort And pop
illiteracy simply could not hear?<br />
<br />
[...] So let me be absolutely clear about this. This is all a weakness,
failing, problem, phobia, hang-up with me. It is something to do with
physical shame, clumsiness, self-consciousness, pride in privacy, lack
of co-ordination, all of which have culminated in a huge and insuperable
hatred of losing physical self-control, in jumping in and joining in.
The once sappy bendy young tree is now too old for anything to be done
about it without his gnarled distorted shape cracking with a puff of dry
dust, so it is too late to change.</blockquote>
<br />
A man after my own heart. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-83923988778137777272012-07-25T14:43:00.001+01:002012-07-25T14:43:41.389+01:00When Daddy Was a Little Boy - revisited<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It was with much bombast here that I intended to <a href="http://shrik.theswamp.in/2012/02/when-daddy-was-little-boy-or-why-book.html" target="_blank">transribe my PDF copy of When Daddy Was A Little Boy</a>.<br />
<br />
Sadly, a combination of too many things to do in terms of both work and pleasure meant that such mundane activities kept getting relegated to the back of the queue.<br />
<br />
So, here's the next best thing: <a href="https://j.mp/WhenDaddyWasALittleBoy" target="_blank">my copy of the PDF</a>. Read it and enjoy, as I know you will. (Well, really this would be the best thing, and the transcript would be the next best thing, since the actual book has really nice illustrations and looks brilliantly quaint.)<br />
<br />
Note that I do not own the copyright to this work of brilliance - anyone who does can let me know, and I will take down the link.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-30839559382805855312012-07-10T16:27:00.001+01:002012-07-10T16:32:43.884+01:00How programming lets me know I'm getting older<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
You're hammering away at a particularly hairy bit of code (or any other problem). You know exactly what you want it to do, but are just struggling to translate it into the right language. After hours of wrangling with convoluted logic and endless cycles of <i>edit-build-debug-rinse-repeat</i>, you throw your hands in the air, give up and walk away.<br />
<br />
And then suddenly, while cooking dinner, or watching a movie, or in the shower thinking of what manner of pasta to snarf down for lunch, or simply just on the can focussing on your business -- it hits you. A brilliant solution to the hair-puller-outer, so elegant and so bloody simple you wonder how you never thought of it in the first place.<br />
<br />
You scribble a quick note in your head (or Evernote, or a notepad, or whatever) and suddenly nothing else will do except firing up <a href="http://www.vim.org/" target="_blank">vim</a> and set things straight right away. You do it.<br />
<br />
The final turn on the safe -- maybe something audibly goes "click" in your head -- and it's done. You step back and marvel in the beauty of it. You can feel the mystery briefcase glow on your face, <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Q42Qc_wQRtUB3k9KhsZhqzelySpdIL2tnXMPYEOBrye_YzkCyjx6Axge9iLiXSjxEarPFiXGb1hGIQfRcY90G7LeoWxC6ClsqSMeucbxEbYT4-TlOoXeIcG55FSaZlF5dkZw/s1600/13213-avram_grant.jpg" target="_blank">a la Pulp Fiction</a>. All is right in the world again. You are the master of all you survey - there is no mystery you cannot solve, no stream you cannot ford.<br />
<br />
You are also not me.<br />
<br />
Maybe I am slowly gathering up enough work experience, or maybe I'm just getting older and my mind is atrophying, but while the initial frustration and subsequent elation are still very firmly in place, the "<b>eureka!</b>" appears to be happening a lot less these days. Instead, what I find works most of the time is just plugging away at the issue, continuously breaking it down into smaller bits, and gradually piecing the solution together from these little digested chunks.<br />
<br />
"Solution epiphanies" strike about two or three times out of ten, down from 6-7 out of ten from back in the day [when we wrote our code with styluses on papyrus and prayed to Ra to compile it into machine code via heliography]. The adrenaline and oxytocin rush is still phenomenal, but I find myself needing them less and less, since I can be more objective about the side effects and just more productive overall.<br />
<br />
I still end up getting celebratorily hammered over the next weekend though.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-75264094815792972522012-07-02T16:10:00.004+01:002012-07-10T09:43:48.888+01:00You're doing it right<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
Dear Maciej Ceglowski: You're doing it right.<br />
<br />
It is quite a breath of fresh air to see someone who's built a product, marketed it to the right audience, charged money from the outset (and thus not falling into the "users first, money later" trap).<br />
<br />
I signed up for <a href="http://pinboard.in/" target="_blank">Pinboard</a> (just out of curiosity, and wanting to see if my shiny new credit card did USD payments) pretty much the same day it was launched on Hacker News, and it became the first ever online service I paid money for. A mammoth sum of ~$1.<br />
<br />
And since then, for this one-time joining fee, Pinboard has continued to add numerous features -- both asked and un-asked for -- while stamping out bugs nearly as quickly as they were discovered. <a href="http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/" target="_blank">And because it was making money</a>, there wasn't a need to slather it in advertising or the atrocious amounts of social gunk that seem to crawl across pretty much every "Web 2.0" site now.<br />
<br />
The Pinboard blog sees some brilliantly detailed posts and insights on technology (both site- related and otherwise), the site itself offers a <a href="http://pinboard.in/api/" target="_blank">spartan, uncomplicated and flexible API</a>, and<a href="http://blog.pinboard.in/2012/06/do_it_yourself_bookmarking/" target="_blank"> now -- this is what motivated me to pen this screed down -- the database schema behind the site</a>!<br />
<br />
This is how quality products are built - the real secret sauce is the execution; the actual idea and technical implementation detail can be at any point in the simplicity-complexity spectrum. It really is quite awesome to see someone basically give you everything you need to clone their product/service. The level of confidence in your own execution and delivery capabilities underpinning such candour and openness is a refreshing departure from the current clusterfudge that is "intellectual property".<br />
<br />
Once again Maciej, you're doing it right, and I thank you.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-78656708495750861942012-05-02T20:29:00.000+01:002012-05-02T20:29:36.966+01:00Switching over to Ubuntu 12.04<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Ubuntu has certainly come a long way since the days of the <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2004-October/000003.html" target="_blank">Warthog</a>, and <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/precise-pangolin-rolls-out-ubuntu-1204-released-introduces-unity-hud.ars" target="_blank">Precise Pangolin </a>(commonly known as 12.04, to appease the suits) seems to be the slickest out-of-the-box experience of the lot. Unity seems mature and quite snappy on my 2.5 year old laptop, and the most common bugbears, audio and wifi, got set up in perfect working condition during the install itself!<br />
<br />
Personally, what I liked the most was that GParted will happily re-partition your drives without data loss during the installation. This was the biggest sticking point earlier - having to 'source' shitty bloated tools from Acronis or PowerQuest, or struggling with boot disks and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIPS_%28computer_program%29" target="_blank">FIPS</a>. And of course, the murky middle ground of Ranish and the Windows Disk Management tool. Bleurgh.<br />
<br />
Not any more.<br />
<br />
Not only do you not need to burn a CD any more (<i>I think my CD/DVD drive has lapsed back into virginity...</i>), you don't even need to hunt up a USB flash drive!<br />
<br />
A combination of the <a href="http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/" target="_blank">Universal USB Installer</a> and <a href="http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/" target="_blank">EasyBCD</a> means you can install Ubuntu in a dual-boot configuration without needing to use Wubi at all. Simply use the Universal USB Installer to pick up your downloaded ISO and 'install' to an existing (non C: drive) partition on your hard drive. Then create a bootloader entry via EasyBCD that points to the newly set up Ubuntu 'live USB' location. Reboot, et voila. You can boot into the 'live USB' Ubuntu setup that resides on your hard disk.<br />
<br />
Some people might want to leave this in place (<i>dual-boot setup without re-partitioning! Hooray!</i>), but I went ahead and installed Precise anyway. For one, I'm not entirely comfortable with having Windows manage my bootloader, given its tendencies to gobble up the MBR occasionally. Also, there was a nagging need to rid oneself of the Microsoft-centred ecosystem. And a desire to use a real terminal and solid command-line tools without resorting to nice-try-but-no-cigar solutions like <a href="http://www.cygwin.com/" target="_blank">Cygwin</a>, <a href="https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/wiki/" target="_blank">Gow</a> and <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/" target="_blank">Console2</a>.<br />
<br />
After a friction-less install process, all that remained was to mount the old D: partition into the current /home directory to retain access to old files and the media libraries.<br />
<br />
Unity + Compiz is pretty sweet, and once you paper over some of the
lesser annoyances with <a href="http://www.florian-diesch.de/software/classicmenu-indicator/" target="_blank">ClassicMenu Indicator (for a real applications menu)</a> and <a href="http://ubuntu-tweak.com/" target="_blank">Ubuntu Tweak (to smooth out some fiddly bits of the Unity interface)</a>, Precise Pangolin completely shines through in day-to-day
computing. A few hours of <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">sudo apt-get update/upgrade</span> for Flash/Java/MS fonts (ugh), and an <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2011/06/firefox-aurora-channel-ppa.html" target="_blank">Aurora Firefox</a> sync later, it was bye-bye Windows 7. Except for when iTunes is required. Ah well, one can't have it all.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-3410173062926415082012-02-10T15:34:00.001+00:002012-08-16T20:57:45.510+01:00"When Daddy Was A Little Boy", or, why book publishers need to stop being stupid<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
Once upon a time, there was this publishing house called Raduga Publishers.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://librarything-svetlana.blogspot.com/2010/07/books-of-progress-publishers.html" target="_blank">A brief blurb on them</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Progress / Raduga Publishers was a Moscow-based Soviet publishing house founded in 1931. It specialised on output of the books translated into foreign languages. The children's literature was only a part of its production. They also published scientific, arts, political books, books for people studying foreign languages, guidebooks and photographic albums. [...] The Progress Publishers stopped the existence after dissolution of the Soviet Union.</blockquote>
If you go on to that link, you can see some of the covers of the books they put out - they look quite delightful.<br />
<br />
A big part of my childhood was reading, and one of my most cherished books of that time was this hardbound collection of stories called "<b>When Daddy Was a Little Boy</b>" by <b>Alexander Raskin</b> (originally in Russian, and translated into English by <b>Fainna Glagoleva</b>).<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2011/may/13/review-daddy-little-boy" target="_blank">Here you have a 10-year-old's review</a>, which tells you everything you need to know about the book, really. But sadly, pretty much every book put out by Raduga is out of print. The only copies exist in the hands of a few people lucky enough to come across those books, and <a href="http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b11493539~S1" target="_blank">amidst library collections</a>.<br />
<br />
Until today.<br />
<br />
I managed to find a scanned PDF from a library website, and intend to transcribe it into a document with the original images/artwork and put it someplace for download.<br />
<br />
This experience has given me a renewed respect for Google's book-scanning efforts, and I'd like to - in my own humble way - tell all the publishers that opposed this: <b>You all are giant, flaming idiots. Let there be a way for the books to live on long after you're dead and buried</b>.<br />
<br />
To give you a taste of what the book is like, here are some of the initial images, and the author's foreword.<br />
<br />
<hr />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Cover Image & Publishing Info</span></b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjUFVrguwPykfVi-CFaBihBqctEg9x8zLIQf0LeW-BP0M2jZltvUV8XlzK4Xq1HtLGLOT-wSuQUtjZED5cy4Fo5ZH5pvt0axx-IS-Sg08AvdPQegKU5VmeE4Qk0m59IC3hndvuxQ/s1600/raskin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjUFVrguwPykfVi-CFaBihBqctEg9x8zLIQf0LeW-BP0M2jZltvUV8XlzK4Xq1HtLGLOT-wSuQUtjZED5cy4Fo5ZH5pvt0axx-IS-Sg08AvdPQegKU5VmeE4Qk0m59IC3hndvuxQ/s320/raskin.jpg" width="247" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg07_qsAQmOKGU843S4-d-zHTbN0gQwcUmIBBSZceMlZipfY-rL3pLRZHTSwR-Fkdomfzz3kivuJYAwewyqCey_NBeZfB8qyJrBScrEC3tvhx1ttTlzXk1QQ2HjMckLYsKpuAqB_Q/s1600/publish.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="97" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg07_qsAQmOKGU843S4-d-zHTbN0gQwcUmIBBSZceMlZipfY-rL3pLRZHTSwR-Fkdomfzz3kivuJYAwewyqCey_NBeZfB8qyJrBScrEC3tvhx1ttTlzXk1QQ2HjMckLYsKpuAqB_Q/s200/publish.png" width="200" /></a></div>
<b><br /></b>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Table of Contents</span></b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZrTqs11NRVlvZJsoScQ4Xf30yDDBDraICCTQHg6Z4cCycQTnkQWsA3vfbHBrIlpHyIEwwlzI_7_M-7HujPBWB4Uo-kW8nio5zFrHH6qevRLp-9bZMPwbWLC1jlILGjL7KryMdXw/s1600/toc.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZrTqs11NRVlvZJsoScQ4Xf30yDDBDraICCTQHg6Z4cCycQTnkQWsA3vfbHBrIlpHyIEwwlzI_7_M-7HujPBWB4Uo-kW8nio5zFrHH6qevRLp-9bZMPwbWLC1jlILGjL7KryMdXw/s640/toc.png" width="408" /></a></div>
<b><br /></b>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Artwork accompanying author's foreword</span></b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV8zXSUDH_X0uyYs7F8mLWHOXdREgkbgEmh0GWmTYfEz5FeSKVFbnyte-MbV3IrQL8OsL0jVh-R_tDr4vMFFmXMFsUaKzMgzB3Aia_QgixZXwKS9tgbmQR8RH6waYxBUJRKg7a0Q/s1600/image.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV8zXSUDH_X0uyYs7F8mLWHOXdREgkbgEmh0GWmTYfEz5FeSKVFbnyte-MbV3IrQL8OsL0jVh-R_tDr4vMFFmXMFsUaKzMgzB3Aia_QgixZXwKS9tgbmQR8RH6waYxBUJRKg7a0Q/s400/image.png" width="301" /></a></div>
<b><br /></b>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Author's Foreword</span></b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote style="border: 1px solid lightgray; padding: 16px;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<b>A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR</b><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
Dear Children,<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I want to tell you about how I came to write this book. I have a daughter named Sasha. She's a big girl now and often says, when speaking about herself, "When I was a little girl –" Well, when Sasha was a very little girl, she was often ill. She had the grippe, and a sore throat, and an infected ear. If you've ever had an infected ear, you know how painful it is. And if you haven't, there's no use explaining, for you'll never understand anyway.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
One Sasha's ear hurt so badly that she cried and cried. She couldn't sleep at all. I felt so sorry for her that I nearly cried, too. And so I read aloud to her and told her funny stories. I told her a story about the time I rolled my new ball under a car when I was a little boy. Sasha liked the story. She was surprised to learn that her daddy had once been a little boy, and that he'd gotten into mischief and had also been punished sometimes. She remembered the story, and whenever her ear would begin to ache, she'd shout: "Daddy! Daddy! MY ear aches! Tell me a story about you when you were a little boy." And each time I'd tell her a new story. You'll find them all in this book. I tried to remember all the funny things that had ever happened to me, because I wanted to make a sick girl smile. Besides, I wanted to my girl to understand that being greedy, boastful, or stuck-up wasn't nice at all. That doesn't mean I was always like that when I was a little boy. Sometimes, when I couldn't think of a story, I'd borrow one from other daddies I knew. After all, every daddy was once a little boy. So you see, none of these stories were invented. They all actually happened to little boys. Now that Sasha is a big girl, she's hardly ever ill and can read great big books all by herself.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But I thought that perhaps other children might like to know about a daddy and the things that happened to him when he was a little boy.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
That's all I wanted to say. But wait! There's something else. There's more to this book. Each one of you can discover the rest for yourself, for your own daddy can tell you about things that happened to him when he was a little boy. And so can your mommy. I'd love to hear their stories, too.<br />
<br /></div>
With very best wishes,<br />
Your friend,<br />
<i>A. Raskin</i>
</div>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i>
Who wouldn't want to read the book after all that?<br />
<br />
And since it's only about 160ish pages, it only takes about an hour to read. I can use these reading credits to offset a similar amount of time wasted on frivolity like Jonathan Livingston Seagull.<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE</b>: <a href="http://shrik.theswamp.in/2012/07/when-daddy-was-little-boy-revisited.html">See here</a>. </div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-44136204602395329662011-10-31T13:21:00.000+00:002011-10-31T13:36:29.448+00:00Not really life with a dumbphone<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One of the worst things on the Internet is attempting to outgeek geeks. Only one thing is worse, and that is trying to out-hipster hipsters.<br />
<br />
For the uninitiated, I'll try to define "hipster" (in its Internet sense) a little more concisely than <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_%28contemporary_subculture%29" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> and <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hipster" target="_blank">UrbanDictionary</a>.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>A hipster is someone who actively rejects the mainstream, and a large part of the reasoning is that the idea of a "mainstream" seems to run counter to their need to stand out from the teeming, unwashed masses who have seemingly been brainwashed into their 'preferences'.</i></blockquote>
I (try to) pass no value judgement on hipsters, as sometimes I can come across similarly (being a Bieber-hater, for e.g., although I try to convince myself that it's because he's shite.) <br />
<br />
And yet, when I try to draw on other people's experiences in a life with a dumbphone, I come across examples that are either <a href="http://longgame.org/2011/07/life-with-a-dumbphone/" target="_blank">not really dumbphone enough</a> (GPS? Music? Podcasts? WTF?), or <a href="http://manassas.patch.com/articles/life-with-a-dumbphonepart-1" target="_blank">way too</a> <a href="http://manassas.patch.com/articles/life-with-a-dumbphone-pt-ii" target="_blank">smartphone-hating</a>.<br />
<br />
The problem with the <a href="http://longgame.org/2011/07/life-with-a-dumbphone/" target="_blank">first linked post</a> is that the blogger's reaction is a little extreme. He tries out a Moto Cliq tied to T-Mobile, and after a terrible first experience, <i>continues to do the exact same thing!</i> He then moves on to a Huawei Comet (again with T-Mobile), and has an even worse experience, promptly pronounces renunciation of smartphones, and goes for an LG "feature"-phone. Which can still do GPS, music and podcasts.<br />
<br />
So it's not <i>really</i> "life with a dumphone", but more like "life with a non-shitty phone and service provider, but let's start small". He's basically gone hipster without knowing it.<br />
<br />
My issue with the second linked post (in two parts, <a href="http://manassas.patch.com/articles/life-with-a-dumbphonepart-1" target="_blank">One</a> and <a href="http://manassas.patch.com/articles/life-with-a-dumbphone-pt-ii" target="_blank">Two</a>) is that it is <i>phenomenally</i> hipster, in that it denounces the typical smartphone user as being a socially inept person in real life, who dumps all over real-world relationships, <a href="http://fixed-mobile-convergence.tmcnet.com/topics/mobile-communications/articles/160964-smartphone-encroaches-personal-lives-destroys-relationships-ringcentral-survey.htm" target="_blank">based on a survey</a> done by a phone systems company ("<i>81 percent of survey participants said they would prefer being single and keeping their smartphones!</i>", "<i>on average, an adult spent nine hours a day playing with a smartphone and only about 27
minutes per day talking with their significant others!</i>") <a href="http://blog.ringcentral.com/2011/04/nationwide-survey-conducted-by-ringcentral-shows-smartphones-to-be-sexier-than-spouses.html" target="_blank">Except that the study it cites was an April Fool's gag</a>, as confirmed by the company in question on their blog. There's an important lesson in there about getting your data from the right sources, as well.<br />
<br />
After having to forcibly live with a <a href="http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-c1-02" target="_blank">"proper" dumbphone</a>, it is a little strange that there is such little chronicling of such experiences. Ah well, if the mountain will not come to Muhammad...</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6555764.post-81491469020858141722011-10-31T09:42:00.001+00:002011-10-31T11:37:02.024+00:00The Metallica "Angry soon-to-be-ex Fan" is stupid<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Nearly everything in this "<a href="http://inkinn.com/blog/?p=112">Open Letter To Metallica from an Angry soon-to-be-ex Fan</a>" is either wrong, misguided or plain foolish.<br />
<br />
What have Metallica said or done that betrays a lack of concern or knowledge about the fans feelings? <a href="http://www.metallica.com/news/20111028-news.asp" target="_blank">Their news update is pretty clear</a> (IMHO), and just about stops short of an apology. What more do you want them to do? You're taking them to task for not wanting to perform in a - by your own admission - "shitty venue"? And you're mad at them for this? To paraphrase the hackneyed t-shirt slogan, "They've upped their standards. Up yours." :-)<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www2.orlandoweekly.com/util/printready.asp?id=4741" target="_blank">Spirit of personal integrity? Laugh and a half, that one</a>. "Put on our headphones and tear shit up"? Well, that's what the Metallica 'fans' did at the concert venue, and look how well that worked out for them.<br />
<br />
Saying "we can behave like idiots because you do too" is far too childish for someone in the age-range of the average Metallica fan.<br />
<br />
The absolute kickers were these lines:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>See…you shouldn’t toy with the affections of people who love your music…they will react like homicidal lovers. They will set u on fire.</i></blockquote>
..followed shortly by:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Heavy metal is supposed to represent a spirit of rebellion and independent expression but it seems like you expect less from your fans.</i></blockquote>
Allow me to say: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!<br />
<br />
There are strangely unsettling parallels between the thinking that drives this blog post, and the apologists for the London rioters. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04779358031790009679noreply@blogger.com1