a primate on a blue planet

Happy Birthday Mike!

2009-12-11T19:52:00.000-08:00

Please accept this drawing as your birthday gift:

Few links for you:

http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html

http://i.imgur.com/cIrNx.jpg

http://abstrusegoose.com/148

2009-08-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

Enjoyed MIT 8.02 Lecture 1. I wonder why electron and proton have the exact same charge. Of course, "fundamental charge" and what not, but that "explanation" doesn't explain anything. Also, what happens when an electron collides with a proton? I guess all the answers are on the internet and I just need to search around. Also I read that neutron decays into proton, electron and neutrino. I am now going to have lunch at Gainsbourg restaurant which is near my apartment, since UrbanSpoon rates it very high. [Update : I liked the food. I liked the place even more.]

Art Supplies

2009-08-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

I went to a traditional art store today. We used to buy from that place when my sister and I took drawing lessons long ago. We bought supplies there out of last minute necessity and we didn't buy much anyway. I wanted to buy some water colors to try. Yowww isn't that place a rip off! Sure it is awesome to look around and everything but the prices are crazy to me. Definitely not affordable to the stereotypical 'starving artist'. I bought just a small drawing set which had sketching supplies (graphite, charcoal, sanguine etc). Amazon seems to be a far cheaper place for water colors. I'll be buying from them. I wonder where real artists buy their supplies.

Puppies

2009-08-08T22:25:00.000-07:00

I am learning. I drew it seeing the pic. Settled down at about 9:15 and drew for an hour. Next time, something less negative-spacey.

credit

Ferry Ride to Bremerton

2009-07-22T20:59:00.000-07:00

Weather has been amazing. I was going home from work yesterday evening and I didn't have the heart to just head home and waste the warm evening. So I took the Seattle Downtown to Bremerton ferry and came back in the same boat. It was a two hour ride and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It was fun to focus on little details like the pattern of wavelets on the water. There were many layers of them and varying levels of intensity and size. Observing things like that for more than a few minutes at a time gives a thrill as mind is relieved from drifting to current issues and running thoughts about them in an infinite loop.

Since it is a commuter ferry, it is really inexpensive. It cost me just $6.75 for west-bound travel and all east bound travels are free.

I went to Bainbridge Island couple of weeks ago like that and walked around in the island for an hour. Bremerton route was more fun.

2009-06-30T20:46:00.000-07:00

Sad about MJ's :-(

My favorites of his are:

Billie Jean
Smooth Criminal
Bad
Beat It
They Don't Care About Us
Black or White

(pretty much in that order)

Though 'Billie Jean' is my most favorite, it makes me sad when I listen to it too many times... all the crazies he had to deal with even back then.

=====

Recently watched movies: (in the past few months, most recent first)

Up (awesome)
Hancock (piece of shit)
The Hudsucker Proxy (enjoyed)
3:10 to Yuma (enjoyed)
Vitus (i loved it. awesome.)
Primer (wow + whoa)
Rat Race (very few funny bits)
The Truman Show (yup, watched it so late. enjoyed.)
The Darjeeling Limited (enjoyed it)
Dogma (seeing it again. of course i liked it)
Tropic Thunder (enjoyed it)

=====

I bought a Kindle DX. I love it. It is amazing.

=====

Currently Reading:

The Annotated Turning
GEB
ANSI Common Lisp [pg]

=====

I am now doing an "hour of learning" every day, where I spend 15 minutes each on 4 different subjects. This reduces my senseless browsing around that leaves me fatigued. I am finding that I am spending more than the 15 minutes and in more than 4 different subjects, as I am getting too engrossed. This activity feels awesome. I am keeping detailed log but I don't plan to publish them for privacy reasons. The subjects I touched in my today's session were : lighttpd, boto.py, pg' ansi cl, emacs, linux, python, analysis of genes and genomes. I ended up spending way more than an hour ;)

2009-05-13T16:15:00.000-07:00

Changed the title to something more appropriate.

It used to be "Just Curious..." which was kinda huh?, kinda blah, kinda meh and kinda blah again. "a primate on a blue planet" is more in line with my current perspective, which no doubt will soon change.

This is not to be particularly taken as an attempt to brag about my opposable thumbs. I just use them to hit the space bar.

2009-05-12T23:40:00.000-07:00

I cleared more than half of the storage space that I am renting. It was quite a workout, hauling stuff, sorting them and donating as much as possible. Then, after picking up pizza and some immediately needed groceries, I stopped by my friend Prakash's house to pick up something. It was quite late. Still he force fed me. He had his mom and wife on his team. I was out numbered. I am sure I could have convinced the baby to be on my side but he was fast asleep, not caring about the noise of our lousy jokes and unmusical laughter. Chapati + garbanzo beans curry combination was delicious, but it didn't take long for my eyes to start rolling into their sockets on being over stuffed. That was taken as a cue to serve more. I am a fat penguin today.

There is something about showing love through food. It works.

I slowly hobbled back to my car more than an hour later. Only then did I remember that I had parked on the fire lane, with blinkers on, as I expected to be back well within three minutes.

org-mode marathon

2009-05-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

Few days ago, I learned emacs org-mode for almost 10 hours straight. It was FUN. It felt like org-mode was loaded into my brain Matrix-style. I saw couple of videos, read through the manual and tried out my made-up examples. I read the manual cover-to-cover, metaphorically of course. If you are a more of a literal kind of person, I mean that I read the manual first-link to last-link. I skipped only the sections that described features that I thought I'll never use.

org-mode is beautiful. I had a lot of omfg moments. I believe it is going to have a significant positive impact on how I get and keep my ducks in a row. I won't go into the details here, but I'll just say why org-mode is better than all the other organize-your-stuff / project planning softwares out there: It is notes-centric rather than task-centric. Learn more if that makes you curious. Some people have learned Emacs just to be able to use org-mode, I hear!

I've become a fan of marathon learning sessions. There was a time when I prided my multi-tasking skills. I was just fooling myself. Interrupted time makes for pretty low quality time. I'd like to try this Quality Recluse Time type of effort on few other things I want to grok. 'Lisp Macros' is what comes to mind first. I've put off learning Lisp Macros for long enough, I suppose. I kind of know it but I want to learn it well. I mean, *really* learn it well. Ironically, that is how I've put it off for this long - I should just start.

Notes : Technology & Courage

2009-05-07T18:45:00.000-07:00

I reread 'Technology and Courage' [pdf] last Thursday, making effective use of the time waiting to go to my weekly motorcycle meet. I took notes this time. By the way, I had an awesome time at the meet, at Pike Place Brewery. The Kilt Lifters did live up to their name.

These notes were a result of liberal paraphrasing... So read the original for accuracy.

It is all about courage. We almost never look at it like that.
Do warm up projects. IMPORTANT
Identify your failures of courage. This is difficult as it comes well disguised.

"I am too busy with a more important task"
"No one will be interested in my work"
"Can't show. It is not quite done yet"
"I have to analyze this further"
"Let us be just reasonable here"

Long vacation / Sabbatical is great for good work because:
- Change of location
- Rest
- Lack of distractions
Harness pride.
Anglo-Saxon names for things stick, more than Roman names <==
If you use parenthesis in writing, either you are too lazy or your thoughts are still muddled.
Blogging is good. Ivan called it "display file". It gives you an informal start, which is important.
Have courage to abandon unsuccessful projects.
We have a finite reserve of courage. Use it well.
He has more tricks to bolster courage.Device some of your own.

2009-05-05T18:24:00.000-07:00

"If god is for us, who can be against us?"

Answer : You

This is what I came up with, when I once again heard the often quoted verse. Religion turns people into sheep, if they aren't one to begin with.

--------

I liked this comment that someone made about Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indians, an uncontacted tribe in South America:

I wonder if they sit out there all alone without the necessary technology to move beyond their little village, and they all believe that they must be the only tribe in the Universe, because if they weren't, then surely someone would have contacted them by now.

They've been listening for jungle drums for decades without hearing anything, and sending out smoke signals that can be seen from miles away. If there was anyone else out there they would have seen them, and what reasons could they possibly have for not initiating contact?

Sometimes one of them happens to spot an airplane passing by, but he is instantly considered a nutjob, and the event is explained by claiming it must have been a big bird, or Venus.

Neatly explains Fermi paradox, I suppose :-)

--------

I learned today that if you are a citizen of India, you don't need to get a visa to visit these 31 countries:

Andorra, Bermuda, Comoros, Cook Islands, Cuba, Ecuador, Fiji, Galapagos Islands, Guam, Haiti, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Kiribati, Leichtenstein, Macau, Maldives, Mauritius, Micronesia, Nauru, Nepal, Palau, Palestine, Pitcairn Island, Saint Helena, Saint Kitts Nevis, Saint Vincent Grenadines, Srilanka, Samoa, Seychelles, Tuvalu, Vanuatu

[Source : VisaHQ]

If you are a citizen of a first world country, many more countries will let you in without a visa. It would be ideal to be a Canadian - as people will be friendlier to you than, say, if you are an American.

My .emacs File

2008-12-10T19:43:00.000-08:00

Here is my .emacs file, ready for public consumption. I've cleaned it up.

http://github.com/ki/my-dot-emacs/tree/master/dot-emacs.txt

http://github.com/ki is where I plan to host my public code.

OLPC As eBook Reader

2008-10-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

OLPC was choking up on large pdf files. I installed xpdf and it is working perfectly now.

yum install gv
yum install xpdf

I like xpdf a lot now... It is so minimal and blazing fast! I installed it on my dev laptop too.

Also, I installed emacs on my OLPC.

[credit]

emacs and stuff

2008-10-09T21:16:00.000-07:00

I am sick with cold. It is probably flu, as the whole body hurts. I am in bed and don't feel like doing anything else. So I thought I'll type up a blog post.

I will try to keep this post to be about what I did and what I am doing, while avoiding what I plan to do. By now most of you are pissed about my grandiose plans that I blog about and don't follow up on.

One on the most productive things that I did was to learn the text-editor-slash-operating-system emacs. I was using vim to edit files in my remote webserver instances. I promise you that emacs kicks ass. Seriously. It is a joy to use it. I has so much fun tinkering with my .emacs file. Of course I've barely scratched the surface but it gives my such a happy feeling when I get a boring task done in a blink with keyboard macros.

For example, I am on-call this week at my day job. I got called in the middle of the night to rerun a set of programs. I had to write dumb code like this:

For list of jobs:
somepgm25
somepgm33
somepgm04
somepgm11

Create:
JOB SOMEPGM25
RUN OCT 9 2008
ENDJOB

JOB SOMEPGM33
RUN OCT 9 2008
AFTER somepgm25
ENDJOB

JOB SOMEPGM04
RUN OCT 9 2008
AFTER somepgm33
ENDJOB

JOB SOMEPGM11
RUN OCT 9 2008
AFTER somepgm04
ENDJOB

But I had to do this crap work more than 30 programs.

Here is the macro that I recorded:

M-d ;; kill-word
JOB ;; self-insert-command * 3
SPC ;; self-insert-command
S-C-y
M-B
M-U
RET ;; newline
2*SPC ;; self-insert-command
RUN ;; self-insert-command * 3
SPC ;; self-insert-command
OCT ;; self-insert-command * 3
SPC ;; self-insert-command
9 ;; self-insert-command
SPC ;; self-insert-command
2008 ;; self-insert-command * 4
RET ;; newline
TAB ;; indent-for-tab-command
AFE ;; self-insert-command * 3
DEL ;; delete-backward-char
TER ;; self-insert-command * 3
SPC ;; self-insert-command
S-C-y
M-Y
RET ;; newline
ENDJOB ;; self-insert-command * 6
RET ;; newline

It probably looks complex if you have never used emacs, but it is ridiculously simple. It is just a matter of starting the recording process and doing what you would do anyway.

So, my point is: though it is in no way earth shattering, it came in handy in the middle of the night and it made a guy smile who would have been cursing otherwise.

My thought is that you can make most of the dull tasks interesting. I am specifically saying "most" for a reason. You are out of luck if you have a micromanaging mofo for a manager.

I am typing this post in emacs of course! What did you think?

Not only this, I love how I can ssh to my instance on AWS and run emacs there. Coding is fun again. Especially because I am discovering emacs tricks everyday. I feel like how I felt when I discovered MSExcel macros when I first started working.

I was going to write about how I -- climbed the Seattle Columbia tower, ran a half-marathon across the 520 floating bridge, flew in a hot air balloon, flew a glider myself, revamped IWS with what I am learning from "Don't Make Me Think", enjoyed reading 'The Day Of The Jackal' etc but I'll blog about them later. I've rambled too much today. Also I'll blog about how Stevey is awesome.

The Amusement Ride Ahead

2008-06-15T13:46:00.000-07:00

I love to build things. But I hate certain annoying characteristics of the real world. If I were to sculpt a cool looking statue of Venus, a one second lapse in concentration can end up ruining days of work. Attempts at correcting lopsided breasts of Venus result in smaller ones on each iteration.

It is sad that most of the programming methods used in corporations are as inflexible as sculpting.

I am lucky in my current job that I am a team-of-one for the tools I have to code. I interact with many but code in isolation. Freedom to do your work your way is the best perk, I suppose. For instance, no one forces me to code in Java.

Corporate inflexibility is brought in using seemingly benevolent requirements such as "coding standards", "detailed design documents" and "best practices".

Apart from such procedural inflexibilities, there are, of course, other issues. People.

"Happy Coding" can scale to bigger programming teams too. But it requires the absence of control freaks, credit leeches, fragile egos, passive aggressive types and various other corporate scum. Obviously, bigger the coding team, more likely is the presence of these well-poisoners.

I perhaps used up all my luck. My co-workers are all great... even the "worst" ones are harmless. However, losing my current job is now imminent. I've defied fate in the past. I came here for a three month consulting gig and have lasted five years - still as a consultant! Pretty much unheard of, everyone says. Powers-that-be liked my work and kept me. But the mega-corp itself was recently sold for half a dozen billions to another mega-corp. A firm tug on the carpet is expected at any moment now.

What are the odds of landing another job with ideal working conditions and relaxed co-workers? Yes, you guessed it right in one try!

Financial independence is the best way to insulate yourself from having to deal with douche bags. With this in mind, I've saved up rather aggressively and haven't signed up for the modern day indentured servitude called the 30 year mortgage. But the real 'fuck you' money would be from success of the startup.

I don't want to work with teams sculpting programs. I don't want to work with teams doing high school reenactments. So I have to make my startup succeed. I am working on it.

[Credit : Title from 'Just For Fun']

2008-03-15T12:16:00.000-07:00

First off, I'll give you a bunch of twittery updates, so that I can resume regular blogging after that. This is kind of like what you do on the first day in gym after a month long break... you just try to wake up all different muscles.

I read "Ender's Game" and I would recommend it to everyone. I'll be reading the sequel after a break. I am now reading:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - page 146
Gödel, Escher & Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - started
The Little Schemer - page 80

I went snow-boarding just once. I hope to go few more times before they close down.

I am doing the big climb tomorrow. I'll be climbing the 69 floors in the Columbia tower. I am excited about it.

I've learned ping-pong. I don't suck as much at it any more. I play twice or thrice almost everyday at work. Thom, my colleague, coached me by kicking my ass several times a day, handing me really humbling defeats. I kept at it and now I make him sweat - although he still wins. I do those crazy slams now, to the audience's cheers and my opponent's dismay.

Living room has been reconfigured now. It is a lot more comfortable. We have a new black leather couch. I set up my old laptop to serve as media center for the home and hooked up the audio system, TV, iPod etc. I'll be hooking up a monster hard disk to it too. Now we watch even the Netflix online streaming movies using TV. I use RealVNC to remotely control the media center laptop from the laptop on my lap :-) RealVNC is awesome by the way.

I am doing exploratory programming regarding startups... nothing concrete yet.

My sis got a Macbook and my friend got an iPod Touch. I am waiting for OLPC to arrive. They said it should be here in a week or so.

I plan to learn these now:

Berkeley DB - I've read about it. I'll be playing with it now
Advanced Pylons - I need to learn this asap so that I won't be reinventing

Oh I almost forgot! I had about 1300 unread emails in my Gmail inbox. I cleaned them all up. I cleaned up my work inbox too. I am cleaning up all my pesky little tasks - you know, in line with Getting Things Done. I need to solve the clutter+procrastination related stress once and for all. I've also adopted a more minimalistic lifestyle - but that is worth a whole big blog post by itself.

Reading...

2008-02-29T22:16:00.000-08:00

... "Ender's Game". Very interesting.

nearing the end....

Inequality Of Time

2008-01-08T16:33:00.000-08:00

Bad News: Higher Income = Less Leisure Time? The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss:

... a certain class of pundits and politicians are quick to see any increase in income inequality as a problem that needs fixing—usually through some form of redistributive taxation. Applying the same philosophy to leisure, you could conclude that something must be done to reverse the trends of the past 40 years—say, by rounding up all those folks with extra time on their hands and putting them to (unpaid) work in the kitchens of their “less fortunate” neighbors. If you think it’s OK to redistribute income but repellent to redistribute leisure, you might want to ask yourself what—if anything—is the fundamental difference.

From economist Steven Landsburg

Hmmm... Thought provoking...

2008-01-03T21:54:00.000-08:00

Done

Read 'Worse Is Better'
Fixed Annoyance: Google Toolbar Bookmark In Ubuntu Gutsy
Read Beginning Python [APress]

Closures
Collecting Parameters
Unpacking Arguments

Read few pages of 'The Little Schemer'

New Year Gift From Our Rich Uncle Mike

2008-01-03T21:36:00.000-08:00

We went to the Space Needle to watch the new year fireworks. There were some hiccups. They had to ditch the computer and do it manually. Can you guess which operating system that computer was running?

It was priceless to watch. One lady standing near me yelled "Come on Seattle! We are on national television!!" I hope 2009 fireworks will be triggered using a Linux machine (preferably Debian-Stable)

New Year Gift From Me: 'Seasons of Love' from the movie Rent

Introspection

2007-12-31T21:43:00.000-08:00

23andMe is my favorite startup of 2007.

From: Kirubakaran
Sent: December 27, 2007
To: 23andMe Help
Subject: RE: Can you...?

Thanks. It will be really cool to look at my raw machine code and write my own code to parse it :-) If you can let me know when you offer that, I'd buy immediately.

Thanks,
Kirubakaran.

-----Original Message-----
From: 23andMe Help
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2007
To: Kirubakaran
Subject: RE: Can you...?

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in 23andMe. Our service characterizes your genome at more than 580,000 points, known as SNPs, where people tend to differ from one another. Ongoing scientific research is determining how these SNPs, or Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, affect an individual's chances of having particular traits or developing certain medical
conditions.

23andMe's web-based service offers an assortment of tools that let you view your data with regard to certain genetic associations, and also in the context of ancestry, the global gene pool and, family relationships. Our tool set also includes Genome Explorer, which allows you to browse all 580,000 points of your raw genetic data by SNP, gene or chromosomal location. At this time 23andMe does not have a way to give customers their genetic data on a CD, flash drive or other downloadable or stored format. But we are working to make that possible, and hope to be able to distribute raw data to our customers in the near future.

Regards,
The 23andMe Team

--------------- Original Message ------------------

From: Kirubakaran
To: help@23andme.com
Date: 12/26/2007
Subject: Can you...?

Hi,

I am planning to order your product in www.23andme.com
I have question though: Will you allow me to download my genome?

I understand it takes around 3GB to fit this information. Can you ship it to me in a DVD?

Thanks,
Kirubakaran.

2008!

2007-12-31T20:07:00.000-08:00

Plan for 2008 : Be More Audacious

I have some serious goals for 2008. My entire focus is on creating a successful startup.

I do get "free" time besides my focussed effort. This is where I plan to fit in all the other stuff. It is pretty much a given that the main startup that I will be working on will not succeed and a derivate of it will be The One. It is due to the simple fact that you cannot predict something that doesn't exist yet. However, the startup that I work on with full effort will be the battering ram with which the doors of opportunities can be opened. I've seen this happen again and again in my work. I will be working on something very seriously and will get inspiration to do something else. This fact doesn't diminish the importance of the primary task. Without such focussed effort, the derivative inspiration wouldn't come in the first place.

I can give numerous examples from my experience but each of them are worth a separate post. One quick example I can give is: I was working hard for a programming competition in school. My friend Pradeep was also working on his project. He wanted to construct some line drawings for that and asked me to help - as it was taking a long time to get it right. I wrote a quick tool to interactively draw shapes and then have the program spit out the code that will create the shapes. Then I got interested in that tool, abandoned my original project which now looked lame compared to this tool, and rewrote it into something presentable to an audience. That was the first public programming contest that I won.

Besides kicking some serious ass regarding startups, I plan to learn lots of new things in subjects I am totally unaware of. Math and computer science are already in the radar. I will grok some Genomics. I think this is where the puck is going to be. Looking forward to an exciting projectile vomit filled 2008.

Bye Bye 2007

2007-12-31T17:04:00.000-08:00

There is nothing as great as good old fashioned last-minute-rush to get something done. I promised my friend that the number of my blog posts this year would be a perfect square. It happened to be perfect squares in the past - although I didn't try to make it that way. [144,100,__ - I am trying to fill in the blanks with 49].

Could I have done more in 2007? Regrets are for losers and ONWARD we march :-)

Here are few notable things I did:

YC Winter Founder Program
I applied for WFP Y Combinator funding, for my startup AdheSieve. It was not selected. The process of submitting the application itself was a new experience. One big positive outcome was that I talked to my current manager at my day job about my startup plans. I didn't want to do anything behind his back as he has done a lot for me - and also because doing something behind someone's back is just plain creepy. He was extremely supportive and encouraged me to make it big. I am continuing my efforts - moonlighting basically. I pretty much threw out the AdheSieve idea though.

Web Apps
I know much more about web applications than I ever did. I have internalized various things, which mean I can roll out a webapp in hours when I think of something. I'll be putting my webapp muscles to work in near future ;-) Expect some serious kick ass apps. If you want to invest in my company, do so soon. You don't want to miss the next Google.

Linux, Exclusively
Ever since I first started using Linux, I've been a loud mouthed advocate. My friend TVK and I won Rs.100 in a college debate (Windows vs Linux). :-D But all my computers so far had been dual-boots. Although I rarely booted into Windows, I had it there. When I bought my new Thinkpad T61 few months ago, I made it an exclusively Linux machine. Finally! I intend to get the Vista tax back by going to small claims court. I've made videos of not accepting the Vista EULA . I have not filed the claim yet. At the very least, it will make a funny YouTube video.

Patent Pending, Almost
My friend Mark and I came really close to getting a patent. I bought three books on the subject and started reading earnestly. Really interesting books. You should read them even if you are not thinking of getting patents: (like digging a well before you are thirsty)

Patent Pending In 24 Hours
Patent It Yourself
How To Make Patent Drawings

It turns out that prior art for our invention exists. Hmmm. Anyway, the whole activity of excited discussions over lunch every day and sharing dreams of what we were going to do after we cash out has got me all psyched up. It will be really cool to invent something! Now, THAT would be achieving my childhood dream.

Drawing Lessons
My sister and I took one full quarter of drawing lessons. I can say that I see things a bit differently now. I feel that my patience has improved too. I don't remember doing anything else ever for three hours straight. That is good. I sometimes have a sneaky suspicion that I have ADD or ADHD or whatever. It may be that I am just being childish. If I can draw a still-life of eggs on a white paper plate for three hours, I guess I can safely assume that I am okay.

Skills
Learned snow-boarding and inline skating, early this year. I found out that I enjoy snow boarding much more than skiing. It is a LOT more fun. I learned several new tricks in playing Racquetball.

Instant Word Search

2007-12-31T16:30:00.000-08:00

Instant Word Search was one of the best things I did in 2007. It is a toy application and anyone can write it in a day or less. I know. But I learned a lot in the process of creating it. I will try to explain.

I was working on my startup - which was trying to empower small business with easy client management tools. I was getting nowhere. I wanted to play with Javascript and Python frameworks. I wanted a simple but interesting application. So I wrote a small application over the afternoon and called it "Instant Word Search".

Writing it was fun. I did some nifty things to make it fast. It was hosted as a CGI application. So the fastest it could get was not fast enough. 'Mechanical Turks' gave me feedback that was very eye opening. I used this need for speed situation to learn all about Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and moved the application there. There I played with lighttpd. I did lot of UI improvements based on what the real users were saying.

In the mean time, I showed the app to my friend Manikantan. I was (am) shy about showing it to anyone, as it was a very trivial app. I was really ashamed. Mani submitted it to StumbleUpon. I was shocked to get 20k visitors per day. They kept coming back too! The reviews of StumbleUpon users were heart-warming for me. These were people who I had never heard of - and they were treating IWS as best thing since diced tomatoes! The feeling cannot be expressed in words, I guess :-)

My sister and Ruchi loved the app from the beginning. But the praise of strangers gives a weird satisfaction. My sister sent the link to her friends. Ruchi found out that the site showed up in Alexa. The app got written about in an online magazine called "Web English Teacher" that goes out to teachers. Ruchi acted as my PR person.

I found out that we tend to grade our work in terms of the effort we put it, while the users tend to grade it based on how useful it is for them. Duh!

Great thing about StumbleUpon is that the recommendation is very targeted. Mani submitted it under 'linguistics', 'search', 'words'. That just worked perfect in getting really interested users. Submitting it to Reddit was an embarrassment.

I saved the best for the end: I got a B-I-G fan mail from Gail. This app happened to be something she wanted for years. She even used it at her work to show her co-workers that teaching certain prefixes to students was a waste of time. Reading her email was so much fun and satisfying. You just can't put a price tag on that. We are friends now and she has volunteered to test drive every app I write!

May be next time I'll try to be less shy about the silly things I create :-)

My Startup

2007-12-31T16:00:00.000-08:00

Here is my very own spartan startup. I have everything I need right here. The dead tree books are there mostly just for old time's sake. I like to view the results in my Nokia 770 (near coffee cup) - which usually shows me the novel ways in which I screwed up. Dell machine has Windows XP that it came with - I use this for testing in IE... *sigh*. My new Thinkpad T61 is all pure Linux. Moleskine notebooks are awesome and I swear by using index cards for brainstorming.

At present, my startup uses: Python (+Pylons), Javascript (+jQuery), Linux, ligHTTPd, git, Amazon EC2 etc.

That orange thing is my startup pillow.

Quest To Become A Better Programmer

2007-12-31T06:00:00.000-08:00

The best time to start was last year.
The second best time to start is right now.
- Seth Godin

I will try to list the milestones I want to cross:

Write a compiler
Write a ray tracer
Write an operating system
Learn Lisp
More math #

Neural Networks
Genetic Algorithms
Bayesian Classifiers
Clustering Algorithms
Image Matching
Project Euler

More Computer Science

SICP
Operating Systems
Compiler Design
Machine Learning
Distributed Computing
Algorithm Design

I am not kidding. I am pretty miserable about the current state of my programming abilities. I am going to follow Stevey's advice. Valiant effort has got to pay off. Of course, as I learn more, my world view will change and I will revise this list. What we have right now is just v0.1. In this case, I think 'revise' most likely means 'expand'. Since you are my loyal audience, I will keep you updated about my quest.

As I explore to write this post, I am finding more and more things that I need to do. Damn. All the more reason to become financially independent soon, quit and retire to a beach house filled with books and computers... Ahhh... :-)

Links:
Books recommended by Stevey

2007 - Books That I Read

2007-12-30T22:43:00.000-08:00

Friends were the first victims of my startup efforts of 2007. Hanging out, emailing, chatting, calling up - everything just dropped as if someone threw on the gravity switch in a zero-gravity area. A close second is my reading habit. Fiction intake especially took a big hit.

These are some notable books that I did read this year:

The Four Hour Workweek - Tim Ferriss
On Writing - Stephen King
Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl
Selected Stories - O.Henry
Stumbling On Happiness - Daniel Gilbert
How To Get Rich - Felix Dennis
Founders At Work - Jessica Livingston

[1] crystallized many of my thoughts and gave them a concrete form and plan; [2] is making me write different and simple. I feel very inspired and might write a book next year (serious - what the hell anyway); [3] eased a lot of my pain and brought me out of depression - you know 2007 was horrible year for personal pain; [4] relaxed me on lonely nights; [5] opened my eyes to several things about our mind (unfortunate author - he was humiliated by a Baboon); [1], [6] & [7] inspired me immensely.

I plan to read more often in bed than I did in 2007. It is great to read some fiction before you fall asleep. It lifts you off and places you in a different world. If the author does the job right, you forget yourself and there is nothing that wipes your troubles better. Of course stronger drowning agents may be needed for stronger troubles, but that is off topic.

I kicked off this personal goal of reading 5000 pages in 100 days - but that was a flop. I'll do that in 2008.

The books I had in mind for the 5000 page challenge were:

ANSI Common Lisp - Paul Graham [few chapters]
VIM Book [done]
On Writing - Stephen King [done]
Software Engg For Internet Apps - P.Greenspun [nope]
Prime Obsession [one chapter]
Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain [nope]
Dive Into Python [many chapters]
Practical Common Lisp - P.Seibel [few chapters]
The Little Schemer [few chapters]
Analysis of Genes & Genomes [one chapter]

How much I actually read are in s[quar]e brackets. As you can see, I didn't do too well. However, what I was doing was pretty productive and I'll blog about that soon... sooner than you expect :-)

The Movie Madness Continues

2007-12-30T18:10:00.000-08:00

On trying to list the movies that I watched in 2007, I was shocked. The list is not comprehensive - I am pretty sure I missed a whole bunch of them. Still the count is 70+!

Movies Seen In 2007 (Google Doc Spreadsheet)

I briefly entertained the thought that I should cut back on movies, and then thought - what the hell. It is one of my primary relaxation activities. There is nothing like sitting together, eating and seeing a nice movie.

[Thanks Ruchi, for your help with the list]

A Simple Way To Become Rich

2007-12-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

You may use this idea to become rich. Just give me 10% of your profits. Losses are all yours though - that is tax deductible, right?

If you are not a criminal, you probably believe in the adage:
"Truth Triumphs".

Then why didn't you short SCO or buy put options? Instead of just talking to your friends about SCO's fraudulent business practices, you could be a millionaire today.

Instead of the countless hours that I spent Donald Duck dancing in front of my sympathetic friends, had I done some research and put some options where my mouth was, I would now have more options to put things in places - especially my feet in Seychelles and some of the finest rotten grape juices in my mouth - regardless of what I would actually do.

I think this is a great hedge fund idea. Derivatives of this idea could make great startup ideas. If startups are born from the conviction that Fat Corporation is the 'Bad Way To Do Business' ^TM, why not take it all the way and build your business model around fighting evil?

Do you claim that Splenda is just chlorinated sugar and hence a deadly carcinogen waiting to strike en masse? Buying put options on Johnson & Johnson could be your ticket to wonderland. What is stopping you? What, you are not that sure now or something?

TRAT HedgeFund (Truth Always Triumphs Hedge Fund) could also lead to a better world. If Green Peace can buy put options in Exxon before suing their asses for an oil spill, it can be self-sufficient. Is it legal for a hedge fund to lobby? If not already so, I guess it can be lobbied successfully that it is legal for them to lobby - given suffient money. This could be like the idea of unleashing solar powered self-replicating robots in the desert to build solar panels from the sand (K Lackner & C Wendt ; Cochran ; cached link).

I bought a significant (significant for me) chunk of Vonage using the same logic. My average price was $3.11 per share. But contrary to my expectations, Vonage lost the seemingly frivolous and vague patent lawsuit and went down to $0.89. I expected that it would jump to at least $7, if they won. It has bounced back to $2.10 since. Lets see what happens.

You missed Enron. You still have time on Halliburton. Will you act? Microsoft, anyone?

Unpredictability = Risk. Since you know that the "Truth Triumphs", you get huge advantage, since the outcome is predictable. Watch out for options expiry though.

Consult your accountants and financial experts before proceeding with this idea. Side effects may include nausea, bankrupcy, extreme riches and/or baldness by tendency to pull your hair out. No animals were harmed in the writing of this post. Opinions of the author are, well, opinions.

[Submitted to: Hacker News(YC), Reddit]

My New Year Wishes

2007-12-12T06:00:00.000-08:00

People will stop using guidelines from medieval times (also known as religion) to live in the modern world.
India will not elect convicted criminals just for religious and caste reasons.
America will elect a President who is not of the current race, gender, belief and orientation stereotype.
Instead of putting band-aids on problems like starvation, we will empower the victims to resolve their problems themselves.
For a change, middle east will be peaceful.

If my wish #1 comes true, I think everything else will come true too. I am hopeful.

Abort, Retry, Ignore?

2007-11-29T18:00:00.000-08:00

When someone does something that you don't quite agree with, the options you have remind me of the old MS-DOS disk-read error message:

Abort, Retry, Ignore?

Do you walk off, try to make them understand or look the other way?

Lets consider each option:

Abort
Breaking up on encountering simple disagreements might produce out of you a grumpy old man yelling "Get off my lawn!" or a bitchy hag with nine cats who the children are terrified of. This may not be in the interest of your long term happiness. Some times you may not even have an option of breaking up, like if you are the mother of a difficult teen.
Retry
What starts off as a constructive criticism can quickly escalate to a bitter fight and irreversible damage. This is more likely if you or the recipient of your criticism lacks the tact to contain disagreements and has the tendency to let things snowball. At the very least, it will ruin your day. You may think that your are only helping the person by trying to expand their perspective, but even if it works, it is usually a thankless job. There are few things as emotionally draining as a thankless job.
Ignore
Ignore is what you do when you are inert. This could be your personality trait or this could have been forced upon you. One example of forced inertia is a bad marriage that has to continue for the sake of kids. A good guy with a bitchy wife and three young kids loads up on hamburgers and prays for a heart attack.

Now I think I understand why there are many single introverts, why some couples that seem to fight a lot are actually happy and why parents are likely to be unhappy. Road trips with friends are more enjoyable than with family because we don't try to manage friends and they don't try to manage us either.

I think this strategy might work:

Don't try to improve others (exceptions: kid / pet)
Develop higher tolerance.
Mention your point in a friendly manner - just once.
Take a lot of time to commit.
Walk off if hopeless.

To summarize: First ignore, then retry a little bit, then abort.

And remember, preservation of sanity trumps pursuit of happiness.

I had disagreements with multiple people today, and I responded with 'Retry' each time, which only led to unpleasant results. Most people can deal with this instinctively, but I had to think it through. Writing helps me think without going in circles.

What do you think?

Cheer Up!!!

2007-11-27T06:00:00.000-08:00

We don't yell "Quit drowning!" when we see a guy flailing in the dark waters. Then why do we yell "Cheer up!" when we see someone sad?

We can carry this analogy further: You don't think before diving in your Armani suit, head long into shark bay, to save your dear friend. But if the dude is bigger than you, or even if he is not, he most likely will take you down with him in his death grip. This is why you knock him out if he starts over-powering you. Only then do you proceed to drag him ashore. I present this as an argument to get drunk with your sad friends. Otherwise, they take you down with them.

My real point is: There are many ways to help your friend who is sad - depending on you, your friend, the weather and your sexual-orientation. But repeating "Cheer Up!" is not one of them. And getting angry is worse - like giving death punishment for attempted suicide.

Everyone, including yours truly, is guilty of this. Common sense is not that common, it seems :-)

Playing, watching a funny movie, going out or any such thing that indirectly takes their mind off their sadness helps, I guess.

Pro*s

2007-10-31T15:03:00.000-07:00

Programmers don't enjoy working for companies for the same reason that prostitutes don't enjoy sex. Initial fascination goes like: "I'll get paid to do something I'll be doing anyway!" But bigger the company, the more often do you have to service ugly old men of code alignment standards et al. Sure, the money is good, it pays your bills and puts your kids through school. But you have to drop your pants, bend over, and code in COBOL and JAVA.

Like the enterprising workers of 'that' trade who sneak in a book to study for exams after the 'client' falls asleep, we work on startup ideas on nights and weekends... with the same hope of escape... looking forward to the day when we can code purely for pleasure and a better world.

Update: Seinfeld Chain

2007-08-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

My "Start Up Efforts" Seinfeld-chain so far:
Thing of beauty, isn't it? It is working out great for me.
(My related post)

Start Up Efforts

2007-08-15T20:30:00.000-07:00

Seinfeld chain is working great for me. You can view my chain here: Start Up Efforts. (The link will also tell you what a Seinfeld chain is)

I am keeping a journal of what I do each day to earn the X. I thought about making that public but I am not going to. I just send an email (reply) with the subject 'Seinfeld Chain:Start Up Efforts' everyday. Gmail keeps these emails together as a single thread.

This productivity hack works, because it is so simple. Try it.

Hide Ads On Reddit

2007-08-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

Ads displayed on Reddit are flashy. They call out to the colleagues walking by my cube. I don't have the luxury of AdBlock as I am forced to use Internet Explorer at work.

So, I use this to get rid of the offending ad:

javascript:(function(){document.getElementById('ad').style.display="none"})();

You can either copy-paste the code to the address bar when you are at Reddit website or (better) install it as a bookmarklet.

Use 'open links in new window' in you Reddit prefs, so that you won't go crazy copy-pasting this code. It still sucks to check comments. Any ideas?

Comes Back To Bite You In The...

2007-08-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

#1 reason people don't blog is that they don't want to go on record on anything and be embarrassed later. "I'll have kids some day and they'll grow up and read my blog post that compares and contrasts the rear end of Jessica Simpson and Beyonce". They think their blog posts will become their Clinton letters.

I don't think that a life time of carefully guarded gray image of yourself is what we need. It is very liberating if you speak your mind and let the chips fall where they may. I hate the grayness imposed on you in the name of "responsibility" (for your future self / kids / "society").

Conservatives make me want to throw up anyway. They might as well mummify themselves. The God that these guys so strongly believe in will shake his head and tell them "what a dull barren life you have led! what a fucking waste! I created the cows and the sheep to be conservative. Why the hell did I give you humans a large frontal lobe?". But that doesn't matter as there mostly likely is no God and these guys are going to live their boring conservative lives and die and become dust. Problem occurs only when they try to impose their lifestyle on the rest of us.

With blogs being so prevalent and Google being so thorough, I think it will soon become socially acceptable to have said whatever in your past life coz everyone would have said whatever themselves.

Few thought provoking essays on the topic:
You Should Write Blogs - Steve Yegge
What You Can't Say - Paul Graham
... End Of Leadership? - Dave Pollard

Edit:
Manikantan left such an great comment that I have to include it in this post itself:

Point taken.

I read somewhere that the only best thing we can teach our kids are the mistakes we have done in our life and assure them that it Ok to make mistakes and still have a good life learning from it.

Creativity is nothing but mistakes/weird stuff that get appreciated later.

FrznSpot - Tool Idea

2007-08-03T22:02:00.000-07:00

Idea: A program that automates the steps involved in MAC address spoofing to access a restricted wireless hotspot.

Simple Explanation: Wireless hotspots like in Starbucks charge you a hefty fee. They identify the computers using a number called the MAC address. This address can be changed with software. If you change your computer's address to an address already let through by the hotspot, you will be let through too.

Warning: The software I am talking about is for use in your own hotspots only - like in your home. Using it in places where you have to pay for wireless (like some airports) may be illegal. (Whats the point then, you ask? I can't answer that. For me, this is just a possible cool tool. I am not trying to break the law.)

The program must run on Windows. Linux users are savvy enough to spoof their way in anyway! The main requirement is that the user should not have to do anything other than execute the program. All the spoofing programs out there now assume that the user is a computer expert. This is not good :-)

In my opinion, spoofing MAC address is a long hit-or-miss process. A program should do all the hard work of hunt, try and repeat. It should scan the environment for active addresses and try each until it succeeds to connect to the internet.

Right now I don't know where to start and what to do. Let me explore further. This seems very interesting and I think lots of people will be interested in such a tool.

If you know of a tool that already does this, please let me know asap.

Links:
Want free Internet? Heres how...

To Explore Further:

Rand MAC Addr Gen	GPL, OS Portable, C
MACSpoof	GPL, WinXP, ?
SMac	I love the name ;-)
HOWTO	(using ifconfig)

Blogger Labels Bug

2007-08-03T21:16:00.000-07:00

If you are using Google's Blogger and having issues with labels (tags), this might help. This is a solution to remove the undead labels, ie. the labels that don't go away even if there are no posts currently with that label.

The bug annoyed the hell out of me, let me tell you. I searched the internet far and wide and wasted hours on this which I could have wasted on other things.

Thought Upgrade?

2007-08-03T15:30:00.000-07:00

I bought these books on Tim's recommendation:

Simple & Direct -- Jacques Barzun
On Writing Well -- William K. Zinsser
The Elements of Style -- William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White

"Clear Thinking And Problem Solving". How better can the promised reward get? I am looking forward to reading these books.

See his post for more details.

Links etc - 1

2007-07-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

'Stranger Than Fiction'

2007-07-26T18:36:00.000-07:00

I loved the movie. Just loved it.

Writing anything about it felt like me spoiling it for you. So here are some of my favorite quotes: (tx imdb)

Dr. Jules: Hell Harold, you could just eat nothing but pancakes if you wanted.
Harold: What is wrong with you? Hey, I don't want to eat nothing but pancakes, I want to live! I mean, who in their right mind in a choice between pancakes and living chooses pancakes?
Dr. Jules: Harold, if you pause to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes

Book Channel Host: So, can you tell us the title of the book you haven't written yet?
Kay: I'm calling it Death and Taxes.
Host: Death and Texas? Hey! I'm from Texas!
Kay: Wha?
Host: Yep! San Antone.
Kay: No, no, no, no. Death and Taxes. Taxes. TAXes.
Host: Oh! Death and TAXES! Like the Ben Franklin quote.
Kay: Yes.
Host: Oh now I feel really silly.
Kay: [under her breath] You should.

Try, Then Add

2007-07-22T16:49:00.000-07:00

It is very important to write your computer program piece by piece. I am writing this post as I have seen many people sit down and type in a whole program based on their 'knowledge' (=assumptions) and then ask "hey, can you tell me whats wrong?" when the program does mysterious things. At this point, if time is also against us (as is usually the case), little can be done.

Try it bit by bit in isolation and see for yourself that it works. Don't assume anything. Test everything. THEN incorporate it into your code.

A big program will have so many moving parts. If it is also doing mysterious things, there will definitely be lots of flying monkeys and clowns on crack. If you try to make sense of such a freak show, you will experience a pain that could have easily been avoided.

If you have already clumped together all the square pegs, round holes and chewing gum, the best bet would be to take your code apart, try (copy-paste) it piece by piece and put it together into a new program.

Personally, though I've inherited some hairballs at my day job, I've had the good fortune of at least being able (=time,budget) to rewrite them altogether.

Good programming languages make 'trial & error' approach painless. I love playing in Python and Lisp primarily because they make this experimentation easier and natural. However, "Try, Then Add" is a good habit while programming in any language - even if it is in COBOL. Doing it in COBOL will be a pain in the neck, of course - but I double dare you to not do it.

Imagine my joy in finding something that makes "Try, Then Add" easier for JavaScript! [Learning JS from the Command Line]

Further Reading:
What is REPL?
Programming Bottom Up

The Book Solution

2007-07-19T17:43:00.001-07:00

To keep my mind creatively engaged, I decided to read like crazy. I used to read a lot but I slowed down a bit the past couple years. First there was a road trip phase just after I got my driving license, when my friends and I went on road trips almost every weekend. After that wore off, I spent most of my time hanging out with friends, watching movies almost every night, playing racquet ball every single day, snow boarding on the weekends & kayaking on balmy days. These were good things except that my reading took a beating.

My friends got married, relocated, busy, overworked or simply lazy. With more time in my hands, I went back to reading, like a child going back to sucking its thumb when too many things change at once. I even considered getting a dog - I love dogs - but my rootlessness made me think that that might be a bad idea at this point in time.

Tim Ferriss had a point when he said that reading fiction is the best way to take your mind off of the day's events. Reading a short story every night felt so good. I have a paperback edition of 'Selected Stories of O.Henry' - I read a story a night. I have not done this in weeks as it gets late for me to get into bed. I should resume this as I felt so relaxed. I especially liked 'While the Auto Waits' and 'The Higher Pragmatism'.

Not only did I want to start reading a lot again but I wanted to get back into the habit with vengeance. So I dusted (shelf) / borrowed (kcls) / bought (amazon) these:

"Man's Search for Meaning" -Viktor E.Frankl
"Issac Newton" -James Gleick
"Making Comics" -Scott McCloud
"A Pattern Language (Towns, Buildings, Construction)" -C.Alexander et al
"Prank the Monkey" -Sir John Hargrave
"Test-Driven Development" -Kent Beck
"Simplify Your Life" -Elaine St.Jame
"The God Delusion" -Richard Dawkins
"Stumbling on happiness" -Daniel Gilbert
"Ender's Game" -Orson Scott Card

That should keep me busy for a while, don't you think? ;-)

I chose each of these books carefully - mostly based on recommendations from people I respect in that area: primarily Phillip Greenspun, Aaron Swartz, Manikantan SSA, Raganwald and Ben Casnocha.

Right now I am reading "Man's Search..." and "Making Comics". Both are extremely interesting in diametrically opposite ways.

I have started working out every day - which is a good thing too. I feel much more energetic than, say, a month ago.

ADD

2007-06-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

Did I mention that I read 'Four Hour Work Week'? Its a great book that crystallized lots of thoughts that were floating around in my mind.

Few things from it:
Adventure Deficit Disorder
Exictement is the more practical synonym for happiness (that is, chasing hapiness is tough; but if you do exiciting things, you'll end up being happy). It has some awesome stuff on dealing with existential depression.

Thats not what the book is about though. The title should give you an idea about that. Hope you read it too.

My Loss

2007-06-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

This pretty much sums up how I feel, without me having to sum it up:
(scroll down for 'Chapter I')
http://www.photo.net/samantha/samantha-I

If you liked his writing, here is more: http://philip.greenspun.com/site-map

Go Team!

2007-06-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

I am exploring the idea of having a team work on my ideas. This way, at least it gets done. I outline the result I need and we negotiate a price and it gets done! Compare this: I get excited; I write it down; I fantasize about how great it is going to be; I put in effort once in a while; I get distracted by newer ideas; the project gets procrastinated to death.

While I was trying this, I discovered that I have a good eye for talent. I found out a great programmer who wrote me a web application in days. I am learning from the code. He has Buddhist inclinations.

Since I am on this topic, let me say some more on Buddhism before I go back to 'Go Team!'. Agnostic that I am, I find Buddhism to be the most civilized & palatable "religion" (if you can call it that). No one tries to bullshit you with stuff like "Heaven is paved with gold" etc. Who gives a fuck about the sidewalks in heaven? What difference does it make to you if it is paved with gold [Au - atomic Wt:197] or lead [Pb - atomic wt:207] unless you are a personal injury lawyer?

Mike mentioned Buddhism after he read my previous post. He mentioned it in the context of figuring out the whole mind thing - his friend became a millionaire and gave it all up and became a Buddhist. Mani posted a comment about it. Now I am going to expand my knowledge on Buddhism.

Argument for religion is often morality. I don't think we need an external moral compass. I think we all have it built right in. The "morality" that is not intrinsic and differs from culture to culture is just social programming in disguise. If you look at me like Jules now and say "example!", I have two words for you: 'Blow jobs'. What was totally immoral few decades ago is now a first date thing! (second date thing for good conservative girls). (I am not complaining!)

In short: I am interested in learning Buddhism for the accumulated knowledge on the mind, happiness and meaning of life rather than for want of a moral compass.

Have I digressed? :-)

Anyway, I am identifying talent in few places and also I am working with few outsourcing companies. Interesting times ahead. Go team!

n = blessings.count()

2007-06-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

Well, this doesn't work when you are deep into some worry. But when you are like on the fence, counting your blessings may help cheer you up. "May".

But think about it: one of the primary tasks of your mind is to solve problems. Your problems.
"Will I ever get a good girlfriend or am I doomed to loneliness?"
"What am I doing with my life?"
"Am I happy? Can I be happier? What could I be doing different?"
...ad infinitum...
What good is a mind that thinks about what is going right? From the point of view of a highly efficient mind, that time could be better spent solving problems (instead of thinking 'wow I am in heaven' all the time). Hence the tendency of the mind to dwell on problems. If you solve certain problems, mind moves on to worry about another set of problems. Inefficient minds of inefficient people, on the other hand, will be happier by definition. But, if the purpose of life is to be happy, then this 'highly efficient' approach is totally inefficient, right?

So I thought of a small list. I don't know what your blessings are - but I do know what your curses are not (probably).

Here goes. Read forth and feel better!

(If you are a guy) You didn't walk into the bar that Marsellus Wallace did.
(If you are unmarried) Your SO didn't cheat on you with your best friend.
(If you are a girl) No worry about getting it caught in the zipper.
(If you are blind) You won't have a reason to yell "Don't you have anything better to do?" at me

If you are still down, Ugh 2 Yay might pull you back up. May be not yet - it is still 'under development' - but soon.

Until then, may be you can watch Demetri Martin. ('awesome' is the word)

Priya

2007-06-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

Priya passed away on 26th April. I came to know of it only on 19th May, when her cousin emailed me. Past month has been the toughest in life I think. Everyone has been extremely supportive.

For obvious reasons, I am unable to go into details about how I feel. I can tell you that my perception of the world has been completely changed. I feel weird.

Writing helps me. I've been doing it offline for a bit. With this post, I am resuming blogging.

The Goddamn "What-Ifs"

2007-05-08T13:27:00.000-07:00

[I guess this post is easy to misunderstand. Don't.]

Sometimes I think I should have got married at 16 or less and been done with the whole damn thing. I didn't know anything then. I probably would have married a classmate. It is shocking to see those "hot girls" now, at 27 (only their IQ seems to have stayed at high school level), but I digress. The point is, that part of my life would have been over. My mind will not be going into blood sucking infinite loops now, taking all my current highly developed hopes, expectations and fears into consideration. I would be a different person now, with a different set of worries.

But then, it seems like I am wishing that I were in prison, so that I wouldn't have to debug someone else's sloppy badly-indented code. May be my life is better as is?

Pure Evil

2007-05-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

Could there be anything more evil than the mind that deviced the "fill your timesheets on friday" idea?

Think about it: Friday is the only day when the tiny cogs in the big corporate machinery feel a little warmth in their heart and have a little sparkle in their eyes. "So, tell me! What have you been doing all week?" asks the timesheet, with a devious smile, thinly veiled sarcasm and biting cynicism, knowing all too well that the question will strike terror in those meek souls. "Am I worth the money I am paid? Is my existence justified? What DID I do ANWAY all week long? Will I be fired? What am I doing with my life anyway?" There goes the "Its friday! Yay!!" bounce. The meek souls are now in "Am I a waste of water and precious minerals?"[1] mode. The contented sly grin of the evil genius is hard to miss.

[1] Credit: Olin Shivers for "waste of water and ..." expression. :-D

Perceived Truth

2007-04-30T18:37:00.000-07:00

Why is it that a negative person is perceived as more truthful?

You may really like something and honestly say so. It is likely that you will be seen as sugar-coating, white-lie-uttering, insincere lowlife. If not that, at least you'll be seen as someone with low standards.

However, a perpetually complaining cry-baby is usually seen as straight-forward, no-bullshit, honest person with really high standards. People strive to please these ~~jerks~~ difficult people.

Does this make sense to you?

Random Thoughts

2007-04-28T12:34:00.000-07:00

Optimist : "She is playing 'hard to get'"
Pessimist: "She is playing 'you are not getting any'"
:-)

"Bless me" said man.
"Fuck you" said God.

Time & Life:
How much ever you are doing with life, you could be doing more, right? I am very energetic and I like keeping myself that way by playing, working on interesting things, thinking cheerful thoughts etc. But there are all these things I simply don't have time for... I wish I could learn martial arts. I've already shrunk my sleep time to as little as possible. I used to sleep for 9 hours straight, every day. Now I sleep not even 6 hours. But the moment I go to bed, I kinda go into a coma and I remember absolutely no dreams... I guess the sleep is more intense now. I put in effort to make my time to be of higher quality too. "In headaches and worry life leaks away" (W.H.Auden) It is when I am worried/sad/upset/angry that I feel tired and unenergized... and life passes without being really lived.

Paul Buchheit:
Linkjacking is certainly not my intention. I really think you should really read this: Whose reality are you living in? Whose reality would you rather live in? Paul has crystallized some beautiful thoughts. You better read ALL his posts.

Money And Happiness II

2007-04-27T20:21:00.000-07:00

I wrote this a little while back:
Money And Happiness

If those thoughts were even remotely interesting to you, you may want to read the article that I came across today:
CNN Money: Can Money Buy Happiness?

Roll Call

2007-04-24T17:34:00.000-07:00

Please leave your name or other identifier in the comment section of this post.

(Or email me at kirubakaran[at]gmail[dot]com)

I am just curious! My tracker shows hits from strange places. I recognize the IP lookup of almost all my friends (I think...). But few visitors really confound me. For example, I have a regular visitor from Ireland and I don't know anybody in Ireland. I am pretty sure that that is not a bot too. Proxy server perhaps? Lets be optimistic and think that I have a human friend in Ireland! So, if it isn't too much trouble, please leave a note - even if you think I know you read my blog :-)

I really wanna know who reads the ~~crap~~ stuff I write :-p

A Small Sigh

2007-04-22T18:46:00.000-07:00

Reasons for that small sigh of relief are:
1. I finally got wifi to work on Linux.
2. I made some progress on Clientish. (not uploaded)

Wi-Fi didn't work for me due to a deadly combination of broadcom card and procrastination. I was using Debian Sarge and recently installed Debian Etch. The new installation was all the more a motivation to get it working - as it was almost working (wifi was failing only in the very last step). I found this HowTo to be very helpful: How To - Broadcom Wireless Cards. (Relevant since Ubuntu is based on Debian...). This is a big deal for me: I don't have to reboot to windows in search of hotspots when I am on the road; I don't have to plug that damn cable in at home.

These days I am playing with Python; web.py in particular. You know how we think of something as a daunting task and keep procrastinating it and when we finally do it, we beat ourselves seeing how easy it turned out to be? Its like that. Aaron's post comes to mind.

I've shelved Lisp at the moment and doing my web application for client management using web.py. This is because I want to get this done asap. (There is nothing in the website at the moment - I am doing all the dev offline)

BTW, I got an new idea today. Seems immensely promising. Lets see! I will blog about it if it turns out to be worthwhile.

When Down

2007-04-22T15:55:00.000-07:00

What do you do when you are down?

I usually fix the problem. But sometimes there are many external factors involved - mostly intangible. It is when things are not in your control that you have a tough time.

Distractions are one way to go. Play, watch a feel good movie, read a book etc. But once the distraction stops, it seems like the earlier thoughts come back with vengeance.

Talking yourself into a frame of mind is another. You know, things like: "It will be alright", "It is for the better", "This too shall pass", "Tomorrow, something will happen and it will be like this problem never even existed" etc.

Acceptance, may be? But that needs the maturity of a saint. If you had that attitude, the problem would have never seemed like a problem in the first place, right?

Counting your blessings. This seems pretty lame-ass to me right now.

What do YOU do anyway?

Money And Happiness

2007-04-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

This post is an observation; NOT a how-to.

You must have heard rich people say "Money does not buy you happiness". They say this as a complaint rather than as a fact. The rest reply "Yeah right! Give me a chance to prove that wrong".

Why do we even think that money and happiness are related?

Sure, money prevents certain types of unhappiness resulting from certain types of s(h)ituations:

evicted again for not paying rent
only child dying, lacking basic medical care
bad debt ending in blown knee caps
unable to afford college, day-care, food...

The list truely is endless...

But not being in these "if only I had money" situations doesn't seem to make people happy. It will keep you from those specific worries but doesn't seem to do much good as you go forth and worry about the next possible thing (a dent in the left corner of the rear fender in your ferrari?).

No one counts the blessings. May be we humans are not wired that way? Or may be we have set up the game (a.k.a: society, civilization, market) in such a way that counting exisiting blessings and being happy is impossible? Animals seem to be doing just okay. Even the chimps, with whom we share 98% of the DNA, seem to be doing better. (Or may be they are not - and we are culturally too different to understand it).

[I have a strange thought now. I haven't seen the movie 'Pursuit of Happiness' yet. May be they've covered these there? That will suck! :-) Hmmm. I should see it soon.]

Money can make people "un-unhappy". This does not mean "happy". Mind seems to have an "okay, what else is wrong?" magnet. new acronym: oweiw? :-p

The strength of this cursed oweiw magnet varies from person to person. Over a period of several years, I've tried and cultivated healthy thought processes that have weakened this magnet. But I am not done yet. Far from it! Most people seem to be held at gunpoint by the magnet and they seem to be oblivious to this root cause of their troubles.

Is 'loving and being loved' the area you should focus on instead of 'trying to buy happiness'. This seems true to me. People who think that they have no one to love them are certainly unhappy, irrespective of their bank balance. Who is happier: a penniless young couple crazily in love or a rich stock broker who just found out that his wife has cheated him with each and every 'friend' of his, except his dog?

But then, who is happier: a young couple crazily in love whose child goes hungry in the night or a young couple crazily in love whose child gets a good meal three times a day?

Money seems to be very important. But only until the basic needs are met. After that, the law of diminishing returns seems to kick in.

It seems that we can work towards being a happier person. The effort in this direction includes daring to give and receive love, nourishing friendships (all relationships need work), spending time with family AND making money that will avoid shituations.

But then, you may love with all your heart and end up getting your heart trampled with stiletto heels. Can't you be truely happy without depending on someone for love? I am not wondering if you should live in a shell and not love - for fear of getting hurt. Thats absurd; everyone knows that. I am wondering if people can be truly happy, all by themselves, while also being open to love. Okay, I am digressing here.

Another interesting thing I observed was that worry about money masks other "real worries". May be this is why couples who start out poor and become rich look back and feel nostalgic. They were united in their worry about whether they can make their next mortgage payment. Now they worry about: if they really love each other, if this is the life they really want, what the purpose of their life is, if their life is meaningless, if they have wasted it etc. Interesting thing is that, the same issues existed even when they were poor. But back then, they were united (and were happy in that sense) like a country in war with a powerful neighbor.

I am not proposing that you should not care about money after your basics needs are met. I am just saying that money is simply one of the many things you need to take care of. There are several other things to take care of too. Think of the lonely rock stars past their prime.

Try to make trillions - but don't expect it to buy you happiness. Happiness needs effort in various other aspects of your life too. May be you are neglecting them in pursuit of money, instead of intelligently balancing them?

But then, there are infinite number of things beyond your control. You can do everything right and be crippled for life by a drunken driver. May be the fatalists are right? Well, what do we care even if they are right? :-)

2007-04-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

Found this very adorable: :-)
(if u don't know rms: wikipedia)

rms with katana

source etc:
orig pic
how it happened
reddit

2007-04-09T10:00:00.001-07:00

This is going to be just a quick update, ok?

I haven't called/written-to/replied/communicated with friends. I missed few birthdays. I haven't done my taxes. I haven't done a million other such really important things.

I did kayak in the rain, see 'The Grindhouse' & play with Python.

I wanted to blog about an incident in Chipotle, various socio-economic topics that I pondered over and few mundane stuff too. As you know, I didn't.

From 04/04/2007, I am officially fully committed to Python - to learn it really well. Its very interesting. I can't believe I've been ignoring it for so long. I need it for a pet project I am working on. I am not doing it in Lisp, as I am planning to enlist the help of few people (if needed) and I don't know any other Lispers personally. Plus its so sexy to be able to just say:

a = (([1,2,3]*3)+[0,0,0])*3

I didn't go to Startup School this year :-((
But I'll be going to "The Startup Project", a conference hosted by Amazon.

I googled on Seattle based startups.

(damn! this post is now morphing into an elaborate one... once I start typing, one thing leads to another... hope you'll bear with me... (However, I have to say I am not sure if I care if you'll bear with me or not (-: Whats your problem? All you have to do is close this window and get on with your life(if you have one), right? d-: ))

(I am typing this in emacs - so I know all the parens in the above para are balanced!)

Ok, Seattle Startup links:
http://sampa.com/seattle-blogs/

I am planning to attend Ignite and other geeky events around here.
I should get over my shyness (stemming from my miniscule knowledge of Lisp) and go to the Lispers meetup in the area. You know, who knows what'll happen.

See this stand up comedy: (stumbleupon suggested it to me)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUiGGzym_uQ
I especially loved the one about the glass house :-D (@ 02:54)
His delivery is awesome.

Here is a teaser for you:

There is a saying that goes 'people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones'. Ok. How about 'Nobody should throw stones'? Thats crappy behavior! My policy: "No stone throwing regardless of housing situation"

:-DD (what continues after that is even funnier)

If you liked that, why not try more?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRLFTP-Qqls
(this one really made my stomach hurt!)
(esp. 3 dogs; trying to run away from spot light; paradoxtor etc)

Competence

2007-04-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

Competent Man

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

- Robert A. Heinlein

The Monkey Trade

2007-03-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

Shan sent me this modern parable titled:
'Stock Market Simply Illustrated'

Once upon a time in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10. The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.

The man bought several at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms.

The offer rate increased to $25 and the supply of monkeys became so little that it as an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it. The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: "Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell it to him for $50." The villagers squeezed up all their savings to buy the monkeys. Then they never saw the man or his assistant; only monkeys everywhere.

This got me thinking... These were my thoughts:

#1
We are assuming that 10a+20b+25c+50d < 35(a+b+c+d). Otherwise it was a net win for the villagers.

#2
Although, as a whole, this might be a net loss for the villagers, lets say 30% of people got interested in the proposition when the bid price was $10, 40% when the bid was $20 etc... (elastic supply & demand). The parable speaks of 100% sale, not 100% people participation. So, it is possible that some villagers got really wealthy from these transactions (if they had gone on a vacation just before the assistant came).

#3
We are assuming that the monkeys didn't reproduce (bad deal for villagers) or die (bad deal for the conman). May be birth approx= death (no change). But monkeys don't breed all that well in captivity. Plus pregnancy period for monkey is large enough to be really significant. Crowded cages cause fights and deaths... which is a bad deal for the conman.

#4
If feeding the monkeys during the holding period i.e. (a+b+c+d)*q [where q = cost of food consumed per day per monkey] is significant, it could be a REALLY bad deal for the conman. To be more accurate, it is:a*q*t + b*q*(t-t1) + ... where t is the total time and t1 is the time elapsed between $10 bid and $20 bid etc.

So, may be the villagers had a net gain? ;-)

On Writing

2007-03-04T21:30:00.000-08:00

Anybody can say you can’t write. Let no one say you don’t.
- Ken Rand #

Though I mostly see blogging as an activity where I reflect on my life, sometimes I reflect on blogging itself. I do this especially when I resolve to blog regularly (daily / at least five times a week etc) and then don't. Blogging is kind of a leading indicator for me if I have my house in order. If life gets little bit disorganized, blogging is the first thing that gets hit.

I've been meaning to blog about (now):
1. What homework do I do before I buy/sell stocks.
This is a FAQ type situation - If I write this, I can just point people to this post when they ask me about this.

2. Some insights I've gained about our thought-process/emotions
This is "I will have a better idea on what the hell I am talking about if I actually wrote something down" situation.

3. Startup efforts
Working on startup is where all my personal non-wasted time is going. Someone might be interested to know about my experiences. May be not. I recently bought a website where I'm going to anonymously blog about my startup efforts - anonymous because I'll get to write my thoughts/experiences in their rawest form and still not be disowned by my family, shunned by my friends and fired from my job :-) (I say enough offensive stuff as it is... that will not stop... this is for especially offensive/pathetic/embarrassing stuff that I think I'll need to write if I need to write about my startup - which has been my dream for ever). I'll still write the regular/important stuff about my startup here - so you won't miss much.

Here is a beautiful article about why everyone should blog:
"You Should Write Blogs" - Steve Yegge
I hope you will read it. I read it long long ago. On rereading my own (this) post, I feel I am in fact quoting Stevey here. So, I'm giving you the link.

I love Stevey's writing. He lives in Kirkland (couple miles from my home). Wish I could meet him some day...

My New Car

2007-03-03T10:13:00.000-08:00

Party Crashing

2007-02-19T21:21:00.000-08:00

That I did on Saturday(2/17). Walked in, talked to the host (for extra fun) and did stuff I usually do at parties. Was awesome :-D

Intelligence / Wisdom

2007-02-14T22:55:00.000-08:00

As you might know, I follow Paul Graham's work. His essay 'Is It Worth Being Wise?" was out today. You should read it. I was feeling bad about few things and he explained that it is okay to feel bad about those things. It makes better sense to me now.

This is primarily about the difference between being intelligent and being wise.

As a Reddit-comment for that essay, I left:

an intelligent man gets drunk and goes for any girl he can get.
a wise man gets a hot girl drunk so she'll go for him.
[valentine's day funk]

:-))

and by the way, let it be known that I am a foolish man who just blogs about these.

Am Back

2007-02-13T17:30:00.000-08:00

My friend Mike teased me today with: "Day 35 – Conditions are beyond description but my captor’s have not broken my spirit yet as I wait patiently for another entry into Mr. K.’s journal. :-)"

:-))

Since I blogged last, I've gone skiing, learnt roller blading, bought a new car (my first), learnt some more Lisp, cleaned up my cluttered room etc. I'm reading 'Founders At Work'. I'll be going to Startup School this year too (Mar 24th). Hope I can get the book signed by Jessica when I am there.

Tomorrow is "the day invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap", right? Enjoy! ('Eternal Sunshine...').

This is just an "I am back" post. The real post will be in soon.

A New Skill

2007-01-08T06:00:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I was teaching my friend to drive. The mind, as usual, wandered. Not surprisingly, I was thinking about the time I learnt to drive. I put in lot of effort in getting every maneuver right. To illustrate: I practiced something more than fifty times, although I got it right in about six tries. This made me absolutely positively confident of doing that. Now that I think about it that way, I guess in order to be confident, not only do you need to know something, but you also need to know that you know it. This is what practice is all about, right? You can learn anything pretty quick. To be confident about it, your poor mind needs to see you successfully do it several times.

These thoughts led me to think about what I've done since. I've had several 'personal firsts', sure. Lots of them. But if I were to make a list of them on a sheet of paper, I would be forced to give that the title: "What I Dabbled In".

If I were to become really good at something, what should it be (first)? Lisp? The thought of that is enticing. Let me make a small (non-exhaustive) list of things I've had going on for a while and want to get good at. It is no secret that I pretty much suck at all of them at the moment. Lets see...

Lisp, Linux, Web programming
Racquetball, Abs, Endurance
Stock-trading
French, Sketching --(done very little)

I haven't been using "overwhelming force" on any of them. I *REALLY* find Lisp to be enticing as I have few ideas that are, in my humble opinion, best implemented in Lisp. It certainly looks daunting, considering how much effort I will have to put in to do anything remotely worthwhile. But this intrinsic difficulty in itself makes it appealing. Hmm. I'll keep you posted.

(Hey! I just noticed that my previous post was #2^8!)

A Brand Spanking New Year

2007-01-03T06:00:00.000-08:00

My new year's resolution includes blogging regularly. Although that is relevant here, it is not significant in terms of how it impacts my life. But I use blogging as a tool to reflect on my life and think about where I am going and wonder about what I should be doing. If this is done in isolation, it can be very depressing. Blog helps by also showing me other fun things I've been doing.

The "real" (significant) resolution needs some intro:

My resolution of last year was "Take More Risks". This doesn't mean I wanted to pursue a career in window cleaning for high-rise buildings. I changed my work-visa from L1B to H1B. I also changed my employer and went into a more direct profit-loss consulting role from being an employee. This is definitely much higher-risk. Although it pays significantly more, if I don't go to work for a day, I won't be payed for that day. After all, risk = reward. So I can say that I met my overall 2006 goal. No more "bargaining" for promotion. I hated the appraisal time where "they" humiliate you using all methods possible... Now I just get a percentage of what the client is billed. But it does come with all its accompanying potential nightmares... but that is something I just have to deal with and not something I need to blow out of proportion and worry about.

This brings us to this year. Last year's change did bring an improvement. But it was not an order of magnitude improvement or anything like that. I plan to spend my free time on entrepreneurial activities this year to hopefully bring a big improvement in my lifestyle. I had this on the radar for last year. I officially started an LLC company; dabbled with various ideas; bought lot of domain names; got started with Lisp & Python, put up some small webapps etc. But they were not intense efforts. This is what I intend to do this year. Don't wish me luck. But on second thoughts, may be please do -- my friend says LUCK = Laboring Under Correct Knowledge.

What are yours? Do you have any big plans for the year? If not, why not? Why not just try something?

[Thanks to Ruchi for reading the draft and suggesting improvements]

Sergey

2006-12-08T22:34:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed this talk by Sergey today:
Search, Google, and Life

I'd definitely recommend it to you.

Linux WiFi - Start

2006-12-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

I have this huge list of small pet-projects that I procrastinate to death. Only good thing is that I am not in denial about it. I've read incredible amount of procrastination...

[got a call... jks called coz they are making pancakes and i love pancakes... will continue this blog after that... this is good procrastination dammit!]

[i am back: 1:19pm]

I've read incredible amount of procrastination avoidance techniques. Yeah that becomes an excuse for procrastination by itself. But, to be fair, I do get things done too.

So the latest thing I want to get done is make my laptop's Linux installation wi-fi capable. Not having wifi access is one of the main reasons I reboot into windows. If this is done, I would be getting rid of a 3 year old task from my to-do list! :-)

So, thats what I will be working on this weekend. When I am not being pleasantly distracted by other stuff, that is.

Losing My Screen-Casting Virginity

2006-11-29T19:46:00.000-08:00

A flash based screen-cast, where I add two numbers using Lisp-In-A-Box :-)

Click the green button plz... And turn up the volume too.

Software used: Wink

Thanking Nature In Diamond/Crater Lake

2006-11-26T22:57:00.000-08:00

Some quick pix from this Thanksgiving weekend. It was a massive 15 member trip to Diamond lake, Crater lake.

Part of the 'group':

Riding snow-mobiles... another personal-first:

I was lucky to get the 'single' machine:

I haven't copied the pix from other ppl's cameras... So, I don't have the group pix etc to share here... Will do later.

Zune!

2006-11-26T22:03:00.000-08:00

In the past month, if you had asked me a question that had the word 'Zune' anywhere in it, I'm sure I wud've given you an earful.

For others: No, I didn't buy it and I won't. I'd rather get paper cuts all over my body and go for a brine dip.

As if my one-on-one rant wasn't enuf, here is something:
Avoid the loony Zune [tx2reddit]

I had to share it coz I just loved the simile employed:

...overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face...

:-)

New Definition:

Zune
... a person or thing that desperately tried to mimic a successful product or person, but instead wound up a horribly deformed copy because they totally misunderstood what made the original product or person successful in the first place.
[credit][minor mods]

The End

2006-11-22T16:55:00.000-08:00

THUD!!!

Two crushed ants.
One was singing and dancing.
Other was brooding and frowning.
Both became dust.
And nothing happened.

One Way To Start A Weekend

2006-11-11T12:19:00.000-08:00

I saw Borat last night. I guess I don't have to say anything about that :-)
(I concur with Aaron for most part)

Got up this morning, had coffee, eggs, orange juice, eggs & coffee (again) before playing racquet ball. Oh yeah. We played for just 2hrs today - all doubles. Senthil and I teamed up against Shan & Thom. Good game. (I am not saying if we won or lost, because we lost)

After a refreshing shower, now I am doing the ~~hacking~~ coding, sit-ups, coding club-sandwich... cu later.

(might go golfing... sun is out!)

An Observation

2006-11-09T06:00:00.000-08:00

I don't have bad days. I just have days when I need more coffee.

:-)

Busy

2006-11-08T22:47:00.000-08:00

I've been really busy in the past few days. I am somewhat good at prioritizing. Though I aim to update my blog everyday, it is not exactly my Priority #1. Of course you know that :-)

Quick update: I've been busy with so many different things... However I did buy SimCity 4 and played it few times. I *love* Caesar III and I used to play that all the time. SimCity has the same blood type as that. I've written some interesting tools but they are so unbaked that I can't share them with the world. I've bought few more domain names that fancied me. My abs are getting better ;-) I play racquet ball everyday now - you don't want to be slapped by me. My scores are still dismal but I am working on them. I'm not up to date with friends (yet)... I haven't returned all calls. I've learned a lot of web programming related stuff - still there is a long way to go though.

RSS

2006-10-31T18:02:00.000-08:00

I've changed site feed from 'short' to 'full' to please the Google Reader visitors :-)

Updates (for lack of a better title)

2006-10-29T11:43:00.000-08:00

While my racquetball score is at a pathetic 3/15 won/lost, I can tell you that I am on my way up. I've started my long procrastinated 'situps before shower' morning routine. I'm concentrating more on my triceps too - as it is my back-hand serve-returns that lose me points big time.

As I mentioned before, I've taken up golf. I go to a small par-3 9-hole course nearby.

My scores were 57, 50, 47, 45, 49, 45. Here is a graph to help you visualize :-)

We attended Prakash's wedding today. Had a really good time. Yesterday he treated us all to a formal dinner in a cruise. Senthil's organizing abilities shone through.

In other news, I am quitting Cognizant ;-) My last day would be Nov 3rd. It is a funny feeling as this has been my first job. Sep 10, 2001 to Nov 3, 2006. A tiny little more than 5 years. I am leaving a safe environment for an adventure (hopefully!) - After all, risk = rewards :))

I wrote a small web tool - a tiny little hack that made something easy for some people. It got over 2000 hits in 3 days (it keeps coming). It feels good :) I am not saying what it is, because, it is something really really simple. It got equal number of up & down votes in Reddit. Anyway, I learnt from this... more from 'error_log' than from 'access_log'. (I love webalizer, by the way)

My observation is that, when you do something new, you learn things you never thought you would. Those side-effects seem to be the most valuable outcome... Sorta like how World War II caused economic and scientific development in USA.

Ta(tt/b)oo

2006-10-12T09:54:00.000-07:00

My grandma has a scorpion tattoo on the back of her hand. She got it when she was a teen. She even has a tattooed bindi on her forehead.

While it is cool to have a tattoo in America,

I find the idea of getting one myself quite unappealing. Ask any one else from India if you don't believe me.

So, here is my "Road Ahead" for you:
"Two generations from now, tattooing will be totally uncool in America"

(While it is rumored that Bill said "640KB ought be enough for everybody" and while I am in no way his fan (quite the opposite, I am), 'Road Ahead' sounds good. ('Amusement Ride Ahead' is better though))

Yeah, it will simply be uncool thing to the teens of tomorrow, because it would be a grandmotherly thing to do. That is how, my friend, will tattoos die.

Ever Feel -ve 'Bout The Li'l Uni?

2006-10-04T21:58:00.000-07:00

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Well, today I am thinking more like:
"Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make love to it in the rear."

It is a temporary glitch in the thought process, I promise :-)
I did see this 1hr 16min video on Lisp, didn't I? (-: (SICP - Part II)

[More: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs]

Lisp, Oh Lisp!

2006-10-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

Discouraged, depressed and demotivated. Doesn't sound like a sexy combination, does it?

In my quest for my own super-successful startup, I searched far and wide for years and I now believe that mastering Lisp is a crucial step. I am not going to go into the details here. I am not going to answer "Why Lisp? Why not ____ ?" (Don't fill in the blank with Java or I'll permanently lose my respect for you)

Since I don't have millions in VC fund, I can't just recruit a couple of Lisp hackers. I learn things really really fast. Really. But Lisp is certainly testing my limits and has totally humbled me. Totally.

I'd like to believe that I've simply been psyched to believe that mastering Lisp is so tough by all those experts saying how they "got it" only after spending 99 years hardcore hacking in Lisp. I'd like to believe. But using Lisp in non-trivial ways is certainly tough. At least at the moment. I've just started with it. Barely.

"Everything is difficult before it is easy" they say. I know I will keep at it until I master it. I am just feeling a bit down thinking about the steep mountain that lies ahead of me - and about how many damn years it is going to take me before I can do something useful with it. Even thinking about it drains all energy. The wise say "Have no regrets" but I do kick myself for all the time I wasted in engineering school and also before & after that. Dumb me. Weather in Seattle at the moment seems to reflect my gloom.

"Little Superstar"

2006-10-01T10:01:00.000-07:00

Atheism: Best Video I've Seen So Far

2006-10-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

Insomnia

2006-09-28T21:55:00.000-07:00

I saw the movie 'Insomnia' (Al Pacino et al) day before yesterday. The funny thing is I couldn't sleep after that. I found it really funny. The reason was that it was damn hot plus I had a night-coffee etc... Anyway I couldn't sleep till like 2AM. But I found it funny as I had seen 'Insomnia' only that day. Either I've honed my sense of humor or my life is so pathetic :-)

Another Weekend...

2006-09-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

Saw the movie A Beautiful Mind (I am 5yrs behind).
Saw the movie Dogs & Cats (I am still 5yrs behind).

Had some great weather... went to the golf driving range.

Went to the Huskies game (American football)... The home team won as they always do when I go, irrespective of the game (-:

I was also working on websites:
http://www.l15p.com/
http://www.093n.com/
http://www.c063.com/
http://www.kirubakaran.com/

Lisp Related:
I saw the whole 'Overview and Introduction to Lisp' Sussman video.
I finished reading this lengthy article too: Scheming is Believing.

Few Links

2006-09-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

I really liked this post that made it to the top page of Reddit:
Lessons learned from a job that sucked
There is a reading list too, which I need to check out.

I liked this too:
It Must Be Tuesday : Who Am I?

And this: Did I a Virus Make You Smart?

Competitive Advantage

2006-09-14T20:15:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of time every day drinking straight from the bottle/udder/hose about startups and related stuff. Here is a collection of some of that, in the 'competitive advantage' point of view - in a pretty raw format.

A startup should choose wisely and have competitive advantage in the following aspects:
[follow links for 'why']

Team
Appropriate Use of Programming Languages
Lisp - For overall implementation
C - For well-defined CPU intensive components like image processing
Javascript - For client-side scripting
Automated Testing
Selecting Non-Proprietary Infrastructure #
Version Control System

or you can get a job... (-;

ZZZ

2006-09-13T22:21:00.000-07:00

I am kinda cranky with sleep deprivation. Rather than pissing you off with some pointed comment, I think it is a good idea to just sleep. Seattle's typical weather today... bed is so inviting with its promise of warm comfort.

I am going to manufacture some ZZZ :-)
(movie 'Everything Is Illuminated' if you didn't get it)
I told you... I am sounding like a condescending prick.
[ if you are tempted to mutter 'just today?', I don't blame you... 'my birthright as the first-born' (-; ]

For the curious: significant activities of today were carpet putt-putt with friends, my cooking and occasionally being generally pissed off at the world (global warming, genocide, internet explorer, spilled chilli powder, greasy vessels, Wednesday...) caused by sleep deprivation.

Are You?

2006-09-12T20:37:00.000-07:00

I don't want to say "man enough" and come out as a sexist. Are you person enough for doing something like this?

While on the subject, here is something for you:
00 01 10

And a well-known personal productivity hack for good measure.

Reading List on programming.

Several Things, Actually...

2006-09-11T22:20:00.000-07:00

After a long break, I played racquetball today. It felt really good. I want to continue it.

I came back from gym, took a cold shower and cooked egg curry. Turned out good. Just finished it off and logged in.

I am talking to Krishna Rajesh after 9 years, thanks to Orkut. He is a buddy of mine from high school. I was looking around in Orkut and found a butt-load off "free" (u know what i mean) e-books (about all subjects - pretty much everything I want to read) from sites linked to by my sis. It is a treasure trove. Like the greedy fat merchant who comes upon a sea of gold coins and scoops them up deliriously and makes them rain down on him, I downloaded gigs and gigs of them. Now I can quit my job and read them all in my hut by the foothills of Himalayas, wrapped in warm wool, with crisp chill air on my face, while sipping my favorite brew of coffee. [sigh] I wish... (I actually thought of including Uma in that wish too... but thats perhaps wishing for too much)

Speaking of financial freedom, my portfolio is doing good. Whenever I say that, it seems to instantaneously tank. Anyway I will say it, at least just to spit on the face of superstition :-) Portfolio doing good but I am not yet a millionaire ;) So hold your plans to kidnap me - unless you just want to buy cotton candy with the ransom.

I actually meant to get started on 093n.com today. It is my domain name for my open source projects. I intend to complete at least one non-trivial project before Sep 4, 2007 - preferably in Lisp. I think I'll do the same project in multiple languages, just to see how they compare. Anyway, the bottom line is, I didn't start tinkering with the site today. But you know what to expect now.

I've thought of a new license for it - instead of using GPL, CC etc. I am calling it the SFO License... for "Slimeballs Fuck Off". It will read "You can do whatever fuck you want with it..." I haven't thought through the details yet - but you get the idea... (Afterthought[9/12]: It will also be a fitting word-play on Microsoft funded "SCO" scumbags and a tribute to my favorite city)

Aww

2006-09-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

The weekend is about to end )-: but not a bad weekend at all... quite eventful, one can say... eth is illuminated (movie), lage raho munnabhai (movie), caesar III (game), vettai aadu... (movie), v4vendetta (movie), golf driving-range 150yds, para-sailing in Elliott's Bay, sunset, dinner@pf.chang's... Oh man did I really see that many movies? Damn. I didn't do even a little bit of Lisp - although thats what I meant to do all this weekened. Really glorious weather too.

I am planning on kayaking to San Juans next weekend.

<excuse me>
Jagan: Dei I am sorry I haven't returned your call yet. Ur email id is in my work computer. I'll email u in detail tomorrow.
</excuse me>

It has been years since I used Orkut. I joined just to get a gmail invite from Google. Two friends from my high school pinged me on it this week. Pretty cool! Here is my profile, if you wanna add me as your friend - you know I am just too lazy to do it myself.

... And I Am Back

2006-09-08T00:13:00.000-07:00

I've been disappointing about 15 people every day for the past two weeks. Hmmm. Not a good thing. Thanks for sticking with me. I haven't returned your calls / replied to your emails & comments either. Sorry about that as well. I am on it.

What did I do worth mentioning since the last post? I golfed for the first time in life! :-) I've been to the driving range few times in the past month or so but yesterday was my first golfing day. I used to think 'oh man what a dull stupid sissy game'... but it is great actually - now I see why 'they' like it.

I did a road trip to Mt.Shasta on the Labor Day weekend with two friends. It was a long (10hr + 10hr) drive. We rented a fishing boat there and raced it around in Lake Shasta. Good weather too.

Hmmm what else did I do? Thats pretty much it on the fun side I guess. I am reading 'The Long Tail', 'The Alchemist', 'All Marketers Are Liars' & 'Practical Common Lisp'. The last book I read (finished) was 'Just For Fun'.

Now that you have been updated about my 'activities', let me think of something "interesting" to blog about (-: I think I should write about my war on Procrastination. I am only doing as good as Bush's war on terror in Iraq but I hope to change things and win. (If I don't, I am screwed) Have a good day!

Patience Is A Virtue

2006-08-21T22:30:00.000-07:00

Thanks for your patience! I'll post tomorrow.

(I am trying to do more than I can and there has been some time crunch... for the "like-what?-ers" in you: kayaked *all* of Lake Union, golfed (ok, just the driving range), saw couple of movies, made progress with the books I am reading 'The Alchemist', 'Just For Fun', cooked, wiped my hdd and reinstalled WinXP, Debian Linux (due to a nasty crash some time ago) and all my dev tools, learnt more Lisp and listed out all ideas I've worked on so far)

(need to call friends...)

Eminem Lisp "Hello World"

2006-08-14T19:57:00.000-07:00

CL-USER> (defun say-it-bitch (n) (format t "Bitch: ~r" n))
SAY-IT-BITCH

CL-USER> (say-it-bitch 123432456)

Bitch: one hundred and twenty-three million, four hundred and thirty-two thousand, four hundred and fifty-six
NIL

Passionately Advocated

2006-08-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

I am listing what I've passionately advocated to my friends etc so far. I got hooked to those things at various points in life, but in retrospect I never have had to abandon any of those. [FYI for some ppl: I am not trying to be an arrogant prick here]

Jerome K Jerome
Linux
Ayn Rand
Firefox
Quentin Tarantino
Lisp
Libertarianism (ideologically; not politically)

"The World Is Flat" Video

2006-08-10T20:09:00.000-07:00

A must-see video ppl...
Speech by the author of the book 'The World Is Flat' in MIT.
I absolutely loved it and it will be so worth your time.

Here is the video.

It runs 1h 15m and you may need Real Player.

Train Trip To Portland

2006-08-09T22:13:00.000-07:00

[Click on pix to see them big. Comment on 'em]
Aug 5 & 6, 2006.
I wanted to do some thinking; some soul searching, if you will...

I made reservations to travel by train. Booked a hotel room as well.
Destination: Portland, OR.
I set out with a small black notebook and pen.
(to trace my thoughts and stuff)

Saw the sights... Let them randomize the mind...
Thought about various things...

Went on long walks... Realllllly long walks...
(I became half dead by the end of it)

Crossed bridges... Took pictures...

Made some attempts at drawing some too...

Visited colorful places...

And 'interesting' places...

Ate pizza in the alley...

Went places in their "Max" city-train...

Hung out with bears...

I met many people and talked to them. It was nice...
Got a new pen-pal now too.
A little bit more clarity in thoughts now too...
May be it wasn't a bad idea, after all! :-)

Greasemonkey

2006-08-01T20:52:00.000-07:00

I saw an guy is a suit, near Univerity of Washington Medical Center (mind you, it is medical center, not the engineering school) showing off his iPod to a lady. She was exclaiming "oooh you are so techie" and he was beaming and obviously gloating. Wish someone had walked up to him and asked if he greasemonkeyed his browser. He would have gone: 'Grease what?' or 'What monkey?' and his tech-senility would have hit him then.

Having made you sufficiently upset (if you don't use Greasemonkey yourself), here is a link for you to learn more: [#]

My favorite script links to my library from Amazon.com - so that I can be browsing books in Amazon and click a link there to put a book I like on hold in my library. How slick is that? I use the great interface of Amazon.com but utilize my local library for actually getting the book for free. Piqued your interest yet? No? How about a script that silently removes all advertisements from websites?

You can make websites dance to your tune. Or you can make them dance to techno music. Your choice.