Sounds From The Dungeon

TODO List

My TODO list just keeps growing. In no particular order, I have to:

• Finish the web app that I've started working on
• Start the web app that I've planned out
• Finish processing photos and clear that backlog
• Get photo backups in order
• Print a few photos as an experiment
• Implement a major feature that I've planned for Mitter
• Finish reading the four books in various stages of completion. Perhaps only three; this one is too irritating to finish.
• Buy an Xbox 360 and play GTA 4, Bioshock

And this is not counting all of the stuff from work! I'm just too lazy these days and need to get my act together.

misc | 2 comments | permalink | 28.05.2008 14:47 SGT

Trip Summary

kilometres travelled: 9235
cities visited: 4
nephews/nieces met again: 3
old friends met again: 16
weddings attended: 1
photos clicked: 378
kites lost: 3
times MasterCard used: 0

misc | 2 comments | permalink | 02.02.2008 17:39 SGT

Ricoh GX100

Bought the Ricoh GX100 tonight.

I fly out to India tomorrow for a two week break. More on the trip and the camera after I return!

misc | 4 comments | permalink | 13.01.2008 01:46 SGT

Jan 1, 2008

misc | 0 comments | permalink | 01.01.2008 19:26 SGT

Email Slowness

I realized today that emails sent to deepak@antrix are getting very delayed before reaching me - some by as much as four to five days. I've set up deepak@antrix to forward to my deepak.sarda@gmail account and as it happens, Google have grey-listed Dreamhost which is causing forwarding delays. I hope they can resolve the situation quickly.

In the meantime, if you sent me an email and haven't received a reply yet, please send the mail again to deepak.sarda@gmail. Of course, this announcement isn't worth much since the number of folks who send me email and regularly read the blog is vanishingly small :-)

PS: I really should get on with migrating to Google's hosted mail for antrix.net

misc | 0 comments | permalink | 04.12.2007 11:09 SGT

Social Networks

Social networking sites are a classic case of the chicken or egg conundrum. The value proposition of using these sites depends on having all your friends using them too. I wouldn't join a site, however useful it may appear, until my friends are in it. But my friends won't be in it till I invite them in.

Inviting is the Web 2.0 form of spamming and I'm averse to indulging in it. So faced with a few new and interesting social networks, I figured asking here would help. If any of you are already using these sites, or are interested enough to join, please comment. If I see the value proposition rise, I'll join too!

Oh yeah, the sites in question: Dopplr, facebook and friendfeed.

misc | 7 comments | permalink | 25.10.2007 17:34 SGT

The XO

From David Pogue's XO review:

Most of the XO’s programs are shareable on the mesh network, which is another ingenious twist. Any time you’re word processing, making music, taking pictures, playing games or reading an e-book, you can click a Share button. Your document shows up next to your icon on the mesh-network map, so that other people can see what you’re doing, or work with you. Teachers can supervise your writing, buddies can collaborate on a document, friends can play you in Connect 4, or someone across the room can add a melody to your drum beat in the music program. You’ve never seen anything like it.

Look's like my idea of a pervasive Ether in 20H may become reality after all!

misc | 0 comments | permalink | 06.10.2007 15:49 SGT

Status

For a long time, I've thought it would be nice to have a page aggregating the various bits and pieces of junk I put out on the internets. Then, when Jois built his status page, I knew I had to have one too. We even exchanged emails about implementation issues, etc.

Well, that was then and this is now and in the time in between, I've changed jobs, travelled the world and learned a few new words in a few new languages, both human and machine. Which is to say, it didn't take me too long to create a status page of my own. ;-)

I call it: Recently.

Please don't laugh at my javascript :-|

misc | 5 comments | permalink | 29.07.2007 23:51 SGT

New Books

• The Confusion - Neal Stephenson: Since Quicksilver was so much fun!
• Earth, Air, Fire and Custard - Tom Holt: bought it on a whim; not a good decision. Turns out, this one is book three in a trilogy of three.

Still couldn't locate River of Gods; it was either out of stock or just got lost in Borders' wonderful organization system.

misc | 2 comments | permalink | 17.07.2007 10:35 SGT

Saturday afternoon fun

1. Translate the homepage to Japanese using the Babel Fish.
2. Translate the Japanese page back to English.
3. Control hysterical laughter resulting from reading such gems as The biting scar classified the lump of doubtful intelligence at size aka bite sized chunks of questionable wisdom.

Oh machine intelligence, how I love thee!

misc | 7 comments | permalink | 23.06.2007 15:19 SGT

Gmail lockdown

FYI: Gmail has locked my account for suspected unusual activity. I have a full archive elsewhere so I'll be able to check old emails if need be but I won't be able to check new mail.

I suspect it's because of the forwarding rules I've setup (which span several accounts) compounded with a 'fake' from address in a few (< 10) emails that triggered this but I'm not sure exactly how or why.

Update: The lockdown has been lifted! Lasted for about 18 hours.

misc | 3 comments | permalink | 03.05.2007 23:44 SGT

Happy Diwali!

I am leaving tonight for Hyderabad. Boy, first Diwali at home after seven years!

As Saip would say, Mama, I'm coming home...

misc | 7 comments | permalink | 20.10.2006 13:51 SGT

Book buys

Roomie and I plundered the library book sale yesterday. Slim pickings:

• The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
• Stardust - Neil Gaiman
• The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
• Sons of Fortune - Jeffrey Archer
• The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer
• The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
• The Father-Thing - Philip K Dick
• A House for Mr Biswas - V.S. Naipaul
• The Cassini Division - Ken Macleod
• Hollywood - Gore Vidal

The previous sale post.

misc | 0 comments | permalink | 13.08.2006 19:02 SGT

Computing woes

My laptop's hard disk crashed last night :( It started making knocking sounds and then locked up, in a matter of seconds. Aren't these things supposed to give a warning? Die a slow, painful death?! Roomie's laptop drive did that - screamed for a month before giving up the ghost.

I don't know which is better: work well and die quickly or work miserably but give all signs that you'll be gone for good.

This is not a good month. First lost some disks at work and spent an awful lot of time recovering data from tapes. Now this. And I just got the laptop back after getting the fan replaced! Good thing its three year warranty still has a month left on it!

I don't think I lost much data. Data from last year is on CDs. Some of my recreational code is lost but all the useful bits are sitting on the server anyway. Lost my messenger chat logs and some recent photos which I had neither burnt to disk nor uploaded to Flickr.

This incident just accelerates my PC buying which I've been contemplating for some time now. I thought I'll hold off till I move apartments in September but not any more. Will go shopping for parts this Sunday.

This will be my first Windows free PC! I am planning to get a Pentium D 3.2 GHz system paired with a Dell 20" widescreen. Some component research notes here.

My laptop is called dungeon; that's where this blog gets its name. What should I name this new machine?!

misc | 2 comments | permalink | 30.06.2006 12:41 SGT

Introducing the mini!

Tidbits from the Dungeon - my new mini blog. Why a mini? Take a look, you'll get the idea.

It's another webpy app. This one I wrote against the upcoming version 0.2 of webpy. Code will be available soonish, I've got to implement pagination first. Which means I've to add at least 30 entries first ;-)

I'll be porting webr to webpy 0.2 too. Keep an eye on the svn if you are interested.

misc | 3 comments | permalink | 31.05.2006 18:54 SGT

Feels good to ship!

Today, we released Borland VisiBroker 7.0! This is the release I started working on after joining Borland last July. So it's great to see it out of the door! In fact, if you scroll down the product page, you'll find my little feature at the end :-)

In related news, my work here in the US is almost done and I'll be out of Tampa this Saturday! I am taking the next week off - will be catching up with some old friends around here before returning to Singapore!

PS: Too many exclamations in this post!

misc | 2 comments | permalink | 20.04.2006 10:16 SGT

On Japanese

A chat with a friend today segued into a discussion on the Japanese language and then I went around Wikipedia reading up a bit. This is a powerpoint style post on what I learned about the language. Hopefully, someone will find it useful :-)

• Modern Japanese uses four scripts:
  • Kanji which contains characters of Chinese origin. Used for nouns, etc.
  • Hiragana, a syllabary for where Kanji falls short.
  • Katakana, a syllabary for foreign words, technical words, onomatopoeia.
  • Romaji - the Latin alphabet :-)
• A syllabary is a set of written symbols which represent syllables.
• Sometimes, the choice of script to write the same word conveys extra information about the word. That's one of the nuances of the language.
• Romaji is used to represent Japanese script in the Roman/Latin alphabet. Clearly, some sort of symbol mapping is required. The Hepburn system of romanization is the one most widely used (esp. outside Japan). But it's been criticized for not being a lossless translational mapping.
• The traditional Japanese writing format, called tategaki, is top->bottom and right->left like Chinese. The modern yokogaki format is like English: left->right, top->bottom.
• Katakana has roots in Regular scripts where all strokes are independent; characters are balanced and spaced. Hiragana has roots in Cursive scripts where the writing style is free flowing and strokes are often merged or dropped for stylistic reasons.
• Since all this is so complicated, there's a special system/convention called Furigana wherein Hiragana symbols placed as superscripts next to Kanji symbols serve as a pronunciation guide for the Kanji. This is usually done for obscure Kanji symbols or where the context is not clear or in children's books since kids are typically not so well versed with the full Kanji set of symbols.
• The alphabet of Indian languages is not a syllabary. It's called an abugida or alphasyllabary since the vowel and consonant symbols are combined to create syllables.

Corrections by those more knowledgable are most welcome!

PS: Wikipedia rocks!

misc | 1 comment | permalink | 18.04.2006 04:19 SGT

To Tampa

I got my passport back from the US embassy today which means it's all confirmed now. I am flying out tomorrow morning to work out of our office in Tampa, Florida for a month. Woohoo!

Then again, it ain't over till the fat lady sings.

BTW, I am taking what is said to be the longest, non-stop commercial flight in the world: 18 hours from here to New York. Ouch!

Update: It's 3 AM on 26th March. I arrived an hour ago and am typing this from my nice mini-suite now. Free Internets too! Now to try and sleep...

misc | 1 comment | permalink | 24.03.2006 21:26 SGT

Funnies

Someone asked on MeFi recently: What's the funniest joke that doesn't involve making fun of anyone? [Link]

I am copying those that I enjoyed the most over here for easy access later.

---

A pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel in his crotch. The bartender looks at him and says, "Hey pirate, why have you got that steering wheel in your crotch?" The pirate says, "Arr, it's driving me nuts!"

A neutron walks into a bar.
The barkeeper says "For you, no charge!"

Why do farts stink?
So deaf people can enjoy them too.

A rabbi, a horse, and an astronaut walk into a bar. The barman looks at the three of them and says "Hey, what is this, some kind of joke?"

Did you hear about the woman who walked into a bar and asked for a double entendre?
The barman gave her one.

---

Guy walks into a pet store to get some cat food and as he's walking down the aisle, he passes a parrot cage. The parrot inside says, "psst! Hey buddy!" Guy turns around and says, "yes?" The parrot says, "FUCK YOU!" The man is taken aback, but gets his cat food and goes on.

A week later, the same guy comes back for some more cat food and he walks down the aisle, passes the parrot cage and the parrot says, "Pssssst! Hey, Buddy!" The man warily turns to the parrot and says, "Yes?" The parrot says "FUCK YOU!"

The man asks to speak with the manager and says, "Listen, I don't want to take my business elsewhere but that parrot is rude and offensive." The manager apologizes and assures the man it will NEVER HAPPEN again.

So a week later, the man comes to the pet store for some cat food and he passes the parrot cage and the parrot says, "Psssst! Hey, buddy!" The man slowly turns and says, "what?" The parrot nods and says, "You know what."

---

What do you get if you cross an elephant and a cucumber?
Elephant cucumber sine theta.

How many Ivy League graduates does it take to screw in a light bulb?
One: He holds the bulb and the universe spins around him.

---

First-year students at Purdue Vet School were receiving their first anatomy class, with a real dead cow. They all gathered around the surgery table with the body covered with a white sheet.

The professor started the class by telling them, "In vet medicine, it is necessary to have two important qualities as a doctor: The first is that you not be disgusted by anything involving the animal body. For an example, the Professor pulled back the sheet, stuck his finger in the butt of the dead cow, with drew it and stuck it in his mouth. Go ahead and do the same thing," he told his students.

The students freaked out, hesitated for several minutes. But eventually took turns sticking a finger in the anal opening of the dead cow and sucking on it. When everyone finished, the Professor looked at them and told them, "The second most important quality is observation. I stuck in my middle finger and sucked on my index finger. Now learn to pay attention."

---

A guy writing to the Bombay Zoo:

Dear Sir, Please send me two mongooses.
Dear Sir, Please send me two mongooses mongeese.
Dear Sir, Please send me two mongooses mongeese mongi.
Dear Sir, Please send me a mongoose. On second thoughts, make it two.

---

Why did the chicken cross the mobius strip?

Two sharks meet in the desert. One says to the other "Long time no sea".

A horse walks into a bartender. The bartender asks, "Why the long face?"

---

A lonely man went into the local pet store looking for an unusual pet as a companion. The store owner suggested a centipede. " What sort of a companion would a centipede be?" the man asked. "This is a most unusual centipede, the store owner said. "He's a great conversationalist and he loves to drink."

The man took the centipede home ad put him in a box on the windowsill. That evening the man asked, "Would you like to go out for a beer?" Receiving no response, the man said, "How about it, would you like to join me for a drink at my favorite bar?" Again there was no response, so the man fairly shouted, "Hey, in there! How about goin out for a drink?" To which a tiny voice replied, " I heard you the first time. I'm putting on my shoes." - from Playboy's Party Jokes of all places.

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A chicken and an egg are laying in bed under the sheets. The chicken takes a drag of a cigarette, turns to the egg, and says, "Well I guess this answers that question."

---

misc | 0 comments | permalink | 22.03.2006 22:13 SGT

Worst Climax Ever?

From Accelerando:

... he begins to spasm, shuddering uncontrollably, emptying the Darwinian river of his source code into her, communicating via his only output device.

I had to stop reading it after that.

misc | 6 comments | permalink | 15.03.2006 22:48 SGT