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Computing Mysteries
From time to time, I'm confounded by computers. I have come to know them reasonably well over the years, at least at a superficial level if not at a more intimate level. However, they can still throw up some error, some noise or some silence that leaves me scratching my head.
Consider this: we bought a commodity server for work some time back. It's nothing fancy, just Linux running on a Core 2 Duo sitting on a Gigabyte mainboard. The curious thing about this machine is the kernel loading phase. You see, the kernel on this machine apparently doesn't like USB keyboards very much and simply refuses to boot up if it doesn't detect a PS/2 keyboard! Of course, this preference is limited only to the initial bootstrapping stage; once the init image is loaded up, I could not only disconnect the PS/2 keyboard but also shred it to bits and the kernel wouldn't care. It would just use the USB keyboard like nothing ever happened between them. So now whenever I reboot this server, I have to remember to plug in the PS/2 keyboard. Yes, the same one which I haven't shred to bits.
You can imagine what process of trial and error led me to solve the case of the spurned keyboard.
Then consider my desktop computer at home which feels like it has to compete with my work machines to get my attention. This computer doesn't even get to the kernel loading stage. It hangs before loading GRUB, the OS bootloader. The culprit? My external Seagate USB hard drive which is always connected to the PC. Apparently, the BIOS on this computer doesn't like to be connected to this external disk on boot. So I've to power off the Seagate before turning on the PC. Of course, it isn't as simple as that. If I forget to power on the Seagate before Linux starts booting, then the init scripts detect the missing disk and throw a fit. So I am left with co-ordinating this intricate boot up dance sequence:
- Power off the Seagate external drive
- Power on PC
- Wait for GRUB to show up
- Press
Escto enter GRUB menu - Power on the external drive
- Wait for the beep from the BIOS indicating recognition of the drive.
- Press
Enterin GRUB to load Linux
Thankfully, this workaround wasn't that tricky to figure out.
Finally, there's my old IBM Thinkpad which I recently turned on after leaving it sitting in a cabinet for almost an year. Well, tried to turn on. When powered up, the Thinkpad does nothing but emit four loud beeps repeated four times in case you miss them the first, second or third time. Lenovo says this beep pattern means System board (Security chip). I am not sure that's very meaningful.
Thankfully, this kind of stuff doesn't happen often enough for me to consider alternate careers - like that MBA everyone keeps talking about. :-)
ramblings | 2 comments | permalink | 27.08.2008 15:11 SGT
This and That: 9th Edition
It's been long since something substantial appeared here. By here, I mean, specifically here in the Journal - there's no lack of activity elsewhere. And by substantial, I mean something bloggy, not some email outage or worm coverage. I'll try and make up for it by making this the longest blog post ever. So set some time aside and prepare for some serious rambling. Get a snack if you must.
I've been travelling for the past few weeks for work. Now travelling by itself isn't so bad if you can avoid the travel part of it. The travel itself isn't so bad if you can avoid the airports, especially all of the non-Changi ones. The airports themselves aren't so bad if you can avoid the insane security theatre that greets you at every one of them. It helps to have flown enough miles to get priority check-in & boarding privileges but there's no way around the barefoot dance through the scanner while some uniformed drone peers at layers of your packed stuff in grey/green/red. Or is there?
I was in San Francisco for the first couple of weeks of this trip. It was cold. I was mostly working out of the hotel so that wasn't such a big deal. But I didn't relish having to think about stepping out at just seven in the evening! I guess it's kinda like having to think about stepping out at two in the afternoon here in Singapore.
As you may know, it gets dark pretty early in the northern latitudes of our planet. (I haven't gone South of Equator yet.) I knew that factoid too and have experienced it first hand for more than a couple of times. Still, having to re-adjust my clock to a new Sun-cycle is hard. And I'm not talking about jet-lag. You see, I am used to working till dusk, then tuning out, having dinner and perhaps doing a bit of work later in the night after dinner. But with dusk falling at 5 in the evening, it's hard to keep my head from tuning out so early in the day. I felt like shutting down at 5 in the evening, watching TV at 6 and then having dinner at 6:30. My body-clock's working hours are intimately tied to the Sun's - whether I work at night or day. It's hard to separate my schedule from the Sun's.
I shudder to think of how I would cope in Finland.
I managed to visit the Golden Gate bridge this time. It's truly a magnificent structure. Luckily, the day that I went there was a clear one and I got great views all around. Well, all around except for due-west where the late afternoon sun was hanging out.
I got a little active on Facebook while in California. It's much better designed than Orkut, for sure. And it's got Apps. Oh apps.. at once the best and the worst of Facebook. Do I really need to know who bit whom? I'd rather use an app like Dopplr to know who's going where - now that's useful! And I imagine usefulness is the raison d'etre of a social network. Seriously, everyone I know should join Dopplr. It's really useful when you need it and stays out of your way when you don't. Just perfect.
For all the talk of platforms and openness on Facebook, I haven't found any app that is really open. There's the Flixster movies app. I already rate my movies elsewhere - can I import those ratings into Flixster? Can I take my ratings out of Flixster to re-use elsewhere? No and no. Then there are the places I've been to apps. Same story. Can't take out data and can't bring in data from elsewhere.
And then there are the annoying and downright devious apps from the Rockyou.com folks. I added their Likeness app and they used that access privilege to start sending me messages for their Superwall app. Cross-selling BS! No more Rockyou apps for me, thank you very much.
I guess I'll have to write my own apps the way I want them. But then, why would I bother writing one for this closed platform?
I got a chance to visit the Stanford campus where a friend from IIT days showed me around. It's a nice campus with some interesting architecture. Though I found Princeton to be more charming in that sense. But anything is better than MIT architecture, I suppose ;-)
I also went down to the campus bookstore while at Stanford to pick up a Moleskine. It's certainly a very well made notebook with a great feel to it. But I don't think it justifies the cost. I guess the price premium is because many regard it, for lack of a better analogy, as the iPod of notebooks. For me, my horrible handwriting just destroys the beauty of the book :-) It's been really long since I hand-wrote a full page of text in one go. Have any of you written much since you stopped attending classes?
I tried writing in Hindi some time back. It was a disaster. I don't think I can write the entire varnamala from memory. Depressing. On the other hand, I'm happy I could recall the word varnamala without looking it up!
Speaking of writing, I'm writing this in white letters on a dark background. Yes, I've switched my KDE colour scheme to a dark one. It's a nice experience, like all your apps are Adobe Lightroom :-) But it also breaks many apps since lots of apps assume a default light background or a light colour scheme. It's especially bad if you set the web browser to use a default dark canvas - it breaks a lot of websites (including mine!) which forget to explicitly set a background colour. You can imagine the results of that!
Kate, with the dark syntax highlighting scheme, looks great in this colour theme. I tried replicating this with Eclipse but it's just not possible. Broken-ness all over the place.
What else?
The last leg of the trip was in Tokyo where the temperature dropped below 10°C. The hotel we stayed at this time had rooms of a size that reminded me of my cozy hostel room in IIT Madras. And the bathroom was as big as an Indian Railways coach toilet - except - this one also had to make space for a shower. Interestingly, the shower area was a bath-tub but I can't imagine anyone over four feet tall using that tub. The bath had some redeeming qualities, though. The shower featured independent knobs for water volume & water temperature. It bugs me no end where the shower apparatus doesn't let me zero in to the right temperature and then lock that! I don't want every use of the shower to become a chance to exercise the Bisection method!
The other redeeming quality was the presence of heated mirror. I don't really like the soft-blur effect when I'm shaving, thank you very much. If you take these two things for granted, clearly, your quality of life is much better than mine.
The Japanese have this interesting culture of going out almost every night of the week, unlike us who limit the partying to the weekend. You'll find the watering holes crowded until midnight all through the week. I wonder how the young cope with their hang-overs when they have to report to work the next day, on time, no matter what time they hit the sack the night before. :-)
I got a free evening in Tokyo and while walking around Ginza, decided to visit Bic Camera on a lark. I was actually going to get just a retractable ethernet cable before walking out of the store but ended up spending almost an hour over there just geeking over everything. Got a chance to play with the Ricoh GR Digital II. It's a beautiful camera, both in looks and operation. The look is very distinctive with a matt finish and great form. The operation is just fabulous with almost every function you'd want just a dial/knob/click away! If only it weren't so darn expensive! 74,800 Yen! Its zoom lens cousin, the GX 100, wasn't much cheaper at 68,800 Yen :-(
That's a long enough post! I'll leave you with these yummy digital delights from a Bic store display.
ramblings | 0 comments | permalink | 21.12.2007 00:49 SGT
The Eye
Towards the fag end of June, I went in to get my eyes dosed with fluorescent dyes in the hopes of taming a recurring pain in my left eye. The doctors at that cheerful place found nothing structurally wrong with my eyes. Were they implying that something was psychologically wrong? Just as my GP had surmised when faced with my eyeball of pain?
The truth, according to the good doctors, was more mundane. They surmised that since my vision was better than that suggested by my spectacles, the pain could be due to the over-compensation provided by the corrective lenses. "Get a new pair" was the prescription offered.
Last Thursday, I got the new pair. The frame is kinda thick compared to the earlier one and so, at first, there was this black blind zone in the periphery of my vision. But it's really amazing how quickly the brain adapts and starts filling in detail where there's none available. By a process of super-advanced, realtime, image interpolation, the black blind zone is now razor thin - a mere zin of a zone. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I just invented that phrase.
Anyway, the pain is just a discomfort now and hopefully, it'll be gone in another few days. But I do miss those super-effective, over-compensating pieces of plastic. I realize now that I was seeing things much clearer than I'm supposed to see. Distant events that should rightfully be a blur were crystal clear. Alas, I'm no longer the far-sighted visionary that I earlier was.
I guess that's enough puns for the next two months.
ramblings | 7 comments | permalink | 31.10.2007 00:02 SGT
Thank You!
I was looking at the feed subscription stats for this blog today^:
I know perhaps just a dozen of those subscribers. The rest of the folks who are subscribed: who are you and why are you listening? :-)
Thank you everyone for your support! I'll get that AdSense cheque any day now! ;-)
^ I picked the most recent day for which the labels on the chart aren't messed up :-/
ramblings | 1 comment | permalink | 25.04.2007 23:34 SGT
25!
Beta,
janamdin ki bahut bahut shubkaamnaae... pachees saal ho gaye..socha kya gift bejhe..teri ma boli biwi dedo..bhabhi boli 25 ladkiyo ke biodata bhejdo :) par filhaal to ye card :)
jug jug jiyo :D
mummy aur papa
Some days, the blog just writes itself ;-)
This has been an interesting year so far.. spent the new year in a plane and the birthday in a plane^. I wonder what comes next.
A quarter century and not much to show for it. I need to go cure AIDS or rid the world of suits and ties and all formal clothing... or something equally important.
Ciao.
^ I was in Tokyo last week. Expect some pictures soon.
Update: Tokyo photoset
ramblings | 7 comments | permalink | 12.02.2007 17:21 SGT
A look back at 2006
Saip tagged me while I was looking the other way! In honour of his first (and hopefully last ;-) tag, herewith, a recap of 2006. BTW, I wrote a blog post in a dissimilar vein last year.
| January | Rung in 2006 in Phuket. Rest of the month was pretty normal IIRC. Went home towards the end for the Chinese New Year vacation. | |
| February | The birthday month! This was a stressful month at work due to an impending product release. Oh, looks like I made a promise back then to get rid of the advts from the site if they don't bring in enough moolah. I'm happy to report that since I've recovered almost 50% of the hosting costs, I'll keep the ads around ;-) | |
| March | With the product shipped out to the testers, life was slow at work. The bosses found that to be a good reason to send me off to Florida ;-) I think I also started jogging regularly around this time. | |
| April | Tampa, Rutgers and NYC. Met some old friends after ages and made some new friends too. All in all, a great month! Also wrote webr; probably the only useful piece of code I've put up for download! Of course, no one else has ever used it so looks like only I think that it's useful ;-) | |
| May | What happened in May? Did I just sleep 24x7? Hmm.. email logs indicate the starting of an ultra-secret project with some friends. Other than that, nothing much. Oh yeah, started the mini. Other than that, nothing much. | |
| June | This was a bad month. Lots of stress at work - at one time, it looked like all the work accomplished in the US trip would amount to nothing. Thankfully, some late evenings & extra weekends & yours truly's amazing skills saved the day ;-) | |
| July | Bought the new PC :-D | |
| August | Another uneventful month I think. Anyway, go read the most misunderstood blog post I ever wrote! | |
| September | Yet another empty month. Either that, or I have a poor memory. Both are equally likely. What I do recall is that work had been generally boring these few months. | |
| October | Lost a sweet phone :-( Bought a sweeter phone :-) Spent Diwali at home after seven years :-D | |
| November | Resumed development related activities at work. And of course, started drawing The Stickies! | |
| December | Had to go home for a couple of weeks to attend to some family matters. Also, resigned from Borland! Starting this month, I am working at Hiperware. If you find the company^ website a bit bare, please bear with us. We're just starting out :-) |
Wow, this post has been a lot of work! Digging through emails, blog posts, messenger archives and what not trying to reconstruct the year. I should've just asked the government agencies for my file ;-)
It's a bit late in the year to be tagging others for this, IMHO. But if you do feel like writing a recap of your own, consider yourself tagged. :-)
^ Unrelated to the ultra-secret project ;-)
ramblings | 2 comments | permalink | 05.01.2007 00:26 SGT
Media, DRDO, FUD and conspiracies
The Maverick has written a couple of great posts (1, 2) analyzing the anti-DRDO sentiment being propagated in certain media circles. I initially found his psyops speculations a bit far-fetched but there's some point at which you look at all the signs and are forced to concede that even far-fetched conspiracy theories might have a good chance of being real.
ramblings | 0 comments | permalink | 30.11.2006 11:01 SGT
Book Tag
Vidya's tagged me twice; I think I ought to respond to this tag. :-)
Book that changed your life: Hard to say. I think events have shaped my life more than books.
Book you've read more than once: None, unless you count textbooks ;-) There are so many great books in the world - why would you read anything twice?!
Book you'd take to a desert island: It would be The Baroque Cycle without a doubt. If I am allowed more, I'll take GEB since I need to read it some time & an island with not much else to do would be an ideal place to get lost in GEB.
Book that made you laugh: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Book that made you cry: Doctor Zhivago. I was very impressionable back when I read it :-)
Book you wish you had written: 13 - this will be a collection of my micro fiction. I wish I had it out by now. :-(
Book you wish had never been written: The New New Thing. As I wrote earlier, never before have I felt like tearing a book to shreds.
Book you're currently reading: Stardust by Neil Gaiman.
Book you've been meaning to read: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. I want to read it, but get scared everytime I peek through it. :-(
That brings us to the end of this list. As is tradition, I am to tag some more unsuspecting souls who, in this instance, shall be: Anshul, Jois, Saip and V.
Update: Unsuspecting souls respond - Anshul, Saip.
ramblings | 8 comments | permalink | 10.09.2006 22:31 SGT
Q2, 2006
This has been one of the more forgettable quarters in the company's history. In fact, we do not recall such a difficult quarter since we went public in Q3, 2003.
We initiated a program for technology transfer from the US at the start of the quarter. Although the program was a success, the Work division subsequently suffered from a data loss incident which took a heavy toll on time & resources. The backlog of issues is still being dealt with and that has made what could've been a interesting & exciting venture into a dreary operation.
The repeated failure of existing IT infrastructure in the Home division necessitated heavy expenditure in purchase of new equipment. On the bright side, the decision to renew the lease on the existing premises has saved the company a considerable amount of money.
Several other factors have contributed to the gloomy results this quarter. Meanwhile, the parent company continues to raise the possibility of a merger with another like-minded party. In the current environment, we feel it would not be a wise strategy to pursue.
Considering the bad quarter, it is perhaps surprising that we remain upbeat and optimistic about our performance in the next quarter. As usual though, we do not provide future guidance for investors.
Oh boy! I didn't think a disclaimer was needed but here it is: the 'company' here is me - not any real company & especially not my employer, Borland. I hope the post makes sense now :-)
ramblings | 14 comments | permalink | 01.08.2006 20:30 SGT
This and That #8
I came across an old draft post - a few items that were supposed to go into a This and That post but never saw the light of the internets. Better late than never!
Once upon a time.. long long time ago, I bet on Gmail coming out of Beta after September 2004. How time flies ;-)
In a TIME interview, MM Lee effectively says Singaporeans are dumber than Americans. *palmtohead*
(Former U.S. Secretary of State) George Shultz once wrote to me about why I insist on this right of reply. I said to him, "We believe in the marketplace of ideas. Let the ideas contend, and the best ideas the public will buy." But I also said, "That assumes a large well-educated group of people as readers. Look at the marketplace of ideas in the Philippines, and see the chaos." Americans can have a marketplace of ideas. For example, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was a box-office hit. Americans enjoyed their President being mocked and satirized. But the majority voted for Bush in November 2004. When we have a large enough educated population like America, able to make independent judgments, we will loosen up. But even without the cacophony, all ideas are accessible in the media and the Internet.
- Why is teen-flick fare peddled as mainstream cinema in bollywood? From Rediff:
The film is about a guy called Neal, who has 21 days left before he has to marry. He decides to sleep with 21 women, but has trouble finding them. In the meanwhile, he keeps running into a girl called Nikki, who makes a deal with him and says she will help him get lucky with women. It is not a regular love story.
And just so this post has some fresh content too, two new effects laden photos from my photostream. Both are products of my newly acquired quick mask foo!
PS: Now you can get blog updates (haha!) via email; just use the form on your right to subscribe.
ramblings | 0 comments | permalink | 16.05.2006 22:28 SGT
Singapore Elections 2006 : a comedy in four acts
Prologue
Opposition: NKF, NKF!
Party: Move on, move on!
Act 1
Opp: NKF, NKF!
Party: Sue, Sue
Opp: nkf, nkf
Party: SUE, SUE!
Act 2
Party: Gomez, Gomez
Opp: Move on, Move on!
Act 3
PM: [grave tone] Think about the big picture. There is a lot at stake here - this election is about Singapore's future.
[whispers] Would you like a housing upgrade?
Act 4
PM: Our system is the best because we don't have to deal with the pesky opposition. Opposition is just a distraction. What? Communist State? No! No! This is a democracy! A Uniquely Singaporean Democracy!
SM: I agree absolutely. We welcome alternative views - just keep them outside the parliament!
Epilogue
The Party wins 66% of the popular vote - down 9% since the last election. This can only be described as a resounding victory.
ramblings | 0 comments | permalink | 08.05.2006 22:17 SGT
The purpose of Life
Today, I start on week six of a nine week programme
A week or so ago, I linked to this great essay: Moore's Law is Crap. The writer talks about staying on an Upward Curve - continuously learning something new, even if it is only a little at a time.
How do you know if you are learning something new and worthwhile? You'll feel the pain. Maybe physical or maybe mental. But the pain will be there. Think back now to the most worthwhile endeavours of your life. Do you remember the pain you went through for every single one of them?
No pain, no gain. A cliche but it's true. At times when you find yourself asking if the pain is worth the result, it's useful to remember this.
So what's my goal in life? To stay on an Upward Curve. And now I have a good measure to know if I am doing it right.
^ more like week six of fourteen weeks. I missed schedule in between. :(
ramblings | 0 comments | permalink | 18.04.2006 05:43 SGT
Tampa Week #2
My laptop is getting old. It shows a 'Fan Error' message on every other boot before shutting down. I hope it survives this trip at least! Maybe it's time to look at those Macbooks ;-)
Interop standards rock! I use the same USB cable (A -> mini-B) to connect my phone, my mp3 player and my portable HDD to the laptop. Not just that, the phone and mp3 player use the same (USB style) power charger too! My FZ-30 camera would be on the same data cable too if Panasonic hadn't decided on using an even smaller connector camera-side.
I don't see many footpaths in Tampa. Clearly, this is a drive around place. I think I prefer denser, high-rise cities to spread out ones.
How would I know that make uses bash internally and not the current ${SHELL} ?!
There are primarily four kinds of commercials on US television: online/telecom services, food, cars and lawyers, in increasing order of obnoxiousness. Others include beauty products and medicines - the latter being less obnoxious and more evil!
I thought the Navy and Air Force ads in Singapore were tacky but after seeing the US versions, I think the Singaporean versions deserve Oscars or something.
If there's one good thing that's come out of this blog, it's the ReiserFS undelete HowTo. Every new comment there makes my day. :-)
At the Tampa office, I've been working at a Sun Workstation and since I started banging at that workstation's keyboard, I've wondered more than once why the Caps Lock key and Left Control key are swapped. I got the answer today in this hardcore Effective Emacs essay: it's because Ctrl is so important for effectively using Emacs that the designers of Unix keyboards put the Ctrl key on the home row! Another of life's mysteries solved!
Maybe I should ditch vi and learn Emacs, if only to get some hardcore geek cred. ;-)
Hey look, BlogBurst! Another of my predictions comes true! To be fair though, this was a no-brainer. Next no-brainer prediction: one of Reuters & Co acquires BlogBurst.
ramblings | 3 comments | permalink | 11.04.2006 07:15 SGT
Tampa Week #1
Tampa's downtown shuts down rather early in the evening. They have a night spot in Channelside which, if you are from Singapore, is a spitting image of Boat Quay, etc. in that made to attract tourists kind of way. I haven't been to Ybor yet, so let's see.
America's obesity problem is very real. The number of overweight people around is amazingly high. I don't mean the chubby kind but the can't get into a Maruti 800 kind. Coming from Singapore, the contrast is especially stark. Although I am sure if I were living in a university environment, I'll find people in much better shape ;-)
There are lots of Oak trees here which look rather beautiful.
Every morning, I do a nice ten minute walk to get to my office. On the way, the flora gives off this mulberry/strawberry jam smell that's absolutely fantastic.
Daylight Saving is a strange thing. One day, it's getting dark around 7pm and the next day, it's 8pm and you are having dinner while it's still twilight outside.
Made a trip to Orlando on Saturday. We thought of going to Disney World first but it was too complex a task trying to nail down an itinerary for that place. So we went to Universal's Islands of Adventure. Great rides, long queues, good fun. Interesting tidbit: I saw hardly any Asians in the park. Very unlike NYC and Boston which were full of Indians and not just Asians. An all-American destination I suppose. Photos.
I bought an iAudio U2 mp3 player and a pair of Koss KSC75 headphones to go with it. It's taking some time to get used to the sit-on-ear design of the Koss headphones. Although I must say they are much better than the bigger size headphones which sit on your head - I just can't stand those!
Curse of the proprietary formats. At work, I found some old design documents created in Adobe Framemaker that I wanted to read. I googled for FrameViewer but looks like Adobe's discontinued that product. I don't even know if the viewer was free (like MS Word Reader) or a paid for product. Finally, I had to wade through all our old CDs to dig out a FrameMaker installer. That's time I'll never get back.
I am still at Level 20 of KlueLess
ramblings | 6 comments | permalink | 04.04.2006 23:33 SGT
A Rediff Headline
Oh Rediff! It has been a long, long time since I last wrote about you. What can I say, I've been busier than I used to be and you've been nicer than you used to be. I've been nicer to you than I used to be! ;-)
But today, I was free and I was bored and then you ran this headline:
That highlighted headline links to the transcript of a chat session with Dr Leonard Weiss. The thing is, Dr Weiss has had little to do with the NPT! Look what that very chat transcript has to say:
nuclearwinter asked, Dr Weiss, when you drafted the NPT, did you consider the possibility of nations testing nevertheless?
Leonard Weiss answers, I did not draft the NPT. I drafted a domestic law called the Nuclear Nonprolifertion Act of 1978.
Oh Rediff! You remain my favouritest news portal. :-)
ramblings | 4 comments | permalink | 07.03.2006 21:41 SGT
Regular programming will resume shortly
If you've cared to notice, blogging has been slow around these parts of the internets. I would posit that an upcoming product release and its concomitant increase in workload are to be blamed. Or thanked.
That theory has a competitor though. An alternative theory suggests that the lack of interesting (read blog-worthy) events in YT's life could explain the lack of updates.
The analytically gifted readers would've noticed that Theory 1 and Theory 2 could be correlated. I'll leave the calculation of the covariance for some other day.
I've been asked - offline - why I haven't blogged recently. Twice! Well, stranger things have happened.
So what should I write about? I've got two short micro stories in draft. Yeah, I know. Even my micro-fiction lives in draft form. Pathetic! Anyway, can't post them here to end the drought because... they are still drafts.
Speaking of stories, here's an idea I want to throw out there and see if anyone's interested: Realtime Mashup Fiction. Here's how it works. To get started, we need three or four literate human beings and a collaborative writing tool such as Writely. The participants draw up a rough plot and write down a very barebones plot outline. Then they start writing the story, simultaneously - on the same page. They can see what others are writing, where they are going with the plot, how they are fleshing out the characters and then they can adjust their own writing according to that. Or not! They could even go and make some changes to what someone else has written! What say? Anyone wants to try it out?
BTW, I've had this collab-writing idea in mind for some time now. I think I've even discussed it with someone - I don't recall who. :-(
Poor recall is my Achilles heel, IIRC.
While going through my server logs the other day, I went back to reading one of my posts from 2003. An excerpt:
Between the previous evening and this afternoon, yours truly was engaged in a tete-a-tete with a beautiful lady in what amounted to silly banter with a hint of flirtatiousness. The simple pleasures of the workplace, as my friend saip will concur ;-)
For the life of me, I can't recall who the beautiful lady in question was! The heel...
Kaps has been blogging about the earning potential of blogs recently. Check posts here and here. I share his view that for the vast majority of bloggers out there, the earning potential is limited. Take my blog for instance. It has been around for a couple of years now. It enjoys good search engine rankings for a few keywords. There's a group of regular readers - Feedburner says 50 subscribers of which at least half should be human^ by my estimate. And it averages about 170 visitors a day. All in all, this is your typical long tail blog by a long tail writer creating long tail content.
I've been running Google AdSense advts on this blog since December 2005. What are my earnings to date? US$14.64
That doesn't even cover my hosting costs! Clearly, living on blogging isn't for the masses. I am going to run ads until December. If they can pay at least 30% of my hosting bill, I'll keep them around. Else, advertisement free Sounds from the Dungeon for all in 2007!!
Update: Forgot to write about this last night: at Borland Singapore, we are looking for a Java geek, preferably with some C++ experience too. Drop me a line and I'll mail you the job profile.
^ What would be a good way to find out the human/bot ratio? Asking all subscribers to write a comment would be one way, I suppose. ;-)
ramblings | 8 comments | permalink | 22.02.2006 23:22 SGT
On life's little coincidences
Earlier today, I was watching Scrubs on TV. The local channel is airing the second season of the show; it's currently in its fifth season. Today's episode featured Ted's a cappella quartet and I immediately remarked, "You know what, they haven't done that in the past couple of seasons. I really wish they did!"
I've just finished watching the latest episode from season five a few minutes ago and guess what, Ted's gang of four is back! Sometimes life is so fantastic, it just kicks ass!
Sometimes.
ramblings | 1 comment | permalink | 27.01.2006 01:20 SGT
This and That: 6th Edition
Long time, no blog. Random things have been collecting since the last post, waiting to be blogged. Which means, it's time for another edition of This and That.
Last Friday, we had a company offsite event - the first since I joined. The day started with a bunch of decently fun games which was followed by some lunch and finally three games of bowling (ooh.. tired hand and back!)
One of the morning games went like this: everyone stands around in a circle. A ball is thrown and someone catches it. Now whoever is standing on either side of the catcher have to call out the names of each other - the slower one drops out.
One of the guys was getting to repeatedly call the name of his right side neighbour and so he took to calling out the name by reflex. Unfortunately, when the ball landed on his left, he still called out the right-neighbour's name!
As they say, "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things." ;-)
I've finally finished uploading all photos from the Italy album to Flickr.
It was a pain with the 20 MB per month upload limit until I gave in and signed up for a pro account. This is most certainly a variation of the bait and switch scam, I say!
Speaking of Flickr, have you seen my recent phonecam photos? Check out blue potatoes!
I don't think I've mentioned this on the blog: we got an Xbox console at home. I know, I know - I am late to the party. What can I say, I am a retro-game player ;-)
I've played on it for all of two days in the last one month :-) Maybe it'll see more action once I get GTA San Andreas.^
Last week, we sought out and rented a couple of region 3 DVDs to finally put the DVD playback kit of the Xbox to some use. That's when I realized what a piece of crap this kit is.
If you don't know what this kit is, it's just an IR receiver that plugs into the Xbox unit and a conventional looking remote control. The DVD playback functionality is actually built in to the Xbox - this separately sold kit just makes it "accessible."
So we power up the console, put in the disk and start fiddling with the remote. Guess what - the remote doesn't come with any batteries! How's that for an out of the box experience! With no spare AAA batteries around, we ended up watching that movie using our usual TV-out-from-laptop trick.
Next day, armed with newly bought batteries, we loaded up Constantine. Another revelation which made it absolutely clear what an unmitigated disaster this kit is. You can't change the volume with this remote, navigation is unintuitive and you can't even switch-off the box from the remote!
I can't believe Microsoft actually charges for this thing. Moreover, all the required software is built right into the Xbox - why force this kit upon us? Why not just let us access the DVD menus with the game controller?!
My userid on PublicGyan is 42. heh!
I read this nifty statistical analysis of IMDb movie ratings today. It's interesting to find that the median rating is 6.4 and not 5.0 which does confirm my own theory that by and large, anything below 6.5 must be avoided. I have also come to regard anything rated 7+ as watchable while anything rated 8+ to be a must watch. The analysis just confirms that nicely - 8+ rated movies are in the 94th percentile!
If you follow my movie ratings, you'll see that I use a five point scale. Roughly, the ratings mean this:
| 5 | Must watch! | |
| 4 | Recommended | |
| 3 | Timepass | |
| 2 | Avoid! | |
| 1 | I can see why people commit suicide |
I am leaving for Hyderabad this weekend and will be returning on 6th Feb.
For the past week, I've been spending some time now and then writing some code to replace Blosxom which currently powers this blog. I love Blosxom for its simple approach to blogging but hate it 'cos it's written in Perl and I don't want to learn Perl just to make Blosxom do what I want.
When I heard that Rael Dornfest, the creator of Blosxom, had himself switched to Typo, I realized it was time to junk Blosxom for good. Since I happened to be playing with web.py at that time, I decided to put together something with web.py which would replicate what my current Blosxom setup does.
The results so far. It's a bit bland, but that's just a matter of putting in some nice templates. As you can see, most functionality is already in place. Once I get feeds and comments working, I'll switch.
BTW, web.py is a delight to use. The learning curve is so shallow - it reminds me of my first few lines of PHP code; except, this is cleaner and much more elegant :-)
Oh, one more thing. I am looking for a name for this blog server. Suggestions welcome!
Finally, I leave you with something that's finally seen the light of the open internets.
The Great Dictator - a Nefarious Nev and Courteous Cue Street Productions.
There are lots of in-jokes, but hope you had a laugh. :-)
^ You do know my birthday is around the corner, right? ;-)
ramblings | 2 comments | permalink | 26.01.2006 00:08 SGT
2006!
Happy 2006 you all! I got back just a few hours ago after a fun weekend in Phuket.
Time now to revisit last year's new year resolutions and see what worked and what didn't!
- Start thinking 'what next' career wise. -- Done!
- Be more productive at work. -- I am!
- Pay more attention to E minor. -- It's almost dead now :(
- Learn a new language. Spoken language! -- Didn't even get started on this :(
- Use up more passport pages. -- Germany, Italy and Thailand!
- Get back to reading books. -- Read many more than in 2004!
Update: An apt Calvin strip for the occasion.
ramblings | 0 comments | permalink | 03.01.2006 16:09 SGT
A look back at 2005
Oooh.. my first meme-blog! Following jwz, I present twelve cut-and-paste sentences from the year.
| January | If I refuse to acknowledge Him, to worship Him and sing praises in His name, almost all contemporary religions assure me of a place in Hell with a ringside view of the fires and suffering. | |
| February | One of the likely epitaphs for me: An exception! Fatal! | |
| March | The answer given is 26^13 seconds while I am convinced it is 13*(26^13) seconds. | |
| April | Why do ringtones cost two dollars while a full song costs just 99 cents? | |
| May | | (o) (o) | | |
| June | Oh! Umm.. I hope this isn't being recorded... | |
| July | Do you want to receive Jesus into your life? | |
| August | metrics enable us to ascribe a price to content being generated in the new micro-economy. | |
| September | How do you prove that the digital music you own has been legally obtained? | |
| October | Bollywood confirms to the Object Oriented Style of Film Making. | |
| November | Unfortunately, when a tiger is seeing you in the eye with a look that says, 'Hello breakfast!', you don't want to do the dismissing thing. | |
| December | Mad recursion! |
ramblings | 3 comments | permalink | 13.12.2005 18:42 SGT
