Writing on Shivanand Velmurugan — Product leader. Systems thinker.

From Digger to DeepSeek: A Quest for Local Silicon

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:17:00 +0530

The bug bytes again;
Beneath the hood, the hidden
Sparks begin to run.

From Digger to DeepSeek: A quest for a local AI model

It was June 1988. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had just wrapped up the Moscow Summit, Steve Jobs was fueling intense industry rumors with his upcoming NeXT workstation, and Tim Berners-Lee was quietly circulating the first informal notes at CERN for what would become the World Wide Web. On the radio, Michael Jackson was dominating the summer charts as “Dirty Diana” became his record-breaking fifth consecutive number-one single from Bad. Meanwhile, Russia was prepping the launch of its ill-fated Phobos 1 Mars Orbiter, and I was an 8-year-old in Paris getting the bug — the desire to build my own computer.

The Last 10 Feet

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:20:00 +0530

Photo by Micah & Sammie Chaffin on Unsplash

Pin drops in the road
You apologize again
The gap grows wider.

The Last 10 Feet

Decline doesn’t announce itself dramatically. Rot sets in slowly; a little less care, a little more friction.

I wrote this post last year, days after returning from a trip to Singapore and India. The 7-year gap where I sequestered myself to North America made my visit to Asia stark! It felt like an alternate reality — one with a functional approach to adopting technology into life. It is almost as if they still care about how the human experience.

The undone made possible

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 14:30:00 -0800

Code waits patient,
Dreams gather digital dust—
Until machines learn.

We all have them—that long list of projects, ideas, and tasks that are left incomplete. Like a cluttered kitchen drawer ignored until you wedge the oversized scissors between the back and the roof of the cabinet, we leave piles of neglected items in the wake of our busy lives. There is a special kind of mental malaise that comes from carrying around ideas and tasks, relegating them to purgatory. That app concept left unfinished just after you figured out how to add 1,700 dependencies to your React app and spent eight hours learning the nuances of MVVM. The data analysis you meant to complete to dispel misinformation spouted by Elon about who did meaningful work based on the number of lines of code committed. The project around the house you need to do every year, but can’t be done because you don’t have the time to do the required research. These orphaned possibilities accumulate over the years. And I have a very long list.

The insanity continuum

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 16:44:00 -0800

Madness spins unchecked,
Echoes shatter silent minds—
Ruin wakes, and smiles.

Of all the things that transpired in the last two weeks, this judgement by the Supreme Court in the US will perhaps be the most damaging in the long-term. While the world’s attention is focussed on the economic damage of the Trump tariffs, the preeminent court in the US just gave the authoritarians even more power to act with impunity. At this point, why bother with laws? Why pretend like the courts matter? The partian judges who are fine accepting bribes now get to hand over judicial power to the fascists.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent, identified how much is at stake: “The implications of the government’s position” are “that not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal. History is no stranger to such lawless regimes, but this nation’s system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise.”

Chaos, Bias, and Sadness

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 22:20:22 -0800

A mind slowly grows,
Wisdom flows like rivers wide—
Each step reveals more.

This week has crushed my soul - a bit. I am bewildered by the speed at which the majority in the US is willing to shed constitutional procedures, rule of law, long-standing practices in government. The silence by the ruling party – the Republicans, is deafening. I am despondent, despite consolation, that we are not only enabling kleptocracy, but also cheering on the rise of fascism in the name of “efficiency”. It has been an appalling week. However, I remain a witness to the attrocities, and will continue to read and write about them.

Beginnings, once more

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 22:05:10 -0800

New dawn softly breaks,
hope blooms with every heartbeat,
new life starts anew.

Ahh linux. The frustrations and the joy. After a hiatus of 9 years, I have decided to resurrect this blog. Of course, before I wrote anything meaningful it was time for some cleanup. Hugo, the static site generator that I use for this blog, uses the filename as part of the url. The last time I ported the blog from Jekyl to Hugo I made the terrible choice of encoding dates into the file name. Well, as a result, I have a few hundred files with a date prefix thus making the posts immovable.

2016 year-end recap

Sat, 31 Dec 2016 20:32:53 -0800

Don’t smoke (Stay quit!!) : Doing great!

There is no desire to smoke. After being a smoker for over a decade, I quit smoking last year, and stayed quit. I went to Vegas, smoked incessantly for 3 days, and stopped at the end of the trip – cold turkey. Never went back to it, and quite frankly disgusted by the thought of smoking now.

Say yes more often: Did well.

I have reduced negativity greatly. This is a good one to keep at for the next year.

Working with large C codebases

Thu, 29 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Searching for symbols

The product that I work on, has over 22 million lines of source – most of it a nightmare. I use vim as my editor of choice ¹. Both cscope and ctags (integrated into vim), allow me to quickly move between files and lookup definitions of symbols, and help in understanding the challenge-du-jour.

Throw in fuzzy find capabilities of the most awesome Ctrl+p plugin, and vim becomes the best ‘IDE’ out there!

Elixir - A crash course

Sun, 06 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

These are notes from the official Elixir documentation. It a quick walk-through of the unique features in Elixir for someone coming from years of C — a way for me to remember and use as a reference.

Summary

Types

Atoms

Named contants with a value. true and false are atoms.

Strings

Supports unicode string natively! It’s about time. ¹
You can concatenate strings using <>. "hello" <> " world".

Anonymous functions

Native support for closures – called anonymous functions. Also, functions are first-class, i.e. can be passed as arguments into other functions. Special syntax is required to invoke ananymous functions.

Use Linux, learn new things

Sun, 10 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

After 12+ years, I built a workstation from scratch. Hardware has come such a long way, but that is a post unto itself. Having always worked with Ubuntu and other debian variants it was time to venture into a more lean distro. I picked Arch Linux, on the recommendation of several colleagues. It’s been fun. Pacman and Yaourt are great package managers, and the rolling release model ensures access to the bleeding edge all the time.

Battle of the static site generators

Wed, 10 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I set myself a goal to write more this year - in fact, I attempted to do so once every week. This required me to look at my blog, which led to the inevitable: small changes in what it looked like, led to general dis-satisfcation with the current solution I have to publish my blog, which quickly ballooned into a whole host of activities.

Let me step back a bit.

A month flies by

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

It has not been a great start. It, however, has been a busy one.

Don’t smoke (Stay quit!!) : Going strong!

The urge to smoke still surfaces on occasion. I have, however, been able to avoid every time. I must admit that it gets easier, but it always take a bit of an effort.m

Say yes more often: Doing ok.

I have caught myself a couple of times. Still needs work

Goals for 2016

Tue, 05 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The word “resolutions”, feels forced. It feels like a ritual declaration of intent, followed immediately by inaction, and eventually concession that it was all in jest. This year, I am going to have some goals.

Don’t smoke (Stay quit!!)
Say yes more often
Read a book a month
Write an app a month
Blog once a week

Goals, feels more friendly, reachable, inviting almost.

Thoughts on ello

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In the tradition of joining new social tools on the interwebs, here some thoughts on my experience.

The usual steps are:

The first few hours – mostly spent exploring the interface, the features, mired in the comparisons between the “old” and the “new”
At some point, the lack of interaction and content of previous networks – the constant buzz of twitter, the inane conversations of facebook etc. – forces me tp hunt for connections. Rampant, indiscriminate “friending” of people ensues.

My Eiffel Tower

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Today’s post by Seth Godin, struck a cord. I am fortunate enough to get an opportunity to build “my Eiffel Tower”. I’m building two DSLs and associated infrastructure to allow storing lots of data in an in-memory database running in an embedded system. Wish me luck! Very excited, I might add!

Getting rid of passwords

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I hate passwords. Seems like several smart people are on the case of getting rid of the “password”

Lucas Gonze, argues the loss of meaning around design of user authentication mechanisms.
A world without passwords! How will we identify each other? Exchange tokens. Make “forgot password” the default.
Passwords are the new pay-wall.
A non-violent protest against the cruel overlord — the “password”. Justin Balthrop, calls for a boycott .
Several alternatives to identify users — promoting password-less login in your apps.
Eran Hammer — OAuth founder — gave up on OAuth 2.0. (An old link). Tim Bray didn’t take kindly to that post. Ahh IETF! You can grind the smartest minds to pulp. :)

Ink rotation - April 2014

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I haven’t been very good with rotating the inks in the last year. Having accumulated more than my share of inks, it is time to have fewer pens inked and rotate colors.

I still couldn’t resist inking 9 pens! There are 3 pens I’m excited about – 2 parker 51 and a custom pen made out of 10000 year-old bogwood (a gift from Christina).

Getting git status on multiple directories

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

At any given time, I have a handful of git repositories that I work on. While typing in the command-line is great, it getting tiring when you have a several directories that you have to manually change to and check. The “git status” command can take the git repo and the working directory as input. That, and a little bash programming to the rescue. The following command, executes git status in every subdirectory that is a git repository.

Somethings should be obvious, but are not, obviously

Fri, 14 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Update: Apparently, I had accidentally hit a minor bug in pew. This has now been fixed.

Every so often, we spend several hours battling an issue, fighting linux or python or people or thoughts. The solution, often, leaps out when there has been a respite in the constant search for the solution. It’s the “duh” moment, that all of us feel. There is a little self-loathing, and relief at having arrived at solution. It is a moment of great pleasure, that I have learned to relish.

Bitcoins, new languages, freedom and other things

Mon, 27 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Some interesting links for the weekend:

Mr.Krugman thinks Bitcoin is evil.
Why should I turn off my devices for 30 mins, while a hunk of steel and glass is hurled into the upper atmosphere? #first-world-problems
Lamdba expressions: something for the nerd in you.
America, you make me want to travel! NOT REALLY!
We don’t really change. Let’s not blame it on tech! Truth from Gary Vaynerchuk of winelibrary fame.

Those wonderful tele-conference meetings

Sat, 25 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

If you have worked for a large company, you know you have been here. Hilarious

2013 on twitter - a recap

Thu, 02 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Vizify makes a video out of the posts you have made on twitter in the last year. Christina, you are always my #1! Thank you for bringing this to my attention. As any self-respecting nerd would do, I immediately made one for myself. Doesn’t the world need yet another summary of meee!!

2013 on twitter

Thanks to my top followers

Malaise of large companies

Sat, 28 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Another gem from the always spot-on Dave Winer. Microsoft could have owned netbooks.

The pathological need for large companies to focus on the wrong, to their own demise never ceases to amaze me. Why do dominant players lose out? Is it the incompetence of people in these companies? Is it the inability to articulate, convince, and move the masses within these companies?

Most often, it is the later. Perhaps, the collective, is bound to make safer choices and very often, the simple or obvious option is not the safe one.

How to apologize to your users

Sun, 21 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

There has been an increase in security breaches this year. This past week, two services I use were compromised - Tumblr and Apple Developer Connection. Both services informed me of the security breach, and one made me feel like they cared, and the other one didn’t. Perhaps I am reading too much into this, but at the very least, it illustrates how important language is, in conveying how much we care.

Apple’s mail is clear, concise and inspires confidence in their ability to take care of my information. They state the purpose of this communication, tell me what they did about it, and what they were going to do to fix it in the future. Update: Apparently, it was a whitehat security guy doing his thing.

Inky obsessions

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Have I mentioned the long-standing obsession with stationery, especially, fountain pens? Well, it is a bit of problem, really. In the last few months, I have started hoarding them. It started with one– a Lamy. Once I discovered how one can procure junk on eBay for very little money, I quickly ended up with a selection. As these things go, I suddenly had the increased “need” for inks that are not blue, or black. Nay, simple colours won’t do for the truly obsessed.

Reclining airplane seats : work of the Devil!

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Reclining airplane seats!! I shake my fist at thee. This one feature on airplanes has caused me untold miseries. Ok! I exaggerate .. a little. I live Vancouver, which is one the other side of the planet with respect to my hometown. As a result, I spend at least 30 hours on an plane, once a year. To compound, my 6’ 5" (196 cm) frame does not mix well with cramped spaces.

Congrats Thomashawk!

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Congrats to Thomashawk on the flickr interview!

“Why? Who?”, you ask. Thomashawk, photographer extraordinaire, has taught me a lot about photography. I’ve never met him, or gone on a photo-walk (to be fixed some day), but have learnt from his work, nonetheless.

I am compelled to write this, because, in some ways, there is a certain vindication to Flickr doing an article on him. He has been Flickr’s ardent fan, and critic. It’s been a long road! From the fun insanity of DMU(s), Zooomr, and flickr censorship to getting some well reserved recognition. Kudos!

Working with rpms (extract, list contents)

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Unix. I love thee!

Extract an rpm without installing in to the current directory (really, the rpm command should support this):

$ rpm2cpio myrpmfile.rpm | cpio -idmv

*i: Restore archive

*d: Create leading directories where needed

*m: Retain previous file modification times when creating files

*v: Verbose i.e. display progress

List contents of an rpm:

$ rpm -qlp myrpmfile.rpm

source

A weekend of culinary delights

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The great G.B Shaw, in “Man and Superman” (not that Superman), quipped, “There is no love sincerer than the love of food.” I had a weekend, that reminded me how much I love being fed. It also, reminded me of my wayward ways, in keeping the waistline in check, but I diverge. For this Christmas, I got the most amazing gift – the gift of an evening out trying out food that tasted, as good as it sounds and looks. Without much ado, here is the spread:

Beautiful git logs and listing files in a commit

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Working with git is fun. However, it is easy to get tired of the log list of parameters one has to use to very often. Git aliases are a great way to deal with this.

For instance, the standard git log, it pretty much useless in any large project, where there are several hundred commits in a day. Most often, the commit you are looking for in probably several pages deep.

Macports from behind a proxy

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been using my MBP as the main computer at work for a couple of weeks now. It is not officially “supported”, and I’m left to my own devices to figure out any issues that arise.

Configuring proxies on the mac for all GUI applications is quite simple. However, most of the *nix tools have trouble with it. Macports, which I love to hate, should read it from the environment’s $http_proxy and $rsync_proxy, but for some reason doesn’t really do so. The simplest fix, is to override system env variables, and use the macport configuration file to provide the proxy. It works like a charm (one of reason to like macports, I suppose)

Two-factor authentication and spicy salmon sashimi don

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

For the last few months I’ve been annoyed. Two or three times a week, I get a flurry of emails from Facebook and twitter claiming that I reset my password. Sounds like a first-world problem? It is. However, I have 4 emails linked to my Facebook account and one to my twitter account. I get on average 15-20 mails a week, and I dutifully dis-avow each one of them.

Then, this happens. It scares the hell out of me, but I procrastinate. After a good two weeks, and 40 mails later, I’ve finally caved, and enabled it. Now, it’s practically impossible to hack my account. Password + token to access from any new device, and I can remotely revoke access to any device I lose.

Multiple ssh profiles for multiple services

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I use git – quite extensively. At work, we have several git repositories, across different organizations. In addition, I also hack for pleasure. Interacting with several git servers means that I need to have different roles and identities for them. The solution is to setup up one ssh key for each domain, and use ~/.ssh/config profiles to control them. Based on the host I’m connecting to, a different ssh private/public key pair is used – make life a lot easier!

I am fat no more

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

BMI, is not the best measure of health, or fitness, but >30 is a definite indicator of lack of care about one’s health. After several years of exactly that, I’m finally within reasonable limits. My BMI is 24.0; It’s official, I’m not obese anymore.

In the last 4 years, I have seen my weight go from 230 lbs to 266 lbs, and back to 202 lbs, as of today.

It’s a good day!

More unix goodness

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Ohh the unix command prompt, I love thee! Can you guess what these commands do?

1
2

# grep -l <regex>  
# find . -name <regex> -delete

An hour with HAML and Stasis

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I have been meaning to get into the exciting world of static site-gen. Why, you ask? Well, I will tell you why?! Actually, I’m too lazy, and it’s late on a Sunday night – instead, Mick Gardner, can inform you on the virtues of static site-generation.

After an hour of mucking around with several site-generators, I chose Stasis, which is a good compromise to the blog-oriented Jekyll, and options-insanity that is nanoc. With my new-found fascination for Ruby, I wanted to stay away from Hyde (which is Python based – it’s time to try the dark-side, a little)

Here, have some wine

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Note to Self: Get wine. Lot’s of it! ;)

My bags are packed

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This saturday, I will be leaving to Sweden for work. It will be an exciting two months! Hopefully, I will have some time to enjoy and experience a new country, and chronicle the (mis)adventures there!

For now, here’s some music. This song has followed me around for the last 12 years, and when it is time for me to go away, I hear this song playing somwhere. It’s corny, but its nice.

Piracy for convenience

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In the wild days of 1996, when I got my hands on a computer (it cost about a year’s worth of my Dad’s salary, and nothing that I am would have been possible but for that sacrifice he made), I was enamored by the ease of content consumption on a computer.

In one year, I went from knowing nothing about the world, to interacting with hundreds of other people across the world, talking about different things, and experiencing new content every day. Ideas in the form of text, video (granted there wasn’t much back then), music. That desire to learn new things, and to “consume” content has not abated in the last decade and a half.

Prawn curry

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

If you are in a hurry, and need something tasty yet easy to make, this one is for you. The prep time is about 5 minutes, and the cooking time around 10-15 minutes. If you have a small rice cooker – the kind that plugs into a wall sockets – you should be able to get the rice done in about the same time.

It is also the perfect curry to cook for smaller portions. If you are like me, and have to cook for 1 person, aka me, all the time, it is a no-frills and no-freezer required recipe.

Happy birthday, Mom

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

It’s my mom’s birthday today, and as I scoured the recesses of the internets for something nice to say, I came across this most beautiful poem by the author of “Joy Junction” about his mom. As most of you who know me know, I’m not much of a poet, but I am enough of a romantic to steal “borrow” someone-else work to express what I feel (I know – lame, right?)

music and hearing

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Forget perfect pitch. I’m so thankful that I can experience a large range of frequencies, and that I have enough hearing ability to distinguish timbre, and tone. Watch the video below, especially at 7:00 minutes. We all must be thankful that we can hear as well as we do. I can’t imagine what life would be like without the ability to sense the warmth of a viola rising up in the Brandenburg concertos (BWV 1046) movement 1, or the horns in the 3rd movement of the same.

strong mercy

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

When in doubt, take a poet’s thought to your heart. They are, invariably experienced beings, that have spent a great deal of their lives, exploring the heart through the mind.

Strong Mercy by Rabindranath Tagore

My desires are many and my cry is pitiful,
but ever didst thou save me by hard refusals;
and this strong mercy has been wrought into my life through and through.

Day by day thou art making me worthy of the simple,
great gifts that thou gavest to me unasked—this sky and the light, this body and the
life and the mind—saving me from perils of overmuch desire.

That time of the year

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

What's in store for me

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I just watched the last 30 mins of the movie “The green mile”. What a beautiful movie! The last few lines was particularly well written. “we each owe a death; there are no exceptions; but, Oh God, sometimes the Green Mile seems so long. But if he can make a mouse live so long, I wonder what is in store for me”

Don’t we all!

The sun is out in Vancouver ! Time to get out!

Moving a car using magnets

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

1. Assuming an average car weighs around 4000 pounds

2. Force required to move such a car (neglecting friction):

F = ma

As per the above,
m = 4000 /2.2 kg [approx. 1800 kg] a = 1 m/sec^2

=> F = 1800 N

3. Since it would be next to impossible to get a rare earth magnet that produced that kind of force, we would be, better served trying to use a solenoid. The formula to get the force generated by a solenoid is given by:

Badly punctuated parameter list in #define

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes working with an old c compiler brings up painful, yet fun-filled days of making it speak the same language as you, and sometimes you just go “*$&%*$#&% you piece of sh** compiler”

I had one such moment today, and after I had returned to Zen (some soul-searching and some google searching), I realized it quite simple.

$ gmake  
...  
...  
some_file.h:42: badly punctuated parameter list in \`#define'  
some_file.h:64: badly punctuated parameter list in \`#define'  
Failed to compile  
$

This was caused by the following:

RIP Steve Jobs

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

DeWitt Clinton once wrote

What are the hallmarks of a great engineer? A great engineer is characterized by their intelligence, versatility, creativity, loyalty, passion, experience, vision, dedication, composure, humility, and ability.

Apart from the “humility” part, which he never cared for, Steve Jobs was the epitome of that description. We shall miss you Mr. Jobs, especially for that keen sense of doing something perfectly.

RIP Steve Jobs, the maker of beautiful things.

Worldwide Photowalk 2011

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Last weekend, I went to my first photo-walk in Vancouver. This one is a yearly affair, organized by Scott Kelby. It’s called the Worldwide Photowalk (#WWPW), and it was quite exciting. This was the fourth such event (and my first). I met a lot of very interesting people of varied backgrounds. Can’t wait for the next one.

Flickr groups for the photo-walk are:
Gastown
Scott Kelby’s WWPW4

Thanks to Scott Kelby for starting such a wonderful thing, and letting it grow. This was as exciting as last year’s Barcamp

Sometimes, they are useful for a lifetime

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

And sometimes, they barely hold your attention. However, the recent acquisition is the former. I got the mammoth of a book, over the weekend; it weighs a ton and I’ll be sleeping with it, clutched tight in my hands.

If you already have the tomb by tanenbaum of similar name, the unix programming interface, you probably are not going to glean much value from this one (you can thank POSIX for maintaining a modicum of consistency over the years and some would vehemently contest that). That said, if you write code for *nix systems, it definitely deserves the shelf-space as much as any other programming book.

OSX Lion and jumping through a few hoops

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

If you haven’t yet upgraded to Lion (slow-coach you !), you might want to read these:

How to burn your own install dvd for OSX Lion
You didn’t read this before you installed lion, did you? Then, follow this thread.

10 reasons to dump Facebook for G+. Now!

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A friend asked what I like about google+, and as I started posting a reply , I noticed there were enough to make a blog post. So here goes…

Here’s a quick list:
1. Mobile app on android and iphone are awesome!
2. Automatic upload of pics on phone/picasa
3. Non-crappy photos (allows 2400+px, and g+ renders pictures better, since they don’t mess with the image, if it is smaller than the max size)
4. Easier to mention specific people in a conversation. (auto-completes ppl’s profile name)
5. hangouts (free video conferencing)
6. Group messaging done right (huddle) on the mobile phone
7. decent integration with email (I guess this is just coz I use Gmail)
8. Privacy - predictable and manageable (not that it matters to me)
9. Much less noise (a - mostly used by techies for now, b - allows asymmetric relationships à la twitter)
10. Keyboard shortcuts (J, K work. Someone at google like vi – a lot)

Life in the BASH universe

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

If you write a lot of scripts to automate tasks, you probably already know this. However, if you don’t, and you are still reading, you are probably a programmer, in which case, you really should be learning how to script in BASH!

A couple of pointers for you:
1. Using a -x, in the shebang line “echo"s every line before executing. This turns out to be quite useful for debugging shell scripts
2. It’s quite easy to make BASH print a countdown.

People of GVRD - a photographic experiment

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I started a new project - to shoot random strangers in the streets of GVRD (Greater Vancouver Regional Districts - for those of you that are not from here). I wanted to see if I had the guts to walk up to random strangers, and ask their permission to shoot a picture of them. I was also curious to know how they would react to it, and what my success rate would be.

OSX Lion. A first look (at 2 AM)

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Just upgraded to OSX Lion. A very slick interface.

Quick Review:

1. Launchpad. Solved previously by Alfred in the GUI, and bash aliases on the command line.

2. Mission Control. Eye-candy. Will probably use it until I get tired of all the moving windows, and stick to Cmd+arrow keys to switch desktops. Maybe normal users will find it useful. But then, most people don’t want anything that increases their workflow complexity. Most of them have trouble keeping track of more than a couple of windows, let alone, 10s of them (which I think is what features like Mission Control will promote)

Some major site updates!

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

New wordpress theme
Optimized website load time (articles about this are to be expected in the offing). P.S CSS sprites are awfkinsome!
Upgraded to the latest greatest version
Finally, started writing something for the blog!

Exporting XDisplay

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

In *nix systems, you can make the display, the GUI of an application, appear on another machine. This if often required, when the machine you want to run the application on is in a lab, and you have access through a desktop machine that has a monitor.

You can do this, by running an XServer on the desktop machine and configuring the client (the one where you run your app) with the XServer details. By default, the XServer instance on your desktop disallows communication from all machines except localhost. Thus, you will need to add the host in the allowed list using the xhost command.

iPad and friends

Sun, 01 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a year since I sold my kidneys for an iPad. It’s been fun. It has replaced every other device I own (ie, a couple of PCs and the nexus one). It’s an outright winner, when it comes to reading, especially long-form articles, and books alike. It has become my go-to machine for everyday news, twitter/facebook, and even for browsing my favorite photographers.

It have however remained strictly in the realm of content consumption – until now. In the last few days, I’ve added a stylus - the Targus iPad stylus (available quite readily at most ‘best-buy’s, and on Amazon), and the iPad’s camera connect kit. If you own an iPad (v1 or v2) I would recommend that you fork out the moolah for these two. It will be the best $50 you’ll ever spend on accessories for the iPad. Forget the cool looking smart cover. These will be more rewarding than the 2 hours of thrill of watching the smart cover turn off the ipad when you close it.

You cribbing bunch of morons

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

And now you’ve done it!! Bah! I thought it was so cool that I could plot of heat map of my location for a full year. With all the cribbing around the internets about how the iphone is not secure because it stores data (ie a cache of your location data), Apple has decided to squash this wonderful “easter egg”.

Sometime in the next few weeks Apple will release a free iOS software update that:

Blogsy - a ray of hope

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This is a test post from blogsy, an iPad blogging tool.

The interface design looks thoughtful – drag & drop of images from flickr and picasa, videos from YouTube, a built it google search and browser to get at other content. Although there is a bit of a learning curve, it makes the iPad a true content generation device.

Maybe this will keep me blogging this time around. On that note, here’s a cutie pie to bring a smile to you, today.

Cthulhu is your god

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

‘Nuf said!

To the people of Japan

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

To the people of Japan, and the world, Lord Tennyson has these words

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,–

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

No matter what we say

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

If you weren’t in a hole the past few days, you would have heard about the iPad 2 launch. Here’s Conan’s take on it.

I must say, the cover is a thing of engineering beauty. Kudos on that, Apple, and thanks for screwing over several thousands of your iPad 1 customers, who forked up 9.5 Billion in revenue in 9 months.

Job Control on \*NIX systems

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

If you are not a UNIX user/not a geek, please turn away right now.

Every year, I either chance upon something new, or remind myself of something interesting that I’ve forgotten. This is the latter case. On a *NIX shell, you can push a foreground process to background (obviously without terminating it):

$ ./someprocess ... ... ... Ctrl-Z [1]+ Stopped ./someprocess $ bg [1]+ ./someprocess &

To bring the process into foreground:

My linkedin network visualized

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

[caption id="" align=“alignnone” width=“506” caption=“linkedin-visualized”][/caption]

Very cool

The Dude ... Rocks!

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Need I say more ..

Watch the full episode. See more American Masters.

Anger is Illogical

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Shared by shiva

Very cool!

Anger is Illogical, a film created by “OneMinuteGalactica”, takes audio from one of those “behavioural” films they used to show in schools in the 1950s and 60s and video from the original Star Trek TV series (run through a filter to make them look like they’re on 16mm film) and combines them for hilarious results.

Here’s another amusing little film from OneMinuteGalactica: Luke Skywalker has OCD…

Impersonations

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Some actors have the incredible talent of keen observation, and Mr Spacey is a master at it. Watch him channeling Pacino around 5:25. In few words, he makes you believe you’re seeing the real Pacino. The ‘Christopher Walken’ is also spot on.

Music from DMU

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

DMU (Delete me Uncensored) is a group on Flickr, that was formed because a few people got pissed at Flickr censoring content. It is a very “lively” place on most days with a lot of colour and personality. Mostly its just a bunch of fine folks that have a common passion (photography), and express their opinions with almost no filters. It’s easy to mistake the group for being too rude, but you just have to hang around to ‘get it’.

Barcamp Vancouver 2010 - Roundup

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Phew! What an awesome 23 hours! I’m just back from Barcamp Vancouver 2010 #bcv10. (Check out some pictures from the event). It’s been a while, since I have been this tired and excited at the same time. There are a thousand threads competing for the processor(s) in my head right now. I met a lot of very interesting people, and learnt about some great ideas. It has been a very educational weekend, in general. For all the great folks I met, I’m sure there were many more that I couldn’t chat with. To you, I say, “Let’s meet on the internets”.

Power of 2

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve done anything except write code – lots of it. The last 20 days have been insane, and ofcourse to a take a break from writing code, I like to read code that others write. (You DO know that I’m crazy, right?!). In one of my futile attempts at clearing my google-reader reading list, I chanced upon a post by Veerabahu, on finding if a number is a power of 2 (or not).

You know it is time ..

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

to write a blog post, when someone calls you to tell you that they checked your blog, and there was nothing of interest. Ofcourse, being lazy, I just chose to put some pictures, which have been languishing in the netherworld of pictures on the internet – Picasa.

Looks like, Google has improved picasaweb to be almost usable. It is still void of comments, or any real social aspect. I’m still well within the free quota, and I’m not forking out money for yet another storage provider, until they provide a way to export all of the content that I generate in a “parseable” form (That’s right, we invent words here). Anyway, I will shut up with the review of another techy thingy, and put some pictures on.

Awesome cricket ads

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Everything you need to know about cricket, in a series of awesome ads for Adidas.

and let’s see all of them mixed into one beautiful ad (that might make you want to watch this game, after all)

Unsigned Arithmetic

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Since my last post, I’ve had a couple of replies, a few more tweets, and few minutes of talking about unsigned types in Java, and why it doesn’t support them.

I still retail the view that unsigned types are unnecessary for the majority of Java developers. The only kind that should care, are those who deal with network information (like representing an ipaddress or macaddress). Everyone, put down your forks, and do not touch the unsigned.

Why does Java not support unsigned int? - Part 1

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

An interesting thing for me, is that if I am active on twitter during daytime in India (now that I’m here on vacation), I get to have some interesting conversations about design and development. Today, I chanced to talk about the lack of unsigned values support in Java.

veechand is there unsigned int in #java support your answers 10 Jul 2010 from TweetDeck

shiva @veechand nope. but use char instead. If you really want a type, you can define your own class backed by char 12 Jul 2010 from Twitter for iPhone in reply to veechand

A list to be on

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been busy. That doesn’t explain my silence on this blog, its but an excuse. A lot of things have been happening, both in my personal and professional life, and I’m not at liberty to talk about them. Those are for another day.

I have been writing code - for money, ie - for 9 years now. This obsession started a good 6 years before that. I don’t have much to show for it (most of it is copyrighted, or lost across several machines, that weren’t mine). One thing that hasn’t changed is the burning desire to get near some of my idols – gods even. When I was 15, I promised myself that I will strive to be at the same level as some of these people.

iCaved

Sat, 29 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I did it. I said I wouldn’t. I said I will hold out for purely ethical reasons, but it is very hard to resist the iPad. The first impression in-store is simply – awesome. This of course is not a surprise and is something that one can expect from apple these days.

Warning: This is a long post ..

Here are some thoughts, after a day of use:

It’s fast. Much faster than the iPhone 3GS. This is good news for the upcoming iPhone.
The battery lasts a really long time. It was around 80% and I used it for incessantly until it died 7/8 hours later. The a4 processor is at this point THE chip to kill for. If you have any samsung shares, I would dump them now, and load up on apple (although they are a tad pricy these days)
iPhone apps are useless and look ugly on the iPad. Don’t bother synching any of them
The keyboard is a lot more usable that I thought it would be. I’m typing this post at about 60-70% of my usual typing speed. (Only true if inclined at an proper angle – the perfect angle: the one you get with the iPad case).
I missed the universal back button. I’ve been spoiled by the freedom-toting nexus one robot ;)
Other small annoyances include URL copy pasting between apps, and how the app store lists apps. Exiting the app store every time I install an app is also mind-numbing. I know I can use a Mac and install all apps at one go, but I didn’t spend a 1000 dollars for workarounds.
Although I could type very well, creating a blog post is not this device’s forte. For one, all the switching back and forth, is a nightmare, and there is simply no way to get the links to apps for instance from the ipad. Adding images is a pain as well (which is why this is a purely text-only post). It is really nice until you want to go beyond its function as a consumption device. Even a little, and it makes you want to get to a mac/pc in a hurry.
Some apps are just stellar, that make it worthwhile go through the above mentioned niggles.

I don’t feel any remorse at having bought it, but at the same time, I’m not floored by everything either. That is actually the strength of the device. It is the first time a computing device completely disappears and you interact with data. The experience depends on the app that you are using. Instapaper does a great job, so does the gmail web app.

The day-after the "big" day

Fri, 14 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I turned 30 yesterday.

A whole day has passed since I left my 20s. They say it is a big day. They say it is a dreaded day. It was neither. Just busy (which is good).

I chanced upon [Douglas Adams’ post][1] from 1999:

> 1. everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
> 2. anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
> 3. anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.
> Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.

OPML Editor as a wordpress editor

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This is a test post to see if Dave Winer’s OPML editor works with a self-hosted wordpress blog. There is something geeky about seeing crappy fonts on a screen, that makes one want to use a tool more.

I’ve known of the OPML editor for a few years now, and have tried several times to find a neat use-case for it in my workflow, and it never had a compelling enough reason for me to stick with it. I’m hoping that this new wordpress editor tool will make me want to use this more.

Some deep shit

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

A recent conversation about Melody Gardot, and her songs, her recovery and music therapy led to the following thoughts. It’s some deep shit, but struck me as something that I should share. If you could care less about such things, move along, and forget that this every happened. If not, read on. It might just inspire some more thought

Person 1: You know I’m beginning to believe that each time something hits us hard - there’s going to be a lovely gift - only thing you don’t see it right away. Takes years sometimes. If only people realise this everyone will want to have problems all the time!!

So long and thanks for the "jailed" iphone

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

[caption id=“attachment_737” align=“alignnone” width=“300”] So long oppression[/caption]

Thanks for the iPhone, Mr. Jobs. There is a new way to protest the iPhone. I don’t have to sign petitions anymore. I can now take my $500 elsewhere, for a slightly more open experience. I didn’t ask for much, but I don’t have to wait on your whim any longer (no offense meant to you personally, Mr Jobs).

Vancouver 2010

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

And another thing about Google Buzz

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

There are several issues that people have uncovered in the last 2 days that it has existed. For me, of all the features that Buzz lacks, one thing really stands out. There is no way to just see a list of the conversations (without the whole list of comments expanded by default). This is the main reason that I *had* to unfollow Scoble, Michael Arrington, Louis Gray and a bunch of others. Take a look at this conversation, and you would understand why.

Google likes RSS .. a lot

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Did anyone else notice that buzz has an RSS feed for everything!!

Here’s a conversation that @Thomashawk started

Here’s the feed for that entry

Here’s the feed for the owner’s entries

Theoretically, one could build a service that aggregates only specific conversations (and keep them updated), or only a small group etc… No more reading data from a firehose!!

That is very nice.

P.S: also this could be a way to aggregate all your webservices into one super feed, that can then be posted elsewhere (comments and all!!)

iPad is iBad petition

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/ipad

If you think that the iPad is promoting DRM of apps that will lead computing in a direction that will undermine the freedom that we currently are enjoying, freedom the seeds of which have been sown over the last few decades, the visit the link above and sign the petition.

I too have something to say...

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

about the iPad, or so I thought. Then I realized with every single one of them writing pages upon pages of commentary, I’m not going to bring in too much insight. I’ve hence, tried to curate some interesting articles that I found. You’ve probably read most of them already, but in case you have been in a di-lithium mine on Remus. Yup! That’s right, I do like Star Trek. Now do you understand why I loathe - hate - despise what has been done to the iPad!! PADD!! arrrrggghhh! serenity now! serenity now!

Been a while

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I last updated, or even had the inclination to do so … well .. I’m back.

Here’s what I’ve been doing since the last time I updated:

work
worry
work
procrastinate
gain weight
work
quit smoking
go to India
fail miserably at quitting smoking
took a lot of pictures
return to vancouver
work

In the end, here’s what I have to show for the last month

Kindle for the rest of us .. well, almost

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve lived in India for 27 of the 29 years of my life (moved to Canada in 2007) For almost every year for the last 15 years (that’s how long I’ve been a gadget/tech fanatic), I have lamented the availability or lack thereof of any newly released shiny thingies. Amazon has finally figured out that people outside the US, read books too. Imagine my delight when I heard that there a new version of theKindle (The global wireless edition - no less) (Disclosure: affiliate link).

The Holy Grail and the Programmer's High

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Dave Winer, the inventor of RSS, wrote today about twitter’s latest API update for supporting the lists feature

It turns out there’s an API call that retrieves the timeline for a list, and it works exactly like the API call that retrieves the timeline for an account. So much so that I didn’t even have to change the glue script, I pass in a different URL and it just worked > orig link

I wonder if there can be a better award?! Dave Winer applauding twitter?! I never thought I’d see the day ;) (Just kidding Dave). Dave’s right though. There is a certain high that you get when something just works (as it was intended). That is the high that we programmers live for. It’s like a runner’s high.

Fun with an iphone app

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Got a new iPhone app called sketchbook, by autodesk.

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=327375467&mt=8

You need to check this out. Trust it is really cool and loads of fun

Guess what I'm getting in a week or two?!

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been waiting for this for a while now! Gary I hope it is all that I expect it to be. If I don’t read this the day I get it, and jump up from my bed at 2 AM crying “crush it” … well … I bet I will.

Google's on Vancouver Streets

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Google street view is now available for Vancouver, Canada. So, the big G has finally realized that people living outside the US might find use for google’s products.

I work here

View Larger Map

And I sleep here

View Larger Map

I'm on cloud number 0.9!

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

well not really! I just turned on RSSCloud support on this blog’s feed. RSSCloud allows the feedreader subscribing to you, to setup a callback address, which your blog will call whenever you publish something. If every blog does the same, it could account for several thousand, if not million CPU cycles due to lesser polling. It is the brain-child of Dave Winer, the man who invented RSS, the author of the ever-popular scriptingnews blog. (If you had started blog back in 1994, you could’ve got a domain as kewl as his!)

Folding Plug System

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

via minkyu.co.uk

Fricking awesome! I would kill to have this made for the Canadian and the Indian plugs as well (I’m just kidding … .or am I?!)

Posted via web from shiva’s posterous

I'm getting an os upgrade for 10 bucks!

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

With Snow Leopard, Apple has the first time done something that has made me go wow! An almost free OS upgrade. This kinda beats the crap out of paying a couple hundred for Win7.

[Posted via email from posterous - service no longer available]

Some fun with the IPod's shuffle feature

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

1. Put your mp3s on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. Write the song name down no matter how silly it sounds.
4. Tag 10 people. (I don’t do this .. It’s called spam)

someone says ‘are you okay’ you say?
Cat stevens - wild world (hmm… Note to self .. Delete that song!)
how would you describe yourself?
Julie Doiron - Consolation Prize

GReader just saved me a lot of time

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Google reader is one of Google’s products, that didn’t you didn’t realize you needed until you started using it. Heck, pretty much every product they do is in that category. It is one app where I spend a lot of time every day. That is how I still manage to read blogs. Even after twitter and facebook and friendfeed, GReader is still the place, where you can truly control the signal vs noise ratio of content that you read.

\[Jason\] The Case Against Apple--in Five Parts

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Hi Jason,

I was writing a post very much on the same lines, when I read your mail. I’m on my 3rd ipod, 1st iphone and 2nd MBP (one which I ordered just last week). I don’t think I can in the right mind buy another iphone or ipod for the amount of control that apple gets.

1. Absolutely. This is a no-brainer, that I’m frankly surprised that Steve Jobs does not see?! Well not really. Apple has always been a closed company. I was under the impression that Apple was a *hardware* company. This behaviour of blocking other applications from talking to Apple products is not only insane, and unfair to the consumer, it quite frankly against the interest of Apple shareholders. I’m pretty sure that having more ways to access data on Apple devices will have a direct impact on the sales of those products. Any product manager or marketeer who has desgined/sold electronics products will see the sense in this.

Map of the internet circa 2006

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Yeah that’s right! Myspace was still relevant. I have a theory that the internet usage explosion will not happen in other countries, until the US gives up its share of reserved IP addresses.

[Original gallery from posterous no longer available]

(via xkcd.com)

[Posted via email from posterous - service no longer available]

Some fun things, and some cute ones too

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I’m pretty sure that I am violating some copyright by posting these here but they really are good. (I found these on a facebook album shared by someone I know - thank you if you know who you are). I did several searches on google and bing and couldn’t trace any restrictions. If you have problems with it, let me know.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from shiva’s posterous

Some fun things, and some cute ones too

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from shiva’s posterous

Evolution's third replicator: Genes, memes, and now what?

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The first replicator was the gene - the basis of biological evolution. The second was memes - the basis of cultural evolution. I believe that what we are now seeing, in a vast technological explosion, is the birth of a third evolutionary process. We are Earth’s Pandoran species, yet we are blissfully oblivious to what we have let out of the box.

via newscientist.com

A little apocalyptic, but not beyond the realm of possibility. Of course, this does assume memes as fact, when in reality it is quite circumspect.

We Choose the Moon: Launch

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

via wechoosethemoon.org

This is awesome. I was born a few years after the race to the moon. What a great time it would have been for all those that got to see/hear this live! In the four decades, life on earth has changed so much – we’ve been de-sensitized to the miracle of flight and technology , and yet the spectacle of space travel is exhilarating as ever.

Posted via web from shiva’s posterous

Dreams for the next 100 years

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Over the weekend, I bit the bullet and bought a pair of really good speakers by KEF - the iQ70 series.

As I listened to them, for the last couple of days, I realised something that is, quite obvious, yet, goes unnoticed all the time. I wanted to show my parents how great this new set of speakers were. Even with all the advances in science and technology, I could not really convey how great the speakers sounded. It occured to me that there is no way to share experiences unless we share similar quality equipment. You could record video in HD, with a RED camera, but unless the person seeing it uses equally high quality display, there is no way, he/she is going to get the same experience you had. To some extent we have, acheived parity in display quality, and hence can convey images and video without losing much of the experience. However we are nowhere near ubiquitous when it comes to sound. Other factors like touch, thermal state, smell etc and completely beyond our prowess to express. However, we must pat ourselves in the back a little, coz in a matter of decades we’ve gone from a select few being able to communicate across great distances to several million all at once, in a matter of decades.

Left me gaping at the void

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Seen in the wild

I caught one and had it with my coffee

Posted via email from shiva’s posterous

For the last time, its not an OS!

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The last couple of days has been ablaze with news of Google taking over the world, destroying Microsoft and sticking all of humanity on stakes to collect sunlight and convert it to power. Obviously, some are elated at this proposition, some tentative, and then there are some others who think all of this is just hogwash.

I have but one thing to show you today. Presenting article number 1, a video by one of the minions at Google.

Fathers and Sons

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

[caption id="" align=“alignnone” width=“500” caption=“Father & Son #1”][/caption]
[caption id="" align=“alignnone” width=“333” caption=“Father & Son #2”][/caption]

20 years is a long time .. lest we forget

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post is a little late, but that has never stopped me from doing it anyway.

There are some things that we need to regret …

And then there are some others, we continue to ignore …

Hope we don’t add more such pictures to that list in another 20 years.

Thanks to WilW @ WWdN: In Exile for inspiring me (as always)

Dealing with electronic waste

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I can’t claim to be someone is really into environment protection, and I’m not crazy paranoid about the junk I produce, but I do care about me, my family, and the future of mankind (mostly in that order). I recycle as much as I can, I try to avoid plastic bags, I don’t throw garbage on the streets (I’m shaking my fist at you, Shivanand-in-India-who-doesn’t-live-there-anymore) etc.

I own a Macbook, and I wouldn’t say that I’m a big fan of Apple “the company”. However, I really like their products. The latest version of the macbook – that I’m not going to upgrade to – has given me reason to like it even more! Apple has made a huge stride, in making computer more environment friendly. Here’s the laundry-list of things they have eliminated from the Macbook (you read it right, ELIMINATED)

Computer Recording Equipment

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a bit of a stickler, when it comes to audio recording. I hate using the mics that come with laptops or the standard desktop mic. Recently, a co-worker asked me about my setup (I record a piano, strictly for my listening pleasure, and NO, MIDI doesn’t count).

I couldn’t find the links for my version of the mic, but here are some equivalents.

USB Mics

MXL .006 USB Mic
MXL .007 USB Mic

Latest Communication Technologies

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

All you nerds, be careful before you brag about your new gadget.

The devil is in the why?

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I got asked, what the best way to do a join between two large lists, into another list was? I always tend to answer that question with: it depends.

Just like any other algorithm, there is no silver bullet. It is a trade off between CPU and memory utilisation. Sometimes, we do have to think about these things (this is code in c++ on a device with scarce resources, to say the least).

How I'd spend $1,000

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Firstly $1000 is not a jackpot, add a couple more zeros and your in my range of a jackpot. :)

Secondly, if I did get a $1000, say on the street, or in an envelope by my door-side from a do-gooder, I would buy this http://bit.ly/jcL (70-200 2.8L canon mount lens)

I recommend drinking Vin Chaud when you're in Strasbourg, France

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Ever wondered how they keep warm in the cold winter months in Alsace?! They heat really good (most of the time) white wine and drink it like tea! And you can get it pretty much in every square!

Hot, sweet wine

A Week in Strasbourg

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

After several no-vacation years, I ended 2008 with a (short) trip to Strasbourg, France. For much of the last year, I have started doing things that I have abandoned in the last 8 years. The year has been quite eventful, much of it not evident from the lack of posts (which I hope to correct this year).

After a frantic last-minute scramble for the visa, I managed to get to Strasbourg. I managed to escape the record-breaking snowfall in Vancouver. Strasbourg was cold, really cold, but is quite beautiful during the Christmas week.

My first job: Building Custom PCs

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

It lasted about 2 years. I made next to nothing, but I owe my software development career to it!

On the road with some 70s

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Quintessential road trip songs. The 70s rule!

roadhouse blues by The doors

Eyes on the road and hands upon the wheel!

I can’t tell you why by Eagles

Coz I really can’t tell you why!

Highway Star by Deep Purple

When I get home, I kick my shoes off

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

To air out the feet

Are you using Open-DNS?

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

You should be using Open-DNS, if you answer yes to one of the following:

Are you frustrated with crazy-long wait times before even the website url shows up?
Is your ISP is a cheapo-*#$% using a crappy machine for DNS, and you wait enough to count the seconds between pressing enter and the little thingy on the browser status bar says “done”?
Are you subject to phishing attacks?
Do you want peace of mind?
Do you want auto-correction of urls?
Want to block your teen from accessing “excessive” porn?
Do you need a new dog to carry you paper?

OpenDNS is for you (well, for the dog, you’ll have to move your ass and get one yourself). It is quite trivial to setup and really speeds up your browsing speed. You can can set it up for each computer that you use, or better still, change the configuration on your router, which would apply across all machine connected through that router.

Review: A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke

rating: 5 of 5 stars
If you are on your way to Paris, or on the way from Paris, or in Paris, or … nevermind… just read this book if you are associated, in any way, with Paris. You’ll love it.

(If you are French, read this too, get angry, rebel and then revel in the glory! :) )

View all my reviews at goodreads.

Little masters

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Found these guys playing at commercial and Kitchener. If you wanna listen to them head out to cafe du soleil on commercial drive, Vancouver on Wednesday in the evening

Apple! Are you stupid?!

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s the the top 3 requested features from iPhone users at large.

And here’s what they thought people wanted.

Some Product Manager at Apple needs to think how much this is hurting Apple’s brand. Do they want to be branded, yet again, as a company that completely ignores their customers?! At least give some indication as to why you can’t get the top three features in. Sure they have a lot of less demanding, faithful sheep in their flock, but now they are going mainstream, and they need to get their act together. Come on Apple! Stop making me feel bad about choosing a product by a company that doesn’t give shit about what I want.

Review: Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life by Jamie Oliver

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life by Jamie Oliver

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Too much text and recipes are wantonly complex. A bit contrived, but not as bad as it sounds. A lot of comfort food. This book is about eating well, and not for the health conscious

View all my reviews.

Proposed GUI for C++ based twitter client

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I got really sick of using Adobe AIR apps that take up more and more of system memory for an app that does twitter.

I’ve decided to put my “coding for myself” hat on and write a QT based C++ application (that should be cross-platform). No name as yet, but I will find something soon. QtTwitter is taken. Mebbe, once I have a working version, I can get ownership of the project on google code.

A Thousand Tweets

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

How I handle 1000+ emails and 300+ blog posts a day

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Several people are shocked to hear that I read 1000+ emails and several hundred blog posts a day. Ofcourse, when I say that, all I mean is that, I process that much content. I read around 30-40% (That is really the signal-to-noise ratio of web content these days–and that is, if you are subscribed to high quality feeds)

[caption id="" align=“alignnone” width=“450” caption=“google reader trends”][/caption]

One of friends was curious how I can handle all that data flow, and I emailed her this:

Tandoori spiced fish with cucumber

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

One program–on Food TV–that I like to watch, is Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. He is such a powerful person, who is into what he does for a living. He has inspired me to get of my couch and cook decent food.

This is a recipe from his book, Fast Food. Every guy who wants to cook decent food should have on his shelf. A simple book, with simple recipes that any idiot (aka me) can follow. Most dishes are less than 30 minutes of cooking time. I’m a very imprecise cook, and subtitute freely when I can’t find a specific fish or condiment. I have taken the same liberty with this recipe as well.

Webified desktop applications

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

You know something is seriously out of whack, when you download a 12 MB application that is just a step above an ftp application. I know, a rant at such an ungodly hour! Yup! I have been up 2 hours past bed-time trying to upload a few high-resolution photos.

I found these shots of fireworks that I captured about two months back, and finally managed to sneak in some time to process these shots. I started my attempt at putting these on my flickr account, and the pitiful uploader V3, has been failing for the last 2 hours! I doesn’t seem to be the servers, since the 2.5 version works fine. Although, I must confess, I’m uploading files that are more than 5MB, and it’s really just timeout issues.

Unix: removing duplicates from a file

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last few months, I have re-discovered some unix commands (it’s been such a long time)

Eliminate duplicate lines from a file

#sort -u filename > filename.new

List all lines that do not match a condition

#grep -v ajsk filename

Copy contents of two files to one

#cat file1 file2 > file3

Append output of a command to a file

#cat file1 >> file2

In the browser lies the power - Wave 2 of the Google takeover

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Finally it’s out in the open. The ultimate weapon in Google’s powerchest to combat desktop applications, render the need for a specific platform meaningless - the browser. I guess this has been in the making for the last decade, and here it is. A browser by a company that downloads pretty much most of the internet every day.

If you are still reading this, you shouldn’t be. Get outta here and read this. (Actually just open in a new window, and continue reading this).

Chicken Curry with Eggs served on Rice

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Chicken Curry with Eggs served on Rice, originally uploaded by Shivanand Velmurugan.

Thank you Mr. Raghavan Iyer. This is the man, that wrote the book 660 Curries, that has initiated me into making proper Indian food. In the last month or so, since my return from my vacation to India, I have tried eating good food, and have found cooking a very rewarding activity. It helps you think more about what you want to put in your mouth and somehow, also makes you eat less!

Movie Review: The Dark Knight (spoiler alert)

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In a moment of mild insanity (actually more like boredom), I decided to watch the last show last night. I was plesantly surprised to find that the movie was playing in 2 theatres @ Silvercity, Coquitlam. With all the hype, and the huge revenue generation in the first week, the movie does deliver most of what it promises.

Before you start reading the rest of the post, there are few items, that could give away the plot. I wonder if one needs to worry about the plot in Batman. Here’s the short version of the review - watch it if you haven’t done so as yet. NOW!

Shooting Star

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Shooting Star, originally uploaded by shivanandv.

As I was rummaging through my old pictures, I found this one and liked the pastel colours of the evening sky. This was shot a few months back, I have over 3 months backlog of images to be processed. Let me know what you think.

Friendfeed comments for wordpress

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Conversations on the web have evolved quite a bit, in the last 4/5 years. During the late 90s, conversations on the web, was pretty much non-existant, except for a few, who used their websites to engage in conversations. The advent of the blog, made available tools to start and continue conversations.

In the last couple of years, there has been several attempts to normalize comments, across the blogging ecosystem, and several ways have been tried. Disqus, is a company, that is in the business of aggregating comments for your blog. Seesmic, a video communications startup, has partnered with them to integrate video comments. Even after all of these innovations, getting people to comment on a blog, is still pretty difficult.

cvs - Getting list of files changed in the current tree

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The simple way to retreive the list of changed files would be to update the tree, which would then list the files updated.

#cvs update . > filelist.dat

The problem with this, is that if there have been changes to other files after your last update, you will have to manually glean the files that you have changed. I tend face this, particularly during the last couple of weeks before a release, since you don’t want to risk updating your tree everyday, but still have to make 2/3 checkins. I did some googling today, and found how to find the list of files changed without updating your tree.

Whaddup Mister?!

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I am at the end of my trip to India, and I will miss this fella sorely!

A web based writer for writing to a blog?!

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

WriteToMyBlog.com, is a web-based editor (with a lot of formatting options), that allows you to write to your blog (from another website?!).

First thoughts go like,

“wtf?!”, … “hmmm.. interesting”… “I am a web 2.0 junkie?!

The likes

1. Simplicity of the UI interface - neat, allows lots of space for text

2. Integration of Flickr and Youtube (although I would love to see more such services)

3. Zero account creation overhead. (I wrote this post, before I created the account to publish it, and is a 1-click process.)

So long and thanks for all the good times

Sun, 25 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I have been away from the internet for most of the last week. There are only a few things that can keep me away from spending hours reading feeds or uploading pictures, and when those things do happen, it is not very pleasant.

Last week I lost yet another wonderful person from my life. I lost my father-in-law, Mr. Ghanshyam Maheswari. He was a good man, a good soul, a great father, and most of all, someone who lived his life - truly lived every moment of it. I can’t find words to express the loss I feel. As the hours on the plane ride half way across the world passed, I couldn’t begin to accept that he had really passed on. I guess, a part of me was expecting to see him at the airport, telling my wife and me that this was all just a dream.

Hey wordpress guys, have you heard of diff?!

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I hate having to upgrade software. I truly do. I release a version every 3 months, and it try to make the upgrade as painless as possible. For an application like wordpress, that has been around for such a long, I would expect that they would do something to make it a little easier to upgrade.

Ok. Sorry about the rant, but here is my problem: the download for wordpress 2.5.1 is around 1 MB, but what has really changed is only a few lines. However, according to wordpress, you have to go through a time-consuming process to get your blog up to date.

Twitter digests

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

A few weeks back, I installed Alex King’s Twitter Tools for wordpress. Running it for a few weeks, I found that by lack of posting to my blog, became more apparent that earlier. There are now more “twitter” posts than the number of posts that I have written myself in the last year or so. How pathetic is that?!

Looks like I have almost lost the need to say something (about anything) and it is about time to shut down this blog. However, I intend to give it another shot (one last time), before I stop hosting my own blog, and move to life-streaming instead (You can already find my at shiva.tumblr.com).

Jott - a voice-based blog client!

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Well, this is a first post to my blog using Jott, which is a very cool service. It allows you to call a number and talk what you want to post, and post it to your blog. I think it’s one of the new tools that really enable blogging. I’m just going to try it and see how it works out. listen

Welcome new friends from twitter

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I have the very distinct feeling that a bunch of people from India, are going to visit my site today. Maybe, it is too late, but nonetheless, I was compelled to post before I left for work, after staying up the whole night (watching movies). No really - Van Helsing followed by American Gangster - two very find movies, I might add, but I digress.

I got the honour, of being one of the few listed on a fellow tech-enthusiast’s list of “twittering” Indians. It’s not everyday that I make someone’s list, and hence the compulsion to blog about it. So, thank you Yuvi. Since he described me as a programmer, on his list, it’s only fair –

Biting the "Mac" Bullet

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I did it! I finally went out and bought myself a mac. I didn’t waver. No! Not this time.Â I knew exactly what I wanted, and I was going to get it, come what may!

I have to confess that I have been pretty critical of Apple andits policies. I still am. Nothing has changed my opinion of Apple as a company, in particular, it’s marketing team. The ipod touch price changes lead me to those conclusions.I liked the ipod touch’s interface and engineering, but when I first booted up my MacBook (Penryn-based) I was completely taken aback. The first time I booted my laptop, it was completely usable. Within a few hours, I had a few applications installed (open source ones), tweeted, seesmiced my first video, and was having fun, in general. The Mac experience was very very close to the ideal computing experience ever. (Yeah, it is that big a deal).

Can we end the Six Years of Fear ?

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

“This is it! Its the final straw. We need to do something about it!”

“What is it?”, you ask. I am sick and tired of hearing story after story of crazed authority figures, forcing rules upon the common man, rendering life to a boring, monotonous series of security checks and bans and fines. From security at airports, to self-righteous moderation aimed at photographers in public spaces. I am sick of it.

That queasy feeling

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

A few days ago, I returned the Ipod touch that I had for exactly 11 days, coz Apple chose to charge me $20. Apart from me being a cheap bas***d, I had this queasy feeling in my gut, about apple products. I felt an unexplainable rage towards Apple, Jobs and the fanboys. I am usually a very moderate person, and it really surprised me that I could harbor such crazy extremism and frustration. I could never place a finger on the source, until I read this article on Coding Horror by Jeff Atwood.

Bye bye IPOD

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Since I don’t enjoyed being screwed over when I buy a $500 product, I said buh-bye to my ipod touch today. One thing that I enjoyed, was the sharpness of the display. I will definetly buy this device again, if I knew for sure that, Apple will not pull another stunt like that with the imminent release of IPOD touch SDK. So until then, I commute for 2 hours everyday with no music to listen, no podcast from CNN to watch :(

IPOD touch: Downgrade from 1.1.3 to 1.1.1

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

My ipod touch was upgraded to 1.1.3, after connecting to my computer, and I wanted to downgrade to 1.1.1, so I could jailbreak it and put any app I want on it.

ipodtouchmaster found a way to downgrade it using iPhuc.

IPod touch 1.1.1 firmware link

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Since Apple’s is so bent upon disappointing their customers, by introducing paid firmware upgrades, I needed to ensure that I have the option to jail break, my new ipod touch (if need be). (update: the firmware upgrade itself is not paid. Only the newapps are paid). I am going to wait until they release their SDK in February before I jailbreak mine.

I found a link to the 1.1.1 firmware (thanks to Rupert and who-ever posted this).
I have a copy on my hard-drive (just in case).

Ipod touch/Iphone support

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This website, now supports a special interface for viewing usingÂ ipod touch/iphone. I’m using the iWPhone plugin at contentrobot.com

Google blogs its feature later than I do!

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I discovered today, that twitter+zooomr+a small utility called Cropper, now allows us to put new information about some of the products we use often, out into the blogosphere (I hate that word now), faster than ever before.

Check this image that I posted this image on zooomr on 12th Dec and then twittered it.

I found a blog post, by (I presume) one of the engineer’s who made it happen, on the google’s official blog. Although, I didn’t post the exact feature he was talking about, I noticed the feature too on another search I was doing that day.

Review: Canon 40D

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The best thing since .. well a Canon 20D.

If this video convinced you to buy a Canon 40D, or Canon 30D or Canon20D, use the affiliate links as provided.

The webfaction experience

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The reason for the respite in my blogging, was my move to a new web-host. After several hours of researching, I decided to go with webfaction.com. If you haven’t already visited webfaction, DO IT right now! It has been simply amazing. I love the one click installer, and within hours of getting billed, I got access to my account. It comes with shell access, SFTP, enough space, rails 2.x (just days after it was release), django, wordpress 2.3.1 and a host of other webapps, all of which you can install with a just a few clicks on their web interface.

What will happen in 100 years?

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

That is a very difficult question to answer (which I don’t answer anywhere in this post: go away). Anyone who attempts to do so, must be a genius or a fool, perhaps a little of both. Philipp Lenssen on Google Blogoscoped, observes how one of those is true. Here is a more detailed analysis.

John Watkins, must have been quite a visionary considering the depth of his predictions and how much of it has come true.

Loving my Canon 40D

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I recently got myself a Canon 40D. After a 3 year wait, I can finally afford to buy myself a DSLR, and have been going crazy with it for the last couple of weeks.

[Larger version previously available on zooomr - service no longer available]

Largely influenced by Thomas Hawk’s passion, I have started carrying the camera everywhere I go: to work, when I go shopping, and even when I am just walking around the neighbourhood. I shot this picture, on my back from work, last Friday. With all the shooting, I am running out of HDD space very quickly. I am ok, for the next month (I have 2 external 80GB HDD + around 60GB in my laptop). After that, I will need to move the old ones to DVDs (something, which I hate doing: easy to lose shots, and difficult to retrieve).

Sting by a bee

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Dang! I got stung today, by a bee, for the first time in my life. The little critter was trying to sniff some aroma from the back of my head, and I reached out with my hand, grabbed him (sorry, it must of hurt), and he got pissed and wanked me. Just as any normal, crazed-out geek would do, the first thing I did was to search the net for home-grown, bee sting remedies and I found this post by William Brantley. Being a much braver individual than I can be (when it comes to bee stings), he went through a series of bee-biting to test various remedies, that exists in the market-place and several home-grown remedies.

Banking woes

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

First off, this is a rant. You have been warned.

I have been banking with ICICI bank for the last 6 years. I have generally had a pleasant experience banking with them, since you could do pretty much everything you want to do with your account through their online interface. With my recent move to Canada, I was pleased to see an branch here in Vancouver.

I opened an account with them last week, and had used a check to make the initial deposit. A week passed and with no sign of a confirmation of account activation, I called their call center.

Issue with Twitbin, Jing the next-gen screen capture

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Twitbin has been my favourite client for twitter. the key thing that attracted me to it, was that I can use twitter, along side my browsing, and that makes life much simpler. Also, it have a very simple interface, to track your friends and their messages.

I realized how much it mean to my twittering experience, when it went down sometime last week. I presumed, it was due to the upgrades that the twitter team was planning, and want to see if the problem persists. Well, looks like twitter is working fine now, through the web-interface, and I guess twitbin should be operational now, but.. well NO.. I still have to use the web interface and it suck big time.

EX-SideRSS

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

After several months of keeping away from updating or changing my website, I broke the fast today. I found a wonderful plugin, sideRSS, which allows display of RSS feeds within a blog’s sidebar. As usual, I needed a specific functionality that was not supported the way I wanted it. I hacked it a little bit, renamed the plugin, and posted a custom version for download on my website.

If you need to share Google Shared Items, on your blog, but hate to include javascript (like I do), then use this. You can download it here (right-click and use “Save Target As…”) and find install information here.

hmm.. facebook apps and bandwidth

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote this a few months back, when I had just starting using facebook, but never got around to posting it. With a recent cleaning spee (of my laptop) I found it lying in a neat corner. If you are not already infected by facebook, here it is.

Facebook, is a web2.0 app that has the most serious drain on productivity, and got me to waste all of 5 hours on it, doing nothing but organizing, linking, inviting hundreds of friends; and just lounging around!

Unix: how to check system configuration on solaris

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I had to compare machine hardware today, and found information on that here.

**#prtdiag -v - **Gives hardware information about FSB, Sparc Model, CPU speed, RAM, Harddisks, USB drives (ie. PCI and networking slots) etc.

Click on the image below, for a detailed overview of prtdiag’s output

#psrinfo -p - lists number of physical processors .

#psrinfo -p -v - list number of virtual processors (cores) per physical processor.

#psrinfo -v - detailed information for each virtual processor.

Trojan alert in Chip-India DVDs

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I use AVG antivirus, which has never ever caught a virus on my laptop. For long, I have pondered if I really need one, since I have been quite fastidious in ensuring the media that I download/execute on my laptop. In my eagerness to try out Dreamweaver CS3 and Photoshop CS3, I slipped in the latest chip-India DVD (July 07) which carries the trialwares, and boom! AVG chucked out its first trojan alert in the last 5 years! That is quite amazing ain’t it? I haven’t had a virus in half a decade and boom one fine day!!

So many things to do and so little time

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

It has just dawned on me that I have more work to do, that when I was employed. So many things to catch up on: emails, orkut messages, linked-in invites (ohh. Kristopher Tate is a contact now! Thanks Kris! :) ).

Talking of linked-in, the pressure from the ‘opening-up’ of facebook is showing. Linked-in has added several new features and made interaction much easier than it was before. Things are where they should be; A free member can get in touch with someone they know directly. No need for any introductions if you know a person. (you don’t need to know their mail id, either). Finally someone at Linked-in realized that they need to accelerate the rate at with the interconnections were formed between people. That’s where the money is.

Happily unemployed (for a while)

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I recently quit my job at Novell. After more than half a decade of working 5 days a week and several hours a day, I get to spend my time doing only things I want to do. No more tasks that I have to complete, no more deadlines, no more betas to release (atleast for a few more weeks). I get some time to myself before take a deep dive into the job of chucking out code day-in and day-out.

Zooomr offering free 4GB accounts!

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Zooomr, for those of you, who don’t know it, is a photo-sharing site, that is developed and maintained by a single developer, Kristopher Tate. Thomas Hawk, the CEO, is a wonderful photographer, and writes a great blog, which you should check out.

If Flickr started web2.0 photo-sharing, zooomr is slowly moving the game forward. The latest version of zooomr, offers a bunch of new features, that are nothing short of amazing. Now, they are offering free pro-accounts for bloggers who use zooomr. (Marketing tip #1: Befriend the blogger). Ohh, btw, you can choose to use zooomr, on any blog service that allows you to add html to your post. I guess, that includes every single blog service out there!

Who wan[2]: http://technorati.com/tags/election [3]: http://technorati.com/tags/president%20of%20india [4]: http://technorati.com/tags/presidential%20elections [5]: http://technorati.com/tags/president [6]: http://technorati.com/tags/Kalam be the president?!

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

It is comical to see how the country, in other words, the ones who rule them ridicule one of the most important posts in India. How can the political parties choose to gain mileage by being so very fragmented in choosing the next president. How can they even propose to elect people who probably have very little to show for themselves as imminent achievers in their respective fields?! For God’s sake, you are going to elect a president!

Grady Booch talks about Cisco IOS, Britney Spears and Halo!

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Here is a wonderful way to spend about an hour of your time, particularly if you are in anyway associated with software development. Listen to Grady Booch talks about “The promise, the limits, the beauty of software”. Apart from that he also talks about pimped out laptops, being half dead, and fun stuff like,

“I looked at a machine from Siemens, and thought, Damn, I know the guys who wrote the software for this machine.”

One cat and lots of code

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Rich Skrenta elucidates the power of less code.

I ask you, grasshopper, which is better: flexible code or tiny code?
“Ah,” you exclaim, “Learned master, it is a trick question: code which is tiny yet flexible is best!”
WRONG! Tiny code is always best. Now you must carry water up the hill for the rest of the day.

For sure, he can’t think up of good stories. Just Kidding! Every time we, developers, make a change or fix a bug, we decide the fate of that particular code flow. We take a call on how the module or component is going to behave for the rest of the life of that application.

Computing webified a bit too much

Mon, 28 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last couple of years, the onslaught of web 2.0 apps has almost made the desktop irrelevant. With a service offering for almost every kind of application that a normal user would use, the age of installing applications is near its fag-end.

Is this good? Is this the direction we want to head towards? More importantly, does it make real sense for end-users? Ok let’s see what you pay for a normal laptop these days.

Upgraded to Wordpress 2.2

Thu, 24 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Finally upgraded to wordpress 2.2.

Geez!! It was released almost a week back and I hadn’t upgraded!!! I know, I know! I am a little paranoid!

I wonder why, that every time I update my wordpress version, I need to go through this very laborious task, of backing up my database, the entire wordpress folder, the last underwear that I wore, etc. Scripts guys! I need a script that does all that. Installing wordpress takes 2 steps, but upgrading 5?!

How to brew tea (Earl Grey) - The English Way

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been on a reading binge lately. With quite a few hours of flying time, and long waits at airport lounges, I got the chance to catch up on my reading. Went through two books this time around, the placid, but mildly interesting “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri (skip the book and watch the movie.. way better) and the exhilariting final masterpiece, “The Salmon of Doubt”, (wikipedia entry here) by the new age, space comic, Douglas Adams.

Linux, preinstalled on PCs - It about time

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

And the timing is perfect. Mr Dell, as it turns out (a little Douglassy, eh? Don’t get it, read “Salmon of Doubt”, the last book by Douglas Adams, pg 27), runs Ubuntu, Feisty Fawn on his home PC. Well, one of his PCs, he has four mamoths with 4GB RAM and a Quadro FX 3500 et al, costing well over $4000. Aparently, he also runs windows as well. Hmmm… living the high life.

The day that google acquired the world

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Philipp Lenssen, has an interesting (scary) thought about the day that google acquired the world (aka internet :) ). The date that he has chosen, 12 May 2017, sent a shiver up my spine. I, definitely, don’t want to see the world taken over by the most efficient search engine on my birthday!! :) That would be some scary stuff to wake up too.

Since we are on the subject of acquisitions, google paid over $3 billion for doubleclick, a company that google didn’t beleive in when it wanted to serve ads in the first place. How ironic! You pay more than what you invested in your company, to acquire something you didn’t believe in! I find that a little absurd, and you?

Wordpress commended for lack of spam

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Me and thousands of other people, continue to use wordpress, one of the leading blog management systems (sounds kewl, eh? ;) ), and proof that is it in fact leading is here.

Apparently, Wordpress.com, has the least spam, compared to other free blog-hosting services. The honored list of competitors, include the likes of google, myspace and AOL, each one of them goliaths! Matt Mullenweg, the creator of Wordpress, associates the success of wordpress.com spam protection to Akismet. This is something that I use now. I used spam-karma before this, which was pretty good, but with Akismet, it is almost zero-management.

Recovery from GRUB Failure

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I have a dual-boot PC at home, which boots to OpenSUSE and Windows. After a very tiring 7 hour journey, I came home to a GRUB failure. After searching for help all over the web, I found some help here, here, here, here, here and here. :)

It turns out, that GRUB stage 2 was not being loaded. So here’s what I did.

1. set the root partition

2. run GRUB setup on the MBR.

3. load the os using chainloader.

Blogging from a linux desktop

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Yipeee!! Just one word - Fantabulous.

The most painless install ever. Well, actually, I haven’t yet completely migrated to Ubuntu, but I just might. Today, I downloaded the latest beta of Ubuntu codenamed"Feisty Fawn". The thing that amazed me was that it had to use a restricted driver to get my Wireless working, but it did detected it and also most other hardware on my laptop. Amazing how far linux has come in the last couple of years. No wonder, Ubuntu has captured significant market-share from other linux distros. Now what is required to push wide-scale adoption, is to make a slicker interface. I know there is Gnome and KDE, but we need to rethink requirements. Greedy as I am, I fail to be satisfied by “better than windows” performance. It would be great if the Ubuntu developer push the envelope further, and develop something that can compete with MAC OSX.

News?! Why buy

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I ought to resist the temptation of writing posts full of only links to other blogs .. but this one is good

http://www.douglaskarr.com/2007/03/25/selling-news-is-dead/

He talks about how “selling news is dead”. I thinks he hits the nail on the head with this one. When was the last time, that you read/saw, a news items that was worth buying the newspaper for?

I can hardly remember the time, I needed to pick a newspaper, let alone buy one. Well, I do read a couple of articles once a week, on the papers that lie around in my office reception.

MS Vs Apple: Which is more secure?

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Marius Oiaga of Softpedia News argues that Windows Vista is more secure than MAC OSX, on the grounds that there are more security patches for MACOSX in a 1 month period. Now, how naive is that?!! Developers at Microsoft are probably just catching their breaths after years of trying to get Windows Vista out of the “window” (excuse the pun).

Now, why is Mac OSX more secure that Windows. Well, you never need to run as administrator (root, in unix speak) to get all applications to work efficiently. Since it is based on BSD unix (FreeBSD), Mac OSX’ architecture is definetely much more secure. Also, take into account, the fact, that there are only 6% of users on Mac OSX, and hence proves to be a very unlikely target for security breaches.

Meeting old friends

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

After moving to bangalore (it’s been 3 months already!!), I never had an opportunity to got visit good friends who have moved here. Last weekend, I managed to find time to meet up with my old pals.

Koushik (Photo no longer available)

Introducing, Koushik. a very good friend from Pondicherry. He is currently work as a Project Manager (yup, the youngest there!) at Accenture. This giant of flesh and bone (much like me) is a strict veggie and drinks non-alcoholic wine only (I tried it but … ugh).

The zen of Photo Management

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I have been rambling for the last month or so, about the need for better photo management. Having acquired a N730 recently, I have started shooting more and more pictures, and the chore of organising them, and sharing them has been such a bore, that I haven’t uploaded a single picture.

Well, to change that I launched into building one myself to suit my own needs, only to discover that someone has already thought of most of it and has built a product and a service around it.

Website clean up

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been hosting this site for over 2 years now. Nothing much has come of it, except satisfying my own ever-growing obsession with all things that are related to “The Web”.

Over time, I have managed to accumalate a lot of unwanted scripts, html files, tools and code snippets, that I have randomly uploaded to my website. It is a junkyard of sorts, and several attempts at clean it up has ended in adding more crud.

Bangalore Hangouts

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to the person who has compiled this huge list of addresses of establishements in bangalore. I have no clue how currrent this list is, but here it is.

Bangalore Hangouts - download files no longer available (HTML, Excel, ODS, PDF formats)

Usual disclaimers apply. DO NOT get in touch if your dog dies because of an error in this

document.

[tags]bangalore, bangalore hangouts, restaurants, blore, pubs, clubs[/tags]

Movie Review: Nishabd

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Nishabd is a re-make of the very famous russian movie, Lolitta. I know, that the flavour of the day is re-mixing movies, but I must confess.. what a re-make? Amazing movie! I was simply blown away by the pathos of the story, the power of Amitabh’s eyes and the great performances of every single character.

Personally, I think, this is the best performance by Amitabh. yes.. even more than Black. He has truly scaled peaks that probably most actors in the world can ever see. Finally, a movie that has created some hope for bollywood and the Indian film industry. We have class, we are the masters of pathos. We can do with more Nishabd’s. Mr. RGV, are you listening?

Blast from the past

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Pictures of Hiroshima post the 1945 bombing

http://www.gensuikin.org/english/photo.html

It is sad how destructive we human beings can be. I wonder how they will judge us, say 1000 years in the future.

[tags]Random thoughts, hiroshima, World War[/tags]

Hell via Sify Broadband

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

[Email screenshot showing Sify broadband complaint - image no longer available]

I had a hell of a time connecting using sify “narrow"band connection. After umpteen calls to sify call center, I decided to send mails to the CEO,CTO and Communications Officer of Sifycorp, to let them know of the pathetic state of affairs, and horrible experience of being a sify broadband user. I have attached a snapshot of the mail that I sent to them.

Let's raise our voice for our president APJ

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, has been, by far, the best president that India has ever had (atleast in my humble opinion). More than that, he has been one of the greatest ambassador of India and its culture.

He is the most energetic motivated I have known in my life. He is about to complete his term at the office of the President, and the following is a petition to extend his term at the helm of the country. I personally can’t think of anyone who can do justice to that role, better than him. So please, let us join together and raise our voices, so that someone who has done the country a lot of good, can continue to do so.

How I lost 4 kilos in 1 month

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

One of my good friends, James (who wants to remain anonymous), asked me how I lost weight. So for his benefit and hopefully to inspire others here it is.

Learn to ride a pulsar 180 at low speeds
Ride around town until you find a road with some engine oil on it.
Apply brakes (disc brakes are the most prefered) as soon as you ride on the oil. (Not mandatory, usually ride on the oil suffices, but just in case)

Knocking at Google's door

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

What should one do to get Google to listen to them.. Everyone gets an idea, but not everyone has the guts and the determination that Aaron has. Aaron has an idea, which he is trying to pitch to Google, by going to the googleplex. Already, he has had success in finding a few ears there, and thousand others worldwide. Check out his blog here.

http://www.cangooglehearme.com

Truly inspirational. (Speechless)

All I can say is, “Way to go, dude” like a thousand others have already wished you. I hope that your pitch to Google, gets us yet another cool Google product, and I hope to see the day an announcement is made on some Google blog.

That's what I call a "search"

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I wonder what’s happening to me. This is the third post in the last one hour. I must be going crazy. Anyway, this must the least used blog on earth, so what the heck. (I know there are a few of you out there, but you don’t say much on my blog!! :( )

Before I bore you into leaving this page, here’s what this post is about:

Have you seen this somewhere?

Filmi funda

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Some news from the Kolloywood.
Check out the latest pictures of Kamal Hassan in Dasa here.

In other news, Vijaykanth is infurious..

Vijayakanth: Naan Jaya TV mela Case podanum..!
Police : Yedhuku Captian?
VK : Naan Katchi arambichathai “Vilaiyaattu Seithiyila pottu irukiraanga”

End of the world nearing, doomsayer cry…

_First world war 1914 ——- DEATH: 10000
__Second World war 1943 —- DEATH: 150000
_Ajith’s ALWAR 2006 —– Apocalypse … end of the world

New phone - Nokia N73

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I dropped my trusty ol’ Nokia 6610, from the third floor, at my office. After scourring the gazillion models and options that are available out there, I settled on two phones.

Sony Ericsson K790 Cybershot

Nokia N73

guess what, although the other phones seem to catch up on paper, in reality nokia still wins hands-down. Just hold the two phones in your hand, and you know that the Nokia oozes quality. There are a few gripes though, which I will reserve for later.

Eventing mechanism between two java processes using HTTP persistent connections

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I have been twidling with HTTP Persistent connections in the last few weeks. Let me start at the beginning

I needed to replace CORBA in a legacy application with something new. Ofcourse, there are a few alternatives out there, but I needed something very lightweight. The problem had two major parts

Command Execution - Let the client, execute a function on the server-side and process the output data
Eventing - Make clients register for events and wait until some events occur and the server transmits the required objects to the client side.

The Command execution was simple. Expose all services provided by the server as SOAP services and make the clients talk SOAP/XML, however SOAP involves a lot of overhead in terms of serialising the object into an XML stream and later decoding that. Since both the client and server were completely in Java, I just had to transport the Java object itself
The event part, however, provided a challenge. I had restrictions on opening ports on the clients (Issues like firewalls, NAT, SSL support etc etc). So I chose to use HTTP itself to do eventing.

Goldilock's at my place

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

After a long ride from Bangalore, whilst I was sleeping blissfully, some rascal, ran through our house, ate an apple, stole a couple of jars of Pickle (good ones at that), helped himself to the following:

My Philips DVD player (it was skipping at most DVDs anyway)
An old Sony Tape recorder/player (apparently, some was wrong with it, and needed replacement)
1 apple (worth Rs 25, but actually priceless since my wife got it for me)
2 bottles of mushroom pickle
1 bottle of mushroom, and 1 bottle of (the famous) panchranga pickle (five types of fruit and vegetables)

Ohh.. also he chased my cats out.

XML Validator

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

It is quite surprising that there are hardly any open-source to validate XML out there. I had the need to validate a auto-generated XML output against a valid xsd, to see if the code that I wrote to generate XML was producing not only syntactically correct XML, but also XML that was data-valid. XML Validator, provides an UI that allows you to check the validity of any XML, in with reference to its xsd. It is free for Personal and Commercial use without any warranties. So don’t come to me if it makes your dog barks all night, or if your computer commits suicide.

Nexo - The tool you'll remember for a while

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Firstly, thanks Scoble.. I think I’ll stop reading other gadget/tech sites .. you are my new feed filter.

Secondly, I got a whiff of yet another web 2.0 (does that even mean anything these days!) application site. Nexo is a wonderful wonderful site. just as Scoble says “It’s Yahoo Groups done right”.

It took me the whole of 1 min to create my account, invite a few friends and setup my own group. Oh yeah, it also provides me with web-space to put my photos etc.

Crap on TV - Is that even news?!

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, I was watching an interview with Mr Ankit Wadia (His website describes him as “The Computer Security guru. The Ethical Hacker. The Author. The Intelligence Consultant. The Entrepreneur.”)

He was talking about how the web is unsecure today and how easy it is to crack passwords. Whilst, I was eagerly awaiting in anticipation to see how he hack into a yahoo password, he pulled a bluff on me, when he asked the presenter to enter his password and then he went about using Revelation to read the password from it!

Let's re-wire our minds

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

My site is probably one of the least visited blogs in the world! Trust me on that one! ;) by linking to the following set of youtube videos, I know I don’t do much in making it reach more people, as it rightly deserves.

Nonetheless, I consider it my responsibility to do it. and those of you who do read my blog, please do visit these vidoes and tell the author what you experienced.

Tips: Presentation

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I have always wanted to be good at public speaking, especially in front of large audiences. Although, I can address a gathering without a shiver in my voice, I nonetheless feel butterflies in my stomach all the time!

I found some interesting links that might help soothe those tense moments!

http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/presentations.html
http://www.aresearchguide.com/3tips.html
http://lorien.ncl.ac.uk/ming/dept/Tips/present/present.htm

Most times, one hardly derives anything at the end of an hour long technical presentation, and more often than not, the content of your presentation is lost after your audience exits the room.

Ideas: Plugins for Windows Live writer

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Been using Windows Live Writer as my blog writing tool. Here are some plugins that I would definetly make my life much easier. If you are insterested in writing a plugin or would like to add to these requirements, do get in touch.

Extended Link insertion

Link to different Search Engines (Google, Google Blog Search, Code search, Sun API search, Technocrati search etc.)
Link to various product sites (Amazon, RitzCamera etc)
Link to previously exisitng Posts
Recent Links
Links from clipboard
Auto-link insertion based on certain keywords
Multiple link inclusion - when this mode is enabled every word that is clicked on / selected should be added to a bucket, which can then be used to create links on.

Note-taking

Separate interface for storing notes/ideas for blog entries
Allow search across notes
Auto-complete using phrases from existing notes (optional)
Plugin for Firefox and IE to enable addition of notes by selecting text on browsers

Monetize #

Support for various ad tools like adsense, amazon associate etc.

Wordpress Style Support#
Review Publishing#*

Wordpress plugin that allows to create a set of reviews for various products
Allow access of reviews separate from posts. (can use a set of categories for this - similar to asides plugin)
Allow posting to this through categories, or allow through a plugin in windows live writer as “write review'

Drafts sync#

Allow multiple instances of windows live writer to share drafts.
upload selected drafts to wordpress
check-box for using wordpress drafts instead of local drafts
button for pulling drafts from wordpress and adding them to local drafts

# - might require extending existing XML-RPC (should be possible with wordpress)
* - might require wordpress plugin

Got myself a new Laptop

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I’m now officially one of the self-obssessed techie guys, sitting in public places and completely ignoring all the life-forms around me. Got a very nice deal from HP. Here is the config!

HP Pavillion DV2124TU
Intel Pentium Core Duo 1.6 Ghz
1 GB (2 X 512 MB) DDR2 SDRAM
Intel 945 800Mhz FSB Motheboard
14.1" Widescreen Display
LightScribe DVD-RW drive
802.11 a/b/g wireless
Bluetooth
Infrared
Altec Lansing Speakers
Built in modem and ethernet ports
3 USB ports
1 DV based USB
SD/MMC-Pro/MS/XD card reader
Remote control for DVD player
Windows XP Media Center Edition

Got myself a new Laptop

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I’m now officially one of the self-obssessed techie guys, sitting in public places and completely ignoring all the life-forms around me. Got a very nice deal from HP. Here is the config!

Got my hand back, finally!

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

After a whole month, of wearing a cast, I got my hand back today. This is the first time, in 30 days that I am using both my hands to type and it feels good to be back (atleast partially).

Here are some pics of my hand.

That is the result of a 4 cm incision on my elbow, to re-align a 3 cm X 2 cm piece of cartiledge that had broken and had torn into my tricep. The doc says, that upto 10 cms of the tricep was torn by this piece. They have affixed this piece to my elbow with a screw to keep it in place.

Trouble with Sony Ericsson W800i - Phone not detected.

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Trying to get the Sony Ericsson W800i has been by far the most traumatic experience of my life. I tried everything possible, but still was unable to get it recognised on my home PC!

So, finally I decided to resort to the most reliable way to get anything to work with a PC. Do a google search!!!

Found a wonderful link, (on a forum that solved the issue). Here is the fix suggested, (I have organised in to be more of a step-by-step guide.

Common Access Portal

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

With advent of web 2.0, and some habits cultivated over the last decade, I have a certain list of tasks that I do everyday. I current visit a bunch of websites more than once a day, and an integrated interface would do me so much good.

mail, a whole set of accounts, gmail, yahoo, etc
feed readers
blog editor
orkut
del.icio
google notebook

What is lacking, is the ability to have a single sign-on/account mgmt capability, a common dashboard, ability to cross-launch/cross-post content.

A broken elbow

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

On the 2nd of Jan, I fell off my bike and fractured my elbow. Been out of action since then. Thanks for all you guys, who kept me company.

Special thanks to Guru, Tanigai, Rajsekar, Shankar (my bro), Swetha (my sis). My mom, granny and dad, for nurrsing me back to health and for putting up with me (I know how much of a pain in the ***, I can be!)

Web 2.0 : The Next generation Web

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The following is something I wrote 14th Dec 2005, on my trial account with one of the earliest Web 2.0 spplication services, called backpackit.com

The site still continues to be a hot seller, with over 200,000 subscriptions. You can find the link to the original article here.

I post the whole content here, well coz I like my content in my own space! Now there is a feature that no web 2.0 application allows. Why can’t content reside separate from the service? Every application from gmail to backpackit, want you to trust them with your content. I think that should change, mebbe we shoul called that web 2.5?

Hacking Wordpress - An extended XML-RPC API

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Having broken my elbow, I have spent the last two weeks typing away with a single hand. With nothing much to do, I went about looking at ways to improve the capabilities of blog editors. I use BlogDesk for my blogging needs. It is a wonderful editor, that let you do all operations provided by MetaWeblog API. However I wanted to do more than what was provided there. I wanted to add some features for plugins that I used.

The art of software development

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Though many disagree, and think of software development as a mundane, non-creative task, as Kevin Carlson@DDJ puts it aptly, it is a work of art!

“I suppose the question is this: “where are the limits of the scientific approach in software development?” I mean, we are, ultimately, talking about an act of creation” - Kevin Carlson

(note the nested quotes! ;) )

Many of my non-IT friends have asked, how I keep myself interested and how I stand to sit (pun intended) in front of the PC for such long hours and not get burned out?! The reason for this question is partly, I guess, because not every developer that writes software, thinks of it as an art form, and hence most software automate mundane tasks .. users often do very boring stuff with computers .. stuff like filling forms, writing email etc.

My year in Cities - 2006

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Nice idea this one. So, here is my list

Chennai, TN*
Pondicherry, PDY^
Bangalore, KN*
Delhi, DL
Madurai, TN
Kodaikanal, TN

^- weekend visits
* - multiple times (weekdays) ;)

I have another idea. A chronologically organised milestone-events list for a year. Maybe that will take some time to compose! Good for another post eh?!

[tags]2006 summary, year in cities, travel[/tags]

Windows Live writer - Growing pains

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I just downloaded Windows Live Writer

At first look, it looks good! I haven’t been able to say that about most Microsoft products off late. The last product that was awe-inspiring was perhaps VC++ 6.0 (such wide range of features), IE 6.0 (it was big deal when it came into the market) and maybe, to some extent Office 2003 (a lot less buggy and smaller file sizes than previous releases).

Firefox upgrade!

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

It is not just M$ that struggles with frequent patches for its products. Mozilla just released a whole host of bug fixes in a new release 2.0.0.1. You can download it here or use the direct links below.

Http Direct Links to Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab
Windows
Linux
Mac

Ftp mirror: ftp.osuosl.org
Firefox 2.0.0.1 home dir: /pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0.0.1/

windows: $home/win32/en-US/Firefox Setup 2.0.0.1.exe
linux: $home/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-2.0.0.1.tar.gz
mac: $home/mac/en-US/Firefox 2.0.0.1.dmg

There are some issues upon upgrading. Some plugins have trouble working, notably Google Accelerator. You might want to disable that for a while and wait around for an upgrade.

Mono and Sharpdevelop - A baby step

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Having joined Novell recently, the opportunity to learn a bunch of new development skills has come up. Novell products make extensive use of the mono platform for applications development.

After 4 long years, I find myself in need of re-learning some windows application development. I tried setting up mono on my windows pc, and encountered some peculiar issues. I had installed mono and then went looking around for an IDE. Well, monodevelop sounded kewl, and tried to get in compiled on windows. I found that I needed to setup cygwin if I need to build it, and another 100 MB download is not what I wanted to be doing.

Arrivederci! Siamo arrivato!!

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

… that, my friends, in Italian means “Good bye! We have arrived!!”.

I have recently movd from my 4 year old job at HCL Technologies, Chennai to Novell, Bangalore. The first day at Novell was nice. The experience exuded professionallism on the part of the company and the people that I am going to work with.

Life seems exciting. On the very first day, I have a machine, access to email, food coupons, bank account, an airtel connection, travel info and more than I can remember. Amazing how quick things can be done these days! ;)
Finally, I did feel the loss I should have felt when I left HCL, my colleagues for the last four years! This quantum change, I hope will bring more challenges and exciting engineering problems for me to work. (God I sound cliched!)

2 days to lift-off!

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

As with Discovery, after a lot of hurdles (some within me and some otherwise), here I am about to take-off on yet another journey, that, I hope is going to be as exciting as the last one that I took, when I joined HCL-Cisco ODC. I has been an amazing experience in the last week or so, when I have been reminiscing about what I am about to do, what I have done, the wonderful people that I encountered and worked with, and the good and bad times.

Me! Back!

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Not that many are reading this blog, but hey, I’m back nonetheless!! Let’s see if I can sustain my blogging! I’ve been getting ready for a change from my current job. For those who don’t know, I’ve been working at HCL Technologies, Chennai, Cisco Offshore Development Centre, for the last 4+ years.

Reasons

1. my wife’s moving there!
2. My WIFE’s MOVING do you need more!! ;)

I hope to start work with a company in Bangalore. So you guys in cool B’lore, here I come!

AJAX toolkits that are hot!

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

JavaScript, MochiKit, PHP, X, TinyMCE et. al.Nice article comparing some AJAX toolkits that are talked about these days. Also Anant is doing a very kewl project for Google Summer of code, called GuideXML, an online AJAXified XML editor that is sponsored by Gentoo! Way to go Anant.

JSON Resource Guide

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

JSON Resource Guide

Male Restroom etiquette

Tue, 03 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Male Restroom Etiquette

All men of the world can find common ground in these simple rules of “evacuation” etiquette.

Author: zsOverman
Keywords: machinima overman sims restroom etiquette rules men toilet bathroom humor
Added: September 13, 2006

You must see this!! Wonderfully done and hilarious yet thought provoking!! ;)

technorati tags:fun, humor

AJAX Toolkit Shootout

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

AJAX Toolkit Shootout Â« Summer of Code â„¢ 2006

I wanna get on that plane

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

First Images of Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Cabin

Virgin galactic is a spaceship/commercial aeronautic vehicle that is being designed to let ordinary people like you an me (well ones with $200,000 spare change) to travel to space and conduct “scientific” experiments (kiss in space? marriage in space? ahem … in space? **pervert**)

and I wanna get my ass off to space in just that … 3 days out of the earth! That will mean a lot less coding. Maybe I will come up with the first-ever “out of the world” open source software, or maybe even a yahoo widget or two!!

HD-DVD and Blu-ray unite!

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

New technology could nip DVD format war in the bud

That is what someone needed to do, build an abstraction layer over the various DVD/DVD-like media so that as a consumer, when I am choosing between Star Wars and Star Tre, I don’t need to bother with the media type and the version etc..

Just let me but the disc and get home to watch on the blu-ray drive or at a friends place on HD-DVD drive.

You gotta gimme one of these - Part 1

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

dapreview.net: content / meizu m6 (stand-alone review)

That my firengi friends is why one needs to be in China!! Damn that is a kewl gadget, and that if built with good quality can beat the sh** outta any pod that any fruit in the computer industry can make! (for the uninitiated read fruit as “apple”). Check out the reviews at the link mentioned above

Online AJAX Training

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

10-week AJAX Training Course by Sang Shin

Tuning Garbage Collection

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The much talked about and often cursed part of Java development is Garbage Collection.

I often say, “Writing code in Java is easy, but writing good code is extremely hard”

I have listed a list of links at the end of this article that provides more detailed information.
Resources:
http://java.sun.com/docs/hotspot/gc1.4.2/index.html
http://java.sun.com/docs/hotspot/PerformanceFAQ.html#1

Return of Javascript!

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

After what has been ages, I have returned. Not that many are reading this, but I intend to use this for future reference in any case

I have wanted to learn javascript, and this time I found a sustainable way. Learn a language by implementing something very huge in it. I’m writing, what I must say a very kewl application at work, and am learning quite a few tricks in javascript.

Detect that counterfeit and slap it!

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Nice website this one!
Counter Counterfeit Commission

If you are enraged at people selling counterfeit Minis on Ebay, check out this link to vent your anger

http://www.counterfeitmini.com/main.swf

How "The Alchemy of Desire" changed my life

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The Alchemy of Desire

by Tarun J. Tejpal

This is an amazing amazing book. What prose?! and what a story?! This has rekindled my faith in Indian authors, Finally a book in â€œenglishâ€ by an Indian author, without a thousand transliterated words from Hindi.

It has made me see a few things I had forgotten, made me look and find new things, that I didnâ€(tm)t knew existed.

Thank you Tarun, you need to write more!

Piya Bole - Pareenita

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I was listening to the song “Piya Bole” and couldn’t figure out meanings of some words … so I googled it and presto!
BollyWHAT? presents THE TRANSLATED LYRICS of PARINEETA
enjoy.. nice lyrics eh?!

Btw, You can find guitar tabs for that song here and here

Why it's taking me forever to finish consuming "The Da Vinci Code"

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The Da Vinci Code

by Ron Howard

Well, finally managed to catch the moview! The moview has been banned all over Tamil Nadu (Drat!!!), but I chanced to catch it. IPrehaps because I have read the book, the actors seem to be mere narrators of the script. I could hardly accept Tom Hanks (guess he is getting a little old these days), as Robert Langdon. I like Silas though, but would have expected a more burly man!

Convert byte\[\] to long in Java

Tue, 23 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

One more little thing that is painfully difficult to do in Java. (I love Java though ;) )
There are two ways of getting it done.

a. Cryptic but sweet! bring on the bit manipulators!
private long getLong(byte[] mbytes) { long lValue =0; for (int i : mbytes.length) { lValue = (lValue< <8) | (mbytes[i] & 0xff); } return lValue; }

b. painfully slow and created a gazzillon objects (sooo typically Java)
write byte array to DataOutputStream, and read from corresponding input stream using readLong()

The "Da Vinci" Debacle!

Thu, 18 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Check out the news item!! The height of hypocrisy! When there a thousand things we can raise hue and cry over, all we can manage is go on a hunger strike to avoid screening a movie?!! We got to be better than this.. someone please tell me .. we got to be better than this!
Top News | Reuters.co.in

Integrated solutions for an easier life

Wed, 17 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The ability to put together a set of innovations into real-life use and build something that reaches the lives of common men, making it a tad easier, a tad more fun .. that I think is the most amazing ability that a person can have. We were discuss this among many other, at office the other day, when we decided to go to a movie.

Now, I have this habit of watching a movie at “Satyam” - chennai’s very own sofisticated multiplex. Aparently, they have a website through which you can book tickets. It is one of the few usable flash based sites, that I have seen. What was amazing for me was that, they also have an option for you to choose the snacks that you would like to eat when you are there!! Kewl uhh?!!

SFO bridge stats

Wed, 10 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I was always intrigued and amazed by the ability of human beings to give up their lives at some of the most beautifiul places. Why do people like to jump of cliffs that provide a breathtaking view, or bridges like the one at SFO with its capability to produce “suddenly-surreal” images!

Check out some statistics on the suicides at the SFO gate
SF Gate: Multimedia (image)

Bug Fix: Boast Machine 3.1

Tue, 09 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

There is an issue with installing the latest version of boast machine v3.1.

The message displayed during install is this
Error message : Invalid default value for 'author'

The problem is due to the following code in install.php
author INT(10) NOT NULL default ' ',

This should be changed to
author INT(10) NOT NULL ,

install patch for Boast Machine 3.1

*Note: Right-click and save target as / Save link as

A review of "Crash (2005) (Widescreen Edition)"

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Crash (2005) (Widescreen Edition)

Some one tell me what the hell are they talking about in this movie!!!! It is the mind-numbing experience of watching 7 movies at one go.

I must give it to the director though, for tying together each of the sub-plots, but man.. you gotta tell me something by the end of the story!!

See more about Crash (2005) (Widescreen Edition)

My Guitar

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

well, about a coupla months back, I got myself a guitar and having been since then, utting my fingers at it on and off (mostly after midnight).

I have finally learnt how to play a few bars of “Ilaya Nila”, the song that really pushed me towards learning the guiatr in the first place.

After numerous attempts to find the notes myself and failing quite miserably at that, I found this amazingly true reproduction of the original, Guitar Lesson #8646 at WholeNote: Ilaya Nila by Ananth Narayanan. Kudos to you dude!

Fastr

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to kottke.org, I found a very engaging game, to keep my busy during the long hours of installing applications at work!
Check out Fastr. Oh Yeah, btw, it uses AJAX to update the scores. Welcome to Web 2.0

I'm back

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I have been away far too long this time around. But, I finally find some time to do my bloggy thingy!

I managed to finally migrate to Wordpress 2.0 with the latest K2 theme. (btw great work with the theme guys)

It has been a very hectic month, and very busy and interesting start to the year! Some of the stuff I have been dabbling in since the begining of this year

Sun Tech Days 2006 at Chennai

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Nice sunny day, and a huge auditorium filled with half of Chennai’s Java crowd… well mebbe not exactly have, but close 2500 java programmers attended this year’s Sun Tech Days held at Chennai,India. This is my first time at a Sun conference.Well, it is not a JavaOne kinda event, where it is all techie, but atleast you do get to meet a few like minded, hard-core, think-OOAD-in-the-shower guys. There were some very kewl speakers. I especially enjoyed

Page link in wordpress

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I have been wondering for sometime now, how K2, added an entry in pages, but the content was controlled from the one of the php files in the theme directory.

It turns out that is is very simple (yet elegant … hat’s off to wordpress guys). I used this to integrate FAlbum into K2.

Okay, let’s get on with the tutorial:
*WARNING*: Take a backup of your database before you proceed with the following

Actually I got a Creative Zen Micro instead

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I wanted to get the pod nano initially, but I chose to get the Creative Zen Micro instead for reasons listed below:

Why the Nano is a piece of junk
1. Cracked screens – heard quite a few reports of that and since I live in India and the Nano cost about 2 as much as it is in the US, I didn’t want to risk it

2. Flimsy – the entire player bends with little pressure applied, a little more I’m sure I’d end up with two pieces! (Definitely not suited for 40deg C and extremely dusty conditions that I have to go through everyday to work and back)

The Swift is here!

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Yippeeee!!! Last weekend I finally got my long-awaited very won Suzuki Swift ! The delivery of the Swift is by no means swift!

Anyway, I had a ball of a time. Here are some pics! (WARNING: eye-candy)

Some pics of Bunty and Bubbly too:

Some pictures taken on the wya back to Chennai (a coupla weeks back):

The wonder that is php

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

PHP is an incredibly easy to use scripting language and yesterday I had my first meeting with it.

Yeah, I know I support and fix some issues in wordpress, but that just requires programming knowledge, and not exactly great php exposure. But yesterday, I wrote a small tool to track some timesheet info, in php and the whole thing took about 1.5 hours to complete. Slick UI, storing and retreiving from DB et al!

Yabadabadoo!! flickr's in my blog

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I have been wanting to integrate photos that I take into my Wordpress blog for over 6 months now!
I finally found the best suited solution for me. Well almost! Probably the second best thing

I can now do the following:

Insert images from my flickr stream into my blog.
Present a gallery of images based on my sets
The visitor can now search images based on flickr tags

Bug \#1 in Ubuntu

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I found a very interesting bug report on ubuntu! If you haven’t heard about Ubuntu, then this bug report is definetely a must read. Check it out!

Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace. This is a bug, which Ubuntu is designed to fix.

Bug #1 in Ubuntu - Microsoft has a majority market share

I tried to see how the latest release of Ubuntu has addressed this particular bug, and I see that it is still pending. Although, the open-source OS guys are striving a lot for features, but somehow everyone has forgotten the root-cause that made unix so popular.

Bike ride -Chennai-Pondy

Sat, 26 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Yet another wondeful ride on my bike, and I’m road wiser !!

I rode to Pondy last Friday, (the usual weekend get-away). Having been long since my bike stretched its engines, this ride was a nice change for both me and my bike.

Pitck black, it was, that night, but very little traffic on the roads. A cool breeze was working its way up my spine. Frequent drops of impending rain, threatened to drench me, my soul and my bike, as we streamed past Mahabalipuram. Stopped momentarily at Kalapakkam for a tea. The warm tea, quenching my raving hunger, the news that india lost miserably (yet again!) to South Africa, set my my pulse raving to get to Pondy to catch the highlights of India-trashing! (just wanted to see how badly our team can perform)

Learn HTML and Javascript

Fri, 25 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

HTMLSource: HTML Tutorials

I know I need to refrain from this incessant habit of link-blogging, but hey, somethin’ better than nothin’. A lot has been happening lately, but no time for that now!

This is a wonderful site, by far the most useful and easy-to-find-info site for HTML and Javascript. They don’t assume that you have a PHD in web-develeopment before talking about some of these kewl technologies. Check it out!

The zen feeling!

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Atlast!!! Finally!! I got to lay my hands on the Creative Zen Micro I have been drooling over all these days! One of Guru’s friend’s finally agreed to get it here.

It is much smaller that I thought it would be, but it is one of the coolest gadgets I have laid my hands on. None of the images on the web do any justice to the drool value of this pod-killer. The only disappointment until now, has been the need to shell out $40 for the charger, which I haven’t bought as of now. Need to find out how much they would fleece me for it in India.

Nature's wrath #2

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Wowie!!! Yippeee!!! Yikes!!!
That’s the sequence of emotional states that I have transitioned through over the last couple of days. Getting some rains after a long period of drought was nice, but then like most things in Chennai, it turns out a teeny weeny bit much, when I have to waddle through knee deep slush!

Torrentials rains have gripped Chennai, for the last couple of days and today life came to a stand-still! Water logging everywhere, no power, nowhere to go to eat! More has been predicted for the weekend! Let’s hope chennai is not submerged by the time I get back from Diwali holidays

Apple iMplant

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Have you heard about the latest ipod.

http://www.bbspot.com/News/2005/01/new_ipod_implant.html
http://news.com.com/5208-7354-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=4129&messageID=24004&start=-1

This is amazing.. Imagine being able to have a device implanted in your body, with which you cantrol with your thought, and which will use your brain as a hardrive, and use blood sugar as a battery cell.

Eerie thought envelop me, when I think of what could be?!! Living the matrix ?!!
It is not only the body heat that can be a source of energy (like in “The Matrix”), even human blood sugar can be harnesed!

Nature's wrath

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

What are we humans against the over-powering wrath of mother nature? Time and again, she warns, and tests the best of us, and ceases to amaze us with the brute diplay of power. With all the technology in the world, man still has to grapple with reality of the powerlessness of the human being against forces of nature.

The recent display, in Pakistan and its surrounding, is simply astounding. One cannot, but feel empathy towards the innocent thousand (maybe millions) that have been trampled upon by the brute force of a 7.2 Earthquake.

SNMP tutorials

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

SNMP being the bread and butter for me, I decided to dig up some tutorials and links regarding the same.
For the uninitiated, SNMP is short for Simple Network Management Protocol, and is a protocol used to manage network devices such as routers, switches etc.

Simple Web - Introduction to SNMP, and good set of tutorials
Simple Times - technical articles and featured columns
Cisco - SNMP Overview
Cisco - whitepaper
SnmpLink - Links to almost every possible SNMP resource

Website Sruce UP

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I need some ideas for my website and blog. I still have not been able to integrate and modify my blog well enough. Wordpress is great, but it sorely lacks some core CMS functionality, like for instance the ability to add pages to my site. I know you can add static pages, but I need to be able to create another changeable content page like what php-nuke provides for instance.

I’m trying to organize some of the plugins and features I would like in my blog:

Down with a viral fever

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

What a lousy week it has been… I’ve had this fever all week long, and is still poking its head around me now and then..

I have been down for the last few days with a viral fever. I also made the mistake of calling my family and telling them that I am unwell. They got very worried and came to Chennai in a taxi to pick me up (my mom). (That was embarrasing … but did feel well pampered).

Talking about UI interfaces

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

As technology enters our lives, dare I say, invade our lives, the concept of radical design has been ubiquitous. It’s design, design and more design, for last few days for me. I came across quite a few very kewl interfaces and design concepts (a detailed listing below). Some much of what we do, is so dependant on how efficiently a product has been designed. How minimal and useful the interface is.

Opera for free! Yipeee!

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

There was once a wondeful browser called “Opera”. The lucid interface, the smal memory footprint - it was simply browsing heaven.

Then came the version loaded with ads, heavy, sluggish UI and a hug memory footprint in the name of new improved UI. The ads loaded version of opera turned out to nag-ware and I totally detested it and moved to other browsers (read Firefox). Get online and check websites out became “swimming” and not “surfing”

Back Online

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

After a week long battle with my host sending email back and forth, I managed to get my site back online!
Hopefully now, I can start posting some of the events of the last two weeks. Very eventful mind you. Check back in a couple of days.

Google Talk

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Another wonderful tool and a new area that Google has strolled into and stormed!
Check out the new IM from Google.. neat sparse interface as usual. Extremely intuitive and very light on system resources. I’m lovin’ it!

Download Google Talk

OBL 2005

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

OBL - Out about learning, the second time to the same place, same people, but totally a new experience. On a deeper note, I rediscovered myself! Quite a few things about myself, that I hadn’t noticed before came to light.

I had a great time too, meeting a few new people, and a few new versions of old ones!
The day we were returning to Chennai, we went to a kewl pub called “Alibi” in Church Street, where we managed to get two free pitchers of beer (try the Castle beer there … really neat!)

Book review: Five point someone

Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’m at office, after an all-nighter! I chanced to come by this amazing un-put-downable book by name “Five point someone” by Chetan Bhagat (Check out the book’s site). Not many books that I read get read, in a day.The amazing story of three friends through life at IIT, brought back memories that had been shelved for the past four years. Of the gazillion trees that were felled for the books I have bought, read and enjoyed, the trees that made this book lost their lives to a worthy cause.

attrocious site - bonsaikitten.com

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I encountered, by far, the sickest website I have seen in my entire life.
Kittyculture is the act of stuffing a sweet little kitten into a jar, sealing its anus shut and feeding it to a tube, and keeping it that way for 4 weeks and more, so that it may be given “fair” treatment by giving it an “unique” shape that nature has denied it!! Wow, I just read what I wrote and the absurdity just baffles me! How can anyone in their sane mind can even dream up something like this!!

The new face of google

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Check out the future of google here

Google Suggest is in BETA testing (as all other kewl features of google ;) ). Just go to the link above and search for your favourite search text and wait for a second before pressing “Enter” and voila!

Lunch at Kadaleevanam

Fri, 15 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

We went for team-lunch at this amazing restaurant called “Kadaleevanam”. It is a health food restau, at Mugappair, Chennai. The food there is based on naturopathic principles and it actually tasted quite good. They explain the food that you eat, and enforce (read, beware of the order in which you eat, or else they’ll make you eat it again ;) ). A small tip, check out the ice-creams there (Yup, healthy ice-cream!! quite an oxy-moron eh?! ). Quite an interesting choice of ice-creams, like tender-coconut, ginger and honey, guava!

Couple of guys and a cuppa

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

What are the odds of meeting a violinst and a chartered accountant (two people, ofcourse ;) ) in the same city on the same day, at the same cafe? Well, I did just that. I’m sorry to say that I managed to forget the name of this very interesting violinst, who educated me at the finese of Bach’s compositions and also taught me a coupla chords on the guitar (Aparently he plays that too!! )

Firetune - speed up your firefox

Thu, 07 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I just found this link on an orkut forum … yeah , I’m part of orkut too!!
Check out Firetune. It is supposed to make Firefox quicker.

I’m testing it as of now.. and will post some results

What kind am I?

Wed, 06 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

You Are a Life Blogger!

Your blog is the story of your life - a living diary.
If it happens, you blog it. And make it as entertaining as possible.

What kind of blogger are you?

swift booked!

Tue, 05 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I booked a swift this weekend. Seems like it will take almost 5 months for delivery! I hate this BS dished by Maruti to its customers. Why introduce a car, which is by far the most economical in its class, packed with features and expect it to sell only 5000 a month?! Well, the sales rep at a Maruti Dealer told me the production capacity was just 5000 a month, and they already have booking close to 30000?!

Newtons Laws For Software Engineers

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Law 1.Every Software Engineer continues his state of chatting or forwarding mails unless he is assigned work by external unbalanced manager.
Law 2. The rate of change in the software is directly proportional to the payment received from client and takes place at the quick rate as when deadline force is applied.
Law 3. For every Use Case Manifestation there is an equal but opposite Software Implementation.
Law 4. Bugs can neither be created nor be removed from software by a developer. It can only be converted from one form to another. The total number of bugs in the software always remains constant.

Swift!!

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I took the Swift for a test drive last weekend. Amazing feeling I must say! The gear changes are soo slick, spot on .. like a hot knife through table butter!
The acceleration is smooth, and yet let’s you know it is there if you want to leave in a hurry. Perfect seating position for me (I’m 6'5").

The vehicle took my heart away. It’s now a Swift or nothing at all! I’m booking it next weekend. Let me get my bonus!! pllluueeessse God pluuueeesse!

Oil Crisis galore! The End as we know it?!

Wed, 22 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I happened to read some very interesting scary (to say the least) articles on how life as we know it may come to a standstill.

Check out some articles on the net about the Whats and the Whys of the Oil Crisis we are in today and what the implications are:
Life After the Oil Crash
THE PARTY’S OVER
Nine reasons the peak now looks more imminent
Economic “Armageddon” Predicted

The New Ride

Mon, 13 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’m planning to get a new car in the offing.

The brand new Maruti Swift ! yup! It is quite a kewl car, modelled quite a bit on the new “Beetle”
Check it out here

I’m planning to get the VXi variant without ABS. It has got a kewl 87Bhp@6500 and 113 Nm@4500! Detailed specs here
Currently, I’m working out the financials, let us see how it goes.

Am I a Nerd or what?!

Thu, 09 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Check out nerdtests.com and find out if you are a nerd indeed!

This is what I got!

VC++ Time

Wed, 08 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Started working in VC.NET. The Visual Studio 2005 BETA is out! really kewl stuff. I simply love the IDE enhancements
I had to port an application from VC6 to VC.NET. It was such a breeze. a little googling and most of the issues are under control
Will post an article on it sometime

I also got myself, the GoF Design Patterns book! simply amazing and such a great read, I must say

Visual Studio .NET

Fri, 03 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Visual Studio .NET 2003 is kewl.. I mean really kewl! The work flow is a hugely improved. Quick, a breeze to install and work with.
and VS 2005 sounds even better, Check out the Express editions at http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/

getting batch categories to work with Word press 1.5.1.1

Fri, 27 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I simply love that plugin - Batch categories, like a myriad of other wordpress users. (A thousand thanks to Stephanie Booth wouldn’t suffice ;) ), but I had problems getting it to work in 1.5.1

Lots of results out there, that explain how to fix it, but none that lets a newbie get it up quickly. I know this is a repetition, but it still took my more than a day to get it fixed (mebbe it’s my dull head.. but then again)

Hurrah! to Wordpress

Thu, 26 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Hip hip hurrah! (applause ..) I finally managed to get my site up using wordpress. A truly wondeful peice of software. Thanks to all those developers and plugin-authors for their wonderful contribution to the world of blogging! I know that blogs are becoming less fashionable, but I have always been more into what is functional than fashionable.. It server my needs and that’s all I care about. I’m trying to make it look more static, like a normal website, but that is beside the point.

roaches kill laser printers

Thu, 26 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Roaches have attacked the toner in laser printers .. or so some judges claim! however the infrastructure team claim that they have found yet another effective way of dealing with them.. the heat and the laser killing the roaches!?

Now how weird is that. Check it out here

What’s next, the spider that weaves a web that disconnects the US and Asia and disrupts outsourcing ?! ;) (touch wood)

word press!

Thu, 19 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Wordpress is a nice small CMS written entirely using php and mysql!
It makes using blogger, MT and other such services entirely useless!! If you have a website and would like to manage your website effectively go for this!!

I’m planning to switch to it in the near future! I’m working on choosing a nice skin and customising it for my site!
Do check back soon!

*Update 13-Nov-2009* You shouldn’t be here if you are looking for me. Well, considering that you are reading this, I’ve messed up somehow. You can find my latest ramblings at http://blog.shiv.me, or if you are the micro-blogging kind, head over to http://twitter.com/shiva or http://facebook.com/shivanand.

Latest GAIM is out!

Wed, 18 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

The latest update to gaim is out! These guys are churning in version after version .. nice and kewl…
1.3.0 is more of a bug fix release .. not many features

version 1.3.0 (5/10/2005):
* Removed parts of the font selection dialog that were not respected
* Fix being invited to a multi user chat on MSN
* Multiple SILC accounts should work now (Pekka Riikonen)
* Fix times on jabber chat backlogs
* Fix gevolution plugin to compile with e-d-s 1.0 or 1.2
* Fix gevolution plugin to remember buddy name when someone added you
and you then add them
* Formatting in jabber chats works
* Fix to prevent MSN disconnecting if you change status while connecting
* Fixes for two remotely exploitable crash bugs. See
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/security/ for more information.

A collection of tools that I have come to use

Fri, 06 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Well I confess, I’m a tool fanatic . Before you get werid ideas let me tell you that what I mean is that I like to use small, efficient utilities, that help me get my work done quickly. I have been on a perpetual hunt for THE best utility for almost all tasks.

A lot of my colleagues and friends seem to share this fascination for “those quick little things”. So here is a list of some that I use quite regularly.

Google downloads

Fri, 06 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

A one stop shop for all your google needs!
http://www.google.com/downloads/

These guys are doing awesome stuff aren’t they?!
What’s next? a self-aware OS?

Adobe and Macromedia to merge

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Yup, been a very long time since I blogged!! but I am back again!
**Thanks to my fellow util-seeker Sudhin for this bit of news
**

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, which has been approved by both boards of directors, Macromedia stockholders will receive, at a fixed exchange ratio, 0.69 shares of Adobe common stock for every share of Macromedia common stock in a tax-free exchange. Based on Adob ’s and Macromedia’s closing prices on Friday April 15, 2005, this represents a price of $41.86 per share of Macromedia common stock.

Free e-books from Apache!

Wed, 09 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Free ebooks are available for download from Apress.

A Programmer’s Introduction to PHP 4.0
Dissecting a C# Application: Inside SharpDevelop
Writing Perl Modules for CPAN
Programming VB .NET: A Guide For Experienced Programmers
COM and .NET Interoperability

NJoy!

Journey with a book

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Started reading “Illusions” by Richard Bach. Often, I feel, that a book comes in your life, when you are ready for it. It presents itself, in ways you never would have imagined. I have heard of this book for the last 10 years. There has been a sopy at my parent’s place (where I stayed for the better part of the last 10 years) and it never occured to me, to pick that small book (of about 200 odd pages) and give it a read.

Your phone might catch a cold

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

FIR of a virus on a phone! A very warm welcome to the world of computing! Soon we will need antiviral software running on our phones all the time and that would mean that your phones will get more processing power. If phones take the way PCs have, the day when we will have a phone with a huge Pentium or whatever processor and tons of RAM won’t be too far away.

Woes with airtel services

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

What a lousy feeling it is, when you hold shares of a company, whose customer you have been for more than 2 years and have paid everyone of the bills in time, and when you have an issue, you are brushed under the carpet!That’s what happened to me today.

I have been with Airtel (cell phone service provider in Chennai, India - for the uninitiated ;)) for the last two years. I had an automatic debit facility enabled. In January, the credit card I had enabled the auto-debit facility on expired. Airtel, promptly disabled the facility and disconnected my service asking me to call customer support. Well, I tried to do just that, but you know what?, the call to customer-care wouldn’t go through coz they disconnected me!! Wonderful!

New website launched

Wed, 02 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Hi folks!!
This weekend I got myself a website and a domain name.
I’m yet to get my site up and running. I am looking for ideas for my site content.

keep checking http://www.shvelmur.com

Eulegy for a good heart

Sat, 22 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Today has been a very sad day. I bid farewell to Mr Subramaniam.

He was my grandfather’s nephew and has been my a great inspiration to me in my life. One of the bravest and knowledgeable persons I have known. One who lived through life with conviction and was as clear at heart as they come.

He has always been there for my family at good and bad times.

A devout and practising Hindu, and a learned man in vedic chants, I have always envied him of having lived in my grandfather’s company. I think, what I know about my grandpa, is what “mani thatha” (what I used to call him) has told me of. Having lived in the pre-independance era, he has offered many insights into the lives of my forefathers.

A very kewl site from Microsoft

Wed, 15 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/design/

This site deserves a visit, but don’t try it with anything less than a T1 line! ;) (T1 = high bandwidth high speed - for the uninitiated)

A very new refereshing interface. Quite an enjoyable experience.

Tutorials for the uninitiated

Mon, 13 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

JavaScript Tutorial

This site has the most comprehensive tutorials for almost everything that I have seen offlate!!! Really work a visit!

If you are looking for anything related to the web from HTML, XML, CSS, Javascript, DHTML, SQL, ASP, .NET, VBScript, SOAP, RDF,WAP ..etc.. and the list goes on forever, you can find it at the aforementioned site!!

hats off to whomever that maintains the site!

Zaval Light-Weght - Visual Component Library

Thu, 09 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This is a very kewl gui toolkit for J2se, .NET, J2me .

Very neat and neat indeed.

Zaval Light-Weght - Visual Component Library

It is available under GPL and comercial license.. Need to try using it with a coupla tools I have in mind. I know that there are zillions of open-source utilities out there, but I am looking for ideas for applications and utilities that you would liket o use at home/work.

Pocket GCC @ mifki.ru

Tue, 30 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Been offline for quite a few days now!!

Work, work work!!! Loads of it!! and I am luvin’ it!

Btw, my latest acquisition in my digital brigade is my new (well not so!) Delll Axim X3 handheld!!

Check out these sites for kewl development utils for the pocket pc

http://mifki.ru/pocketgcc/index.html

http://mifki.ru/pcsharp/index.html

copyrights!! that's the in-thing these days !! Wired 12.11: How I Learned to Love Larry

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Wired 12.11: How I Learned to Love Larry

This article by the former CEO of RIAA is quite intriguing. In today’s world of “digital creativity”, are the copyright laws really as relevant as in yester-years? Does copyright laws curb creativity or are they in place for safegaurding the poor content creator from being cheated out of their pride possessions by 12-year-old, computer weilding school kids?!

Check out these links too

Google Desktop Search Download

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Google Desktop Search Download

Check it out!!! I love thee Google, “Lord of Search”!!

Really really neat way to access information. Very quick, a little scary considering that Google can go on to become the next MS! We the users of technology (particularly developers, testers etc) are going to have more exiciting times!!

Google Desktop is a like have the Google search engine installed for searching your system. it indexes your system, and ofcourse it currently supports only Microsoft products, but hope that a few of the open source software liek thunderbird and firefox are also supported soon.

Wired News: Plasma Beam Eyed in Space Travel

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Wired News: Plasma Beam Eyed in Space Travel

Now that is what I can advancement in technology!!! Way to go prof Winglee .. let’s get ourselves moving to other galaxies … maybe in my lifetime!!!

BoredGuru.com

Mon, 11 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Well, are you really bored with life and have a net connection, but none of the sites do anything for you?!! Well, here is one nice site that caught my attention when I was googling (= verb. searching aimlessly on google with anything that comes to your mind!)

Neat interface and no “signup with us if you want to use” thingy, gives good trivia and lots of news about the Indian job scene (if you would care to look at it!)

daily dose of imagery

Thu, 07 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

daily dose of imagery is a very nice site .. wonderful site with great pics that are inspiring. Check it out every single day

Ultimate Boot CD - Overview

Thu, 07 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

ultimate boot cd

Check out this link!! Really useful for those like me who invariably end up doing something to their OS that they have to reimage their pc atleast once in two months!! I have CD writer and I back up most of my work, so I get to fiddle with whatever, but my data is safe!!!

cm-dev's day out!

Mon, 27 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

As I have mentioned earlier, I have recently moved to a new team at office.

This weekend, we went on a team outing to Mahabalipuram. Well, if you are in India and happen to visit Tamil Nadu, do not, and I say again, DO NOT forget to make a trip to Sterling Resorts ( and no, I didn’t take money from them to say this )

They have this kewl package to offer. They take you on a boat ride, into the sea (3/4) kilometers and, they throw (not literally) you into the water. Actually,it is more like they help you into the water. You get to hold on to your dear life at the end of a rope! It is great fun to swim in the sea, with nothingness for about 70/80 feet below you. It scares the shit out of you, if you don’t know how to swim i.e!

Had to dump Frequency

Wed, 22 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Had to dump Frequency! :( No support for titles! Based on the old Blogger 1.0 API and free only for 15 days!!. Desperately in need of another client based interface, after moving to opera. It is such a pain, to browse in one environment and having to open IR just for blogging.

I think I should write a client myself based on the atom API. Now that I have a VC environment with me, I might just do that! If at anyone reads this blog, please do get in touch with me if you are interested in write a small VC++ application that will sit on the taskbar, and will let you post to blogger.

Found a client interface for posting blogs!! Frequency!

Tue, 21 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Frequency - client for weblog postingFound a very neat client for posting a blog item on Blogger and other weblogs available!! This is really neat. It let’s blog quite comfortably without disrupting my workflow! Not much time wasted in waiting for UI to get loaded and no timeouts and multiple logins in a day!

Anyway, I hope this gets me bloging more regularly!

Working my ass off on VC++

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

and yeah!!! the day has come, when I get to get my hands dirty with some VC++ coding!!

That has been the primary reason for me not blogging for such a long long time. Anyway, after about 15 - 20 days of a good dip in VC++, life is good.

Last week, Priyanka and me, we celebrated our marriage’s first anniversary! I drove down to Pondicherry that night (8-sep-2004), on Shankar’s bike! The bike is really trashed I say… At the end of the drive my hands were swollen and red. Gosh, I’ve never felt so much vibration on a bike.

Tech Crazy Internet connections will hit 10Gbit by 2010 in Japan

Mon, 30 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Tech Crazy � Internet connections will hit 10Gbit by 2010 in Japan

Now that is what is happening in this world. Japanese gov is talking about getting a 2 hour moving into their people’s homes in just 35 secs apiece! Is the Indian government listening ?!!

The results of Correctness

Mon, 30 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Matthew Yglesias: June 20, 2004 - June 26, 2004 Archives: “The Dialectic of Inaccuracy”

Check that article out. One of the most well-written, thought provoking articles in some time!

Anyway, I drove down to Pondy on my bike on Friday! Night ride with Tanigai and Prem. Peaceful, uneventful ride home. Was feeling very happy about it! Not for long. I met with an accident on Sunday morn, thrashed (well, almost. gonna cost me 2500 and upwards).

Quote by Mark Twain

Thu, 26 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones that you did. So throw off the bowline. Sail away from the safe harbour. Dream. Explore.Discover”

Mark Twain

charles statman - you don't know me but I know you~

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

charles statman - hiya Charles!! Well this is a must read blog! This guy is really really living life! Way to go Charles!

I’ve known him through Kandan ( you are kewl too Kandan no offence ;) - set up a blog and I’ll host you too on mine!)

Damn I hate the traffic in Chennai

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Come on people! What’s up with Chennai roads these days.. yeah I can understand that since the city is growing blah, blah, blah, it is going to be congested…. but you know there is this thing called sanity that departs you when it takes you an hour and half to get from Numgambakkam to Vadapalani!!

I hate it and I hate it and I hate it!! grrrrrrrr!!!

Well, it is madness I say, what’s the point in selling bikes over 150 cc and cars the size of a Cessna if there is hardly any room for people to use their vehicles on! Our roads got to go bigger! I know, I know, don’t you ask me how?! Figure out how, Corporation of Chennai!

Indian scientist working on $250 PC-phone-TV

Thu, 19 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Indian scientist working on $250 PC-phone-TV

Now that’s gotta be good news ;). The world needs such kind of low cost devices. The more people have these devices, the more jobs we get to explloit .!! hehhehe ;)

Mozilla Thunderbird rocks !!

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

mozilla.org - home of mozilla, firefox, thunderbird and camino

Check out this site!!! Mozilla Thunderbird rules. Finally, a mail client that can handle about 500 MB of mail, blogs, newsfeeds etc. and it is customisable and there are some very neat plugins on the net, if you are interested.

The Onion : CIA Asks Bush To Discontinue Blog

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

The Onion : CIA Asks Bush To Discontinue Blog

Come on old man! Get your grips on. You go on to tell the entire world that you have to attend a secret meeting?! Duh?! That kind of beats the purpose of a secret meeting uh?!

Well, one has to appreciate the efforts of a president, if he thinks that he wants to tell his unedited opinion about things to the people of the world. That is worth applause. It is not that I concur with all his opinions, but if we had a leader or two, who would pick up blogging and will read through the comments that the people give to his opinions, India can become a far better place?!

Getting screwed for doing the right and wrong

Mon, 16 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This blogging thing is turning out to be good. It let’s you interface with people and take a sneak peek into their minds, (which btw, I think has been the most characteristic search of humankind in the last century - a peek into the evolving human mind) without tramping on their time or egos!

anyway, on my wayward browsing adventure, I happened to look at a quote posted on one of the blogs by Heather

The day Vinci Code - Official Website of Dan Brown

Mon, 16 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

The Da Vinci Code - FAQs - Official Website of Dan Brown

This book , “The Da Vince Code” (DVC), by **Dan Brown **is a must read by every person who has ever read a fiction novel. The most gripping tale that I’ve heard/read in quite some time.

The audacity of the author to lay questions about the foundations of the one of the most populous religions in this world has to be applauded. Further, he raises questions that make you question yourself!. Now ever, heard of a fiction autor make you do that.

A novel definition of Ethics

Sun, 15 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I received a mail about the diffrences in the roles of a Leader and a Manager.

A quote from therein - “Ethics is the maintaining of life at the highest point of development” - A. Schweitzer

Google offers a terabyte of storage space!

Sun, 15 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Check this out!

Is it true that Google is offering a terabyte of space or is it a marketing gimmick as hardly any would cross the 1 GB mark?!

Chennai Online News Service

Wed, 04 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Chennai Online News Service - View News

Perhaps the dawn of an era, where Indian software companies will start developing products and not stop with providing services to US software giants. Good news for all Indian developers, maybe in the future, we can truly claim second place in software innovation.