Mystic Codes

A year later

2011-07-15T18:10:00.000-07:00

I always wanted to get back to this blog but the sheer fact that my last blog was in 2010 made me procrastinate a bit longer. I was afraid to see the date on my last post. So much has happened in so little time. Life has seen some important changes while still has remained more or less the same - although I must say, it's wonderful to have someone in it.

I am almost more than a month into my marriage, forgot the one-month anniversary (ya! you need to set up that reminder on phone - if you tend to forget a lot like me). It was one of the happiest moments of my life, my parents' lives and everyone around me had so much fun. Although my ancestral customs forbid the bride and groom to have a lot of fun by making us fast till the end - by the time we get to eat, all our apetite is gone and we wish we could sleep. But that one day, you wish it never ends. Sukhada looked awesome. Needless to say, her reception pics at Mumbai were the best I have seen to date. Photographers in Mumbai are 100% better than what we had at our place.

Rewinding a little bit, it is now two and half years in Bloomberg. Going strong and going good. I hope I can keep going some more. Things around me has changed. People are gone. New ones in. Subhendu & Chhavi still around in US :). I have spared very little thoughts about my office life in the last year. Mostly, it has been like keeping myself alive and awake.

I met Sukhada, fell in love, proposed, waited, felt the world slip away under my feet when she said yes, told near and dear ones and everything in between. There were multiple American Airlines and US Airways tickets made without the miles# before we realized - we need to make sure we have an account with every airline. Travel between New York and St. Louis was a bi-weekly thing (It still is, though sometimes monthly). The biggest fear was when our parents met and everything was sorted out without our presence. We were kept in dark for 2 days when all this was decided and we wondered what might be happenning. As it happened in December, I was given a 6 months deadline. I had given a 3 Year project estimate. Of course, I should have known - neither it was realistic, nor it would have been approved. Marriage date (after panditji made some mistakes citing the bengali calendar vs the oriya calendar) was fixed.

Every thing related to marriage - www.sukhada.in

I did not have so much fun in years. So much so that - now I want to go to India every year. I don't know what happened to me. I did not go for 3 straight years since coming to US. But it felt the best this time around. May be I was given the VVIP treatment. But it was great I could meet so many near & dear ones. Both sides.

Since December, days passed by like minutes. With Sukhada on top of my head with the trigger - I am usually lazy at doing things (Please consider my 3 Years Estimate). We managed to do a lot of things. Skipped some. Forgot a lot too. All in all - it was a total celebration. A momentous one.

Marriage ofcourse did not change anything except that Sukhada's surname is yet to change officially to Mishra. If it has changed anything - it makes me feel rich when I see the gold ring on my left hand :P. Sukhada is lovely more than ever before.

Now, that the jinx and fear has been taken off of my shoulders, I should come back here more frequently. Recently got a git username and plan to start participatng in stackoverflow. Picked up Code Complete to brush up my coding skills but returned it in 2 days - it has too much words & lot less actual stuff.

This has been typed while I am waiting for my food to be delivered. Sukhada just completed driving 100 miles to St Louis Airport and is going to board the flight in next 30 minutes. I am going to pick her up at the airport. She is coming to NY tonight.

Android/Incredible - Almost a Month Now

2010-05-29T19:18:00.000-07:00

Well - I had followed the HTC Incredible hype since Dec 2009. So, when Verizon finally confirmed it, I just could not wait any longer. I had to jump to the offer. Here's is a review almost after a month of usage.

It is an Ultimate Phone with the Best & Most Open Mobile OS out there.

1. Home Screens

The Live Wall Papers and Personalization is wonderful. 7 Home Screens is just awesome. I hope app developers do keep in mind that Android is perhaps the best platform for Personalization & Customization. So, if there is any possibility to add Shortcuts or Widgets, they should invest time in doing the same.

2. Apps

Well, of course it does not have a zillion apps like iphone - but pretty much all the good ones have been "ported". There are some nifty ones which do not exist on iphone like the Newsroom or Google Navigation/Listen (I mean all the Google Brand). This phone runs like 30 apps any time. Just go to Usage and you will see the battery draining out with all the apps. But I love running all of them together - its like having a laptop in your hand. Why wouldn't you multitask?

3. Social Integration*

Facebook & Twitter Integration is awesome. It quickly recognizes your contacts and spits out the links to create a wholesome appeal to your contact list. It integrates facebook/twitter etc to create that individual so that you don't have to look at 5 different apps.

*I thought of calling it Facebook Integration coz today Facebook is virtually the Society.

4. Google Voice

I am yet to use this one properly. Its acting as my default Voicemail as of now. The more I read about it the more I get intrigued. It is just an awesome way to customize your usage of phone.

5. My Useful Apps - Checkout the Video

Newsroom - You have to get this one. It's perhaps the best one out there. Its like 36 sources pulling in beautifully formatted news for you. Of course, it cannot beat the way NY Times looks. But, it does it for 36 sources not just NY Times. And NY Times does not provide any customization either. Here in matter of seconds I can refresh the entire room. Some mentions - CNN, BBC, WSJ, Business Week, Google News, ESPN, TOI, NY Times, Engadget, Boing Boing etc.

Navigation - You simply don't need a GPS. I am going to beat the hell out of this app once I am back from India. Heard a lot about it and seems pretty useful.

Dolphin HD - So my iphone friend does not like the Stock Browser and dismisses the complete Incredible. Well, unfortunately the case with Apple is that if you build in something competing with the stock one, Apple kills it. Not in the Android World. That's how Firefox brings in Fennec. Opera bring Mini (well there was great hullaballoo over approving it on iphone in first place). Still, Dolphin HD is like the best browser currently. It uses the entire 3.7" to its disposal and runs awesome. Screen rendering is crisp. iphone users do not like the fact the the letters are small. Well, thats the customization again - I like to see the full page.

Skype - This is the deal breaker though it is recently been "ported" to iphone. Haha. Verizon is the shrewdest carrier to bring in all the nifty features. Skype is so deeply integrated along with multitasking, that you can't tell whether you are getting a call on Skype or Network. Its awesome to keep in touch with my Parents anytime anywhere (except for the subway/path).

NFL Mobile - Alert for *God* level Material

I don't know what Verizon had to do to get this on its App list. But it ****streams**** live NFL Channel to your phone on 3G. Let me tell you - it runs about 1-2 sec lag than actual TV but it is awesome beyond words. You can see every touchdown of Tim Tebow happenning when you are staying late in office or hanging out in some bar which is playing the oldies baseball.

So, there are a lot of more apps. I spend most of my morning and evening time reading Newsroom/Newsrob and listening to Google Listen. I believe this phone is more than apps.

6. Launcher

My iphone friends have no idea what I am talking about here; but then Apple never promised them anything like that. They give you one and you have to accept it. Moreorless it is like 80% satisfying. I tried LauncherPro on Incredible but I had to lose out the HTC Widgets. Launcher Pro is awesome if you like the 3D feel of Nexus One. But I have so much customization in place that the transition between Sense UI and Launcher Pro is not seamless. I enjoy using Sense and have stuck to it. Well, I keep changing the Live Wallpapers :) Try out NexusMod and Flying Android.

Ultimately - The winner is Verizon.

My monthly (thanks to some Corporate Discount) should be around $64 and that "includes" taxes. My data usage after a month was more than 2GB. And I *do not* connect to wifi coz Verizon is supposedly the best carrier out there for 3G. Oh, I did not mention about the 8Mpx Camera. This phone stands to its name. I am attaching a video herewith - all shots taken by my Incredible. I have not learnt use the flash etc, still it's pretty good. Enjoy in Youtube HD.

ps: For making the Videos, I used iMovie on my Mac. Shots were captured using USB Debugging. Checkout this page http://theappslab.com/2010/06/01/how-to-take-a-screenshot-in-android/. All Videos are in HD. Its 514am in the morning now.

What a play! Big Respect!

2010-04-24T23:30:00.000-07:00

This post will be short.

I would ask you all to go and definitely watch the play titled "The Blue Mug". Awesome performance by the entire team. Its about all those childhood memories you had and would want someone to narrate you back. Its hilarious and makes you take a journey down those murky memory lanes of the past. The group is on a world tour and its advisable you book your tickets as soon they become available. We got a $75 one (I guess) and we were like 8 rows from the stage. Great experience as this was the first time I watched a play.

Running Chrome OS

2010-04-16T19:27:00.000-07:00

(My ramblings as I wandered off to the Chrome OS era)

Well, hmm now I think thats not entirely true. I would have wanted it to run on Dell Vostro 1500. I had to steal someone else's :). There were hiccups. Any OSS usually needs bit of effort to make it run/usable. When google launched Chrome OS last year, I immediately went to the website to see if an image is available. Google never shared the image - instead gave a list of steps to build the source on Ubuntu. They were tedious and my Dell Vostro was almost dead. I still wanted to give it a shot (long shot of course) but was preoccupied with work. And then I bought a Macbook Pro on Thanksgiving. It has been just a fantastic platform and hats off to Apple to pull in such masterpieces every time.

One of my friend recently mentioned that his laptop is not running for the last year. The reason was something related to OS as he mentions. I already had Opensuse on the USB which I sometime used when I felt like working on Linux. My Windows is breathing its last due to bad virus issues. That gave me the motivation to finally search for Chrome OS image again. I got the resource here. Well, thanks to my windows laptop I ended up downloading the image for some 3-4 times and the worst case was it went till 200 MB and stopped. Mac to rescue. The whole distro is 327MB - so your wireless has to hold and not get disconnected (My Dell Vostro does). So, once I completed the transfer and image burning on my USB - with bated breath I tried to boot it up.

It didn't. Black screen all over. Complete let down. What to do now. I read some more. May be the md5 is wrong and file is corrupt. May be I did not format the USB properly. My search hit this page next (see the parent wiki page too; lot of info). Dell Vostro 1500 - Does not boot. Then there were few comments about Flow and Zero (builds). The next thing I saw was there were listings for Apple.

There were 2 reasons why I did not want to try it on my Mac. First - its Mac. Its pristine. Its still a virgin and I have not fiddled with it like I do with my windows/linux. The other problem was that I need to burn a separate image for the Mac (I guess) coz of the hardware differences. That would have taken some time to start the entire process again.

Solution - I saw in the list that HP works. It had like Y Y Y Y everywhere. Thats it. I know somebody who has a HP laptop. Its like my Dell Laptop - almost dead. But I had to try once. Thanks Rohan - I had to reboot your laptop to experiment this one.

Well, well. Initial start 22 seconds for the first (Google had 7 on its demo, hence there is no image available from Google. I guess the time is something which can be played around with). I am counting this from the moment I press the button. In 22 seconds you are on login screen. This time reduced to 15 in the next 4-5 boots. And its simple to use. Chrome Browser is amazingly (read lightning) fast & it feels light. The build version is of 20100213 0.5.31. It shows another version 6.0.321.0 which looks like the Chrome Browser version but I need to google further to verify that.

I could not find few important features like pinning & app area. But Ctrl-Alt-T brings to the familiar console and then the world is yours. This is perfect for Netbooks - there is no question about it. There are nifty UI tricks which are eye-candy. I don't have any screenshots coz I did not find the print screen feature (well thats something which might be useful to report bugs). Had I been running VmWare or VirtualBox, I could have posted few images. So task in hand is to get an external HDD and download all necessary stuff from my Windows BOX (>30G of my class lectures) and kill it. I mean put in something better (Linux for now).

Okay, thats it for now. Till Rohan is not in - I can decimate some more of his laptop functionality and do some cooking. Its good to see that I finally could get this one done. My plans to watch "Kick Ass" did not work out, but I can say the evening was worthwhile and Chromium is a kick-ass OS.

The iPad

2010-03-13T10:48:00.000-08:00

iPad will be going on sale in less than a month now. It's available for pre-order and the more I see it, the more I end up deciding to get one for my Parents (Of course that includes some months of free usage by me before I send it over). The best thing which I found out about it is that as the apps you download is through iTunes library - your apps can be downloaded directly from there for iPad as well. This hence means that if you have an iPhone (which I plan to get in a few months - wish Mr. Jobs speaks about the mysterious OS 4.0) and get the iPad - the apps will be virtually in sync. The problem now is when I send the device over to India - what happens when I buy new apps. Of course the iTunes installations will be different and I believe it will recognize the folly. But is there a way around this?

I did my bit of research on phones - while I believe that HTC phones are way better than the iPhone and are a good device to be bought by any tech-savvy person, its not yet mature. Neither do I have enough money to have 2 phones like all those youtube posters who have bought both iPhone and Nexus One on the first day. Regardless, the only problem with HTC phones is the radiation level. While iPhone makes sure everything is way below the warning level, all major HTC phones kind of flirt with that mark. Nexus One does best among them - still its pretty high to be there in our pockets. I can't argue with what performance a 1Gz (1.5GHz coming soon, even iPad is just 1GHz) mobile processor can give you - just that I need to get rich more quickly to get going with the american way of buying things while still saving the way Indians hold onto their bank balances (Thats a gujju trait I wish I was born with).

I have an eerie feeling to hold on to my hunger for few more weeks and wait for the initial reaction by users. I know Apple does not mess up with things - so all in all its going to be awesome. But, there is no rush as I don't know anyone who is visiting my part of the country in the next few months (before I "plan" my visit in the mythical months of May & June).

Apps for "Great" Cooks

2010-02-18T17:25:00.000-08:00

I rushed out from my office. Since few hours I could not resist the ideas coming into my mind. I had to write them down somewhere and may be work on it later (which has never happened yet and it stays in the story boarding phase forever)

Well, I had this amazing idea of designing an App specifically to cater the Indian palate in a better way. The entire ride from office to home made me hungry for food as well as thought as to how it can solve the problem of being a terrible cook especially if you fall anywhere within my range of cooking expertise. If I ever go to that show "Worst Cooks in America", I can easily give them a run for their money for weeks. May be they should have an Idol to celebrate my success.

Anyways, before I could start on my ideas and the images popping out in my brain causing enough bile to flow & making me hungry (this sentence is going no where like Sarah Palin) - I did my due diligence to do some research on Apple's philosophy of "There's an app for everything".

Believe me, this App was in the front featured section. Front Page. Was my idea stale? Nah, not really. But when I looked at the App - It put a dent into my thought process. Apple Apps are so picture perfect. It's made to be sold. At any price - the page looked so awesome that I was like ... hmm how can I better on this?

So may be if you guys have an iphone and want to try out some recipes at home or may be just want to get organized in the cooking department, Try these. I have no affiliations what so ever & neither I have an iphone (which should make me the last person to recommend you this). But, nonetheless I would vouch for everything Apple. Now, if the folks at Apple approve this to go on the front featured section - there must be something worthy about it.

Moral of the Story - Nothing beats Apple in Showing off!

What an end to the Week it Was

2010-01-31T07:55:00.000-08:00

What a weekend it was .....

There was the Russell Peter's Green Card tour in New York City. Watching the show was worth every penny. After an hour, I was tired of laughing. My jaws hurt and the mouth was dry. It was hilarious and grose. If you know that there is a tour going to be in your city - You have to watch it. And do not, remember do not, get the first row seats. You are digging your grave. But then, somebody has to get those seats. So, good luck!

Ishqiya - the movie had a great preview but I did not know anything else about it. Nor had I heard the soundtrack. What a surprise. I have couple of friends from M.P. and U.P. Believe me the language used in the movie portrays the hindi dialect used by people of bhopal and gorakhpur. Some of my good friends are from there and I could literally hear them speak. The movie is awesome if you are well versed with the local colloquial terms used to describe adultery. And then there are punch line gags from Arshad Warsi. I was told that this movie was not directed by Vishal Bharadwaj - but it had all the essence and I found it a blend between Omkara and Kaminey. The story might not be 5/5 but everything else is. This is a great start to 2010 from the perspective of hindi movies. I hope you go watch it.

I am finding myself getting busy & tired every week with just about a lot of work pouring in. I am not sure how I am going to handle all this. But, I have to find something out. This weekend was a real stress buster.

Next week the Grand Dad of All Entertainment - The Super Bowl. Go Colts!!

No bells or whistles to start the Year 2010

2010-01-11T20:25:00.000-08:00

There is not much happening these days. College Football is over. NFL is almost about to be done. I hope one of them - NY Jets, Vikings or Colts win (I root in that order). There's Lakers vs Knicks on 22nd which I have tickets for and then Russel Peters on 29th. But these are fillers.

Did I sign up for this not-so-interesting life? I think so. I mean I am just being a lazy ass here trying to put on some weight. I planned to do the following and did nothing:

1. Learn Ice Skating

2. Learn some version of Electronica (guitar, casio something)

3. Learn Badminton or Racquetball

4. Learn to F******* drive.

So, this weekend I am going to resume badminton for sure (hope the Manhattan Club reopens). I am going to find out whats the scoop on Ice Skating. This new year my wallet is just getting emptied on anything and everything. I have to shell out more for my new apartment (> $1100 man). Man! who says you can save in America. To top that, my favorite channel now-a-days on television is HGTV in HD. God damn it! I would love to buy property the way they show in there. At least, I will save something on rent. But again, the fifth thing which is missing in the above list is "Learn to Save money" which I don't think I will ever learn. Hence, there is no point in putting it there.

Past couple of days went like whirlwind and work has taken priority again. I have been listening to a lot of stuff out here Coke Studio. It got some good tracks.

Out of no-where: If I have to name 3 movies last year which you gotta kidding me if you haven't watched, they are (in no particular order)

1. District 9

2. Avatar

3. Hurt Locker

I did manage to watch a lot of movies last year and believe me I have watched 80% of these.

Last, I wish I could go home sometime this year. With every passing day, I think I keep forgetting my roots. Its about time I pay a visit to my Matrubhumi.

Aal is Well

2009-12-26T18:34:00.000-08:00

I wanted to put an exclamation mark at the end of this title. But thats so cliched now-a-days. So much so that it is appearing as a strict no-no in many recent design articles. But as "woh kah gaye" ... bad habits kambakhath die hard. Now, blogger is giving me hard time with the spell checker.

What prompted me to write this post? Well, its pretty much obvious from the title that I must have just watched the movie. Yes, I did. Not without a struggle though. I had gone to the cinemas twice returning without watching the film as it was sold out. The turn out is good especially during Christmas. Not that the movie is too good, just that here the Indians stay pretty away from family and there is nothing much to do during holidays. To spoil it further, its raining heavily today.

The movie is excellent. I have not read the book "Five point someone". That must be an eye-opener for quite a few youngsters. If not, please help them. Coz, sincerely speaking I needed some and there was no-one. Those few who were there could not convince me much and "Here I Am" - just a cliched one from Bryan Adams.

So. We Indians deliberate a lot on that word. I mean its so wrong to make such a strong pause there. But we do the mistake and we repeat it a thousand times. It has never been a complete sentence. Still, we use it like it speaks of everything we want to say next. Whats the moral of the story?

Its not that you want to be the next waangdu. You might have already passed that stage. If not, good luck - hope you get to one without that surname. The real one is to believe that life starts at the age when you kick start it. Not when when you are still getting pushed in the blinding crowd. I don't want to elaborate on this now. In 3 words, "Never say Never".

My expectations of the movie were slightly lowered thanks to movie reviews on web and my roomies who did not appreciate the second half. I think the movie was excellent. Though some jokes were too predictable for any engineering college student, nonetheless we can still laugh at our past. I just wished it could have been more hilarious.

So as aal is well, I am going to microwave the paneel butter masala and daal from nearby "Raaz" restuarant (I donno why they keep such names). Enjoy your time.

Just when I was going to hit the publish button, I could not stop smiling that I had completely forgot to mention the virus which created so much trouble for us. I mean if someone can match that template of bhrastbudhhi, it can be khodu (1st prize please). Applause. Applause.

Whats happenning now-a-days?

2009-12-05T17:44:00.000-08:00

So the inevitable finally happened today! Florida fell. Superman lost saving the gators for so long. I felt terrible.

Well, 22 games undefeated. I read all posts, followed blogs and read news - it was gators everywhere. And today it all ends in that Georgia Dome. The same stadium where we defeated Alabama last year. This year - Alabama proved that they are the better team. I won't feed to the fact that Urban Meyer or Tim Tebow did anything wrong in this finale. But we just didn't show up. We were lost. I was so unimpressed by the play that I couldn't watch the game for most of the time. Anyways, thats the end of the season. I save a trip to Pasadena, CA. More than $1500 savings - lets say (well it isn't savings actually - I was willing to shell out that much if FL reaches National Championship). I don't have high hopes from next year FL team. Still, I will root for them.

Coming back to title of this post. I am current running 3 OS's. Windows Vista (no 7 for me :(. Fedora 12 - this blog is being typed on Fedora. More or less, I am moving to Fedora and will __NOT__ be working on Vista anymore. The only problem I had with Linux (any flavor) in general was with networking. The wireless card and wireless router are just not willing to mate. It took some effort in making them talk and now we are here. I tried Ubuntu (latest version) but gave up. I found Fedora working and it helps.

Ok, the last OS - I bought my Macbook Pro 13" on Thanksgiving. I am just blown away. Why I am not using it? Its just too remarkable to be touched. Even putting my fingerprints on it makes me tinker. Its perfect. Well, as I plan to do some projects on it, I installed Eclipse on it. I found that eclipse was somewhat different from what I last used on Windows. Don't know its Mac related Customization or Eclipse Interfae has changed in a while. Well, the Macbook Pro 13" is amazing and you should buy one. I got a good deal but what I came to know is Apple is going to launch MBPs with Inter Core i7 and i9 processors in 2010. So, if you want to hold on, you may. I can gift this MBP to someone in India lateron and get a higher end one next year if I click to generate some extra income.

So, I bought a lot of stuff on thanksgiving. Will sending them soon to India. Listening to Fireflies (Owl City) now. Thats all! - over & out.

ps: If I ever get an opportunity to make my "hall of fame" - Tebow & Meyer shall be there. I am inspired, floored and feel proud. I wish: somedayI get a chance to meet Tim Tebow!

Mark Isham

2009-11-22T16:28:00.000-08:00

I have been following his music as part of movie soundtracks for few years now. No doubt, he is one of the living legends in putting in some of the finest background score out there.

I watched Bad Lieutanant: Port of Call New Orleans yesterday. Awesome movie. I would suggest you to go forth and give it a shot. You might like it, you might fall in love with it or you might just disregard it. But its one of those movies you should not miss. After so many years, perhaps Nicolas Cage got a movie which fits his characteristic frown. He gels into the script so well - you think that the character Terence McDonah does and should exist. Of course you might question their ways of action but none-the-less you would love the addiction.

My views on Knot

2009-08-29T14:22:00.000-07:00

Well, everytime I talk to my friends - I keep getting the updates as to who got married and who is going to tie that once-in-a-lifetime knot. Well, somehow one of my friends who recently moved to NYC with his wife did not turn up to meet me - I spent my time watching ManU vs Arsenal game for a change and then slept off. What happened in sleep is that I got some interesting quotes in my mind. Believe me; these exactly depict why I think bachelors (and that includes me) are afraid of wearing that ring (of death) . Oh well, pardon my "high" thinking!!

"Life is full of uncertain variables. You and me are just two good friends. Maybe, sometime more than that. But then, do we have to tie the knot? That would mean I have to understand your side of equations - mother, father, family. And you have to understand my side and inherit the complications. A study would show that these random variables are so many, that we have to spend more than a lifetime in solving these simultaneous equations and believe me - there is just no answer. And do you want to do this Math your entire life? And then you have relatives which are like solving differential equations; you take the derivatives of the primary and believe me - even in true mathbooks they solve it using approximation techniques. So, lets forget the knot. So much Math is detrimental for healthy living".

Undoing Some Mistakes

2009-02-01T21:24:00.000-08:00

Have you got that realization that you have been unjust to so many things in life? That moment kills you.

I have been suppressing this feeling for quite some time now. As always; there have been excuses to kneel on. Life has been hanging between mundane and painful actions. Nothing enjoyable. Why?

Perhaps it is because I am still looking for the right moment. I still cannot define what it is? When I joined MS, we asked our seniors a question: How do you secure an on-campus job?

The answer was simple: "You have to be at the right time, at the right place".

I never did an on-campus job. Reasons many. Excuses galore. I still wish I had done one. Perhaps I never could grasp what it meant in the first place.

I watched luck by chance movie today. An Akhtar trend special, simply put, it should be on your next weekend movie list. It is that simple supper with all the right mix of palatable items with nothing overwhelming the other and exactly filling your stomach, leaving you satisfied and content. Give a listen to song the song "Yeh Zindagi Bhi" by Loy Mendonsa & Shekhar Ravjiani. The overall soundtrack is remarkably light & relaxed.

Diving deep, I found subtle nuances which ask questions so bold that even my soul fell silent and had no answers. I felt alone (and hence writing this blog).

I could relate to few, I got lost in others. Mistakes have been made. Undoing them would take a lifetime now. The question is: Have I realized it yet completely? Perhaps not.

It is today that perhaps I get a feeling what is the right moment. But still it is vague. And believe me I feel the pain.

Thanks to everyone who has been around for so long time with me. I am here now; 25, at the cross-roads - whatever I have achieved it is because of you. So you must know this and I have to speak it aloud - You are the Best!

Moving out of Gainesville

2009-01-17T14:19:00.000-08:00

I am at the Charlotte (NC) airport and thought of writing the blog as I have loads of time before I board my connecting flight to Newark. My flight from Jacksonville had engine problems (US Airways 3222) and the cascading delays have resulted in this wait. But thanks to airline staff, I got my schedule changed from flight departing at 7:55p to one at 6:15p. That leaves me 20 more minutes.

Today is special. Finally making a move out of Gainesville, FL. Home of the Gators. It has been a heck of a stay for the last 18 months or so. So much so that while doing an internship in summer, I was desperate enough to get back. You can say it was a lousy summer experience, but believe me I felt like I missed school and wanted to be back at any cost. I felt at home as soon as I reached the Gainesville Airport back in August.

I feel sad today. Gators won the National Championship this year. I watched each and every game as if I had adopted a new religion. I started watching so much football that even till today I check the espn/cbs websites for school recruits for the next year game. I wish the Gators all the best and with Tebow I have supreme confidence and pride to state that we will go and have another one next year. Go Gators!

Back to me. It is going to be NY/NJ destination for an unknown amount of time. I am moving to the capital of US (I mean common, who goes to DC). The city, the culture. The events, the who&whos you see in televison. The madness, the blood rush, the competition, the die hard attitude and over all home of the New York Giants. Its going to be the start of another chapter. And I am as excited as anybody. And did I mention that my work kind of relates to reporting what happens in Wall Street? (Its just kind of; ok might be - I accept, I have no clue yet)

Low and behold, there is much to do in upcoming days in NYC. Places to go, things to do, people to meet. If you know of anything I might be missing out before Feb 9th, write in a comment here. If you are in NYC/NJ and would love to show me some places around, drop me a comment. Whats on Feb 9th; thats my joining day at work. So, before I get married to my workaholic schedule, lets get to enjoy for some more time the bachelorhood. Better, if you have a Giants Game Ticket, lemme know and I might* sponsor the party.

So, Adios Gainesville.

*Offer expires soon

Yet Another Interview

2008-10-14T17:08:00.000-07:00

An interview call makes you really excited - you think of all the possibilities and aftermath. After the process is over, you are drenched. It might leave you elated if you have done exceedingly well or tired/fatigued if you failed to make a mark. So why am I talking about all this?

After the Bloomberg offer, I send denial emails to few companies I was being interviewed with. Believe me, its hard to send in such emails because I understand how much effort has been put just to get that call. I was lucky I did not try for many and not too hard (Y! rocks in some sense none the less).

I finally applied to Microsoft and going to have an interview on 16th. Everything was going on nice and fine. Till this happened and perhaps I have not had good sleep till yesterday. I can go for a deep slumber now as I don't have much hope from today's encounter :-|

I got an interview with Google. [Please do not ask me about questions - I cannot discuss, nor the emails;]. While I did not expect much preparation, I punched in several lines of code as this was supposed to be a coding exercise. I was doing fairly well with one fear that what if the question does not click me.

What I have realized is that if I know the solution well, I can jot down the code without making a lot of mistakes. Believe me, my code would show up with fewer compile time errors and hmm, a few runtime ones (those which are really really evil and happen only on full-moon days).

But when I do not know of the solution, somehow I am good at explaining them but if asked to explain as well write the code simulateneously, I falter. I perhaps manage to pitch in the overall picture correctly by picking up the grassroot problem; but when it comes to finishing it up - I just go eerie with design blunders. I am not sure what screws up my frame of mind. Is it the constant pressure which mounts every minute of the interview or is it that I have exhausted myself of that creative juice by not taking ample rest before the interview.

A lot of things can be spoken after the interview - the fact is plain & simple. There is room for improvement. I might have polished my coding standards and understanding of c++ a lot better. Given a known algorithm, I can write up the solution quickly and efficiently (something which again I need to work on; I found that I tend to do a lot of pre-optimization; something which brings in those runtime errors - there is a simple solution to this :: Hold yourself till you execute the code). I need to write in more and more code; code which makes me think while I write. I am more of a paper-pencil guy who likes to solve the problem separately and code separately. But this has to change. I don't know how! But perhaps more practice and more experience.

Now that I have begun with one down, lets see how I fair at the MSFT interview. I am not preparing for the same because I prepared a lot for today's interview. I want to take it all in the light spirit. Perhaps over-preparation spoils the party.

Summary:
1. Do not optmize before you execute. Let your code be verbose. You need to make that cut.
2. Relax, relax, relax
3. ?If the solution does not strike to you and you have to start coding any how, What should you do? - Try to find out.

Not just the pursuit, I am happy today

2008-10-03T20:52:00.000-07:00

Well not just that I am sober, I am typing this at almost the stroke of the midnight making a lot of spelling mistakes and correcting them. So you know how difficult it is for me to keep it grammatically right till now (pardon me if I really made any).

I finally could score a job offer and look forward to join NYC for the next year. It's a dream to work in NYC. It reminds of so many things I have missed out and I have high expectations from myself as well as the firm I am joining.

I have time for almost Feb 9th to enjoy and make out something finally of this Masters. I know this degree gave me a lot of things to ponder and speculate. But still, the ambitions are not yet fulfilled. It is long road and I need to envisage it. This is perhaps the first step, or perhaps the first success of the few bold steps I have taken in the recent past.

For the die hard techie fans:

From now on::::

From now on::::

Whenever you compile using g++ and use inline ............................... yes u use inline to make your program faster;

Use g++ -O2 or -O3 ...... then only it takes into effect. AND, use gprof to actually measure it, otherwise there is no point in making a function inline - really absolutely no point at all.

Learn how to profile your code today before it is too late, regardless it is jprobe or gprof. I am sorry for the intoxication :)

Inactivity around

2008-08-27T17:04:00.000-07:00

I need to order some fizzy drinks I guess.... something really fizzy!

For the past 3 days, since my internship has ended, suddenly I see myself sucked into a land of inactivity. All I do is sit in the Joe's chair (remember the one they had in Friends') and ponder on what should I do next and which one should I do first!! Of course, as you have guessed by now, its not that I can't figure out what to do next, but the list is so damn long and vast - I just can't come to a consensus on what to begin with. So the past 3 days, I have been just day dreaming. At nights, I sleep for 12 hours putting the blame on jet lag "I came from California last week, you know".

Semester just began. I can't still get used to the fact that their is no office to attend. I am a "office" person I guess, while I hate discipline. I can never go to office at 9, technically I can - I would be just half asleep. But if thats not there, there is a big void. To fill it in I come with these strange ideas to fill in my mind and the the rest of the day goes by dreaming and creating castles in air.

I have a long list of software upgrades lined up which include FF3. I am still not sure if I should reformat my laptop to run Ubuntu instead of Vista. I perhaps should do it sooner but I want to know how good Eclipse + Java 1.6 runs on Ubuntu - if you have tried it out, please leave a comment.

I am looking for doing something more this semester. Will probably look forward to build something on python, try my hands on web development and write some big chunk of server code in c++. While all of these targets towards getting myself noticed for a job interview, I sincerely think this is a long term fruit. And throwing away vista would be perhaps the first gear to kick in. But the only difference is that I am running out of time and I can feel it. I feel it really hard now.

Its high time I get high ... aghh .. I mean I dream big ... I mean .... you know what I mean.

[Give me some fizzy drinks]

Making Sense of My Life

2008-06-01T23:22:00.000-07:00

I turned 25 today!

Thanks to my new roomies I had quite an awesome night yesterday and the day passed in standing the subsequent repercussions of the party.

Now as the night has fallen in and I have sometime to think and write this blog - I again fall back to the very question I have been asking myself for sometime now. And now that I have crossed the 25 mark, it becomes all the more meaningful.

I have no idea as what to write here - there are so many things going in my mind now that I am LOST!

Where's my education leading me to?
Will I regret ever that I did not try to take up the line of research?
Or will I regret of not taking up the challenge I once set for myself - Did I fail myself and all the people who had faith in me?
What point in my personal life have I reached on?
Have I fulfilled any of my personal goals yet? And do I know what are the next ones slated for me?

And believe me, there's many more .....

I guess I am in no more control of my surrounding and I am just flowing through the river of life as others around me. I have finally become one with the floating mass. Is that what I wanted? I know I can never be same as them - its just an illusion which I might wish to have. Still, even in my dreams, I had thought of something better. True Life is something different; failing even in your dreams is scary.

Is this the end of the road - Or a new beginning? Where's the light?? I expect the big bang to happen soon.

Amen.

Algorithms Mania

2008-04-25T20:26:00.000-07:00

Things have been about algorithms lately. Someway or the other. Explaining about dynamic programming to my roommate, convincing people of P != NP consequences and how to move in with things or for that matter taking in witty interview questions or listening to continuous video lectures on NP Completeness and working on all possible sources to get my assignment done (yes, that should be done in polynomial time to meet the submission requirements, ya ya! I know I got freaked out lately).

My algorithms instructor has got me. I would agree on this. He has been great all the sem making us feel good about appreciating algorithms. Note that, I did not say that we are learning to write new algorithms, but merely understanding the beauty of existing ones. It is really fascinating that all what we have learned as of today and for all of those whose concrete proofs are available (in form of textbooks) have been accomplished before 1970s. Or, I will say mid 1970's to be on safer side. For the past 25 years this field, undoubtedly has contributed a lot but in direction which would seem a dead end back then.

The algorithm diaspora covers puzzles from all walks of life. From scheduling small things to building and optimizing complex motives, we rely on algorithms which would be executed by machines and would give us result based on our input set. What is particularly worth noticing here is the problems being discussed are no where in the domain of computer science. For example, the original problem on "3D Matching is NP Complete" had to do with polygamy and marriage between 3 sexes. Is the society ready for anything like that? No, not at all. But still this small problem if solved, would motivate people to link problems to this one and solve them. Or for that matter the N-Queens problem which has a 2^n solution. Come on, I did not see any value of that problem when I learnt about it in my undergrad class. But something of that sort can be transformed to problems in graph theory, wow! I could not envision that. So, yes it amazes me that how much application this field has in whatever walks of life we are in.

So, that brings on to us with questions which are asked during interviews and are supposed to be cracked "On the Spot". Hmmm. Quite a lot of expectation. Performing under pressure is never easy. But if you want to compete against a MIT undergrad who can churn in these solutions without taking a single class in this area, you better hold some ground in this subject. I would classify the problem being asked into 2 categories - One that is crack-able and the Second which are attempt-able. My point is that its good for you that the third category which contains a can of problems which are unsolvable to be as rare as possible. Why? Because you ain't any einstein, so you need not solve problems which he solved. Also, everyone is not in einstein's company, so they won't ask questions which only einstein could solve in his lifetime.

But still, given a problem, it is the approach which matters. Sometimes all you need is to invert the problem upside down to see it naked and surrendering to you. Sometimes you need to get hold of a pivot point for the puzzle to crack. How can I get it right everytime? Wish I knew the answer. The only answer I got was : Practice, practice and practice. You see things when you dive into it. Effort put in makes the picture a lot clearer in this subject. And the best part is that, when you are able to connect those dots, you feel like getting eternal bliss. You feel like you just cracked the $1M Netflix question, when actually what you have done has been done-undone-redone atleast a billion times.

Lately I have been thinking it would have made a lot of sense if the subject had been divided into 2 parts (Algo-I and Algo-II) and taught during our undergrad classes. It is the heart and soul of computer science, come on you need to give some time to it!

Why so much of a rant on algorithms. Because what I am going to do in the next 8 months has everything to do with algorithms but would not be specific to it. While it is true that I would be using existing ones, but the fact is that I am free to choose them and that makes it more difficult because it tests my understanding of the subject and how good am I in expressing my problem and transforming it into a solved puzzle of this subject. So why am I so afraid? The truth is that I did not do justice to this subject. I got busy with projects and blah blah and neglected this. But everytime, I tried to get hold of whats happening in the course, I just wished that I could have paid more attention to it. I am not great in solving puzzles, but I have noticed that by taking small steps towards breaking down the complexity of these questions, we can increase the likelihood of us cracking them down in minutes. All it requires is TIME. You give undivided attention and there you see things happening. But I must tell you that, it is something which cannot be done in 2 days. I know of the consequences of that statement and I am ready to accept it.

Next time you see someone in Computer Science scribbling something on a paper and cracking his head, give him some free space and time :) Not that you abandon him. Because what he is trying to do is work out his mind. And that makes him a healthy person in some aspect of life!

Mocking Intelligence

2008-04-20T23:40:00.000-07:00

I had to write out this stuff. This is taken straight from a presentation by Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google. The discussion was on training using data sets, algorithms, machine learning, clustering of data sets and finding out potential patterns and outliers.

A nice problem was explained on String Segmentation. I won't try to create my own version but would cite some of the examples mentioned during the presentation. When dealing with texts written in languages such as Chinese etc many a times the need of spaces in between words is ignored. A Human mind reading the same can easily recognize the pattern and thus understand from the context as to what it is trying to convey.

But think about the computer brain. It goes nuts while interpreting these combinations. For example, it is easy to observe what the following line tries to say:

livelisteningparty :: live listening party

But combinations like,
smallandinsignificant becomes 'small and in significant' while it should have been 'small and insignificant'. Hence we conclude that semantic training on the data set is required. Again there might be words which are actually in the context but do not rank high in the training set to make an impact. One of the training sets which he had mentioned was of 1.7B size but would still fail to recognize an uncommon dictionary word and would break it into highly ranked separate clusters lacking any meaning altogether.

Ok, now the fun part. The examples next follow particular nuisance created by this parsing. In each of the examples mentioned below, you have a website hosted somewhere on web. And see what the computer makes up while tagging them.

www.whorepresents.com : who represents provides Contact Info for Celebraties etc :: whore presents (Now imagine what the similar searches would lead to)

www.therapistfinder.com : Finds you a Therapist in California :: the rapist finder (Gosh! The Dept. of Investigation would buy this one out!!)

Now, this one we all use for something or the other (Cached results remember :)

www.experts-exchange.com : Provides inputs to your queries :: expert sexchange (Yeh I know you would say that the delimiter should not be ignored, but then do you know the very reason of having that! ... Yeh :)

www.penisland.net : pen island provides Custom made pens on internet :: (Aha! Pop Quiz Time .... Left for you)

So, still we need things out here to evolve. Computers need to socialize more I guess and know what fits in where.

Projects, Linux and Tricks

2008-03-14T15:44:00.000-07:00

This is perhaps an useful post I am writing after a long long time. Normally it is just rants on life and things which are bogus or seem to be. Without digressing much from the topic, let me tell you about my rebirth in the linux world. Still in dormant phase, but few minutes back - I just saved myself from buying a 2 GB RAM to work full time on Linux and still use Windows for GTalk Calls. Haha, what a reason to have Vista on my laptop.

Question 1

Sometimes while using Visual Studio C++, you feel out-of-the-blue the auto complete feature suddenly stopped working. You would close the solution and reopen, but just nothing would happen.

Answer

The auto complete feature is basically a slow build up which Visual Studio does time and hence while you are busy coding. It builds a huge repository of index which would help you to quickly access lot of your code snippets and lines with shortcuts to make your life as a programmer simpler. Now, if you search in your solution directory, there will be a file with the extension .ncb. Now thats the culprit for the problem above. It would be having the same name as your project and would have a description as some "Intelli sense ...". Just check the size and I promise you that it would be larger than your code base. Just for statistics, while my code base was in all just 380 KB in total, the .ncb file was 1.5 MB. So now you know the exact reason, why in databases, data actually takes 20 GB of space and the indices take the rest 80 GB. You just have so many of them to make your life simpler as all you know to use is "search".

Hence, the simplest solution is to delete the .ncb file. Don't worry, nothing will happen. Until you source code is there, this file has no significance. As soon as you open your IDE, this file will start building again. And in no time it will grow that big. Many a times, due to some **poor** programmers out there in VS team, the ncb file gets corrupted. Hence, from that point on, nothing starts working properly. Older additions might work, but if you add new classes, it will just not respond.

So check first if compilation goes through. If it does, there is no reason IntelliSense should not work.

Question 2

I have just a 1 GB of RAM. I don't want to work on Vista except that I want to receive calls on GTalk. And somehow Ubuntu on Vmware runs slow.

Answer

I don't have a concrete answer for this one. But this is what saved me from buying an extra 2 GB and blowing out $80.

Go to msconfig and turn off all services you don't want.
Open Task Manager and kill all the processes you don't want. See to it that they are removed from startup.
Go to System Properties and see that the memory usage is optimized for **BEST PERFORMANCE** - which means back to Windows 95. :) This blog I am typing is in Ubuntu, and I can guarantee that if someone performs a GUI comparison between my Vista and Ubuntu, the latter will win hands down. Still, now I am getting a lot better performance than earlier when my mouse used to hang and processes used to take a lot of time before getting spawned. So much so for Vista!

Question 3

Whats an ok-if-not-nice setup if I want to move to Linux?

Answer

I am playing safe here coz I know people tend to use a lot of tools and swear by it. When I install a package, I feel that I have a necessary requirement to have it. I hate to have unused softwares on my disk if I am not using them.

So I installed Ubuntu. Pretty easy and nice. Next was to get kdevelop. I know vim folks would dread me for this. But I am an IDE person (moving from eclipse, come on; you got to give me a chance).

If I evaluate kdevelop, I would rate it at 7/10. Nice integration with CVS and SVN. Autocomplete just about works perfectly fine. Switching to header/body is not that perfect but its manageable with the help of the File Tree. Integration with konsole is available at the bottom. It recommends kompare for diffs and is really very well suited for collaborative development.

What I did not like is that, the debugging is not that great. I mean you don't have that great an interface - coz it makes you slow. But in case you are comfortable with gdb, you can just find your way out. Regular watchpoints, breakpoints etc work fine.

So, pretty much thats my linux setup. I allocated around 16 GB of space and am pretty much all set to work on the 6 million record dataset I have for full time :).

Question 4

What to do if you suck at using Linux Commands?

Answer

I am still trying to find that out. But what I got is that, you can't memorize them in a day. It's only through long long hours of code development that you realize that suddenly you want to do some filesystem or memory stuffs. As one of my friend perhaps screwed up the vim version and had to rollback to prev version but was not able to figure out a way to leave glibc6 untouched. Such nifty things won't come to you overnight. It is just that you have to make linux your mistress, accept your illicit relationship in public and then you might find getting into the groove.

This question arose because in my last 2 interviews, I have been shot and fired with unix commands which I have managed to ignore till today. But perhaps, destiny has its own thoughts.

So currently this is the list of open items for me:

1. Start using unix commands. Just grep won't do :)
2. Start learning python for scripting. You need one, once in a while apart from shell script.
3. Install mysql and start tweaking in.
4. Algorithms, Algorithms, Algorithms. - Do I have to say more?

I was asked today about memcached. I remember before the beginning of all these interviews etc, when I first took the Database System Implementation course, read a lot about Google Big Table and was fascinated about Distributed Systems - the first thing which impressed me was memcached. Next was the hadoop project; a part of lucene. I just wished if I ever get a chance to work on something like memcached. If I ever could learn to know what Oracle Caching Algorithm is. I had got the opportunity today - just that perhaps I blew it, and that too I did it pretty nicely. Hence, this rant. Oh, it comes again!

So guys, there are things open here and we need to work. Your comments are utmost welcome. Have some new things to share, do leave me a note. Adios.

Stop and Stare

2008-03-07T19:01:00.000-08:00

An ideal morning for me would be an extended version of a Sunday Morning. Waking up at 10, making a hot cup of coffee with just the right amount of sugar and creamer with VH1 playing the Top 20 countdown. Wow! Perfect start to a perfect day.

Tonight, when the college breaks in mid of spring semester, I try to recollect how fast the days have gone by in recent weeks. I have been more or less able to cope up with facts and figures which would give a normal guy a heart attack. Of course, when you try to juggle more than 3 balls, it's likely you goof up somewhere. I am no professional neither a genius. So trying to play just an average guy - which indicates that my acads are not going too well, but yeh in an amortized sense ; everything is just all fine.

The visit to NYC was awesome. We stayed at Broadway Millennium which is at Times Square (I mean AT Times Square, of course, you can't be "at" per se, but it was 10 steps from there). I had the 46th floor with nice view of - yeh - The Times Square :). NYC was freezing. The hotel was too much comfortable. We had lots of coffee, thanks to the Coffee Maker provided in the room. I guess it tops the list of first-to-be-bought-items when I visit NYC in summer. Roaming around the city reminds me of Bombay. But it is way more than that. It's a real cosmo world. And I mean world.

I have been watching the Top20 Countdown on VH1. Everyday when I wake up, its perhaps the best thing to make my eyes at least open and start peeping, even if it is the Idiot Box. There are two songs which are currently in the Top 10 and are awesome. You can listen to them online.

"Falling Slowly" from the band "The Frames" won the Academy Award this year.

"Stop and Stare" from the band "RepublicOne" is a debut, still a good debut.

So, next time you get a chance, hook on to rhapsody or youtube and watch them!

Few lines from "Stop and Stare"

Stop and stare
I think I'm moving but I go nowhere
Yeah I know that everyone gets scared
But I've become what I can't be, oh
Stop and stare
You start to wonder why you're 'here' not there
And you'd give anything to get what's fair
But fair ain't what you really need
Oh, can u see what I see

Adios and Happy Spring Break!

Mad about Money

2008-03-03T22:27:00.000-08:00

I won't write anything here because this is my second time. The saying goes that to err is human. But I think all this is done so well, that I don't blame myself falling into the trap twice. I just hope to be smart enough to evade it a third time.

I would point you to a webpage - Go READ here.

And then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme.

If you don't have time, just watch the video (thats enough). Be educated and start to think logically. And then suddenly you realize the days of one-dimensional rabbit holes are long gone. There are meshes and meshes surrounding you. Ideas and philosophies which blind you for the very wrong desire which you always loathed.

Vagaries of mind multiplicity

2008-02-16T17:01:00.000-08:00

One of my friend used the following signature for his email footnote:

Every man is a hero is his dreams

- Sigmund Freud.

Today, is a saturday night. This week has been more than just a week. I saw couple of night outs - which have faded out since college days. Of course, sometime back in my working days - I used to stay late and finish work. But, things did not last this long - because I never felt that compulsive responsibility. As this is academics, you feel bad when you screw up due to mis-management. So, perhaps let the oil burn a little more - it just reminds of those days when things used to shine bright till the morning dawn.

Next week is going to be still more hectic. Oh! did I say hectic - thats an understatement. I would make my first trip out of Gainesville - a paid one of course. So, I am all excited to go to New York where I am supposed to give an interview and perhaps as friends plan - stay a while and enjoy the place. I can feel jitters in my stomach every time I think about the trip - but I convince myself saying that this is just a beginning. Many more are yet to come. This mind is not just waste matter - some gray cells are worth the price.

So, would an interview make it hectic. Nope! Nada! I have given so many of them that the questions often don't surprise me - if they save those "Out of the Box" ones. For those types - I have an honest answer - given time I can produce equally worthy results to your satisfaction ; but at this moment my best answer may not average well with your expectations. I may digress with things which are way beyond imagination while coming out with suggestions which may seem dumb to incorporate. I am not saying I lack creativity - all I am is a lazy thinker.

Next, to add to the interview - I have a quiz, two assignments, two projects and a midterm lined up in ten days. Is it not a red carpet for me - a bloodshed in waiting!

So, why the title reads multiplicity - many of times when you are alone, you feel like talking to yourself. When you are with your self for some more time - you start retrospection. You go back in time, recollect fond memories, shed some tears, laugh off key moments and wish you had more of them. You then digress more and ask what is WRONG in the present moment. Why are you unhappy? Your mind gets divided into two halves. You start judging yourself with the popular yardstick of successful and unsuccessful people around you. You start assuming things on their part as how they have made their lives lively or miserable and what is common between them and you. Somewhere in the middle of retrospection, you start contemplating about your future. And you dig down deep into the rabbit hole for hours - tumbling like Alice, whatever happened to the wonderland!

I hear this song - "Numbered Days" by Eels/Shootenanny often. The song makes me feel to long more. Like every passing day is taking something away from me and I have very few moments left to cherish. I hear it when I am alone ; in a mood to complain for something or the other.

I thought I would quote some lines here : but I could not pick which ones I should show up here. So here's the link. Do listen to the song if you get a chance (It belongs to soft rock genre and available in rhapsody).

So, its a saturday night. I missed out on my weekly badminton practice due to the schedule I have. But, if I see people around me - I am still having a lot of time to myself. If I can write this huge a blog, I won't lie that I spend time in useless stuffs too. But perhaps everybody is not built in the same type. We need different catalysts to keep our lives going. To say that one's catalyst is bad is putting a wrong argument.

So - fixed in all the mind battles, what is Joyesh going to do? Breathe in and start fighting the lonely battle or ruin everything and let life take its course? Is it the time to say "Thats it, Its all over, I'm through .... Counting Numbered Days".

<yawn>
<more yawn followed by a deep sleep>
<I have been watching MATRIX a lot these days than medically prescribed>

Language Bashing

2008-01-29T20:22:00.000-08:00

"You know what - Java sucks". When someone tells something in those lines in front me - my blood boils. I am literally letting my heart speak rather than making the expression any less intense.

Well, as a matter of fact, I was one of the victims of this unnamed syndrome when I graduated from college. At that time, we had three choices - C or C++ or Java. Some went ahead with C, few with C++ and many with Java. I belonged to the last camp. My frequent attempts were to educate people with Java and how powerful it is. I despised people who coded in C - like they live in some sixties still. For C++ people, I had some admiration - but I knew that 90% people who say that they write C++ code, actually mean they write "C with Classes" code. So, I often indulged in verbal bashes in favor of Java (quoting the design patterns to whom most were unfamiliar). Sometimes, I could convince people - sometimes I just gave it up.

After a while, AJAX came into picture. That, I believe, is a turning point in defining what would be the perfect language. I will give the answer after a few lines here. The next noticeable turnaround was the chanting of "python" mantra by Google-related sources. People said that C++ and Java are soon to be extinct : scripting is the way to go. You will find millions of just blog lines and comments arguing that this language is the future and that cannot hold any longer. Had those developers written that many lines of code - probably some company would have posted more profit than Google did (or whomsoever is the leader in this area). Few long-bearded gentlemen proposed Rails and further Ruby-on-Rails. I guess - that is the sweetest name of any framework I have ever heard. And again all hell broke loose. People against people - on something so abstract.

And still today I hear it - "Java is for web development Man! Do you want to go in that field?"

People who are expert in PERL should die. And those still writing code in Assembly - I guess they should take a hack-saw, put in some salt & after-shave mix on the ridge and start cutting their throats right now. I am sad to say them this - You guys don't even get discussed among these people. Read on.... you can do those once you are done with this article. I hope you change your mind.

The ONLY answer I have for all these people - who ask such STUPID question & perhaps are too adamant about seeing the truth is : Someday, you are going to learn it the hard way - brutal and it will hurt.

"There exists no ONE language for all purposes". That being said, people still try to make coteries among language. Oh you know what - if you are in this subset {ASM,C,C++}, then take the kleen closure and you are cool. Otherwise, you are not among the best. Shocking!!

I have been riding this wave for 4 years now. And perhaps I can see the shore. My belief is that there is exists no ONE language for all solutions. Neither coteries help. What matters the most is this simple question - "What is the fastest way you can make money out of the effort you put in and once done how long does it take you to keep it generating worthy revenue". I guess you would understand how sensible that question is - you involve business in and you see everyone is nodding and listening to you very carefully. Read on.

Money matters to us all. We may want to be a filthy rich professional or are a humble millionaire already through stock options - what we all believe in at the end of the day is we EARN our money and this earning never dries - till we are faithful to our work.

Said that - we are always home with certain technologies like C++, Java, Oracle, MS Office etc to name a few. Anything beyond that will make our ears go deaf. Protests will just be knocked out without giving any second thoughts.

No doubt they are the best products of some of the VERY best minds in our industry - but didn't they solve some purpose too easily which at one time looked unsolvable. That is the main reason why they have gained so much popularity and people have embraced it. But one needs to know, someday a bigger different problem would exist - and then everything would break loose again. We need a new solution and it would be one of its kind. Evolution is something which we can't stop. We HAVE to embrace it and live our lives.

So for people who are still reading as in why Java DOES NOT suck against C++ - I will answer next.

Any product, given a bunch of exceptionally talented engineers, can be written to the best it can perform. Did I forget the language part there?

No.

You guys might want to read the INTERNET more than a NORMAL / AVERAGE person who uses Java does. There are many benchmarks which cite performance measurements with Java outperforming C++ compiled with g++. I AM NO WAY SAYING NOW THAT C++ IS BAD. There can be many reasons to this - The platform can be a mobile phone whose stack was implemented in Java - so JVM compatibility was the best when the apps were written in Java. What you often forget is the following two simple things which are utmost important to any product development:

1. Time to turn around the concept to reality - a neat and clean working code
2. Time to fix bugs

Now, if you really don't want to hold no longer and ask the AGE-OLD tried and tested missile question - "What happened to performance" - All I can say is this - "Every language gives you freedom to fiddle with it - to the degree that you modify and use it to the best you want to". In case of Java, you may want to redefine the garbage collection and tweak in the JVM. But you won't : as language bashing is the easier route.

A new age is upon us. When I started using computers, C++ was the standard. Java came into boom in late nineties. We bid goodbyes to procedural languages and welcomed OO frameworks. Somewhere and sometime, scripting language sneaked in. Some trillions of lines were written overnight and they remain as backbone and sometimes the most important asset of many companies. We jumped guns and embraced Javascript through AJAX - because it just looked cool. The person who still does not know what is the POWER of AJAX : will not give you an iota of respect if you say that your bread and butter is Javascript. May be PHP might sound cool to him. (Don't say ASP or JScript - you will fall 'down' into some domain that he cannot define himself).

Then why is that Cisco still uses Assembly in its best possible routing codes. Why do companies employ people to learn PERL and write those very million dollars worthy UNIT test cases - is TDD bad after all? Or why does not Google do all its development just in C++? Why does Microsoft spend money after all in inventing F# or asking teams to build products using D. Why Bruce Eckel takes the pain in evaluating Scala and advising people that it is the most definitive successor to Java. Why in MIT if you still get admitted, you get to use Scheme. And you thought coding in Python was cool.

Baseline - It is the time to build and sell the product which matters. Do it in a language you are comfortable with - so that you will write less buggy code and give a better output in the time assigned to you. But by that don't convince youself that you have evolved to the best you can. Keep you eyes open. C++ has its place - may be in embedded systems, may be with C++0x you would find a Concurrent Language worthy of learning (you might want to learn a language which is inherently concurrent - not just supports threads as a library). When you speak about Oct core systems, if you write a program which does not exploit Concurrency - you should feel sick downright - coz you are wasting computing power. Don't you think there should be language ConcurrentJava which would befit. Or you still want to to fall into your coterie and be Multi-C.

Java or C++ - they have places to stay. So is ASM. You want real time - use ASM. You want little lesser than that use C. May be even C++ now-a-days gives almost the same runtime support with HALF the development and perhaps ONE-EIGHTH the maintainance time. Use Java to build applications in Distributed Platforms - Isn't today all the work done in distributed scenarios? You want performance - tweak in JVM. Profile and profile. When you give up - know that given ONE-TENTH the time you invested in coding it in Java, you can achieve the same mark if you switch to any different language if you have some excellent coders in your team and IF YOUR DESIGN IS PERFECT. People neglect the 80/20 rule and start cursing Java. They don't realize that the 80 belongs to the debugging and cross-platform issues in C++. In Java most of the time is spent in designing. Still, some good coders are faithful and regardless of language, spend time in architecting the entire thing - before even deciding what to use : I say they are the best coders, even if they have not written even one damn line!

So, start googling for the language problems you feel you have. There can't be a case that all your problems are solved by one paradigm solution. Learn at least one from each - Assembly, Procedural, OO, Scripting and Functional (sorry, If I missed anything here - tell me and I will learn). You can build a browser in just 25 lines of Python code. While in some - you can multiply two matrices in just one line.

Remember that what matters is you should propose a solution which should be independent of underlying infrastructure. Model you design to not compromise with anything. Then start picking what fits in best based on constraints you have :
1. Time to build and sell (Productivity counts)
2. Ease of collaboration
3. Ease of Maintainance
4. Debugging
5. Inherent features and Recent Developments
6. Open Source Initiatives and Available Plugins
7. Scalability and Performance Metrics
8. Agility

So the next time if someone asks you - "Do you recommend me reading Java or C++?". Just stare and stay silent - Do not utter a word. I hope he feels like he asked a question which perplexed you so much that you could hit him at any moment. After sometime he would realize it and start describing the actual problem in his design and then asking for advice. All you need now is to educate him not to ask that little **stupid** question again.

Potpourri

2008-01-26T19:12:00.000-08:00

We are always living in times when things are happening - even when they seem to be still and quiet. In case you are like me - you must know this, that you are missing out the celebration somewhere.

In the winter break I watched so many movies that I stopped watching any more this semester. With that I meant I stopped watching movies on television. I watched Halla Bol recently - but would not recommend as a must watch. The theme lacked a force - may be few strong dialogs from the main actor Ajay Devgan. And yes, before that I watched Juno. Nice movie - simple story : good watch. And I always knew the guys in SuperBad would be seen in many more to come.

And then there is Australian Open. All sorts of thing happening this year around. Tsonga beats Nadal as if Nadal was the one who was unseeded. The volleys and techniques just stunned Nadal who tamely lost the game. The courts are said to be slower than US Open, but still Tsonga repeatedly surprised Nadal by coming to the center of the court and taking control of the game rather than letting Nadal to continue his baseline ralleys.

And then the historic upset - I would say this because I respect Roger. When he says he has created a "Monster", we have no idea how high peoples' imaginations soar for him. I watched his game against Blake - James was no match. He was a spectator to almost most of Federer's returns. People often say that this man is 26 and still the fastest around. But....

Someday all this has to end. If not this grand slam, still signs have started coming in. And I hope the best for him to make that 14 as soon as possible. Djokovic was not very good - but he played really sensibly. My analysis (whatever sane my mind could think) is that Roger dig his own grave by making more unforced errors than that is allowed in a grand slam final and come on - its not allowed to him either, he is Roger Federer. Novak never failed trying and the moment he got the opportunity to break games, he took his chances. It was a great game to watch and to see the legend bow down. I am making him a legend - coz I know he is sure to be one pretty soon.

Next comes Fe-male matches. Sadly I watched the finals. My observations were that ladies should not have two serves given to them because 99% times they tend to make mistakes in the first serve. Hardly you see 2-3 aces in the entire match. Anyways, as reported in the news, it must have been a photographers' frenzy to watch Tennis's 2 hottest and best players fight each other - Serbian Ana Ivanovic vs Russian Maria Sharapova. Who then cares what happened to match? Haha, just for the records - Maria won it in straight sets. But I cheered for Ana and I know Maria ain't last long.

What else - I had and have my classes going in full SWING. Unfortunately, rather than going out and playing it, I am in my blanket caught napping for past a month now. Thats {bs}ad.

Next few weeks are going to be interesting. I am hoping that I get some Internship Calls pretty soon - now that its time to convert and secure something for the summer. So, thats in a whole a short diary of what happening these days. And being a lazy bum - I did not celebrate republic day ? Why, because by the time I recollected it was THE day the time in the clock was 6:30 pm. India was already past the day :).

Adios.

Bloated, Wrinkled and Dead

2008-01-14T11:45:00.000-08:00

Things sometimes don't go well. You can see them working - but not around you. You see people moving on with those things quickly and efficiently - they are happy. Sometimes thats makes you all the more sad. Is it not?

Well - to make it worse - you can't stop them from moving on. Can you? They have every right to. We all live for ourselves. And then you know that you are alone!

Still - a wise man has said, "It is not what happened to you, It is what you do about it". Perhaps, that extra hassle will pay off some day. Life is unfortunately an infinitely big circle. The moment you call your game to be over - might be the turning moment of your life. Its a casino which never shuts down itself - until you pack your cards. So as I always have said to myself - hang on!!!

Reflections and Reverberations

2007-12-31T22:29:00.000-08:00

It's time to look ahead. It's time to look back. It's time.

Nobody knows what 2008 has in store. Will it be different? Will it bring all the bads to an end in your life? Would it make this life a little bit more lively, if not filled with celebrations day in and out. I don't know.

The calenders are turned in and people look at months ahead and make tentative plans. Some people keep them. Most forget and get busy with mundane schedules of life in which this new year's celebration adds nothing but hope. Is it all in vain? I am not sure.

So, should I be celebrating still when all these questions remain unanswered? I thought I had a good appetite for them. I am contemplating now on things. I am nobody.

As I deliberate more, I fall into these loops and I can see that I get swamped into the fake patterns which life shows. The more I try to understand them, the more it intrigues me. Sadness and Happiness over long terms share common proportions. But can I amortize them over any period of my life? I have no answers.

So, how does it matter if it is 2008? This time next year, I may be sipping margaritas somewhere or will be drinking my sorrows away. But both of them would have started well before the new year giving it no due significance. Do we need a new year to drink? Aha! No, Not at all.

2008, 2008, 2008 ...... Reverberating everywhere. Hope it goes on for sometime for the people who dreamed to see this day. Let them have their share of joy. And then, lets get back to where we started. The mundane circles of life awaits our presence.

If you really want to remember it, do something new. Even if it is a small thing not worth of any significance, do it for yourself - probably it may turn out to be a reason for you to remember new years. If not that, perhaps your life may not remain mundane after all. Little works of pleasure build an empire of happiness.

Supreme Beings of Leisure

2007-12-23T13:18:00.000-08:00

I am no connoisseur. But the taste is far too difficult to forget because the ecstasy seconds to none. And well for that matter, the pleasure is Never the Same.

For few days the Johnnie Walker Black Label Advertisement was airing and I liked the jingle a lot. Being all ears to good music (what I think is Good Music) I tried to get the source (if any). Needless to say - the names are perhaps aptly given.

I got a lazy lounge version of the song - soothing and flowing as slowly as possible. The Details:

Track Name: Never the Same Album: Supreme Beings of Leisure.

Classy, ain't it? Well for that matter, Johnnie Walker is meant for such a coterie. Cheers.

A Math Riddle

2007-12-13T01:54:00.001-08:00

This is a twisted version of a simple thing. I bumped up to this while trying to come up with the formula for summation of squares of natural numbers and if they could be derived as a factor of sum of natural numbers. But, I went down and down into the whirlpool. Finally with some online help, I could find my way out. Do post your comments about whatever you could come up with.

Do you think the approach is wrong? Why?

MiKTeX

2007-12-11T08:31:00.000-08:00

{/begin}
My First academic semester at UF just ended yesterday. And I was so happy that I did not sleep yesterday night. Weirdo am I?

I would like to pass on some information about useful stuffs one should know if you have something to do with Computer Science in general. Perhaps this is pretty vague and may be redundant - but still you can take it as a preaching hah :)
{/end}

MiKTeX - Let me take this first. Well, in case you have not heard yet about LaTeX, its high time you get to know what it is about. If you write long documents, have a knack for preparing them beautifully and could not quench your thirst with popular word processing tools available - go for it.

Well, just for the fact to get the dates straight - TeX was written in late 70's and is much popular in the academia domain. The typesetting system was developed by Donald Knuth and many others contributed to it along with support for all major operating systems.

The TeX file looks kind of a html file but is strongly typed. Most of the commands start with a backslash. The file (usually stored in .tex format) gets compiled into a DVI format (DeVice Independent). The DVI file can be sent as input to printer drivers or converted to pdf or postscript formats.

All these formats are standard formats which can be used without explicitly obtaining any licenses from any proprietary sources - This is the best part.

Sadly for novice users, afaIk TeX does not support WYSIWUG formats. So there are two options - one can take existing pre-written files and change stuffs as per one's requirements. Take a smaller version - there are plenty available, all you have to do is forget being lazy and google for .tex files. Of course any worthwhile task consumes time before giving results.

Or, you may write down from scratch. Remember to make a lot of tex files for specific purpose - which will prove to very useful for future modification. Its very tedious to read 1000 lines of tex code as it is to interpret a 1000 lines of html spaghetti.

You can include these smaller tex files into a single tex file. This file can actually contain only 10 lines and these lines are nothing but inclusions of 10 specific tex files. Remember, the order is important as in any C program.

It is not just about mathematics - why one should use tex. The problem is with over repeating things. You always wanted to do things once and use shortcuts the next time. Word Processing offers so many shortcuts - that they literally abuse it. You struggle with things which should have been simple. They break that rule that things should be simple, but no simpler - and I just abused Occam's Razor.

Hope you get it. Perhaps on a Sunday, when you feel like trying out some good stuff, give this a try. I installed it on MS Windows. Go to MiKTeX Home Page. Lots of Documentation is available. Read the Installation properly because you would not like to mess it up. I downloaded the complete installation from a local mirror available with UF. A recommended editor from this website is WinEdt. Try it out. You may go for other installations of LaTeX. Tell me about it if you know something is really good.

Next Blog would be on few video lecture courses in Computer Science - highly recommended for students in the bachelors' program. I am currently viewing the course lectures. Once completed I would post complete information about it.

Rendezvous with Life

2007-11-30T21:34:00.000-08:00

Today I was not in that great mood. I don't know what happened. Is it something which happened today? Or is it something I have been putting off for long?

I was feeling sick - perhaps a bit homesick. This is not what I am usually. Even I did not buy that myself. But I was down and low.

Couple of hours and I am back. Back to normal. I have a test, an assignment, a presentation as well as a demo lined up in the next 5 days. And I watched "Bend it Like Beckham" for the past two hours. The movie was more than a distraction.

Suddenly I realized something. And it is what will take me through these five days and more.

There is always more to life. I wrote my last post, but at times I fail to believe in it. It is the persistence which I lack. The ability to stand for that extra second. Why did I always fail?

I have my answers to find. If you can, help me - in the right way.

Om Shanti Om

2007-11-20T19:59:00.000-08:00

for once I can say ...... bas deewangi hi deewangi hai.

I watched the movie yesterday. It was the second hindi movie I have seen after coming to florida. The first one was "Chak De India". Both were SRK starrers and have completely different flavor.

I must admit that since I saw the movie late yesterday, I have been on youtube watching all clips related to Om Shanti Om. And nonetheless I can't stop smiling and laughing. It is a hilarious movie and believe me - if you miss this one, you are missing a bollywood heartbeat. On Diwali, every year there is a clash between two big banners and mostly people get a good movie to watch. I don't know about Saawariya, but I can vouch for Om Shanti Om.

Forget Karan Johar, forget SRK stereotyped Rahul - you get something fresh here. A different SRK. Roles which the public would love to watch.

Yes, I agree that comedy sells these days and for that matter even cheap ones have made their way into the market. But, you don't expect such things from a 34 Crore Investment. Om Shanti Om has been made meticulously keeping in mind what people want to see. And when you want to beat someone as big as SLB, you better have something to show.

Om shanti Om uses many of the old known jokes and few sequences which have been reproduced as-is from other movies. When you watch it, you would tend to feel that you have heard those jokes somewhere earlier. But the energy and enthusiasm in the movie makes it all the more enjoyable. There is a hidden flow somewhere which keeps you glued to the movie. Frankly speaking, I even did not care to put in thoughts if it was half as comparable to Karz - a classic in hindi cinema.

This movie can be classified as the first spoof in modern times (barring Ghoom launched by MTV) which has been accepted and enjoyed by the Indian mass so well. I bet you won't complain that you wasted your time watching it.

Also it sends a reply back to the media who have made fun of SRK umpteen times. SRK has proved it once again that it is not Karan Johar or Farhan Akhtar on whom his success depends. He knows exactly what he wants and spreads a strong message that "There is no replacement to hard work".

So, I would suggest you to call for a time-out from your busy schedule and go and watch this movie (anyway you can). It would relax you and it is fun. No doubt about it.

Lastly, here is one of the dialog from the movie and perhaps its the original source:

Itni siddat se maine tumhe..... paane ki koshish ki hai,
ki har jarre ne mujhe tumse milane ki...... saazis ki hai

(the symphony starts)

kehte hain,
agar kisi cheez ko dil se chaho,
to poori kayanat usse tumse milane ki koshish me lag jaati hai

aaj aap sabne mujhe meri chahat se milaya.
Thank you. Thank you very much.

main aap sabka sukra guzaar hoon ki aapne mere khwabon ko yakeen me badal diya....
itna,
itna ki I feel like the king of the world.

aur aaj... is baat ka bhi yakeen ho gaya,
ki hamari filmon ki tarah hamari jindagi me bhi ....
end me ... sab thik ho jaata hai,
haapys endings
aur agar, aur agar thik na ho
to woh The End nahin hai doston....
picture abhi baaki hai

-------------

“When you want something, all the world conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

Sweet November

2007-11-17T09:17:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know thats a good movie - the inset of fall sets a whole new view of Gainesville. I just wished somebody could lend me a digicam for couple of months.

The temperature has fallen down. I have stayed in Delhi for a year and I know I used to freeze at 4 degrees. The huge fur jackets, probably heavier than me at that time, had to be used to keep you warm. But still it was just four degrees.

The fall in Gainesville is beautiful. Imagine being in a hill station - only thing missing is the mountains and the deep mist. But the serenity and breeze would sweep your minds. At nights, the mist would escape as you start talking. The cool breeze would make you long for warmth. But, it is not all jittery. If you stay for sometime out there, you would start enjoying it. Well, fortunately or unfortunately it never snows in Gainesville. So, I do not know how wonderful it would be. But yes, yesterday the temperature was -1 degree celsius. And the night was worth roaming around.

Well, for that matter my roommate returned home at four o'clock in the night, after watching his first movie in an american movie theatre. And of course, he had dinner at 2 am in a bustling restaurant nearby. Eight dollars for the movie. Seven dollars was the dinner. Roaming around the town in the night with friends in a ca-ar, priceless for a desi "graduate" student.

The day sets in pretty early. I usually take the bus from a nearby bus stand to go to college. The bus stop is around 300 metres from my place. The walk is pretty relaxing. The cool breeze fills you in waking you up for the day. The picture perfect trees and signboards just catch your breath. The best thing out here is the nature. Its all calm and quite - what you would desire when you try to take a break from the city life. No wonder this place has been voted as the best place to live in US for some time.

This is perhaps the best time around the year to be at Gainesville. Its not too cold, but you feel the chill. And the time of the year when you enjoy the sun. Sweet November ain't it?

FogBugz 6.0 - Devs' envy Testers' Pride

2007-11-13T23:01:00.000-08:00

Well it is 02:02 at night and I am not in a mood to write something long here. So, would point you guys to a good demo of FogBugz. Seemed pretty awesome to me and I hope you would like it too. Believe me developers, you would strictly say a big NO to this software getting in the hands of the QA folks. Coz, it hits where it matters most - your performance and consistency.

The software keeps track of timelines you have skipped and other small stuffs which impact your consistency and reliability in solving bugs/issues. It is perhaps a thousand times better than Clarify which I have seen people using.

If something appeals to me most, it is the usage of Thin Client (of course something which works on Firefox without giving JavaScript issues and which uses Web 2.0 features). You have collaborative tools which spurs free interaction between Dev and QA.

I have only seen the demo, so I am not sure if this feature is present in 6.0 - I would have liked to see a quick draft form of a bug saved to a QA profile without getting filed right away. Many a times, the tester keeps a bug for further verification after he has encountered it for the first time. This feature should be included - though there are both pros and cons attached to it for the obvious reasons - the management (you figure it out yourself why).

The Demo URL is here

Just to add more interest - fogcreek is the one associated with Joel Spolsky who writes the famous blog http://joelonsoftware.com/.

This is part of an effort am putting in now-a-days to correct the process of writing code and implementing projects/designs efficiently. Good process comes through practice and awareness. In the beginning I used to always skip it. But slowly as I built the framework, it does not take much time of mine. Using open source software frameworks is the first step in this direction ( ! FogBugz ). Gone are those times when we had time to rewrite something twice. You write something today - and that remains forever!

There are some steps one should use before writing even a single line of code. Along with OO design, keep in mind Version Control, Memory Management, Code Profiling, Code Documentation etc. I would write an article when I get some more time highlighting these aspects and how they help you to bring clarity and integrity to the overall project. You may not configure them right away, but keeping space for them in your overall project design helps in the long run.

And remember - never reinvent the wheel unless you have been asked to do so. Always build on the top of existing blocks (reusing efficiently) until : you hit the Great Wall of Performance Issues.

hmmm ... the glass finally goes empty ... sadly it was cranberry juice all the way.

A thousand thoughts

2007-11-05T17:58:00.000-08:00

Codes, thoughts, ideas - those have been the diet on which I survived for so long. And yes, for some time now, the burritos.

So to start with - choosing the name for this blog took me some time. I must confess that it took more than two hours. Well, whats in a name? But sometimes a lot of factors external to you affect you more than you thought they would. And that is exactly what I mean. I was supposed to name it Fork(ing)Threads. But searching for definitions could bring in more clarity to the first word. So, a better vocabulary could have helped. Still, one should always check before letting it out! And I checked it because I am not a novice if not an expert :)

So here we are again - back where we started (Train - Free).

I started writing this blog because when I get my hands full, I just drop everything blindly and tend to do something which is not at all related. Its a distraction for a good cause. Being a master's student, you will have your To-Do lists all filled up and popping in at every glance you take. Deluge of mails reminding of the pending assignments and projects which lack clarity and need substantial effort than they were intended for. Whatever happened to Proof of Concepts, it is very much alive and takes precedence over modeling solutions when it comes to deadlines. Hours of efforts flow in. Who said going back to school was cool?

But thats what we are here for. To apply what we have learned. And to re-learn again, what we use to apply, in a new way. To find better ways to the mistakes we have been doing. To take a break from the mundane codes which had become our only friend. To simplify our thoughts, our designs and the way we visualize. To bring us back when we are long lost in the forest.

So whats next? I want to write on some of the tools which I recently picked up and have been using since. Valgrind, Doxygen and Rational Rose would figure out in next couple of blogs along with other potpourri of rants on life, thoughts and revelations.