It's been 2 years since the Mars Orbiter Mission (also known as 'Mangalyaan' when it's at home, sipping tomato juice) officially began its orbit around the Red Planet. They hoped it would be there for six months - another 18 months and it seems to be doing just fine.

I wrote this piece for Architectural Digest last year about MOM on its first orbital anniversary. Here's to MOM painting the town red for some more time.

Chrome Fume

The biggest personal productivity boost in recent times has come by unchecking a single checkbox: the one that says 'enable hardware acceleration' in Chrome's settings (on Win 10). I haven't quite figured out why this option had caused such a slow down, but apparently, it's something to do with the display drivers.

I've often had to wait for as much as 10-15 mins after the laptop resumes from sleep for Chrome to come back to life.

For once, a silver bullet.

Facebook's new messages system

I've always wondered why, in the age of online handles and content-based routing and web identities, do we still need to have 8+ digit numbers for phones. Since it's painful to remember more than a handful of these numbers, we end up giving them useful aliases on our mobile devices or address books. Instead, why can't we simply have something like a "name telecom provider" interface?

Which is why I was intrigued to see that very same point being made in Facebook's announcement of its Facebook Messages revamp. It's very clever, it's very social, and it is likely to take Facebook to people who didn't care to be part of that ecosystem. When GMail brought in a fresh look at e-mail, it was typically Google: fast, usable, but geeky (tags instead of folders, email classification, attachment reminders). This, in comparison, is social-like-hell (for us not-so-social types) - separate inboxes for friends vs others (v. simple - why didn't others implement this?), the promise of replaying your interactions with a person over a lifetime, and convergence of email/IM/sms.

The announcement also suggests that they spoke to high-schoolers to understand what they thought about messaging, which is interesting. So Twitter is for the 30+ crowd and the hare-brained-celebs, GMail for those who discovered Google in their twenties, but FB will evolve with teens.

I don't use FB very much, but it looks like it's just arrived on my online doorstep. Especially if this is the vision:

Relatively soon, we'll probably all stop using arbitrary ten digit numbers and bizarre sequences of characters to contact each other. We will just select friends by name and be able to share with them instantly. We aren't there yet, but the changes today are a small first step.

Zuckerberg's Social Network keeps getting wider.

(just a bunch of thoughts that struck me when I read the announcement)

Save our saves

I have been using Tomboy, a note-taking application (based on a recommendation by Harsh. (I'm not quite sure why it has that name.) It is simple to use. There is a tiny problem - it is excessively simple to use.

In essence, I have only one problem. Thanks to instant and automatic saving, I don't have to hit CTRL-s or its equivalent here. But I am so used to saving my work while working on a text editor that I end up doing that often in Tomboy. Unfortunately, that's a shortcut to turn the 'strike out' formatting option. Which means I begin to cancel all my forthcoming words (yes, that does allow me the happiness of hitting CTRL-s again to toggle :-))

It's like the story (not sure how true) of how phone service providers had to add a little background noise during a call even though they can completely eliminate it. It feels correct, since we're used to it, and habituated to using it as reassurance of the call being live.

So, though I know my work is being saved, I miss the comfort of having tactile proof of that fact. Just another example of how we get so used to something and that even the tiniest of things can matter to a wholesome interface-experience.

Typecasting

Typealyzer attempts to find out your blog's (not your's, mind you) Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The processing is remarkably fast, which leads me to wonder what portions of the blog they are consuming (at least the results are consistent!).

This blog for instance is classified as ISTP - The Mechanics with the description:

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts. The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

(Ahem.)

Anyway, it's an interesting exercise in text classification and I wonder what their training data was. (The folks at LingPipe had that same question when they pointed to this link).

Left pointing the other way

While using a mouse, I occasionally switch from a right-handed mode to a left-handed mode. Earlier versions of Windows used to call the relevant option under Control Panel -> Mouse as switch to left-handed mouse, but now they call it (confusingly, IMO) as switch primary and secondary button.

Which brings me to my point: software UI design, for all its comforts, still remains sinistral-unfriendly. On a typical GUI containing windows, there's no way to move the scroll-bar to the left (by default, the mouse pointer tends to rest on the LHS of the screen, but largely this could be a psychological perception of having to move to the right end of the screen). The minimise-maximise-close buttons will be on the top-right. Even the mouse arrow pointer continues to nod towards the north-west (IIRC, in earlier Windows versions, it would go north-east with a switch in mouse-handedness).

Here's an interesting little discussion between a left-handed user and a (left-handed) UI designer on the topic (look for the comment by "Sebastian").

And while on the subject, once again, all the main contenders for a US Presidential election are left-handed. The last time this happened was in 1992 when George Bush (the elder), Bill Clinton (the victor) and Ross Perot (the moneyed pretender) were on the ballot.

Linky Pinky Ponky

If you didn't already know (I didn't until Santosh pointed to it), Ram Gopal Varma is blogging. What's good about it is that the font size is readable and there are challenge-responses such as the following:

13. Your films like AAG, Nishabd scared me and I don’t want to watch your films anymore.
Ans: Thanks

Roger Ebert is journalling here.

Help Firefox (v3.0 coming up) create a world record.

Mulva is not just a famous typo (a la Moops). George just got the wrong person.

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby

I have always heard great things about Ruby, but never got a chance to sample this object-oriented programming language with the sparkling logo. Today, I did, without having to even download and install. A very cool online command-line simulation exists here, where you can take a 15-minute tutorial and get introduced. What a wonderful way to promote the language of your choice!

Data Structures in Pop Culture

TV is educational. I recommend it particularly for CS students. Take this for example:

Jeff: There's the Giggle Loop, of course.
Steve: What?
Patrick: What's a Giggle Loop?
Jeff: Don't ask. To know about the Giggle Loop is to become part OF the Giggle Loop.
Steve: I think we can take it.
Jeff (breathing heavily): No, you're not ready for the Giggle Loop.
(Cut to empty beer glass)
Jeff: Basically, it's like a feedback loop...

[Explains the Giggle Loop]

Jeff (in utter horror): ... and oh dear Christ, you think it is funny!
Bartender (looking at glasses): Excuse me. What're you doing?
Jeff: It's a Giggle Loop (!).
Bartender: It's not a loop, it's a stack.
Jeff: Well, I couldn't call it a Giggle Stack, now, could I?
Steve: That would sound ridiculous.
Patrick: Exactly!

:: 'Sex, Death, and Nudity' - Episode 3, Series 1.

For another such error, see the sidebar of this blog.

The RecoGraph

I am a compulsive list-maker (of movies I've seen, books I've read, people I've known at certain places). In recent times, I've graduated to collecting more and more data about myself. Of particular interest right now is recording how I am led to books, music, or films based on the recommendations of others (however, still in the realm of dream-ware)

Some recommendations turn out to be more precious than others, lending greater worth to the recommender. Recommenders can be people one knows, newspaper columns and TV programmes, blogs etc. A graph of recommended elements and people who pointed to them could be built. I don't know if anything useful will come out of this, but it just sounds like something interesting to know.

While on the subject, I wonder if secretly, I want to become like Gordon Bell. The data collection is the most painful bit.

Learning to think like a computer scientist

A recent Language Log post talks about studies that attempt to understand how members of a profession learn to think in ways that helps them effectively practise their work. The focus was of course on the use of language (examples of studies in Law and Medicine are given) in reasoning in the field.

Which books would be the counterparts in computer science? I remember reading a book called Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers (reviewed here), which featured interviews with 19 leading programmers. It was a fairly engaging read, if I can trust my memory. Programming Pearls is a popular classic, where author Jon Bentley patiently explains the process of analysis a problem and deducing a solution, however magical it may first seem.

A broad and useful log of books beyond programming is available at this Computer Science Reading List maintained by John Regehr (link via Tejaswi).

Now an IT finishing school

NASSCOM chief Kiran Karnik inaugurated an IT finishing school (apparently, the second such in the country) in Bangalore recently. It's not very clear to me what such a school is meant to teach and polish, but it does underline two things: one, the grave situation involving hordes of students seeing IT-stars and a critical lack of good teaching, and two, the increasing uneasiness of IT corporates as to the hiring options before them. If one needs a finishing school to be employable after 4 years of education, then something is wrong, and a waste of resources is happening.

We also continue to be caught in this language-centric rut, which is potentially myopic - we don't seem to encourage our IT workers to be good enough also at the abstract skills; rather, it seems preferable to focus on the immediate needs of churning out code. True, this makes sense if you want to get your product out there as soon as you can help it, but will it necessarily help in the long-run? I fear not. But sadly, we are unable to properly instruct our students even at these language skills.

Paul Erdős and me

Thanks to this¹, I've moved a lot closer to center of the 'universe' on the publications graph. My Erdős number is 5, I think.

---

1: my 1/4^th contribution to that paper was on the structural analysis part. Just for spidey's sake, here's an official link: Mapping and Structural Analysis of Multi-lingual Wordnets.

Hyper-complete

In the future, will every new webpage's content be completely hyperlinked? Your average Wikipedia page (e.g. this page (as of Mar 27, 2007)) has several proper nouns hyperlinked and even some common nouns (like "stage magician") and adjectives ("amoral").

Next thing is to come up with a little browser plugin or preprocessor that takes my current content, adds hyperlinks from my own content database (such as blog archives), browsing history, or defaults to say, the appropriate Wikipedia page, instead of me having to insert it each time. Or perhaps a hovering bubble with a brief definition/snapshot a la some of these link preview plugins.

Convergence '07

A public-service announcement: my department, KReSIT, is organising its annual research workshop which is called Convergence. We're focusing on research activities in the field of Networks this time, and the line-up of speakers seems very exciting for those working or studying in this area. All the details at the afore-mentioned link for those of you interested in the workshop.

Blocking the blog

A fellow blogger writes on her blog how Blogger is now blocked in his office (didn't want to link to the post without permission and induce any "doocing".) The Indian Express on Sunday had an article on how people are getting fired for spending time on social networking sites despite being told not to. Unlike the facetious "jalao-jalao" fetish of politicians when it comes to web technology, this is a much more serious problem that needs some more thought than merely blocking popular websites.

These measures don't work very effectively because proxy sites can be accessed or new proxy sites can be set up with not too much difficulty. People can blog via email or by Blogger APIs. One can read blogs via news aggregators. In fact, for every ban, if there is enough will, it can be subverted with not much inconvenience. Administrators need to understand that the nature of technology is such. Alternative IMs, blogs, social networks will crop up innovatively to staunch the demand. As long as you cannot ban email and/or a search engine, you will keep tilting at the windmills.

However, this is not to defend those malingerers who are not working. In my personal experience, most good people manage a good balance of work and timepass (this *is* usually timepass, as is chatting all the while on mobile phones with blaring ringtones to boot). But a lot of people aren't quite that professional. It's not just about web access, but their lack of professionalism extends to other spheres as well. The bad habits of these people end up overshadowing the benefits of networking and blogging sites.

It's a tough situation, and some more creative solutions are needed. The Infosys model of allowing access only for a few hours (the actual implementation on the ground is a little flawed, according to reports) may be a short-term solution, but I would cringe at working in such a place. However, these models are becoming more universally adopted, which is a shame. I may have a low attention threshold, but I'd like to think that never has work suffered because of my browsing or blogging. However, I'd stay away from making such a claim for all fellow workers. Free internet access is a huge bonus of working in such industries and perhaps it can be used as an incentive to improve work habits. A one-size-fits-all approach is not going to work in the long run.

The Philosopher's Stoned

For the last couple of days, I was engaged in a death struggle with an implementation of the computer science scenario known The Drinking Philosophers problem in a new language, but alas, was doomed due to lack of time and enthusiasm. (Instead I had to settle for its more famous but lesser cousin, The Dining Philosophers problem.)

If you have wrestled with anything that involves concurrency, then you'll know that reconstructing the histories of parallel processes based on their trail is a little like trying to understand a Tarantino or Christopher Nolan screenplay in its non-linearity. At worse, you're saddled with a Lynch film - every which way you look at it makes sense but you will always be wrong in your conclusions.

Coming back to our quaint bunch of theosophers, I chucked my worries by looking at the brilliant Monty Python implementation of the problem. Here it goes:

The Drinking Philosophers Song

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boosey beggar who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume Shoppenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as schloshed as Schloegel.
There's nothin' Neitzche couldn't teach ya 'bout the raisin' of the wrist;
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed!

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, after half a pint of shard was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle, Hobbes was fond of his dram.
And René Déscartes was a drunken fart, "I drink therefore I am."
Yes Socrates, himself, is particularly missed: A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed!

(lyrics, link to page with the audio)

Gazzag

Scarcely have I made my peace with Orkut (the site, not the man of course - /even I/ am not that well-connected) - the reason being I love the "delete all scraps" option (hee hee) - that it seems everyone is moving to yet another social networking site called "Gazzag.com". I get an "invite" almost everyday, but I continue to play the snob and not go near it.

So if kind souls can enlighten:

* What's so special about gazzag.com?
* Is it promoted by Paul Gascoigne and gang?
* Have the Brazilians won this round as well?

Muito obrigado.

The world's first competent programmer

(From the pen of the great Edsger Dijsktra a.k.a EWD).

Although at the time that this story took place, mankind was not blessed yet with automatic computers, our anonymous man who found this solution deserves to be called the world's first competent programmer.

To know why, you've got to read the parable.

Bringing home the blog-truths

What does Tim Berners-Lee do if he thinks he's being misquoted and misunderstood? He blogs about it, of course.

An article had earlier appeared in The Guardian featuring a provocative headline Blogging one of biggest perils ostensibly based on a comment by the inventor of the WWW ((link to the article) - Berners-Lee didn't link to it :-)). Berners-Lee refuted it a couple of days later in his latest post, ending with "And, fortunately, we have blogs. We can publish what we actually think, even when misreported". Bully for him.

It is quite well-known that I am no Tim Berners-Lee (!), but /even I/ have had problems with the press. During my 7 3/4 minutes to glory in January 2003 (when it was revealed to general horror and squalid amusement that I had won Mastermind India), I was interviewed by a lady of the local version of a national rag. Probably because she couldn't unlock the keys to the skeletons of the closet, questions soon became speculative. "What next? Will you take part in any international quizzes?", asked she. "There aren't really any international quizzes that I know of", said I. "But if there were, would you?", shot back she. "Well, hmm, perhaps, who knows?", said I.

The next day, I was quoted in the papers as saying (paraphrased) "My next ambition is to go for international quizzes". Thank you very much, Mr. Cocky Quizzer. That one day, I knew what Salman Khan was going through.

More seriously, yes, there is a lot of nonsense "out there". But there is also a good chance someone will spot the nonsense and alert sane minds, if not be able to correct all of it. Everyone new to the web and email goes through a phase of forwarding fake chain threads and believing urban legends, but soon they get pointed to an alternative site refuting it, and hence instilling some much needed scepticism. However, with the newspapers, if you get misquoted, it reaches a lot more people without you getting a chance to completely refute the erroneous impressions (perhaps they'll print a little Letter to the Editor that falls of the page when you lift up the newspaper). One should be equally suspicious about print, irrespective of the nature of the paper it's printed on.

At least, thanks fundamentally to Tim Berners-Lee, you can blog about it.