Carpe Diem, Baby

Five

2010-08-01T22:34:00.000-07:00

Completed 5 years at Google today. This is the longest time I have spent in any organization since middle school and the most fun of them all. I am lucky to have learned so much from some of the smartest people I've ever met and to have made so many long lasting friendships. Most importantly I am grateful for having had the opportunity to ship top notch software to hundreds of millions of people starting with Google Desktop for two years, then Google Chrome for a year and now Gmail.

Google has been a huge part of my life in these past five years and will always continue to be, no matter where I go.

This is me, five years ago, on my first day at work in Google, looking bewildered and still unable to completely fathom how the hell did I con these people into hiring me.

Much Proud

2008-10-21T23:51:00.000-07:00

India launched its moon mission. Considering the illiterate and vain politicians that rule India and the sad infrastructure the scientists have to deal with, this is a huge achievement in my country.

Butterfly Effect

2008-10-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

On a warm summer night and a few beers down my friend decided to climb up some trees and then go frolic the roof of the bar, to prove a point. Few months later I read in the local paper that the said roof has collapsed. Coincidence? I don't think so!

Misattributed Twainisms

2008-09-12T00:09:00.000-07:00

I have had it with people quoting me a funny line and attributing it to Mark Twain. Yes, you out there. You know who you are. Mark Twain is not Chuck Norris, so he could not possibly have come up with all those witticisms. You need to realize that and get on with your life. Maybe actually try reading some of his works. Or if you are lazy, read this Snopes post on the intertubes.

Browser detection through javascript

2008-09-08T01:07:00.000-07:00

If you have a website and want to detect browser information, here is a cool article which describes how to do that. This post was inspired after looking at a tonne of blog posts, user group posts and bug reports about 'incompatible browser' errors.

Chromium!

2008-09-02T23:15:00.000-07:00

I am not sure if anyone still reads this, given that I haven't really posted anything on this blog for over a year and half. But I thought that it would be good to blog about something I have been a part of. I have had many long days here at Google, but this has been one of the most satisfying!

Those of you who do read this post might have a few questions about the how, why, what and when. Hopefully this comic that we published will help answer some of those. For other juicy details subscribe to the Chromium blog.

I count myself lucky to have worked on such an awesome piece of technology and it has been an honour working along with some of the smartest engineers ever. And you can help us too. Come on over to the open source Chromium project to see how you can help us drive the web forward!

Breaking radio silence!

2008-02-19T20:50:00.000-08:00

Usually people have something great to announce when they break radio silence. But I got nothing! Nada. Zip. Zilch. But then again its been exactly one year since I blogged and I thought it would be great to get back to the blogging habit. So stay tuned. Meanwhile if you want something really interesting to read, check out my link blog.

Understanding Web 2.0

2007-02-19T05:07:00.000-08:00

Awesome video explaining the whole Web 2.0 phenomenon

Perils of unsecured WiFi routers

2007-02-17T08:09:00.000-08:00

I came this nice blog post on the Symantec Security Response blog. You *must* read it, especially if you have WiFi at home. Here is an excerpt:

It allows attackers to create a Web page that, simply when viewed, results in substantive configuration changes to your home broadband router or wireless access point. As a result, attackers gain complete control over the conduit by which you surf the Web, allowing them to direct you to sites they designed (no matter what Web address you direct your Web browser to).

This is a serious issue especially with most of the people setting up unsecured WiFi networks at home. I just wonder why this took so long to come out...

I think the router manufacturers and the OS vendors need to work together on this, to come up with a simple out of the box experience when it comes to setting up routers with good security.

Weekend

2007-02-15T05:27:00.000-08:00

Here is what I plan to do for the upcoming long weekend:

Took this picture last weekend in my balcony. It was really hard to get 3 chimps to sit still through the 5 second exposure.

Evolution

2007-02-15T05:16:00.000-08:00

Looks like Darwin can finally rest in peace, after the state of Kansas in USA decided to teach the theory of evolution in their schools. CNN has a nice article about this issue: "Evolution of science standards continues in Kansas".

Big day for science. Big day for my blog too! This is my 100th post!!

My new link blog

2006-11-29T23:47:00.000-08:00

Since I find myself without time to update my own blog, I am going to do the next best thing - point to interesting posts I find on the blogs I subscribe to. Without further ado, here is my link blog: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/02082663834503550011.

There is an RSS feed too, in case anyone is interested.

Is Football Everything?

2006-09-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

Saw a really stupid advertisement on TV, where some professor asks a question to a bunch of high school jocks but no one can answer. Cut to an American 'Football' game, where the protagonist goes on to kick butt. All so very typical. What surprised me the most was that this was an advertisement by Nike for their new 'Gridiron' range of sportswear.

It is interesting to see that a major corporation is glorifying dumb students in order to sell more shoes. I guess that is just a reflection of reality.

Random thoughts about the environment

2006-09-16T18:48:00.000-07:00

The other day me and a friend who had just come from India were at a gas station refuelling my car, when the discussion inadvertently turned to rising fuel prices everywhere. Just as we were leaving the gas station, a Toyota Prius drove past us, prompting me to ponder why the Priuses or any other hybrids are not being sold in India, where people seem to be buying cars like there is no tomorrow. I mean the companies have a potential to make a lot of money based on the mass hysteria about rising prices in India. Plus the Government can give some tax breaks and score some karma points for being eco-friendly and at the same time helping curb rising fuel costs.

I am wondering how long will it be before the environment becomes a political issue in India.

The Illusionist

2006-09-16T01:12:00.000-07:00

Finally managed to see 'The Illusionist' tonight. Really well made movie, comparable to the 'Inside Man', which incidentally was the last movie I saw in AMC Mercado. Ed Norton simply rocks as an actor. Although the end is a little predictable, the movie is still worth watching.

Back to beta

2006-09-16T01:08:00.000-07:00

After months of inactivity on my blog, I decided to give the new Blogger Beta a try. Anyway, it was time for a new template, so here goes. As those who may know me in person, and to reflect the general mood of my posts, the template is simple and dull. Enjoy.

Placebo Effect

2006-08-19T22:38:00.000-07:00

Came across this somewhere on the net:

"Laughter might be the best medicine, but I was in the control group"

Blogging in मराठी!!

2006-06-27T09:24:00.000-07:00

माझा ब्लॉग माझ्या भाशेत!

Yesterday my friend suggested me this really cool transliteration software called Baraha, which lets you type Indian language words without really having to use an Indian keyboard. I have been having fun with all day, especially sending messages like (तेरे मां की...) and freaking them out. But seriously, I found it pretty useful, because I usually use a lot of vernacular (mixture of English + Hindi) to talk to my friends by typing out Hindi phonetic sounds in English. But now I just have to press F11 and I can actually communicate in a much cooler way! It was really awesome to be able to send an email to my Mom in Marathi. This was actually the first time I ever wrote an email in my own language, inspite of using computers for the past 10 years. I had used Devanagari keyboards before, but this is much more convenient. It is stuff like this which will make computers more popular in India.

And we're back...

2006-06-27T08:59:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a two week trip to China, where the access to Blogger was blocked by the Great Firewall of China. Anyway, here is me on the actual Wall:

Anyway, China was a fun place to visit. More about the trip coming soon...

Political Dicks

2006-05-16T01:17:00.000-07:00

Every so often when you are reading the morning paper, you find something which makes you laugh so hard that the tea you have been drinking comes out of your nose.

I am not a big follower of Kerala state politics, but while browsing through some election related stories in today's newspaper I found out that there actually exists a party in Kerala called DIC(K). The acronym stands for Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran). Now who in their right mind would name their political party such that its acronym is a euphemism for the male organ? So what does that make Mr. Karunakaran (the guy who leads the party)? DIC(K)head? I wonder what their election symbol would be...

Here is a small article on wikipedia about DIC(K).

Mind Control

2006-05-11T11:15:00.000-07:00

Does anyone of you get a feeling that the airlines are doing all sorts of crazy things to keep passengers 'subverted'? For example:

1. During takeoffs and landings, the cabin crew announces that people should switch off their walkmans, MP3 players and laptops as it might interfere with avionics. I am very sure that this is just a big fat lie they tell you. These are just typical scare tactics which are very useful in making a group of people make you do your bidding. If they did not scare people, do you think anybody would pay attention to the safety announcements?

2. Mobile phones must remain switched off as long as the airplane doors are closed. Again, makes no sense to me.

I spent a few hours today digging up information on the web whether MP3 players or cell phones had caused any air mishaps, and so far could not find anything. My knowledge of electronics is rather weak, but I am quite certain that use of cellphones and MP3 players is quite harmless at any point during the flight. If it were really *that* harmful, airlines would not let you carry it on board and place it in the list of banned items like cigarette lighters, knives etc. It would be so much easier for a terrorist to crash an airplane, all he has to do his keep a bunch of cellphones in his hand bag switched on throughout the flight.

There have been so many instances where I left my cellphone in my pocket and it was 'ON' for the whole duration of the flight, no one noticed and nothing ever happened.

The intent of airlines is right (make sure passengers are aware of safety information and are alert when instructions are given), but it is the lying and deception which annoys me. But the thing which bugs me the most is how come no one has ever questioned this before?

Burning Man

2006-04-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

I seem to have acquired a newfound ability to burn things. A few weeks ago I was making tea in an electric kettle, when I left it on for too long and it caught fire and filled the whole house with the smell of burnt plastic. Today I set fire to a bag of popcorn in the microwave. And its not just things I am burning. I got my arms and back badly sunburnt while I was snorkeling on some coral reef in Andaman last week. The lost bag of popcorn or the busted electric kettle didn't hurt as bad as the sunburns did.

I wonder where this burning spree of mine will lead me. I just hope it leads me to the Burning Man. Been meaning to go to the Playa for a couple of years now, especially after seeing this person's photos put up on the walls of building 43 of Google's Mountain View office.

Toilet Manners

2006-04-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

In the office, sometime today afternoon.

Coworker # 1: Why are you whistling?
Me: I just took a dump in the loo. I feel so relaxed!
Coworker # 1: Eww..
Me: Huh?
Coworker 2: Something's wrong.
Me: Huh?
Coworker # 2: You have a newspaper tucked under your arms. So obviously you read the newspaper while you were in 'there'. And we all know that newspapers these days carry only depressing news. Yet you came out whistling.
Me: Did you folks just have coffee?
Coworker # 1: Yup.
Me: No wonder....

The joy of absurd conversations.

What's in a (domain) name

2006-04-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

Came across this interesting analysis of availability of domain names. Interesting to note that of the 17,576 possible three-letter sequences, again every single one is already taken. So if you are looking for the smallest .com address on the internet, be prepared to shell out big bucks, like Microsoft must have paid for the live.com domain (link).

Anyway if you are wondering what the hell is this domain name, here is a good article on Wikipedia.

Does this look familiar?

2006-03-23T15:35:00.000-08:00

For all those "Friends" fans out there...

I was working from New York City since last week and our corporate apartment happened to be in Greenwich Village (that's the neighborhood where the characters of "Friends" are supposed to stay). Its an eccentric and cliquish neighborhood, and it seemed to be much slower paced than rest of Manhattan. It was an interesting week, living in the Village and working from an office on Times Square, catching a show on Broadway, jogging in the Central Park, clubbing in the Meatpacking District, waking up to blaring sirens at 3AM, being knocked over by cab drivers, meeting old friends and new. I think I am going to do it again sometime.

Under Siege

2006-03-10T16:18:00.000-08:00

With every passing day, Dilbert makes more sense. Yesterday, when I had called home, I had the misfortune of speaking to some relatives who had come over to my parent's place. As expected, questions about my 'bachelor' status popped up. Maybe I should have just showed them this Dilbert cartoon. Puts life in perspective:

What if Microsoft designed the iPod package?

2006-02-27T09:46:00.000-08:00

Extremely funny (and quite realistic) video on YouTube about how the iPod package would look like, if Microsoft were put in charge of designing it.

Surprisingly, I found the link while browsing through the MSDN Channel 9.

(If you can't see the video in your browser or feed reader, click here).

There is something special about....

2006-02-12T23:28:00.000-08:00

...standing in the balcony, with paan and sutta, enjoying the cold weather. Reminds me so much of Pune and the good old days.

GMap Pedometer

2006-02-06T00:48:00.000-08:00

G-Maps Pedometer is a pretty cool Google Maps mashup. I have been using it fairly regularly for the past 6 months (mostly to find out how many calories I burnt walking to Starbucks. How many I gain there is a different story).

It was pretty useful last Sunday, when we went biking from downtown San Francisco to Sausalito over the Golden Gate Bridge (and back via ferry). Was a pleasant shock to learn that we biked more than 16 kilometers in about 4 hours. And that too over hilly terrain!! I haven't biked that long since high school.

That was the same week that we went skiing. One of the most extreme physical weeks for me in the past few years. A sure sign that I should get off the couch and go out more often.

20 year old infection

2006-01-19T18:26:00.000-08:00

Today is the 20th Anniversary of the first computer virus. Interesting. The worst I ever got hit by viruses was when the PC's in my college lab were infected with Redlof.A virus(also known as the folder.htt virus) and the infection spread through floppy disks to mine and my friends' conputers. Plus our 'browsing habits' did not exactly help. I think one of my hard drives is still infected with all weird viruses and spyware. Would be interesting to look at it say 5 years down the line.

Retrievr

2006-01-19T18:07:00.000-08:00

Here is a cool tool I found while trolling del.icio.us. It lets you search for a subset of photos uploaded on Flickr, by letting you sketch it in a small MS Paint like box. Check it out at http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/.

Its a very cool concept, although I rarely got what I was looking for. The only time it scored a direct hit was when I drew a picture of a lighthouse and it did show a couple of photos of it. Oddly enough on the About page, the author claims that:

"One thing to keep in mind is that retrievr doesn't do object/face/text recognition of any kind, so if you're drawing an outline sketch of a chair, it almost certainly won't get you one back (except your index only contains images of chairs)."

Lord of War

2006-01-02T23:02:00.000-08:00

Chanced upon this movie on my flight to San Francisco today. Lord of War is a very hard hitting movie about the world of arms dealers. Nicolas Cage is superb in the role of the arms dealer who lives only by one rule: "Never get shot with your own merchandise". The movie opens with a quote by Cage which sums up rest of the 2 hours: "There is a gun for every 12 people on this planet. The question is, how to arm the other 11".

Throughout the whole movie, I could not help noticing the striking similarities with one of my favourite novels 'The Dogs of War' by Frederick Forsyth which is about mercenaries in West Africa and the European arms dealers. This movie seems to be a more contemporary version of the novel.

Nice movie. Highly recommended if you are into 'serious' movies.

goodtimes

2005-12-22T10:10:00.000-08:00

I got a chance to fly Kingfisher from Hyderabad to Guwahati, via Calcutta. I must say that is the best domestic airline I have ever flown. The food was great, there was a in-seat TV, people were friendly and the air hostesses were the icing on the cake. I would fly Kingfisher again just for the air hostesses, who are just so damn hot!! I guess Vijay Mallaya (guy who owns the airline) was not joking when he said he has personally selected and supervised the training of the cabin crew. And they have even got Yana Gupta to do a video demonstration of the safety features of the aircraft. I am waiting for Kingfisher to start international service, when the times will be better!! (because then he can serve some of his own brew. Vijay Mallaya owns the largest alcohol company in India, and it is a shame he can't serve alcohol on domestic flights because of Indian Government restrictions).

She...

2005-12-22T09:51:00.000-08:00

We were supposed to travel together, from San Francisco to India, but the holiday season rush meant that she could not make it in time. So she decided to come here with my friend a week later. I just hoped that she could make it in time to Hyderabad on Monday so that she could accompany me on my trip to Guwahati and Delhi this week. And then she came. As soon as I got the news that she had landed and was waiting at my friend's place, I rushed there to find her in her beautiful white outfit. She looked even more beautiful in person. I bet she was happy to see me to. With trembling hands I held her and it felt so good...

I was jealous of my friend who must have had fun with her on the flight back. But I was not too concerned, because we are together now. And to prove it that she is all mine, we even had my name tattooed on her back. Now that I have her, I understand what I have been missing all along.

Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting my new white 30GB iPod Video, with my name engraved on the back.

Blur

2005-12-17T01:08:00.000-08:00

The last two weeks have probably been the most hectic ones of my life. First I travelled halfway across the world from San Francisco to Frankfurt to Mumbai to Pune and then before I could shake the jetlag off, I flew back to Hyderabad only to realize that I have to retrace the route again in a couple of weeks. Life sure goes by in a blur...

[Edit: fixed grammar]

Flower Power

2005-11-27T23:04:00.000-08:00

Sometimes a picture can say it all.

Stitch me a Panorama

2005-11-26T23:18:00.000-08:00

The other day my friend Raju showed me a cool photo stitching tool called AutoStitch. So I decided to give it a try today, with the photos I had taken from a rather nice walk around the Shoreline Park in Mountain View. I had no idea that there was such a beautiful park so close to my house and right behind the Googleplex. I think should go there more often...

Anyway, back to my point of the panorama. Here is a sample of what it can do:

As you can see, it is quite a decent panorama, considering that it was taken using a crappy Fujifilm FinePix A210, without a tripod and is composed of just three 3.2 megapixel images. And the best part about it? Its free!! I had seen some panoramas and 360 degree shots done using the more expensive and 'professional' software and this one comes quite close.

More panoramic images coming soon...

(Edit: Fixed Grammar)

Pimpin'

2005-11-26T00:19:00.000-08:00

Caught unawares in my apartment. Oh and that baggie on the table isn't what you think it is. Its just mint saunf.

Golden Gate

2005-11-25T23:44:00.000-08:00

I spent this afternoon driving and walking back and forth on the Golden Gate Bridge, which has become the icon of San Francisco and has also inspired the logo of a famous networking hardware company. Its a nice view from atop the bridge, with the Pacific on one side of the bridge and the San Francisco Bay on the other.

One more thing accomplished of my personal list of things to see in San Francisco.

Madness...

2005-11-25T23:07:00.000-08:00

Is it really worth standing in line since midnight to catch a few deals on the after Thanksgiving Day sales? I mean, here I am sitting comfortably in my apartment watching news about stampedes at stores like Wal-Mart wondering if the discounts are worth all that? When it comes to shopping, people back home in India seem so much disciplined. And I just spent some time comparing prices on the web versus the discounts offered in the stores, and I didn't find much of a difference. I think its just another meaningless tradition, and they have lots of them here.

Another pointless post from me, posted just for the heck of posting.

Yeah, right

2005-11-20T22:53:00.000-08:00

Venice Beach, Los Angeles. Full of freaks and shops selling all kind of 'smoking' equipment (shown above). Reminds me so much of the Anjuna beach in Goa.

Also Venice is the beach where a lot of Baywatch was shot. This tower below seem familiar?

(Edit: fixed typo)

Rootkit madness

2005-11-20T19:21:00.000-08:00

Was browsing through some CD's at a music store in LA, when I saw a CD collection or Roger Water's new opera Ca Ira which I liked. Just as I was about to pay for it, I saw the Sony-BMG logo on it and dropped it like a hot potato. I am not sure if I will buy a CD ever again from Sony, for the fear of infecting my computer.

For the uninitiated, here is why. But my fears stand refuted, this particular title does not contain the rootkit.

Its a wiki wiki world

2005-11-14T22:33:00.000-08:00

Came across a really funny (depends on how you look at it) joke:

Q. How many Wiki people does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. One, but anyone can change it back.

Geeking out

2005-11-05T22:50:00.000-08:00

I wanted to visit the Computer History Museum for a while, and finally managed to do it today. That place is awesome!!! I had intended to spend about a couple of hours there, but ended up spending five.

Amongst all the cool exhibits there, I loved the PDP-1 restoration exhibit in particular. That's the only running PDP-1 in the world complete with Spacewar.

And the coolest part was that I was playing Spacewars with the creator of that game without knowing it. Of course I got to know later and ended up having a nice chat with Stephen Russell where he told me how they added gravity calculations for the spacecraft, but did not have time to do it for the torpedoes. He even agreed to pose for a photo alongside the PDP-1.

For the uninitiated, Spacewar is the first ever video game. I had never played Spacewar on a PDP-1 before, I had only played on a 286 and more recently a Java based web simulation of that.

If you are ever in the Silicon Valley, make it a point to visit the museum. It is only fitting that the museum is here in the Valley, home to almost all the great names in Computer Science.

Puppy learnt a new trick

2005-11-05T22:39:00.000-08:00

In addition to learning how to make kickass Espresso, I learnt another skill this week - to open locked doors with a credit card. Someday when you find yourself locked out of your bedroom with a party to go to and your car keys locked inside, you learn these things.

Doom-ed

2005-11-05T22:21:00.000-08:00

There are some actions for which you can never give a rational explanation. Like yesterday, when I thought it would be a good idea to watch 'Doom' at 12:45 in the night at AMC Mercado in San Antonio. I am starting to hate that damn movie theatre. The place is great, but I saw 2 sucky movies in a row there (first Serenity couple of weeks back and now Doom).

A wise man once said "Never watch movies based on video games and never play games based on movies". I should have heeded that advice.

The whole movie was awful, but I liked the part where the camera goes into a FPS (First Person Shooter) mode and finally we get to see the carnage and blood bath (which was the whole essence of the game). But that lasts only for 5 min :(

To top it all the movie is riddled with factual errors...how the hell did Sarge end up being the bad guy? And humans have 23 chromosomes?!! I may have been a dud in biology, I remember clearly that we have 23 pairs of chromosomes.

Aqua Dock

2005-11-01T22:32:00.000-08:00

Found a cool tool...called Aqua Dock. Gives a nice Mac OS X like launcher on the PC desktop. Here is a screenshot:Download link.

Sin City

2005-10-31T22:47:00.000-08:00

Well, one has to go to Las Vegas to understand why it is called as the Sin City (or the 'Entertainment capital of America' as favoured by the local authorities). If you have ever been to Varanasi or some other place, where you see millions of people trying to wash away their sins in the holy Ganga and wondered what could be the other extreme of this spectrum, look no further...head straight to Vegas, where you can wash down your sins with any drink you like, any time of the day.

As I found out this weekend on a 1150 mile road trip from Mountain View, California to Las Vegas, you can learn a lot of stuff too:
1. The House always wins.
2. The more you play, the more you lose. (This is actually a mathematically proven theory)
3. And most important lesson: Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas ;)

Irony

2005-10-22T21:14:00.000-07:00

...is when you see a PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric) commercial, when you were watching Erin Brockovich.

Idle Sunday Afternoons

2005-10-16T14:26:00.000-07:00

On an idle Sunday afternoon, with nothing better to do, I observed that:

1. MSN and Yahoo search engines apparently consider an authority on some topics. Here's a few of them..
- Nagesh Kuknoor. I had written a post earlier about my brief encounter with the famous Indian director. Yahoo thinks its the 8th most relevant result. Check it out here.
- Bubble Years. Another post of mine about the 10th anniversary of the Bubble gets the 11th spot on MSN. Check it out here.
- Google Hyderabad. Since I have mentioned in my Blogger profile that I work there, MSN gives me the 13th Ranking. Here is the link.
...now isn't that awesome!! Me, important.

2. When the bouncers and bartenders at all the clubs I visited in the Bay Area did not ask me for an age proof (apparently one isn't allowed to drink in USA until he/she is 21 years old. Yes, they have weird laws here, its not like India), I have realized that I am getting old very fast.

Anyhoo, time to take a nap. Now you would ask, why such a disconnected post? Well, I was the 'Oktoberfest by the Bay' yesterday in San Francisco and this is the result of that. More on that coming soon (after this damned hangover is through).

That wonderful woozy feeling....

2005-10-11T23:44:00.000-07:00

Ingredients:
2 flights, totalling 19 hours.
Half a world full of timezones away.
2 glasses of red wine, 1 glass of champagne, 2 pints of beer, 1 Campari, 1 Bailey's
Shaken and stirred by some turbulence and garnished with intermittent sleep

...and voila!! we have Jet Lag.

Hyderabad Blues - Part 3

2005-09-25T22:05:00.000-07:00

For some wierd reasons (which I still haven't found out), people here pronounce the English letter 'H' as "Hech" instead of "Ech". So everytime anyone says "Hech Tee Tee Pee" in an interview, I can barely suppress a smile.

Hyderabad Blues - Part 2

2005-09-18T22:49:00.000-07:00

How not to behave around famous people:

I was having lunch at a restaurant on Saturday with my room mate, when I noticed that a guy who looked like Nagesh Kuknoor (a renowned Indian movie director) sitting on the table next to mine. So I ask him (while I am eating soup) ...
Me: "Are you Mr. Nagesh Kuknoor?"
Him: "Yes, I am"
Me: "Ok, Cool.."
...And I continue to eat my soup. My room mate kept staring at me for about 5 minutes. Don't blame me, I have never met a celebrity before.

If you were wondering which restaurant was this, it is a place called 'Chutneys' near Banjara Hills. Good place for wholesome vegetarian South Indian food.

Spam Attack

2005-08-29T01:13:00.000-07:00

Within 30 minutes of me putting up my previous post, I got comment spammed. Henceforth, I have enabled comment verification to weed out spam. So you will have to spend an extra 30 odd seconds when posting comments.

Recursion

2005-08-28T23:53:00.000-07:00

Read somewhere on the web:

"Human brain is so complex that it can't understand itself completely"

Tim Berners-Lee

2005-08-10T00:09:00.000-07:00

Since we are on the topic of the Internet today, here is a nice interview by BBC with Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented the web and created the first website 14 years ago in August 1991.

The Bubble: 10 years on

2005-08-09T21:52:00.000-07:00

9th August 1995. Netscape IPO hit the market. What followed later is something nobody could have imagined. Never before was so much wealth created in so little time (and later when the bubble burst, all that wealth just vapourized). It was Netscape IPO which started it all. Overnight Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark (founders of Netscape) became multi-millionares. I wonder where will the current Bubble version 2.0 lead us...

Here's a nice Wikipedia page on the Dot-com bubble. Here is a history of Netscape. In case you want to buy the Netscape IPO prospectus, it is up for auction here on eBay.

Great Balls of Fire

2005-08-07T21:51:00.000-07:00

...Was watching some talk show on TV sitting in my hotel room. And heard this funny line which made me really laugh:
"I thought 'Great Balls of Fire' was not song but a medical condition"

Speaking of which, never operate a laptop in bed when you are wearing only boxer shorts.

Hyderabad Blues - Part 1

2005-08-07T21:48:00.000-07:00

Hyderabad, a bustling state capital of the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Seems like this city is going to be my home for a while now. At least for the next few months. Its a very different city from Pune. The roads and infrastructure here is much better than Pune. Houses are easy to find here and property rates are much lower. But the traffic here is awful. People here have absolutely no traffic sense. I mean they have these beautiful roads (I come from Pune, I know what bad roads are), but the drivers are absolutely crazy. They just don't deserve these roads. And traffic cops here seem pretty useless. All I have seen them do at traffic lights is chat up on their walkie-talkies. Thankfully I don't have to drive here yet. It will be a while before I get by car or bike down here...

Chilling out

2005-07-29T02:27:00.000-07:00

That's me and Rando, in our old cabin. We shared the cabin with 40 machines and 2 air conditioners at full blast. We sure did chill out a lot.

Tomorrow

2005-07-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

The good-bye emails are almost sent, the farewell lunches are done, the personal data is almost backed up....because tomorrow is my last day at this job. My first job. I have been associated with this company for more than 2 years now, first as an undergraduate project intern for a year and then as an employee. I met some amazing and brilliant people here and made some really good friends.

And was this a fun job or what. It was the people with me who made it fun. We did all sorts of crazy things...like scaring people with dead lizards, playing Counter Strike till 3 am and then working till 7 in the morning, just to meet deadlines. We were a musical bunch, with people playing guitars, flutes and harmonica. We actually had a band 'Ass Tricks Boys' and managed to record a few songs. I would have put them up here, but the world isn't yet ready for us.

And we worked, we worked our asses off. We actually managed to ship software on time inspite of some *really* crazy schedules. Very rarely in the software industry do people see well jelled teams and we are a shining example of what such a team can do.

Time has come that I move on. Thanks AK47/Maverick, nonbeing, sk/Kaka, sd, coolfeelings/XXX, Bullet999/Rando, T101, bluestar/chicken, pakanti, PaRu, Uncle Sati and Col. Hell (who left before me) for a good time. And of course Roy, but then 'Roy Knows'.

But It Rained

2005-07-27T01:20:00.000-07:00

We have been having torrential rain over the past couple of days. But it is not as bad as Mumbai and rest of Western Maharashtra. Here are some pics I took yesterday:

1. Water logged roads on my way to work yesterday.

2. The small canal behind our office got flooded. Thankfully, it didn't overflow.

3. There is an old, huge (25 feet diameter, 60 feet deep) well in my backyard. That was also about to overflow.

Missing Out

2005-07-22T06:31:00.000-07:00

So often we come across people/companies blowing their trumpet on their resumes/PR websites. But rarely do we see people accepting defeat. Here's a rare example of Bessemer Venture Partners, a private venture capital firm. They actually have admitted failure in saying they missed out bigtime on funding opportunities like Intel, Apple and Google. But they still have the balls to show it on their website. Of course, they also display their list of successes which includes VeriSign, Veritas and PTC.

start.com

2005-07-22T02:12:00.000-07:00

Need a new feed aggregator? Need something better than Bloglines? Go to start.com. You will have to take some cheesy puzzle test or else you can directly go to their URL at: www.start.com/myw3b/

Its a new aggregator from MSN, and its awesome. Man has Microsoft learnt some serious UI lessons, after having been repeatedly kicked in the nuts by Google and Apple. This is a refreshing change from the usual stuffy and crappy MSN webpages they dish out. Also this is fast, and I mean Google fast. These guys have used client-side Java scripts to make this radically fast. I guess we will see some more stuff like this when Microsoft's AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) comes of age.

Here's a screenshot of their cool UI. Of these guys are just in Beta, and things will only improve.

Thank you Mr. Robert Scoble for this link (and a cool Channel 9 video). Now will you link me ;)

Why me?

2005-07-04T06:01:00.000-07:00

Begin rant:

How fucking hard is it to get a broadband internet connection at home? Especially if you live in a locality serviced by three different companies? It turns out that it is harder than making Pakistan give up claims on Kashmir or brokering peace between Arabs and Israelis. How the fuck can an ISP just say "Sorry sir, we can't give you a broadband connection", when it gives out a connection to people I know living about 500 meters away?

6 months ago I approached Iqara for a broadband connection. I paid them the initial charges and waited for 2 months for a connection which never came. I had to threaten legal action to get my money back from those bastards. Next I approached Sify. They are a reputed company and so I thought things would work out. They took money and even laid a cable upto my house. The cable stayed there hanging for a month or so, but no bits ever flowed out of it. And then one fine day they just took it away, handed me my money back saying they have some bandwidth problems. By now there was a third operator, the Government owned BSNL DataOne. There was no cabling involved since they are also my telephone service provider and they provide internet through ADSL and pretty impressive speeds. Hoping to be third time lucky, I signed up for them. By now, you know how the story goes. I am still stuck with a dialup connection at home.

This sucks. This so fucking sucks. Why can't I enjoy streaming high quality porn in the privacy of my room? Stupid service providers. Idiot bitch-fucking assholes. I hope something bad happens to their servers.

Will somebody please help me? Please give me a broadband connection at home!!

Blaargghh....

End Rant

No, I don't feel any better after this. And, I am sorry for the foul language. Can't help it though.

The MIT Weblog Survey

2005-07-02T04:04:00.000-07:00

The MIT Media Labs, weblogs survey. They want to understand how blogs have affected the way people communicate with each other. Pretty cool. Take it if you have the time (you need to have a blog for taking part in the survey).

A whole lot of machines

2005-06-27T04:34:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered how big websites, with high traffic loads are hosted? Wikipedia has a nice page about how they deploy their web servers. It's quite interesting to read that their squid web proxies have a 75% hit rate for cached pages, which means that they effectively have 4 times as many apache web servers. Pretty neat.

Check out their link at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers

Who reads my blog?

2005-06-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered who reads your blog? Well, I have been monitoring mine for a while now with a little help from my co-worker.

How is it done? Its just a small piece of java script that you have to add to your blog's HTML code and it keeps track of people visiting your blog. It caches information like which ISP they used, country, time etc. Its pretty cool. I found that someone from Slovakia read my blog. Its just one of those small things that continue to amaze me.

Click on the here to see the latest stats. Do you want to add something like this to your blog? Visit http://www.nedstatbasic.net/service/apply

CartoMania

2005-06-22T05:28:00.000-07:00

In response to Raymond Chen's post , here is my take on various map services available on the web. Of course these are my personal opinions and should not be taken too seriously.

Map services reviewed:
1. Map24 (http://www.us.map24.com)
2. Yahoo Maps (http://maps.yahoo.com)
3. MSN Maps (http://maps.msn.com)
4. MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com)
5. Google Maps (http://maps.google.com)

I used 3 addresses in USA (the places I have been, so makes it easy for me to judge) and 2 well known landmarks (Smithsonian Instution, Washington DC and Sears Towers, Chicago). I did not include driving directions at this point. Although these map services do have maps outside North America, I wanted to narrow my focus to USA only.

I judged the maps on the basis of followign criteria:

1. Usability
Google scores when it comes to usability. All other map sites require the user to add a complete street address, but Google map can search on any term and shows the search results as pins on a map of suitable scale. And I can search on any term. For example, I searched for Smithsonian Institute and I got 10 closest matching pins on the map. All other map sites lack this simplicity.

2. Look and Feel
By look and feel, I refer to the ease of use of the UI. MSN Maps, MapQuest and Yahoo maps have very crappy user interfaces. Yahoo is somewhat better than the other two with a nice clean interface but they lack many things like a real-time scrolling which Map24 and Google Maps have. I can just drag and scroll on the maps on these two, but only way to do it on the other three is by using buttons on the side of the map. Between Maps24 and Google, I would rate Map24 slightly higher. They have a nice way of displaying relevant information about the area under the mouse pointer. It tells me what type of street it is (local street, highway etc.) and also gives information about parks, public utilities, reservoirs etc. whenever I scroll the mouse over that.

3. Ability of show other relevant information
Yahoo Maps and MapQuest score very high here. They have links right next to the map pointing to business that might be relevant to me when I am looking at this area. Google Maps makes me go to the Local Page and lets me search, but this is of very less use if I am in some unknown area. But when I do search it neatly arranges the search results as pins (which on clicking expand into a box that gives me more information like address, phone and driving directions). Map24 shows sponsored business information on the map itself using symbols, which is kind of useful.

5. Links to the map
Only Google and Yahoo let me have a link to the map that I see on my browser window. MSN has a long article about how I can build a link, which is quite worthless for me. All I want is a nice link which I can copy paste in an email or IM conversation. I don't want to spend too much time in building a link.

My Verdict:
Here are my rankings of Map Services.
1. Google Maps: Awesome UI, very simple to use. Additionally it shows a satellite photo of the map at the same scale which is simply kickass. No one else has that functionality.
2. Map24: Very good UI and gives a lot of information. Additionally they have some great maps of Europe and UK (but I didn't judge maps on those criteria). Only serious competitor to Google.
3. Yahoo Maps: Decent UI and shows relevant links on the webpage. But UI lacks real time scrolling over the map.
4. MapQuest: Very bad UI. But it does show relevant links on the webpage.
5. MSN Maps: Sucks bigtime. Scored last in all my criteria. They have horrible UI and their functionality is also not so good.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

2005-06-21T07:07:00.000-07:00

Man, those Google guys are smart!! In response to my crappy, good for nothing previous post, they came out with the most fitting ad. Doh!

Blogger's Block

2005-06-21T06:17:00.000-07:00

Wondering why haven't I put up a new post in 2 weeks? Its because I have got a classic case of writer's block. I tried to put up posts thrice, but somehow it fizzled out and I ended up closing up the browser window. Plus not a lot of things happening in my life to blog about. Sure, my car got clipped by a bus and one night a pack of dogs decided to chase me and almost managed to knock me off my bike....but then again, it wasn't worth blogging about.

This post sucks. This has nothing of any value whatsoever. But I am going to put this up anyway, since this blog deserves to be fed. Also I need to feed the Google Ads that run on this blog (which help me collect money for donations).

Anyone who reads this has just wasted precious moments of their life. If I were you I would have done something better with my time rather than continuing to read this senseless drivel.

Gaaa!!!! I have nothing to write!! Its such an empty void. I need to write something meaningful. Stupid people, why are you still reading? How long does it take for you to realize that this post is pure crap and nothing good will ever come out of reading this, however hard you try.

This is probably the largest quantity of meaningless data I have unleashed on the Internet. Oh my god!! What have I done? I have unleashed a monster. So...this is how Frankenstein must have felt when he assembled his monster and powered it on. Of course that was a real monster but this is no less dangerous. Be warned people, this will seriously impact your ability to think rationally at least for a couple of minutes.

Ok now I am bored. Back to sitting in front of the PC and pretending to do some really important work. Ever realize how easy it is to con people?

Shaping Up

2005-06-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

Remember the gym that sucked me dry that I was talking about in my earlier post? Well they had me take a fitness test. Turns out I lost 1.2 kilos since I joined, reduced my body fat from 17.9% to 15.8%, dented my paunch by 5 cm. I can run 310 meters in 12 minutes more than I could when I joined the gym. I can do 10 more push ups, 5 more crunches, bench press 5 more kilos!! Phew!!

Finally, I see numbers that make me really happy!! Now for a new workout regimen. Lets see how that goes.

Best part about that test? The instructor told me my lower body strength has improved drastically. Now ladies, that's good news for you. Yipee!!

Self Gratification

2005-05-21T04:47:00.000-07:00

With work becoming a bit slowpaced and dull, I find myself in an unfamiliar situation. As far back in time as I can remember, I have rarely had time to indulge in things I have always wanted. Whenever I had the time, I didn't have any money to afford the things. Now suddenly I have time and a bit of money to splurge. So what have I been doing with all this free time and the money leftover from paying taxes?

I have joined a gym. Not just any gym but one that sucks me dry of a thousand rupees every month. Is it worth it? You bet. All those girls in tights all over the gym makes it every rupee worth. I have a new fascination for old english movies and the World War II. So every night I invariably watch some rented DVD or stay hooked to the History Channel. Or I just sit out in the balcony listening to music savouring my experiments with Irish Cream. Then I just go out for a long walk in the night and come back feeling all happy for no reason.

Is this some kind of a pre-midlife crisis or am I just having an affair with myself? Why am I so happy doing things alone? Have I accepted the fact that I am going to end up alone? I hope this is just a phase that will soon pass. Why am I thinking so much? I must find some work to keep me busy and occupied.

Store Wars

2005-05-21T04:12:00.000-07:00

While browsing the web yesterday for Star Wars (yes, I saw Episode III), I came across this. This is a pretty neat spoof on the Star Wars trilogy. Enjoy...

P.S. George Lucas, I am so dissapointed in you. I was expecting a bit more of Natalie Portman.

Irritants

2005-05-09T06:25:00.000-07:00

I am neither a control freak nor a linguist, but of late I really get irritated when I get emails or SMS with horrible grammar and spelling and idiotic abbreviations. And to make things worse, some of these are 'business' emails. And it is not just people for whom English isn't the first language. Are people getting lazier by the day? Or are we just becoming plain stupid? How hard is it to run a spellcheck?

Many of my friends who work as developers don't take this very seriously. I don't believe that such people can come up with code of the highest quality. After all, languages are fundamentally similar. How well you communicate in real life reflects a lot on your ability to express your thoughts to the machine. Maybe that is the reason why we see so many instances of slipshod and poorly built software.

Failing gracefully

2005-04-21T10:55:00.000-07:00

Its been almost an year since I have been associated with Software Quality Assurance team in my company. I have seen numerous test plans (and written a few myself) which try to test the behaviour of software under failure. The most important thing people test is 'failing gracefully'. I got an 'eye opener' (pun intended) to this term. Here is what happened:

I had set a wake-up alarm in my cellphone (Nokia 6100). Overnight the battery drained out since it was not charged for 3 days (clearly a failure condition). My cellphone is the only alarm clock I use, so if the alarm would not ring I would be screwed, since I had an early morning appointment. Some one who wrote the software for the cellphone was thoughtful enough to handle this contingency. So there was some battery reserved (I later found out that it is also used for making emergency calls). So my alarm rang at the expected hour and I did not have an excuse to miss the appointment. This is a classic example of how a software should fail gracefully.

HypnoBoob

2005-04-07T10:27:00.000-07:00

Just when you thought you had seen all the crap on the net, you stumble across this. If this actually works, I want to be that hypnotist. I can already think of a LOT of evil kinky stuff I can do with this kind of a power. Muahahahaha.

Smarty Pants

2005-04-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

Are people really smarter than animals? Sure, we can design and build complex (and mostly useless) things and send people into space and all that crap...but are we really smart? Some animals like parrots and dolphins have a vocabulary of about 50 English words (saw that on Discovery channel), but how many words do we know from dolphin language (yes they have a language, and scientists haven't yet figured it out)? Huh?

Money for nothing

2005-03-25T11:02:00.000-08:00

I just realized that the number of people who read my blog is now more than 10. I still can't believe I got 10 people to read the random crap that I dish out. I would like to use this occasion to make an announcement.

I have added 'Google AdSense' advertisements to my blogs. In case anyone has noticed, they have been there for more than a month now. Everytime anyone clicks on these ads, I get paid some amount of money by Google. I plan to collect US $100 (about 4500 Indian Rupees) using these advertisements by June. When I reach this mark, I will receive a cheque from Google (they send out cheques only when your collection crosses $100). I plan to add an equal amount from my own pocket and donate the resultant US $ 200 to Baba Amte's Anandvan care center for leprosy patients. This institution is located in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra state. You can help me in my cause by just clicking on the advertisement links shown below. As far as I know, these links are certified by Google and are not very likely to generate pop-ups and malware. I will display the collections at the end of each week on my blog. If you want to help me even more, you can add my Adsense code to your blog/webpage. This will show similar ads on your webpage and if anyone clicks on them, money will be credited in my Adsense account. It will just help me reach the $100 mark quicker. So...please support this cause. It doesn't cost you anything. Make some poor children with leprosy happy.

The Fine Print :
How do you know that I will actually donate money? You will just have to trust me on this one.

Save Toby. Please.

2005-03-25T04:37:00.000-08:00

I don't know whether this is true or just a new way of phishing, but this just sets a new benchmark for sick people on the internet. This is pure blackmail and is completely legal. Whoever came up with this is a genius. Go ahead...SaveToby

Photoblogging with Flickr

2005-03-24T10:43:00.000-08:00

Coming up soon...review of the Flickr photoblogging service. Till such time you can view my photoblog on Flickr.

Crying over spilt milk will make great minds stronger!!

2005-03-24T07:19:00.000-08:00

Now doesn't this just make you burst out laughing? And all of what he says is true!!

Earthquake?

2005-03-14T01:51:00.000-08:00

2 minutes ago...at 3:20 PM on Monday 14th March 2005, we felt the tremors. Everyone in the office is up surprised. Maybe there was a big quake somewhere nearby. People as far as Mumbai also felt the tremors. Watch out this space for more info....

Edited to add at 15:21 -

Date                Time  Description of Location  Magnitude Depth Quality

14th March 2005     05:11 MID-INDIAN RIDGE          5.8     10.0   Good

This is the data available from the Global Earthquake report.
The epicenter according to them was in the Indian Ocean quite
far from India. 
Visit Global Earthquake Report for more details.

16:00 hrs - Rediff.com says that the quake was centered
around Koyna in Maharashtra, India.

wtf?

2005-03-04T10:20:00.000-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck. So fucking extensive!!

The Ides of March: 'Tis THAT time of the year again

2005-03-03T13:28:00.000-08:00

It is that time of the year when you suddenly wake up and smell the reality. It is that time of the year you introduce a phase shift in the way you think. It is that time when you desparately wish you had a backup plan. You curse yourself for buying too much into something rather hastily without being sceptical about it the way you usually are about anything that seems appealing at first sight.

It has happened to me two years in a row around this very time of the year and now I am third time lucky. By chance you stumble across something you were not exactly supposed to. That tiny little piece of seemingly unconnected information, unknowingly given away by some idiot who isn't clearly aware of the grand scheme of things, is like an end of a thread sticking out of a big entangled mass. You innocently pull on that thread and suddenly the mass becomes disentangled and you are left staring at the reality. You know that 'tis about time shit will be dumped on you. You laugh to yourself about the irony of the situation. You know that like the two previous years you are again going to climb up on the terrace, with your trusty 'thinking aids', the cup of green tea and your music. You are going sit there till wee hours of this balmy March night trying to over analyze the situation. And then it strikes you.....

SHIT HAPPENS. But you wipe your arse and move on....

Today's Random Sentence

2005-02-28T02:49:00.000-08:00

Now and then, an impromptu defendant recognizes the industrial complex beyond the steam engine.

Life

2005-02-19T09:31:00.000-08:00

LIFE....is a four letter word.
LIFE....is a sexually transmitted disease.

Book Review: A Brief History of the Future - Origins of the Internet (John Naughton)

2005-02-14T04:24:00.000-08:00

Although this book is a bit old now (published in 2000), it nonetheless gives as an excellent account of how the Internet came into existance. It gives extensive background on how the whole idea of packet switched TCP/IP networks came about and the fierce oppositions it faced from the telecom companies. The author goes as far back as early twentieth century to trace the developements. He also goes to pains to explain simple concepts of information theory and computing which we take for granted, but are still greek to the lay reader. The book starts with John's facination with radios and his 'need' to communicate and then traces the origins of computer science to give a good platform for further chapters.

The author has made a good attempt to tell the stories about some of the things which we now take for granted. Things like the WorldWideWeb project by Tim Berners-Lee, everyday use programs like 'ftp' and 'telnet', the evolution of more sophisticated and user friendly Operating Systems, the origins of the Free Software Foundation and Linux and many more. It also visits the bitter battles in the industry, like those between Microsoft and Apple or Micrsoft and Netscape.

This is quite a nice book to read, for those curious about the evolution of computers and internet. You don't have to be from a CS background to understand the book, it is very explanatory.

My personal favourite is the part where Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) exploded to his engineering team
"I don't know what TCP/IP is...and I don't care about it...but all my customers seem to want it and are giving me a hard time....please make the pain go away!!"

Days of glory!!

2005-02-14T03:47:00.000-08:00

My beard in full flow!!!

Catharsis - Part One

2005-02-05T10:17:00.000-08:00

Isn't it ironic that it doesn't take much to get yourself to loathe the very thing which you once really cared about. I am just so fucking tired of putting up an act and been taken for granted. I am so close to the point of no return. But then again.....SHIT HAPPENS.

Paradise Lost

2005-02-04T02:41:00.000-08:00

This post comes about 5 days late. I tried hard not to let it out, but couldn't really control myself. I have commited something horrible and this is my penance.

On Sunday, 30th January 2005 I shaved off my beard. All the hard work of two and a half months was gone with a few strokes of the clipper. My face feels so naked now. And to add insult to injury, people actually think I have started looking 'decent'. But it was great while it lasted.

People around me always hated it. I was 'Osama', 'Mullah' according to my family. My friends called me 'Devdas' or 'Gabbar' or if I wore a woolen cap they called me a 'peddler'. My colleagues called me 'sadhubaba'. People said I looked like 'something the cat dragged in'. Someone also called me 'Maurice Gibb'. People thought I was my younger sister's uncle. Little kids used to run away from me. And I loved all of it!! I was finally close to acheiving my goal of becoming a hermit. I didn't care if food got stuck in it or if there was an entire ecosystem living in there. I didn't really mind people's comments because I knew that deep down all of them (males only) were jealous because they couldn't grow this themselves. And with my longish hair I looked like a part time hippie and was proud of it.

And then one day it turned on me. It started itching. And I had to shave it off to prevent a biohazard. And now I am just another brick in this goddamned wall....

12 minutes short

2005-01-31T04:23:00.000-08:00

So true. So very fucking true. Nothing personal against anyone....just that somedays HR policies and bureaucracy gets on my nerves.

Google It !!!

2005-01-28T04:57:00.000-08:00

Having some time to kill, I decided to 'research' search engines. Here are my 'rankings' -

'Hit Rate' -
1. Google
2. Yahoo
3. Altavista
4. MSN Search (beta)

Relevance (How useful are the search results spitted out) -
1. Google
2. Yahoo
3. Altavista
4. MSN Search (beta)

Average time taken for a successful search -
1. Yahoo
2. Google
3. Altavista
4. MSN Search (beta)

"Usability" -
1. Google (It has a 'clean' appearance, does not bombard me with unnecessary information on the main web page).
2. MSN Search (beta - also has a nice, clean appearance, but lacks the extensibility and features of Google)
3. Yahoo (Can match Google feature by feature, but webpage too cluttered with news and other links)
4. Altavista (Somehow the appearance didn't feel appealing. Feature set is slightly less than other three)

And the verdict is?
Google still rules as far as searching for stuff goes. I can't imagine myself pulling up a browser and typing www.yahoo.com or www.altavista.com to search some stuff. Although they have good features now, I doubt if they can keep up with Google's pace. Only serious competition could be MSN Search. It is pretty lame right now, but you have to consider the fact that it is still in the beta phase. And from what I have seen/read from MSDN weblogs, its going give Google a hard time. But right now, Google is king of the search hill.

Disclaimer: This is just an impromptu search based on my own opinions/methodoligies. I have derived this using a sample set of 20 random searches including my name (which threw up some interesting results - especially about my stupid postings on USENET). Please don't take it too seriously!! In case you want my result set, send me an email.

If necessity is the mother of invention...laziness is the illegitimate father

2005-01-22T09:48:00.000-08:00

If necessity is the mother of invention...laziness is the illegitimate father. Believe me...its true. All modern inventions are in varying degrees attributed to human laziness. Washing machines, dishwashers, electric shavers, cordless phones, remote controls for everything, home delivery, push-button start bikes....its all around us.

Half of the people reading this might be using some kind of crawler to collect their RSS feeds. Another example of laziness driving the technological breakthrough. Too lazy to visit all the news, forums, blogs and other junk? We (less lazy brethern amongst us) invent the crawlers that 'feed' information. Whoever preaches that 'sloth' is one of the seven deadly sins, has probably never discovered true virtues of laziness.

Whats my point? I am one of the laziest people in the world. So I think I am due for an invention of some kind. Look out world....here I come now (or maybe after I rest for a while...I am all stressed out after typing this shit...I would have used a speech-to-text software, but I am too lazy find and install one)

Shiva Power

2005-01-02T06:11:00.000-08:00

Goa Rocks!! It just bloody friggin rocks!!
I finally ended this year the way I wanted to. Managed to reach Vagator beach just in time for the all night party. 9 hours of almost non-stop driving, a full tank of fuel, no cash, a broken exhaust pipe ushered us into 2k5. The psytrance music, the wierd fluorescent colours, the UV lamps the whacked out scene all around was worth all the trouble driving there and then coming back home and facing flak. I am just too happy!!

In case anyone is wondering, "Shiva Power" was what I saw stamped on my hand when I woke up in the morning at the party.

Damn you Scott Adams

2004-12-28T23:50:00.000-08:00

Scott Adams must have some kind of psychic powers. This is what I am...NOW. In a month's time my beard will have grown as much!!

And this one...

And this one too!!!

lazyboy

2004-12-27T23:42:00.000-08:00

Thats me. Few years from now.

Epic?

2004-12-25T02:11:00.000-08:00

Is this the future of information and media? Where are we headed? I believe everyone must see this video. Especially people who blog frequently and are fascinated by the power of RSS feeds.

http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/

On one hand this is scary. It is scary because my news is now being compiled by machines. What I would like to read, hear and see is now determined by my demographics, who my friends are and what they read or like or subscribe to and even by what my tastes in shopping are. It is scary because I have for all practical purposes lost my privacy. Even though this information might be secure and not centralized, I am scared that there exists an algorithm that can gather, corelate and make sense of bits and peices about me that float around. I am scared because the same algorithm that can 'suggest' me news, can also very easily used to determine my strengths and weaknesses. It also so very easy for someone with access to this knowledge to 'adjust' the weights in the system and 'suggest' me things. It is a subtle yet effective way of excercising control over the populace. The people who control the system, would now hold the keys to absolute power.

On the other hand, it is also wonderful. We now have access to content that we chose and we are no longer shackled by the bias of one editor. We control everything. The news that comes to us reflects who we are and who our friends are. This will certainly help in weeding out unnecessary news that is delivered to us. This is a big leap towards freedom. Freedom to chose what we want to hear and see. Freedom from others' points of view being imposed on us. Freedom to contribute news and content. Since the news and content is delivered to us over the internet, there are lesser chances of Government controls. The tremendous amount of effort in terms of manpower and money required by the Governments to track and control content that continuously being put up by people, would weigh down any decision to do so.

If the corporations just make this technology Open Source, it would lend more credibility to it, make it more transparent and act as a check and balance.

v2.0: With Haloscan support

2004-12-22T05:10:00.000-08:00

For all those who do not have a blogger account, we are proud to announce support for Haloscan commenting. Now commenting is made easier. To ensure backward compatibility and to cater to acquired tastes, we also have Blogger commenting. Hopefully this change will be well appreciated by the subscribers.

Let your creative juices flow!!