a primate on a blue planet

2009-08-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

Enjoyed MIT 8.02 Lecture 1. I wonder why electron and proton have the exact same charge. Of course, "fundamental charge" and what not, but that "explanation" doesn't explain anything. Also, what happens when an electron collides with a proton? I guess all the answers are on the internet and I just need to search around. Also I read that neutron decays into proton, electron and neutrino. I am now going to have lunch at Gainsbourg restaurant which is near my apartment, since UrbanSpoon rates it very high. [Update : I liked the food. I liked the place even more.]

Art Supplies

2009-08-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

I went to a traditional art store today. We used to buy from that place when my sister and I took drawing lessons long ago. We bought supplies there out of last minute necessity and we didn't buy much anyway. I wanted to buy some water colors to try. Yowww isn't that place a rip off! Sure it is awesome to look around and everything but the prices are crazy to me. Definitely not affordable to the stereotypical 'starving artist'. I bought just a small drawing set which had sketching supplies (graphite, charcoal, sanguine etc). Amazon seems to be a far cheaper place for water colors. I'll be buying from them. I wonder where real artists buy their supplies.

Puppies

2009-08-08T22:25:00.000-07:00

I am learning. I drew it seeing the pic. Settled down at about 9:15 and drew for an hour. Next time, something less negative-spacey.

credit

Ferry Ride to Bremerton

2009-07-22T20:59:00.000-07:00

Weather has been amazing. I was going home from work yesterday evening and I didn't have the heart to just head home and waste the warm evening. So I took the Seattle Downtown to Bremerton ferry and came back in the same boat. It was a two hour ride and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It was fun to focus on little details like the pattern of wavelets on the water. There were many layers of them and varying levels of intensity and size. Observing things like that for more than a few minutes at a time gives a thrill as mind is relieved from drifting to current issues and running thoughts about them in an infinite loop.

Since it is a commuter ferry, it is really inexpensive. It cost me just $6.75 for west-bound travel and all east bound travels are free.

I went to Bainbridge Island couple of weeks ago like that and walked around in the island for an hour. Bremerton route was more fun.

2009-06-30T20:46:00.000-07:00

Sad about MJ's :-(

My favorites of his are:

Billie Jean
Smooth Criminal
Bad
Beat It
They Don't Care About Us
Black or White

(pretty much in that order)

Though 'Billie Jean' is my most favorite, it makes me sad when I listen to it too many times... all the crazies he had to deal with even back then.

=====

Recently watched movies: (in the past few months, most recent first)

Up (awesome)
Hancock (piece of shit)
The Hudsucker Proxy (enjoyed)
3:10 to Yuma (enjoyed)
Vitus (i loved it. awesome.)
Primer (wow + whoa)
Rat Race (very few funny bits)
The Truman Show (yup, watched it so late. enjoyed.)
The Darjeeling Limited (enjoyed it)
Dogma (seeing it again. of course i liked it)
Tropic Thunder (enjoyed it)

=====

I bought a Kindle DX. I love it. It is amazing.

=====

Currently Reading:

The Annotated Turning
GEB
ANSI Common Lisp [pg]

=====

I am now doing an "hour of learning" every day, where I spend 15 minutes each on 4 different subjects. This reduces my senseless browsing around that leaves me fatigued. I am finding that I am spending more than the 15 minutes and in more than 4 different subjects, as I am getting too engrossed. This activity feels awesome. I am keeping detailed log but I don't plan to publish them for privacy reasons. The subjects I touched in my today's session were : lighttpd, boto.py, pg' ansi cl, emacs, linux, python, analysis of genes and genomes. I ended up spending way more than an hour ;)

2009-05-13T16:15:00.000-07:00

Changed the title to something more appropriate.

It used to be "Just Curious..." which was kinda huh?, kinda blah, kinda meh and kinda blah again. "a primate on a blue planet" is more in line with my current perspective, which no doubt will soon change.

This is not to be particularly taken as an attempt to brag about my opposable thumbs. I just use them to hit the space bar.

2009-05-12T23:40:00.000-07:00

I cleared more than half of the storage space that I am renting. It was quite a workout, hauling stuff, sorting them and donating as much as possible. Then, after picking up pizza and some immediately needed groceries, I stopped by my friend Prakash's house to pick up something. It was quite late. Still he force fed me. He had his mom and wife on his team. I was out numbered. I am sure I could have convinced the baby to be on my side but he was fast asleep, not caring about the noise of our lousy jokes and unmusical laughter. Chapati + garbanzo beans curry combination was delicious, but it didn't take long for my eyes to start rolling into their sockets on being over stuffed. That was taken as a cue to serve more. I am a fat penguin today.

There is something about showing love through food. It works.

I slowly hobbled back to my car more than an hour later. Only then did I remember that I had parked on the fire lane, with blinkers on, as I expected to be back well within three minutes.

org-mode marathon

2009-05-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

Few days ago, I learned emacs org-mode for almost 10 hours straight. It was FUN. It felt like org-mode was loaded into my brain Matrix-style. I saw couple of videos, read through the manual and tried out my made-up examples. I read the manual cover-to-cover, metaphorically of course. If you are a more of a literal kind of person, I mean that I read the manual first-link to last-link. I skipped only the sections that described features that I thought I'll never use.

org-mode is beautiful. I had a lot of omfg moments. I believe it is going to have a significant positive impact on how I get and keep my ducks in a row. I won't go into the details here, but I'll just say why org-mode is better than all the other organize-your-stuff / project planning softwares out there: It is notes-centric rather than task-centric. Learn more if that makes you curious. Some people have learned Emacs just to be able to use org-mode, I hear!

I've become a fan of marathon learning sessions. There was a time when I prided my multi-tasking skills. I was just fooling myself. Interrupted time makes for pretty low quality time. I'd like to try this Quality Recluse Time type of effort on few other things I want to grok. 'Lisp Macros' is what comes to mind first. I've put off learning Lisp Macros for long enough, I suppose. I kind of know it but I want to learn it well. I mean, *really* learn it well. Ironically, that is how I've put it off for this long - I should just start.

Notes : Technology & Courage

2009-05-07T18:45:00.000-07:00

I reread 'Technology and Courage' [pdf] last Thursday, making effective use of the time waiting to go to my weekly motorcycle meet. I took notes this time. By the way, I had an awesome time at the meet, at Pike Place Brewery. The Kilt Lifters did live up to their name.

These notes were a result of liberal paraphrasing... So read the original for accuracy.

It is all about courage. We almost never look at it like that.
Do warm up projects. IMPORTANT
Identify your failures of courage. This is difficult as it comes well disguised.

"I am too busy with a more important task"
"No one will be interested in my work"
"Can't show. It is not quite done yet"
"I have to analyze this further"
"Let us be just reasonable here"

Long vacation / Sabbatical is great for good work because:
- Change of location
- Rest
- Lack of distractions
Harness pride.
Anglo-Saxon names for things stick, more than Roman names <==
If you use parenthesis in writing, either you are too lazy or your thoughts are still muddled.
Blogging is good. Ivan called it "display file". It gives you an informal start, which is important.
Have courage to abandon unsuccessful projects.
We have a finite reserve of courage. Use it well.
He has more tricks to bolster courage.Device some of your own.

2009-05-05T18:24:00.000-07:00

"If god is for us, who can be against us?"

Answer : You

This is what I came up with, when I once again heard the often quoted verse. Religion turns people into sheep, if they aren't one to begin with.

--------

I liked this comment that someone made about Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indians, an uncontacted tribe in South America:

I wonder if they sit out there all alone without the necessary technology to move beyond their little village, and they all believe that they must be the only tribe in the Universe, because if they weren't, then surely someone would have contacted them by now.

They've been listening for jungle drums for decades without hearing anything, and sending out smoke signals that can be seen from miles away. If there was anyone else out there they would have seen them, and what reasons could they possibly have for not initiating contact?

Sometimes one of them happens to spot an airplane passing by, but he is instantly considered a nutjob, and the event is explained by claiming it must have been a big bird, or Venus.

Neatly explains Fermi paradox, I suppose :-)

--------

I learned today that if you are a citizen of India, you don't need to get a visa to visit these 31 countries:

Andorra, Bermuda, Comoros, Cook Islands, Cuba, Ecuador, Fiji, Galapagos Islands, Guam, Haiti, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Kiribati, Leichtenstein, Macau, Maldives, Mauritius, Micronesia, Nauru, Nepal, Palau, Palestine, Pitcairn Island, Saint Helena, Saint Kitts Nevis, Saint Vincent Grenadines, Srilanka, Samoa, Seychelles, Tuvalu, Vanuatu

[Source : VisaHQ]

If you are a citizen of a first world country, many more countries will let you in without a visa. It would be ideal to be a Canadian - as people will be friendlier to you than, say, if you are an American.

My .emacs File

2008-12-10T19:43:00.000-08:00

Here is my .emacs file, ready for public consumption. I've cleaned it up.

http://github.com/ki/my-dot-emacs/tree/master/dot-emacs.txt

http://github.com/ki is where I plan to host my public code.

OLPC As eBook Reader

2008-10-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

OLPC was choking up on large pdf files. I installed xpdf and it is working perfectly now.

yum install gv
yum install xpdf

I like xpdf a lot now... It is so minimal and blazing fast! I installed it on my dev laptop too.

Also, I installed emacs on my OLPC.

[credit]

emacs and stuff

2008-10-09T21:16:00.000-07:00

I am sick with cold. It is probably flu, as the whole body hurts. I am in bed and don't feel like doing anything else. So I thought I'll type up a blog post.

I will try to keep this post to be about what I did and what I am doing, while avoiding what I plan to do. By now most of you are pissed about my grandiose plans that I blog about and don't follow up on.

One on the most productive things that I did was to learn the text-editor-slash-operating-system emacs. I was using vim to edit files in my remote webserver instances. I promise you that emacs kicks ass. Seriously. It is a joy to use it. I has so much fun tinkering with my .emacs file. Of course I've barely scratched the surface but it gives my such a happy feeling when I get a boring task done in a blink with keyboard macros.

For example, I am on-call this week at my day job. I got called in the middle of the night to rerun a set of programs. I had to write dumb code like this:

For list of jobs:
somepgm25
somepgm33
somepgm04
somepgm11

Create:
JOB SOMEPGM25
RUN OCT 9 2008
ENDJOB

JOB SOMEPGM33
RUN OCT 9 2008
AFTER somepgm25
ENDJOB

JOB SOMEPGM04
RUN OCT 9 2008
AFTER somepgm33
ENDJOB

JOB SOMEPGM11
RUN OCT 9 2008
AFTER somepgm04
ENDJOB

But I had to do this crap work more than 30 programs.

Here is the macro that I recorded:

M-d ;; kill-word
JOB ;; self-insert-command * 3
SPC ;; self-insert-command
S-C-y
M-B
M-U
RET ;; newline
2*SPC ;; self-insert-command
RUN ;; self-insert-command * 3
SPC ;; self-insert-command
OCT ;; self-insert-command * 3
SPC ;; self-insert-command
9 ;; self-insert-command
SPC ;; self-insert-command
2008 ;; self-insert-command * 4
RET ;; newline
TAB ;; indent-for-tab-command
AFE ;; self-insert-command * 3
DEL ;; delete-backward-char
TER ;; self-insert-command * 3
SPC ;; self-insert-command
S-C-y
M-Y
RET ;; newline
ENDJOB ;; self-insert-command * 6
RET ;; newline

It probably looks complex if you have never used emacs, but it is ridiculously simple. It is just a matter of starting the recording process and doing what you would do anyway.

So, my point is: though it is in no way earth shattering, it came in handy in the middle of the night and it made a guy smile who would have been cursing otherwise.

My thought is that you can make most of the dull tasks interesting. I am specifically saying "most" for a reason. You are out of luck if you have a micromanaging mofo for a manager.

I am typing this post in emacs of course! What did you think?

Not only this, I love how I can ssh to my instance on AWS and run emacs there. Coding is fun again. Especially because I am discovering emacs tricks everyday. I feel like how I felt when I discovered MSExcel macros when I first started working.

I was going to write about how I -- climbed the Seattle Columbia tower, ran a half-marathon across the 520 floating bridge, flew in a hot air balloon, flew a glider myself, revamped IWS with what I am learning from "Don't Make Me Think", enjoyed reading 'The Day Of The Jackal' etc but I'll blog about them later. I've rambled too much today. Also I'll blog about how Stevey is awesome.

The Amusement Ride Ahead

2008-06-15T13:46:00.000-07:00

I love to build things. But I hate certain annoying characteristics of the real world. If I were to sculpt a cool looking statue of Venus, a one second lapse in concentration can end up ruining days of work. Attempts at correcting lopsided breasts of Venus result in smaller ones on each iteration.

It is sad that most of the programming methods used in corporations are as inflexible as sculpting.

I am lucky in my current job that I am a team-of-one for the tools I have to code. I interact with many but code in isolation. Freedom to do your work your way is the best perk, I suppose. For instance, no one forces me to code in Java.

Corporate inflexibility is brought in using seemingly benevolent requirements such as "coding standards", "detailed design documents" and "best practices".

Apart from such procedural inflexibilities, there are, of course, other issues. People.

"Happy Coding" can scale to bigger programming teams too. But it requires the absence of control freaks, credit leeches, fragile egos, passive aggressive types and various other corporate scum. Obviously, bigger the coding team, more likely is the presence of these well-poisoners.

I perhaps used up all my luck. My co-workers are all great... even the "worst" ones are harmless. However, losing my current job is now imminent. I've defied fate in the past. I came here for a three month consulting gig and have lasted five years - still as a consultant! Pretty much unheard of, everyone says. Powers-that-be liked my work and kept me. But the mega-corp itself was recently sold for half a dozen billions to another mega-corp. A firm tug on the carpet is expected at any moment now.

What are the odds of landing another job with ideal working conditions and relaxed co-workers? Yes, you guessed it right in one try!

Financial independence is the best way to insulate yourself from having to deal with douche bags. With this in mind, I've saved up rather aggressively and haven't signed up for the modern day indentured servitude called the 30 year mortgage. But the real 'fuck you' money would be from success of the startup.

I don't want to work with teams sculpting programs. I don't want to work with teams doing high school reenactments. So I have to make my startup succeed. I am working on it.

[Credit : Title from 'Just For Fun']

2008-03-15T12:16:00.000-07:00

First off, I'll give you a bunch of twittery updates, so that I can resume regular blogging after that. This is kind of like what you do on the first day in gym after a month long break... you just try to wake up all different muscles.

I read "Ender's Game" and I would recommend it to everyone. I'll be reading the sequel after a break. I am now reading:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - page 146
Gödel, Escher & Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - started
The Little Schemer - page 80

I went snow-boarding just once. I hope to go few more times before they close down.

I am doing the big climb tomorrow. I'll be climbing the 69 floors in the Columbia tower. I am excited about it.

I've learned ping-pong. I don't suck as much at it any more. I play twice or thrice almost everyday at work. Thom, my colleague, coached me by kicking my ass several times a day, handing me really humbling defeats. I kept at it and now I make him sweat - although he still wins. I do those crazy slams now, to the audience's cheers and my opponent's dismay.

Living room has been reconfigured now. It is a lot more comfortable. We have a new black leather couch. I set up my old laptop to serve as media center for the home and hooked up the audio system, TV, iPod etc. I'll be hooking up a monster hard disk to it too. Now we watch even the Netflix online streaming movies using TV. I use RealVNC to remotely control the media center laptop from the laptop on my lap :-) RealVNC is awesome by the way.

I am doing exploratory programming regarding startups... nothing concrete yet.

My sis got a Macbook and my friend got an iPod Touch. I am waiting for OLPC to arrive. They said it should be here in a week or so.

I plan to learn these now:

Berkeley DB - I've read about it. I'll be playing with it now
Advanced Pylons - I need to learn this asap so that I won't be reinventing

Oh I almost forgot! I had about 1300 unread emails in my Gmail inbox. I cleaned them all up. I cleaned up my work inbox too. I am cleaning up all my pesky little tasks - you know, in line with Getting Things Done. I need to solve the clutter+procrastination related stress once and for all. I've also adopted a more minimalistic lifestyle - but that is worth a whole big blog post by itself.

Reading...

2008-02-29T22:16:00.000-08:00

... "Ender's Game". Very interesting.

nearing the end....

Inequality Of Time

2008-01-08T16:33:00.000-08:00

Bad News: Higher Income = Less Leisure Time? The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss:

... a certain class of pundits and politicians are quick to see any increase in income inequality as a problem that needs fixing—usually through some form of redistributive taxation. Applying the same philosophy to leisure, you could conclude that something must be done to reverse the trends of the past 40 years—say, by rounding up all those folks with extra time on their hands and putting them to (unpaid) work in the kitchens of their “less fortunate” neighbors. If you think it’s OK to redistribute income but repellent to redistribute leisure, you might want to ask yourself what—if anything—is the fundamental difference.

From economist Steven Landsburg

Hmmm... Thought provoking...

2008-01-03T21:54:00.000-08:00

Done

Read 'Worse Is Better'
Fixed Annoyance: Google Toolbar Bookmark In Ubuntu Gutsy
Read Beginning Python [APress]

Closures
Collecting Parameters
Unpacking Arguments

Read few pages of 'The Little Schemer'

New Year Gift From Our Rich Uncle Mike

2008-01-03T21:36:00.000-08:00

We went to the Space Needle to watch the new year fireworks. There were some hiccups. They had to ditch the computer and do it manually. Can you guess which operating system that computer was running?

It was priceless to watch. One lady standing near me yelled "Come on Seattle! We are on national television!!" I hope 2009 fireworks will be triggered using a Linux machine (preferably Debian-Stable)

New Year Gift From Me: 'Seasons of Love' from the movie Rent

Introspection

2007-12-31T21:43:00.000-08:00

23andMe is my favorite startup of 2007.

From: Kirubakaran
Sent: December 27, 2007
To: 23andMe Help
Subject: RE: Can you...?

Thanks. It will be really cool to look at my raw machine code and write my own code to parse it :-) If you can let me know when you offer that, I'd buy immediately.

Thanks,
Kirubakaran.

-----Original Message-----
From: 23andMe Help
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2007
To: Kirubakaran
Subject: RE: Can you...?

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in 23andMe. Our service characterizes your genome at more than 580,000 points, known as SNPs, where people tend to differ from one another. Ongoing scientific research is determining how these SNPs, or Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, affect an individual's chances of having particular traits or developing certain medical
conditions.

23andMe's web-based service offers an assortment of tools that let you view your data with regard to certain genetic associations, and also in the context of ancestry, the global gene pool and, family relationships. Our tool set also includes Genome Explorer, which allows you to browse all 580,000 points of your raw genetic data by SNP, gene or chromosomal location. At this time 23andMe does not have a way to give customers their genetic data on a CD, flash drive or other downloadable or stored format. But we are working to make that possible, and hope to be able to distribute raw data to our customers in the near future.

Regards,
The 23andMe Team

--------------- Original Message ------------------

From: Kirubakaran
To: help@23andme.com
Date: 12/26/2007
Subject: Can you...?

Hi,

I am planning to order your product in www.23andme.com
I have question though: Will you allow me to download my genome?

I understand it takes around 3GB to fit this information. Can you ship it to me in a DVD?

Thanks,
Kirubakaran.

2008!

2007-12-31T20:07:00.000-08:00

Plan for 2008 : Be More Audacious

I have some serious goals for 2008. My entire focus is on creating a successful startup.

I do get "free" time besides my focussed effort. This is where I plan to fit in all the other stuff. It is pretty much a given that the main startup that I will be working on will not succeed and a derivate of it will be The One. It is due to the simple fact that you cannot predict something that doesn't exist yet. However, the startup that I work on with full effort will be the battering ram with which the doors of opportunities can be opened. I've seen this happen again and again in my work. I will be working on something very seriously and will get inspiration to do something else. This fact doesn't diminish the importance of the primary task. Without such focussed effort, the derivative inspiration wouldn't come in the first place.

I can give numerous examples from my experience but each of them are worth a separate post. One quick example I can give is: I was working hard for a programming competition in school. My friend Pradeep was also working on his project. He wanted to construct some line drawings for that and asked me to help - as it was taking a long time to get it right. I wrote a quick tool to interactively draw shapes and then have the program spit out the code that will create the shapes. Then I got interested in that tool, abandoned my original project which now looked lame compared to this tool, and rewrote it into something presentable to an audience. That was the first public programming contest that I won.

Besides kicking some serious ass regarding startups, I plan to learn lots of new things in subjects I am totally unaware of. Math and computer science are already in the radar. I will grok some Genomics. I think this is where the puck is going to be. Looking forward to an exciting projectile vomit filled 2008.

Bye Bye 2007

2007-12-31T17:04:00.000-08:00

There is nothing as great as good old fashioned last-minute-rush to get something done. I promised my friend that the number of my blog posts this year would be a perfect square. It happened to be perfect squares in the past - although I didn't try to make it that way. [144,100,__ - I am trying to fill in the blanks with 49].

Could I have done more in 2007? Regrets are for losers and ONWARD we march :-)

Here are few notable things I did:

YC Winter Founder Program
I applied for WFP Y Combinator funding, for my startup AdheSieve. It was not selected. The process of submitting the application itself was a new experience. One big positive outcome was that I talked to my current manager at my day job about my startup plans. I didn't want to do anything behind his back as he has done a lot for me - and also because doing something behind someone's back is just plain creepy. He was extremely supportive and encouraged me to make it big. I am continuing my efforts - moonlighting basically. I pretty much threw out the AdheSieve idea though.

Web Apps
I know much more about web applications than I ever did. I have internalized various things, which mean I can roll out a webapp in hours when I think of something. I'll be putting my webapp muscles to work in near future ;-) Expect some serious kick ass apps. If you want to invest in my company, do so soon. You don't want to miss the next Google.

Linux, Exclusively
Ever since I first started using Linux, I've been a loud mouthed advocate. My friend TVK and I won Rs.100 in a college debate (Windows vs Linux). :-D But all my computers so far had been dual-boots. Although I rarely booted into Windows, I had it there. When I bought my new Thinkpad T61 few months ago, I made it an exclusively Linux machine. Finally! I intend to get the Vista tax back by going to small claims court. I've made videos of not accepting the Vista EULA . I have not filed the claim yet. At the very least, it will make a funny YouTube video.

Patent Pending, Almost
My friend Mark and I came really close to getting a patent. I bought three books on the subject and started reading earnestly. Really interesting books. You should read them even if you are not thinking of getting patents: (like digging a well before you are thirsty)

Patent Pending In 24 Hours
Patent It Yourself
How To Make Patent Drawings

It turns out that prior art for our invention exists. Hmmm. Anyway, the whole activity of excited discussions over lunch every day and sharing dreams of what we were going to do after we cash out has got me all psyched up. It will be really cool to invent something! Now, THAT would be achieving my childhood dream.

Drawing Lessons
My sister and I took one full quarter of drawing lessons. I can say that I see things a bit differently now. I feel that my patience has improved too. I don't remember doing anything else ever for three hours straight. That is good. I sometimes have a sneaky suspicion that I have ADD or ADHD or whatever. It may be that I am just being childish. If I can draw a still-life of eggs on a white paper plate for three hours, I guess I can safely assume that I am okay.

Skills
Learned snow-boarding and inline skating, early this year. I found out that I enjoy snow boarding much more than skiing. It is a LOT more fun. I learned several new tricks in playing Racquetball.

Instant Word Search

2007-12-31T16:30:00.000-08:00

Instant Word Search was one of the best things I did in 2007. It is a toy application and anyone can write it in a day or less. I know. But I learned a lot in the process of creating it. I will try to explain.

I was working on my startup - which was trying to empower small business with easy client management tools. I was getting nowhere. I wanted to play with Javascript and Python frameworks. I wanted a simple but interesting application. So I wrote a small application over the afternoon and called it "Instant Word Search".

Writing it was fun. I did some nifty things to make it fast. It was hosted as a CGI application. So the fastest it could get was not fast enough. 'Mechanical Turks' gave me feedback that was very eye opening. I used this need for speed situation to learn all about Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and moved the application there. There I played with lighttpd. I did lot of UI improvements based on what the real users were saying.

In the mean time, I showed the app to my friend Manikantan. I was (am) shy about showing it to anyone, as it was a very trivial app. I was really ashamed. Mani submitted it to StumbleUpon. I was shocked to get 20k visitors per day. They kept coming back too! The reviews of StumbleUpon users were heart-warming for me. These were people who I had never heard of - and they were treating IWS as best thing since diced tomatoes! The feeling cannot be expressed in words, I guess :-)

My sister and Ruchi loved the app from the beginning. But the praise of strangers gives a weird satisfaction. My sister sent the link to her friends. Ruchi found out that the site showed up in Alexa. The app got written about in an online magazine called "Web English Teacher" that goes out to teachers. Ruchi acted as my PR person.

I found out that we tend to grade our work in terms of the effort we put it, while the users tend to grade it based on how useful it is for them. Duh!

Great thing about StumbleUpon is that the recommendation is very targeted. Mani submitted it under 'linguistics', 'search', 'words'. That just worked perfect in getting really interested users. Submitting it to Reddit was an embarrassment.

I saved the best for the end: I got a B-I-G fan mail from Gail. This app happened to be something she wanted for years. She even used it at her work to show her co-workers that teaching certain prefixes to students was a waste of time. Reading her email was so much fun and satisfying. You just can't put a price tag on that. We are friends now and she has volunteered to test drive every app I write!

May be next time I'll try to be less shy about the silly things I create :-)

My Startup

2007-12-31T16:00:00.000-08:00

Here is my very own spartan startup. I have everything I need right here. The dead tree books are there mostly just for old time's sake. I like to view the results in my Nokia 770 (near coffee cup) - which usually shows me the novel ways in which I screwed up. Dell machine has Windows XP that it came with - I use this for testing in IE... *sigh*. My new Thinkpad T61 is all pure Linux. Moleskine notebooks are awesome and I swear by using index cards for brainstorming.

At present, my startup uses: Python (+Pylons), Javascript (+jQuery), Linux, ligHTTPd, git, Amazon EC2 etc.

That orange thing is my startup pillow.

Quest To Become A Better Programmer

2007-12-31T06:00:00.000-08:00

The best time to start was last year.
The second best time to start is right now.
- Seth Godin

I will try to list the milestones I want to cross:

Write a compiler
Write a ray tracer
Write an operating system
Learn Lisp
More math #

Neural Networks
Genetic Algorithms
Bayesian Classifiers
Clustering Algorithms
Image Matching
Project Euler

More Computer Science

SICP
Operating Systems
Compiler Design
Machine Learning
Distributed Computing
Algorithm Design

I am not kidding. I am pretty miserable about the current state of my programming abilities. I am going to follow Stevey's advice. Valiant effort has got to pay off. Of course, as I learn more, my world view will change and I will revise this list. What we have right now is just v0.1. In this case, I think 'revise' most likely means 'expand'. Since you are my loyal audience, I will keep you updated about my quest.

As I explore to write this post, I am finding more and more things that I need to do. Damn. All the more reason to become financially independent soon, quit and retire to a beach house filled with books and computers... Ahhh... :-)

Links:
Books recommended by Stevey