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Scars will remain

I used to love science when i was in high school. I believe i started thinking properly from 8th standard onwards. I had varying interests as each year passed by. From physics to chemistry to maths.

I looked at my face and found a scar today. It happened because of an accident. I had a library next to my house. I took a membership there when i was in 8th. Initially i used to read all the detective novels ranging from Sherlock Holmes to local ones. Then i started taking some electronics books. There were books on how you could repair radio, about chemical experiments etc. I made a small collection of electronics items courtesy of some of my relatives. I bought a soldering iron, some coils etc. I badly wanted to make a crystal radio. The idea of running radio without battery fascinated me. I didn't have much money that time so i had to settle on a low quality soldering iron. Its wire was plastic and was not cloth wrapped. One day while soldering, i accidentally placed it on the wire. It melted and i took it in hand without knowing it and got an electric shock. The iron fell over my face and my throat. It was horrible. Walking around school with a bandage around the neck was embarrassing.
The scar remains.

Blade Runner

After four years i watched this movie again and i savored every bit of it .. It will always stay in my memory

deteriorating life

deteriorating life, life of everyone around me
finding peace in programming, what do they have?

explanation

wtf?

By the way something is going wrong with the universe .. first my ipod charger throws up, then my ipod started making weird noises.. and now i have lost all my music after pluggin my ipod in my friend's machine. crap

import this

The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

Lovely December

I miss my dog. I don't know what state he is in now. Hope he is well. I loved him. When i used to hug him he used to make affectionate noises. The first time when he was brought to me in a bag, i marvelled at his existence. There was a creature which can think. He stared at me straight in my eye for minutes. He was shivering, more from fright than cold, even though it was a cold December. It was exactly two years before. There is something magical about Decembers for me. It was fun always. This year i am forgetting and and forgiving myself and just enjoying my existence.

Nelson on facebook

An interesting bit from Nelson Minar on facebook. The day i signed on facebook, i knew that i will delete it very soon. So far i have only invited only two friends to join on facebook because i thought the feed feature coupled with the movie i watched would be interesting to them. I am sorry for my adrenaline.

Facebook Ads

So now Facebook is directly competing with Google with its new Social Ads. I like this concept and i wonder what Google will do now.

An interesting quote from Dave Winer

Long-term, however they both have problems because advertising is on its way to being obsolete. Facebook is just another step along the path. Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information. And that's good!

Gym

Finally after one year I'm back to gym again. I ran for 1.5kms on the treadmill and was pretty happy about it. Then the instructor took some 7-8 of us and started doing some ground exercises. The guy almost killed everyone. All i could hear was groans and moans :). It was fun. With the help of this instructor and a paintbrush, i intend to become like SRK.

BTW, if you want real inspiration keep Daniel Craig in your mind while doing exercises (suggested by my ex roommate cum drinking partner)

Programming fonts

I use windows at work and use Courier New as the font for programming purpose. (It's the default in eclipse, visual studio 2005, idle etc). Now Microsoft has come up with Consolas, a monospace font for programming purpose. A monospace or a fixed width font is one whose characters have same width. Courier New is one such. A monospace font would look ordered and you can draw tables etc easily because all characters are of same size. Try setting your ide's font to Ariel or Verdana (which are not monospace) and see the difference. You won't be able to code in those fonts. One of the fonts which i loved coding was a monospaced font in Gnome Redhat 7.0. I believe the font was BitStream Vera. Anyway Consolas is the new font which i like in windows and it simply is the best. Try it out. Make sure that you have ClearType switched on. Below are some code in 3 different monospace fonts from my system. (blogger screwed the images totally, so better try it out in your system and see the difference).

Courier New

Consolas

BitStream Vera

OpenSocial

So Google today released the OpenSocial apis. Funny that the google pages look very similar to facebook developer pages. Google is using the atom format for data exchange. It's time to look inside atom.

past

i ran
i ran with the memories of the past
for the past holds the heaven
and everything else is just nothing
-dog

Battle without honor or humanity

From XKCD

That track ('Battle Without Honor or Humanity') -- like 'Ride of the Valkyries' -- improves *any* activity.

Within Temptation

I've been listening to Within Temptation's songs for last two days. Sharon Den Adel's voice feels like Evanescence's and to some extend Dolores O'Riordan's voice.

Here are some of their songs

Angel


Memories


And this is the song that got me introduced to them


somebody point me to more songs like these please :)

Portal

nice .. now i need brains also

Wish you were here

Data Visualization

Some of these sites are downright sexy

Data Visualization: Modern Approaches

substring bites

Last week i copied some string splitting logic from C# to Java and didn't bother to test much. Today i fired up one of the Duet appointments and typed max value in the location field (256) and it bombed! .. after debugging i found
C# substring is - substring(startIndex, length)
Java substring is - substring(startIndex, endIndex)
crap.. Java's is more like Python's where it's called slice syntax - str[startIndex:endIndex]
but we don't have slice syntax in Java or C# .. and i like C#'s better

random

Martin Fowler never ceases to amaze me. I was banging my head over timezone issues yesterday and today morning i see this. He gave Microsoft Office the worst timezone experience award. Interestingly i'm working on the exact same thing for one of the scenarios. I do think trying to be clever might ruin user experience. We have 3 major layers (outlook, java server, SAP backend) with each running in 3 different technologies (.Net, Java, ABAP) glued together using XML and proprietary protocols. The nuances of each of these technologies bundled with the bugs in them makes life a living hell.

I saw The number 23 yesterday. Neo ruined the movie unknowingly :) few years back. I'm also finding number 23 at many places. I look at my phone and its extension is 4739. Add it, you will get 23. Phone displays today is 07.09.07 again 23. My birth date is August 15 (15-08) again 23. My cubicle no is 23! Not so creepy anyway :)