Random Thoughts of a Random Fellow

I'm Moving To Windows 7

2011-07-12T13:58:00.000+05:30

Yes. That's what I'm going to be doing next.Not a big leap forward. But just to the next, slightly more usable (according to popular opinion) version of Windows. I've discovered that a store nearby will be carrying it for less than the full price on the Microsoft India web store. About 4.5k compared to 5.6k.

Let's hope I can do this soon. Hopefully before my laptop screen breaks completely. Right now it's at a point where each centimeter of swivel causes it to black out completely. So getting a picture on the screen is a delicate operation of patience and stickng-your-tongue out. (Actually, I've always wondered why people do that. Here's the answer.)

On A Day Like Today

2011-07-10T13:14:00.000+05:30

This song popped into my head when I was just waking up from a post-breakfast nap when I'd gone to Kerala a few days back. It has been playing in my head ever since... I'd forgotten the title, but I knew some of the words, and Google came to the rescue.

Positively Googled

2011-07-03T20:09:00.001+05:30

I am now a part of yet another social nutwork.

I guess pictures inserted into emails will not show up in posts.

Tuesday Morning

2011-06-28T22:00:00.002+05:30

I have a paper due tomorrow. And I haven't started on it. Infact I haven't come up with a topic to write on. Instead I've spent most of the day listening to Avril Lavigne's What The Hell. The lyrics don't seem to make sense. I think it's that opening accordion part that really gets me going. It's really upbeat. And I have a 5 AM shift starting tomorrow. I'd better stop and get started on that paper. But I'm still not sure what I'm going to be writing about.

What if they allowed you to write a paper consisting of a single chart. After all I could be saving people a lot of time by cramming a multiple of 1000 words into a single chart than a droning, lecturey type essay that went on and on.

Maybe I should try speedrunning Half Life. :)

Weird thing is that I started writing this post in the morning. And now it's 10 PM. Time to go to sleep. Yet I cannot do that.

Working on this problem now.

2011-06-18T18:33:00.001+05:30

Update: They cancelled it. Reason is open to speculation.

It took them only a month to get this done.

2011-06-18T18:27:00.000+05:30

I just finished reading confessions. Weird.

bathroom wall in aquamarine relief

2011-06-13T17:22:00.001+05:30

Pseudo art title/description.

The One FreeManu

2011-06-12T01:26:00.001+05:30

I have been playing a lot of Half Life of late.

2011-05-31T08:58:00.000+05:30

My current reading list in increasing order of possibility of completion before book is returned.

Hint: I have had Catch 22 for the past two months.

2011-05-31T08:47:00.001+05:30

100 out of 100 people don't like being labelled 'stupid' as recent hypothetical studies have shown.

Time to change the message on my commenting system. Or even better remove commenting all together.
Any comments? :)

4 AM on a Monday

2011-05-31T08:42:00.000+05:30

Talk about Monday morning blues Mr GrumpyFace. Looks like a great mugshot photo.

This was taken yesterday just before I left for work,

Open Income

2011-05-20T11:28:00.000+05:30

This is always how I imagined doing business.

What is a DP?

2011-05-20T11:26:00.000+05:30

Deewana Pagal?
Daulat Palghat?
Dil-eee Plate-form?
Digjig Panga?
Dance/Disco Pants?
Danda Padna?
Dandi Parched?
Driving Pie-sense?
Driving Pilot?
Dilshot Pisschance?
Distance Package?
Dipshit Punk?
Departmental Premises?
Dog Punter?

Don't Post: yeah, that's probably it.

(Have I exhausted them all...? I think not because I still have a few more...)

2011-05-20T11:11:00.000+05:30

I realised recently that I've got too many blogs/websites/social media outlets: one too many outlets of creative, emotional and technological frustration. Because I've been looking for that one blogging platform that will let me do what I want to do quickly and at the same time give me control over my content (though, looking at it from a less (C) ME-oriented mindset, I'm not really sure if there is anything in my ramblings that anybody would want to make use of).

So, in the 6+ years that I've been on the Internet I've experimented (read used initially with great eagerness and lost interest shortly after a few days) with multiple blogging platforms:

Blogger was the first and still continues to be today. It's the platform that I've used the longest and because I've put up so many posts here, I'm hesitant to move away from it. But with the recent upgrades and the insta-post-save to the cloud as changes are made, I'm finding it really hard to edit posts that have more than two pictures in it as each time the entire post is sent up. You can't type more than a couple of words without the Firefox window freezing up.

I started using WordPress after I got tired of seeing the blogger interface. WP has a wonderful interface but it has too much customizability for my liking. While Blogger is a Google-hosted platform, WP offers you the option of hosted instances or you can host your own since it is an open source project. I think that's also partly why I was attracted to WP.

I even tried running a WP instance from a small AMD PIC box that I still have working here. But I guess the load of running a MySQL DB and PHP-heavy software was too much for it. I got past the install stage but I could never get the admin interface to load up past the 30 second PHP page load timeout.

I have since been blogging on WordPress.com here and there. I'm still not sure why I created two blogs that pretty much sound like me (now I'm beginning to suspect that I have MPD). I like the option to email the post directly (which incidentally Blogger supports also). That works for me. I made a mistake of getting too dependent on finding novelty in the platform I was using for Blogging instead of finding new content to write about. But hey, I'm probably fascinated by new blogging platforms, I should have started a review site where I review every platform starting from A-Z.

I realise that now. Anyway, onward with the list.

Posterous: Really simple idea. Everything should be done through email.

Tumblr.: Because I wanted one.

Microsoft Spaces: This decision is something I never understood and now I regret.

Yahoo! 360: Why? Why? Why!

Facebook: 'Note' to self: "WTFacebook were you thinking!"

Orkut: **&#*#@$&M@nuUll@$$**#^$@#$ must stop using special characters in his profile so freely because that would diminish their specialness. Also, how the hell are you supposed to find somebody named Thanakeshwar if he goes by the callsign: $up3rThankerR0llinRollinOvaUrButt. Regular people pretending they're playing HackherHackhim with stupid hacker aliases.

Jaiku: I thought it was an MMORPG where the person spewing the most 'status' would win a all-expenses paid trip to Finland. (Jaiku was eventually bought by Google and the code was open sourced).

Twitter: Because I was only one tweet away from being termed a "social media maven".

Identi.ca: Open Source again. Also far better than Jaiku.

Google Sites: Google again. And also HTML and CSS! WOW! I found out after using it that "custom-CSS" was a power feature eliminated for

My Own Status Showing Tool Hosted On AppEngine (for lack of a name).

I wonder if there's anything I left out.

My Thoughts On Moving To Canada

2011-05-20T09:55:00.000+05:30

Deepa:

Thank you for the invitation!
I have not recieved my Canadian Visa yet. My passport has been locked away safely in my drawer here and I can assure you that it has not left there since I checked last. To be absolutely sure, I am checking once again. Yes, it appears to be there, inside with that perfectly awful photo I had to take for the passport application because the one I'd submitted didn't "fit inside the box". I keep hearing about "thinking outside the box" but it doesn't happen in the regional passport office here! That's for sure.
Back to issue. I've not booked my tickets yet, come to think of it. Hopefully some day I shall be able to afford the plane fare to that charming country of yours. I hope to see Nova Scotia, and the wonderful Prince Edward Island (just like Anne told me it would be). If your firm is willing to sponsor that, I shall be most happy to pack a change of clothes, some jammies, toothbrush and a towel (actually that's all you need really, the rest are an excuse for packing a big bag for a big trip).
Once you have assured me that you will arrange the plane fare (by handing me a valid ticket) I hope the services that come with your Basic Package can be sampled as well, although I think a family of my own is some way into the future I assure you that when our Canada-ho-wards needs arise we will consult you. I also am very pleased that the rest of my relatives on my and father's/mother's side can be included as well at a very small increment which we shall be most happy to pay you, after all you seem to have left the smallness of the aforementioned to us! The Customer Is Always Right!
I had no idea that one could be educated on the ways of life in Canada in just a 30-minute session. Maybe you will be hooking us up to one of those dream machines like in Inception, so we can explore life in Canada in a totally controlled and safe way and end up getting mugged and stabbed only to way up and find ourselves at the airport. But then again, Canada is not a place where people get mugged right? Right?
I also understand that you're going to be helping us with all the paperwork. If that's really the case I have a suggestion. Why don't you also add “pay our bills for us” as one of your services. Writing out that check is such a hassle. I don't seem to want to do it. Also while you're at it, make a sandwich.
If you're going to be getting us hooked up to cellphones, please don't get us Rogers because the Internet people told us that Rogers Sucks.

Also if I get tired of Canadian winters, will you help me move back to India? Even better would be if you could hire Lisa Bettany to photograph my adventures in Canada plus

Hi Lisa! I have enormous respect for thee

be your appointed escort to these places? I'm wouldn't call myself the most demanding customer. But you know that I'm always right, right?

The Pale Blue Dot

2011-04-16T19:58:00.000+05:30

The thought of being a dot
On a pale blue dot
Made me shed a tiny teardrop
I started thinking about it
And I could not stop.

It wasn't blue though, like the waters in the Great Barrier Reef.

This:


is all we have, really speaking. This is all we're worth right now. Our GDP. And it's not growing at the rate of 5% every year. Probably in reverse.

So take a step back and think about it. And if you're overwhelmed, shed a tear. A pale, blue teardrop. Be kind. Rewind.

What I Look Forward To Seeing When I Login To Facebook

2011-04-16T19:35:00.000+05:30

Aren't I presumptuous. Note: that is not a question. Why? Because there is no question mark. Just like there is no spoon. End of today's lesson.

CodeCheffing: Central Point

2011-04-16T19:24:00.000+05:30

I'm back to posting solutions to problems I found online. This is one from the easy category.

The solution for this can be found here.

2009-12-13T11:26:00.002+05:30

manubuntu - is what I call my portable computer, with affection.

Thatdamnthing - is what I call my portable computer, without frustration.

It's come to a point where I can no longer ignore the lack of response to repeated finger workout sessions on the power button.

The screen stays black, the ventilation fans whirr, but nothing happens.

It makes for a great something-you-can-chuck-at-villian's-heads prop at these times.

And if you can't find a villain, there's always a wall.

So, today I have enough time to backup the pictures I have taken but not done anything with so far. And then send manubuntu off to the cleaners.

2009-12-06T11:20:00.003+05:30

Dad came back after a 30-hour shift. He then took my grandfather - mother's dad - to the Sankara eye hospital nearby. That was for a routine checkup. And in the end, grandad ended up getting laser surgery on his eye.

Here's a timeline of events:
Friday -
Dad leaves at 9 AM for work

Saturday -
Dad is back home at 4 AM
Leaves for the eye hospital at 11 AM
Back at 5 PM

Time spent awake: 32 hours

Grandad is seeing things much much better. Quite

You want to be great at your job, your relationships, and your life. You'd better count on being sleep-deprived a lot of the time.

That's something I'm going to be learning soon.

Now listening to an episode of You Look Nice Today - "Jobbo"

Which reminds me, I got my joining letter from TCS. Just one day after that big rant.

Passport Status Updated

2009-12-03T11:04:00.004+05:30

It was stuck at 'Waiting For Police Report' for the past three weeks.

A welcome change.

I need to

2009-12-03T10:16:00.004+05:30

~~Become an SCJP~~
Design a kickass personal homepage
~~Help grandad get home~~
~~Road to fitness - take the first step~~
Do the AOL Advanced course, before which I do my kriya for 7 days in a row without too much flinching
Solve all the problems in the CodeChef practice set, post the solutions/code for those problems on the Internet
~~Get passport and all other documents required for TCS ready~~
Read all books in dad's DeBono collection
Fix dad's old Nikon
Fix the Sony Cybershot
Start a photoblog
~~Fix the timer in the desktop~~
Learn how to program in assembler
~~Pick up where I left off with C~~
Consolidate all my blogs into one familiar web resource, so that all my friends don't have to chase me around the web
Learn the art of self-defense (karate seems like a good option)
Learn how to fold shirts like mother
Learn how to put on a tie
Make a killing in the stock market
Develop a nice portfolio monitor for dad
Develop that game I came up with in mid-pee

Thoughts On The Long Wait For TCS

2009-12-03T09:35:00.005+05:30

What prompted this?
I've found myself asking at times "Oh, mera number kab aayega!?" when I open my inbox and a bunch of new emails in which everybody has torn to pieces the latest bit of news that some college somewhere else, which nobody'd ever heard of had been batched. Anguish, disappointment, outrage.

While I was sucked into it initially, by and by I learnt that nothing but the disappointment of unmet expectations would come from this.

So, I thought about it, and asked myself...

Why worry?
Why worry about a date that could be 4 days from now, or even 4 months from now?

Why worry, when clearly, TCS has got far more important matters, like for instance keeping an organisation with a headcount larger than the population in a lot of countries running smoothly, all while adding more people at the same time?

Why worry, when you're dealing with a company that's got a lot of history, a well-respected organization which has time and time again kept up its promises?

Why worry, when you're young?

Why worry, when there are so many other opportunities out there besides thisto fall back in case it doesn't work out?

Sure, you've lost a lot of time, but 6 months isn't the rest of your life. It will seem like a tiny blip when you look back on it 40 years from now.

It's not our problem to figure out "When?" It's theirs.
Screw it! that's what I'm saying. They'll batch us when they can, and need us.

Continued harassing of the people at TCS is certainly not going to help the situation.
They're a big organisation, and since there are orders being passed down a chain of command taller than Mount Everest, there are differing levels of awareness at each level. The HR people like Arun keep getting calls from us, and all he can do is pacify us and stall for another 5 minutes before the next call, because there is very little he can do without the approval of 10 other managers across various departments - finance, recruitment, and so on...

What can I do in the meantime?
If you took a few moments and thought about it, this is time that you have been given to do some amazing stuff.

Go out and learn a new language. Go clubbing. Dance. Figure out how to write a word processor in assembly language. Solve a problem. Write a poem. Be silly. Do everything that you've wanted to do all when you were stuck attending dull lectures at college. Travel. Do all of this and more. Because if you think about it, this is time that you'll never ever get.

This surely isn't the time to be whining about whether the harrassed HR people at TCS are going to chalk off CMRIT on their big training blackboard. It really isn't.

A problem/solution approach:
If you can't help but think about this, then look at it as a problem that needs a solution. The problem can quite simply be described as uncertainty arising from a lack of information. What is a solution to this?

Communication - regular, and reliable.

TCS needs to have a blog of sorts where they put down a list of colleges that have been batched so far, and the next probable set of colleges to be batched. It'd be simple and effective. And at least, the amount of confusion regarding which grade each person's college falls into can be avoided.

Even a twitter profile should do the trick. Believe me, one thing they won't have is a shortage of followers.

Something easily accessible, they can even put it on NextStep if they want to restrict it to just students.

Right now, there are groups on social networking sites like orkut and facebook, that are relied on for information. But these are unofficial, and I'm just a little sceptical when it comes to relying on the information posted here.

It's particularly sad that there is nobody I've found at TCS making use of social networks to send information out to students. Maybe I've not searched hard enough, but they really should start something on those lines. It would definitely reduce the number of calls handled by the people at HR.

They should really think about this.

My position as of now.
Sometimes, there's some good news, and while I'm happy for the people who have been batched so far, and more recently, the non-CS* students from our college, for having been given a chance at something that's really going to be a possible future vertical that TCS is going to be involved in, and like all the CS students, I'm still left clutching at straws when it comes to my future with TCS.

But I've gotten some things crossed off my list. Not a lot, but it is definitely a start.

While, I'm not going to be happy now about not having anything but "Sure, January or February (or any month in 2010)" as an answer each time I'm asked "When?", I'm pretty sure the answer is soon in coming.

Till then, stop worrying, and start living. Life and the time-of-your-life is too precious to be wasted in worrying about some day in the future.

Just have a little faith, and enjoy yourselves. That's all I'm saying.

Apologies on the length of this, but I do hope you gained some perspective on this. This is not a definitive guide on how to spend 6 months while waiting for a joining date, that guide will be written by you, for you.

* I've seen the term non-CS take on some kind of discriminatory shade. Not good. They're engineers just like the rest, and they've worked equally hard (possibly more( to get through 4 years of VTU. Same goes for the grading of colleges. Does it even remotely matter who is better? And believe me, that is probably a subjective definition based on internal company policy. Which we can't figure out. So, why make assumptions?

Se7en

2009-12-01T16:46:00.001+05:30

Probably has nothing to do with this. Just probably.

There's a guy named Tomek (I'd be surprised if there isn't something puzzley about that) who has 1337 (and this one too) friends on Facebook. Now he wants them to join in a big circle of hand-holding togetherness to celebrate the launch of Karmic Koala. (You Windows people throw house parties, we hold hands and look up at the sky. It's just the way we do it. (And yes, we are cooler!)

So, while on one of these weird hand-holding orgies, Tomek decides that they should bring an element of fun into the ritual (about time somebody did that!) and he starts playing a game of 7UP (no, this event is not sponsored or endorsed in any way by the popular brand of carbonated beverage!) where people count up from 1 up to infinity.

Now there's a twist to Tomek's game of 7UP. Counting goes upward continuously clockwise from whoever calls out 1 to begin the game. So, if person 1 calls out 1:

person 2 calls out 2

person 3 calls out 3

and so on...

till person 7 calls out 7

and person 6 calls out 8

person 5 calls out 9

and so on...

till person 1337 at the end of the circle (does that make any sense?) calls out 14

and then...

person 1 calls out 15

person 2 calls out 16

So, to end the counting and summarize the rules of the game:

Each person calls out a number. The next person calls out the next number. The number to be called out is always incremented by one.

The direction of counting starts clockwise from 1 to 1337.

Direction reverses when a number that is:

divisible by 7 (eg 7, 14...)

OR

contains the digit 7 (17, 27, 455677221, 7000)

So, those are the rules of the game.

Now, Tomek's a weirdo, (or we wouldn't be having this problem), so he wants us to write a program that can tell him where he has to stand if he wants to call out his favourite number.

So, if you were Tomek, what would your favourite number be? That's what we're writing this program for.

I came across this problem on the CodeChef website initially. And at the time I attempted to solve it, nobody had been able to submit a successful solution owing to length of time allotted for calculation a very generous ONE SECOND.

It does help if you look at that as ONE THOUSAND MILLISECONDS. A little.

So, I went to work on it. It sounded simple enough to write, but little did I realise that the number of elements to be processed would be HUGE if I merely brute forced this.

Imagine processing 100,000,000 elements checking each for divisibility and presence of 7! That's not good enough. And the running times proved it. When Tomek's favourite number is 100,000,000,000 we have around 3.5 minutes processing time. And to think that the size of the input can go up to 10¹⁰⁰! We have something serious on our hands.

So, the question now is, could we optimize the algorithms used to determine divisibility and presence of 7 further or should we simply observe the state of the program over a period and see if there are any patterns that we can exploit? Which is simpler? Or more effective?

The answers to those questions are:

the first approach one is simpler, since there are plenty of well documented algorithms for that. Wikipedia has plenty of them. I used that one instead of using the standard % 7 == 0 test, since it increases the time required to process as the count goes up. But the first approach can only help so much.

The second approach brings maximum effectiveness since skipping over a bunch of elements which you know will anyway not contribute to the final answer eliminates the divisibility/presence tests associated with them.

So, your problem input size is probably reduced in size by half. And after much thought I decided to take a raw dump of the program as it worked. And ended up with a HUGE file after 3 test cases.

Will have to figure out the quirks and optimize.

The source for the program is attached. Documentation is something I'd love to do some more work on, but a work in progress is just that, it's a work in progress. This is the part where most programmer's like to spend time trying to play with code rather than document, so, I've tried explaining wherever I can. Links are also there to the pages where I got the algorithms from.

Will be posting a set of links here when I find the time.

How To Hurry Tomek's Ass Up (aka possible optimizations):

1. Who cares about the 70s, or the 700s, or the 70000000000000000000000000000000000000000s!

aka the remove the 7s way

Last night, as I was thinking about ways to optimize this, I realised that the processing required for complete blocks of the input could simply be eliminated.

Inputs of the form:

d* 7+ d* (d is any digit from 0-9)

viz. any range of concurrent numbers known to contain 7 in the same place. For example:

70 - 79

Here 10 numbers can be eliminated by simply adding 10 the count and keeping the direction of count the same. The counter does not change since the number of reversals is even as in:

caller 1 at 70

caller 1337 at 71

caller 1 at 72

caller 1337 at 73

and so on...

caller 1337 at 79

caller 1 at 80

caller 2 at 81

caller 1 at 82

and so on...

So, in effect, the person to call out the first number in the series is the person who counts the last number of the series. The direction of counting remains the same.

For larger inputs 7000-7999

caller 1 at 7000

caller 1337 at 7001

...

caller 1337 at 7999

caller 1 at 8000

1000 inputs skipped.

So, skip formula:

((10^{place of 7})) elements skipped and added to count. So the larger the input, the larger the skip.

After running some timing tests, this is what I found:

Test run without the remove 7s optimizations with an input of about 10,000,000,000 ran for 1 minute and 49 seconds.

And this is with the optimization:
1 minute and 12 seconds.

There is an improvement, definitely.
So, for such large inputs, we have a 1/3rd cut in running time.

While not as large an improvement as I expected, I am pleased to say that something worked.

Hotlinked. Oops!

2009-12-01T16:07:00.000+05:30

I've not posted here for weeks. I noticed today that every time I was coming to the blog, I was being redirected to the wikipedia article on bandwidth theft. I spent some time puzzling over how this was happening. I was pretty sure I hadn't coded the page to do anything of that sort.

Then I realised it was a JS document.window.open() call, the target being the default, current window.

I found the source of the redirect being Kent Brewster's JS code snippet that had been changed since I put it on here. I hardly used it, it being here for just experimental purposes.

But as it turns Mr. Kent Brewster seemed to be getting a lot of traffic from people embedding identica badges on their websites. I didn't realise I was being irresponsible.

My apologies.

Sixteen

2009-08-19T10:00:00.000+05:30

I find this odd. I have nothing to write about today. Let's try reasoning it out.

I've spent more than 5 of my 12 waking hours asleep (contradiction)
I've spent about an hour of the remaining hours consuming food
I've spent roughly two hours socialising, both online and offline
An hour running to and fro between home and stores
An hour on the TV
An hour on Need For Speed: Most Wanted
Close to an hour reading that new Java book I bought yesterday

Well, that chart should clear things up! It clearly shows I'm not GTD in a day. Even if I don't hit GTD-nirvana I'd like to say, I GSDT (Got Something Done Today).

Time to rethink my whole approach to doing things. This will simply not work out.

I've been thinking about performing some analysis on how I spend my time during my waking hours. And waking hours here, includes all the time I spend, staying up late into the night (up till the point when it's really really early in the morning), barely awake and unable to think. Of course, I could use that data to track how lack of sleep affects my productivity.

(Of course, that means that I now have to come up with some way to measure my productivity, how would I do that. This requires some thought)

This is interesting. I could also measure the effect of meditation on my productivity. (and maybe that would help me be more regular in my practice)

Interesting, times of meals. The time I wake up. The temperature. The weather. The news. How I feel. Sick/unwell. It could all be documented and measured against productivity...

This sounds like the beginning of a very fun experiment.

And if I could build a system that considers all this data.

Oh my god.

Let's get cracking.

Fifteen

2009-08-18T00:32:00.000+05:30

Listening to the latest episode of twit again.

Once you get into the habit of doing something a certain way, you get used to doing it that way. If your webhost seems to support all the things that you throw onto its servers, then you get used to stuff working just like that. (I wouldn't say that for the laconi.ca install, but still, most of it just worked out of the tarball!)

I stopped checking requirements pages long ago. I assumed that since Wordpress 2.7 worked, WP 2.8 would also work.

So, what is the difference between PHP v. 5.2.10 and 5.4.3?
x10hosting.com uses PHP v. 5.2.10. WP needs v. 5.4.3. I never actually bothered to check whether x10 fulfilled the reqs. Which cannot parse the code WP 2.8 uses to connect to the database. I wish they'd use some legacy code for the DB connection! Oh well. That's the price of progress, I suppose.

UPDATE: I was wondering whether the earlier releases of WP MU were to be found. Guess I should have looked at the trac: Wordpress MU 2.7

UPDATE: I can't stay up any longer, bed time now. It's 1:42 AM!