Routine Post

Because the last time when I tried to switch on my computer, there was something burning ... and I don't know what.

• First things first. After getting rejected left, right and center last year, I finally managed to secure an admit for my MS in Computer Science. That too in UCLA. People tell me that it's a good school, but I'm more like "Hey it's in LA, so GREAT!" (Note: I am still awaiting more results).

• On to running. My sub-20-minute-5KM goal still exists and I'm training as much as I can (maybe I can do more, but then I won't be able to do all the other things which I do). I may not be able to make it in a 6 month time-frame, but it still seems possible within the end of the year. 

• For people who didn't know, I had joined Latin Dance Classes couple of months back and I'm still continuing. It's good fun and would to recommend to everyone.

• I have registered for the Sunfeast 10k which is slated to happen on May 23rd. I don't have any solid goals. I hope to do a sub-50 minute, but then that goal kind of sucks because that's the same which I had last year (I failed last year).

• I'm back to playing basketball. In fact I had been practicing all of last week for a corporate tournament which happened last weekend. We faced 3 teams (Bosch, Wipro and Repucom) and lost to each one of them, but I had a great time playing. It was almost 4 years since I had played a match. 

• Cooking has taken a back seat. I don't find it too interesting to just cook for myself. Although, if there are other people, I like to cook. 

• I'm currently reading greatbong's "May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss." I also bought "Getting Things Done." I hope I get time to read everything.

Google's Go Language First Impressions

Google recently announced the launch of a new programming language called: Go. Its creators are software heavy-weights like Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson. It's a C style language, it has garbage collection and claims to compile fast.

Its idiosyncrasies follow.

1. Backward declaration: Instead of declaring a variable like "int a", you do "var a int".
   
2. Type derivation with ":=". You can initialize variables and Go will derive its type for you. For example doing "a := 1.0" automatically initalizes "a" to a "float".
   
3. Semicolons are not required at the end of each statement.
   
4. The only looping construct available is the "for" statement. No "while" or "do-while".
5. The parameters for the "for" and "if" statements don't need to be within parentheses (I'm shocked and crying)
6. Unicode strings which are immutable.
   
7. Pointers but no pointer arithmetic.
8. Its compiler is currently not available for Windows -- only for Linux and Mac. Doubt if a cygwin port is available.
   

Maybe more later.

Routine Post

Coming back to you after a three week hiatus. How have you been? Outstanding, I hope.

• I came across Joggling few days back I was searching for how to run with a backpack. It's a sport where you run ... while juggling (jogging + juggling = joggling). Inspired by this I have been trying to juggle three tennis balls (notice how I qualified "balls"). I use the three ball cascade technique and can go for about 10-20 seconds without a drop. Apparently, the ball prices have gone up -- earlier (read over 10 years ago ... shit I'm old!) a Cosco ball used to cost Rs 20; now it's Rs 35.

• In an act of self-discipline, which my mom is very happy with, I have decided to ban all computer usage -- not just internet usage -- from 5 PM to 8 PM on all days. I'm free to do anything other than use the computer. Till now, I have been able to perform this feat for two consecutive days (today included). It's been good. I have been reading books, washing clothes, playing the guitar, taking walks, sleeping etc. People who know me, might appreciate why this is a big deal.
  

• Second time in two months, I visited Kerala. Again to attend a wedding. God's own country is still hot and humid. Fans and showers have no effect on sweat production. I was in the Trivandrum area and finally got around to see the Kovalam beach (albeit in the night) -- a place which I never visited while I was doing my engineering in Cochin. It was a fun trip, with good food, lots of Indian poker (teen patti) and (thank god!) air-conditioning.

• I bought a Timex digital watch (Rs 945) to keep me company while running. Yes, I have a much more expensive, fancy gadget, which I keep showing off, but this is more for times when I don't want to risk my Garmin Forerunner. Like when I'm running in the rains and other situations as such. I hope a time comes, when I can measure distance by my stride and the time by the sun (clouds are seen by pessimists).
  

What do you wanna do this weekend?

If you are in Bangalore, you have quite a few alternatives:

• Be scared of going out, because you think the Sri Ram Sena goons will embarrass you and marry you off. It won't happen, but you can always give this as an excuse and enjoy a movie and a cold beer at your home.

• Go celebrating in pubs as part of the "Pub Bharo" movement to thwart Sri Ram Sena. Which is not that special. I mean what do you do on weekends anyway?

• Participate in the "Pink Chaddi" campaign. Donate a chaddi to Sri Ram Sena.
  

• Rock the weekend Iron Maiden style. I'm sure that we will see a lot of head-bangers from outside Bangalore coming for the concert. This should surely help the "Pub Bharo" movement at least.

• For the computer programmers (respect to all the geek bros), we have the Yahoo Hack Day.
  

• All couples who can run: you not only have the advantage of escaping when being chased by our friendly neighbourhood Sri Ram Sena, but you also have a chance to win fancy Nike t-shirts. The Nike Run Club is conducting a 4k couple run at Cubbon Park at 6 AM. Check it out.

• Or you could go see the Aero India 2009 aero show at Yehlanka.

Unfortunately I can't do any of the above. I'm off to Pondicherry to take of some running business.

Microsoft Surface

The demo is too cool. Its a surprise that such a thing comes from Microsoft. I think this is going to be the next big thing.

...

Linux-the Academic Microsoft Windows
The holy trinity: Linux, gcc, and Netscape.
Of course, it’s just another orthodoxy.
These have become icons not because of what they are, but
because of what they are not: Microsoft.

Rob Pike (Systems Software Research is Irrelevant)

I want one of these

I'm a child in a developing country ... gimme one.

I hate laptops in general, but this one (OLPC) looks quite tempting. Its $ 100, but its only available through government agencies. The hardware is not brutal, and I don't know what I will do with one of these, but I sure will want to buy it.

NUnit + NCover

Deadly tools. Do use: NCover, NUnit. Usual recipe is to run your unit tests from within NCover and check how much code your unit tests are covering. This can even uncover silly mistakes where a test is not being run because you forgot to put the "[Test]" attribute.

After a while she remembered that she still held the pieces of mushroom in her hands, and she set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one and then at the other, and growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter, until she had succeeded in bringing herself down to her usual height.

- Alice in Wonderland

Binary search ... anyone?

Mac OS X Live CD?

Just take a look at the number of Live CD distributions you have for Linux: Countless. In fact that has now become the de-facto standard for performing installations. It is a safe way to introduce a new user to the features of the operating system. It is ready to use out of the box (well.. most of the times).

But, if you see, there are no Live CD distributions for either Windows or Mac OS X. Now for Windows, it may not make much sense to have one (every other desktop user has used it). But for Mac OS X, this may be the way to go. Becoming a Mac fan-boy is easy... once you have used it. But that in itself is a challenge because of the steep price tag. So does making a cheap Mac OS X Live CD make sense? No.

Today, where desktop environments (Aqua, Beryl, Aero) are becoming more and more fancier, will the transfer rates supported by a CD/DVD ROM do? I don't think so. Also what stops anyone from copying the CD and distributing it? (Ans: No one, at least in India)
Maybe the way to go is USB. Sell bootable USB devices which are more or less mass storage devices, with the operating system on it. The device will be protected from tampering and illegal copying. And of course the packaging should be sexy. Sell it for a price of say 15K (with around 4 gigs of storage) and people should be tempted.

For Apple this would be a stripped down Mac Mini. Of course, what is left to see is how much the USB 2.0 transfer rate will be a bottleneck.

The Linux journey

The first Linux system I installed was Red Hat 6 back in the beginning of the 21st century. Which is the time when Linux was not sexy. We (me and my brother) had a 1 gig hard drive and we had somehow managed to squeeze both Windows 95 and Linux into that. Although I couldn't do much on the system, we didn't have sound or internet (yeah, I had a dial-up connection that time), but we did have a desktop. This lasted only for a few days, because slowly we got tired of sacrificing space for Linux and not being able to play games (Quake 2 Demo used to be my favourite apart from Age of Empires 1).

College saw another bunch of distributions. I started out with Red Hat 7.x; got sound and display to work and dumped it for Fedora Core 1. I got everything working in FC 1 too, but I got tired of the package manager (I don't know if its better now), so I did the unthinkable: I installed Gentoo.

It was not an easy ride, but in the end I had a pretty decent system to boast of. So other than the hours and hours I spent compiling stuff, I had no complaints at all from Gentoo. It was sleek, lean and mean. The best Linux system I have had till date. It was during this time I first learnt how to recompile the kernel. Not only that I tried to make it smaller. Packing in only what I needed into the kernel.
I would have never given away all my blood and sweat, but that is what happened. A freak accident wiped out Gentoo and I neither had the time or energy to make one again. But I thought that this is a good time to try out Ubuntu.

Ubuntu was good. Very good in fact. It worked out of the box. No hand tweaking of config files was required. Installing applications was a breeze. Moreover they shipped it to your doorstep for free! Only down side was that gcc, gdb etc was not installed by default. But that was OK. No big deal.
Ubuntu got wiped out when I completed college and parked my computer back at home.

But I guess there is always this thing with Linux distributions (or maybe with me). Most of them don't work out of the box. You have to go into the system, to get it working. Most people would say that this is a bad thing for Linux. Yes, maybe, for home users. But for engineers, developers and hackers, I guess this is what pulls them towards it (Of course, I don't say this is the topmost reason). It is that itch; that there is a problem and (surely) a solution, and I (will) want to find it.

And it is happening to me again. I installed something new called: archlinux. Took me two days and a lot of jugglery to get it working. But somehow, I'm drawn back to Ubuntu ...

Buy now!

Hello tiger!

Portrait of a kite.