weddings!

The last couple of weeks have been hectic.
Last weekend, a bunch of us took a Friday night bus to Goa, to throw a bachelor party for Vikas. It wasn't too crazy but we did spend the entire weekend relaxing, getting massages, drinking (banana milkshake mixed with Old Monk dark rum was the unofficial beverage sponsor) and eating (goan spicy sausage, prawn-curry-and-rice, prawn-stuffed-papad).

This past Friday afternoon, S and I flew to Kolkotta to attend Naveen's wedding. We went out for dinner and drinks with some of his highschool friends on Friday night, and followed it with an evening of gambling. I don't gamble on principle, but it looked like a lot of fun and I was pretty tempted to join in. Instead I sat back and enjoyed the Black Label that Sahel graciously provided. On Saturday we ate, did a superfast city tour (the Victorial Memorial is breathtaking; S ate some Mishti Dahi, Roshogollas, and Sondesh), came back and ate again, and then got ready for the evening reception (yes, they had a reception before their wedding). The reception was at an amazing location next to some body of water. They had fireworks, candles floating on the water, unimaginable amounts of food (I guess the latest thing in Indian weddings is to have a bunch of food stalls where you can get different types of food; they had everything from mediterranian and domino's pizza, to north indian and chaat).

On Sunday morning, we took a flight to Delhi and hung out at my parents place in Gurgaon. Monday morning we went to the US Embassy to take care of some business and then drove to Chandigarh for Vikas's wedding.

I missed out on all of the heavy pre-wedding drinking with Vikas (they were up till 6am on Monday morning) but the wedding was awesome. Both Vikas and Pooja looked fantastic. My wife, though, will soon be publishing a treatise on Why Punjabi Weddings Should Not Be Late at Night. The actual wedding ceremony started at about 2am (outdoors) and it was frikkin cold. Luckily, I was wearing a set of heavy wool robes that I picked up in Ladakh earlier this year so I was nice and toasty.

On Tuesday we drove back to Delhi and almost missed our flight back to Bangalore (they had closed check-ins but I had been able to call ahead so they had blocked seats for us). I was extremely stressed out.

Now I'm back and should really get cracking on all of the piled up work.

usability

This article from a list apart talks about website usability and how design choices have a serious impact on site performance.

One of the things that I love (and amazes me) about amazon is that they have a really cool framework that allows you to test any design changes to the site. Almost all design changes go through this 'weblab' process which calculates the statistical impact of a certain change on various things (purchases, add-to-carts, etc. - I don't know the actual set of metrics we track).

Design is a wierd and sometimes counterintuitive thing. I couldn't guess which was the most usable site out of the three listed in the article above. I think the discipline of constantly collecting and analyzing metrics goes a long way.

news

news in india is not perfect; my wife often complains about the newspapers carrying mostly local news and only a page of international news. That said, the other media (magazines, tv) have pretty good coverage of international events.

I was having a conversation last week where I mentioned to a friend that, while I can't find much to complain about living in the US, the one thing that infuriates me is the subconscious messages that tell you that the world ends at the US borders (often accompanied by a very 'holier than thou' attitude towards the rest of the world). I'm not eloquent or observant enough to put my finger on exactly what it is that causes that, or even to be able to enumerate the ways in which it manifests itself. But the feeling was undeniable while I was there.

Although living in Bangalore is not always pleasant (dirt, dust, pollution - all the things I promised never to complain about if I moved to India) what I love about being in India is the feeling of being part of a world that is much larger, and much more diverse than the US of A.

On a different note, check out Toxic truths from the Iraqi battlefront.

artificial artificial intelligence

Amazon Web Services released a beta version of mechanical turk last week. see here for a description of the term.

What does Turk have to do with Web Services? Mechturk is a framework that allows people to get paid for tasks that humans are much better at than computers (e.g. image recognition). But it allows applications to submit those tasks. So the tables are suddenly turned and we have this apocolyptic scenario where applications submit tasks, and you have a bunch of humans plugged into a system, doing jobs for the applications. How whack is that?

Without hyperboling, it actually takes outsourcing to the next level. It may change the economics of research; at least for a short while. Why bother putting millions of dollars of research into something like image classification when you can outsource it on a massive scale to people all around the world for a fraction of the cost?

I think a lot of economists, philosophers, computer scientists, criminals, and sociologists are going to have a fun time thinking/talking/writing about mech turk.

Stallone

On the way to work today my cab driver, in slightly broken english/hindi said something about "fistblood, rumble,film?" After some clarification it turns out that he was asking me if I'd seen any of the Rambo movies. According to him my face looks like Stallone's. Funny.

update According to imdb, him and I do share the same birthday, though he's 32 years older than me.

ps: in hindsight, maybe Stallone's great acting and stellar portrayal of the I hate being in 'nam and I'm gonna kick your ass look and my I hate going to work and I'm gonna kick your ass look have something in common. ;)

go start a company

... but first, listen to this podcast, Paul Graham speaking at OSCON 2005.

Oh and also go watch The Corporation.

And then go create something.

pent up thoughts

some pent up thoughts from not having blogged in a while...

The other day my wife was complaining about how I'm too skinny. And it got me thinking. For my entire life, I've had relatives make comments like "hey - you've lost weight since we last saw you!", "you should eat more!", and "you're all skin and bones!"

I have tried retorting with the very logical "You say that everytime. If it really were true, I'd be non-existant by now." but that usually just gets brushed off and is followed by some oily snack being thrust in my face.

Anyways, it got me thinking how ridiculously biased society is. No one meets an overweight relative and makes comments like "hey - you've put on so much weight since we met!", or "you should really cut back on your food", or "you're all lard!". Why is it acceptable to publicly make fun of skinniness but not of fatness?

:) I'm not all that bothered by it, but I think the next time someone says I look skinny, I'm going to tell them that they look like an elephant.

On a totally unrelated note. Today I went to play tennis and this guy was just getting off the court from practicing; he was just picking up a basket worth of balls and putting them into his bag. After he was done, he went back to the court, bent over and touched it with both hands, lingered there for a few moments, straightened up, and touched his hands to his heart and then his forehead. The gesture was so pregnant with reverence and sincerity, that I was moved and disoriented afterwards. It wasn't a quick, ritualistic, obligatory movement; but slow, deliberate, and sincere.

On the one hand, gestures like these are so built into Indian culture (a similar gesture is used as an apology for accidentally touching someone with your feet) that most of the time they are done in a very obligatory-type manner (quick, unthinking, instinctive). On the other hand, the idea of revering your 'craft' (sort of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"-like) is just built into most people.

Two examples of that: Almost every driver (chauffer) I have seen will fold their hands in prayer for a few seconds before starting the car for the first time in the day. Second, the other day there was a festival during which people gave the instruments of their craft a day of rest, and worshipped them. I know of a few IT companies where all the servers were shut down in the morning, coconuts broken and prayers and sweets offered before they could be brought back up in the afternoon.

the depths of your heart.

I've been a fan of Trevor Romain's blog for a while. It's a good daily dose of feedgoodness.

Among other things, it (his blog) gave me the inspiration to attempt to start drawing. Yesterday I was just feeling an alltime low at work so I left early to go home. My wife was feeling the same way so we went out to Gangarams (a stationary + book store in Bangalore) and bought a notebook, pencil, and some pens. Then we went and hung out at Infinitea - a chic tea store on Cunningham road. I drew a few pictures, and she got started on a story she's been meaning to write.

I remember when I was a kid, my mom would learn various art forms (oil and water painting, sculpting, sketching) from a teacher (Anna Aunty). A bunch of ladies would get together at our house and paint and gossip under Anna Aunty's guidance. Well one time I decided that I wanted to try as well. I was so distraught at the outcome that I decided that I couldn't draw.

My abilities haven't changed much but, after reading Trevor's blog, I've realized that it's okay to not draw masterpieces as long as they reflect the depths of your heart.

At the beginning of next year, I want to take some time off work and head up North to the Himalayas and learn to kayak, as well spend a week or so at one of the numerous ashrams. Thoughts of being in the mountains again and battling a gushing river have been going through my head for the past week (uh. sorry. tilt your head 90 degrees to the left):



I'm hosting this picture on our media - I'm surprised they don't have a way of scaling down images - so sorry if it takes a while to download.

star traffic police

On Saturday we were driving around the Commercial Street area in Bangalore. At the busy intersection right near Commercial Street was a traffic policeman (wonder of wonders) dressed in a smart blue uniform. He was stopping traffic for pedestrians, stopping vehicale who were trying to cut red lights, and generally doing a fantastic and whole-hearted job.

We thought he must've been a private cop hired by the commercial street shopkeepers to keep order in the area. But low and behold, he was actually a Karnataka state cop. I felt pretty proud and gave him a big smile and wave. I wish I could remember the name I read on his badge. Whoever you are; keep it up.

On a side note; if the Bangalore Police allowed volunteers to do traffic police duty, I would gladly volunteer my time for that. I go berserk when people break traffic rules. The worst part is that they look at me like I'm a freak for doing things like stopping at red lights. grr

time to move on

I've fallen in love with the following lyrics from Tom Petty's "Time to Move On":

It's time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It's time to move on, it' s time to get going

It's such a chill song, and it's whispering intimately to my heart right now.

six dumbest ideas in computer security

The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security has some great stuff. (link from osnews)

fc goodness

from Digital Competition

Communication is a big part of making deals. One minute, I could be talking to three guys with pimples in a garage; the next, I could be speaking with the CEO of Deutsche Telekom. The most important thing is to get rid of all your prejudices. You have to open your mind. It doesn't matter if the people you're talking to are 22 years old or 57 years old. It doesn't matter what their color is, what their gender is, what language they speak, how big their company is, or even if they were a success before. The playing field today is a lot more level than ever before.

In Hollywood, you're expected to be intuitive. In the entertainment industry, you have people who have intuition and people who imitate. Nobody there analyzes. But for the most part, in our society, if you know and you don't know why you know, then obviously whatever you know doesn't matter -- which is stupid. If you have been right about things for 20 years, then you should be able to say, "I don't know why I know, but I know." If I'm hiring people, I don't want to know how they know, I just want to know that they have a good record of being right.

Interesting. Good intuitive decisions being applause, but when the bad intuition costs you money, I'm sure things hit the fan.

if you try to keep everything in your company under your own control, then your company has built its own coffin: It's limited by itself in every direction. If you think of your company as a box, then there should be only one side to the box. The rest of the box should be open.

From GM Has a New Model for Change

inside virtually all big companies -- is that you spend most of your time with people who are exactly like you. To counter this insularity, Ochalek, 43, lobbied to get his team out into the real world. Members of APEx went to work inside various car dealerships and visited with companies in different industries. They stopped attending auto shows and started going to Internet conferences, consumer-electronics trade shows, and toy fairs.

sania

India's really proud of Sania Mirza. She's in the press all the time, and you can see her advertising jewellery on billboards all over town. Recently, some clerics made an uproar about her short skirts on court.

Here's a nice article in reaction to all the fuss. You go Sania!

file systems and web ui's

From an interview with Hans Reiser:

I also learned to focus on the little things in the data that don't make sense. Often the guys I hire will disregard them, thinking there must be something wrong with the benchmark since it does not make sense. Being more experienced I know that the things that don't make sense are the most important data collected. Time and again, getting to the bottom of a minor performance anomaly that should not exist reveals a design flaw or failure in my understanding, and curing it leads to an advance in our performance that was well worth having. (link from osnews)

pretty cool. I think I tend to turn a blind eye to anomolous data. I didn't get all the way through the interview...

I forget where, but I saw a link to this site called A List Apart.

A List Apart Magazine (ISSN: 1534-0295) explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on techniques and benefits of designing with web standards.

My first observation was that the site is beautiful. I read some of the articles today and they taught me a lot about CSS. I now subscribe to the feed so hopefully my web-authoring skills will improve. I hate crappy-looking sites. And I hate writing crappy UI code - even if it looks nice. Hopefully, some of the techniques mentioned will help beautify both the end-product and what lies beneath.

Incidentally, I'm working on a little app using Ruby on Rails. After working on very platform-level distributed systems code, it's fun to work on a web app. Sometimes I focus on db stuff, sometimes I work on the functionality, sometimes it's usability, and sometimes I just putz around trying to make it look pretty.

Update: I really want to make sure I have a ticketing system in place before I release my web-app (even though it's not going to be a huge release). Here's a somewhat long, but informative rant that reminded me why it's a great idea.

gems from FC

From Here's How to Make It to the Top:

"I've been so successful in my climbing because I usually haven't turned back during that final, exhausting 5%. Making it to the top isn't about a final sprint; it's about maintaining your rhythm - even if that rhythm is five breaths for every one step. That kind of focus means that you're more likely to have the energy to deal with unforeseen challenges - and less likely to lose sight of why you're climbing the mountain in the first place."

I thought upward (manager) evaluations were standard practice. I'm horrified to know that they are not.

From The Fall and Rise of David Pottruck

Just before the meeting got started, Andy Grove, the gruff chairman of Intel's board at the time, pulled Pottruck aside. " 'When you got promoted to CEO,' " Pottruck remembers him saying, " 'did that make you a better man?' I said no. He said, 'Well then, do you think the fact that you're no longer CEO of Schwab means you're not a better man?' I said, 'No, I don't think so.' He said, 'You're as good a man as you were last week. Hold your head high.' It helped me a lot."

my wife's murder

Last Wednesday was Ganesh Chathurthi, so we had the day off. Sindya and I decided to go watch a movie with Praveen. We ended up watching My Wife's Murder, a Hindi movie about, well... read the review I linked to if you want to know. I loved it because none of the characters are overly exaggerated. And, although the main character ends up making some pretty crazy decisions, he seems to be responding to the very real first instinct that we (at least I) have of running and hiding from problems. Apart from hoping that I never get into the same situation as the protagonist, I found myself constantly being like "shoot... I wonder if I would've made a similar decision?"

This weekend Sindya and I went shopping for a small music system. In the process of driving around town, we also stopped by an exhibition of 'nature lamps'. This one artist has made lamps out of tree bark. We ended up buying a free standing lamp. It should get delivered today; I'll see if I can post a picture.

On Saturday night we had an anagrams party with a twist; everyone had to bring a guest who we didn't know. It was cool; I ended up meeting some really cool people. It's funny because all of the random people actually ended up having some connection to someone else at the party; small world.

(If you haven't played anagrams before, you have, to try it. It's frikkin awesome)

Back to Monday. No rowing for the next few weeks; the Army rowing team is preparing for a competition so they hog the boats and don't let civilians play. Oh well.
Update: Lamp pictures here and here. Hiking pictures from two weekends ago here and here.

(more) rowing

Maybe it's annoying reading about day-to-day progress in my rowing abilities. But it's still pretty exciting for me so I'm writing anyway.

Today I went on a double-scull with this girl Sarita who's been rowing a few months. It felt awesome. I got a really good workout (arms are in pain) and it was just so cool to have two sets of oars rowing in time (most of the time) and the boat just shooting (at least compared to rowing when you're tied to the dock) across the water.

When we were out there, I looked to shore and saw that Sindya was out on a single scull. She was actually standing up on it without holding the oars. That's super difficult to do. She eventually fell in. But given that I fell in while sitting down with only one hand off the oars, she did pretty damn well. She divulges the secret to her balance here.

Pretty soon, Sindya and I may be able to go out on a double-scull by ourselves. And if it's anything like riding a tandem cycle with her, I'm sure I'll get a solid workout. :)

On an unrelated note, check out amazon's cool ajax UI for doing a
diamond search.

waterskiing!

So this morning we went to Ulsoor for rowing. Sindya and I did ran around the lake and were just stretching and waiting in line for a single-scull. Today was the day we were meant to practice balancing in a scull while tied to the pier.

Just then, they brought out some waterskis and there was an army guy trying to learn how to waterski. He wasn't able to get out of the water, and I made some comment about his skis not being positioned correctly. One of the coaches overheard so he turned to me and asked if I knew how to ski. Then he was like "will you show us?" It was issued as sort of a challenge. So I said that I could definitely give it a try.

Well eventually the boat came in and I got into the water. The only thought going through my head was "shit. now a bunch of army guys are going to get a laugh out of me falling" Luckily, I was able to get up on the first try and even cross the wake a few times.

After two rounds of the lake I came back to shore and watched Sindya's balancing act in the scull (she had already gotten in). There wasn't time for me to try today, but that's okay. I haven't waterskied in oh about... fifteen years. So I've spent the rest of the morning smiling from ear to ear.

PS: I should mention that Ulsoor was no cleaner today than it was yesterday. So if I die because of sewage ingestion, then we all know why. :) (actually it wasn't that bad)

gluttony

Moral: Gluttons shouldn't go to an all-you-can-eat place when starving.

Story: After rowing this morning and attempting to improve my running time (no luck: still did 16:54 around the lake), I rushed to the office and forgot to pick up breakfast either at home or near the office. By 11am I was starved and light headed.

Every Wednesday they have an all-you-can-eat salads-and-cold-cuts buffet at a german cafe (Cafe Schlomegger) above the Max Meuler center in Bangalore. I called and made a reservation for 12:30 (when they open). I ate about four full plates of meat and salads, after which Sindya (who didn't eat quite as much as me) proceeded to order dessert. Of course, I had to have some of that too.

After a 90 minute lunch, I could barely walk the four flights of stairs back down to the road. An hour later I'm at work feeling unbearably sick. ugh

On a side note, Moohaha writes about bad drivers in the US. I'm amused

running

The rowing coaches want us to be sufficiently warmed up before starting to row, so I've been running around Ulsoor Lake every morning for most days the past two weeks (the long weekend excluded).

I was told that it's 3.6 km around the lake.

I timed myself the past three days and the times were 18:34, 17:40, 16:54 respectively. Pretty rapid improvement once I started timing myself, but I know I'm getting closer to my current limits.

As soon as I get under 15 minutes I'll be close to a six-and-a-half-minute-mile, which is my current goal. I'm told that the Army dudes run it in under 15.

Given that I do an hour of rowing after that, I'll probably just stick at that, until it becomes painlfully easy for me (wishfull thinking)