| A Movie A Day |
[Apr. 7th, 2007|12:15 am] |
So, I've been watching a lot of movies over the last year. And this final quarter at Stanford, with an effort to take it easy, I want to take this movie watching an extra step. I've decided to try to average and watch atleast one move a day.
I've just started maintaining another blog: http://one-movie-a-day.blogspot.com/ where i'll be adding details about each of the movies i see. Lets see how many I can get done.
/ajay
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| Feeded? |
[Apr. 21st, 2006|11:19 pm] |
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Does anybody still really feed on this feed of mine? |
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| god does answer prayers, albeit a little late |
[Jul. 15th, 2005|12:00 am] |
Long ago, when I was a kid, it doesn’t matter how old a kid I really was, I saw the rest of my family – bro, dad and mom wearing spectacles and looked at myself in the mirror and so wished that I had one of those things on my nose. Maybe it was an acceptance issue, I’ll never know, but I do faintly remember asking Him why I couldn’t have one.
Yes, you could say it’s silly to wish for glasses; but you have to forgive the innocence of a small kid. I vividly remember going to the doc and saying things like, ‘but seriously, I can’t see things that are far away’ and the doc would very wryly retort back: ‘you really don’t need to see that far’.
Like he knew better!
Many years later, and many doctors later, I come to today. The message might have reached Him late, or maybe my dietary habits went southwards, either way, with a quirk of fate, I got my eyes tested today. It wasn’t a childhood dream come true per se this time round, but the statement that I could not see farther objects clearly was finally certified true by the doctor. I don’t feel exactly on top of the world, but I do feel vindicated in front of all those previous doctors. A pair of prescription lenses to rectify the optical defect of 1.25 on both of my eyes is the word of the day to share with my friends (and restart my blogging?).
Truly speaking, it may be due to the many years added onto my hairline, or just plain realization and shared wisdom, I’m not looking forward to my face playing host to extra gear. Life turns its wheels in circles, or He just loves looking at this melodrama on earth. Forgive this question of a 23 year old young man, but I looked at him in near disbelief and say, ‘but seriously, do I really need to see that far away?’ and to think that when I heard the final statement that he was to make, even the child in me was not jumping in glee: ‘oh, you really need to wear spectacles!’
Sigh! Like he knew better!
So there it stands: I can testify.
God does listen to your prayers. He just has a huge backlog of things to handle before he can get to yours.
Not timely, but time for another ice age?
/ajay |
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| whats cooking? |
[Feb. 12th, 2005|04:46 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Whitesnake - Here i go again | ] |
first there was nothing, then there was an electric cooker cum heater, an LPG single valve stove, a microwave oven, a non stick Teflon pan, 1lt cooking oil, a thousand grammes of rice and packets of instant mixes. A couple of hours back, out from the erstwhile clothes dump room of my apartment: the kitchen, came freshly cooked hot rice that fed three mouths!! ladies and gentlemen; a momentous day indeed!! i ate what i cooked for the first time after coming to bangalore !!
while i'm gloating in this a-oh-so proud moment, plug that thought of asking why plunging into this exercise took 18 months in gestation. some things are better left as an unsolved mystery and relegated as another testimony of erratic human behaviour. most philosophers would attribute it as a toast to our laziness; i wouldn't want to contest or commit.
but what is true, is that the kitchen was left in a slight mess. but strangely, while i was contently walking out of it, i thought i heard a voice, a very kitcheny one, pronounce that it was craving to get messier. now, i wouldn't want to disappoint it would i? wonder if my maid will ask for a raise...
in the midst of satiated stomachs, my room mates very eloquently declared me the cook of the house. but i do believe there is a conspiracy underway there to delegate all the cooking to me :-)
either way, its rice and dal for lunch 'morrow. for tonite, theres this paneer makhani instant mix packet that i'm waiting to try. anyone care to join in?
/ajay
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| Feels like forever.. |
[Feb. 11th, 2005|08:11 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Heart - Alone | ] |
Feels like forever. forever since history happened. forever since i'm here, forever since i've been there, forever since i remember, forever since i blogged.
And since forever, the miles have kept rolling.
The guitar has called me back again. Got a couple of songs in, and a couple more tunes are brewing in the mind. Am looking ahead with an aim of getting half an hour of a stamp of my identity into music. At work, theres another effort to get a band together - just heard that a drummer has joined in at work ! boy! just cant wait to jam.
So whats been happening over a month except the guitar? numbers and abbrevations rule:
* 100 years of solitude, will be a book that i will grade as one of the best reads i've had in many a year.
* M5 completion was just announced;
* 60% optimization in download size of my feature with a sinking feeling that i wouldnt forget for a long time: sun spots of work for the last month
* 1Kg of rice that I bought for the first time in 18 months, which will be cooked today.(So, why dont we cook at home? Ahh.. it has been such a toast to our laziness, that we very energetically pursue to keep it that way)
* 1 friend whose learning the rope and is surely to be affected by events of last month more than he realizes,
* 903MB of music added to my collection which brings my pi hdd collection to 16.8 GB
* 0 night outs. (hmm.. the first month since a long time since this happened)
otherwise eventless :-)
/ajay
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| Research In India |
[Jan. 12th, 2005|01:21 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Dream Theater - Through Her Eyes | ] |
Just came back from the inaguration of Microsoft's 6th MSR (MS Research) unit to be housed in Bangalore. Taj West End hosted MS and Kapil Sibal who inagurated it. The research wing, third outside the US will focus initially on multilinugual systems, technologies for emerging markets, GIS systems, and physical sensor systems. Interesting work many of them.
Btw, they are looking out for good researchers. Apparently the only criterea is that you must be Good - with a very good IQ level. What you then do in the unit, is upto you. And your interest is nurtured... You get to work on anything that you want. The entire team seemed extremely academically interested, and the delegations and guests included many profs from IISc, IIT D,B and C.
Will be great to see how this picks up. It is nice to see a trend of good research happening in India. Many researchers seem to be heading back to India, and Industires are setting up units here too. A very promising trend. But does India have the academic infrastructure to encourage and sustain good research? I would still have to believe that there is a way to go before India can 'train' and nurture young researchers. Steps like what MS, GE and HP are taking in investing in the minds of India, will of course be a good step in this process. Encourage and step up research and invest in quality human resources is what i would say to the Govt and global industries.
India has been and is producing talented and smart graduates. And India has made a mark in great researches around the globe. The missing link is the process in the middle in creating researchers of note and findings of quality. Even today, many of us would love to go to places that have the best atmosphere for reasearch. It would be nice to see a change in this area in India. Self sufficiency has never harmed any country.
/ajay |
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| the trite ringing in of the year |
[Jan. 5th, 2005|09:59 am] |
'tis been a long time, AD2005 rings in and its just another year in the vast ocean of uncounted years gone by.
aldous huxley portrayed a 'brave new world' in 1932, and i'm surprised that we havent reached half way into his visionary thoughts.
we have a long way to go my fellow earthlings.
31'st was just like the one of the previous year: in kerala.
but the week before the year ended signaled the way majority of last year has been: 15 hour parties and hang outs that just seem to come every other day of the week.
a social life thats rejuvenated, kicked itself in the butt and propelled itself to newer highs. No ones complaining except my purse ;-)
my phraseology of the year gone by would talk about a long and eventful year, a lost love, a gained new life, switched jobs, rewards, parties coupling the social life and reunions of friends of yore.
happy to know that i am still reinventing and discovering myself. it keeps one alive...
and am not starting anything 'new' this year. just keeping things going the way they are!!!
/ajay |
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| Foot Massage... |
[Nov. 15th, 2004|03:08 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | The Beatles - Michelle | ] |
Got my foot run over by a car yesterday evening. Its a lot less dramatic than you might imagine it to be, but its not a walk in the park either.
If you ride a bike you'll know that when you reach a speed close to overtaking an ant on his way to get an evening snack (with the added conditional that you are not one of those adventure sports enthusiasts we watch on tv) then you have to put your feet down to get balance. And thats just what i did - while on the way to church, i stopped for a traffic light and I habitually and innocently put my right leg down to gain my standing.
Thats when i felt a very warm feeling on my right foot. A quick look down gave me this pretty sight of a bridgestone tire promptly riding over my foot. The scene and the tire were running at .5X frames per second; just like in the movies.
It was weird, i dont remember it feeling very nice, but i'm sure that that was because my brain took lodging in my foot for a while and was not doing much of it usual role of interpreting and feeling. I didnt have time enough to give my thanks to the driver of the car, but i did reach down to my foot to feel if it was actually there. And thats when it officially started to hurt. I went to the side and wriggled my toes. I was happy when they cried in pain: I could feel them: they weren't broken.
Managed to get to church, with the thoughts of how'd i'd forgotten what bangalore traffic was all about. And right now am nursing the swollen metacarpel equivalent on the foot and a sweet spot on it that will keep my sneakers on the shelf for more than a couple of days.
As kamath says, its a momentous event to be blogged :-)
/ajay |
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| browser slide shows that dont suck |
[Oct. 31st, 2004|11:33 am] |
just look at what css can do to your brwoser presentation, and take a peek at the source, its fairly simple. and practical.
i did think its a little heavy though.
/ajay |
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| packet decodes |
[Oct. 31st, 2004|11:02 am] |
SYN
now why didnt we look at this when we were writing our NAT
/ajay FIN |
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| Enabling Frame Buffer Mode |
[Oct. 15th, 2004|07:12 pm] |
Enabling framebuffer mode works on most intel machines. It gives a higher resolution into your console (non-X based) In a single step if you want to get it done, just add the following parameter to the grub.conf or lilo.conf or my grub.conf entry for my fc2 looks like this: title Fedora Core (2.6.5-1.358smp)
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.358smp ro root=LABEL=/1 vga=0x318 rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.5-1.358smp.img
the 0xxxx number specifies the resolution. other modes are : | * | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x1024 | | 256 | 0x301 | 0x303 | 0x305 | 0x307 | | 32K | 0x310 | 0x313 | 0x316 | 0x319 | | 64K | 0x311 | 0x314 | 0x317 | 0x31A | | 16M | 0x312 | 0x315 | 0x318 | 0x31B |
find out more details in this site: http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/hiresconsole.html
/ajay |
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| google desktop |
[Oct. 14th, 2004|11:36 pm] |
and here it is finally !!!
http://desktop.google.com/
man, these people are heading in some direction allright!
they are getting closer to doing all that one can do with a search algorithm :-)
modeling every single application based on search is a novel way of getting a bussiness done.
am waiting to see this.gooProductNumber+1
/ajay |
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| BMI Bummer ! |
[Oct. 14th, 2004|10:19 am] |
you know, there actually exists a company called "cyberkintics"?
its actually called Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems.
making the brain talk to machines is surely something i've been interested in. Great to hear that they have gone a step closer to that. Cyberkinetics coupled with Duke and Brown (sigh..!) have managed to train a guy to play Pong using sensors attached to the brain !
and could DARPA be far behind on such ventures? its doing its duty by pumping in money and acronyms.
they call in BMI - the Brain Machine Interface. cool na? :-)
would be nice to work on such a topic.
heres the news article that talks abt it.
btw, if you have some idea, send DARPA a white paper
/ajay |
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| synaptic driver for the touch-pad |
[Sep. 24th, 2004|06:11 pm] |
got my touchpad working with full functionality on my Dell Inspiron 5150.
Up until now, the tap to click was not working, so thought i'd go about configuring it, and now the scrolling this is also working
here what you have to do:
1. the Synaptics Driver is housed at this site. you can download the files from there
the driver supports a lot of laps and the entire list is quite comprehensive.
2. untar the tar ball
3. get into the directory and type
> make
followed by
> make install
4. thats done with the module compiled and placed in the module path.
now for the configuration.steps of the instuctions are present in the INSTALL file. some pointers
5. edit the X config file. this is either /etc/X11/XF86Config file or (as in my case) /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.
6. the xorg.conf file has many sections, we have to edit these sections.
into the "ServerLayout" section, add this line
InputDevice "SynapticsMouse" "CorePointer"
7. into the section "Module" add this line
Load "synaptics"
8. add this section along after the section "InputDevice" for the Mouse0
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "SynapticsMouse"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "LeftEdge" "1700"
Option "RightEdge" "5300"
Option "TopEdge" "1700"
Option "BottomEdge" "4200"
Option "FingerLow" "25"
Option "FingerHigh" "30"
Option "MaxTapTime" "180"
Option "MaxTapMove" "220"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "100"
Option "MinSpeed" "0.06"
Option "MaxSpeed" "0.12"
Option "AccelFactor" "0.0010"
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
# Option "Repeater" "/dev/ps2mouse"
EndSection
9. restart X.
10. you should be up and running :-)
/ajay
ps: here is ( my xorg.conf ) |
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| sage for rss. |
[Sep. 20th, 2004|12:52 pm] |
heres a light wieght rss reader that i just love now.
its called sage .
good:
a good directory structure for your blogs
opml support,
atom/rss support,
stylesheet for a good rendering. (i still have to find somebody who actually does this :-) )
one step install.
bad:
it doesnt have any db to hold on to the posts you havent read,
moz dependant.
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| PI Offsite Day 2 & 3 |
[Sep. 20th, 2004|12:10 pm] |
and the fun continued...
saturday was a day for (other than meetings) three hours of tennis, some good german wine, games of snooker, a presentation by mark on the internals of the store at 1130 in the night, and an adhoc team talk at 1am by the pool !
sunday was a day for planning for the next month and m4, a nice presentation by alexis on the way PI is using jxta for its network layer functionality, and talks on the store and forward (coordinator fundas) with adam.
the evening was riddled with a couple of hours of team cricket, a sprained leg and a jack daniel followed by dinner and dessert.
this might just be the way one should live life :-)
heres are some interesting code segments:
(credits H. Warren, Hacker's Delight, 2003)
inline unsigned nextP2(unsigned x)
{
x = x - 1;
x = x | x >> 1;
x = x | x >> 2;
x = x | x >> 4;
x = x | x >> 8;
x = x | x >> 16;
return x + 1;
}
inline int pop(unsigned x)
{
x = x - (x >> 1 & 0x55555555);
x = (x & 0x33333333) + (x >> 2 & 0x33333333);
x = x + (x>>4) & 0x0f0f0f0f; x += x>>8;
return x+(x>>16)&0x3f;
}
the functions are named a little confusing, so dont go by their names.
/ajay |
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| PI Offsite Day 1 |
[Sep. 17th, 2004|11:02 pm] |
up at 830, a decent breakfast and the entire team of PI is on the breakfast table. ahh... thats how a team should be - together.
930 to 530 has now given to me a taste of what it might be like to be in this industry for a long time. meetings after meetings with different directions every hour. stuck , though in the same room, breaking three twenty minutes for tea, lunch and tea in that order.
Quite interesting discussions going on with respect to PI and a sense of what it means to bring up a team and a company from scratch.
there were some interesting points that i got that i want to share:
1. Making 'people' another physically accessable and identifiable entity in the Internet. Its an interesting concept, and it really caught me. and theres something i want to add to this. i firstly think that its a great direction to go towards along with the general concept of accessability of data and hardware. what i also believe is that this focus on making an individual as the focal point should not be a goal with just the Internet in mind, but should transcend the underlying networking infrasctructure.
2. the dichotomy in execution efficiency of a query vs the ability to hold a generic data into a store. well, i'm not much into the database concept, but i can see how this can be a problem. this is what i think:
yes, it is conceivable that the data that you want to store should be possible to be stored in a very generic way such that many other apps that need to access this data will get to use that data in a fasion that is not propriety. but with the knowledge that i have now, i believe that the user is interested in getting results and activity from the app in a faster way making it look as seemless as possible with the underlying software. so i think tht there should be a shift of complexity to the developers work and have a little more understading of the rahter not-so-generic store mechanism.
i want to see how this concept in my mind changes over time.
3. Pual Maritz, my ceo was whom i was sitting next to. and its interesting how experience and money can make people listen to you.
that apart there was this line that he added that seemed to come out of his experience as the group vp for many of the system software at microsfot. to quote:
' ... history has taught us that its the application that becomes the platform in the end...."
an interesting thought, and it makes me again believe that given the spatial location in time that you are in, if you make an application that makes life a lot easier and 'seemless' (am begining to like this usage for the goal of app) then it might just end up becoming a platform. funny how things can just grow and turn out!
this is again somewhere analogous to what my Talisma director of engineering had to tell me before i left talisma.
added to these three points, i thought that the post afternoon post mortem analysis of milestone 3 made a big difference on what to do for further development of this product. as far as where and how our m3 milestone went, i think this perspective of paul would sum it all : "... lets make m4 shorter and let it have a similar goal as m3; but this time, lets get it right!". agree with him on that count.
and at the same time, hope that there arent too many processes that shut you in your friggin shorts.
and once it was 6, it was another hour of tennis (oh man, i think i'm starting to like this game, again)
followed by an hour in a lovely blue pool of water, with some beer on the side :-)
thats how i thnk one has to relax. though, given that i played water football (or hockey or whatever) with a football, makes it harder for me to keep typing with my arms in an upright position. but really, who cares :-) i'm just having a ball of a time !!
good education in the end of it all.
am waiting to see how the next couple of days are going to be too !!
/ajay |
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| PI Offsite Day 0 |
[Sep. 17th, 2004|10:03 pm] |
evening at 7pm, i came into angsana and checked in to room 1005. the wireless network, contrary to the claims of the resort staff, was not exactly 'up'
but looked like a cool place to be in....
well, so it was, and after five years, one hour of tennis ensued. and it felt so good :-)
its been months since i even had a chance to think of anything like a break, and somehow it looks like its going to be a nice time away from bangalore.
the room was a typical top-notch double room. was alone, since my room mate had not checked in. a good dinner, a soft bed, music from the tv and my laptop, a beer, a mystery novel, and french wondows that open into a spans of green grass and a view thats gives you a glimpes of the entire horizon. it somehow felt so good to be in there...
looking forward to see how the next few days go on...
/ajay |
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