lunatechian (lunatech-ian)

Got this email from one reader

Hi,

I found your blogs from more than TWO years ago on working for small companies very funny and interesting. I am getting ready to switch jobs from a large office (60 people in my department alone) to a very small institute (6 people). Your insights will be useful to keep in mind!

Sweet! Thanks. The reader was referring my blog posts my perspectives on working in a small company

Links:

• my perspectives on working in a small company - Part 1
• my perspectives on working in a small company - Part 2

• Toilet paper use flags inequities - Indians consume toilet paper worth $7.7 million each year, according to an assessment made by the World Watch Institute, which has concluded that toilet paper use reveals the inequities in access to sanitation globally. ..... [snip] .... When these figures are juxtaposed with the numbers of people who do not have access to proper toilets, the inequities in terms of services and basic amenities are evident, according to World Watch. The U. S. and Canada enjoy 100 per cent access to sanitary toilets. In India 67 per cent of the people do not have access to them. Africa is even more pathetic.
• Americas' "earliest recorded gunshot victim" - A 500-year-old human body sports a wound believed to have been caused by a Spanish firearm, in the first documented gunshot victim in the New World, found in an Inca cemetery near Lima, Peru.

Hugh McGuire is the founder of LibriVox.org. LibriVox is a volunteer project to make great books available to everyone as free audiobooks.

A few weeks back, I listened to an interview of Hugh McGuire (the interviewer was Jon Udell) and it is quite interesting to see how a part time project grows into a major project involving so many people. Hugh mentioned that most of the work for LibriVox is done using forums.

I am downloading books from libriVox and listening them on the weekend on my ipod.

Links:

• Jon Udell's interview with Hugh McGuire
• LibriVox
• Euthyphro by Plato - the book that I heard

Have you checked out the new my yahoo! ?

link: Announcement

I was reading the Top Five Scale-Out Pitfalls to Avoid article. I knew about 4 of the 5 techniques that they mentioned, however, this one was new to me

1. Avoid Mixing Hot and Cold Data

   Similar to #3 is mixing hot (frequently-changed) and cold (more static) data, especially when it comes to write activity. Since database writes are more difficult and expensive to scale, it is advisable to keep this type of data away from data that does not change that often. Again, separating the data onto different databases and/or servers can significantly enhance your application's performance.

# Title:

I am at the Delhi airport and the secne here is chaotic. I am travelling by Spicejet airways and it looks like the whole world is planning to fly in the same aeroplane. The queue managmnet for Spicejet is t3h suck - I don't think I will travel with Spicejet again unless I am in a major financial crunch. A good thing about the airport though is that there are enough electrical points - if you are willing to sit on the floor. The seats next to electric plug points are occupied by fat, sleeping middle aged women .

Before leaving for this Delhi trip I had setup a very nifty mail setup on my laptop which allows me to read my mail even offline. It involves dovecot and offlineimap.

Delhi weather is really crappy right now - too damn hot. The people here are as ill-behaved as ever. I hardly see anyone standing in the queue or waiting politely for their turn to come.

That is all the update that I have from the Delhi airport.

I have lived in Bangalore for the past two years. Before Bangalore, I was in Delhi for ten years. I was born in Bihar, and I lived there for around sixteen years. When someone asks me, "Which place do you belong to?", I usually answer "Bihar". But it is hard for me to consider Bihar a home now. I have not been there for around ten years now. I think I will call Bangalore my home hence forth. I think it is one city which has rewarded me the most. It is one city that has not discriminated against me for being a Bihari (all North Indians are treated equally badly here ).