lunatechian (lunatech-ian)

Thanks to Sachac for pointing out this list of questions to review your year.

What did I learn this year?

Let me see. On the technical side I learnt quite a lot.

• a bit of Perl
• quite a lot of MySQL
• new things in PHP, especially related to web services and graphs
• lots of new stuff related to high availability and failover
• lots of new stuff in troubleshooting

On the non technical side, I did not learn much

• I finally read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• I started taking steps to manage my time well. I am following the Getting Things Done forums and mailing lists, picking up great tips from them but have yet to read THE BOOK. It was this year that I learnt about emacs-planner for managing tasks
• I read a few management type books, they are not that bad

The lessons of life that I learnt this year

• I am much better than I think I am
• Family support and good friends are the most important assets that someone can have
• Don't try to get stereotyped
• An idea does not have to be big, it has to change the world
• It is a good idea to write and publish about every new thing that I learn.

What did I accomplish this year?

Quite a lot, if I can say that myself

• Got selected to be a part of Yahoo! Bangalore
• Moved from Delhi to Bangalore and established a household here
• One of the interns I mentored got selected to become a regular employee
• Got published in webzines
• Kickstarted the PHPC Gazette, which is still in its infancy but I am sure something good will come out of it
• Wrote articles on my website that proved useful to a bunch of people
• Spoke on Y! webservice at Freedel
• Got a good year end appraisal
• Discovered Terry Pratchett

Which accomplishments am I proudest of?

• Getting selected to be a part of Yahoo! bangalore
• Kickstarting the PHPC Gazette

Knowing what I know now, what would I have done differently in the past year?

Let me see.

• Written more articles
• Written more code for my favourite free software
• Read more Terry Pratchett

What will be my greatest lasting memories of this year?

• Getting selected into Yahoo!. Absolutely something that I will always remember.
• Moving to Bangalore from Delhi

In what ways did I contribute?

Not in as many ways as I would have liked to, just in small ways

• Helped my previous colleague in taking over from where I left off
• Started the PHPC Gazette
• Submitted one patch for AMO. I should have done more
• Answered a bunch of questions on php-general, linux-delhi and some other mailing lists and IRC channels.
• Supported my brother and sister for this year

What were my biggest challenges or obstacles?

• Not enough time management
• I am not punctual
• I am not caring about my health, even though I am aware that it might give me trouble later in life

What obstacles did I overcome?

• Reduced the time I spend in the office from 16 hours to 9 hours, though this change took place only in December
• Established a household in a new city

How am I different now than I was at the start of the year?

• I am more confident than I was when the year started
• I am more willing to voice my disagreements, both in person and over email
• I have stopped saying RTFM to questions now
• I am fatter
• I know how to better manage my time now (but this is still a ongoing struggle )

What am I most grateful for?

• The support of my family
• My job

What else do I want to reflect on?

I should have contributed more to Free Software projects than I do now, and by contributing I mean more in terms of code. I need to figure out a way to fit exercise in my schedule and lose weight.

Originally posted posted Thu, 13 Nov 2003

I came across an interesting essay, Consumer Angst, today. It mirrors very well what I feel about products that try to ride on advertising instead of innovation. Take Microsoft, also known as the evil empire, and Linux. Everyone (well almost everyone) agrees that Linux is more scalable and robust than Microsoft < insert your Windows version > . Yet, there is this amorphous resentment, this inclination to trust a glossy advertisement more than an impartial report by your IT department. Well, my bile seems to be spreading all around and getting out of hand, so I will return back to the essay.

The reason I like the essay is that instead of ranting (like me), he fleshes out the issue very well. Here is an excerpt from the essay

Here are some examples of the minor lies that are included n advertising to support the big lie:
"New!" - How can something be simultaneously new  and absolutely essential to survival? Or, given the thesis that new is better, the advertiser should honestly list the ways that the old new product failed us, thus setting the stage for inevitable disenchantment with the new new product.

Another of my favorite quote (and especially relevant in an argument between Linux and Microsoft) is

"It costs more, but it is worth it." By implication, things that cost more are worth more, and by negation, things that have no price also have no value. This is an appeal to reject the entire natural world out of hand.

Before I got myself the rajshekhar.net domain, I used to have a blog at journlaspace.com. I have stopped posting to it completely (I use the JS account to read the blog of siome of the people ), but there are still a few good entries in it. Over the next few days, I will bring them into this blog. This suddent spurt in posts should not be seen as a burst of creativity

Geek Pick-Up Lines: Part 3 - Also collected from part 1 and part 2

• No matter how I sort things, you'll always be first.
• You put the SPARC in my workstation.
• By looking at you I can tell you're 36-25-36, which by the way are all perfect squares.
• My 'up-time' is better than BSD.

Some good parts from a speech by John Gilmore

• I want a guarantee -- with physics and mathematics, not with laws -- that we can give ourselves things like real privacy of personal communications. Encryption strong enough that even the NSA can't break it.
• We also want real privacy of personal records. Our computers are extensions of our minds. We should build them so that a thought written in the computer is as private as that thought held in our minds.

A question that has been on my mind for a long time was put in by my friend Mary (he is the sysadmin at Sarai). Let me give a bit of the background. When I was in Delhi, a bunch of us fellow-geeks used to meet almost twice a month to talk about our hacking projects, our current work (all of us were happily free of NDAs), have a good dinner and generally get into debates about topics that would be considered a taboo (or inappropriate by most people). Once when we were joking about how prostitution is legal in Thailand and what procedure would the government be using to collect the taxes (I mean, how will they cross check the receipts), that Mary popped the question "Why do you think prostitution is wrong ?" . My first reaction was "It is not the right thing to do" - however, I realized that pushing my judgement of what is right and what is wrong on someone else is not the correct thing to do. I have been thinking of why I consider prostitution to be wrong - it is a profession - a service is provided and a price is paid for it.

This question again came to the front of my mind when I read this blog post by Joshua Newton. He writes about the An autobiography of a sex worker by Nalini Jameela. He posts the following quote from the book

Some see brothels as a space for sexual perverts.
They are wrong. Why do people of all walks of life come to us? Parents prevent our sexual desires in the beginning. Then teachers in schools. Then moralists in churches, mosques, and temples slap rules. When you grow up, police and courts take up the role. They spread the rule one man for one woman. Yet people seek out prostitutes all over the world in all ages. What does it prove?

So are you against moral structures?
No. Men dictate the morality of this age. They use wives or sex workers to their ends. We dream of a new dawn of morality. Sexuality like food and shelter is a terrain of human tastes. It is still to be developed into a plateau of endless tastes and forms. Morality should not suppress. It should be liberating. When sex work turns into one among many human service sectors, you will stop suppressing yourself and others.

I have not read the book but this book is definitely on my to-read book

There is absolutely something heavenly in being drunk and listening to Curt Cobain. The lyrics start to make sense

A discussion was going on in the Linux Gazette's The Answer Gang about a post by RMS on harry potter book. Ben Okopnik, an all-round nice guy and a perl guru, made the following observation -

> If the injunction really orders them not to read the books they have 
> purchased, that strikes me as wrong, but hey, we all know the law is an ass, 
> even in Canada. If I'd bought a book and got an injunction like this, I'd 
> still read it, I just wouldn't tell them 

...and if we extend that line of reasoning just a bit further, it brings
us to (what I think is) RMS' original point. How much of a right do we
grant to our governments to declare arbitrary actions illegal, no matter
how trivial or harmless?

The cynic in me says that governments love having their citizens buy
into a belief that they (the citizens) are guilty of something; people
with something to hide are likely to keep their heads down and be good
little sheep lest they be noticed and shorn. As the saying in Russia
went, "nobody ever asks 'why' when the KGB takes them away." The KGB, of
course, had a matching expression: "if we have the man, we'll make the
case."

If the government is allowed to control trivial aspects of people's
lives, then they will do so. Not in all cases, but... oh, the
"opportunities" that arise. Perhaps this case is not as black-and-white
as it could be, but I surely do see it as a very steep and well-greased
slippery slope - with its entry point just under a hidden trap door.


 Ben Okopnik  Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette  http://linuxgazette.net 

I agree with his sentiments completely. Most people assume the government to be all knowing and always correct entity. What they forget is that the government is not an amorphous mass, it is made of people - who might have no clue. Anyone has just to look at the Indian government's blunderings in the IT LAW to learn how clueless it is.