lunatechian (lunatech-ian)

casio's g-shock watch

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:46:38 +0100

New entry at my site - a review for my watch, Casio's G-Shock MT-G Atomic Tough Solar Watch, which I love. Read more here

weird dream

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:58:31 +0100

I had a very weird dream tonight. I saw that I was a space traveller and we came in contact with aliens who could live in 17 dimensions. These aliens did not try to kill us off, but they made us humans well aware of the inadequacies of living in "just" 3 dimensions. These guys looked similar to humans, but I do not remember what other things they could see that we could not.

realization

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:52:11 +0100

I arranged my closet and I found out that I have more shirts than t-shirts. Luckily, I have only one pair of pants and 6 pairs of jeans, so I am not handing back my geek badge anytime soon

Why did Snape ask Harry to look at him

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:57:45 +0100

The most touching scene in the Harry Potter books is the death of Snape.

"Lookatme" Snape whispered.
The green eyes found the black, but after a second, something in the depths of the dark pair seemed to vanish

Snape wanted to look into Harry's eyes because Harry had Lily's eyes,the woman he's loved in life and in death. I was lucky to get this the first time I had read the "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows" book and with his dying wish, I was able to better appreciate Snape's bravery and his character.

Higher Order Perl

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:25:53 +0100

I am in love with the book Higher-Order Perl, especially the technique in the Chapter 2: Dispatch Tables.

word of the day: proscribe

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:40:40 +0100

Proscribe: to denounce or condemn (a thing) as dangerous or harmful; prohibit.

This word seems closely related to the word Prescribe, but I could not find any source which would mark proscribe as the antonym of proscribe.

Sliders

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:34:51 +0100

This is a recommendation for my fellow geeks who enjoy sci-fi series. You should check out Sliders. The premise of the story is that a college genius invents a machine that gives him the ability to travel between dimensions. There are infinite number of worlds and there are an infinite number of story-lines to go with it. With his friend Wade Wells and Professor Arturo, Quinn (the college genius) decide to take a spin round the universe and due to some accidents, they are not able to get back to their home.

We see universes where alternate outcomes to world changing events have happened and things are different from what they are "back home". The pilot episode deals with the possibility where communist ideology has won the cold war.

One of the episodes that I enjoyed was "Eggheads". This is a world where intellect is prized and nerds are heroes. You have billboard of Einstein modeling for Gap in khakis, and a sports guide written by Stephen Hawking. The best part of this episode were the "bad guys", who threatened using Latin phrases!

I am still on Season 2 (netflix disk 1). Go check it out.

lifehack idea: not getting influenced by personality

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:59:56 +0200

I have been thinking that sometimes personalities of the speaker affects the way I perceive his ideas. i.e. if the speaker has a pleasant personality, and presents his ideas with a calm demur, I will be more agreeable with his point of view and I will take in his evidence with an open mind. However, if the speaker is unpleasant or if he is not calm and confident while presenting his ideas, I sometimes dismiss his ideas and evidence as unworthy of my attention.

I think I might have found a workaround for this issue. Whenever I find myself strongly agreeing or strongly disagreeing with someone's ideas, I would do a "vice-versa" on the speaker's personality and see if I still agree with the evidence. What this means is, if I find myself strongly agreeing with someone, I will imagine him presenting his facts and ideas at the top of his voice or in a very shaky voice. Similarly, if I find myself strongly disagreeing with someone's ideas, I will imagine him talking in a calm manner and in a strong voice.

The idea here is to try and subtract out the effect of personalities when listening to new theories and ideas.

touching pic from postsecret about a pet

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:46:38 +0200

taken from postsecret.com

This image really touched me. In my mind's eye, I can see the image of a dog waiting for his end and looking around to find someone he trusts to console him and not finding him there for him. If I had a pet and if I had to euthanize him, I would have left the room too, as it would have been hard for me. However, after seeing this pic, I am sure I will not leave. I am a great believer in keeping trust and "being there" for family, friends and people who trust me. Leaving the pet alone when he is about to die would be a selfish decision and a breaking of the trust a pet has for his owner.

GPL still matters

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:48:35 +0200

Today morning I came across this piece of writing - Does GPL still matter?. The whole article is based on a few anecdotes from CEOs and marketing droids. They have gotten quite a few points wrong in the article.

GPL is a developer friendly license. The basic premise of the GPL is that the user should not subtract from the freedom he gets when redistributing software. GPL is not restrictive. It merely insists that whoever takes from the common pool must contribute back to the pool.

I would like to point to these 2 articles in support of GPL -

interesting meetup on July 14

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:13:06 +0200

I attended the Hackers and Founders meetup yesterday. It was a high energy meetup and I liked it. When I walked in, I was already 2 hours late but there were still quite a few people around. I walked in, took a name tag and tried to "merge in". Merging was easy - the folks were friendly and did not mind if you joined the discussion.

Some observations

I did not have a good answer for "what are you working on right now" . This made me realize that from a technology perspective, I have not worked on anything interesting for some time now. I have tinkered with a few things in the past 6 months (man!), but have not really done a deep dive on any of them.
There was a focus on programming language in the group. I am not sure if the choice of a programming language is really a big deal when creating a webapp. Rails, PHP, Python, Perl, Java - all have a good web framework. One of the arguments was that it would be difficult to organize PHP code in a coherent manner. In my opinion, that is a matter of discipline instead of language.
I did not find people thinking of totally different ideas. Or maybe, the folks were not telling those ideas . The ideas floated around ads, community, social networking, websites etc.
I am not a unique case when it comes to the case of creating a startup. A few folks there had a regular job and were planning on side projects.

Imagination

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 19:08:21 +0200

Imagination is your key to unlock the hidden wonders of our world. Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

OMFG!! Is that a ..

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:55:20 +0200

OMFG!! Is that a Romulan Warbird decloaking in front of us. OMFG!! They are hailing us.

Actually, no. It is just me posting to my blog. I had a busy month and hence my website and my blog took a backseat.

So what all have I been up to -

Facebook is the new Orkut. I find myself logging into FB every day now.
Yahoo!'s iphone app is great.
Finally got myself a postpaid AT&T connection, with their data plan. In my opinion, it is easier to get a phone connection in India than it is in USA.
The iphone + google maps app + at&t data plan make a great way to explore new places. My wife and me used it when exploring places in San Francisco.
I am now cycling to work! After some research, I bought myself a Schwinn Frontier bike and I am pretty happy with it. The only problem that I see in this bike is its hard seat, but from what I heard, this is not a bad thing. This review pretty much sums up my opinion about the bike as well.
Oh yes - Star Trek!! I saw this movie and I was impressed. In fact, I was so impressed that I clapped when the movie ended (oddly, very few people clapped)
GIT. That has been a new addition to my programming arsenal. Git is really nice and I am loving it. I have to deep dive into the git branches, but even the basic stuff from git have made source control easy.
Oh yes - I checked out Songbird music player. If you are already using Amarok, don't bother with Songbird. Amarok is way ahead of it. If, on the other hand, iTunes is the only player you know, then give Songbird a spin. It is much nicer than iTunes.

A Hard Day's Night

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:16:12 +0200

This song is dedicated to my pager and my wife. This song needs to be sung in the same tune as A Hard Day's Night

It's been a hard day's night, and the beeper has been beeping like a ticking clock
It's been a hard day's night, I should be sleeping like a log
But when I get home to you I'll find the pager beeping off some more
It Will make me feel like a dull robot

You know I work all day to get you money to buy you things
And it's worth it just to hear you say you're going to give me everything
So why on earth should I moan, 'cause when I get you alone
You know I feel ok

git-svn on macports

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:09:22 +0200

If you are using macports, you will notice that git svn init will give you this erro git: 'svn' is not a git-command. This is because the default build of the macports git does not build git-svn. You can do the following steps to fix this

sudo port deactivate git
sudo port install git +svn

Be preapeared for a long build - this will pull in svn and related dependencies.