Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Of Cold Weather and Warm Rooms
The heater in my room is relishing the cold weather outside. -6 degree Celcius and it's pleased to work to get my room back to 20 degrees. The heater was really jealous of the air conditioner who got to run all summer and through parts of Fall as well.
The fridge in my room finds it queer, to cool the food back to -6 degrees, while the heater is getting the room warmer. The fridge is lazy and tired from work all summer and dislikes the heater for making his job so much harder...even though his friend, the cold weather, is sitting just outside the window.
The food inside the fridge doesn't care. It's just sitting there waiting to be digested by the mighty enzymes of the gargantubrain sitting there watching television.(Did I mention that I'm watching TV?).
The electric company loves the fact that I heat a room in cold weather using electricity and then cool things in the warm room using some more electricity.
The environmentalists hate using electricity for anything... they'd rather move civilization to Florida.
I am pissed that the heater is raising my electricity bill. I dislike the heater, I dislike the weather and I dislike the fridge that cant use the outside air to cool the food. I love the food though... I am waiting to digest it and then sit watching television, wasting away my brain.
The Americans trying to read this post can't make sense out of the temperatures in degrees Celcius. They can't figure out why anyone would spend any time trying to write a post, no one is going to read anyways.
The heater in my room is relishing the cold weather outside. -6 degree Celcius and it's pleased to work to get my room back to 20 degrees. The heater was really jealous of the air conditioner who got to run all summer and through parts of Fall as well.
The fridge in my room finds it queer, to cool the food back to -6 degrees, while the heater is getting the room warmer. The fridge is lazy and tired from work all summer and dislikes the heater for making his job so much harder...even though his friend, the cold weather, is sitting just outside the window.
The food inside the fridge doesn't care. It's just sitting there waiting to be digested by the mighty enzymes of the gargantubrain sitting there watching television.(Did I mention that I'm watching TV?).
The electric company loves the fact that I heat a room in cold weather using electricity and then cool things in the warm room using some more electricity.
The environmentalists hate using electricity for anything... they'd rather move civilization to Florida.
I am pissed that the heater is raising my electricity bill. I dislike the heater, I dislike the weather and I dislike the fridge that cant use the outside air to cool the food. I love the food though... I am waiting to digest it and then sit watching television, wasting away my brain.
The Americans trying to read this post can't make sense out of the temperatures in degrees Celcius. They can't figure out why anyone would spend any time trying to write a post, no one is going to read anyways.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
The Fat Lady Squealing!
Okay I don't know what's wrong with the world but somehow all the elements that make it up are conspiring against me. Firstly none of the career prospects are going anywhere... I am just waiting on the results.
Second I am trying to sublet my apartment and that's not getting sold. I've put out ads in every building close by on campus but its been 5 days and just one person asked to see the apartment. Well maybe its too early but that's forced me to walk in freezing temperatures(It is 0 deg Celcius today) to the Business school, Computer Sci, Psychology, Chemistry, Atmospheric Sciences Depts....
Third, I am getting parking tickets all the time. Earlier I used to keep my car on the street for 5 days instead of 2 and I never got anything.(I have a street parking permit) These days I try to move the car 3 hours past the deadline and the city has already taken away a 20$ bill from my wallet.
I just know that I cant leave anything to chance these days because "the fat lady" is cross with me! I just need to see that silver lining somewhere. I am alive and healthy and sane (or as insane as I was)
Okay I don't know what's wrong with the world but somehow all the elements that make it up are conspiring against me. Firstly none of the career prospects are going anywhere... I am just waiting on the results.
Second I am trying to sublet my apartment and that's not getting sold. I've put out ads in every building close by on campus but its been 5 days and just one person asked to see the apartment. Well maybe its too early but that's forced me to walk in freezing temperatures(It is 0 deg Celcius today) to the Business school, Computer Sci, Psychology, Chemistry, Atmospheric Sciences Depts....
Third, I am getting parking tickets all the time. Earlier I used to keep my car on the street for 5 days instead of 2 and I never got anything.(I have a street parking permit) These days I try to move the car 3 hours past the deadline and the city has already taken away a 20$ bill from my wallet.
I just know that I cant leave anything to chance these days because "the fat lady" is cross with me! I just need to see that silver lining somewhere. I am alive and healthy and sane (or as insane as I was)
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
A Personal History of Personal Computing
I was talking to a friend about when he got started on computers and I thought that it would make a good blog post.
1988
The first time I was introduced to computers was in Class 3. Apple started a programming class for 3rd graders and I learnt Logo as a consequence. Logo was a really simple language in which you learnt how to program a computer to draw various shapes. At Apple I saw a Mac (5MHz) with a GUI and mouse, although I didn't get to play with it much. (Apple later turned into Aptech Computers in India.)
1989
In class 4, I started going to Datapro. They taught me the history of computers and MS-DOS. After that I learnt BASIC, Lotus-1-2-3 and Harvard Graphics. At this point, we also bought a home computer by Sinclair called ZX Spectrum (4MHz). This was a computer with a whopping 64Kb of RAM and displayed on the TV and stored/read programs in BASIC on tape. I played around a lot with this computer and it helped crystallize my knowledge of BASIC to a very great extent.
(What's an even more amazing story is this... One of these chips on the ZX Spectrum got burnt one day, and since the computer was made in England there was no way we could fix it. Turns out that a ZX Spectrum clone was manufactured in Pune in Bhosari under the name DB Spectrum and they repaired our ZX Spectrum one Saturday afternoon.)
I got to see a Commodore 64 (8MHz) as well around that time and salivated immensely on it, but my dad decided against buying one.(My dad is a very conservative person!!) Datapro continued in Class 5 and I was working on PC-286 machines as opposed to the PC-XT (based on Intel 8086 processor which I found out later) machines earlier. The XT machines were rather silly in that one had to boot from a floppy before running any other program. The teachers at Datapro ofcourse hid a lot of these details from you but it was fun nevertheless.
Unfortunately, there was a huge break beyond this and I didn't learn anything new for a long time. We also sold off the ZX Spectrum around Class 7 and although some of my friends started learning C in class 8, I didn't. We didn't buy a PC because the prices kept dropping and new things came out all the time. I really felt deprived and I was a little pissed off with my dad for not getting us a computer. The deal basically was that he had a nice computer with a COLOR MONITOR(!!!!! a very big deal at the time) in his office, so he didn't need to buy one. (This was ofcourse a shared computer and they kept their medical records in Foxpro which students at the University used for their BE projects for a while.)
1996
Finally in Class 10 we bought a Pentium (100MHz) processor based PC. Until this time I hadn't worked much with Windows even, but this was the point when I started learning about most of the Microsoft products. My father was working on a Global Project in Abdominal Pain and hence we got an Internet connection at home. This was in 1997, when most people in Pune didn't have Internet access. I started using the AOL Instant Messenger, Internet Explorer, Eudora.(My dad points out that we upgraded on numerous occassions beyond this time).
1998
In my freshman year in college I learnt C and I was also learning SQL, Java, C++ at NIIT. My skills at C were fairly limited initially but grew substantially by the end of college.
2004
Now I am working on many interesting things in Computing and I am even a Research Assistant in Computer Engineering at one of the top universities in the US. What's really great is that now I have two computers to my disposal, a notebook at home and a top-of-the-line desktop with a 19 inch LCD monitor (thanks to Professor Compton), both Pentium 4-based (3.4GHz) machines both from Dell. I love my 3632-12.ece.wisc.edu !!
I could even end up working on designing one of the fastest supercomputers in the world the SGI Altix series. I'll soon find out.
I was talking to a friend about when he got started on computers and I thought that it would make a good blog post.
1988
The first time I was introduced to computers was in Class 3. Apple started a programming class for 3rd graders and I learnt Logo as a consequence. Logo was a really simple language in which you learnt how to program a computer to draw various shapes. At Apple I saw a Mac (5MHz) with a GUI and mouse, although I didn't get to play with it much. (Apple later turned into Aptech Computers in India.)
1989
In class 4, I started going to Datapro. They taught me the history of computers and MS-DOS. After that I learnt BASIC, Lotus-1-2-3 and Harvard Graphics. At this point, we also bought a home computer by Sinclair called ZX Spectrum (4MHz). This was a computer with a whopping 64Kb of RAM and displayed on the TV and stored/read programs in BASIC on tape. I played around a lot with this computer and it helped crystallize my knowledge of BASIC to a very great extent.
(What's an even more amazing story is this... One of these chips on the ZX Spectrum got burnt one day, and since the computer was made in England there was no way we could fix it. Turns out that a ZX Spectrum clone was manufactured in Pune in Bhosari under the name DB Spectrum and they repaired our ZX Spectrum one Saturday afternoon.)
I got to see a Commodore 64 (8MHz) as well around that time and salivated immensely on it, but my dad decided against buying one.(My dad is a very conservative person!!) Datapro continued in Class 5 and I was working on PC-286 machines as opposed to the PC-XT (based on Intel 8086 processor which I found out later) machines earlier. The XT machines were rather silly in that one had to boot from a floppy before running any other program. The teachers at Datapro ofcourse hid a lot of these details from you but it was fun nevertheless.
Unfortunately, there was a huge break beyond this and I didn't learn anything new for a long time. We also sold off the ZX Spectrum around Class 7 and although some of my friends started learning C in class 8, I didn't. We didn't buy a PC because the prices kept dropping and new things came out all the time. I really felt deprived and I was a little pissed off with my dad for not getting us a computer. The deal basically was that he had a nice computer with a COLOR MONITOR(!!!!! a very big deal at the time) in his office, so he didn't need to buy one. (This was ofcourse a shared computer and they kept their medical records in Foxpro which students at the University used for their BE projects for a while.)
1996
Finally in Class 10 we bought a Pentium (100MHz) processor based PC. Until this time I hadn't worked much with Windows even, but this was the point when I started learning about most of the Microsoft products. My father was working on a Global Project in Abdominal Pain and hence we got an Internet connection at home. This was in 1997, when most people in Pune didn't have Internet access. I started using the AOL Instant Messenger, Internet Explorer, Eudora.(My dad points out that we upgraded on numerous occassions beyond this time).
1998
In my freshman year in college I learnt C and I was also learning SQL, Java, C++ at NIIT. My skills at C were fairly limited initially but grew substantially by the end of college.
2004
Now I am working on many interesting things in Computing and I am even a Research Assistant in Computer Engineering at one of the top universities in the US. What's really great is that now I have two computers to my disposal, a notebook at home and a top-of-the-line desktop with a 19 inch LCD monitor (thanks to Professor Compton), both Pentium 4-based (3.4GHz) machines both from Dell. I love my 3632-12.ece.wisc.edu !!
I could even end up working on designing one of the fastest supercomputers in the world the SGI Altix series. I'll soon find out.
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Wisconsin Badger's ranked 4th in the nation
This one is dedicated to the UW Badgers. I am so proud of our football team that has won 9 games in a row and is still undefeated this season. The games against Purdue and Ohio State were really close, but to be doing so well in such a tough conference is something that is very commendable. This is the highest I have ever seen the Badgers ranked, but it's such a pleasure to be on the winning side for once. And with John Stocco (our quarterback) improving with each game, I forsee a great future for UW Football for the next three years.
We just have two more games to go, one against Michigan State and the second against Iowa. I just hope that we win both our games and take UW to the Rose Bowl (outdoing the stupid U of M!!... I am sure I am going to get angry reactions to this one). UW ofcourse is the only team to have won back to back Rose Bowls from the Big Ten in 1999 & 2000. So let me brag and say that it's becoming a habit now.
Go Badgers!! Do UW proud!
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Incredibly Incredible!
"Honey, where's my supersuit?!" Not a line you'd expect to hear from a superhero. You certainly don’t expect Superman to be scrounging to find his suit before trying to save the world. But Pixar's "The Incredibles" paints a humorous portrait of a super-family with ordinary problems like us ordinary folk.
I have such great admiration for the people at Pixar. The continuing theme that I have observed over Finding Nemo, Toy Story and every other Pixar classics is the amazingly imaginative storyline that the writer’s create. Then the graphic artists weave a completely beautiful yet believable world around their characters. The Incredibles is no exception and quality of every aspect of the movie is so extraordinary, I wonder how many geniuses are employed at Pixar.
The movie is about a family of superheros facing very real-world problems such as legal trouble, unemployment and commutes with gridlock. The visual appeal of the movie is something that can’t be described. Most of the movie has a 70's look and the hi-tech bits are then made to look like the 21st century counterparts. What also amazed me is the careful thought put into the invention of many characters and their special powers. You are then shown a visual symphony created by the various elements of the movie acting in unison. The final outcome is like a combination of Spiderman, James Bond and Brady Bunch.
The Incredibles is a must-see movie and in my opinion the best movie to come out this year. Hats off to Pixar! I am certain that many sequels are to follow this incredible movie and I can’t wait to watch the next of the Incredibles.
Friday, November 05, 2004
"Raj...You're Fired"
From this week I will be posting an analysis of the week's task on the Apprentice. This is just an exercise I am conducting for myself in order to improve my management/leadership skills and you are all welcome to post your own comments on how things could have been done better as well.
What I have realised about being the project manager on the Apprentice is this. The style of leadership suitable for every area of business is radically different. While most intelligent people could probably falter once and learn the correct way to manage things the next time, the candidates on the Apprentice don't have this facility.
Take for instance last week's show about the advertising campaign for the NYPD. Raj imposed the wrong military attitude on this campaign, as a consequence Elizabeth got fired because she didn't stand by her convictions. Andy, on the other hand, didn't care about the opinions of the rest of his team-mates and stuck to his guns about the kind of advertisement he wanted to execute. In the case of advertising, having the right idea and then sticking to it made the winner.
In yesterday's task the dependence on the contractor made a huge difference to the final results. Also Raj I think lacks that inherent business sense, and the lack of that common sense showed up in the tasks in the fashion industry, advertising and real-estate industry too. I admit he is someone who has a lot of panache but he frequently has the wrong idea and in last night's show he made the mistake of changing a 4 bedroom house into a 3 bedroom house.
The contractor was a huge variable on this task. Having control over the contractor had paramount importance. I think a reward-based competitive scheme would have worked well in this scenario. Employ two contractors to do two different rooms in the house. Tell each of them that whoever does a faster and better job at the first room will get to work on the upper floor of the house. Ofcourse I have the benefit of hindsight but well in many cases "not putting all your eggs in one basket" can make a lot of difference.
From this week I will be posting an analysis of the week's task on the Apprentice. This is just an exercise I am conducting for myself in order to improve my management/leadership skills and you are all welcome to post your own comments on how things could have been done better as well.
What I have realised about being the project manager on the Apprentice is this. The style of leadership suitable for every area of business is radically different. While most intelligent people could probably falter once and learn the correct way to manage things the next time, the candidates on the Apprentice don't have this facility.
Take for instance last week's show about the advertising campaign for the NYPD. Raj imposed the wrong military attitude on this campaign, as a consequence Elizabeth got fired because she didn't stand by her convictions. Andy, on the other hand, didn't care about the opinions of the rest of his team-mates and stuck to his guns about the kind of advertisement he wanted to execute. In the case of advertising, having the right idea and then sticking to it made the winner.
In yesterday's task the dependence on the contractor made a huge difference to the final results. Also Raj I think lacks that inherent business sense, and the lack of that common sense showed up in the tasks in the fashion industry, advertising and real-estate industry too. I admit he is someone who has a lot of panache but he frequently has the wrong idea and in last night's show he made the mistake of changing a 4 bedroom house into a 3 bedroom house.
The contractor was a huge variable on this task. Having control over the contractor had paramount importance. I think a reward-based competitive scheme would have worked well in this scenario. Employ two contractors to do two different rooms in the house. Tell each of them that whoever does a faster and better job at the first room will get to work on the upper floor of the house. Ofcourse I have the benefit of hindsight but well in many cases "not putting all your eggs in one basket" can make a lot of difference.
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Bush Kerries on!
Why doesn’t this surprise me?! I’ve experienced this anticlimax for a fair part of my life... I root for some side during a game or a test match, passionately hate the other and it then turns out that the wrong side wins. This election felt like a 3 month long test match. I bet John Kerry feels a similar sentiment somewhere. But I realize now what a humongous waste of time this exercise has been to me. What have I gained by listening to those stupid debates and those hundred other news programs by Jim Lehrer and Tom Brokaw? I think this incident is going to wean me off election coverage, in much the same way that India’s failure at cricket during my teenage years weaned me off the game. I just don’t see the point of watching a game ball to ball, when you can pretty much come in late, enjoy the exciting last hour and make some headway in your research the rest of the day.
But maybe I have learnt a lot from this election about America. I have learnt about the immovable (Bible-smacking) South and my understanding of the people in the various parts of the US has improved. I’ve learnt that even stupid people can get ahead in life. So maybe it wasn’t all a waste. Maybe someday if I am taking part in Jeopardy, these inconsequential facts I learnt could help me answer some inconsequential questions.
Why doesn’t this surprise me?! I’ve experienced this anticlimax for a fair part of my life... I root for some side during a game or a test match, passionately hate the other and it then turns out that the wrong side wins. This election felt like a 3 month long test match. I bet John Kerry feels a similar sentiment somewhere. But I realize now what a humongous waste of time this exercise has been to me. What have I gained by listening to those stupid debates and those hundred other news programs by Jim Lehrer and Tom Brokaw? I think this incident is going to wean me off election coverage, in much the same way that India’s failure at cricket during my teenage years weaned me off the game. I just don’t see the point of watching a game ball to ball, when you can pretty much come in late, enjoy the exciting last hour and make some headway in your research the rest of the day.
But maybe I have learnt a lot from this election about America. I have learnt about the immovable (Bible-smacking) South and my understanding of the people in the various parts of the US has improved. I’ve learnt that even stupid people can get ahead in life. So maybe it wasn’t all a waste. Maybe someday if I am taking part in Jeopardy, these inconsequential facts I learnt could help me answer some inconsequential questions.
