Ongoing Projects

I never start projects. I bump into them. Sometimes they feel like a distant member of Grampa’s extended family. Other times, they feel like a close friend you’ve been dying to talk to for the past 6 months, but gosh darn it where’s his number? Unlike most seasoned hackers, I only have three large projects I wish to see to completion before I touch something new.

• index_server – the full text indexing tool for Haiku I wrote this summer.
• Goonj – a media player and music library manager for Mac OS X (I’m working on this with Pratul).
• Make the Dell Vostro 1520 100% Haiku compatible. For this, I need to write drivers for the following devices: (1) touchpad (2) wireless card (3) webcam and (4) sound card. I’ve already started digging through some driver code, but it will be a while before I have something usable.

Interests

I’m a sad case, really. I need to write a blog post to remind myself what I’m interested in. If you don’t want your kids to turn out this way, make sure they take enough baths. Yes, even in winter.

High-level stuff bores me. I find I’m much more comfortable with C and C++ than Python. With that in mind, here’s a small overview of my fields of interest:

• Compilers
• Virtual machines (and emulators)
• Operating systems
• File systems
• Games (why not?)
• Information retrieval

Lately, I’ve been reading up on electronics. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible with just a few cheaply available components, and I’m already shaking with excitement. College does not permit me to learn as much as I’d like to, but I’m slowly getting there. I’ll have something to show for my efforts in a couple of months. Let’s see what comes of this new obsession .

I was going to say something doubleplusawesome, but I forgot what. Anyway, here’s a list.

• Two grueling months of examinations come to an end. I will fail at least three exams.
• I don’t really care about that. No, really. I don’t care.
• Okay, I do care. In fact, I’m freaking out. Help!
• My GSoC application to Haiku did not get through on account of lack of slots. Instead, the Haiku folks invited me to participate in the Haiku Code Drive 2009, which is very similar to GSoC. I get to work on a full text indexing and search tool similar to OS X’s Spotlight.
• I just went to South Extension 1 with Sneezy, Bubbles and Chinmay to buy a bunch of books. Kitallis and Apoorv chose to watch Gulaal instead. You missed a great deal, guys. Next time, I’m going to drag you along.
• I bought Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, Dune, Kafka on the Shore, Lolita and The Great Hunt (part 2 of The Wheel of Time series).
• Read Brave New World. Huxley was a genius.
• I now have a love-hate relationship with Ubuntu. On the one hand, it Just Works ™. On the other hand, I have to upgrade every 6 months. Why does it have to be this way? Why!?
• I never thought I would have to install Jaunty. I didn’t want to. But I did. That means I have used every single Ubuntu release since Warty came out in 2004. Geez, I’m old.
• I also have a love-hate relationship with Firefox. I hope Firefox 3.5 really is more responsive than the 3.0 branch. I guess it’s goodbye Opera for now. If only Firefox worked better on OS X …

Well, that’s all folks. Now you know what I’m up to. Here are a few disjointed thoughts that do not warrant a post of their own.

• I will be spending most of my vacations using Haiku. With a boot time of 5 seconds and responsiveness that is unrivaled by any of the existing desktop operating systems, Haiku will kick ass once R1 is out.
• I never thought I’d get to see the evolution of an entire OS this closely. Fun!
• After I’m done with HCD2009, I will have learned more about software development than I have learned in my entire life as a hobbyist programmer.

Okay, enough random thoughts. Off to work. I have an operating system to compile.

The Dead Poets Society struck a chord with me because I have been thinking about the same issues it talks about for the past few days. What got me thinking was a conversation I heard at a party last week. This is how it went:

Kid: But mom, I don’t want to eat right now.

Mom: It’s lunchtime. You’re going to eat that chapati right now.

Kid: Okay, ma.

Mom: Why are you using your left hand to eat? Can’t you do anything right?

(At this point, my mom goes over to talk to that annoying lady.)

Mom: Say namaste to aunty. Have you forgotten your manners?

… and so on …

The conversation itself is not offending. In fact, I clearly remember being told to eat with my right hand when I was a kid (a piece of advice that still doesn’t make sense to me). What offended me was the fact that the mother was barking orders, in a way that made me want to put my fork down and leave the room. That kid could not have been older than ten. Show some love, lady. You’re supposed to be his mum. Oh well. What goes around, comes around.

Another story. A guy we (we = my family) know just enrolled his ten year old son into a boarding school. The reason? “He is unruly. We can’t take care of him.” Yeah, right. Do you expect military-style discipline from a ten year old? As far as I know, ten year olds do not want to take over the world (yet). Their curiosity gets them into a lot of trouble, but whatever they do is well intentioned. My parents were visibly shocked.

No one without a parenting license should be allowed to raise kids.

Some of the steps I’ve taken to increase my productivity are:

• I have cut down on useless RSS feeds. Slashdot, Macworld get the boot. Planet Python kept me updated on the latest going-ons in the Python community, but it was low on the kind of content I enjoy. So, Planet Python gets the boot, too. I feel I should remove some of the Cocoa blogs I read from my RSS reader, too.
• I am keeping a TODO list in my OS X menubar and reviewing it before I go to sleep. I’m using a slick app called Anxiety which integrates nicely with iCal.
• I have stopped whining. You will see no more rants here on SUE. If you are following me on Twitter, you will see no more whiny tweets (although I will continue to point out genuine problems I have with the software and web services I use).
• I’m fighting the urge to correct people all the time. I’ve spent countless hours correcting people on Reddit/news.YC/Twitter. None of that now.
• I’m getting into the habit of putting my MacBook to sleep when I’m not using it for something productive. No more Wikipedia marathons, no more Amazon explorations and no more AskReddit.
• I have written down exactly what I want to achieve this year on a piece of paper and stuck it on my wall. Whenever I catch myself doing something useless, I evaluate whether it gets me closer to my goal and then decide to continue with what I’m doing or to drop the task.

I’ve also added a productivity blog to NetNewsWire: 43Folders. I don’t have any particular affinity towards the self-help “industry”, but I find that some of the content on 43Folders is actually pretty good (none of that “you can do anything if you put your mind to it” bullshit that sounds nice but doesn’t really help). Another blog that looked interesting was ZenHabits, but I was put off by some of the cheesy posts I saw on the front page (“5 Foolproof Ways to Produce a Burning Desire for Your Goals”. WTF?).

Right now, my mind is less cluttered than it was a week ago. I’m much calmer, and I got a lot of work done today (got through a lot of dry Objective-C documentation, wrote this blog post, spent a lot of time with my parents and still had time left over for other stuff). This routine suits me. Now the only thing I need to fit in here is some light exercise.

Now, on to the trivialities.

The results for Google Summer of Code 2009 came out on April 21, and I failed to make it. According to my mentoring organization, I was one of their top picks, but failed to get in because I didn’t submit as many patches as the other students. No GSoC work means I have no commitments this summer. Akshay is trying to get a RoR job somewhere, and I think Apoorv has something planned, too. I feel I ought to start making my own TODO list now.

I have spent the past few weeks thinking about how much time I waste on worthless activities (something which led to a fight between me and Apoorv – he’s absolutely certain he’s not wasting any time). The agenda for April is to cut out all the time-sucking activities from my routine. I’ll probably read up on time management and check out what the GTD hype is all about. Also part of the agenda is keeping my workspace clean. Right now, I have a single table for everything – study, web browsing, movies, programming and food. I’m going to have to try and keep my work and fun areas segregated so that when I sit down in my work chair, my mind goes, “Okay, time to work. No more distractions.”

lut4rp tells me I need to get some code “out there”. A lack of Objective-C knowledge is preventing me from delving deeper into Cocoa, so I will be spending some time writing ObjC code and putting it up on GitHub for everyone to see (and laugh at). I really wish I could spend more time with Python, but I want to go indie with a few desktop apps and that’s something which Python fails to do well (at least on OS X). I want to push the limits of ObjC, just to see how dynamic it really is (so far, I’ve used it like a spiced up version of C). In my experience with the language so far, I have felt it is nothing compared to heavyweights of the dynamic world – Ruby and Python. I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

The next logical step after Objective-C is to sharpen my 1337 Cocoa skillz. The strategy this time is to leave the more advanced technologies for later. What’s the point of getting into CoreData or Keyring Services if I never plan to use them? As an aside, the Hillegass book is awesome, but I don’t think it’s written for people new to Cocoa. It reads more like a cookbook than an introduction to OSX programming. I’ll be using Apple’s docs + online tutorials (and refer to Hillegass if the need arises). Since I’ve already covered more than 50% of what is required to write decent OSX apps, my next steps are mostly going to center around getting familiar with the libraries available to me.

My one-post-a-day idea bombed, mostly because exams kept me busy. I had two weeks of exams, followed by a week of semi-rest, followed by a week of practical exams. Another round of practicals begins on Monday, which will be followed by ten days of semi-rest and another two weeks of exams. The last two months of the semester are always like this at IPU. I’m used to it now, so no worries :p

Owing to Google Summer of Code 2009, I have been spending more time using my MacBook than ever before – hanging out in IRC channels, building Haiku (the project I applied to), writing code and doing a lot of reading. The result? The entire last week spent dealing with severe back pains, shoulder pains, wrist pains and irritable eyes. I have never had these pains before. I remember days when I would spend eight hours in front of my PC without any kind of discomfort. Why now?

After some Googling, I figured out poor laptop ergonomics was to blame. In the past, I have felt some discomfort while working with my MacBook, and I have taken some steps to eliminate that. I got myself a new chair, and reduced the height of my desk by sawing off its legs. Apparently, it wasn’t enough. The problem with laptops is that if you manage to set up the screen in a comfortable position, using the keyboard becomes difficult and if you set up the keyboard in a comfortable position, you can’t read the screen.

With a desktop, you’re usually sitting up straight, with your head in its natural position and your eyes looking straight ahead of you at an angle of 90º. Your elbows, too, are positioned at an angle of 90º with your body and the keyboard is below the level of your chest. If you have a good chair then it supports your lower back, thus reducing back pains. When using a laptop, on the other hand, you’re sitting in a hunched position with your neck bent down. Since the keyboard is so small, your hands are placed unnaturally close to each other, resulting in wrist and shoulder pains. You have to bend forward to type, which kills your lower back.

An overwhelming majority of people who use their laptops as desktops recommend separating the keyboard and the screen. One way to do that is to buy a new screen. Since I don’t have that kind of money, I went with the second alternative – use a USB mouse and keyboard instead of the built in trackpad and keyboard. I already had a portable Logitech mouse, so I headed to the nearest Croma and picked up a Logitech Ultra Flat keyboard for Rs.649 (I know I could have had it for less, but the pain was too excruciating to bear for even one more day). Let me digress from the main post so I can tell you how awesome my new keyboard really is.

The Ultra Flat is smaller and more compact than the regular Logitech Classic keyboard. The keys are placed very close together, but that’s not a problem since they are much larger than the keys on a Classic. They are also softer and much more responsive. There seems to be some kind ’shock absorber’ at the bottom of each key, which slows it down as you press it. Whatever it is, it feels very comfortable. The entire experience of typing on the Ultra Flat could be summed up in one word: smooth. Oh, the best thing about the Ultra Flat? Spring loaded keys! There’s nothing more a geek could ask for.

Okay, back to ergonomics. There’s nothing much to tell now. The next step was to raise the height of the laptop to prevent neck pain. Introduction to Algorithms and The MINIX Book came to my rescue, and now my laptop is standing on the shoulders of giants. As of this writing, I have been working with my new setup for about 5 hours without discomfort. No more pains!

Update [March 31] : I just installed a nify application called KeyRemap4MacBook which allows me to remap several keys on my USB keyboard. The default layout of the bottom row on a regular keyboard is something like this: CTRL | WINDOWS | APPLICATION | ALT | SPACEBAR | etc. On the other hand, the default layout on the MacBook keyboard is like this: FN | OPTION | COMMAND | SPACEBAR | etc. I used a screwdriver to pop-off some of the keys from the UF, and rearranged the bottom row to this: CTRL | APPLICATION | ALT | WINDOWS | SPACEBAR | etc. Then I used KeyRemap4MacBook to remap the ALT key (listed as OPTION_L in the prefpane) to COMMAND_L and the APPLICATION key to OPTION_L. I also remapped CAPSLOCK to CTRL, and checked the ‘Use Keypad as Arrow Keys’ option. After installing KeyRemap4Mac, the DEL, HOME and END keys have started functioning properly, too. Finally, I have my Windows keyboard set up (almost) exactly like my MacBook keyboard.

Nevermind the floral pattern.

Now get off my lawn.

A buzzword (also fashion word and vogue word) is a vague idiom, usually a neologism, that is common to managerial, technical, administrative, and political work environments. Although meant to impress the listener with the speaker’s pretense to knowledge, buzzwords render sentences opaque, difficult to understand and question, because the buzzword does not mean what it denominates, yet does mean other things it ought not mean.

Twitter has a crisp, concise sentence on their homepage that describes exactly what their service is all about. Someone must have worked hard coming up with that description. Here it is:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

I’m going to take that description and have some fun with it.

There seems to be no mention of Web 2.0 there, so I’ll put that in. I’ll also toss in “real time”, because I can. The sentence now reads:

Twitter is a Web 2.0-based real time service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

What about “empower”? I think I can squeeze that in somewhere. Since “friends, family, and co–workers” sounds too normal, I’m going to replace it with “end users”.

Twitter is a Web 2.0-based real time service that empowers end users to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

“What are you doing?” is too easy to understand. It has to go. These days, “core competency” seems to be the hot new term in town, especially among entrepreneurs. I’ll re-phrase the blurb so I can throw that in, too.

Twitter is a Web 2.0-based real time service. Twitter’s core competency is empowering end-users to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What activity is the said end-user engaged in?

Something about “rich media” would be nice. “quick, frequent” can be replaced by “holistic, crowsourced” and “question” becomes “query”.

Twitter is a Web 2.0-based real time rich media service. Twitter’s core competency is empowering end-users to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of holistic, crowdsourced answers to one simple query: What activity is the said end-user engaged in?

Change “stay connected” to something better, like “allowing them to initiate a synergizing convergence of thought and action”.

Twitter is a Web 2.0-based realtime rich media service. Twitter’s core competencies are empowering end-users to communicate and allowing them to initiate a synergizing convergence of thought and action through the exchange of holistic, crowdsourced answers to one simple query: What activity is the said end-user engaged in?

And that, folks, is what grinds my gears.

I, too, had dreams. I dreamt of an age where man does not suffer from writer’s block, where little children have no trouble coming up with blog posts containing just the right balance of bad advice, irrelevant anecdotes and mindless drivel, where tiny flying hippos put clever words right into your mouth while Douglas Adams explains the exact meaning of the number 42 to Why the Lucky Stiff on the radio. I realized my quest for such a world was futile. To write, you must think. Unfortunately, on average, I have only two modes of thinking. They are:

1. Mmmmmm … wha? Bugger off.
2. def writeBlogPost(clevernessFactor):
       # TODO: figure out a better algorithm for this.
       for word in randomize(oxfordEnglishDictionary, clevernessFactor):
            blogPost += word

Now my perspective on life, the universe and everything has changed. I have have realized that pure awesomeness is not a substitute for good thinking. That means I’m not qualified to write clever articles that provide wholesome entertainment for the entire family. I ask myself: what, then, will you do with this blog you paid Rs.4500 for?

This is what: I will try to post here every day. Even if it’s mindless drivel. Even if it leads to invisible sock-pixies spreading chalk powder over my toenails. Even if nothing I write makes sense. This is the perspective shift. I don’t need to write deep, insightful, Hacker News-worthy posts to justify my investment. Something that was meant to be an outlet for thoughts, emotions and opinions seems to have become a dead weight I need to carry around. No more. I shall now write for the sake of writing, not for the sake of making a point or getting more hits.

Episode 1 ends here. You may now be awed.

When I walked into the zonal transport department this morning to apply for my learner’s license, this is exactly what I expected. I was relieved to find out how wrong I was.

The first thing that hits you when you walk into the office is the fact that there are no middle aged women who look like your distant aunt. After you’ve had a mental victory dance, you realize that the place isn’t as dreary as you would expect a government office to be. It has a strange sort of cheerfulness. Not the “Yay! I’m so happy!” kind of cheerfulness, but the kind of cheerfulness you find in workplaces where every employee is satisfied and prides himself on a job well done. The computers are all HCL workstations (with LCD screens!) running Windows XP (not really something you can be proud of, but at least it’s better than Windows 98 ). You can see ergonomic chairs behind every desk. A large LCD television adorns one of the walls. The lighting is top notch, and the tiled floors make the ambience even brighter.

(The office also seems to have a competent sysadmin. I first realized he was competent when I saw him getting frustrated at the guy at counter 3, who couldn’t get something very simple to work. He swore in the glorious sysadmin tradition, “What did you motherfuckers eat this morning?”, drawing curious glances from the people near counter 3, and a glance of deep understanding and appreciation from me.)

The only thing that reminds you it’s still a government office you’re dealing with is the long queue at counter A, where you have to submit the filled in license form along with an ID and a proof of address. Since I was early, I didn’t have to stand in queue for too long, but others were not that lucky. At counter B, a young girl took my photograph, signature and fingerprints, a procedure that took 30 seconds. I was told to go to counter 7 for a few tests.

The person sitting at counter 7 first gave me a color blindness test, which was basically an Ishihara Color Test. After that, I was given a simple questionnaire. It was nice to see that the transportation department has a sense of humor. Here are a few questions that struck me as hilarious -

Q: Why should one give more room to cyclists while driving?

1. Two wheels are unstable
2. They might turn anywhere, anytime
3. They have a right to more space on the roads
4. None of these

(I couldn’t figure this one out.)

Q: While driving at night:

1. Drive slow and look out for cyclists and pedestrians
2. You reach your destination faster
3. Cyclists and pedestrians don’t come out at night
4. None of these

Q: While driving at a high speed:

1. You reach your destination faster
2. One must adhere to the speed limit
3. You have more fun
4. None of these

Q: Two wheelers can carry:

1. Only one person
2. Two people – one in the front and one in the back
3. As many people as you can fit on it
4. None of these

Q: There are different speed limits on the road because:

1. Everyone is in a hurry
2. Buses take up too much space
3. Most people don’t drive in their own lanes
4. There are many different kinds of vehicles on the roads

(Another one I couldn’t figure out, so I marked option 4 because it was the most rational.)

The rest of the questions dealt with road signs, driving skills and road laws. There were total 30 questions.

The test took less than ten minutes, and the entire process took less than an hour (including the time it took for the person at counter A to fix a broken printer). This is the first time I’ve gone to a government office and haven’t spent the day there. It seems like the Indian government has realized that lengthy procedures actually cost them money. I just hope other government offices take a cue from the transportation office.

In other news, I finally get my very own car. It’s ten years old, doesn’t have an air conditioner and has a radio that works only when you’re not in the mood for music. But the features don’t matter. What matters is that I finally have a car. Take that, environment friendly public transport!

Update: The professor in question has been reported and is now banned from taking any more classes.

This piece might come across as one intended to bad mouth my own college, but I have a sneaking suspicion that things aren’t all rosy in other parts of the country either.

I suppose every geek has had this same feeling before. You take a seat in the front row of your first Introduction to Programming lecture, all worked up about the fact that here, finally, is a class you can be on top of. The professor walks in, gives a little introduction, and you realize it’s going to be a long, long semester.

Today I decided to make a list of all the atrocities committed by my Introduction to Programming professor. I wasn’t expecting much because, even though he sounded like a complete knucklehead to the geek inside me, I was sure he at least knew the textbook inside-out. I was, as one would expect, wrong. So, hackers, get ready to cringe. Here’s my list.

• … Linux is basically a DOS based OS.
• These days we are using 128 and 256 bit processors.
• A compiler is a software that converts code written in a particular programming language to machine code. To compile a program, you must hit ALT+F9. (It took me a while to realize he was talking about the Borland Turbo C++ IDE from 1992, a prehistoric compiler Indian colleges use for all C and C++ courses.)
• The object code generated by a C++ compiler is almost identical to that produced by a Java compiler.
• The first high level language was Ada, also known as Smalltalk. (This was a big WTF moment.)
• The second high level language was COBOL, which was an improvement over Ada. (Cringe, cringe, cringe.)
• FOTRAN came after COBOL. (No, “FOTRAN” is not a typo. This is what he said.)
• FOTRAN, COBOL, Ada and Smalltalk were not general purpose languages.
• This one is classic: C was the first language to run on UNIX systems. All languages before C ran only on Windows.

I still haven’t completely recovered from the shock.