Dawnshard

This is an offshoot novella from the main Stormlight Archive series. It takes 2 minor PoV characters from the main series creates an adventure arc for them within the main series. It will be difficult to follow if you haven't read the main series as it assumes prior knowledge of the world, political situation & magic system.

The plot is about an exploratory voyage to a mysterious island which has an oathgate (a means of instantaeneous travel between a pair of oathgates). There are 3 main PoV characters. Lopen a knight radiant who is optimistic & funny in the main series but, we explore his personal introspections. Rysn a merchant lady and owner of the ship who is paralyzed hip-down. She owns a rare larkin that is sick which she hopes to cure on course of this voyage as the larkin was native of the mysterious island. Nikli is a new PoV character introduced in this book and is deeply entangled with the mysteries of the island.

Though it does not have the dramatic ending usually associated with Brandon Sanderson's books it adds to the wordbuilding in the main Stormlight series.

Midnight's Children

I think I might be shifting gears from lots of movie posts to books. Well, technically its only the third book I'm going to mention right now but, who knows. I just saw 20 movies and read 4 books during the christmas break :O I'll post details if I recover from the shock (Just to give a little background on that I happened to raid my friends place and made off with 50 movies and 15 books :D).

One of those was Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. All these years I stayed away from his books mainly because of his notorious reputation for 'you know what' and the fact that he's got a Booker prize (I have strong prejudices against prizes given out by committees :/). But, I'm glad I din't stand fast on my prejudices. Midnight's Children is an excellent book; I was vaguely expecting it to be a flaky fantasy but, it was deliciously different from anything I've ever read before (I had the same feeling when I read Catch-22 a long time ago). The narrative was descriptive and witty (if not always gripping). I particularly like the autobiographical tone of the narrative where Saleem Sinai gives you some glimpses of events that are going to happen in the future (I haven't read any autobiographies so, I'm only guessing here...).

I also like the seemingly bizarre chapter titles that somehow make sense when you finish that chapter. My particular favorites are: The perforated sheet, Many-headed monsters, All-India radio, Alpha and Omega and Commander Sabarmati's baton. Saleem Sinai's serendipitous tryst with India's destiny is almost like an Indian version of of Forrest Gump (one difference being Saleem is always not as lucky). Actually, it should be the other way around chronologically because Midnight's Children was first published in 1981 and the movie was released in 1994; forgive me there I saw the movie before I read the book. In some ways its almost like Paradise Lost for the average Indian. Another interesting thing about the book was that the story telling would abruptly shoot off on irrelevant tangents based on some small thing. All the math in the book also sums up which is always a big plus :D (581 + 420 = 1001).

On the whole it is a pretty awesome book and you shouldn't pass up a chance to read it up.

Fixing firefox quickfind

Ever since FF2 I've been hampered with the quick find. Now, its a pretty handy feature but, why the hell would I need a find where I cannot move to the next/previous result? And the fact that there are 2 shortcut keys to the same thing ' and / will essentially popup that annoying quick find. If I had to use a regular find I'd have to do a ctrl+f (I guess that is to ensure consistency with IE :/..)


Thankfully in the FF world everything is customizable. If you don't want yet another heavy weight plugin/extension to do the job, FF offers you the option to customize it yourself. Just google for what you want and you should be well on your way with it. So, thats what I did when FF2 was released and now when FF3 was released (and I waited till all my favourite extensions supported FF3 ;) before I installed it).


So, here's how you make the quick find the full featured find in FF2. Go find (or create one there is an example present usually) the userChrome.css in your $FF_PROFILE/profiles/xxxx.default/chrome folder and add the following line (courtesy http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2006/10/firefox-quick-search-as-it-should-and-used-to-be/

#FindToolbar > * {display: -moz-box; }

And for FF3

.findbar-container>* {display: -moz-box !important;}

(its in the comments section in the same page)

Down Under

I've been trying to picking up any non-technical books that are available at our office library. And Bill Bryson's Down Under was one of them. It was the first travelogue that I have read (I stick to fiction mostly) and, I enjoyed it. It turned out to be a witty, whimsical guide to Australia.

Australia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world! mostly because there are more things in Australia that could kill you than you have time to read about. Thats something I did not know about Australia. But, wait there's lots more. A prime minister goes for a walk and decides to go for a little swim and disappears. Now, why haven't any hollywood directors exploited that plot for some conspiracy theory movie?

No book about Australia can be complete without dealing about the native aborigines. The happen to be the longest surviving culture passed down unchanged for centuries. The magic of Uluru (Ayers rock). The weird ways in which the Australian government tried to bring aborigines into mainstream society, the most shocking of which is when it abducted aboriginal children to train them to be responsible citizens of white society.

The Search

I recently finished reading John Battelle's "The Search", which chronicles the rise of search as a valuable business asset and how google helped in making it that way. For someone who has always been in awe of google for a long time I found the book a very interesting read. The rags to riches story of Larry Page and Sergey Brin and the background in which google captured the search market is wonderful.

Iron Man

Bringing comic heroes to the movie screens seems to be all the rage now. And the latest, to hit the screens was Iron Man (well, technically as of today it would be Speed Racer). I wasn't a great fan of Iron Man after all he was only a normal guy in an iron suit. He has none of the interesting mutations of the XMen nor the supernatural powers of super-hero aliens. The movie was pretty good and I enjoyed it. It lived up to its 92% rating in rotten tomatoes.

Robert Downey Jr. portrayed a very convincing millionaire playboy genius and Jeff Daniels as the backstabbing executive was good. The narrative and screenplay din't wander off or slouch in between as it usually happens. The only misgiving I had was that after sitting through all the initial build-up to the final suit Iron Man had to resort to a clever trick to defeat his adversary in the other suit of armor. A little display of energy shields, sonic blasts and holographic decoy generators would have been exciting though. If you are a fan of comics and cartoons you will not regret watching it. Oh! don't forget to wait till all the credits have rolled past (and almost at the point where you are sheepishly edging to the door wondering why you even believed that rumor about it on the internet) you will be treated to a small cameo featuring Sgt. Nick Fury. So, don't miss it.

Wet monkey theory

You put n monkeys in a cage with a banana (or any food that is of interest to the monkeys) and for some defined period of time discourage the monkeys getting to the fruit by splashing them with cold water till none of them attempt to reach for the fruit. Now, one by one replace the monkeys over a period of time where the monkeys will not be splashed with cold water at all. Now, because of classical conditioning each of the new monkeys that will instinctively reach for the fruit but will be beaten up (or otherwise restrained) by the remaining monkeys by the fear of punishment in the form of a cold water splash. Subsequently, when none of the original n monkeys are in the cage and the ones that are there have never been subjected to the punishment, it will be observed that none of those monkeys try to reach for the fruit in fear of retribution by the other monkeys.

The wet monkey theory seems more of an urban legend than an actual theory. Its actually based on the famous Pavlov's salivating dog experiment on classical conditioning. The little Albert experiment is perhaps the closest human counterpart. But, apart from that there are several examples of this in real life.

Especially, in large software development shops where you have every kind of programmers (all of the 26 programmer predilections-link doesn't seem to exist now so, heres a digg posting of the same), all the 3 types of consultants and hordes of PHB's. The reasons why a particular approach/technique was chosen over others is often lost when the pioneers of the system leave or is buried in huge mounds of documentation. Now, documentation is always an icky subject when it comes to software systems the people who are in the best position to do it despise it with a vengeance and the ones that do write it (or are forced to write it) usually cover it up in layers of cruft to make the document appear important than it actually is. Signal to noise ratio in documentation is alarming low, the concept of code as documentation does not stand to reason if you have a half a million lines of code to read!! (notwithstanding the fancy design patterns and xml configurations distributed liberally over the codebase) All this leads to any question on anything is answered by thats 'the way its always been done'.

One way to bite down and bear it to turn to the Tao of Programming and rest on the wisdom of the ancients before us.

The programmers of old were mysterious and profound. We cannot fathom their thoughts, so all we do is describe their appearance.

Aware, like a fox crossing the water. Alert, like a general on the battlefield. Kind, like a hostess greeting her guests. Simple, like an uncarved block of wood. Opaque, like a black pool in a darkened cave.

Who can tell the secrets of their hearts and minds?

The answer exists only in Tao.

Second System Effect

The second system effect is described in Fred Brooks 'The Mythical Man Month'. It is simply defined as the tendency of the designers to over-engineer an existing simple elegant solution. The tired architect warns us to think a moment before we take the plunge and develop 'the second system'. For a long time I thought this was mostly rubbish and you can only do things better with experience.

That was till I witnessed an actual second(or rather third) system being built. The original system wasn't simple or elegant but, it got the job done (And if you had been mucking around its code for over 6 months you will intuitively know where to fix a certain bug). It opened my eyes to YAGNI but, then the reality of features selling products crashes the party. Hopefully I'm a little wiser from the experience.

IRC woes

Recently I've realized my long lost love for playing trivia quizzes on irc. I started off on irc://irc.criten.net/#triva when I was with my previous company. I still remember 4 people crowding on my machine answering(guessing is more apt) questions and desperately googling for answers. This time around I did a bit of searching around and found irc://irc.thundercity.net/#exp-triv. Except for the music questions which I've no clue the questions are pretty good and offer superb entertainment. I think i'm already addicted !!

Weekend Hitchcock Marathon

Last weekend (Feb 23, 2008) I had the misfortune to be left alone in the apartment I shared with room-mates in Bangalore. And being my lazy self I planned to spend it entirely browsing and watching television. Well, fate had other plans and my broadband connection chose to give up and die. So, here I was alone, without internet access on a weekend. While most people would have chosen several creative and interesting ways to entertain themselves I chose to rent a DVD and watch a movie.

The idea by itself does pose some serious challenges. In addition to being a internet-addict I'm a movie buff too. Its is customary in our apartment to watch another movie after coming back from a night show...that should give you a fair idea :|. We have membership in 2 video rental libraries and just recently started frequenting another video rental library (simply because it was on the way home from our ususal weekend luncheon). So, on sunday I sauntered into our latest video rental library. Normally any attempt to rent classics or black & white movies will be met with sharp resistance but now that no one was around I chose to rent the 'Alfred Hitchcock Collection'!!

There were 5 movies on the DVD

• The Trouble with Harry


• Torn Curtain


• Marnie


• Frenzy


• The Birds

'The Trouble with Harry' is about a corpse of an outsider in a small village. The story unravels itself as the characters reveal portions of their stories based on the information that is available to them at that particular point of time. Which interestingly leads to the corpse being buried and exhumed thrice. But, I thought the ending did not completely tie up all the lose ends. For e.g. Capt. Wiles flicks the deadmans shoes from the deputy sheriffs car and put it on the deadman later to be found by the the widow's son (Arnie Rogers).

'Torn Curtain' tracks the adventures of an American physicist defects to East Germany because the US government supposedly closed down his research on an anti-nuclear missile. Hell breaks loose when his fiancee insists on following him there. Then the physicist reveals that that he is deceiving the East Germans to get access to a brilliant East German physicist to pick his brain to solve a problem he was facing. An unfortunate murder upsets all plans and the rest of the story is how the couple escape to safety.

'Marnie' is about a pretty young girl who is a pathological liar and thief. Her usual mode of operation is to get a job and steal from the safe a few weeks later. Mark Rutland (Sean Connery) recognizes her, later falls in love and marries her. He tries to help her resolve her psychological problems which forms the rest of the story.

'Frenzy' is the story of an innocent man who is wrongly accused and sentenced as being the necktie murderer. Innocent circumstances incriminate him and he is betrayed by his own friend. The plot then revolves around how the actual killer is convicted.

'The Birds' is about an innocent weekend in Boedega Bay which turns into a nightmare when the birds begin attacking humans. The plot also has a dash of romance and a little unsavory family history. The movie ends with the Brenner family and Melanie Daniels leaving Boedega bay. But, the reason for the birds attacking humans is never explained.