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.

FF4 - Rise of the Silver Surfer

I was really excited about this movie mainly because of this awesome trailer and the presence of Jessica Alba. As usual I also headed up to wikipedia for some healthy dose of trivia and info about the Silver Surfer and he seemed a worthy adversary(though I don't fancy the FF4 too much!! I prefer X-Men above all else). But, nevertheless an underdog against a mighty adversary is usually a good watch :D. So, when I headed for the movies and found no tickets for this one I was more than happy to see FF4 - Rise of the Silver Surfer.

It certainly wasn't the effects that were jaded, though the trailer captured the best scenes of the movie. I think the movie audiences have evolved beyond mere computer-generated effects. The plot was weak almost implying that the surfer saved earth more because of invisible woman who supposedly reminded him of his sweetheart!! And Galactus the powerful almost god-like entity is defeated (killed ??) in the last few minutes of the movie by a mere herald!! Taking into consideration that the surfer possesses just a fraction of the power-cosmic of which Galactus is the keeper is just ...STUPID :(

Mr. Know it all

How often have you stood on the pavement in a new neighborhood wondering how to reach your particular destination or, someplace where you quite did not manage to figure out what to do. I've always wondered how people pick whom to ask for directions. For myself I follow a simple algorithm, if I'm looking for directions I head to the nearest autorickshaw driver otherwise ask a group of people presuming that one of the many might actually be helpful. In other cases like for example in a bus-stop how does one pick whom to enquire for directions. Here again I tend to gravitate towards respectable elderly looking people.

But, often (more often than I would like) I've been on the other end. In some cases people have come to ask me for directions in cities where I'd only just set foot. Take for example when I came to Bangalore a year ago (just days after I had come) and was at the bus-stop trying to figure out whom to ask for directions to my destination 2 people walk up to me and ask me (eek!!) for directions to 2 different locations. I've just resigned myself to accept the fact that I appear to be "Mr. Know it all" to most people. So, if you have a question that needs answering "Don't ask me!"

I'm Luke Skywalker

Now I've irrefutable proof of what I have known all my life :D

Take the star wars personality test

No glue

I've always been a great fan of paper crafts and origami. I've been hooked ever since when my neighbour (who was 2 years older than me) taught me how to build a bike out of cardboard for my G.I. Joe when I was a kid. So, when I found this when doing my daily rounds of the threesome (slashdot, reddit & digg) I had this sudden urge to rekindle my lost childhood :|...


I spent a full 1.5hrs cutting what you see below here. Then I realized I did not have any glue to finish it up.

The Hulk

Guess what? Turns out I'm 'The Hulk', I thought I would have been a more sneaky super hero like the Night Crawler or Wolverine. After watching this trailer even the Silver Surfer. But, I'm 'The Hulk' and the world has to deal with that.

Your results:
You are Hulk

Hulk 80% Superman 65% Iron Man 65% Robin 63% Green Lantern 55% Spider-Man 50% Supergirl 50% Catwoman 45% Batman 40% The Flash 40% Wonder Woman 35%

You are a wanderer with amazing strength.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Talent crunch is here

Part of my new job in Bangalore is conducting technical interviews to hire more people. I'm no expert having done at most 5 face-to-face interviews and a around 10-12 telephonic interviews (these don't actually count as I was doing it for a position which required skills that were not even part of my skill-set!!).

That apart I was interviewing candidates with 2+ years of experience for a software engineering position. I think I've interviewed close to 25 or more telephonic and face-to-face together (with the larger chunk now going to face-to-face interviews). I was looking for a programmer who had a good grasp of the concepts and technologies he/she was using and be able to leverage development tools and the internet to get the job done.

I thought it was going to be a walk in the park with Bangalore being the 'Silicon Valley' of the east. I had done a little bit of research as to what sort of questions a 2+ years of experienced guy (like me) would find challenging. I was in for a rude shock. I can fill up numerous blog entries with the wtf answers and antics of the candidates. Slowly I was asking more and more basic questions till I had to finally resort to asking the candidates to write a program for string reversal. Sadly, I have not seen a single implementation of the string reversal program that would either do the job or compile (I've resigned myself not expect both).

I've learnt a lot about resumes in the process especially technical ones, they are a joke. Usually a technical resume will contain a table containing a list of the languages/databases/platforms/web servers/application servers/what not that the candidate has experience in (some cases the experience in months or years may even be mentioned) the only criteria for a candidate needs to add a new item to that list is simply whether or not he/she knows that expansion of that particular acronym.

One of my roommates is an HR executive in a well known multinational software company and I asked him if they were facing the same problem and he they have lots of vacancies open and were not finding the right persons too. Market research has also found that even though there is a surplus of qualified persons there are just not enough of them who are employable. This does not bode well for India's plans of becoming a software hub. How do we solve it? Well, I don't know. But, people realizing that they need to become more competent in whatever they are currently doing might help, I think.

Changing lanes

It has been 2 months since my last blog and a lot has happened meanwhile. I quit the first company that cared to hire me some 2 years ago sometime in April 2004 (how they did it is a nice story which I will share sometime later).

I've moved from Chennai to Bangalore and have to deal with staying away from home, washing my own clothes, post job-switch dissonance, bed bugs etc. I moved to get away from my comfort-zone which, is when inhabited for too long can lead to stagnation according to people with more intelligence than I.

2 months later I seemed to have found my comfort-zone again in a slightly different sense. I think I'm doing the same things professionally the only difference being that I'm staying in a different city. I still go late to work, I still wear casuals 4 days a week (it was 5 earlier), I still never start real work until after lunch, I'm usually one of the last persons to leave office etc. Which leaves me wondering as to what I should change next?

Flame of Recca

Animax is going to air 'Flame of Recca' from 8th May 2006. Wow !! I'm a great fan of cartoons and to get a re-telecast of one of my favourite cartoons is gonna be fun (first time I saw it was when I was in college). This cartoon was singlehandedly responsible for a lot of desks in my college having 'Saiha Fire-sword' and 'Madoka Fire Barrier' scratched on them in all the calligraphic glory that I could muster.

Whats so captivating?

Simple really, the main protagnist 'Recca' has fire coming out of his right hand. COOL !! I have been fascinated with fire since I was a little kid. My favourite plaything was a box of matches, with a candle it was divine(wasn't too popular with my parents because of that ;)...). When I was visiting my native place (which, thank god did not have electric water heaters...) I used to spend hours sitting before the stove feeding the flames (dried coconut shells, coconut choir, firewood, old rags, paper...), heating up water for everyone to take bath. Long story short, fire is my favourite element and this guy had it coming out of his hand as and when he wished. The added fact that each flame was governed by a dragon made it simply irresistable.

Smile Aim Shoot

Some time ago when I was in Hyderbad. I went to watch 'Mangal Pandey' at Prasads and while going to the loo saw this poster(for a photo competition) right above the urinal. Whoever though up the pun 'Rock on mate !!' :)

First On-the-Job Lesson

It happened like this.

I was just a few weeks into my first ever job in my life and my boss asks me to accompany him on a meeting. I happily trudge behind him into the meeting. Few minutes into the meeting he passes me a note which says something like "Don't fall asleep. Meetings can be boring". Ofcourse I did not see the truth in that statement till after a while...