Socrates and his teachings

Socrates was a Greek philosopher who remains an enigma to the world. He never wrote a book, but still influenced the philosophical and political realms of his times significantly.

Socrates said that good looks and proper bearing pave way for a man's political prospects. Though originally stated in the context of contemporary politics, the statement stands true when generalized to the social setup of current times. Simply stating, good looks and proper bearing pave way for a man's social prospects in current times.

Socrates taught by asking a series of questions - one question leading to another. This is branded as "Socratic method of teaching". Some people also call it the "Didactic" method of teaching. The questions asked cause one to explore his beliefs and knowledge, thereby eliminating doubts in small steps. This is a negative method of hypothesis elimination where you strive to gain knowledge by removing your doubts, rather than gaining "knowledge" as it is. The latter could be equivalent to spoon-feeding sometimes.

Socrates said that wisdom is limited to our own ignorance - the more we learn about ignorance, the more knowledgeable we will be. This again propounds the philosophy of learning by elimination of doubts.

Socrates was against the pursuit of material wealth (e.g. money and leisurely comforts) and spent his life like an ascetic - though sometimes he was mistaken for a madman. This "renunciation" of worldly pleasures goes in line with some of the Oriental philosophies, but renunciation in the West was perhaps never popular, other than Socrates.

We should concentrate more on "friendship" and "community" rather than pursuit of material wealth. Friends and family are our real bank-balance.

Socrates could feel a "daemonic" voice inside him whenever he was about to make mistakes. He was able to recognize this voice, and take necessary actions to prevent himself from making mistakes. This is sometimes described as a synonym of "intuition", but some of Plato's writings suggest it's a slightly different form of intuition in the sense that Socratic Daemonic Voice principle incorporates more spirituality and philosophy than simply acting on natural patterns. It is possible to cultivate your skills to listen to the Daemonic Voice, so that you can reduce the chances of making a mistake, or perhaps eliminate them altogether.

Socrates considered "creativity" a form of "divine insanity" which is a gift from God, that makes us to write poetry, fall in love, and think about the meaning of life. This is in line with one of Gandhi's sayings that "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes." In fact, making mistakes is sometimes deemed essential so that you can identify the factors that caused the mistakes, learn from them, and thereby move one step closer to knowledge.

Socrates placed heavy reliance on remembering as a method of learning, in addition to thinking and analysis.

Summary: It is important for a man to have good looks and proper bearing to succeed in his social-political ambitions. One can improve himself by making mistakes, and learning from his mistakes. The lessons learnt must be remembered for a long time. The best way to live is to pursue knowledge rather than material comforts. In order to reduce mistakes, one must learn to listen to the Daemonic Voice that propels us to make mistakes. Your people around you are your real strength. There's nothing wrong in being wrong as long as you're able to correct yourself next time. Asking questions is an integral component of learning, and one must never be afraid of asking questions.

www.43things.com

There is a Chinese saying:

I hear, I forget
I see, I remember
I do, I understand

This emphasizes learning by doing (or "service learning" jargonically), a very effective way of learning. Watching someone else do something looks too easy, until you actually get your hands on the job. The key to learning, therefore, is to just do it.

There's one more step, however. Time and again, I have amazed myself with the ability with which I forget things. I forget even those things that I discovered for myself in the first place! This undoes the learning I've earned, and something must be done to "retain" it.

Repetitions help in retention of learned material. For example, revising a book, writing the same paper again with a new viewpoint after a gap, trying to play an old song from college days on guitar, etc. Sometimes, even email reminders can do the trick for simple things (e.g. remembering events or facts like birthdays, tax submission dates etc).

Memory of learning gets consolidated by repetitions. Each new repetition adds to the previous, but permanence will still not be achieved. To keep the material in the memory, we have to keep practicing it. To keep practicing, we can join that profession, make a hobby out of it, or tie it to something else that is part of our routine. Different approaches work for different needs.

In this context, I remember a website www.43things.com, where you can know other people who want to do the same thing as you. The site can also send you reminders to help you "get started" on your work. 43things is just one part of a bigger theme of social collaboration, which you'll find by exploring the site a little bit more.

I shall explore memorization and learning in more details later... perhaps after this holiday season as school is keeping me too busy.

Official Google Mac Blog: Google and your Mac

Official Google Mac Blog: Google and your Mac

Google has now started a brand new blog focusing on Macs, another step forward in their embracement of the Mac.

The page has links to mac software developed by Google, Dashboard widgets for Mac OS X, a mini tutorial on Picasa Web Albums, and some more information. Check it out!

How I fooled Digg and made it to the frontpage

Introduction (please skip)

On March 6, 2006, a Google search directed me to a page at Digg.com. The content of the page was relevant to what I was searching for, and it was provocative enough to make me write a comment. Since anonymous comments are not allowed at Digg, I had to register. However, I did not follow up after that... until a time came when a fan submitted my site to Digg and it won the day. Shortly thereafter, I just had "too much time at my hand". And since the last two months or so, I find myself taking excessive interest in the activities at digg.com, sometimes spending almost the entire day there.

My first look at Digg.com

Being new to the Digg community, I was noticing what experienced diggers may miss. Sometimes I noticed honest content getting buried, and lame or fraudulent stories being promoted to the frontpage.

But how could that be? I believe "50 people cannot be wrong, the fault lies in you". Was I wrong? How could I tell?

I saw perfect stage for an experiment here.

My Digg Experiment: Part One

I was analyzing the traffic data for my dugg website, and was noticing some interesting patterns. Initially, I was tempted to generalize those findings (e.g. 60% of us use Firefox), but then realized that it was lame, as most of the hits were coming from Digg.com and Firefox is more popular among tech-savvy users. Everyone knows that.

Does everyone know that, really? I decided to present the results of my traffic analysis in a wrong way to Digg.com, and see if the story still makes it to the frontpage.

So I committed the act. I edited the original draft to insert misleading information. I then submitted this misleading and inaccurate story to Digg early morning on Sunday (when people are least likely to notice).

So my story doesn't have quality, has fraudulent information, and is submitted at a time when it's least likely to be noticed. Right?

Yes alright, but let's take a look at what happened.

The Experiment Begins

After submission to Digg.com, the fraudulent story kept quiet for about 10 hours (mere 35 diggs in first 10 hours). But then, the diggers "woke up" (4pm Sunday) and began taking interest in my story. In less than two hours, the story had 150+ diggs and was on frontpage! That was easy, and interesting!

I watched on, and more interesting developments took place.

I was keeping a close watch on the comments page at Digg, and the 4th commentator marked my story as inaccurate. Actually the first commentator had pointed out the inaccuracy, but in a blurred fashion. The story is on the frontpage now, and more people visited the story, and said it's inaccurate (and I presume marked it as such). Nothing interesting about it, right?

Wrong.

The negative comments were increasing in number as expected, but the number of diggs were increasing as well! What's going on here??? How can the diggers digg an inaccurate story? They are the best critics of technology related articles, right?

Umm... maybe.

What was happening here???

Many people who dugg the story did not read it thoroughly. They just "liked the idea" of my story that Apple and Linux are eating Microsoft away, and dugg this in its face value. They dugg what they like. They dugg what they want the reality to be, without knowing the reality at all.

Now comes part two of my experiment.

My Digg Experiment : Part Two

Okay, so my story is now on digg frontpage, despite most people actually agreeing that it is misleading. Here, I try to do a "fixing" act. I logged on to blogger.com and silently made two "little" changes to my story. I appended "for diggers" to the title and "by diggers" to the first paragraph. This makes the the story's first few lines look more authentic. However, I did not make any changes to the rest of the story, so the rest of it was still biased and misleading. Now, we have a story of "mosaic quality" where some parts say the truth, and some do not.

It's like half truth.

Or half lie, if you will.

As soon as I corrected the first few lines of my story, some digg users suddenly started evangelizing me. They commented on Digg that others did not read the story correctly, and are falsely blaming nixdoctor (me!). Just as one person said this, others joined the brigade, and there was a small group coming to my rescue. Heated discussions ensued over "reading skills", and difference between "listening and just hearing". While diggers were digging each other down, I sat at rest, watching them.

I also wanted to see how many people post on my blog (apart from posting at digg.com) and many people did that (I had enabled anonymous comments to make life easier for diggers). Many comments were constructive, offering me advice. Four were simple insults (deleted).

My experiment is over.

Results

1. It is easy to fool Digg and its community, at least in the short run
   
2. This happens because not all Digg users read the posts thoroughly
3. Carefully crafted stories that are far from truth, but appease the tastes of diggers can make it to the frontpage, before being buried finally.
   
4. Good content can be buried because it has no entertainment value.
5. Good comments can be modded down if they do not have entertainment value.
6. Some diggers will simply abuse others, while others will offer constructive suggestions for the same story. (Tip: If you can stand criticism, Digg can be a good resource to improve, because others will offer you suggestions, bundled with sarcasm, of course)
7. Webmasters can click quickly too. (In this case, not even a single Digger noticed that I have changed the title of the story on the original page later - they could have easily compared via duggmirror.com)

My Comments

Digg is an excellent source for sharing entertaining information about technology and current affairs. I use it for pure entertainment. Digg needs more tools in its box to thwart bad stories making it to frontpage.

More to come...

My next story concerning Digg is a short, correct, quality story, and will make it to the ftontpage. Why? Because I'll make sure it entertains us diggers. And it'll be on this blog.

Market share of Operating Systems & Browsers for diggers

One of my websites was dugg recently, and I collected a lot of data using google analytics. Considering the large amount of data I collected is representative of current trends in technology usage by diggers, here are the results:

(Click on the pictures to enlarge)

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Market share of Apple and Linux is cutting into Microsoft among Diggers


Apple's market share used to be 5% as declared by Steve Jobs in a keynote last year. Around the same time, they introduced the new intel-based computers, and they've been selling like hot cakes ever since. Apple has 10% of market share among Diggers!

The growth of Linux is also commendable. Linux doesn't enjoy the power of being an organized company, but the power of community is benefitting it.

---

Firefox is the most popular internet browser among Diggers


This one should be a no-brainer to everyone. Firefox is the leader in browser market. 70% of us use Firefox. But what about the others?

Internet Explorer is a distant second. I wonder why does IE still survive with millions of bugs found and exploited successfully before being repaired. Most probably because it comes pre-installed with the most popular operating system. Or because of higher percentage of masochism in humans than previously thought.

Safari is a good browser too, but loses out in market share because it's Mac only. Now market share of Mac is 11%, and 5% use Safari = half of all Mac users browse the internet via Safari.

The figures for Opera are difficult to explain though...! I have used Opera and found it to be an extremely good browser. I think more people abandoned it in favor of Firefox two years back. Firefox trounced not only IE's market share, but also Opera's.

Related link: http://nixtechnica.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-i-fooled-digg-and-made-it-to.html

Death of a medical student

I am shocked at the recent death of a medical student at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. Kamalla Raj Kiran was training to be a doctor at AIIMS, where he contracted a disease called "Dengue" and died in the same hospital where he was aspiring to be a doctor.

For those who don't know, Dengue is a viral disease spread by mosquitoes. Where there are no mosquitoes, there is no dengue (except by transfusion of infected blood). Dengue is a preventable disease.

This story essentially highlights the sad state of sanitation at the apex body of health in India. While AIIMS boasts of being the best medical training and research institute in the entire Asian continent, it has failed miserably at more steps than it has succeeded. It can be labeled only as an "irony" that the medical students are asked questions about transmission of Dengue in their professional examinations, but the sanitation authorities at the same place are blind to the answers. Such deaths could be prevented only if there is basic sanitation at AIIMS.

Interestingly, this is not the first time when AIIMS is spreading dengue. Is it about time AIIMS did something about itself?

Yes it is time! But given the current state of politics at AIIMS, where people worry more about themselves rather than the nation itself, I do not expect anything to be done. Especially not when I have seen many doctors committing suicides because of workplace harrassment - harrassments that were prevented from being released in the media or the public. In fact, AIIMS thinks that avian flu is more important than other diseases of national interest, perhaps driven only by the buzzword about avian flu in the west.

I urge the people to do something about such a basic necessity as improving sanitation at AIIMS. Will they do it?

The answer is: No.

They will do it only when they themselves catch Dengue. They will do it only when it benefits only them, and not everyone. Hard to digest? Look at the past.

Long live humanity! Long live health! Long live AIIMS!

Duh!

---

P.S.: Here's a first person account about this death: (an email from someone at AIIMS)

Today was a very tragic day for all of us. Do you know Kamalla Raj Kiran, currently he was in 7 th Sem... He got Dengue. I went to see him in the morning when B***** told me that platelets are going out of stock in our blood bank. He was taken to Casualty yday night where he deteriorated very rapidly and his disorientation was not taken care of in the casualty. There was a delay of few hours in getting his CT done. That too was done after he passed stools in bed that they suspected CNS involvement. When I went in the morning to C2 ICU, He was on ventilator and all the brain stem reflexes were gone.. I saw the CT... It was pretty bad...
He was brain dead. He is still being supported cardiovascularly in CT2 ICU. I don't know when they will declare him..
And some more students from BSc and MBBS are being admitted in the casualty and ward suspecting of Dengue..
Really bad times at AIIMS!

---

Update:
I publicized the news across medical schools in India, and also involved one of my friends who works for an Indian TV channel. Finally, media was interested, and the news was covered widely by TV channels in India and BBC 10 hours later. Here's a screenshot from BBC news site: (Click to enlarge)

11 Rules of Blog Hygiene

How to make a good blog

• Have a well-defined purpose

Your blog must serve a well-defined purpose, and declare it in the title of your blog. Nonspecific blogs do not attract visitors. A blog that is focused on a particular theme is appreciated more than a loosely-woven one. Many people write blogs as if they were their daily journals, and that is fine too. That is a purpose in itself, at least for the author.

• Write descriptive headlines

When people reach your blog, they'll look at the headline first. The headline for your posts should be descriptive of the content. Otherwise it becomes confusing for the readers. For example, if you are writing about the visit of Gandhi to South Africa and how it changed his life, then the title could well be "Gandhi's visit to South Africa: How it changed his life".

• Focus on quality

Having quality content on your blog will produce the urge to be read. Most people should be able to generate quality content by themselves, as long as they do enough research or brainstorming on the topic. Make sure to cover as many aspects of the topic as possible. For example, if you are blogging about your shopping experience in the grocery market today, you could describe what all you bought, what you left out, any interesting people you met/saw at the grocery store, any price changes since last time, and so on. The idea is to cover as much of the topic as possible.

Blogs with poor/no content in them are not liked by many. I saw a blog for the first time about 4 years back. It looked like a diary of random events from a real person's life. Many of the posts were one-liners, and it seemed that the author was focusing on quantity rather than quality. My fears were confirmed when I saw one of her posts - "Yay! It's my 200th post on my blog! Oh my God!"

• Include pictures

A picture is worth a thousand words - it has been said, and rightly so. Pictures make our world colorful. Pictures attract attention. Picture want to be looked at. Whenever possible, try to post a picture on your blog entries. The picture must match the content of your post, and also the overall color scheme of the page if possible. For example, when blogging about my recent visit to a pig farm, it is an interesting (but often forgotten) idea to post those pictures I snapped at the pig farm. If you can't think of a picture to place in your blog, forget it then.

Also, try to include your own picture on the blog. It makes the blog lok a lot more personal.

• Use consistent and relevant color schemes

There should be ample white space in the blog for easy readability, and a light background. If you keep your fancy pictures as the blog background, it's very difficult to read. Just take a look at any random profile at myspace.com and you see what I mean.

The color should reflect the nature of your content (e.g. a young girl's emotional blog may have a pink color, a technology blog may have a blue color), but there are no well-defined rules here. Most likely, you shall follow some preset schemes given by the blogging system, but you can always customize the template to suit your needs.

• Place links and references

Whenever possible, try to include links to other sources of information about the content of your blog post. This ensures that the readers know you're open to others' ideas, and are ready to give your readers a broad point of view. You may consider linking not only blogs that support your point of view, but also pages that are opposite to your point of view. For example, if your blog is describing the capitalist economic practices, you might also want to give a link in the end to communist economy. If you have

• Respect copyright

Stealing content is an extremely bad idea, because it doesn't benefit anyone. How would you feel if you discover that someone has copied your blog without your permission, and is getting applauded for the stolen content? If you must use content from others, make sure you post a link to their text rather than copying and pasting it altogether. After all, it is your blog, not theirs! If you must copy and paste content from other sites, make sure you have the author's permission, enclose the copied text within quotes, and always give a reference to the original website.

• Organize and reorganize before hitting submit button
  

All the paragraphs in a blog should "flow" logically from top to bottom. However, not everyone can write all the paragraphs in a logical sequence in the first go. I can't do it myself. When I start writing the blog, first I tend to write the content that appeals to me, and then I write somethinng that doesn't appeal to me that much. This is quite natural, and happens with everyone. But when I start reading my own blog just before I post it, I discover that some paragraphs should be promoted to the top, whereas others serve better as footnotes. Also, when you rearrange your paragraphs, you may have to add connecting sentences to the end of previous paragraph or the beginning of next paragraph so the "flow of logic" stays smooth.

• Correct mistakes

There's nothing wrong in making mistakes as long as you're willing to correct them, and learn from them. If someone points out an error in your blog (factual, grammatical, or otherwise), promptly correct it, and thank him/her. Most blogging systems have a spellchecker built into them (if you haven't noticed). It is a good idea to spellcheck your document before posting.

• Track your visitors

You can track your visitors by Google analytics or a similar service. This will let you know which pages are more popular, and which ones are least so. Knowing this, you can improve upon your weak areas, and attract more traffic.

• Invite feedback/comments

It is a bad idea to disable comments/feedback on your blog. Comments enable others to be part of your blog, and other people will tell you what they think about your blog. There are times when people email me directly because they want to differ with some of my ideas, and there are times when people share my ideas. Nonetheless, it is good to keep in touch with your readers, so enable comments now if you haven't done so already.

Reality Distortion Field

Reality Distortion Field (abbr: RDF) is a term first heard in the Star Trek series. This term referred to optimism being taken to great heights, so that mere mortals could do things way beyond their reach. But this term went almost unnoticed, unpopularized, until Budd Tribble used this term again. Budd Tribble was an MD, PhD working at Apple Computer as a manager of the development team. Being a trained physiologist, he noted Steve Jobs' ability in keeping his team highly motivated by an intriguing mixture of his charisma, charm, exaggeration and clever marketing.

Steve Jobs made his programmers believe that they could "just do it", and his team then put in enormous amounts of effort in their work, leading to heightened productivity and efficiency. The result was Apple Computer passing milestones of success, non-stop.

How to create Reality Distortion Field:

1. Be optimistic yourself.
   
2. Present small achievements as "breakthroughs", interesting developments as "turning points" and "huge leaps forward".
3. Use your personality and charisma effectively for convincing others "you can do it"
4. Be funny about your ideas.
5. Be ready to bend the facts to fit the purpose at hand.
6. Make others follow you, and then make them dream of success.
   

Notes:

1. The effect of RDF is quite volatile. It stays only as long as the initiating force (Steve Jobs in this example) is around the subject, and withers off in his absence.
2. RDF works effectively even when the subject knows about it.
   

How to synchronize firefox bookmarks over any number of computers

Note: This article was written about Google Browser Sync, a product that has been discontinued as of today. The same purpose can now be achieved by installing "Weave" add-on for Firefox.

I have been using the internet since 10 years now, and have noticed one thing. Time and again, I visit few sites that I like so much. I bookmark them, for easy return later. But then, I lose the bookmarks because I erased the hard disk, and never remembered to backup bookmarks. There have been times when I backed up bookmarks, but never cared to restore them. Things get more complicated given I want to use the same bookmarks at home and office.

Hmm... I wish there was a way I could store the bookmarks on an internet server, and my browser could synchronize it automatically from there.

Few people know that Google (yes, again!) has a easy solution to this. This service is called Google Browser Sync, and it works with Firefox only at the moment.

What it does: Automatically backs up your Firefox bookmarks, cookies, saved passwords, history, and last tabs/windows you opened... and then restores it when you use a different computer (or the same computer after you format your hard drive, for example).

How it works: Google simply backs up your browser information on its servers, and then restores it whenever required (e.g. if your browser crashes, your hard disk dies, or you simply switch off your home computer and move to office computer).

How to do it:
1. Requirements: Firefox and a Google account (e.g. a working gmail account).
2. First open Firefox, and download Google Browser Sync extension for Firefox from this page.
3. Exit firefox, and relaunch it.
4. Google Browser Sync will launch automatically, and ask you for your Google account and password. If you have a Gmail account, supply those username and password here. It'll also ask you to set a PIN number as additional measure of security.
5. Next, it will ask which all settings you need to synchronize. I selected everything except stored passwords.
6. Done!

Google Browser Sync will display as this:


To check this, exit firefox with 4-5 windows/tabs open. Now restart firefox (from some other computer if you can), and you'll be prompted to restore your last session. If you choose to restore it, Firefox will spring back to life exactly in the same condition as it was last time. This includes any sessions you may have logged in (cookies).

That was neat! Forget backing up bookmarks manually... Let Google do it for you!

If you don't want to use Google Browser Sync anymore, you can uninstall it. To do this, open firefox, click Tools --> Extensions. Now select Google Browser Sync extension from this list, and click on the Uninstall button.

Perhaps a very innocent question!

A picture is worth a 1000 words :

How to change desktops on a macbook/pro by slapping it

Recently I saw an interesting video on youtube where the person was changing desktops on a macbook pro by slapping its screen edges.



That was cool... and I was on my way to do it. In the absence of any instructions on youtube, I asked my best friend for help. His name is Google.

Principle: Macbook and Macbook Pro has a sudden motion sensor that switches the hard disk off temporarily in case of a fall from height. VirtueDesktops takes input from this motion sensor, and then outputs it to changing desktops. Simple in principle. Simple to do if you follow the steps below.

I have done it, in three ways. I'm posting the easiest way here:

HOW TO CHANGE DESKTOPS ON A MACBOOK/PRO BY SLAPPING IT

1. Install VirtueDesktops from this page.
2. Run it from the applications folder in finder.
3. When it runs, open its preferences by clicking its icon on tray, and then selecting preferences.
4. In the Application tab, click the little checkmark against "Enable Motion Sensor switching".



5. Now start slapping the macbook/pro

It should work out of the box, but if it doesn't, you can logout and relogin to your account.

Tips:

• We call this thing a "smackbook" :)
  
• Sliding the motion sensor to right reduces sensivity (quite opposite of what is expected usually).
• The "light sensor switching" works with a macbook pro only (not with regular macbooks). The reason is that the light sensors are present only in the macbook pro models (for controlling the backlit keyboard).
  
• You could change the desktop switching effect to "cube" and it's the coolest thing!
• When you type on the macbook/pro, the pressure on the keypboard may cause the desktops to change. This is extremely annoying, and in such an event you should reduce the sensitivity of motion sensor switching by sliding the arrow towards right.
• If you want different wallpapers for different desktops, you can do so by opening the preferences of VirtueDesktops --> selecting the "Desktop Template" section from list on the left --> selecting the checkmark against "Use template for new desktops"--> clicking the little plus sign in the bottom of that screen --> selecting "image overlay"--> clicking the little "i" near the plus sign to set the image.

Let me know how it went!

Google suggest: What is it, and how to use it.

Part 1: What is Google Suggest?

Google suggest looks like the usual google homepage only, but it tries to "guess" what you are typing, and autocompletes your entries based on the number of search results. A screenshot:



In this example, when I type "All India", google tries to suggest that the most popular search phrase beginning with "All India" is "All India Radio" with over 8 million results. Second in rank is "All India Institue of Medical Sciences" (which I was searching for) with about 1 million results.

Part 2: How to use it?

Change your browser homepage to this:
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
(If you use a language other than English, change the last two letters of this link to a language of your choice, e.g. replace en with hi for Hindi, de for German, fr for French etc. On testing, I found that suggest does not work with most non-English languages.

Note that when you typing something, Google automatically guesses what you want, and tries to fill up the search field with the top result. If you like the first phrase, simply press Enter / Return on your keyboard to search for that. If you like the other search phrases, you can use the arrow keys on the keyboard to select them, and then press enter to activate. You can also use a mouse for this if you like.

Concept: eBytes cybercafe

The following few paragraphs describe a cafetaria from a dream I had on 22nd July 2006, while I was still in jetlag after traveling from United States to India:

The name of this cafetaria is E-bytes. The logo looks like coffee-cup from sun's Java. There are no waiters who come to take the order. Every table is fitted with a computer with TFT screen and a mouse. Users are presented with a flash-based menu! Users simply point and click what they want, and even pay by their credit card right from their table. The orders are taken by the networked computer by the chef manager who is completely out of sight from the customers. The order is completed, and I get to see it.

I ordered 1GB RAM for myself. It's basically a rectangular wafer with golden yellow base and greenish toppings (maybe cilantro) - looks just like computer RAM. My petite friend gets 512 MB RAM which is a thinner version. We dip it in some kind of sauce and taste it - very tasty! And crisp! :)

Other things on menu:

Hard disk donuts: Comes in 80 GB and 160 GB sizes. This donut however doesn't have a hole in its center! You can order Sweet Seagate or Salty Samsung.

Hotmouse: A mouse-shaped hotdog. It's cordless. Children would like to have a corded Hotmouse that is also available on the house.

The dream ends... prematurely.

Will someone actually materialize this dream, some day? Or is it there already?

Ubuntu and Vista: Trends by Google

Google Trends is a unique service aimed at studying the trends in online google searches. It compares keywords you supply based on the volume of Google searches as well as volume of news reporting on the keywords. I saw the trend for ubuntu vs. vista, and the results are here.

Some comments:

1. Vista has shown dramatic ups and downs, whereas Ubuntu continues its steady rise. The tremulousness of vista graph may in part be due to the Microsoft vs. EU court rows, as well as the continued delays in shipping of vista. However, Ubuntu has continued to rise up, despite the fact it's a two year old baby.

2. Ubuntu has come up with four major releases in the last two years, whereas Windows has struggled to release Vista after about five years of effort. There could be several reasons Windows is lagging behind:

(i) Microsoft is trying to drag XP as long as it can. Thus, by releasing Vista late, it's buying time to develop the next release (Vienna).
(ii) Microsoft servers were hacked few years down the lane. So they are trying to patch up any security holes the hacker community may exploit.
(iii) Microsoft is trying to build "curiosity" among its users for Vista by delaying its release
There could be more reasons... but it appears that the delay will ultimately benefit Microsoft more than what earlier versions of windows did.

2. Somehow all the trends searches are from major cities in the Europe. In fact, more people are searching for Ubuntu rather than Vista in Norway, Finland and Spain. I think I can explain Finland by the fact that Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, hails from Finland.

3. The regionwise trends show that South Africa is the second most popular region for Ubuntu rather than Vista. I can explain this because Mark Shuttleworth, the creator of Canonical Foundation for Ubuntu, hails from South Africa. I have an african friend who says that South Africa is perhaps the most developed country in the entire Africa.

4. When it comes to Ubuntu, it appears that more searches are done on Ubuntu than it appearing in the news. This is very typical of any linux related news - many people are interested in it but somehow that doesn't make headline on any major news site (leaving out technical news agencies).

5. Despite whatever Ubuntu fans might say, I'd contend that Ubuntu is in no way a competitor to Vista... at least not in the first few months. I remember somewhat similar speculations were circulating when XP was in the coming... people used to post fervently in forums "Apple and Red Hat will kill XP" and things like that. But that did not happen. People are resistant to change - they're more likely to continue with doing whatever they are doing. And they're doing Windows. You know what I mean.

6.

eXpression

I coin new usage: eXpression

Definition: The process of externalizing ideas through online electronic media.

Components of eXpression:

• Website
• Blog
• Forums/bulletin boards
• Emails
• Text chats
• Voice/video chats
• Social networking
  

Could well be another name for a cyber company! :)

What is bicycle-repair?

The process of installing Linux is quite boring, just as installing any other OS. Some of you, who keep awake and sit near the computer while it's installing Linux must have noticed that it installs thousands of packages. Have you noticed that it also installs "bicycle repair" as one of the packages?

Does this mean that you can repair your broken bicycle by hooking it up with your linux computer?

"Eh.. Comeon! You must be kidding!"

Well yeah. I am kidding.

When I saw this "bicycle repair" package for the first time, I was curious, so set out to know what exactly is this. And I found the answer.

Bicycle Repair Man is a refactoring utility for Python. Basically, it manipulates the code of a program without changing input or output. The aim is to make the code more readable for the programmer.

But still, I wish my computer could repair my bicycle for me! :)

How to synchronize time with NTP servers on an ubuntu machine

Update: Thanks to Ben Dodd for pointing this out, this blog post is now obsolete. NTP synchronization is now built into Ubuntu. Just install ntp using the command:

sudo apt-get install ntp

and you're done.

After the last two power failures in my area, I realized that the server loses its time after every hard restart. Its BIOS battery is totally exhausted. The time is now erroneous, systemwide! I remember Ubuntu includes a tool with which it can (and does, by default) synchronize time with its NTP servers. In my case, it isn't working well. So here's how I made it work:

1. First, make sure NTP is intstalled.

sudo apt-get install ntpdate

2. Then, run ntpdate, specifying an NTP server:

sudo ntpdate ntp.ubuntulinux.org

This should set the time correctly for that session. Note that superuser previleges are necessary to set the time, because setting time is really an "administrative task".

3. Now you shall want this to run this regularly, right? Since it's a server, I'd prefer to run it at startup. To do this, we shall add a little script to the startup.

First, open a terminal, and pass this command:

sudo nano /etc/init.d/ntpdate

In the blank file that comes up, copy and paste this:

#! /bin/sh
echo "Synchronizing system time with Ubuntu Servers..."
ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com
echo "Setting hardware clock to updated time..."
hwclock --systohc

Note the last line: It resets the hardware time ("BIOS time") to the system time. Press Ctrl+O to write out this file, and Ctrl+X to quit nano. Now we shall make this little script executable. To do this,

sudo chmod 700 /etc/init.d/ntpdate

And finally, let's inform the system about this new startup script we just added:

sudo update-rc.d ntpdate defaults 90

And you're done.

To test this, you must restart your system, and keep a close watch on the messages being shown on the system. Alternatively, you could also read the system log files later (/var/log/syslog)

Free "Parallels" for Mac OS X

I want to run Ubuntu virtual machine on OS X, but don't want to pay for Parallels Desktop. So I was searching for few alternatives, and stumbled across one such tool. This one is called "Q" (pronounced "kju"). I installed it, and was able to create an Ubuntu virtual machine effortlessly. Even easier than VMware Workstation.

So I now have Ubuntu running under Mac OS X, with the help of Q.



Then I also tried Ubuntu and Kanotix Live CDs in Q - Both of which worked flawlessly. I tried installing Windows 98 SE in Q just for the sake of experimenting, but it wouldn't boot from a bootable CD! Don't know why!

In a nutshell, If you want to run another OS on your Mac without rebooting, Q is a formidable candidate.

Identify this operating system

All these OS's running are real, there is no "background jpg" or something like that!

Ubuntu Server: CDROM problem

My server, a 1997 old desktop, has Ubuntu Server Edition running on it. I had inserted my Ubuntu CDROM in its drive, and kept it over there ever since. But now, I needed to take the CD out, for installing an Ubuntu virtual machine on my laptop.

Okay, so I sit in front of my server, and press the eject button of CDROM. Nothing happens. Did that again - nothing yet. I pressed the button really hard one more time. But the machine won't budge.

I thought that the old CDROM drive is dead for good.

But wait... I just remembered: I couldn't eject CDs by pressing the eject button on my previous linux laptop! What is going on here?

Lacking a GUI, I decide to do something from CLI (command line interface) to eject the CD. So I type this:

eject

and press enter.

Viola...!!!! The CD is out now! :)

MacBook Smart Sound Volume

I just discovered this. First, set the macbook volume to a level when you can barely hear it (about 50-60%). Now plug in a headphone jack in the headphone socket in the macbook, but don't wear it in your ears... just let it lie besides the macbook.

And now, increase the volume to maximum... you shall hear the sounds from the headphones, right? Yes you do. And then, remove the headphones from the macbook.

You would expect that the macbook will keep playing sound at maximum volume. But you're wrong.... MacBook remembers your sound volume settings for the macbook internal speakers and the headphones plugged in.

You discovered something!

And last, but not the least, plug the headhphones back into the macbook, and reduce the volume... so your eardrum stays safe the next time you wear them. :)

Google products - now you can touch and feel them!

Google Notebook


















Google T-shirt for pets















Google Car License Plate













Google Chewing Gum











And Google Clothes store!

Empty iptables in Ubuntu default installation

Now that my site is famous (almost), I'm beginning to think about security. Actually I should have thought about it even before opening the site to the public. So here I am, sitting in front of my black box, thinking about security.

Googling around for some time revealed more details about a word I happened to know previously - "iptables". A quick check at my iptables configuration in default ubuntu installation revealed that I do not have any firewall rules set at all! Now, this makes me think twice about my server security. How then, no one was able to hack the site?

The answer is my router. It has an in-built firewall, which I had configured to allow only ports 80 (HTTP) and 22 (SSH). I would just have port 80 open, but I needed remote management. So I opened port 22 as well.

I'll find more details about server security, and post them here.

The Digg Effect on my site

My site was posted by someone at Digg.com recently, and experienced a heavy traffic. It survived the onslaught, but was crawling painfully. It could have done better if

• I was informed before posting at digg.com
• I had faster internet connection (currently 64kBps upload DSL)

Apache and Ubuntu survived the onslaught, and the site remains up. I had set up a mirror earlier... and it proved handy in these times.

Thank you all for digging/undigging the story!