I
More than Death, losing my memory scares the shit out of me.
It makes me queasy to think that all the wonderful experiences I had, the secrets in my head, my tough times and failures can go poof; slowly or in an instant without warning.
Doesn’t matter if its due to some fucked up illness like Alzheimer’s or a freak accident from sheer bad luck. It is very possible that I won’t be me one day.
The only bright side is that at least parts of my identity will live on as memories in people close to me if that happens. Coming to think of it, things won’t be that bad after all 
. As they say,
Filed under: Life, Rants, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: identity, keepcalm, memory, self
“Brooks was here”
Minor spoilers ahead
Like many others I love Shawshank Redemption. The scene where Brooks is out of prison and is unable to catch up with the world is just plain sad. One of my favorite all time movie scenes that gives me the chills every time.
I keep hoping Brooks found his Freedom.
Filed under: Life, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: brooks, freedom, hope, minor spoilers
Chile, allá vamos!
It all started as a little hack by Srini and I at the Yahoo! Openhack Event conducted in Bangalore. The hack by itself wasn’t that fancy when compared to the other finalists but we did feel good when our hack got shortlisted for the finals. We wrote a little web app which would index delicious bookmarks and enable Full Text Search on the Content with a neat tagging mechanism.
Meanwhile, applications were open for the second round of StartupChile program. A seed of 40K equity-free USD and an exotic location, sounded rather interesting. We added some new ideas to the original delicious hack, drafted a nice crisp application and applied a few hours before the deadline.
Fast forward a month, We are delighted to announce that Cruns is one of the 154 startups that made it through the 2nd round of the program.
These are still early days, I am all excited, happy, anxious and scared, all the same time. Never have I budgeted for things months in advance. Ever since I passed out of college, I have been living in the relative comfort of working under a great team at Serendio where I began my baby steps as a programmer.
I have to admit, I am finding myself outside my comfort zone all of a sudden. Something which I hope I will adapt to sooner or later. One thing is for sure, Interesting times wait ahead
So there, Announcing Cruns; Something which we hope will help you to organize your information better.
Congratulations to the other 153 teams that made it through. Looking forward to meeting you all this January!
Filed under: Events, Life | 7 Comments
Tags: cruns, delicious, openhack, openhack2011, startup, startupchile, startupchile.org, yahoo
Save your staplers!
Picture this. You are at work on a Friday evening. You are all pumped up! Who wouldn’t be. Two full days of zero work ahead! You shutdown your computer, rise up, turn around to leave and BAM! This happens,
The key to ‘Lumberg Evasion‘ is not only to stay ‘hidden’ but also to be aware of your boss’ whereabouts. Information is wealth and can potentially save your weekend.
I wanted to check out Pygame and hacked out a little python script which does this. The idea is that you position your webcam (el-cheapo-no-brand webcams sell for peanuts) near your cubicle/desk and get notified if there is some movement in a predefined area. Also works great if you have a laptop and want to know if someone is peeking over your shoulder (yeah, yeah… I know about mirrors).
The script can detect movements within the red rectangle. Here is how it does this
- When we start the script, the average color within the red rectangle is determined. This will act as the reference color.
- Deviations in this average color is monitored in consecutive frames. If its more than a certain threshold, there is some movement.
- When this happens, play a sound and pop up a little notification
All is well
Dad walks in and gets caught
Notifications using pynotify
Of course, it goes without saying that its just a simple hack. Works well if the background color is of an uniform color.
[1]: The Source Code: Needs pygame and pynotify (for desktop notifications) to be installed. Very crude. Use at your own risk. The script is released under WTFPL. Its rather simple but should be enough to be a starting point for more evil deeds 
.
P.S: No, I don’t work for an ‘Initech’.
P.P.S: If you are one of those ‘Bill Lumberg’ types, Fuck you!
Filed under: linux, programming, Python, Tips | 4 Comments
Tags: fun, initech, lumberg, officespace, pygame, Python, webcam
I had been itching to go on a motorbike roadtrip to Kerala. Sitting in the back of the car isn’t exactly my idea of a fun and fulfilling roadtrip.
Therefore from Oct 2 – 10, I was on my motorbike riding through some diverse terrain and landscapes that included arid countrysides, coastal plains, villages, forests, hill stations and plantations of cardamom, sandalwood, rubber and tea.
The 2118 odd kilometers was done on my little 150cc Yamaha FZ16 laden with saddle bags and supplies. Given a chance, I’d gladly re-do the same roadtrip again on a more powerful machine.
The Short Way Round - The route
My itinerary for the trip was as follows
- Oct 2, Sat: Home – Salem – Avinashi – Coonoor
- Oct 3, Sun: Coonoor – *crash in the mountains* – Ooty – Gudalur – Sultan Bathery (Wayanad)
- Oct 4, Mon: Sultan Bathery – Kalpetta – Calicut
- Oct 5, Tue: Calicut – Thrissur – Chalakudi – Athirappally/Vazhachal falls
- Oct 6, Wed: Athirapally – Unknown shortcut through rubber plantations – Kaladi – Muvattupuzha (Rendezvous with my friends here and was no longer alone) – Munnar
- Oct 7, Thur: Munnar – Marayoor – Chinnar – Offroading at Anaimudi – Munnar
- Oct 8, Fri: Munnar – Idukki – Elapara (with lots of detours taking us to awesome spots)
- Oct 9, Sat: Elapara – Vagamon – Parunthumpara – Pambanar (Goodbyes over a heavy lunch and was all alone again) – VandiPeriyar – Kumily – Theni – Madurai
- Oct 10, Sun: Madurai – Trichy – Home
It was a long, wet weekend with rains lashing through Kerala rather heavily. Nevertheless, I was having lots of fun except for the crash in the mountains near Ooty. That was not fun AT ALL. Detailed logs to follow soon.
En route Wayanad
Crashed 5 minutes later
Filed under: Biking, Life | 6 Comments
Tags: fz, idukki, kerala, roadtrip, triplogs, yamaha
simplejson’s simple gotcha
I like simple things. Anything more complex more than ‘simple’ is tough to deal with. Therefore it comes as no surprise that I love JSON. Heck, the entire grammar fits in a business card.
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/equanimity/3763158824/ (by superfluity)
If you take a closer look at the spec above, you will notice that the keys for a JSON ‘dictionary’ should be strings. I have a feeling that programmers like me whose language-of-mass-destruction is python are likely to overlook this minor gotcha.
This is where it gets interesting. Python’s json module tries to do something smart when you try to encode a python dictionary into a JSON string. In this case, all the keys are python ints.
In [3]: json.dumps({ 1 : 'Foo', 3: 'Baz'})
Out[3]: '{"1": "Foo", "3": "Baz"}'
When I decode it back to a python object…
In [4]: json.loads(json.dumps({ 1 : 'Foo', 3: 'Baz'}))
Out[4]: {u'1': u'Foo', u'3': u'Baz'}
BAM! The json module silently converts all my integer keys to strings. I, for one, would have preferred an Exception to be raised instead.
Something like this, for example.
In [19]: class F: pass
...
In [20]: f = F()
In [21]: json.loads(json.dumps({ f : 'Foo', 3: 'Baz'}))
... snip errors ...
TypeError: key <__main__.F instance at 0x92b4b2c> is not a string
In this case, I get the desired behaviour where a ‘TypeError’ is raised. Stupid example, but you get the idea.
If I am missing something obvious here please do comment. This particular cheekiness of the json module caught me unawares recently. Or maybe I was wrong in expecting the decode operation to return something that is identical to the source.
Interestingly, the json support modules that ship with TurboGears error out if you try to return a dictionary having non-string keys from your controller methods.
Filed under: programming, Rants, Tips | 2 Comments
Tags: caveat, gotcha, json, Python, simplejson, Tips
Touring, now a Breeze!
India, is a wonderful place for touring on a motorbike. With terrains ranging from high mountainous North, North Eastern India to the Coastal plains and lush Ghats down South, we sure have a huge load of places to see and experience. Motorbike touring can also be risky since a disproportionate rate of road accidents involve two-wheelers. Therefore it is absolutely necessary for the rider to protect himself on the road with proper riding gears.
The ideal mode of getting riding gear would be to look for clearance sales outside our country and ask the relatives or friends to ship it down to India for us. For people like me, whom the relatives hate to be related to, there are local players like Cramster and DSG who provide gear that are priced competitively. I already have a nice helmet but the lack of a proper armoured touring jacket was preventing me from getting adventurous enough to go out on long road trips.
Requirements
I wanted a jacket that that could satisfy all the following requirements.
- Should be made of a fabric that doesn’t tear easily protecting me against scraping injuries.
- Armor in the joints and some padding in the back for protection against hard falls.
- Since Chennai is not blessed with a good weather, the Jacket shouldn’t boil me alive when I am wearing it. Should be bearable in hot weather atleast when the bike is in motion.
- Extra brownie points for usability in the rains.
Alpinestars are great but they are simply too expensive for me. DSG distributes them in India in case you have saved enough moola to buy one. Be wary of fake imitation Alpinestars gear that are sold here in Chennai for 5 – 6k. They look genuine but they are, at the end of the day; fake.
Narrowing down the choices:
DSG Maze (Photo from planetdsg.com)
Taking into account all these and reading user posts from xBHP (in addition to rabid googling), I shortlisted DSG Maze and the Cramster Breezer 2.0. Earlier, I had almost decided to order Maze online, but after seeing the Cramster in action during the Vedanthangal xBHP G2G, I noticed that the Cramster Breezer 2.0 qualified as a worthy competition to the more expensive Maze, both of which met my requirements except for the usability in the rains. Also the presence of Leather shoulders and cuffs in Maze was putting me off. They are damn cool and sexy, but leather doesn’t go well with rain. To add to the confusion of choices, I learnt that Cramster had released a new all black Breezer 3.0 phasing out the 2nd revision.
The presence of a removable waterproof inner liner was the killer feature for me, which was not present in Breezer 2.0 and Maze (Correct me if I am wrong). Finally, I made the decision and took my little FZ on a road trip to Cramster’s Bangalore office yesterday to get the damn jacket. (also some balaclavas for myself and friends). I chose to ride to Bangalore instead of ordering it online since it would give me a chance to test the jacket on my way back 
(no nagging confusion about choosing the right size as well)
Sorry for the soddy pics.
3M reflectors (the grey lines) are absolutely awesome
Inner lining.
The Jacket is heavy in the hands but fits snuggly when I wear it. I had to wear the inner lining in Bangalore because of the windchill in the early hours of dawn when I was leaving the city. Once the sun came out, I removed it and all was well. I am quite happy with the finish and the quality of materials that have gone into this jacket. Like most other jackets, it comes with the Cordura fabric that doesn’t tear and 3M reflectors for added visibility to other motorists for spotting you in the dark.
Verdict:
Unfortunately, I have no means to compare it with others and offer a shootout of sorts since I haven’t really tried any other jacket before. I would love to hear from the users of other jackets. If you are not a fan of an all-black jacket, DSG Maze comes in red in addition to the all-black version.
Ride hard and ride safe!
P.S: Thanks to Sudarsan (no, not me) and Pradeep for allowing me to camp at their place for the weekend.
P.P.S: Thanks to my boss for buying my LCD monitor!
Filed under: Biking, Life, Tips | 9 Comments
Tags: breezer, breezer3.0, cordura, cramster, dsg, fz16, jackets, maze, planetdsg, touring, xbhp
Roadtrip to Pondy
Made an unplanned roadtrip to Pondicherry on my FZ yesterday. Driving on the ECR with the sunset on your right is pure bliss. The weather was good with occasional chilly bursts of sea breeze. Cruised the entire stretch at a comfortable 80km/hr.
Although not as long as my earlier Yelagiri trip, it was fun nevertheless. The former French colony seems to be at its best charm when it rains .
It is amazing how your senses become tuned to the road after riding for an hour or two. Hopefully, I will be doing far more longer trips this winter.
(Sorry for the poor image quality)
Filed under: Life | 8 Comments
Tags: ecr, fz16, pondicherry, pondy, roadtrip
Almost a graduate
4 years ago, I joined a college which had the highest mediocrity rating among the mediocre colleges in TN. To be honest, I didn’t have good academics in my high school, so I must say I was quite fortunate to get an undergrad ‘seat’ for a CS Engineering degree there. Luckily, on the very 2nd day of college, I had enough brains to come to a conclusion that my next 4 years would be spent in an Orwellian Dystopian Parallel Universe where students wore lab coats for CS Labs. (It still beats me, the purpose of a fucking labcoat in a Theoretical Computer Science Lab).
Engineering education in TN is as fucked up as it gets. The fact that Yours Truly will be attending his Convocation ceremony next month and getting a degree certificate is proof enough that its fucked up beyond all recognition.
And did I mention, there will be 50 more new colleges this year in TN alone! Fucking Pathetic…
Lastly,
Thanks to Krish Ashok for making a joke out of us poor zombies..
Filed under: bleh, College, Life, Rants | 4 Comments
Tags: rant college tn chennai engineering fail education
24camp – Be there
Last week, 24camp started out as a means for people to get together and work on interesting projects/ideas.
Serendio will be hosting one this weekend, 13th February. We have place for about 20 – 25 in our office premises. More information can be found here.
You can also participate virtually by logging on to #24camp IRC channel on the Freenode servers. If you want to start a local, group of your own add your group in the wiki page mentioned above.
Filed under: programming, Tips | Leave a Comment
Tags: 24camp, hackathon, IRC, serendio
