Mahesh, Celebrating Life...

maven plugin to get localip

2011-12-27T23:25:00.000+05:30

During a dev build, its useful to have resource filters that can create config files using localip of the machine on which build/deployment is happening.

I searched all around the net for a way to fetch localip of the machine in maven. But, found nothing working/ready to use. So, Here is an effort to fix it: A maven plugin that sets localIP as maven property. It can be attached to initialize phase of the build.

The code is opensourced on gihub: https://github.com/tmahesh/maven-getlocalip-plugin with usage/install instructions

How fast is my site? : Integrating boomerang with google analytics

2011-02-05T19:11:00.046+05:30

Site speed matters. Period!!

Here is a statistic to drive home this point: For a 100ms(millisecond) delay in pageload of Amazon, sales decreased by 1%

Through this post, I want to share an approach to figuring out: How fast is my site?

Step1:
Install YSlow/Pagespeed : Two wonderful tools to find what is happening behind the scenes to render a web page, how fast is it on your computer.

But, the problem is... The data we can get from these tools is limited/biased.
How can we collect data of every consumer visiting your site?

Step2:
Boomerang is a beautiful tool from the Yahoo! Stable (YDN). It measures how much time a page takes to load for every visitor of your site (well, almost...)

But, the problem is... We have to write a lot of scripts to parse the webserver logs and analyze this data.
How can we be lazy/smart to analyze this data?

Step3:
Integrate google analytics (event tracking api) with boomerang using this code snippet:
https://gist.github.com/833066
The piece of code above will create a report of the page load time of different pages in your analytics account (goto: Content->Event Tracking)

The last column will tell you the average page load time.

Each line/variable of the code has been thought through and tuned to get the reporting right. Hope you will find the code/ideas useful.

Now, Lets make internet faster...

Black Swan: Impact of the highly improbable

2009-01-14T23:58:00.003+05:30

Project two of toastmaster's speech

---------
For centuries together, Europeans were totally convinced "All Swans are white" Until the dutch explorers in 1697 discovered Australia and they spotted a Black Swan. One single event shattered the beliefs held for centuries.

Fellow toastmasters and my dear guests, Today, I'll summarize the ideas presented in the book "Black Swan: The impact of highly improbable" by a famous author Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Lets take another dramatic example to understand Black Swan event:
I assume you all know about the bird Turkey. Its bigger than a Hen. Its fed a variety of grains everyday by the friendly human race. With every feeding, the Turkey firms up its belief, the friendly human race is looking after its best interests. Until one Wednesday afternoon before the Thanksgiving, it incurs a revision of belief. Any guess? Yeah..its slaughtered, cooked and served as Dinner!!

I'm sure we can find a few Black Swan events from our own experiences: Stock market crashes, 9/11, Tsunami, Recent Satyam fiasco...

There is a common thread that runs through these Black Swan events:
1. Highly unpredictable
2. Huge impact
3. Human nature to attach a reason and explain them after they have happened

The First two characteristics are easy to grasp. Let me focus on the third one.

The future history books will say. Oh! SubPrime crisis lead to the Crash. India did not install earth quake sensors in the ocean bad or else Tsunami wouldn't have caused big damage. If all planes had bullet proof cockpits and sealed, terrorists wouldn't have flew into Twin Towers and collapsed them. If SEBI was more cautious, Satyam fiasco wouldn't have happened.

Let me describe a scientific experiment to show how human brain constructs these theories after the fact. Our brain is separated into two hemispheres: Left brain and Right brain with a few connections between the two. Split brain patients has no connections.

Ask the right brain of the split brain patient to lift his finger and then ask the left brain "Why did you lift the finger?" He'll shoot back...Oh! I saw a beautiful flower on the wall or Oh! there was a lizard crawling on the roof. If you do the same to left brain and ask the right brain...He'll say "I don't know"

Strange ways our brain got wired for evolutionary reasons. Be aware of it. Resist the temptation to explain away things as natural and predictable because this has happened or that has happened. We are being tricked by our circuits in the brain. Be aware of them.

So Dear Friends, the Black Swans are a realty. Ignore the experts who theorize and attach reasons after the fact and keep in check the arrogance of humans to attach precise reasons to events and think.... We know more than what we actually know.

Over to you Toastmaster

My GrandMom's place

2008-12-18T18:05:00.009+05:30

The way a house should be-- Clouds provide you the shade, the moon works as your calendar, twinkling stars put you to sleep and time stops for you...

A house where you can:
-grow a few vegetables in the backyard
-domesticate a buffalo & play with its cute calf
-pump out fresh water with a hand-pump
-crawl a creeper all over the roof
-use few resources and Do beautiful things...

A few years back, before it was rebuilt, there wasn't this much concrete and stone. A big black buffalo and its cute-calf were in the backyard. I lived with my grand mom and Great grand mom. Two wonderful women, who cared only for things that made me happy. I played all day, every day :)

About Me: Transcript of my toastmasters speech

2008-11-28T23:00:00.007+05:30

Here is a Transcript of my icebreaker speech at ToastMasters Club:
----

Who is Mahesh? What is his story of Life?

Fellow Toast Masters and Dear Guests. I'll try to run-thru 26 years of my story in 6-7 minutes...

I was born in Macherla, a small town in Andhra Pradesh. Its on the bank of river Krishna near the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam, the longest man-made earth dam on the planet.

My Dad, Siva Reddy worked at KCP. The company's colony pretty much defined the town. People respected him for his hard work and asked him for advise because he was very straight forward and called spade a spade. My Mom, Vijaya was housewife. She truly believes in "Athidhi mahadevobhava", Treat the guest in your home as God. The whole colony loved her. People booked slots with her for cooking advise. She was a famous chef of the town!! Add to all this: I was the only small kid in that tightly knight community. So I was the toy for everyone and they liked to play with me. I was never constrained by the four walls, the whole colony was a playground, i had clothes in every house, slept anywhere i wished to. Life was beautiful.

When i was 4-5, my grandmother took me with her to the Village, I live with my grandmother and great grand mother- my mom's mom's mom. Two beautiful women, and all they cared for was for me to be happy. I played all day, everyday. It doesn't get any better. I ran bare foot on stony roads, chased butterflies, climbed trees, played in mud..There are no rules, thats the way of village life. It was glorious and Life was exotic.

Reality struck my mom after an year and she put me up in a school. I studied in a govt school, KV. The fees was 15/- per year, the cost of one Masala-Dosa now? Enjoyed lots of free time and games periods, I don't remember doing any homework. Everybody has a nickname in school. I was called the doubt master. I was too curious. Some teaches were happy to answer questions, some got irritated. But, i didn't care. I asked them anyway :-) Everything fascinates me. I carefully watched the workers digging the earth to lay telephone cables, work at house construction, Bus driver replacing the punctured tyre. I watched them in fascination and they watched me in fascination :-) I picked up everything, i found on the road..bolts, empty cigarette packs, stones, used rubber bands..u name it. Fight with my kid brother over small things... Life was fun.

Time passed by and i joined college. I was in a big fix, should i focus on EAMCET, the local engr college exams or prepare for IIT-JEE? Parents and neighbors advised to focus on EAMCET instead of putting foot in two boats. They had a point, but IIT was a romantic goal and I didn't know what to do. So, i tossed a coin :) Heads showed up and i wrote JEE. Thanks to good friends, i cleared it and joined IIT Kanpur. I was in the linux geek group and we loved to hate Microsoft for no reason. Contested in Elections and became hostel president and learnt a bit about real-life. Life passed by like a dream.

After IIT, joined Y! labs and worked on some problems related to Artificial Intelligence. After 3 years, I gave up the job to chase dreams. I am now doing a start up and I'll keep you folks updated on it...

So, here i'm... Celebrating Life and Hoping to make a difference. Over to you ToastMaster.
---------------

PS: This is a speech delivered to an audience..so apply a reality filter to it :) Everyone has their ups and downs. We remember the good things in all its finest detail..and forget stuff that is not so pleasant. Thats Life!!

A few interesting tidbits: Was dangerously close to a charged up one-horned rhino that came out of nowhere in a Safari@Kaziranga, A passenger in a supposedly hijacked plane, Stood on the edge of GrandCanyon, Do 50 pushups, Manage a bullock cart, Spray pesticides in a field, Was lost in the crowd of Kumbh-Mela, Did a Bungee jump, Been to Venice, Florence, Pisa, Rome, Vienna, The Alps, California, Bangkok, LasVegas and a lot of other interesting places in India. Wish to drive a 20wheel truck on the freeway and honk madly(like the one in Terminator)

On staying healthy...

2008-11-14T14:43:00.004+05:30

Eat food thrice a day, Exercise for 30minutes, Keep an eye on how ur clothes fit.

How simple is that!! But, no...we are suckers of complexity. We measure the number of calories in cereal, ask if its sugar-less sugar in the coffee, look for vitamins on the label of chips packet, wonder if its good-cholesterol or bad-cholestrol -- Essentially, comfort ourselves in the complexity and refuse to follow simple things; Eat Food, Exercise a bit. If ur trousers is getting tighter, u are eating more than what you need.

Here is a simple rule for choosing food: Don't eat stuff that is/can be artificially preserved. The food has to rot if left in the open. Otherwise its not the food humans have evolved to digest easily. Even bacteria doesn't grow on that food!! Don't buy stuff your grandmother won't understand :-)

Think about it, We have evolved over millions of years. But, things changed so fast in the last 200 years. Even the all agile human mind is struggling to keep up with the pace of external world. Don't push your body too hard to change. Science doesn't have enough answers, yet. Give your body some time to adapt to our abuses and stay healthy.

Time to move on...

2008-08-01T14:24:00.004+05:30

Time flies when you do what you like. I joined Yahoo! fresh out of college and the last three years at Yahoo! were a fantastic ride. We worked on some cutting-edge stuff, could appreciate what it means to be web-scale, built two really cool technologies and a few "hacks". Also made great friends, found awesome roommates and met some wonderful folks.

Looking back, I'm deliriously happy with the time spent at Yahoo! and stuff i have learnt. Thank you Yahoos; I enjoyed my time here. I'll be in Bangalore, chasing dreams....a startup.

Fashion model flaunting Google Saree!!

2008-06-22T12:11:00.003+05:30

Google is so entrenched in our culture!!

via: http://indiauncut.com/iublog/article/the-google-saree/

The world before iphone and after iphone

2008-06-12T11:43:00.005+05:30

The iphone's DNA:

1. location aware
2. internet friendly
3. powerful compute platform
4. stunning display
5. delights user
6. cheap
7. and MOBILE!!

I think, iphone is destined for ubiquity. Apple seems to have consistently delivered products that will be written in RED in the history of technology; mac, ipod, iphone.

Thanks to Steve Jobs. The world is a much better place because of the break-through devices from Apple.

- A Happy owner of ibook, macbookpro, iphone

Amazon is down!!

2008-06-07T00:00:00.005+05:30

Amazon.com has been for some time now. The error message: Http/1.1 Service Unavailable.

This is BIG news!! I always believed Amazon is THE company when it comes to building distributed, fault tolerant systems. A few minutes down time is acceptable. But, 2 hours down time is not. Amazon has the burden of setting an example for people who look upto it. Maybe thats no fair...but then... Welcome to the real world ;) With power comes responsibility.

To US or not to US

2008-05-28T23:01:00.010+05:30

"To US or not to US" has been a question on and off the plate over the last two years. Thankfully, the circumstances helped me avoid that uncomfortable choice. Its uncomfortable in the sense; Both options have their share of good things. I liked the work environment in US -- it offers better career opportunities and easy Money. But, I don't want to miss India; I love this place, the people, the life style....the small things that touch everyday life. I have grown up cherishing India and its part of the dreams, i want to chase: An Indian Dream.

If "I was ME", only 5 years younger; I would have tossed a coin to make this choice!! and happily leave it at that. Infact, this is exactly what i did in class 12th; i wasn't clear on what to focus: prepare for IIT JEE or prepare for the State Engineering entrance exam (EAMCET). So, i tossed a coin to choose :D and the rest is history.

But this January, when "to US or not to US" surfaced yet again, i didn't have to toss. The absolute happiness in following the inner voice was overpowering. There is some magic to it. It seems to know more than what meets the eye and looking back, feels more rational. There are things we cannot measure with the tools our logic has. If you are in fix: Follow your heart...

Doors should open inwards/outwards?

2007-11-08T23:54:00.003+05:30

We learn by generalizing/finding patterns in what we observe. One such generalization...In offic-y buildings, push the door out to go out. This generalization mostly works..it happens subconsciously, We don't think about this.

But i always had trouble opening the door to the parking lot in the basement. The door opens inside!! while all doors from my floor(3rd) to the ground floor opened outside. As usual, i push the door out and it makes lot of noise. It then hits me...."This one is special" You have to pull it inside to open...WTF?

Today, I found the reason for this weirdness/inconsistency!! and thought i'll share the insight.... The design is to help people get out of the building in case of fire. When people try to rush out in an emergency they push the door out. If it doesn't open, they will push it harder (In panic, ppl don't/can't think). Hence the design!!

In sum, Why does the basement door opens inwards?
The goal is to get people out of the building!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_exit

Traveling in the post-monsoon

2007-09-29T14:54:00.002+05:30

Life, as usual, is fantastic at my side :-)

I have been bit by the traveling bug lately and going around on long drives. Destination is not the priority, the Road is!! Being Post-Monsoon, everything around is so clean,fresh and lush green. Its relaxing and super pleasant to drive at Sunrise on a traffic less highway by these green villages. All u want to...is close ur eyes feel the gushing wind and take a deep breath!!

Grand Canyon

2007-05-29T05:40:00.004+05:30

Some people are not comfortable with heights or consider it exciting. I belong to the compliment of the that set :-) I enjoy adventure ala bungee jumping, standing on a cliff, walking the edge, catapult ride. This is probably genetic wiring, the adrenaline rush from crazy things... that pulls you to do something more interesting than “watch it from the view point”.

A bit more about the trip

One of the perks of studying at IIT; You have friends all over the world and that includes Las Vegas ;-) I got a hang of US freeways after driving up and down the beautiful beach side drive of US101 (LA to Santa Barbara). So, one fine weekend, after a very hectic week; crashed at Shivakanth's place in Vegas. The University of Nevada housing is within a stone throw's distance from the famous and glittery vegas strip. Yes you read it right...There is university housing besides Vegas strip!!

I'll finish this post sometime later....For now, u can visit http://flickr.com/photos/tmahesh/sets

Debugging a correct programme

2005-12-11T00:32:00.001+05:30

I spent a few hours trying to figure out why my first seemingly correct C++ programme doesn't compile!!

I just found that the error was because you have to pass -lstdc++ to gcc!! But Why? I told the compiler to include a standard library. Can't it be intelligent enough? Its not even intelligence..its something that can be captured in a rule. gcc being a complete compile suit; that also controls linking and loading..Why does it not add something as trivial as stdc++ library.

Deciphering why -lmath was needed in C(inspite of #include ) might have strong ties to this -lstdc++ thing?

Artificial Intelligence

2005-07-21T21:41:00.001+05:30

It amazing how we(humans) do what we do. ain't it? Forget intelligence...we couldn't even get close to a machine that can walk with the balance and stability of human gait. Sure..a robot automates a process given the parameters. Its a pain to feed those parameters..it can't distinguish between holding a a glass and a piece of spongy ball. It can't look at the object and determine the grip it needs.

Coming to intelligence...first of all is it Doable? I mean transferring the scale of time in which we evolved into the last 50 years of research OR Is it that our mind just does a function call passing the parameters to another dimension (which we cannot envision) where things are processed and our mind receives the return value of a function call, which it then process minimally!!

and the thing is we can neither accept nor reject such a theory!! We need that meta knowledge to reason on the meta knowledge and its an endless recursion u see...

outsourcing - globalization

2005-05-22T14:20:00.002+05:30

How can anyone talk of globalization and at the same time cry over outsourcing unless you are so selfish and fail to see the big picture. A company grows big by spreading its business beyond its own boundaries and as an externality -- feels the need for human resources. If you want the foreign exchange from other countries to flow into your own economy and at the same time against outsourcing -- thats playing foul and being unfair to the very economies that sustain your growth patterns!! You should be satisfied with the profits those companies earn for your economy. You cannot have everything -- Welcome to the real world. That sort of selfishness is not good for your own good.

koders.com

2005-05-13T16:28:00.000+05:30

Here is an extract from their About page

A significant portion of application development involves a process of find, copy, paste, and integrate. This process can be greatly accelerated when you can find existing source code that provides a solution to the task at hand.

Koders makes it easy for software developers to find existing source code that solves many common development problems with our vast index of working source code from a variety of open source projects. In many cases you may find code that solves the exact problem you are working on, and in other cases, you can find an 80% solution - where existing code can be suited to your needs with minor modifications.

According to the site:
Development Cost for Apache is estimated to be $550,230

Assumptions
Lines of code: 110,046
Person months (PM): 110.2
Labor Cost/Month: $5000

Presentation Slides using Latex

2005-05-11T22:15:00.002+05:30

Prosper is a wonderful latex package for creating Presentations.

I came across it in my search to do away with retyping my equations written in Latex again in a presentation software "aware" format(or whatever that means). Later, I found that it can help in things more than just saving some typing and lot of mouse usage. The philosophical, but very practical, advantages in creating Documents using Latex vs WYSIWYG editors continue with Prosper vs PowerPoint kind of software.

Check out this presentation on Google PageRank example (compatible with Acoread 4+). Tarred-and-Zipped source files of the presentation is available here (tar.gz). The README file in the extracted directory has notes on compiling the code in latex using the Makefile

For more info on prosper, refer to the tutorial here

PS: The presentation slides, I linked from here also briefly explain the Math behind Google PageRank Algorithm.

grokker.com

2005-05-09T22:34:00.002+05:30

Grokker is a new and radical way to search the web and share information. Search engines are great for finding specific pieces of data, but as the amount of information online grows, search engines just aren't good enough to help us explore topics that we're interested in.

If the sites hosting the information in required context are not heavily linked to, they get lost in the ranking phase. Take for example a search term "tiger" It would be nice to know all the contexts in which tiger is part of: Animal Kingdom, Apple OS, Golf(tigerwoods) etc. in one screen and then we can dig in into the context that tickles us.

Earlier, i posted about clusty.com here. The visual interface to search results offered by grokker to such clustered results is ofcourse cool and adds a visual dimension to information retrieval. But, Visual search to me seems to be more of a fancy thing. What might be the opinion of Usability experpts on this flashy feature?

A few points to observe in clusty vs grokker paradigm:

Grokker, in addition to this visual innovation uses of search results from Yahoo!, which uses better crawling, search and ranking algorithms than those of clusty.
The clustering algorithms used by the products seem to be impressive and comparable in performance.
The result set of clusty.com is not very exhaustive (poor recall score)

Interesting is the plugin architecture developed by groxis (it seems they patented it) All u have to do is change the source of result set. For Grokker, they come from Yahoo!. It could very well be your corporate database and tools of groxis would neatly cluster"ify" and gui"fy" i.e organise your data into clusters of related information and present eye candy visual search results.

my.yahoo.com integrated with yahoo! search

2005-05-07T01:52:00.001+05:30

my.yahoo.com had made life on internet so cool. I just subscribe to rss feeds of various sites/blogs i am interested in, and all i have to do is visit this one site: my.yahoo.com. Its like those rss readers around but the advantage is... its an web-app and hence portable across platforms, location, network. Also note that when its an webapp...u don't have to reconfigure it every time on every new installation.

Recently, i observed there is an option to add rss feeds if available in a webpage to my.yahoo directly from the search results itself. I love such "usability" conscious features.

US Congress heaps praise on IITs

2005-04-28T18:39:00.004+05:30

The Indian Institutes of Technology, in particular, and the Indian-American community, in general, came in for impassioned praise from the US Congress -- the first time the US Congress has honoured a foreign university in this manner -- for their significant contributions to society in every profession and discipline.

The US Congress passed House Resolution 227 -- introduced by Congressman Tom Davis and co-sponsored by Congressman Bobby Jindal -- praising the stellar work done by IIT-ians in all walks of life.

More here: http://www.rediff.com/money/2005/apr/28iit.htm

I usually care less about what other people think!! But this is a welcome and timely praise...Goes well as an advertisement of IIT's to a more mainstream audience. Therz panIIT happening May20-May22.

Notions of Privacy

2005-04-27T12:03:00.001+05:30

Both Yahoo! and Google launched features to save search queries. As expected, the Privacy experts have something to say:

"It's really a bad idea," said Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. "If you need to keep track of your past searches, I recommend using a notebook."

Oh! common Dixon..Stupidity has limits!! (with all respect for your good intentions, i never understood)

I never get the point of these guys into my Head. They make a hue and cry over every step taken to provide users a better service even when there are options to enable/disable the feature. Moreover, We (atleast me) hardly have any sensitive personal information registered with these sites. Their cookies can only track what we are searching, the sites we choose from their search engines, the mails we receive(gmail only). AFAIK, this knowledge of us is only used by some computer algorithms to serve us better (Remember, Personalised Search).

When we are enjoying all these free services, there is nothing wrong in trusting these "Do No Evil" guys right!! One issue they also complain about is Government can use this information. Why should they not use it? If it is going to be used for the common good (like tracking criminals and stuff)

It could be that I don't understand the concept of privacy and how serious Dixon's concerns are OR These people mix up some serious issues with very trivial things to draw attention and end up creating a totally different impression.

BTW, Is there something we can share with >10 people but should not share with 6.7Bn people?

Information Retreival on WWW

2005-04-26T21:08:00.001+05:30

Google: To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Yahoo : Enable people to find, use, share, and expand all human knowledge

The field of web-search is so exciting... just came across Recent Innovations in Search and Other Ways of Finding Information

With so many big players google,yahoo,msn,amazon(a9.com) in the market, trying to create the Plato's Ideal. A search engine that would fetch the exact info you are looking for and satisfying the Trinity : Recall, Precision and Ranking. The experience for the end users only gets better.

Recently, MSN Search in its recruitment drive from IIT's stated "Bill gates wants MSNSearch to beat Google". Lets see how they improve/innovate. Currently, its search team is only covering up its poor results with a flashy webpage. Sorry Guys..Makeup to a donkey ain't help!!

Yahoo! seems to have come a long way within a span of One year. The results set of Yahoo and Google almost match. Kendall Distance wise, Google and Yahoo are only slightly different for some queries (only ordering of the result set is different, the set itself is almost similar)

I'm more happy with Yahoo! . This bias maybe because its my Home Page ;-). It is the first result on searching for Mahesh Reddy on Yahoo!. In Google, this Blog, My indiapress page and then my Home Page. Also..some brand loyalty is developing in me because of these two excellent services http://my.yahoo.com http://beta.news.com, i almost got addicted to.

Lets wait for the world of Personalised search to get better. Though, most people on blogosphere seems to suggest vertical search in the next thing, I would prefer the search engine to figure out which vertical i'm interested in on its own.

With so much innovation happening around....things only get better for us. Competition is always good for the market. Also worth mentioning are verticals offered in a9.com, clustered results in clusty.com, answers.com.

An interesting quote from the Director of Yahoo! Search divsion: "Data is not Information, Information is not Knowledge, Knowledge is not wisdom"

Way to go..all the Search teams. All the Best

Arun Shourie pledges Rs 11 crore to IIT-K

2005-04-13T10:46:00.002+05:30

Mr. Arun Shourie(a BJP MP) , i admire him. He, unlike most politicians in India, has a great vision and his doings make a lot of sense.

During his last term at the Parliament, He invested his MPLAD grant of 11 crore for BSBE here. Now, he has donated it to Environmental Engineering. Env Eng., needs a bad push in India and this is a good step in this direction.

A ‘Green Building’ will be constructed at the institute for the Environmental Sciences.

The building will be built applying the principles of the latest construction technology which provide natural cooling and warming effects by planting special species of trees around the structure and the green methodology of constructing the controlled temperature walls.

This is not to say using MPLAD money to build a road, bus shelter are less-worthy....Someone should have the audacity to think big too.

YearBook

2005-04-11T18:53:00.002+05:30

Finally, i could get a copy our IITK Y0-Year Book (after almost loosing hope on getting to see it). I uploaded it on my homepage here and within one day i see 112 hits to the page and loads of Thanx mails in my MailBox. They were all written in a very Happy mood. Its nice to read mails written by happy ppl..

jumping with joy!!

2005-03-12T23:43:00.001+05:30

I feel like jumping off a flight and experience a free fall. I am too happy now. All the nice things that have been happening this week--just struck me--All at once..Life is so wonderful. The mood of me is almost not printable!!

I recall this quote:

Life is to wake up happy, sing a tune in the day and sleep with a smile on ur face.

Survival of the fittest

2005-03-12T16:43:00.003+05:30

From Amoeba to Blue Whale -u name it - We rule them all. Maybe, this can be explained by Darwin's school of thought "Survival of the fittest". But then, aren't we destroying the very environment that sustains us.

Sustainable development, is yet to drive into minds. Hope we awake to this call before we can no longer be sustained. (Who would be the fittest then?)

To start with..Maybe u can switch of all lights and fans that are not in use ;-)

A motivational Talk by Shiv Khera,

2005-03-02T00:49:00.002+05:30

As part of Techkriti, Shri Shiv Khera was invited to gave a motivational talk. He had a ton of great OneLiners and i liked them. "Ability without dependability, responsibility and flexibility is a liability". But then, is it true that people get motivated just by listening to some word jargon and quoted examples beyond (say) half-an-hour after the talk..I seriously doubt that!!

I believe that the actions we do come very naturally, as if some kind of reflex is at work. They cannot be mould by an algorithm in a talk/book. Its very hard to accept the stories that say "Reading this book or listening to some xyz changed my Life" Maybe these motivators can, for a short period of time, influence thought process and listening to such talks repeatedly help in some way. But then..is that even remotely close to Personality development? Is the character built on such talks/books sustainable? If thats the way things happen, This world would be full of Optimists, which is not the case. So by contra positivity my claim is true ;-)

But articles like this Structured Procrastination, that leave it for u to interpret and think about the wonderful concept, have a magical influence. It lasts long.

Coderupt, the hacking contest

2005-02-27T10:32:00.001+05:30

After a nightout for the 12 hr long Hacking contest frm 11:00p.m - 11:00a.m, I come to conclude hacking is more abt ur applying knowledge you gained so far working on computers rather than studying something specific to becoming a hacker. The Hacking workshop challenge was conducted by Lazarus, of KPMG's Information Security Group. He is also one of the organisers of famous DEF CON

Digging thru the Assembly code to crack the program was exciting. But at times very irritating becoz of our experiences with the comfortable high level languages. To search for some instruction like idiv. We also had to run ~50m to access internet kiosks. I wish i could read assembly code the way i can read C ;)

The problem was to decrypt a file on ur terminal and then start ssh server on a remote machine.

BTW, we did complete all the 3 stages of hacking contest and learnt a ton of things in the process including the heavy penalties of communication gap.

Clusty vs Google

2005-02-19T12:15:00.001+05:30

I hate to say this...But i find the search results of www.clusty.com better than google.

Besides, Ranking the pages as Google (Dominant Eigen Vector wise)...

1. Groups the results of similar category (Clusters the results)
2. Find results buried in the ranked list and would otherwise be missed.
3. Discover unexpected results and relationships between items.

these are some of the striking features of the service..rest will unfold as u use it..

Thou not a good thing to wish...I would like to see Google buy this company "too" and Googlify the UI(User interface)

Full Moon

2004-09-28T01:48:00.006+05:30

In a serene and clear winter night sky, A Full Moon is so beautifully calm, relaxing, and has the power to blow away all junk thoughts. Luck Me!! to can enjoy this beautiful moon right from the window of my room.

BTW, Some simple comments can make a day beautiful. A mess worker flattered me during the lunch today; He said Saab...Mein itne logon ko dektha hun..mess me roj...par aap jitna saaf koin nahin khata" acha lagta hein .

I finish what i serve myself, and my plate looks empty when i'm done. Seems like that is good enuf to attract a praise from the mess worker who attends to 100's of students ;) My mom is one hell of a perfectionist when it comes to table manners. Thanks Mom, for all the things you thought me(not just this one). I was angry and frustrated when you forced them onto me then...but now it happens automatically... i don't have to think :-)

Oh! Did he say it because i am the President of the Hostel. Well, maybe. But then.... maybe not too :)

Climate

2004-08-16T22:03:00.001+05:30

whaw!! what a climate... It has the poisonous effect of driving u to do something crazy...but anything i can think off now seems routine... Madan is inviting me to watch a telugu movie...i'll give it a shot..

the other side of class room..

2004-08-14T19:03:00.001+05:30

Standing on the other side of the class room is more exciting, demanding and satisfying..its not that this is my first time..giving a presentation. Whats different is all the presentations, i did before were to fulfill my academic requirements..never this kind of guest lectures. I was asked to give a talk on Parallel Computing to the Robiotics group here in IITK. It went fine..Not everyone understood what, i presented. Its the fact that they have a feel of what i wanted to convey makes me float on cloud9..its not a claim i'm making in the air..They asked me some interesting doubts after the talk..

Whaterver..i am happy abt it.. isn't that enough to call it a successful and beautiful day..Frankly, Thats all i care abt ;-)

2004-06-27T02:25:00.002+05:30

Early morning clouds...thru my office window. Vienna, is so beautiful in the day break. Big Deal!! if u don't sleep everyday. We have the rest of our retired life for that. Early morning is the best time to visit the parks or stroll by the Danaube River and enjoy the calmness, energy and freshness in the Breeze. The experience is worth a nightout; waking up early in the morning is way too difficult compared to skipping sleep ;-)

Destination Stephenplatz

2004-06-25T04:23:00.001+05:30

Plan was to vist Stephenplatz..but we did not pay much attention to the Train we were boarding.. and we landed up in a station on the opposite direction ;-) Anyway..Does it matter? when all we wanted was to kill time. But Imagine landing up where a branch of Danaube river flows by the walking path...intoxicating smell of the trees after the rain..Bars and Pubs of glass windows. Euro-2004 Football screened by the river side on huge screen and a fanatic cheering crowd!!

Bungee-ing

2004-06-19T23:01:00.001+05:30

All he told me was to stand at the edge and lean forward ...i didn't feel like thinking too much and unnecessarliy scare myself ;) So i just immediately spread my hands..took a deep breath and leapt forward..I know its sounding so easy to u!! U will be hit by probably a thousand thoughts falling freely thru Air..what all did i not think!! I sometimes wonder if all the memory in my brain has been read once!!

Just suspend you fears for one second, just one second....and take the plunge....You will have a memory of lifetime..way-beyond what your fear is worth.

Danube in Vienna

2004-06-18T22:22:00.002+05:30

Thats Danube River..The freshness of air is so addictive...feel like coming here every morning.

2004-06-18T22:14:00.000+05:30

Thats my Room..The place is a small scale model of Massorie..Its too green and everybody passing by wish each other..

2004-06-18T22:12:00.000+05:30

Thats my workspace..notice the 2 posters on wall, The Lab Admin is too good!! he changed my 17" monitor to 19"Flat CRT Trinitron when i said the earler one looks old ;-)

2004-06-18T22:06:00.000+05:30

Thats what i couldn't capture before..

2004-06-14T04:31:00.001+05:30

we were lucky to go to Beveldere at this time..it was almost a sudden plan to visit this place..and when things as a elaborate cracker show take you by surprise..its adds more colors to the sweet memories....

2004-06-14T04:22:00.001+05:30

thats beveldere...(i donno how to spell it!!) but can feel it.. Thin droplets that reach you, carried by the chilly wind!! Sorry for the clarity..I just brought a camera and i'm yet to learn how to capture vienna@nights, Better. I'll post a better pick sometime...

2004-06-14T04:11:00.000+05:30

The photographic talents of yet another amateur at photography and No the change in color of the fountain is not his talent..its the fountain that changed its colors...The Belvedere is near Karlsplatz, Vienna

2004-06-12T02:36:00.000+05:30

This is the Karlsplatz U-Bahn Station. The station with N noumber of exits and atleast 30 elevators i guess!!

2004-06-12T02:32:00.000+05:30

Testing Hello(BloggerBot) Beyond My Office Window...

Venus Transit

2004-06-09T20:26:00.001+05:30

From an Observatory, we witnessed the transition of Venus.. a tiny ball blocking the partial view of Sun. just put a black spot on a huge white paper...and u'll know what we saw thru the telescope ;-)

No its not that simple..the excitement of watching once a lifetime event is different...though its not something as visually appealing as a solar ecilipse(with beautiful corona ring and all...) We got to know something more about the universe we are a part of and the interesting events that happen. The last venus transit before 8th June 2004 was in 1882...100years before i was born!!

This observatory was on a beautiful hill top. It was a long hike and i got know a lighter side of my labmates and made new friends.

Debugging Skill

2004-06-06T14:23:00.002+05:30

what has happened so far in the past 8 hours is heights of insanity...

i am compiling a paralel program:
mpicc -lm dataparallel.c ../matrix.c -o dataparalel

and running:
mpiexec -np 64 dataparallel (watch the no. of l's in the word dataparallel)

and i expect the modifications to the code to work in an increasingly enticing but innocent executable (It prints beautiful output for every idea i tried). I guess, my project is more than interesting; given the debugging skills i'm demonstrating.

2004-06-02T10:07:00.002+05:30

Yesterday Night while going back to my room (actually 1:30a.m today morning) I felt it was a bit hot, well by hot in Vienna i mean a max temp of 25 degrees ;-)

Then I wake up the next morning and it was raining and the weather was back to its pleasant state . I took a Deeeeeep breath as i set out of my Hostel and skipped one tram station to enjoy the walk . In the tram, there were two small cute school going girls..singing and clapping hands with each other. What a setting to start the day!!

2004-05-31T23:23:00.001+05:30

I'm back from the 2 day trip to Salzburg, Glassgrockner, ZellmSee..etc. With U2 playing in the Car..freeway rides that even touched a max of 180Kmph, the trip was awesome...We played songs from Saathiya, Boys on the downhill. The best sound was that of roaring bikes in the valley!! We should ride these sport bikes one day....

Ice Ice and Ice all around..The Glaciers of Glossglockenr..whaw!! It was my first time at ice mountains. Its so enticing from far below!! Imagine a long drive by the country side in the evening with a energetic stream of water flowing along the road..meadows with grazing cows..(Just the scene for a Bollywood song, i guess!!) On the way back to base camp..We safely docked our car on the train carriage and enjoyed the glimpses of moon from the upper part of that doubledecker train as it peepes out of the mountain caves.....What else can u ask for?

The paddle-boat drive on the huge Zellmsee was just romantic. I tried for para sailing but the trainer was already booked up..maybe I'll do it sometime later...BTW, we also had a stint of Germany, while on the return journey to Vienna we tried a different road..that took us thru Germany for Half-an-Hour. So theoretically, i have visited Germany too ;-)

What i learnt from the trip...Europes country side beats the palaces and museums, handsdown. the concrete structures are more or less alike most of the time. A palace with exquisite gardens are an exception......coz i feel royal in there :-)

-Mahesh
Celebrating Life...

2004-05-29T22:22:00.002+05:30

I left my bag at office and we went to Schonbrung Palace along with some IITD guys. The palace is majestic, high up on a hill and very grand.

Reached office after a long and beautiful tour of the palace. Was surprised to see a Box of Vienna's Mozart chocolate and a greeting on my desk. It was from my Labmates, Blossey and Franziska... This was least expected as i never told them when my birthday is...maybe they have seen it on my website!! How nice of them. The note said: They just dropped in office to wish me and left since i wasn't there. Too bad i can't meet these folks tomorrow morning to say thanks. I'm traveling to Salzburg and Galossgrockner tomorrow morning and will be back in Vienna only on Tuesday.

BTW, learnt an interesting European custom: Even if you get invited to a party, you pay your own bill.

2004-05-26T19:19:00.001+05:30

I'm now an owner of samsung SGH C-100 mobile. It features 65,000 color screen, suppots Java, 40polyphonic ring tone, Organizer and a host of features, i am yet to explore...I am excited abt this new mobile i own..

i got puzzled by the mail from Rani Tiwari enquiring my well being..and i don't sem to recollect meeting her...

we have to plan our Salzburg and glossgrockner trip for the weekend..Aint it awesome that we found a guy who was looking for a company and owns a car!! So we ride very cheaply to all this wonderful places ;-)

2004-05-25T03:54:00.001+05:30

Troy: it was almost a sudden plan from my labees to go to the movies . They were caring enough to pickup a English movie because German is Greek and Latin to me ;-) The cost of the ticket, 7 Euro is a bit high..No point in translating it to Indian currncy Rupees (i.e Rs 355) and pondering over if i'm spending too much...After all "Be a Roman in Rome". I have met some ppl over hear who, before eating something think that even 1/4th Pizza is 2.3 euro i.e 122 Rs. so lets skip eating Lunch..thought they earn a decent stipend. This is my Philosophy..."If u can't spend some money(which u can) to kill your hunger...you are being foolishly crazy!!" Ofcourse i won't say this on their face but motivate in some ways to eat. Hungry people are bound to eat when you start eating in front of them ;-)

Also met a Telugu family that have been staying in Vienna for sometime. They invited me to their home for Dinner.

2004-05-22T19:14:00.001+05:30

I haven't explored the nearby places around my own Hostel so far. I actually live on a hill..its the highest point in Vienna i guess!! Me and a friend of mine frm IITD set out roaming on the hill we stay on...we trekked in the woods..visited the Park..took a ride on the Swing(its been ages since i sat on a swing) Now, I comprehend with the people who commented that 18th District as the most beautiful place to live in Vienna.

2004-05-19T20:32:00.001+05:30

Huha!!

Till Yesterday i couln't find any Indians around..and today..i can't manage time to meet so many that i came across.. Siddharth,Ashwani, Raju...

I guess figuring out things would be very easy...and i'll have company to go around Europe..

2004-05-18T20:03:00.001+05:30

I started to write some Linux Tips and Gentoo related things on: www.linuxtips-mahesh.blogspot.com

2004-05-17T23:04:00.000+05:30

Future \Fu"ture\ noun.
That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our
friends are true and our happiness is assured.

2004-05-17T21:58:00.000+05:30

I remember my school days when i carry a bag like how i do these days in Vienna..Its been almost 5 years since i carried a bag...

2004-05-16T21:31:00.001+05:30

Vienna Marathon: A 20K.m long marathon in the city..so many participants...all along the way from my Student home till my Office..

I was surprised to see a big TV and a few ppl working at a furious pace in our lab. They were a team maintaing the marathon's website for 500,000 users visiting it to get updates. They were runing apapche, loadbalanced across 6 servers.

2004-05-16T15:20:00.001+05:30

Been to the Life Ball yesterday night with my labees...A huge crowd gathered there. Sir, Eric Clapton was the chief guest...Ok..The Mayor of Berlin was also invited for the show buts not many cared ;-). There was a famous actress who was the comperer and her name i don't know ;-)

we made our way thru the large crowds somehow, to a decent spot from where we could get a better view. It was drizzling all along and pretty cold breeze blowing....

The show was good. The songs of Eric Clapton, especially. Therz was also a German singer Nina performing. My labmates Daniel and Francissa translated the german to english for me. These are really cool people to be hangout with and did i tell you they are very helpful.

2004-05-15T20:49:00.000+05:30

Danaube River: Its difficult to come away from the cool breeze that blows near the river...
Had a Pizza today for Lunch and enjoying the weekend...Roamed a bit in the Inner district..The Parliament, Karlsplatz etc..
I was happy nice to see the senti mail from Manav.

2004-05-14T22:50:00.002+05:30

I started to like the Mozilla browser. It has some really features. Time to let go Opera...

i am yet to find a way to import my favorites from Opera in to this.

2004-05-14T22:38:00.000+05:30

I have installed Gentoo on my P-3 iGHz dual processor, scsi supporting 120GB of Hard Disk space, 2GB Ram PC that also has a Creative Soundblaster5 Live Sound card.

therz nothing more that can make me happy at this instant than a running Gentoo...

2004-05-14T20:30:00.001+05:30

Finally..started to cook on my own..I just make rice and eat it with some pickle...I am yet to find out vegetables in Vienna (that i know, how to cook) Hope i won't find them ;-)

Vienna

2004-05-13T17:21:00.000+05:30

As i said...I am going to Vienna for my summer internship..Here i'm in Vienna. My prof. introduced to all in our Dept. and also people in my office. I'm sharing the office room with 3 other people. one is a PhD from Austria and 2 others are from Germany doing their Diploma under a collegue
of my Prof.

I got a PIII 1GHz Dual processor 2GB RAM, creative SBLive soundcard, HP9200series CDWriter, DVD ROM, RAID supporting 200GB of hardDisk space, 2 videocards, TV card etc..and a login on a 196 PC cluster. Others in the LAB have PII's (its like neighbours envy, Owners pride) The people in
my Lab are very helpful..took me the stores where i can buy the groceries and translated the German names on them to English. One of the girls knows howto cook and she told me how to do the store and cook. This stuff which is totally alien to me....

Vienna is city with a Public transportation thats awesome..and the Architecture in the city is splendid..I have just explored 1% of the city so far..Yesterday we went to Life Ball to see Sir Elton John. The Corrs is going to perform soon in Vienna in a place very close to my Office. BTW, my office is a 3 minute walk from the central hub of Vienna and ofers a great view of the city from its Windows..

I have no idea what i'm eating here but for the fact that i am eating a something...coming to my Hostel its 20minutes ride by the tram and i share my Apartment with a girl majoring in Medicine. she is nice, helful and all but she doesnot cook ;-( she offers only coffe/tea which i don't drink. i guess I'll soon find someone who can cook and move to his/her apartment.... The student home is on a hill so u get a nice views of this greenest District Vienna...there seems to be a nice park nearby which i'm yet to visit..This hostel place reminds me of Masoorie..

My Prof....Oh!! he is a very caring..he picked me from the Airport and the next day to the office from Hostel...explained allabout Vienna and his career etc... almost called me every hour or so for the first few days..BTW, I'm working on Parallelising Eigen Decomposition of Block Triangular
Matrices.

In short..celebrating Life@Vienna

2004-05-12T19:29:00.001+05:30

Meri pahli udaan...

A lot of things are my first time on my trip to Vienna....

The first was the Flight takeoff...people unnecessarily scared me with possibility of vomitings and stuff...It was nothing more than a raid on a Gaint wheel... as coincidence would have it..on all the three flights in the transit, i got a seat just above the Wings of the plane.

I caught a plane in Hyderabad at 7:30p.m on 9th evening..stayed overnite in Delhi at a relatives house and caught the flight to Amman of Royal Jordanian Airlines at 11:30a.m on May10th there was a delay in arriving to the destination and i missed my plane to Vienna from Amman. Made an overnite stay in Amman and caught the morning flight to Vienna at 11:30a.m.
Prof. Wilfried received me at the Airport. I'm now safe and sound in Vienna. This city is beautiful!!

2004-05-08T20:32:00.001+05:30

I learnt how to cook some dishes today...Lets see how i will manage this in Vienna without my Mom by my side. Wish i find someone who loves cooking. I usually get lucky more often than not ;)

2004-05-08T11:33:00.001+05:30

Train journey in Full Moon nights..Its just perfect. The cold breeze from the shower added more colors to the effect. Oh! there was a Rainbow when we reached the Secunderabad station.

who said trains are boaring?? When its a full day long journey..You can let you mind free..NO constraints, Absolute freedom.....I love it!!

BTW, Completed "Catcher in the Rye" My first Book!!

Shopping

2004-05-08T11:28:00.001+05:30

Today was all shopping, shopping and more shopping..Roamed around 11 shops for 1 shirt!!
The thing is...u shouldn't go shopping with pre-decided color combination. My mom know this but she doesn't give up till she finds it. Glad that she doesn't do this often :)

2004-05-04T11:43:00.001+05:30

busy with treats these days...

also, i browsed thru www.vienna.info. Pretty excited abt what Vienna has in store for me..

2004-05-04T02:15:00.001+05:30

I went to Delhi to collect my VISA to Vienna. Witnessed one of the best Bus chases. To these bus drivers, even a busy city road feels like a freeway. It amazing how easily they steer a bus that size...

2004-04-26T17:42:00.000+05:30

Testing.....