Does anybody knows what is an appropriate gift to bring when invited for diner in an Indian familly?
The integral collection of 50 pictures of the game are too big to upload without straining the Internet connections here. Here is one of the best:
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Under- vs overground
The Delhi metro is a contrast with the life outside.
Inside, you have one of the best designed rails I had the pleasure to visit. Clean and wide wagons, with accordion connections between the sections. It rides quickly and in silence, in a tunnel of clean and conditioned air. No expense was spared, apparently. You enter by touching a RFID token to the gate's color screen.
Outside, it's grimy, noisy, and approximate. Entire building are put together hasardly, out of found material, and didn't see any maintenance for decades. The tailors work his sewing machine on the street floor, down in the third-word crouch. It reeks of poverty and hardship. Outside, I can't stop walking and rest. If I try, the tuktuk driver, shop keepers and beggars latch onto me and I have to resume walking to loose them. I usually retreat to the metro.
At the train station, a gentlemen ask to see my train ticket. He wears a name tag suitable for a Walmart employee and clothes taken from the same rack as the rest of the men of the city, except that they match, so it is a uniform. As he inspect my ticket, I analyze his behavior, checking for hints that he his a conman. The institution struggles to look official, but they cannot afford it. They can't even construct themselves a booth.
I saw two grown men holding each other's hand as they tentatively embarked on the first escalator ride of their life. I wish for the Delhi people that one day they will afford a city as nice as their metro.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Con artists
It is easy to tell con artists here in Delhi. When they introduce themselve to you, they always say "Nice beard sir. I'm sure it's hot with the ladies". They are so cute and harmless. Irresistible.
First batch of pictures on flickr.
First batch of pictures on flickr.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Delhi
Seat 30A is definitively the best seat in a 747. It's the first seat in the plane after the first class, so no one lowers their seat onto you. When you are done sleeping by leaning on the window, watching the pretty clouds, there is enough floor space to leave without disturbing your neighbor. And it is as far from the engine as can be, so it's a tad less noisy.
But that last bit didn't matter. I had my Shure ear-plug style earphone with me. The cute Chinese attendants were pantomiming to me the whole way, and I couldn't hear the baby crying in the next row. So, yes, I had a good 23 hours of combined flying (14 + 3 layover + 6), thank you.
On the ride between the Delhi airport and the hotel I saw: bikes caring more cargo that small trucks, two cows entertaining a conversation across the fence of the boulevard's median, a woman salving bricks from a construction site by balancing them on her head. I also paid too much for the ride (2$ instead of 0.50$) and was too easily convinced into the most expensive room of the hotel. It's all good; the first layer of the India experience comes easily.
The gender inequality here is large... the woman have all the grace. But for a few college students, they all wear colorful flowing traditional dresses. They are beautiful. The men on the other hand, have zero sense of fashion. They wear the equivalent of the first shirt off the rack at Salvation Army, paired the first pants, with no regards to whether they are faded or to whether they match. Could this be what life would look like if advertisement had no hold on us westerners?
Traffic here follows the laws of fluid dynamics, and little else. If there is an open space, your taxi will flows into it. It will also honk during the transition if there is less than 1 inch clearance, which is most of the time. The painted white line dividers act as a tribute to the colonial power that inspired the India to build roads, and serve little other purpose. Just as other fluid motions phenomenon, it is beautiful to those not terrified by it.
I would love to go blading on these road, just to see how traffic would react. Contrary to the expectation, the conditions do admits blading. But I forgot my blades, on a bus, in SF, while floating in toughs on how I hadn't missed any connection, lost my way, or lost anything so far. Damn. It is finally time to upgrade my wheels, after 10 years of loyal service of my Bauers 7-wheeled skates.
But that last bit didn't matter. I had my Shure ear-plug style earphone with me. The cute Chinese attendants were pantomiming to me the whole way, and I couldn't hear the baby crying in the next row. So, yes, I had a good 23 hours of combined flying (14 + 3 layover + 6), thank you.
On the ride between the Delhi airport and the hotel I saw: bikes caring more cargo that small trucks, two cows entertaining a conversation across the fence of the boulevard's median, a woman salving bricks from a construction site by balancing them on her head. I also paid too much for the ride (2$ instead of 0.50$) and was too easily convinced into the most expensive room of the hotel. It's all good; the first layer of the India experience comes easily.
The gender inequality here is large... the woman have all the grace. But for a few college students, they all wear colorful flowing traditional dresses. They are beautiful. The men on the other hand, have zero sense of fashion. They wear the equivalent of the first shirt off the rack at Salvation Army, paired the first pants, with no regards to whether they are faded or to whether they match. Could this be what life would look like if advertisement had no hold on us westerners?
Traffic here follows the laws of fluid dynamics, and little else. If there is an open space, your taxi will flows into it. It will also honk during the transition if there is less than 1 inch clearance, which is most of the time. The painted white line dividers act as a tribute to the colonial power that inspired the India to build roads, and serve little other purpose. Just as other fluid motions phenomenon, it is beautiful to those not terrified by it.
I would love to go blading on these road, just to see how traffic would react. Contrary to the expectation, the conditions do admits blading. But I forgot my blades, on a bus, in SF, while floating in toughs on how I hadn't missed any connection, lost my way, or lost anything so far. Damn. It is finally time to upgrade my wheels, after 10 years of loyal service of my Bauers 7-wheeled skates.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Providence & SF
It does not take much to make a home. Start with a good breakfast place (Bagel Ole), good pastries (Cheese cake factory et al.), good music (AS220). Then all you need is a few good friend amongst whom fun and focus flow naturally. Chris, David, Tori, Sam, Danny, it was a great time in Providence. It's homely.
We might get a fresh wave of DivaScheme downloads. I had the chance to do the wrist talk on stage at LUGRadio. I was happy to find my own stage self back after the bliztweekend presentation. There we managed a 3rd place on the popular vote, despite me falling on my face during the presentation. At LUGRadio, the audience was laughing on queue, which is always a good sign, and a good dozen people were asking me about DivaScheme after the talk. It not every one gets to do a speech sharing the stage with a naked guy. Good times.
I have two days left in SF to explore the city. To those skeptic of the rollerblades in my India-bound luggages, they will prove useful here. I resolve to blade down SF's crookedest street before I leave. Wish that my ankle, which still hurts after being strained under mysterious condition, will accommodate me.
hugs
We might get a fresh wave of DivaScheme downloads. I had the chance to do the wrist talk on stage at LUGRadio. I was happy to find my own stage self back after the bliztweekend presentation. There we managed a 3rd place on the popular vote, despite me falling on my face during the presentation. At LUGRadio, the audience was laughing on queue, which is always a good sign, and a good dozen people were asking me about DivaScheme after the talk. It not every one gets to do a speech sharing the stage with a naked guy. Good times.
I have two days left in SF to explore the city. To those skeptic of the rollerblades in my India-bound luggages, they will prove useful here. I resolve to blade down SF's crookedest street before I leave. Wish that my ankle, which still hurts after being strained under mysterious condition, will accommodate me.
hugs
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Backup bacteria
There is an argument that says it is unethical to run a Windows machine without an antivirus, even though the threat to yourself is relatively low. Namely, herd immunity works for computer too. You should install the Free software ClamWin.
If you are worried about viruses, you should backup your data. Your data is a valuable thing indeed, and viruses is only one of the many ways it could be damaged. In the last year, I've had two friends lose their data when their external hard drive was stolen along with their computer, and my brother lost megabytes of notes when he accidentally overwrote an important folder.
I tried dozens of backup software before making this post. There is so much awfulness out there, for such a basic function, it's unbelievable. Backup, it's simple, how hard I can it be?
Here are my recommendations. Normal people will want Mozy. It is click-install-and-forget. It does off-site backups, so you are protected against the house burning down. It might not be open-source software, but it's free up to 2 GB. Moreover, at $60 a year for unlimited space, Mozy is the cheapest disc space you can rent.
If you have objections against safeguarding your data on somebody else's computer, try SyncBack. After some fiddling and tweaking it will do an OK job. Necessary trick #1, configure four backup schedules : daily, weekly, twice weekly, and monthly, each with a different destination directory. This way your backup contains four different versions, and you can revert to a good copy of your files ever becomes corrupted. Trick #2, buy two external hard drives and leave the second one at your mom's. Then, each time you go visit her, exchange the two drives. Your off-site enclosure becomes the bedroom one, and your bedroom one becomes the off-site one. Just ensure you switch them with some regularity, otherwise you are vulnerable to thieves and firemen.
Finally, geeks will want rdiff-backup. It is the only open source software I know that does incremental backups with byte-level diffs for both transport and storage.
Update, Nov 09, 2008
A full bitwise system copy done in hardware. Best solution, but somewhat expensive. If you are serious about off-site backups, you will need two.
A really cool combo consisting of online backup space + collaboration sharing + web sharing. Slightly more expensive than http://mozy.com :
Online backup priced at 15 cents per gigabyte. Cheaper than http://mozy.com if you need less than 33 gigabytes. Three-way portable Win, Mac, and Linux.
If you are worried about viruses, you should backup your data. Your data is a valuable thing indeed, and viruses is only one of the many ways it could be damaged. In the last year, I've had two friends lose their data when their external hard drive was stolen along with their computer, and my brother lost megabytes of notes when he accidentally overwrote an important folder.
I tried dozens of backup software before making this post. There is so much awfulness out there, for such a basic function, it's unbelievable. Backup, it's simple, how hard I can it be?
Here are my recommendations. Normal people will want Mozy. It is click-install-and-forget. It does off-site backups, so you are protected against the house burning down. It might not be open-source software, but it's free up to 2 GB. Moreover, at $60 a year for unlimited space, Mozy is the cheapest disc space you can rent.
http://mozy.com
If you have objections against safeguarding your data on somebody else's computer, try SyncBack. After some fiddling and tweaking it will do an OK job. Necessary trick #1, configure four backup schedules : daily, weekly, twice weekly, and monthly, each with a different destination directory. This way your backup contains four different versions, and you can revert to a good copy of your files ever becomes corrupted. Trick #2, buy two external hard drives and leave the second one at your mom's. Then, each time you go visit her, exchange the two drives. Your off-site enclosure becomes the bedroom one, and your bedroom one becomes the off-site one. Just ensure you switch them with some regularity, otherwise you are vulnerable to thieves and firemen.
http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/syncback-hub.html
Finally, geeks will want rdiff-backup. It is the only open source software I know that does incremental backups with byte-level diffs for both transport and storage.
http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/
Update, Nov 09, 2008
A full bitwise system copy done in hardware. Best solution, but somewhat expensive. If you are serious about off-site backups, you will need two.
http://www.rebit.com/
A really cool combo consisting of online backup space + collaboration sharing + web sharing. Slightly more expensive than http://mozy.com :
http://www.getdropbox.com/
Online backup priced at 15 cents per gigabyte. Cheaper than http://mozy.com if you need less than 33 gigabytes. Three-way portable Win, Mac, and Linux.
https://jungledisk.com/
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Playballs
Journalist: Mr. Venter, with the experiments happening in your lab, do people say that you are playing God ?
Mr. Venter: oh... we are not playing.
Craig Venter and his lab successfully printed a bacterial chromosome and booted it. Soon, biology will develop a software engineering division where programmers compose the DNA code for a bacteria that consumes CO2 and produces fuel, thus solving global warming.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/ted-video-craig-venter-fuel-co2.php#ch03
Creating an artificial life is a way to manipulate the world one atom at a time. It gives engineers access to many feats that seemed reserved to nature, such as spitting CO2 with a molecule-sized cleaver. We will invent our own chemical reactions and build our robots from the inside out, the same way our mother built us.
The promises of artificial life forms are the same as those of nanotechnology. It is shocking to see one arrive so far ahead on the schedule than the other. In comparison, nanotechnologists still get excited about building individual bearings. Apparently, the goo of the future will be green, not gray.
In his talk, Craig Venter suggests we start carbon sequestration efforts as soon as possible. In all likelihood, whichever technology we develop to turn CO2 into fuel, the process will work better at high concentrations of the gas. If, by then, we have large stores of CO2 underground, it will ease the transition to the new production.
Mr. Venter: oh... we are not playing.
Craig Venter and his lab successfully printed a bacterial chromosome and booted it. Soon, biology will develop a software engineering division where programmers compose the DNA code for a bacteria that consumes CO2 and produces fuel, thus solving global warming.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/ted-video-craig-venter-fuel-co2.php#ch03
Creating an artificial life is a way to manipulate the world one atom at a time. It gives engineers access to many feats that seemed reserved to nature, such as spitting CO2 with a molecule-sized cleaver. We will invent our own chemical reactions and build our robots from the inside out, the same way our mother built us.
The promises of artificial life forms are the same as those of nanotechnology. It is shocking to see one arrive so far ahead on the schedule than the other. In comparison, nanotechnologists still get excited about building individual bearings. Apparently, the goo of the future will be green, not gray.
In his talk, Craig Venter suggests we start carbon sequestration efforts as soon as possible. In all likelihood, whichever technology we develop to turn CO2 into fuel, the process will work better at high concentrations of the gas. If, by then, we have large stores of CO2 underground, it will ease the transition to the new production.
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