Secret Adversary ..second ebook

Finished my second full length fiction book in ebook format. This rime it was Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie. I tried couple of times before to finish up this one but was able to complete this time. I guess I will finish all those books which I have always been wanting to read by reading thwm in elwctronic format.

Nexus 4

Today my Nexus 4 was delivered. This is my first smart phone. Third cell phone. It does not work with Verizon and I do not want to go for a Sim for last 15 days in US so I am using it as a convenient device.
It is good so far. Should have bought it earlier. Tried reading a book. Not for a full length book. Screen is good. Software is responsive. Will update.

Finished

Finally finished Pride and prejudice. First bought at Dariyaganj at Delhi in 2005. Latest was the fifth, bought on kindle. Glad to record I have finished my first Jane Austen 8 years after I first bought it.

Link: Technical Article

In a recent editorial (read here), George Whiteside discusses some issues in wide scale adoption of Lab on Chip systems. While the editorial focuses on a particular class of products, some issues can be generally applied. Parking it here for future reference. 

Science and Engineering

Blog post on Farnam Street with some excerpts from a book comparing Science and Engineering. This is the link.

Cattles Online

Cattles being sold online in India, reports Indian Express here. In my 3 year long stay in US Midwest, I am yet to see something similar. In an inter hostel debate I participated with Alok, we were given the topic of globalization and its effect on India. One of the examples we used to support our idea was that of Indian flavors included in McDonalds and Dominos menu. With selling of the cattle online, we see one more of such example. From weekly haats, where one would see colored cattle (to distinguish cattle from one owner to other), to online selling space is not natural. At least not now. Not to me. But then I guess I have very high opinion of me of knowing what goes on in India. I am surprised, in a happy way, to read this. I shall be returning to India next month, for good, with the hope that it will provide me with interesting problems. It will be very different from the textbook world I am used to and therefore solving problem will require something more than discretizing a grid and numerically solving a differential equation at grid points. With news like this, I am more hopeful to encounter new scenarios which are yet to be covered in textbooks from Wiley etc. 

Bas baatein karwa lo

बस बातों की  जमा पूँजी है
सपनो की तिजोरी की यही एक कुंजी है
कभी मीठी तो कभी कडवी
थोडा चना ज्यादा चिरौंजी है
बस बातों की  जमा पूँजी है
आँखों से मेरे कही गयी
कानों में तेरे गूंजी है
बस बातों की  जमा पूँजी है
चेहरे से खिलखिलाई है
गले में अटकी रूंधी है
बस बातों की जमा पूँजी है

Link: Word document page numbering

Putting page numbers in word document for two different formats: Link

E Book wish list

I like to read. Books are a favorite. They last longer than a normal blog article, usually covers a topic or idea from start to end, and I get a sense of accomplishment after I finish one. Whenever I try to find a book for reading, I start with a search in the library. If I like it, then I buy it. Sometime I do not find the book in library. Then I buy it. Sometimes these are the books which never get completed. Lately, I have started buying eBooks. I am a convert. I never thought I will ever like an electronic version of book over a dead tree version. Some times it is difficult to wait. But main reason, in my case, is size of book. Some of the books which runs into 500+ pages and it is very cumbersome to carry them around. Some books, however, are still not available in electronic format. Here I am maintaining a list I wish to see in electronic format:

• A Suitable Boy
• Kinetics of Materials
• Raag Darbari
• Mujhe Chand Chahiye

Link: Web Bookmark

I made my first website when I was at IIT Bombay. It was hosted on institute server. I wrote bare basic html code and it was running in no time. Lately, I bought a domain and web space on Google sites. Now I am trying to learn how to code dynamic websites. After searching through the internet, I recently found a good tutorial website which serves me well. Tizag has tutorials on php, JavaScript, and MySQL. I have completed  tutorial on PHP and am midway into MySQL. While this is not new, I am constantly amazed with ease of finding information on internet. Yes there is lots of noise but its not an issue compared to difficulty in finding relevant information prior to it. I remember one of my Father’s friend asked him to bring for him a computer book from Bhopal because it was not available in Vidisha and when he finished reading it, he said it was useless.   

Quora

I have been on Quora for little less than an year. There are days when I spend more times reading answers on Quora than I spend on Facebook. There are other places on internet where people ask questions and other people answers them. I regularly post questions on Stack Overflow sites, and have posted questions rarely on Quora. Most of the time when I need to find an answer quickly, top links reported by Google are invariably from Yahoo answers. Then where does the utility of Quora lies in ? I think, in the space of web QnA sites, Quora has carved its own niche – Questions. Interesting questions, questions you never thought of and yet when you see them you start to think that knowing this will be good.

If I remember correctly, when I registered on Quora for first time it asked for some topics I would like to follow. I chose few and then I could see latest updates on those topics. It was fine for some days but then signal to noise ratio started to decrease. Or at least my perception of it started to go southward. I also started to notice that by following people, I was able to discover more interesting content than by following the topics. And this is when I decided to stop following all the topics and started to focus on finding people with interesting tastes. These may not be the people who ask lots of questions or write good answers. These are the people who have interest in things I have interest, and they read and up vote indicating me where the better stuff it. And by better stuff, I mean the interesting questions. If you know the question, finding an answer to that is easy on internet. Coming up with the question is difficult.    

Link: Web Bookmark

US Navy has produced some of the best introductory technical documentation I have ever come across. These documents explain what needed to be done and many times it is what you need. Here is the link for my future reference: http://www.hnsa.org/doc/

My Short Tryst with MBP

I spent last couple of days using Mac Book Pro. I am now back to my hp Pavillion dv6, running windows 7. I do not intend to ever return to it.

I have been using my laptop for around 3 years. It has served me well so far. Considering the bad treatment I have subjected it to, it has been too gracious to show its anger only through excess heat and occasional shutting down. Few days back I got access to an apple machine in my lab. I am in the middle of finishing up my thesis writing. It obviously involves lots of typing and occasionally running a code or two, many of which I run remotely. Lately, I begin to notice key strokes of my laptops are not what they used to be. So I decide to use Apple machine. I transferred all my necessary stuff to Skydrive, started MBP*, and started typing my thesis. And boy did it felt good. Typing is such a pleasure. Scrolling is so smooth. Keyboard is just of optimum size. Not to mention that Aluminum case and no fan. I was mesmerized. I was hooked.It was not the love at first sight but I am sure it was not in double digit either. But then things started to go from bad to worse. First it was little thing like 'where is my maximize button' or 'why do I always have to go to finder'. Then some serious issues started to emerge. No home/page up/page down !! I reassured my self: I can live with that. Give it some time, long term relationships are built on patience and mutual understanding. I even did learn how to use option key. I somehow managed to enjoy the process. Getting up in the morning, opening the lid and voila, there is the monitor screen all lit up. If you can boot up for me so fast, of course I can push option+click to access right click options. But one thing which deleted my relationship with MBP was, well the lack of delete button. I am in the serious business of writing up something which will constitute most probably most important 100-150 pages of my life and anyone who has ever written any thing even half seriously knows for sure that writing involves more deleting than writing itself and for deleting, back deleting via backspace is as necessary as forward deleting via delete. That was the time I decided it was time to call it quits. And I am back here with my hp and I hope to remain with this till the rest of my life. With all things moving to cloud and me increasingly doing my computations remotely, I do not think this is not doable. MBP was good. It felt good and I am sure had I given it some time, I would have figured out all the things and must have gotten used to all the weird key combinations. Did not I went through all this learning curve when my first laptop arrived ? But it was not worth it. As Bob Marley said something to the effect of: Every one is gonna hurt you. You should decide which one is worth of getting hurt from.

* While looking for some solution on net, I realized it is hip to say MBP and not Mac Book Pro    

Quote

From http://www.mvstat.net/

"It is more probable that a poet who knows what the Gaussian (or bell) curve is writes better love sonnets than one who does not." Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), Poetry and Culture.