Random Musings

I’m a fan of this chap now. He’s a good player, and he’s got lots of style. Let’s hope he does well.

Djokovic all the WAY!

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I read this on The Register. Read it..

I loved the last line “We say: bad luck will surely come to those who seek to profit from the Flying Duckmen. Interfere with their eternal voyage at your peril.®”

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Google has just released the first version of Desktop Search for Linux.. Get it at http://desktop.google.com/linux/.

I downloaded and installed it on my desktop machine, which I switched to Ubuntu just yesterday. You can read about the switch in progress here. I also installed it on my laptop, that has Beagle doing the indexing already.

Initial impressions are positive. The install process was easy, similar to a Windows install. I downloaded the .deb file, and it was a double-click install after that. After installing, it’s a bit weird, because there is no indication that it is installed. There is no icon in the menu’s, nothing on the desktop, nothing that tells you to restart, nothing at all! On the desktop, I started it up manually, after looking up the bin file. On my laptop, I logged out and logged back on. When I did that, I got the window shown below.

I read the Privacy Policy, and chose to enable advanced features. After all, doesn’t Google say, “Do no evil”? Hmmmm

Aaanyway, after doing that, the familiar little icon shows up in the status bar, and the indexing starts off. The defaults are interesting, as you can see below

It defaults to searching your home directory, as well as the /man directories. This is a nice feature, since the man pages contain a wealth of information, and for new users, it’s often difficult to use the man command. Once my index is completed, I’ll use this a bit, and see if I prefer to use this over man.

The other preferences are the usual stuff. You can decide what to index, add specific folders that might be mounted in other places, or specifically exclude some folders that you don’t want indexed.

You can also choose to search you Gmail, but since Gmail includes search itself, I didn’t enable this.

To search, you can hit “Ctrl” twice, and this brings up a little search box.

You can modify the behavior of the search box from the Preferences link, which brings up this page:

Pretty standard stuff again. You can also check the status of your index by right-clicking the status bar icon and going to Index>Index Status. This brings up a page that shows you what’s up.

Indexing does not seem to use much CPU or memory. As I write this, the indexer is consuming about 8.8 MB of RAM, and CPU usage is at 18%. It automatically speeds up when you leave the computer alone, so your normal usage is not impacted much.

Results are shown in your browser. This is different from Beagle, which comes with it’s own client. I don’t mind either, but you may prefer one approach over the other.

It indexes websites browsed in Firefox by default. This is nice, since Beagle does not do this by default. I could not find an option in Beagle’s preferences either. You need to install a browser extension. Google wins on this, definitely.

EDIT: Apparently, according to Joe in the comments, this is a limitation of my choice of distribution, not Beagle. Still, from the users point of view, Google does it, Beagle doesn’t. However, my criticism of Beagle has to be tempered now. Joe is Joe Shaw, the guy who does the maintaining of Beagle for Novell, so I think we can take his word for it, eh?

As far as the search efficiency goes, it seems to be pretty good. The index is not complete yet, but the results I am getting are pretty consistent with what Beagle gave me at the same stage of the game.

Conclusions:

Google Desktop Search for Linux is a solid tool. It’s a native implementation, none of the Wine stuff they use for Picasa. It’s fast and intuitive, and does not use too many resources. The results are presented in a web browser, which some may not like, but it should work for most people.

Indexing your web browsing is a good feature that differentiates it from Beagle, the big dog in the Linux search space. (Only on Ubuntu and Fedora. In SUSE, Beagle has this enabled.)

The Google Beijing labs people did a good job, and I’d recommend you take a look at it.

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After switching my laptop, I am now switching my desktop to Ubuntu. I am documenting this process on The Great Switch page. This can be accessed under Pages on the right hand side.

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Wimbledon has started, and as usual, it’s raining. I’m a Federer fan, but like my uncle said, it’s easy to be a Fed fan. So I am also supporting Ivo Karlovic! Never heard of him? Well, you will.. I predict he will do well. I’m putting this up as evidence.

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Back home, and the dressing on my knee has been removed. Now all I have is two little bandages covering two little holes.

I don’t feel like writing anything else. I’m wallowing.

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Hospital Diary.

18/06/2007

I got admitted to Max Super Speciality Hospital today. The day started off very nicely, with it raining cats and dogs in the morning. We got to the hospital around 10:30, completed the necessary formalities, and then I checked into my nice room. It IS a nice room, with a nice large bay window. I’ve got the bed next to the window, so it’s very bright. Not much of a view, since all I can see is the building next door, but it’s nice enough.

My room mate is an old man, about 70 years old. He’s had surgery on his spine. He’s also been very entertaining. Why? Well, he’s been wanting to go home for the past four hours.. And when I say wanting to go home, I MEAN WANTING TO GO HOME!!!! He’s been yelling at everyone, but the best part is how he curses his son! It’s very very funny. The son just looks sheepish, and runs out of the room. At which point, the old man tells the room how his son is an absolute good-for-nothing so-and-so and that his complete and utter destruction is assured, and sundry other such loving remarks. The best bit of repartee however, was when the son timidly told his dad to eat something.. Dad goes (in Hindi) “Eat SHIT!! There must be some lying on the road somewhere.” Those of you who understand Hindi… “Goo khaa goo! Road par pada hoga kahi”

I rather like the old guy though. He’s got lots of spirit. His son is about 35 years old, and obviously has no idea what to do. He keeps running out to fetch the nurses.

The food here is quite good. There’s a nice pretty dietitian who pops by every now and then to ask how the food is. The problem is, she’s wearing her white coat inside out. Every time she comes by (three so far), I debate whether to tell her this or not. It’s quite funny. I’m now laying bets with myself whether she will have it the right way tomorrow. If not, I think I will tell her.

Also, this place has Subway and Cafe Coffee Day delivering to my bedside. Its quite a nice hospital, in terms of the infrastructure. The staff is polite and efficient as well. Of course, all this counts for nothing if they mess up the operation, so let’s see how that goes before I praise them too much.

I wish this place had a WiFi network. On the other hand, it IS a hospital, and wireless networks can really mess up medical equipment. I’ve spent the day sitting in bed and reading, which is a nice way to relax. I suppose I ought to be a bit apprehensive about tomorrow, but I really don’t feel it right now. I mean, there is nothing I can do about it. I’ve had a bunch of doctors drop by at regular intervals, asking me all sorts of questions. The anesthetist told me that he’s giving me three pills tonight, one of which is for my anxiety. I suppose I looked at him quizzically, sort of like “What anxiety?”, because he hastened to assure me that it is really very routine, and that I should not worry at all. Hmm.

The worst bit is that I can’t eat anything from midnight onwards. And to make matters worse, I’m not supposed to drink water either. I will have a bit, of course.

Well, I suppose that’s pretty much that for today. I guess I’ll be woken up bright and early tomorrow morning, and then I might feel scared or apprehensive or whatever. TR just called up and told me not to worry, and that my operation is quite minor, and how’s I should not get scared. He had a more serious version of my injury, and had surgery for that a while back, so he knows what he’s talking about.

Oh yeah, one more thing. The nurse came to take my ECG. The machine refused to recognise that I have a heart! She had to try three times before she got a reading. So for all those of you who have been saying I’m heartless; you’re right! I also have a very low resting heart rate, about 58 beats per minute. And my blood pressure is normal: 170/110

All very reassuring, and probably why all the attendants here had trouble believing that I was the patient. They all thought mom was the patient.

2118 Hrs

I just signed a bunch of documents, all legal jazz that basically says if the hospital attaches my knee on backwards, of course it’s not THEIR fault.. I read every word, but didn’t tell the guy that I was a lawyer. Knowing how doctors feel about medical malpractice suites, and how the world feels about lawyers in general, they probably kill me, and pat each other on the back for a job well done. It’s actually quite interesting to read all this. They basically make you sign away all liability, and later on claim that they had your consent. Of course, it’s not like you have a choice here. I can’t make any changes to the terms, or anything like that. It’s take it or leave it. Standard form contracts are something we studied in law school, but this is the first time my life (a little melodramatic, I know) sorta depended on it.

I’ve also just swallowed three pills. A big green one, a little white one, and a teeny blue one. One of these is undoubtedly a sedative to “help me sleep”, i.e knock me out so I don’t stay up all night with the heebie-jeebies.

So I’m shutting this down now, and will go back to reading. Let’s see how long I stay awake. It’s 9:25 PM right now.

19/06/07

1346 Hrs

Well, here I am, all done with the surgery. The pills last night were not really sedatives, since I didn’t get knocked out or anything. In fact, I kept waking intermittently. Finally, at 5:45 AM, I woke up for good. I went and had a nice bath, and changed into the surgical gown. Yeah, the one with the open back. And then I sat in bed for an hour. I finished off the book that I was reading, and was preparing to get bored, when the nurse arrived with a tray full of scary looking medical paraphernalia. It looked scarier than it was actually. I was wondering if they would shave my leg, but thankfully they did not do that. The chappie just cleaned my leg with Betadine, making it nice and yellow-orange. Quite a fetching colour, even if I do say so myself.

My blood pressure and pulse rate were 120/80 and 57 bpm respectively. My heart beats quite slowly, apparently. I like that. The nurse asked me if I was scared. It’s such a minor op, that I really did not feel scared or apprehensive. I was mostly bored, cause the waiting is the irritating bit. I was just sitting around for an hour and a half. Oh yeah, I did get an IV line for the first time ever. When they pump you full of cool fluids, you can actually feel the coolness travel up your veins.

Finally, they came to take me to the OT (operation theatre, for all you non-medical minions, heh) It was nice and chilly, and it looked just like what you see in Scrubs, Grey’s Anatomy, or anyone of the myriad medical shows. They transferred me to the table, spread my arms out like Jesus, and knocked me out. This was at approximately 11:10 AM.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up outside the OT, with various machines beeping at me. It was 12:30 PM, and I was all done. I hung around there for an hour, with a pipe blowing warm air into my blanket. Yeah, you got that right!

My left leg has this huge bandage on it, from mid-thigh to ankle. MY leg looks like an elephant’s leg, with all the padding. After returning to my room, I just sat around, reading, and waiting to eat. They had me on a liquid diet till 7:30 PM, which is very vexing. I mean, sure, it’s not like you feel very hungry when you are pumped full of glucose, but I’d much rather eat my food, than have it dribble into me, drop by drop.

I had the physiotherapist drop by too. She quite obviously thought I was thirteen kinds of dumbass. Why? I don’t know, but what I do know is, after she asked me to raise my leg, and I did, she prasied my to high heaven. “Intelligent boy! You got it in the first try; Very Smart!” and more of the same. I found it funny, but played along, with this dumb, vacous look on my face, smiling like a buffoon every time she praised me. This just inspired her to greater heights, and the next ten minutes really deserved to be recorded. Heh heh.

The second night was not very nice. Not being tired at all, I kept waking up. Of course, my roommates yelling for his son every hour did not help matters. Note to self: If ever hospitalized again, take a single room! I tried manfully to sleep, but finally, at 4:20 AM, I gave up. After hobbling over to the loo (which is an adventure in itself), I sat up in bed, and tried very hard to distract myself with thoughts of various things. A photo-montage, if you will. What of? Ah, now that’s for me to know In any case, it worked.

Now it’s 5:30 AM and I am listening to music, and writing this bit. I am going to be discharged today, so hopefully in about 6 hours I should be home, hobbling around.

Oh well, more after I get home, I guess. I’m going to read now.

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Good wishes, please. Thank You!

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I was reading a couple of posts, at Dubious Quality, and at Extremetech about how we all need to be editors today, not researchers.

The points made in both the articles are quite pertinent. I grew up in a small town (Jaipur) in India in the 90’s, mostly. In the ten years between 1990 and 2000, I went from 8 to 18. I was lucky enough the catch the last few years of having only ONE television channel, and I remember how the 9 ‘O Clock news was a household event. Right down to the countdown timer and everything. That half an hour (later one hour), was when everyone sat down and got their information fix. There was NO other way of gathering minute-to-minute information, unless the radio had something on it. And in India, Radio was a state controlled Monopoly.. FM? What FM?

Yeah, I was a kid, so obviously not so aware of things, but I did know that if I saw it on the news, it was probably correct. Yes, government propaganda and all that are valid points, especially in a monopoly, and it was all reported from the point of view of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, but as far as general world events would go, it was decent enough.

If I had to look up something for a school project, I had to plough through an Encyclopaedia. Again, this could be a pain in the ass, but when (if) you found the information, it was not necessary to cross check it, as long as your initial source was reasonably reliable.

The Internet became publicly available in India on August 15th, 1995 (I still have the PC Quest issue). I first used it late in 1996. Thanks to my interest in technology, and reading all the magazines available at the time, I knew a bit about it. And of course, I was quite blown away by the easy access to information.

Three years later, and my patterns of acquiring information had begun to change, irrevocably. No longer would I be waiting for the latest issue of PC Quest or PC World for news about the latest hardware. Now it was Anandtech, Slashdot, TomsHardware, and so on and so forth. Magazines just seemed dated, and they simply could not compete with the voluminous reviews online.

2000 came and went, without nuclear armageddon, and now we had 24 hour news channels, millions of websites, and just massive amounts of information. The trouble was not the lack of info, but figuring out just how to get the important bits out. And that is more an editor’s job than a researcher’s.

Law School was no different. Any topic would yield tons of information, especially since we had access to specialized legal databases like Westlaw and LexisNexis. Again, it was a question of discarding, not acquiring. It’s pretty much the same thing in almost any medium today. We have a plethora of English news channels running 24/7, regional ones, wacky ones, and what not on TV. Any small story gets endlessly magnified by them, till it resembles a freakshow. Remember the rescue of Prince, the kid who fell into the hole?

But is too much information a bad thing? I would say not. However, I will say that we should have the tools to sift through this info to get to the good stuff. The most important attributes, in my opinion, would be a sceptical mind, the willingness to access many different points of view on the same subject, and never assume that what you know is a fixed entity. Information is fluid, and ever changing, and we need to be ready to factor in new things, and be willing to change our minds as required.

But isn’t this too much like being mindless, and simply believing what is told to you? Shouldn’t we have strong convictions and be willing to stick to them? This is a tricky question, and like all tricky questions, the easy way out is to say, “It depends”. I won’t do that, but will try to give a few points of reference. The way I do it, which may or may not be correct for you.

I have a few fixed points of reference, that I refuse to change. I won’t list them in tedious detail, but some examples are: A refusal to think that any human is better than anyone else simply because of the circumstances of their birth, an unwavering belief in listening to the other side of things, and trying to do my best not to be prejudiced about things. How did I get these? Well, as I grew up, and learnt more and more about the world, these, and others not listed, just felt right to me. I tried other things too, but discarded them as they just did not feel the same. My thoughts and opinions are obviously a result of my environment, but I try and keep an open mind, and learn as much as I can about how other people think. I may not agree with them, but I can try to understand and appreciate them.

So all the information I access I take with a bit of a pinch of salt. I do not absolutely believe anything, unless I have very good reasons to. I try and find out the other side to everything. If there are more than two sides ( mostly there are) I’ll make at least an attempt to find them out.

That what I do. It works for me, and I am not trying to force my point of view down your throat. When and if a better way comes along for me, I’ll use that.

So if we have too much information as opposed to too little, I would pick too much as being better, but also hope that we are able to keep up with it, and understand that information is not necessarily knowledge.
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It’s quiet ironic that I am going to work for a tech magazine after saying that the printed word cannot compete with the internet. It should be fun working for the other side, so to speak. I will be writing about that as time passes.

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I must say, I think I have become quite a tree. This is with reference to something someone told me a few days ago. I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s quite possibly true.

I’m back in Delhi now, and whiling away the days before the 19th. I’ve been doing some reading about developmental economics (!), just for kicks. Nothing much, just one essay. And I also think that the Thinkpads are lovely computers.

My Thinkpad T-43 is two years old now, and it still looks and feels new. The keyboard is as perfect as ever, the screen hinge is still strong, and basically, the laptop just feels right. I’ve been running Ubuntu on this for the past eight months, moving from Dapper to Feisty, and that feels just perfect too. I’m going to have to save up for a new battery for this, since my old one now gives me only 3 hours of battery life. Everything else about it is just fine.

I just opened up my Sis-in-Law’s (hereafter SIL) Toshiba Satellite M35X, and damm! It’s bloody tedious. Opening a T-43 requires no effort whatsoever. It’s built in a modular fashion, so if you just want to remove the keyboard, you just remove those screws. Ditto palmrest, and so on. Of course, if you really want to gut the thing, you have to remove everything. The Toshiba however, has about eighteen screws you have to remove before you can remove the keyboard. And then you have to remove a few more to get to the Mini-PCI slot! Not an exercise I would care to repeat.

So anyway, moving away from stuff that no one is interested in, let me tell you what’s up. I went on a rather interesting date. No, not interesting in the standard way, quite the contrary, in fact. Intrigued? Well, I am not going into details. Let’s just say that I have become quite a monk. But it was quite some fun nevertheless.

My sister Roh says that I am useless. However, she also says that all men are useless, so I think we can take that with a bit of salt, eh? Of course, if you want to get all meta-physical and start arguing about whether men and women are in fact the same species, you’re welcome to. Just take the third door on the left. Yeah, that one..

I’m planning to register with the Bar Council of Rajasthan. Yes, I know that sounds funny, but hey, I did get the law degree, may as well register. Never know when it might come in handy, eh? I might be arguing something before some crotchety old judge, trying to save myself from dire consequences.

If this post seems very disjointed, that’s cause I am writing it in bits and pieces. I write a few lines, then I do some stuff, then I write some more, and so on. So you can tell that I am sitting around, mostly bored.

I might be heading back to Jaipur over the weekend though. Mom wants to come to Delhi with the dogs, and it will be difficult for her to come with them, so I might just drive down and bring her back . If I do go, I might also go for the Ashok Club rain dance. The last time I went for that I was in school! Should be interesting to see what it’s like now. Not sure if it’ll work out though. Let’s see.

I finally read Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. I wrote about Something Wicked This Way Comes a while back on my blog (search for it, I’m too lazy to link, just use the search box on the right), and I raved about it. Well, this book is just the same. A must read, to put it mildly. Again, I’m not going to waste pixels, just read the damm thing!

I suppose I should just post this now. I’ll write more when there is more to write.

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