Thursday, May 26, 2005

Echoing my thoughts

What is more important? Writing well or conveying thoughts. People who write well get all the laurels but the purpose here is the the latter, hence I would simply point to this post and say that I couldn't agree more.

I remember a question asked to me in an interview when I was a fresher. He asked "Why do you want to be a software engineer?"
I answered "Because I like Computer Science, or mathematics in general. I like it because it has straightforward equations for every scenario, not dependent on physical or environmental factors. Things are much more clear and reliable in that sense."
He responded "That seems untrue as one never knows when a piece of code will break while a building once made lasts for more than 100 years."
My reasoning "Code only behave the way it is written. It cannot behave in any other way depending upon the heat or coolness of the weather or simply because its not in the mood."

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

My Google

Check this out. Google is offering a personalized page similar to My Yahoo. I don't want to get into the "Google is not a portal" kind of debate right now, but what's most amazing about the site is yet again the "UI".
This has a drag-and-drop portlets functionality. Just add all the portlets you want to view and then just drag and drop wherever you want to place it.

Remembering Gmail's UI, How is it that only Google applications provide these amazing out-of-the-box kind of UI functionality that others are not able to imitate?

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Yahoo Messenger 7 Beta launched

The latest beta of yahoo messenger is out and I decided to give it a shot.

I remember trying out the yahoo messenger 6 beta last year when yahoo gave a completely new look and feel to their messenger and added a lot of features. Apart from the stealth setting feature which I found potentially useful, it was a disappointment. Unstable in terms of memory usage, sluggish responses especially when starting (I started it from taskbar, the whole taskbar used to hang for sometime till it started) and when signing out.

This beta however, though boasts of only few new features, is much more better with instant responses. My taskbar doesn't hang anymore, starting and signing out is done in a flash and the overall UI of the application is improved with fonts in the conversation window being better now to say the least. Also, the message archive can also show nicknames instead of yahoo id as per your preference setting.

The biggest USP as claimed for this release is the PC-to-PC Call feature, which is basically similar to the voice chat feature provided earlier, just that instead of the voice chat button, there is now a call button similar to what skype offers. The additional feature here is that one can now also leave offline voice messages. However, Yahoo has made it clear that unlike skype, which offers PC-phone calls, yahoo will stick to PC-PC calls.
Currently all the new features yahoo offers can be used only if both sides has the latest version, which is not the case with me, so with feature testing not possible for me, I would vote thumbs up for the better responsiveness and thumbs above average for better UI.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Maths is simple

Recently one of my friends had this status line on his yahoo messenger
"If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is. "
A little googling and I got this Math Quotes site that told me that this comment is from
John Louis von Neumann, the guy who gave the Von Neumann architecture.
This is something I can totally relate to, as I guess would most of my engineer friends. Handling a software engineering job is the easier part of life.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

A birthday and 2 movies

Going by my recent posting frequency, my life should have been either too boring or too busy to blog. On the contrary, life has been eventful in a good sense since some time with lots of events happening in the last few days.

It all started with a fantastic birthday on 1st, followed by back to back movies on 2nd and the 3rd. I got the maximum no of wishes this time around, from both family and friends (also got maximum no of gifts this time ;-) ). Considering the kind of introvert guy I am, its absolutely amazing to see how much networks I have got just because of the iitian tag. This also makes me notice how networking sites like orkut would become more and more important to lives.

Watched "XXX-2" on 2nd and "Mumbai Express" on 3rd. Movies of completely different genre, Both have a common "lacking great performance by lead actor". Ice Cube in XXX-2 had no sense of dialogue delivery while Kamal Hassan, though no doubt a great actor, do not have that kind of quality when it comes to comedy. His not-so-good hindi is also a big hindrance. I would still give both movies an average rating.

Another interesting incident that happened on 2nd was the lost and found of my mobile phone. I forgot my mobile on the restaurant table only to find half an hour later that it was missing. I had no hopes of getting it back but to my surprise, I got a call another half and hour later from a guy who took it to his home. I have been on a lucky streak after a long long time and I am enjoying it to the fullest.