The new Decal is here! Some more love for my Macbook Air!
Portal to the Portal Trail
I was doing some Scheming today, which got me thinking. Schemer is not the prettiest website, but I really like how you can do activities or create schemes to get things done. A lot of times in our lives we forgot to look back and think about what drives us. Ever since I got into Mountain Biking, I have always wanted to do the portal trail. It is actually my inspiration to try and get better at mountain biking, to become fitter for the intense ride, to overcome my fear of heights to be able to bike with the sheer drop next to me.
If you havent see the portail trail, here it is:
I am sure you can find better videos of the trail but its hard to pass on this one, thanks to Pixies playing in the background. Portal trail is a super exposed trail in Utah. This website has an amazing description of the entire trail:
I’m going to pause from the story of the day to warn you about the Portal trail. It will reset your scales for exposure on a trail. It is off the charts extreme. Nobody falls off the Portal trail and lives to talk about it. The exposed sections have majestically beautiful views to a certain and quick death. Lee Bridgers in his Mountain Biking Moab book dedicates a couple of pages to bringing home life and the Portal trail. This is just a tiny excerpt of a larger fascinating story on how he relates the life of one of his friends to the Portal trail.
“Rusty was eighty-three when he shuffled off. He was a real piece of work, under construction for over eighty years. He had lots of kids. His kids are having kids. People were, and still are, affected by Rusty’s spirit. When he died his family and colleagues celebrated his long life with funny stories and tears of gratitude for having Rusty as a friend for so long. How old are you? How long will you live? Ever consider that your life is invaluable to your family and friends? Ever heard of the expression “Don’t break your mother’s heart?” Ever heard of natural selection? This is the connection. You may not be a Rusty Musselman, but with age, you may become just as interesting, just as much of a character. In Moab we call it “Rugged Individualism.” Fall off the Portal Trail and you will never know the rewards of being an “elder,” of being a rock for your family. You will become some nameless someone who fell off the damn Portal Trail onto the rocks below.”
I’m not trying to scare you, the Portal trail should do that on its own. The exposed sections are not too technical, a solid upper-intermediate rider could pull off those moves 5 times out of 6. However, that 6th time is DEATH! The risk is simply not worth the reward here. Riding these sections is Russian Roulette on a mountain bike and three people have died so far here. I love myself and my family too much to risk becoming the fourth by trying to ride those exposed sections. If you don’t feel the same way then this may not be the trail for you.
However the reason I want to do the trail is not because I want to defy death or get killed. But its one of those things that kinda define your passion. This single video for me captures a lot of the love I have for mountain biking. It is almost an elusive goal that I have to work towards. This goal prepares me for many other big and small things that come my way. It makes those challenges look trivial, because I am striving for something much bigger.
As a kid I dreamt about writing software that will change the world. As a kid I wanted to write a new Operating System. Now I want to write a piece of software that will reach lives of millions of people, and in its own special way make their lives better for them. But you dont start with that. You always have that goal in your mind. I had those big dreams when I wrote my first “Hello, World.”. I had those dreams when I was graduating from college, doing my startup, doing research. Those were the reasons that drove me to improve myself. They make us go that extra mile and bring us one step closer to who we really are. But its not just the skills that count. A lot of the conviction comes from the heart. You can have all the technical skills to do Portal, but your heart and mind also have to agree to it. Similarly you may have all the technical skills, but you need that conviction to take the plunge and do something unique.
Life is about the journey, right? So let your dreams define your journey. However challenging it might be, it will be fun. It will be you.
John Gruber’s take on the Galaxy Nexus
You either see it or you don’t. If you don’t, that’s cool, enjoy your Nexus. But I think the reason Apple Stores are so crowded, and getting so big, is that there are an awful lot of people who do see it.
Here is the link to the Original Source, a blog post by John Gruber.
I wonder when will people realize the reason I use Android is not because its more shiny or polished (or because I can not tell between a half/full baked product). I am more than tired of people thinking they are all high and mighty because they use Apple products (and seriously no disrespect to John, because he is genuinely a very smart guy). Just because you use an iPhone doesn’t mean that you have a better aesthetic tastes, than a guy who doesn’t. There are more things in life than just phones. My beliefs define me more, than just a pretty UI (and I am not even saying that finish is not important, more on that later). I used Linux a decade or so back (sorry, I aint old enough to have been coding when Unix/Linux come into existence) not because it had a better UI or it worked seamlessly with every thing. However, I could still tell which platform had a better UI, and still I chose to program in Linux. However cheesy it may sound, but the Samsung Advertisement:
where the guy says: “I can never get a samsung, I am creative.” hits the nail on the head. More people think they are cooler, creative and thousands times more awesome because they use an Apple product. MG Siegler (once again no disrespect to him) in his original article compares iPhone and Android to a BMW and Honda. He makes this comparison, while he drives a Honda, and uses a BMW (iPhone). I drive a BMW. I have driven a Honda. I can tell the difference (and that is why I drive a BMW). However I prefer a BMW over an Audi because of what the brand, or the idea behind the car means to me. Similarly a Mercedes generally offers much more refined interiors and driving comfort. Would I give up my BMW for it? No way. Same way my choice in Android and iPhone is not because I can not tell between a good and a bad design, or because I am not cool enough to have an iPhone in my pocket. It’s an earnest decision. A lot of early adopters choose a platform because they believe in it, not because they dont understand usability or design.
I have supported Android even in its early stages, when they were actually like Honda and BMW. Its because I believed in a product. A lot of technologies I love, have developed simply because of belief and community support, and Android is a shining example of that. I strongly believe that the gap is almost complete and whatever is remaining will be complete soon. In the mean time, please do not think you are superior, more creative, a more distinguished judge of design, or that the other person is stupid, just because you use (or do not use) an Apple product. Please do not stereotype/speculate on the reason I am buying an Android phone, just like I don’t do for you.
Is there a thing called as a Designer Co-founder?
Or do you always hack on your own, until you are ready for getting a paid employee?
These days you cant really have an app, which does not have good design aesthetics. With enough startups relying solely on great interface design and user experience (or more so on them than actual innovation), I just find it surprising that there are so few startups where any of the founders/co-founders are designers. Perhaps I dont know enough of these startups, or maybe most of them are not mainstream, but either ways you dont seem to find enough UI designer as founders.
This comes to me as a surprise because there are enough startups with non technical founders. Wouldn’t having a great designer as a cofounder be more lucrative that a business contact, especially for a user facing startup? I mean unless you are already rich, you probably won’t be able to afford a designer right off the bat. And a great UI can be game changing. Given all the creativity that these designers bring to the table (coupled with flawless execution and integration from engineers), I would believe that more of them would be ready to start something of their own.
Is this because of how engineers and designers look at problems? This might be going down a completely wrong track, but engineers look at problems in a much different fashion than a designer. Perhaps as an engineer you are sitting at this vantage point, where you can see more scope for innovation and change. You are exposed to more problems, and have the skill set to figure out what can/needs to be changed/created. Or is because engineers are used to all the pain that involves getting a company to bootstrap?
Either ways, I strongly think that engineering and design complement each other really well, and put together right from the beginning make a huge difference. I think we really need to stop thinking of design as an after thought. For the same reason, I always wonder if we should even be segregating engineering from engineering with a good design?
In any case as engineers, till the time we can not afford a designer, we will hack together whatever we can.
How many Bohr Radius between my office and work?
If you are one of those who just want to know how many Bohr Radius apart are two points on a map, or how many football fields did you walk to get to your favorite restaurant, Google Distance Measurement Tool maybe the answer to all your questions.
Clicking on the small blue ruler on the left of the scale (bottom right corner of the image) brings up the Distance measurement tool. You can select from boring imperial or metric units, or go geeky and find out how many light years to fly around the world. Here are the current set of supported units:
I have not even heard of a whole bunch of them, and that probably makes them more fun. I didn’t even know there were so many sizes of Cubits.
Cheer up, your code is crashing!
Cheer up, the code is crashing in production too!
Everyone needs a fail animal right? And why should we settle for a grouchy one? Like the Airbrake Froggie toad (thanks for pointing that out @hc5duke) who seems to be pleased with the fact that not only is my rails code crashing, but it can also be crashing in production environment.
I wont go into the pros or cons of this happy toad, but I just found it funny.
A Singly view of my data
I don’t know when we will understand this, but the social web is not about checking into places, or posting photos and tagging people. It is not about us sharing our information via our blog, or doing micro updates on twitter. It really doesn’t matter if I use Flickr or Instagram, or Google+ or Facebook. What is more important is the actual interaction we have on a day-to-day basis, be it in the real world or the virtual.
Life is just a collection of experiences that we create, or share with people around us. Different people use different “social” services to serve their purpose towards this end. And to tell the truth, we actually need different services at different times. However that leads to a lot of fragmentation of our personal data. Right now a large chunk of my thoughts are scattered around on Facebook and twitter updates. Similarly Picasa has all the photos that I take from my Android phone, while there are more that are posted by my friends on Facebook and Flickr. This makes it a mess to actually see what content do I really create, get linked to or ingest. And the problem doesn’t just stop there. It is a pain for me to even put the various blocks together. There is no real bridge between these disconnected services. This hurdle is also felt when developing any application that consumes this data (don’t even get me started on actually creating this data). How many websites have you visited recently which didn’t ask you to sign in on at least two of these social services?
This also makes development a challenge. Recently when I was trying to write a simple service to analyze my geo presence based on data online, I found that I had to write code to query at least 4 services to get an accurate answer. Shouldn’t we be making this easier? On thursday I was down at Singly office in the mission for a small Create-a-thon. The plan was to hack till midnight, and welcome 11/11/11. I thought why not? I had read a little about them online and the Locker Project and I thought they were on the right track. Singly provides a unified APIs to query our personal data.
Starting off around half past seven, it didn’t take long before Simon and other folks at Singly had my account setup. They had a general theme of building a photo viewer, which could take photos from all your services (4Sq, Instagram, FB, and so on). However I was more interested in how I could use this data towards my personal project of analyzing my location, based on my online interactions. Despite them still being in an early phase of the places API, it didn’t take me long to see all the checkins from me and my friends, and actually start analyzing them for patterns. Before we hit midnight I was able to pull up a small application which could figure out the places I have been to recently, and an overlap between me and my friends. This was pretty cool, because this actually collated data across 4Sq and Facebook (I wish they had Google Places) and was pretty simple. Despite all the rough edges this actually made sense. Given all the development happening out there, why is there no single way of getting my personal information?
I also played around with their existing photo viewers, contacts and links interactions. I was actually surprised on how accurately they recovered all the links I saw through the day. Although I must say that was a lot of data but nevertheless it really was deduplicated and ready for me to crunch on. I didn’t have to worry about linking 10 different accounts (although I did have to do it once at Singly) in every app I write. While talking to folks @ Singly I realized that there were a lot of challenges in this data unification. I really appreciate the effort they were making, but I wish that a large part of this focus came from these big social networks to allow me to unify the access (and perhaps creation) of my personal data. I know it’s almost impossible to wish for open standards in this, but that would definitely make my life easier as a developer, and also allow people to focus on innovation and not data aggregation.
Integrate Google+ completely with Google Reader
So I was cribbing about how Google Reader is missing the G+ share feature on twitter, and viola, the button appears. I would love to think this happened because of my feedback, but then again it’s just wishful thinking.
Recently Google Reader has got a lot of flak from users complaining about the new look. There has been enough talk about the “new” Google reader, and I must say, that I have to write about it. I used to love Google Reader, and actually I still do. Google reader is simply the best web-based aggregator out there, in my opinion. Its simple, lightweight, and really good to keep a tab on everything.
However my problem with Google Reader is slightly different. I loved the small internal social community of google reader because it worked good enough for me. I have no problems moving that social integration to Google+, much like all other google products, but I think it should not come at a cost of lack of functionality. Earlier I could, in a straightforward way, see the articles my friends were sharing (again, sharing, not liking, +1ing or anything like that). I have said this so many times, sharing an article does not mean I am +1ing it! I may want to share the article with a group of people doesn’t mean I like it and/or support it. With the new reader its impossible to find out what are my friends reading without going over to Google+.
I see that this makes more people visit Google+ to check the updates, but I don’t understand why Google+ needs to be Facebook. For crying out loud, even in Facebook I can now see what my friends are reading without leaving the reader. Google doesn’t have to follow a Facebook model. I like google+ because it allows me to create a social app where it is, not by necessarily going back to plus.google.com. Similarly why is it so difficult to annotate articles with small icons showing friends who shared them? Why not allow me to see the articles that my friends have shared. For example when you are in Spotify, you can still see what your other friends top artists are. You don’t have to go back to facebook.com and figure it out.
This to me, seems like was a step back. I like the new look, and really like the homogeneous interface (although I wish there was a compact view, much the like one in Gmail) and the fact that they maintained the light weight interface. But I don’t think the UI benefits outweigh the integrated social activity. I am not even asking Google to restore the original social network of Google Reader, but just integrate Google+ social integration better so that it maintains the functionality provided by the original one!
Why I am holding off all Android purchases for a bit
I know that when it comes to technology, things move really fast. And your hardware is out of date, almost as soon as you buy it. This was clearer than ever, at the debacle in Hong Kong, where Google released Ice Cream sandwich. Its not that the hardware is much different between let us say a Galaxy S2 vs a Galaxy Nexus, but remember google mentioning that with 4.0, the native screen resolution is 720p.
I give more credit to the screen here, because almost everything else matches up. The dual core processors, memory, cameras are all comparable. The same problem is also plaguing the Galaxy Tab 7.0 releasing in November. I think this problem is even more important in this case since the tab has a bigger screen, and can make even better use of the additional pixels.
In general its kind of sad to see that hardware being out dated so fast (its good to see the fast pace of innovation though). The Droid RAZR, Galaxy S2 all of them look like old computing machinery when I compare it to the Galaxy Nexus, despite only subtle differences. This for me goes on to also prove, how much I value the actual software, and not just the hardware. Moreover getting an upgrade from a carrier is almost not worth the effort. We have seen how reluctant they are when it comes to almost any kind of software upgrades While I heard “rumors” of early 2012 upgrade, its hard not to be skeptical. This elusive upgrade is always in the next quater, and takes its own sweet time (and occasionally they change their minds).
Anyhow, I hoping to see more phones and tables with a high resolution screen, and hoping that 4.0 will exploit them to the fullest.
Am I feeling lucky today?
Serendipity
n. pl. ser·en·dip·i·ties
- The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.
- The fact or occurrence of such discoveries.
- An instance of making such a discovery.
It seems that our fortunate discoveries are becoming more and more accurate. Now we can get a very accurate fortunate suggestion on which restaurant we want to visit (hint, hint Alfred) based on what we like. Or we can find the most accurate music recommendations based on our social circles (AudioVroom). However whatever happened to those life changing experiences that one could not imagine on their own, or even think about trying ever?
Life never asks us for our tastes and preferences. It does not come up with another “recommendation” if we are not satisfied with our current situation. We are exposed to completely new experiences that we may or may not like. The main difference is that in real life we dont have a choice. If I am stuck in a lobby playing a piano composition in the background, I will have to listen to it. I can not skip it, or get recommendations for the next song based on my current interest in music. I might like it, or perhaps I wont. I dont have a choice. However this is not true when it comes to technology. If Pandora doesn’t play a song to my tastes, I am very quick in hitting the skip button. If an app doesn’t give me an accurate suggestion when I search for nearby Thai places, I will not use it again.
This is one of the biggest problems with recommendations through technology. They are bound to have a bigger focus on accuracy because the user wants only good experiences. True serendipity comes at a cost of bad experiences, which we as a consumer are not ready to take. The technology allows us to demand accuracy, and allows us to keep ourselves in our comfort zone of experiences. I can end up talking to a person who designs soup can labels in real life, but I wont probably end up at a similar event with them because our “interests” dont match. The amount of serendipity we can offer is limited by the amount of risk involved in the actual suggestion or decision. Till the time we learn how to package the bad with the good, we will end up serving more and more accurately tuned results, than just sheer luck.