2005

Petals Around the Rose. A simple dice parlour game that Bill Gates apparantly cracked by memorising the sequences. Comments SlaSh 17 Oct 2005 11:15 am: hey is that you who writes articles and does interviews by the name S.Anand in the mag Outlook S Anand 17 Oct 2005 1:29 pm: No, that is someone else. jayant 18 Oct 2005 4:08 pm: Any place where I can get a solution. Sorry to say but I am dumb..:-( Raghav 18 Oct 2005 7:41 pm: As the man says - “The name of the game is petals around the rose, and the name is important” :-) Dhar 19 Oct 2005 3:29 am: Arrgh! I have not been able to figure this out. Utterly Frustrating…Solution appreciated… Please mail me at sumit.dhar at gmail Aman 19 Oct 2005 10:59 am: the solution is in the name…….for every odd no throw of dice, simply add the digits surrounding the centre on on each dice… A 19 Oct 2005 2:37 pm: aman, I dont know if I shld kill you for posting the solution or shld thank u for making my day… R 20 Oct 2005 3:22 am: what happened to your blogroll? ritzkini 20 Oct 2005 5:36 am: fantastic game..and so simple a solution..once u have read it… :P S Anand 20 Oct 2005 8:25 am: Killed my blogroll. I use Google Reader now. Will post the OPML. jayant 20 Oct 2005 3:25 pm: Well still didnt figure out…it does nt add up…and if even throw, then? jayant 20 Oct 2005 3:26 pm: Anand, any clues…since u posted, u know of any answers? S Anand 20 Oct 2005 3:39 pm: Have mailed you. Prakash 17 Nov 2005 11:55 am: I got the answer for the same ! it was a good one

Netflix doesn’t charge you if you lose DVDs in the mail. Nice of them. The only way I see it work is if they have the right to copy a DVD if they lose it in transit. Do they?

Lal Bihar formed a society of dead people. In 2003, he won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize. … to prove that he was living sought arrest, tried to run for parliament, kidnapped the son of the uncle who had stolen his property, threatened murder, insulted judges, threw leaflets listing his complaints at legislators in the state assembly and demanded a widow’s pension for his wife.

How to buy nothing and What not to buy first-hand (like books, CDs, and cars)

Charade starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant is now in public domain (you can download it for free). So are some other classics like His Girl Friday and Dressed to Kill. See Archive.org’s feature films. (Actually, it’s not a Hitchcock film. But it’s said to be the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made.) Comments Dhar 18 Oct 2005 10:25 am: Wow! This is amazing. Have been trying to lay my hands on His Girl Friday for quite some time. WILDMAN 3 Mar 2009 5:30 pm: RE: CHARADE…DOES THE PD INCLUDE THE MUSIC? S Anand 3 Mar 2009 6:19 pm: I’m not quite sure, really… it’s been a while. Besides, it looks like the page I’d linked to has vanished. Maybe it’s no longer in public domain. Unidyne 27 Jun 2010 5:19 am: There’s a debate on the film’s public domain status, because the music composed for it and the story on which it was based are both under copyright. Also, while the film has a number of Hitchcock style touches (big name stars, plot twists, romantic scenes), it was directed by Stanley Donen. Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963) 11 Jul 2011 12:56 am (pingback): […] can easily be mistaken for an Alfred Hitchcock film. With wit to spare, the presence of Gary Grant and an innocent […]

Now, Google search history lets you tag and bookmark.

What Teens Want. From a session at Web2.0. The big laugh line of the session was when Safa asked them how they’d go about researching information on a CD player they might want to buy. They looked at him in silent puzzlement, as if to say, “why would we buy a CD player?”

twofifty.org lets you track which movies from the IMDb top 250 you’ve seen. My twofifty.org list has 71/250 crossed off.

Google Reader. Gmail principles applied to RSS. You can subscribe to posts, label feeds and star RSS items. The reader suggests items from your subscriptions based on your interest.

The Google Admin Console. Wonder what you can do if you have the password to this. More Google subdomains. Comments brinpage 10 Oct 2005 1:43 am: google/donoevil A 10 Oct 2005 2:59 am: anand, can I view this from a blog reader? where do I get the feed url? Smokey 10 Oct 2005 6:02 am: if u use google as userid and password it siplays apage which asks you to move to http://www.google.com/adsense/premium-login AlphaGeek 10 Oct 2005 5:58 pm: How do u manage u r time? You do all kinds of things Watching many movies,browsing extensively and also being sincere in u r work ! How is it Possible. Can u pls elucidate S Anand 12 Oct 2005 5:23 pm: Blogfeed available at http://rootnode.freestarthost.com/sanand.xml

How to convert a black & white photo into colour using Photoshop. The result looks remarkably good.

The next geek dinner is with Tim O’Reilly. Have to attend!

War forecasting. Can software really predict the outcome of an armed conflict, just as it can predict the course of the weather?

CNet has a tool that lets you see the big picture for articles.

Feynman quotes. BTW, Infinity – on the life of Feynman – would be a good movie to watch. Comments anony 3 Oct 2005 7:53 pm: This page is hell. Thise silly yellow things keep popping up. S Anand 4 Oct 2005 1:15 pm: Agreed. The popup shows the tags associated with the link. Any ideas on improving it?

Web 2.0 Matrix. What APIs have been mashed up with what other APIs, and where.

I’ve put in Google Adsense on my page. But the results are ridiculously irrelevant! Comments Raghuraman 9 Sep 2008 9:15 am: google adsense work in expliand in tamil language, For an approval of adsense and how to publish my website to the visitors for click programe and get earn by this work. Thanking you

If you let people photograph your debit cards, don’t be surprised if the balance drops to zero.

Framing - using words to build a frame of mind. A Senator goes on a Fox News show in which a conservative argues with a liberal. The conservative host says: “Some say that more tax relief creates more jobs. You have voted against increased tax relief. Why?” The Senator is caught. Any attempt to answer the question as asked simply reinforces both the Tax Relief frame and the “Tax Relief Creates Jobs” frame. The question builds in a conservative worldview and false “facts”. Even to deny that “tax relief” creates jobs accepts the Tax Relief frame and reinforces the “Tax Relief Creates Jobs” frame. ...

Interesting experiment to test the impact of changing the rate for Google Adwords. Two identical sites have Adwords account. One has an established account paying $0.10 per word. Another is a new account, and begins by paying $1.00, then lowers it to $0.40. The former got 15,000 click-throughs regularly. The latter started just above 15,000 and fell to 1,200 after the rate drop. Does the Adwords algorithm favours rate increases disproportionately (and hence is evil?) Or is the fact that the former site an established one create the difference?