January 2006

Web design patterns.

Hilarious post on Pallu baby. Nice read, Karthik. Stay on course. Here’s his follow-up (which I can’t find on his blog any more). Confluence 2005 is happening and there are students from so many B-schools who have come down to IIM-A. Some of my friends from BITS, now studying in other B-schools, have come down as well. Yesterday I happened to get a call from one such friend of mine who’s studying in ISB (with whom I wasnt in touch at all). After a couple of hi-bye statements, the first thing she asked me was “How’s Pallu baby? And why arent you blogging at all? Your blog is very widely read in ISB. Everyone knows your blog in ISB. That Pallu baby post was circulated around like crazy.” ...

O’Reilly hacks.

Inspiration - not motivation - for writing. Comments Madhu 29 Jan 2006 12:26 pm: Forget writing, sometimes it even difficult to find inspiration for working(not motivation)! Chitra 3 Feb 2006 10:04 am: He he too good !!

My hard drive is experiencing some strange noises but I am unsure if the drive is failing. How can I determine if the noises are due to a failing hard drive? By listening to hard disk noises – available as mp3s.

Google web authoring statistics. An analysis of over a billion pages to see how people use HTML markup.

Data visualization. Examples of charts that convey a lot of information in a visually obvious way.

We were working with the financing subsidiary of a conglomerate. They had two divisions that gave loans for buying vehicles (mostly trucks, but also cars). One division used the direct channel. They had direct marketing agents (DMAs) who were paid a commission for getting the contract, and the division collected the monthly installments. The other used the dealer channel. The dealers would get the contract as well as collect the installments. ...

These are movie quotes. How many titles can you guess? (Use IMDb titles.) Comments Dhar 21 Jan 2006 1:55 am: Hmmm, I got 30 / 40. Nice one! ritzkini 21 Jan 2006 6:02 am: good one ! jake 21 Jan 2006 11:02 am: hey good quiz, i got 31: “seen me everyday for 16 years” should read “seen me everyday for 13 years”. S Anand 21 Jan 2006 11:02 am: Correction: “seen me everyday for 16 years” should read “seen me everyday for 13 years”. Another corrigendum 21 Jan 2006 12:55 pm: there’s a ’the’ mismatch in one of the answers S Anand 21 Jan 2006 1:14 pm: Oh, which quote? joe 21 Jan 2006 8:59 pm: why does the all time hits change? i remember seeing bill gates at 200 now it is done to 198. S Anand 21 Jan 2006 10:52 pm: I removed some duplicate entries last week (i.e. people accidentally clicking twice). Parshu 2 Feb 2006 6:37 am: how did you create this thng, when i type a name if right it becomes green and score gets updated. Kindly help me out with this technique. So i can too develop something on similar lines S Anand 2 Feb 2006 5:33 pm: The logic for turning stuff green is the onKeyUp function in those boxes. If what’s typed matches the encrypted answer, I turn the style.background attribute to green, and increment the quizCount element (which is just a span element) by 1. Hope it doesn’t sound Greek… just see the source. Ravi 3 Oct 2006 6:40 am: Good one anand. I got 34. I think i got the other 6 also but somehow not getting the names in the right format. These movies are sequels & have long names with colon etc. jb 2 Nov 2006 1:55 pm: nice Natasha & co 19 Nov 2006 6:36 am: my entire family working on this quiz for about 45 mins got 30/40! wooooo!!!! Kirsten 21 Nov 2006 11:34 am: Me n me family worked on this for lyk 30mins n we got 35/40 nice quiz…enjoyed it!!! cheers!! Kirsten & co 21 Nov 2006 11:35 am: woo! tibi 4 Jan 2007 1:41 am: i need the answers to ‘How do you solve a problem like Maria?’, ‘Everyone’s innocent in here, don’t you know that?’ and ‘How can you do that, look at me like you haven’t seen me everyday for 16 years.’ please, if you could help me… i like men 23 Jan 2007 7:22 pm: uh 40 out of 40 thats a pisser journalism7thperiod 23 Jan 2007 7:23 pm: notting hill? what kind of homo movie is that? if you ever quote that in real life kill yourself now!!! Anonymous 20 Jan 2006 12:00 pm: cool quiz Saibal 20 Jan 2006 12:00 pm: I got 36/40.. Dan 20 Jan 2006 12:00 pm: I got 40/40 ! how sad am I ! lol, but cool quiz ! look forward to the next one :-D chunk 20 Jan 2006 12:00 pm: some of these dont work when the title is right. huge nerd 20 Jan 2006 12:00 pm: good quiz i got 40 of 40 only after about 20 entires on the final question, not in imdb form. star wars: episode I - the phantom menace. otherwise awesome. Matthew 20 Jan 2006 12:00 pm: I got 40/40! Just shows how gib a movie buff i am. liz 20 Jan 2006 12:00 pm: i totally blanked out on some Batfred 20 Jan 2006 12:00 pm: Nice one, some real tough ones for once too. I had to google the rest after 34/40 as the frustration was strating to annoy me. Trevor Spence 20 Jan 2006 12:00 pm: Not good having double films! could the person that made this not think of 40 quotes from 40 different films! rhys 20 Jan 2006 12:00 pm: what is the answer to “there can only be one” is it the jet li movie “the one” Sam 19 Sep 2008 3:16 pm: Nice one know some of the other answers but cant place them george 5 Feb 2009 11:49 pm: what if there really is no spoon Larry Buesy 13 Feb 2009 7:17 pm: didn’t know much Jodie 16 Feb 2009 3:03 am: Man that was hard!!! Conner Darcy Rankin 25 Mar 2009 4:40 am: whats the answer to … How do you solve a problem like Maria?… really sweet quiz apart from this one question!!!!!! Jq 30 Sep 2010 8:21 pm: Some very neat ones ! Inflatable Bed 3 Dec 2010 1:35 am: the most memorable movie quote that i could think of is the one on Forest Gump ‘:~ KingViz 23 Dec 2011 11:27 am: Question 9 - the title absolutely does not start with “The…” Colette Cullen 10 Aug 2011 11:41 am: Great quiz (23/40)but where are the answers?

Cats are fooled by HDTV. Our cat tends to ignore normal TV completely. Guess HDTV looks real enough. Comments Dhar 19 Jan 2006 2:29 pm: I see you have given Ender’s Game 5 stars. Have you read Dune? You might like that too. S Anand 20 Jan 2006 11:59 am: I HAVE read Dune. Thought it was quite different, but I didn’t like it as much as Ender’s Game, though. I started off on Dragonlance, but gave up mid-way. Now I’m reading Terry Pratchett. SP 23 Jan 2006 4:13 pm: For more than one reason, i dont like Terry Pratchett, though I have read a lot of his books.. Always feel he’s ripped off Tolkien. Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, Dune are all pretty good. S Anand 23 Jan 2006 9:46 pm: Haven’t tried the Dark Tower series. Will give that a shot. Dhar 24 Jan 2006 3:12 am: Errr… Pratchett’s books are a work of parody. I wouldn’t be too surprised to find passages which seem to be “lifted” out of works of Tolkien and others… S Anand 24 Jan 2006 5:44 pm: Haven’t read enough to spot lifted passages… let me see I can spot them :-) Dhar 25 Jan 2006 8:45 am: Check the Annotated Terry Pratchett file.

Excellent article by Paul Graham on How to do what you love. [the] new definition of work [is] to make some original contribution to the world, and in the process not to starve. I think the best test is to try to do things that would make your friends say wow. If you admire two kinds of work equally, but one is more prestigious, you should probably choose the other. Your opinions about what’s admirable are always going to be slightly influenced by prestige, so if the two seem equal to you, you probably have more genuine admiration for the less prestigious one. ...

Apparantly, it doesn’t matter where you put a dot in your gmail address.

US Zip Codes Map. Type in the ZIP code, and interactively see which areas it maps to.

Hacking wireless networks. How to get access to secure networks, and how to see what others are doing on their wireless networks. Comments Arun 18 Jan 2006 4:56 am: Anand, can you recommend a few good podcasts you listen to? S Anand 20 Jan 2006 12:01 pm: I don’t listen to podcasts, I’m afraid! Trains are too noisy, don’t like using headphones at office, and prefer watching movies at home. So effectively no place for podcasts :-) Arun 20 Jan 2006 3:09 pm: Oh..ok..Somehow I thought you had made some post about listening to podcasts on trains sometime ago. Guess it must have been some other blog. Or I must have been dreaming :-) S Anand 20 Jan 2006 6:32 pm: No, you’re right. That was in July, when I was commuting OVER the ground, where there’s less noise. Now I commute UNDERground, and can’t hear anything, so I’d given up soon after I started.

Best of Google video.

It’s a good time to be a mathematician.

Boot up Windows before you log in.

Banks install ATMs to lower their branch costs, and to attract new customers. When working out the economics of ATMs, we found that lowering branch costs alone could not be a viable reason to install an ATM. The bank argued as follows: “Every time someone withdraws money from an ATM, they avoid going to the branch. With enough people going to the ATM, I can afford not to increase my branch size, and that saves me money. Since it costs me Rs 20 every time a person withdraws cash (in terms of salary, rent, etc.) and an ATM costs about Rs 2,200 a day, I’ll break even if there are 110 cash withdrawals from the ATM.” ...

Starbucks economics. Why Starbucks has a better, cheaper coffee that it keeps a secret. Comments Dhar 11 Jan 2006 10:28 am: This was so damn interesting! ritzkini 12 Jan 2006 6:14 am: “The more market power firms have, the less attractive they make the cheaper products.” I can think of N Marketeers in India doing this ! Madhu 13 Jan 2006 11:10 am: Interesting to compare this with the Bottom of the Pyramid concept of CKP.

Python vs Perl. Sums up my feelings perfectly: Python may be better for larger projects, but for my meddling, I’ll stick to Perl. It’s served me well for 10 years. Until 1999, I used Perl a fair bit, but no more than Java or C or anything else. My first “real-life” use of Perl was in 2000, when I was processing 600MB of IBES data. Access and SPSS couldn’t handle the load. Perl slurped all the data in a few seconds, though. A few years later, when processing bank data (3GB worth, this time), Perl again was the only saviour. In fact, between Excel and Perl (and CPAN), I think I have all the data analysis power I’ve ever needed. This blog, for instance, is written in an Excel spreadsheet, exported to XML, and converted into the blog format by Perl.