2007

How to use a GPS with Google Earth and map your path. Which is also a way to use your laptop and any GBP 30 GPS receiver to create a GBP 100 GPS navigator.

Scribd is a document sharing site. Sort of like a YouTube for documents. In other words, a book-lover’s paradise. Comments Dhar 7 Mar 2007 3:52 am: Anand, I found “The God Delusion” on Scribd. What were the interesting titles you found? S Anand 7 Mar 2007 7:01 am: On Lisp by Paul Graham, Excel Time-Saving Techniques for Dummies and Patterns of Software. prakash ayer 25 Mar 2007 11:54 am: Thanks Anand. Pretty good site.

How to find Google Custom Search Engines. Mentions a custom search engine for Google custom search engines.

Many languages have functions to process lists (array). These functions usually return a list, so you can pass that to another list function. This chaining of functions is really powerful. UNIX provides this sort of chaining capability. If I had a cities (with some repetitions) and I wanted to find out how many started with the letter ‘A’, I’d just type: cat cities | sort | uniq | grep "^A" | wc cat: types the cities. sort: sorts the cities alphabetically. uniq: finds unique cities (works only if sorted - that's why we had to sort the list). grep: filters the cities. Only allows cities beginning with A. wc: word count To do this on Excel, the only way is to ...

Running shoes may actually cause injuries. The heel has evolved to detect the pressure of hitting the ground, and to adjust the force with which to land our feet. Cushioned shoes soften the pressure. So we tend to land with greater force, creating more stress on our bones. In fact, the more expensive the shoe, the more likely the injuries! Comments Dhar 24 Feb 2007 7:03 pm: Argh… this is crazy. I have been running for the past year or so and recently shifted to Nike Pegasus because of the cushioning it provides. The whole article seemed like a rant. Will need to check the references he quotes before I can really believe this article. That said, I will nevertheless try a bit of barefoot running as the article suggests and see if it really helps. Cheers, D.

Click here to search for Hindi songs. This is an article on how I wrote the search engine. I find it a nuisance to have to go to Raaga, search for a song, not find it, then go to MusicIndiaOnline, not find it, then go to Musicplug.in, and so on until Google. So I got the list of songs from some of these sites, put it together in one place, and implemented a find-as-you-type. ...

An excellent talk about the myths we hold on the developing world, supported by the most amazing graphics I’ve seen in a while. Among other things, the speaker (Hans Rosling) proves that chimpanzees are much smarter than the top Swedish students, and are slightly better than Swedish professors when it comes to knowing the developing world. The first one of the series that I heard was the TEDTalk by Sir Ken Robinson. May be worth hearing all the TEDTalks. ...

Paul Graham pens another brilliant essay on Is it worth being wise? It’s mostly about the difference between being wise (right most of the time) versus being smart (being right where few others are). If you’re picking between options, being wise is useful. There is a best option, and you’ll pick it most of the time. If you’re doing something creative, there’s no finite set of options. Then it’s worth being smart. Increasingly, tasks are asking for more creativity, so it may be better to be smart.

My earlier list of statistically improbable phrases in Calvin and Hobbes is technically just a list of “Statistically Improbable Words”. I re-did the same analysis using phrases. Here are the top 20 statistically improbable phrases (2 - 4 words only): baby sitter chocolate frosted sugar bombs comic books doing homework fearless spaceman spiff() good night hamster huey ice cream miss wormwood new year peanut butter really think slimy girls spaceman spiff stuffed tiger stupendous man sugar bombs susie derkins watch tv water balloon That is, these are the 2-4 word phrases whose frequency in Calvin and Hobbes is substantially (at least 5 times) higher than in the other books I have. ...

You can download the Oscar nominated movies at Oscar Torrents, and vote for them. (No, the decision won’t be based on this – it’s completely unofficial.) via Dhar Comments zack 13 Feb 2007 12:00 pm: good downloading is enough for me

Steve Yegge at Google talks about the features of the Next Big Language. He apparantly has inside information about the language corporates are likely to make a big push for. The comments seem to suggest Javascript 2.

This is the 15th of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. Dharmavathi is the 59th melakartha raagam. Sa Ri2 Ga2 Ma2 Pa Da2 Ni3 Sa as arohanam and the converse as avarohanam. It is the prathimadhyamam of Gowrimanohari (23rd melam). About couple of years ago Rahman tuned a superb Dharmavathi song in Vandicholai Chinnarasu. The song is sugam sugam vendum. I think the singer of the song is Vani Jayaram. It is one of the best songs that Rahman has tuned in his short career so far. It is a very sexy song. He starts the tune in the madhyama sthayi like Sa Ga Sa Ga, with a very very prominent chord sequences in the background. While another song from the same movie became a good hit (senthamizh naatu thamizhacheeyE sung by the late Shahul Ameed), this lovely song based on a pure classical raagam did not become a hit. Earlier, Rahman has tuned one more Dharmavathi in the movie Gentleman. The song is ottagathai kattikko, which came as an unbelievable melody in that movie with a fantastic rhythm played in the pukka South Indian instrument “thavil”. ...

Peter Norvig’s brilliant talk on Managing the Data Deluge. Among other things, he talks about how having lots of data is sometimes better than having a carefully designed algorithm.

This is the 14th of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. The invincible AIDS virus is fast spreading in India. That is news! (Accidentally turned) bigamist Thamizh writer Balakumaran once stated in an interview that women are like masturbating bowl to men in India. Yeah, lorry drivers acknowledge that statement candidly! They will take the “sarakku” from Chennai to Thirunelvelli by their overnight lorry-borne express. In the gloomily lit bus-stations in-between, they will stop not only for “barota kuruma”, but also looking for their in-expensive bowls of masturbation! There… will come the familiar figure of the betel-nut chewing red-mouthed sexy queen! Our driver’s mouth will twist into a lusty leer! The indomitable Freudian force will drive the male instrument to do its procreative job in few minutes. There… will go our night queen, having earned few bucks to support her indigent family of innumerable malnourished children. In the above encounter between the two beings, not only the rapturous joy of sex, and money will have transacted, but possibly, the seemingly indolent “HIV” fellow too! ...

This is the 13th of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. A.R.Rahman is the number one copier in the world. My friend is very much convinced on this matter. He called A.R.Rahman as a mammoth recycling bin that takes its own previously tuned songs and polishes it and presents it in a different form. How dare he copy the great kousalyaa suprajaa tune and use it as the interlude music in maargazhi poovE (May Maadham). My friend boils with anger. How dare the freshmen music director of the movie Meendum Savithri (Ravi Devendran) copy the interlude of maargazhi poovE (which is itself a copied bit from kousalyaa suprajaa) and present it in his song. A chain of copying! My friend has lost his peace and is now a terribly agitated individual. His head is hot with anger! ...

Kevin Smith’s top 10 films of 2006. Comments Dhar 4 Feb 2007 4:26 am: Anand, have you seen any of Kevin Smith’s movies? Dogma is excellent, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Chasing Amy, Clerks and Mallrats are pretty decent… Subir Chakma 2 Feb 2007 12:00 pm: I want to have a look on those 10 films. manoj pant 5 Nov 2008 7:02 am: thanku very much for giving me idea to select films. i m going to buy these films tomarrow

How would you solve this multiple-choice problem: What is 12345 x 45678? 201932843 563894910 402394820 384718349 938491834 It always amazes me when people try and multiply the two numbers. In any objective-type test (multiple choice question), the aim is not to solve the problem – it is to pick the correct answer! Most people don’t seem to realise the difference. If I had to solve the problem, I’d look for shortcuts. For example, ...

Malcolm Gladwell argues that knowing less can be an advantage. This is based on a study in which kids in the US were asked which was a bigger city: San Antonio or San Diego. Many didn’t know. Kids in Germany were asked the same. Most knew: San Diego was bigger. Why? Because they’d heard of San Diego, but not of San Antonio. P.S: A comment mentions that the actual difference in population between these cities is only 2%. So maybe the US kids were right to be unsure… ...

India Poised: a video featuring Amitabh Bachchan. Here's the transcript. There are two Indias in this country. One India is straining at the leash, eager to spring forth and live up to all the adjectives that the world has been recently showering upon us. The other India is the leash. One India says "Give me a chance, and I'll prove myself." The other India says "Prove yourself first, and maybe then, you'll have a chance." ...

These are the most bookmarked pages on my site: My home page Excel tips Calvin & Hobbes quotes (I typed them all) Indian torrents (I have a search engine for Indian torrents) Tamil Transliterator (Lets you type Tamil in English) Tamil songs quiz Movie quote quiz My best links Top 10 lists But this post is not about these links. It’s about how I found this out. Think about it… how could I know what pages have been bookmarked? The browser doesn’t send any information about bookmarks. ...