S Anand

For a few tenths of a second, at the micrometer level, the Second law of Thermodynamics can be violated. The interesting thing is that it happens at such a large scale.

Yahoo’s been filtering e-mail viruses. Good, but they’ve been a little crude. So a Google search for medireview reveals a book on Middle Ages: that medireview chronology, and a treasure ride with medireview jewels, a medireview city and medireview treasures.

A Google blog. And while we’re on the subject, I’ve found Google labs’ glossary very useful. So are some Google applications based on their API. (Incidentally, their server is overloaded. I tried getting a key yesterday, put it politely declined.)

The winner of the Google programming contest.

I know – I’ve been talking too much about Google. Still, here’re the dates on which Google updates itself.

This article mentions a Patrick Critton. Thanks to this innocuous reference, he ended up in jail.

Text-based games on the rise? Skotos’ site looks interesting anyway.

Bottom line. A blog on the economics of IT.

I just bought a Fuji Finepix 2600. Should be getting it in a month.

In-depth portraits of open source pioneers.

More web scams.

If you see the sun at the same time from the same spot over a year, it traces a pattern called analemma.

False mathematical proofs. I ended to get all except the first wrong! (BTW, Math Mistakes is a good read. Thanks, Sriram!)

People’s Daily from China. In English. I’ve found it quite a good source of news recently.

An intruiging experiment on designing a better keyboard using a computer.

This article on supercomputing mentions that supercomputing is beating Moore’s law. Computing power is doubling roughly every 15 months (instead of 18).

Guardian’s favourite blogs. Satish’s Random Thoughts is on it.

Why is a CD 74 minutes long? Answer: Beethoven. Sony and Philips worked under the following constraints: The bits to be etched the CD had to be 0.83 microns long and 1.6 microns apart. Hence about 750,000 bits fit in 1 sq. mm CD uses 16-bit audio with 2 (stereo) channels. Sound is sampled at at 44.1 KHz for historical reasons. So 1 sq mm translates to about 750,000 bits / 44,100 Hz / 32 = 0.53 seconds of music. Philips came up with a 11.5cm CD that could store about 65 minutes of music. Sony made that 12 cm because 11.5cm can store around 65 minutes of music, while a CD that’s 12cm can store about 74 minutes. One of the supposed reasons is that a slow rendering of Beethoven’s 9th symphony (a popular piece in Japan) would take 74 minutes. ...

Yet another “googlebomb” on the name David Gallagher.

TouchGraph GoogleBrowser. A graphical representation of your site’s Internet neighbourhood.