S Anand

How to get smarter, one breath at a time. Time magazine on the benefits of meditation.

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.

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.

Google search trends. Here is an interesting piece from my search trend. What I don’t understand is, where did thiep and amway come from? Comments ritzkini 9 Jan 2006 10:29 am: from the “the” and the “am” perhaps..dunno.. Madhu 10 Jan 2006 5:15 am: If you realise shareholders of google can just keep clicking away on the links in their mail or search results. Google makes money but shareholders have no cost. If I were an analyst firm covering google, I would employ people just to keep clicking on the ads;) I guess in a proper market, the per click fee would come down over a long term. Sash 13 Jan 2006 5:26 pm: hey ; are u from jamuna hostel @iit madras? sorry for spamming the place but i want to know S Anand 13 Jan 2006 8:56 pm: From Alak, actually. Class of 96.

Reliance Infocomm, after launching their prepaid business in India, introduced an new scheme. Pay Rs 4,300, and get a mobile phone PLUS prepaid vouchers worth Rs 4,300. Effectively, you’re getting a mobile phone for free. The scheme made good financial sense for Reliance. With a million subscribers to this scheme, they could recover Rs 430 cr of their upfront capital investment and retire their debt. Besides, the Rs 4,300 would have normally been bought over a period of around three years by prepaid subscribers, making its present value around Rs 3,600, at an interest rate of 12%. Add to that the reduction in distribution cost due to bulk selling, and possibility of non-usage, etc… the economics might work out. ...

The qualified Yes. Somewhere between saying “no” to a new project or taking on something in an open-ended type of way, be clear from the start on what you can commit in concrete terms. So, what used to be “Sure, I’ll do your web site” is now more often “Sure, I’ll give you 10 hours and 3 calls over the next month to use however you want.” If nothing else, it helps everyone understand that time is a precious commodity, but it also gets me out of being the de facto manager for every aspect of a project I touch. ...

Folder Size lets you see the size of folders in Windows Explorer. Useful to find out where all the junk is hidden.

A crash course in learning theory. Comments Prakash 7 Jan 2006 12:00 pm: This link was very kool Anand. I m goin to train few users next week. It cud b of gr8 use. Thanks…

Over my last few years as a consultant, I’ve seen many interesting ways in which markets have emerged where they shouldn’t have, creating havoc in pricing and scarcity. Fixed prices fluctuate, free goods acquire a value, and non-tradeable goods are traded. I’ll share a few of these examples over the next few weeks. Once, a fan manufacturer asked us, We did an analysis and found that our wholesalers’ margins fluctuate. How could that happen, when we are fixing their buying and selling prices? ...

I’m awaiting AllPeers. It’s a Firefox bittorrent extension that makes it easy to share files among peers.

Retrievr. You sketch out what you want to see and it tries to make a match on Flickr.

Speed up your pages.

Had tea at the Ritz today. Initially, after reading that “Gentlemen are politely requested to keep their jackets and ties on during tea”, my reaction was rather like Calvin’s. But the tea (Earl Grey) was outstanding. So were the scones, sandwiches and desserts. Although most people were ladies above 60, the younger ones were among the most beautiful I’ve seen in London.

Summer of ‘69: a line-by-line history of the song, by its writer Jim Vallance.

Your camera does not matter. “All of them can record what you are seeing. But, you have to SEE.”

Google Feed API to be released soon. While on Google, there’s some rumour about Google Purchases being used for video rentals – and eventually on to micropayments, competing with Paypal. Also, William Slawski maps Google’s acquisitions. Comments Ashwin 1 Jan 2006 3:13 pm: Anand, you have a similar look of Prasanna. (Hero of Tamil film: Kanda Naal Mudhal) S Anand 2 Jan 2006 11:25 am: Gosh, thanks! :-)

Turning iPod into a universal remote.

My Calvin and Hobbes index is current up to June 1990. Comments Sathya 28 Dec 2005 3:23 am: Are you manually typing all these stuff ? Ammadiyov … why dont u outsource such stuff :-) S Anand 28 Dec 2005 8:04 am: Whom to? :-) ritzkini 28 Dec 2005 8:32 am: !!! :O all by yourself !!?? crazy about C&H,eh ? S Anand 28 Dec 2005 10:55 am: Completely. And I’m not the only one I know either! vikram 29 Dec 2005 12:03 am: wow awesome man! i’m crazy about C&H too. great work man. :) Sathya 30 Dec 2005 3:25 am: Now you know whom to outsource to ;-P S Anand 30 Dec 2005 10:43 am: Hey, my index vanished! S Anand 30 Dec 2005 10:24 pm: It’s back. Madhu 5 Jan 2006 7:57 am: Did you try the Calvin Hobbes entire collection for their 20th Anniversary. Its about 5k in India. S Anand 5 Jan 2006 6:00 pm: Very tempting! Anonymous 9 Jan 2006 8:07 am: i have an internet link to the complete c&h, let me know if you would like iy S Anand 10 Jan 2006 9:08 am: Is it in text? I’d really like the complete Calvin in TEXT. S Anand 11 Jan 2006 11:16 am: Calvin theme subjects. Madhu 18 Jan 2006 9:53 am: Let me help you with this. I will work on Calvin and Hobbes backwards from 31-12-95 and see where I can reach S Anand 18 Jan 2006 10:52 am: Thanks, Madhu! That’ll be wonderful. Someone else I know in Germany working backwards from 31-12-95. How about if you take it forward from 01-01-93? JustSomebody 3 Apr 2010 5:17 am: Excuse me, but I think this strip search is broken. For some reason, it only has comics up to July 31, 1988. All the other comics aren’t showing and the text is replaced with jibberish. S Anand 3 Apr 2010 8:02 am: Yes – thanks for pointing this out. Fixed it now. The Calvin and Hobbes search Takedown | s-anand.net 21 May 2010 12:02 pm (pingback): […] bit puzzled, but just added it to my list of eccentricities and carried on. I was halfway there in 2005, pushed further in 2006, and with some help, I managed to finally complete […]

Good and bad procrastination by Paul Graham. The most impressive people I know are all terrible procrastinators. So could it be that procrastination isn’t always bad?

Google Video Downloader. Comments Madhu 5 Jan 2006 8:40 am: Have you tried www.youtube.com Google will probably take it over! S Anand 5 Jan 2006 6:00 pm: I use it. But why would Google take over? They already have a pretty good service… Madhu 6 Jan 2006 12:11 pm: Why not? MSN will take over otherwise. shekar 14 Jan 2006 11:06 pm: s anand, I saw your Swindon vidoes. They are edited very well. What software did you use? Especially the blue first screen. S Anand 14 Jan 2006 11:31 pm: Microsoft Movie Maker. It came bundled with Windows XP on my office laptop.