How I do things

The IMDb Top 250, as a source of movies, dries out quickly. In my case, I’ve seen about 175/250. Not sure how much I want to see the rest. When chatting with Col Needham (who’s working his way through every movie with over 40,000 votes), I came up with this as a useful way of finding what movies to watch next. Each box is one or more movies. Darker boxes mean more movies. Those on the right have more votes. Those on top have a better rating. The ones I’ve seen are green, the rest are red. (I’ve seen more movies than that – just haven’t marked them green yet :-) ...

I’ve updated Mixamail to access Google search results via e-mail. For those new here, Mixamail is an e-mail client for Twitter. It lets you read and update Twitter just using your e-mail (you’ll have to register once via Twitter, though). Now, you can send an e-mail to [email protected] with a subject of “Google” and a body containing your query. You’ll get a reply within a few seconds (~20 seconds on my BlackBerry) with the top 8 search results along with the snippets. ...

There are some standard enhancements that I apply to my photos consistently: auto-levels, increase saturation, increase sharpness, etc. I’d also read that Flickr sharpens uploads (at least, the resized ones) so that they look better. So last week, I took 100 of my photos and created 4 versions of each image: The base image itself (example) A sharpened version (example). I used a sharpening factor of 200% A saturated version (example). I used a saturation factor of 125% An auto-levelled version (example) I created a test asking people to compare these. The differences between these are not always noticeable when placed side-by-side, so the test flashed two images at the same place. ...

As promised, here are some tips from the trenches on surviving in prison. (For those who don’t follow my blog, prison is where your Internet access is restricted.) There are two things you need to know better: software and people. I’ll try and cover the software in this post, and the more important topic in the next. Portable apps You’re often not in control of your laptops / PCs. You don’t have administrator access. You can’t install software. The solution is to install Portable Apps. Most popular applications have been converted into Portable Apps that you can install on to a USB stick. Just plug them into any machine and use them. I use Firefox and Skype quite extensively this way, but increasingly, I have a preference for Portable Apps for just about everything. It makes my bloated Start Menu a lot more manageable. Some of the other portable apps I have are: Audacity, Camstudio, GIMP, Inkscape and Notepad++. ...

Since I don’t have Internet access on my BlackBerry (because I’m in prison), I’ve had a pretty low incentive to use Twitter. Twitter’s really handy when you’re on the move, and over the last year, there were dozens of occasions where I really wanted to tweet something, but didn’t have anything except my BlackBerry on hand. Since T-Mobile doesn’t support Twitter via SMS, e-mail is my only option, and I haven’t been able to find a decent service that does what I want it to do. ...

I was browsing through Beautiful Data, and stumbled upon this gem of a visualisation. This is the default plot R provides when supplied with a table of data. A beautiful use of small multiples. Each box is a scatterplot of a pair of variables. The diagonal is used to label the rows. It shows for every pair of variables their correlation and spread – at a glance. Whenever I get any new piece of data, this is going to be the very first thing I do: ...

Eight years ago, I started typing out each of the Calvin and Hobbes strips by hand. Four years ago, I set up a site that let people search for strips. Early this month, I was asked to take it down. This is the story. I can’t quite remember when I started reading Calvin & Hobbes. The earliest reference I can find in my blogs is in July 1999. I remember it didn’t take me long to become a fan. I’d read every strip on the newspaper; hunt them out at bookshops; and spend a fair bit of time searching for archives online. ...

This is the simplest way that I’ve found to make the background colour of an image transparent. Download GIMP Open your image. I’ll pick this one: Optional: Select Image – Mode – RGB if it’s not RGB. Select Colors – Colors to Alpha… Click on the white button next to “From” and select the eye-dropper. Pick the green colour on the image, and click OK The anti-aliasing is preserved as well. ...

Dear Tesco, I do like you. Really. Your products are invariably cheaper than I can find at most other places. I am a methodical, crazy gadget freak, and I find your gadget pricing impressive. I don’t always find what I want, but you often have the items I finally pick as the best value for money, and at very low prices. But. Your books are expensive. Of Amazon’s bestsellers, just 2 out of the 100 books are cheaper on your site. And this is apart from the fact that I’d get free delivery from Amazon on 37 of those books (over £5), while you’d give me free delivery on 5 (over £15). ...

I just put together this little demo that scrapes John Lewis’ site and creates a MediaRSS file out of it. CoolIris has got to be the best way to shop. Apart from being really pretty, it’s quite useful when you know what something looks like, but don’t quite know how to search for it. For example, I was trying to look for a headphone-microphone (you know, the ones that connect into an iPhone or a Blackberry). I didn’t have a clue what it’s called. (TRRS, if you’re interested. I found out later.) The only way I could get it was to browse the wall… ...

Comments Saiprasad K S 25 Jun 2010 8:21 pm: Hi Anand, Not sure you will recall. This is Saiprasad ( Sai) was your neighbour at " The Presidency", TISL way back in 1996-97. I always knew you were a genius and a man of many talents. I had chanced upon your site sometime ago but while I was trying to get some facts on Ilaiyaraja chanced upon the section of Ilaiyaraja. I didnt pay attention to the name of the author as I approached midway realised this must be the handiwork of Anand and as I cast my eyes upwards found my guess was on the dot. Good work Buddy. May you continue to shine like you always do. I am still with IBM. My contact no is 9886678319. Realise you are in London. I was there too for a couple of years on a sales assignment. Now back to Blore. Shall write again. do write when you can. Take care…. Sai Eating more for less | s-anand.net 19 May 2011 7:12 pm (pingback): […] for less May 19th, 2011 How I do things Visualisation S Anand A couple of years ago, I managed to lose a fair bit of weight. At the start of 2010, I started putting it back on, and the trajectory continues. I’m at the […] Weight lines, again | s-anand.net 14 Jan 2014 2:04 pm (pingback): […] few years ago, I ended up losting weight, mostly by dieting. That worked out rather well up to a point: I lost about 20kgs rapidly. But I […]

Recently, I have ended up giving bits of advice to people recruiting at start-ups, and a few patterns have emerged that are worth sharing. Before I go ahead, I should warn you that I have no qualifications whatsoever. (All consulting advice should come with this caveat, perhaps!) You might be better off reading Joel Spolsky’s Smart and Get Things Done (read). I haven’t read it myself, but from what little I see of it, the thoughts seem similar. ...

I wrote about SSH Tunneling through web filters using Amazon’s EC2 at 8 cents/hr. With Rackspacecloud, you can get that down to 1.5 cents/hr. This turns out to be a lot simpler than EC2 as well! Ingredients Rackspacecloud account (sign up for free – you won’t be charged until you use it) Putty (which may be available on your Intranet, if you’re lucky) Directions On the Rackspacecloud console, click on wordpress website hosting– Cloud Servers – Add Server and select Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). Actually, you can pick any other instance. I’m going to talk through this using Ubuntu 9.10 as the example. Type any server name, pick a 256MB RAM instance, and click on Create Server. Once the server has started, you’ll get the screen below. Click on the Console to open a session. Your password would have been e-mailed to the account you registered with. Log in as root with that password. Now type the following: sed –i “s/^Port 22/Port 443/” /etc/ssh/sshd_config /etc/init.d/ssh restart ...

I just got a digital wattmeter. Had no idea about these until Google PowerMeter, but now, they’re all the rage. Mine’s a pretty simple model and all  I plan to do with it is play around with a few household gadgets. My first target, obviously, was my Dell Latitude E5400. The statistics are interesting: Power … when… 0.3W Laptop is switched off. The adapter must be consuming the power 1.3W Laptop is on standby. 12W The lid is closed, and no applications are running. 18.5W The laptop is on, the lid is open, and no applications are running 25W The laptop is writing to the hard disk 34W One CPU is fully utilised 41W Both CPUs are fully utilised Looks like the display and hard disk each consume about 6.5 watts each, while the CPU consumes a whopping 15 + 7 = 22 watts. ...

Comments Laptop power usage | s-anand.net 7 Feb 2010 6:13 pm (pingback): […] lesson was that turning off the wireless had no effect whatsoever. (It worked quite well for my Blackberry, though. Increased the battery life quite a bit. I thought the same might apply for laptops, but […] Anil 16 Feb 2010 7:34 am: Can you see browse Hindi websites on Blackberry Bold 9700. Can you see Hindi/Devanagari fonts being rendered on Blackberry Bold 9700 (Blackberry OS 5.0). The old Blackberry Bold (Blackberry OS 4.6) does not render Hindi. pradip 2 Sep 2010 12:26 pm: I have also same problem do u have any idea how to read hindi on blackberry bold 9700 .which I am useing now. Pls reply Thanks Pradip

When I’m in front of my laptop, I usually forget the world around. Sadly, the world around has important things that need to get done on time. Like eating medicines, turning off the washing machine or the hob, etc. The one thing I’ve been lacking on my machine was a simple alarm system. I’d like to set an alarm to remind me to do something in 5 minutes, for example. And it should be dead simple to set up. ...

You can defeat most web filters by spending around 8 cents/hr 0 cents/hr on Amazon EC2. (It’s usually worth the money. It’s a fraction of the cost a phone call or a sandwich. And I usually end up wasting that money anyway on calling someone or eating my way out of the misery of corporate proxies.) Most web filters and proxies block all ports except the HTTP port (80) and the HTTPS port (443). But it’s used to carry encrypted traffic, and, as Mark explains: ...

The Dilbert search index now carries 15 years worth of Dilbert comics — over 5,500 strips typed out. This is mainly due to the contributions of BFMartin (over 6 years worth of strips) and Paul Dorman (over 3 years worth of strips), myself (over 3 years worth of strips) and a long tail of contributors. You can search the strips here. While you can find strips as far back as 1989, you won’t see the images earlier than 2002 because geek.nl (whose images I’m shamelessly hotlinking without permission) only holds images that far back. But once you know the date of the comic (say 1991-02-03), you can visit the Dilbert official site at dilbert.com/1991-02-03/ and see the strip. ...

I don’t have any copyright declaration on this website. The problem with that is: content is copyrighted by default. As Jeff Atwood indicates, this means that people with experience in such matters won’t copy the content because they have no legal right to use it. Let me clarify: I don’t care what you do with my content. Feel free. You don’t have to ask. You don’t have to attribute it to me. You can change it. You can misquote me. Whatever. ...

It’s been a good movie month for me, and I’ve managed to nudge closer to my target of watching the IMDb Top 250. But one tool I had in the past, that I sorely miss, is twofifty.org. It’s a now-defunct site that kept track of the IMDb Top 250, and let you strike off the movies that you had watched. You could see which movies you hadn’t seen, keep score, and discuss the movies. Since it’s demise, my movie watching slowed down as well. Earlier this month, I set up a similar site at 250.s-anand.net. It has the same basic function. You can log in, strike out movies that you’ve seen, and keep track of what’s left to see. For the more technically minded, the source-code is at two-fifty.googlecode.com. ...