I show how to use the SORT function in Google Spreadsheets to create dynamic lists that update automatically. I cover multi-column sorting and using NOEXPAND to build dashboards that highlight top performers by revenue or profit.

This is a series on what Google Spreadsheets can do that Excel can't. To sort data, use the SORT function. For example, if you have a list of products, their revenues and profits in A2:C9. Type SORT(A2:C9, 2, FALSE) in cell E2 to get the products sorted by the second column, revenues. 2.1 This is a dynamic list. If you change the revenues, the products are reordered automatically. The first parameter to the SORT function is the data range you want to sort. The remaining parameters are optional. The second parameter is the column to sort by. By default, the data is sorted by the first column, in ascending order. In this example, we sorted by the 2nd column. The third parameter is FALSE for descending order, and TRUE for ascending order. You can specify additional columns to sort by. Just add the second column number and the order, third column number and order, and so on. For example, this formula sorts by the 2nd column (ascending), 4th column (descending) and 1st column (ascending): =SORT(A1:D100, 2, TRUE, 4, FALSE, 1, TRUE) You can create a dashboard with multiple views. Say you wanted to show the above data, and also summarise the top 3 products by revenue and profitability. Go to cell E2, and type =NOEXPAND(SORT(A1:A9, B2:B9, TRUE)) This sorts the products (A1:A9) using the revenues (B2:B9) in ascending order (TRUE or 1). This would show all 8 products. If you want to keep only the top 3, you need to put the NOEXPAND around the formula. Otherwise, even if you delete the 4th product, Google will put it back. Now, delete all but the top 3 products. Similarly, in cell E7, type =NOEXPAND(SORT(A1:A9, C2:C9, TRUE)) This sorts by profitability instead. That's it! You have a dynamic list of the top 3 products by revenue and profitability. 2.2 Can I do that in Excel? Excel doesn't have a function to sort. You can sort a list in-place. That changes the order permanently. There's no way of retaining the original order. You could make a copy of the list and sort it. But the copy will not change when the original list changes. If the length of the list is fixed, and the values you want to sort by are unique, you could use the LARGE/SMALL, INDEX and MATCH functions to simulate this effect. First, type the numbers 1-8 in column D. Then type this formula in F2: =LARGE(B$2:B$9,D2) This will give you the largest revenue figure. Copy this down the column. This will show the largest revenue figures in descending order. Now, fill cells E2 downwards with the formula: =INDEX(A$2:A$9,MATCH(F2,B$2:B$9,0)) The MATCH function finds the revenue in the first table, and the INDEX function looks up the corresponding product. You can use the same principle to get the profitability. However, this will not work if two products have the same revenue figure. 2.3 Comments hk 21 May 2009 3:41 am: put your data in column B, say b1:b20 in column A put formula =rank(b1, $b$1:$b$20). pull down in column D drag down all ordinals - ie: 1 to 20. In column E =vlookup(d1,$a$1:$b$20, 2,false) then pull down There's your sorted list of the data in column B, only issue being duplicate ranks get #NA.

Dynamically sort data


I found Firefox 3 Beta 5 incredibly unstable compared to earlier versions. By analyzing Google search result frequencies for crash mentions across different betas, I confirmed that Beta 5 shows a disproportionately high rate of reported issues.

I just upgraded from Firefox 3 Beta 4 to Beta 5. It's amazing how unstable Beta 5 is compared to the earlier version. Gmail crashes. Google maps crashes. Almost every other site I visit crashes. And looks like I'm not alone: doing a Google search for "Firefox 3 beta x crash" shows a consistently increasing number of results. Number of Google search results for Firefox 3 Beta crashes, by Beta version Update (8/Apr/08): As the comments rightly point out, this could simply be because more people use Beta 5. Here's the number of Google hits for "Firefox 3 Beta x" -- and it shows a clear increasing trend. Number of Google search results for Firefox 3 Beta, by Beta version So, adjusting for this, here's the relative crash frequency: % of Firefox 3 Beta crash mentions on Google, by Beta version Beta 5 still stands out. Maybe Google search results are not a good proxy. Maybe the mention of "crash" doesn't indicate the software itself crashing. But it sure crashes a lot more for me. Comments r 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: Glad I'm not the only one seeing the crashes with beta 5. Eric Florenzano 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: I totally disagree. Also, your assumption that more google hits means more crashes is flawed. It's safe to assume that the higher number the beta, the more people will try to use it. I'd be willing to bet that the correlation of number of users and number of google hits is fairly linear. talboito 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: I'm seeing a bunch of crashes too. Luckily it loads so much faster I don't even mind. Crash, reload, crash reload. The strange thing is that sites that crash the browser will reload perfectly fine. Also, nearly every word in this textbox has been marked as mispelled. Not sure if I have dictionaries installed correctly, but it sure looks weird. TML 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: I have found that pretty much every extension out there, even the ones that declare themselves as supporting 3b5, cause crashes. Removing all extensions has left me with a Firefox 3b5 that has yet to crash, even though I have had several hundred tabs open for about 3 days. jonno 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: I can't use google maps, I have to switch to safari. It is the worst release of firefox I have tried. It crashes many times a day. J 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: I have yet to have a crash yet, even while going through my gmail. Everything seems to work just fine, even my extensions. Andre 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: I too have noticed a \lot\ of crashing since moving to beta 5. It's not just you. WilliamHaun.com 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: I agree- Firefox 3 Beta 5 has been crashing a lot more for me. Most the time it is when I am viewing a Quicktime MOV file in the browser or cutting & pasting text into a form filed (usually Google search). It's driving me crazy! Asa Dotzler 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: Because we're an open source project and all of our crash data is available for you to analyze (either to help fix bugs, or just to compare releases if that's what you're interested in,) you can get a much better proxy than Google searches. http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/ - A ectp 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: I have 3 windows with 30+ tabs in each window. Firefox crashed 2 times only on the first day. I don't have too many add-ons though! Jake 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: I have it.. hasn't creashed once.. Pink 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: Haven't had 3b5 crash yet, have a fair bit of extensions, and use a lot of google and other sites. Even stumbling, which can end up on ANYTHING has been great for me. I much prefer 3, and will be elated when it leaves beta. Nicolae 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: Same for me, beta 5 crash a lot more, and some sites it's almost a "sure" crash with beta 5.. I'd like to downgrade or maybe a beta 6 less buggy.. rpgfan3233 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: Great post! I, too, have been having troubles with Beta 5, though that could be due to the fact that I have incompatible extensions enabled... :P pcdinh 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: Firefox 3 Beta 5 is very fragile to Javascript-extensive pages. It crashes instantly on my computer rng 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: I can confirm that it crashes a lot more than all previous betas (on XP SP2). Disabling Greasemonkey, Firebug and all bumped extensions didn't help. (I didn't want to disable Adblockplus because popups are worse than any crash could be.) It seems to happen more with many tabs open, but not on specific web pages. Andrew Roth 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: It definitely crashes more for me phillip 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: beta 5 is crashing like crazy for me especially in gmail and other javascript-heavy sites. waxxi 7 Apr 2008 12:00 pm: for quoting jonno: I can't use google maps, I have to switch to safari. It is the worst release of firefox I have tried. It crashes many times a day. I think you have a misunderstanding here. It's not a RELEASE it's only a demo of a software. You are advised to use the stable one:firefox 2. Even though if you use the beta you should help out developers by sending crash reports. I also suffer from crashes A LOT! but it is my choice... jiMMy 10 Jun 2009 2:02 am: firefox 3.5b4 crashes randomly 3-4 times a day (4 hrs use) - mostly flash related I think. however firefox 3.0.10 did not crash much with the same flash. srvblooze 12 Jul 2009 2:31 am: Yep, same here. I've got a Mac (Leopard 10.5.7) and it's just out of control. I have to use Safari if I'm doing something that requires no interruptions because Firefox 3.5 is not to be trusted. I spena considerable amount of time removing add-ons one at a time and then finally got gfed up and removed all of them. No change- the thing is a menace to time management. GRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

Firefox 3 Beta 5 crashes


I listed every electronic gadget I bought between 2005 and 2009, from the BlackBerry Curve and Acer Aspire to 16GB SD cards and GPS receivers. It catalogs the specific hardware and peripherals I used during this period.

Some gadgets I've bought / got over the last few years. SDHC Card Reader on 17 March 2009 16GB SD Card on 14 March 2009 16GB USB Flash Drive on 8 Jan 2009 Creative Labs EP-630/A Earphones on 30 Dec 2008 USB MIDI cable on 30 Dec 2008 Strand iPod Cassette adapter on 30 Dec 2008 Recta Micro Compass Accessory on 30 Dec 2008 TomTom ONE v3 Great Britain on 31 Aug 2008 Keysonic Compact Notebook Layout Wireless 2.4Ghz Radio Frequency Keyboard With Integrated Touch Pad on 6 Sep 2008 Acer Aspire 5715Z Notebook Laptop, Intel Pentium Dual Core T2330 1.6GHz, 15.4" TFT, 2GB RAM, 80GB Hard-drive, DVD±RW, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100, WiFi, Vista Home Premium on 29 Jul 2008 BlackBerry Curve 8320 on 10 Aug 2008 TDK Recordable Blank 16x DVD+R Discs 25pack Cakebox on 6 Jul 2008 BlueNEXT BN-909 GPS Receiver SiRF Star III on 6 Jul 2008 HTC S620 (Excalibur) on 1 Jul 2008 Sandisk MicroSDHC 4GB Card in 6 Jul 2008 TRUST HU-4440P 4 PORT USB2 MINI HUB on 31 Mar 2008 Masterplug 4 Gang Switched Extension Lead 2m 13 Amp Fused on 31 Mar 2008 Nintendo Wii Remote on 1 Mar 2008 Hama Compact USB 2.0 Hub 1:4 on 31 Mar 2008 Canon IXUS 70 Digital Camera - Silver (7.1MP, 3x Optical Zoom) 2.5" LCD on 29 Feb 2008 Sandisk 2GB Secure Digital Card on 29 Feb 2008 Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive on 15 Feb 2008 Verbatim DVD+R 25Pk 16x Spindle on 15 Feb 2008 Bontempi Keyboard - 61 Full Key GM, Midi, Stereo (AD177.12) on 4 Jan 2008 LUPO DIGITAL TV DVB-T USB ADAPTER/DONGLE/STICK FREEVIEW RECEIVER & AERIAL FOR PC AND LAPTOP on 6 Jan 2008 Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000 on 26 Dec 2007 Mini-Headphone Splitter (Stereo) on 1 Jan 2008 SanDisk Sansa m240 1Gb MP3 Player on 24 Jul 2007 Kenwood FP580 Food Processor 2 Speed White on 26 Dec 2007 Uniross AAA 1000mAh (4)Rechargeable Battery Ni-Mh on 24 Jul 2007 Sennheiser CX300 Eco Ear Canal Headphones Black on 24 Jul 2007 Cordless Skype Phone Kit NON VISTA on 5 Mar 2007 Logitech EX110 Wireless Desktop on 5 Mar 2007 Sony Ericsson Standard Travel Charger (UK) CST-13 on 12 Jan 2007 LG 42PC1D 42" Plasma TV on 20 Jan 2007 [Fuji FinePix S5600 Zoom Digital Camera \[5.0MP,10xOptical Zoom\]](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000B69IDI) on 17 Nov 2006 Uniross Sprint 1 Hour Battery Charger inc 4 x AA 2700 mAh Rechargeable Batteries - batteries upgraded from 2500 mAh on 11 Jan 2007 DIGIHOME DVB915 FREEVIEW Digital Terrestrial Receiver with SCART Lead on 17 Nov 2006 Fuji 1GB XD Type M Picture Card on 17 Nov 2006 CyberHome DVD 401/0 Multi-region Capable DVD Player with DIVX on 28 Jul 2006 Sony 80min/700MB Thermo printable CD-R spin 50pk on 28 Jul 2006 Dynamode 3.5" IDE Interface Disk Enclosure on 1 May 2006 Rivision DVD+R 8x 4.7Gb 100 Cake Box on 15 Jun 2006 BenQ 16x External Dual Format, Double Layer DVD Writer - EW162I, Beige on 3 Jan 2006 SANDISK CRUZER MICRO 1GB on 3 Jan 2006 [Panasonic NV-GS17B MiniDV Digital Camcorder \[24x Optical, 2.5" LCD, DV out\]](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007YQNY6) on 9 Nov 2005 Emtec DVD+R Cake Box 100pk on 3 Jan 2006 Comments Saurabh 14 Sep 2008 6:23 am: Small tip - If you are not a member of Amazon prime, then do check out their free trial..Cancel it just before expiry or better still, remove the tick for auto renew in your account! S Anand 15 Sep 2008 12:41 am: Is there any benefit other than free next day delivery? I usually end up ordering the free 2-4 day delivery, and end up collecting it from the post office during the weekend! So unless I'm ordering on a Friday or Saturday, next day delivery probably doesn't help me much.

Gadgets


I walk through my first impressions of Google Chrome's 2008 launch, highlighting the fast installation, the built-in task manager, and features like DNS pre-fetching and the Javascript console's autocompletion while noting some early rendering bugs.

I went to the Google Chrome site. [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-12822929746o-png.webp) Clicking on the "Accept and Install" button... [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-22822094501o-png.webp) ... automatically launched the downloader in Firefox... [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-32822930042o-png.webp) ... and (after a fairly short while) started installing the application directly. This may be the most painless install I've done in a while. [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-42822094883o-png.webp) I clicked on "Customise the settings" [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-52822930598o-png.webp) This is what it looks like. [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-62822095325o-png.webp) And that's it! It installs, and launches in just a few seconds. First impressions: the startup and rendering are really fast. [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-72822095593o-png.webp) The address bar doubles up as a search bar. Very sensible. [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-82822931146o-png.webp) Several nice features: incognito mode, application shortcuts, and developer tools. [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-92822095935o-png.webp) The Javascript console has Javascript autocompletion! Watch out, Firebug. [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-102822096083o-png.webp) [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-112822931444o-png.webp) [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-122822096215o-png.webp) The "Use DNS pre-fetching" looks interesting. My browsing certainly seems faster. Might be faster than Opera, even. [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-132822096303o-png.webp) The "Show suggestions for navigation errors" feature. [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-142822931820o-png.webp) There's a task manager... [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-162822096869o-png.webp) ... that shows how much memory each site uses. [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-172822096977o-png.webp) But not all is good. This jQuery animation on my site leaves trails behind. [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-152822096585o-png.webp) And the text box resizing is good, but feels a bit... wrong, somehow. [](/blog/assets/flickr-google-chrome-182822097085o-png.webp) Plus: I can re-import history, bookmarks, etc. from Firefox at any point, so I don't have to worry about using this as a secondary browser. Update (8am UK, 3rd Sep): Chrome.exe isn't installed in your "Program Files" folder. It's in your "Documents and Settings" folder, under "Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application". (That's on Windows XP. Not sure about Vista.) There's a Themes folder, so I imagine more themes should be on their way. There doesn't seem to be an about:config option. But there are a whole lot of others: about:cache about:dns about:histograms about:memory about:plugins about:stats about:version about:crash about:internets about:network about:blank about:shorthang about:hang about:objects I'm not entirely sure if the last two work. Based on comments at John Resig's blog. Go through the code to see if you can find more. Comments Sumit Dhar 11 Sep 2008 1:47 am: Have found an interesting use for "Incognito" mode. Both my wife and I use the same laptop to access Gmail. Not wanting to use a second browser, invariably one has to logout to allow the other to access mail.\ \ With Chrome's Incognito mode, it uses a different directory to store the cookies. This allows two or more people to login to their Gmail accounts in different tabs.\ \ Cheers,\ D. S Anand 12 Sep 2008 1:19 am: But do sessions persist? I thought that once you switch to incognito mode, your cookies would no longer be sent to the server, and that you would need to at least log in. So while one person can stay logged in, the other would still need to log in. Is that right?

Google Chrome screenshots


I prioritize writing for myself to clarify thoughts and avoid burnout. Although my post frequency dropped, my total writing volume remains consistent as I focus on longer pieces and use micro-sabbaticals to maintain my enjoyment of the process.

If you look at the number of entries I've written every month since 2005, there has been a clear decline. While I was averaging almost an entry a day in 2005 and 2006, that dropped to 2-3 entries a month since mid-2007. Number of entries per month declining This doesn't bother me. I've been lucky to never have lost sight of the purpose of this website. This website is meant for me. Not for you, the reader. For me, the author. Writing helps me clarify my thoughts. It forces me to learn. It gives me input from a broad audience. It preserves my thoughts. It kills boredom. But nowhere in that list is the need to entertain or enlighten you. Not that I care less about you, but rather that I care more about me. If I start writing because I need to keep up the pace of output, the quality declines and I stop enjoying it. (This contradicts what I said earlier about Quantity Always Trumps Quality. Well, let me take back the "quality declines" part. If I stop enjoying it, it's not worth doing.) So I've been taking micro-sabbaticals. Just 3 posts between July - November 2007. No posts in June - July 2008. Whenever I have something to write, or feel like writing, I just go ahead. It's very relaxing. I don't feel the obligation to keep up the readership. In fact, I don't keep track of the readership, so that helps. But in fact, while the number of posts has dropped, the average volume of writing hasn't changed all that much. If you look at the size of writing (I write about 25KB worth a month), except for a blip near end-2007, it hasn't changed that much. Those blips in the middle were me copying and pasting articles on Classical Ilayaraja, so they don't really count. Size of entries per month has not changed much In other words, I spend about as much time as before writing. I write about the same stuff as before. Except that I'm putting in a bit more work into each piece, and it takes longer. It's just a different way of doing things. I'm getting more out of building larger pieces than blogging fragmented threads, so I've moved that way. And in doing so, I need to take a break every now and then, because you just can't get some stuff done at a stretch. That's fine by me, and I hope you don't mind. In fact, as Asimov put it, "I'm not too proud to ask a favour. Please don't mind." I'm writing this for two reasons. One is to tell you why you don't see stuff regularly from me, and to tell you not to expect any regularity. Just subscribe to the RSS feed and we're all better off. The other is because I see bloggers abandoning some great blogs. (You know who you are.) I think it's sort of like earthquakes and forest fires. The pressure to take a break from blogging keeps building up, and unless indulged in, bloggers quit. Something like Guru's sabbatical is a great idea. It provides the option for the return, and reduces the cost of taking a break. Comments sathya 5 Aug 2008 12:00 pm: this comment is for me. not for you :-)

How often to write


I share how a diverted flight led to me entering Germany illegally without a visa. I learned the hard way to never pack all my warm clothes in checked luggage after being stranded in freezing weather.

In October 1997, Ram, my manager at IBM, strolled over to my desk and asked if I would like to visit the US. I'd never been there before. The impulse was to say "Yes". But... I'd written the CAT exam once before. Didn't get through. Applied once again. But thanks to my diligence, I'd given the wrong residence address, and never got my admission card, and didn't bother following it up. This would be my third "attempt". And I didn't want to goof it up again. (I didn't get through that one either, as it turned out.) "Ram, I need to be back on Dec 11th." "Mmm... I think we should be back by then." "NO MATTER WHAT!" He smiled, and said "OK. We'll be back by Dec 11th NO MATTER WHAT." He thought I was going to get married or something. It was quite warm in Bangalore, so I set out with a T-shirt and formal trousers. As I was leaving, my landlord and landlady (very nice people, and in retrospect, very far-sighted) pulled me in and said, "Have some snacks. You'll feel hungry on the way." I tried my protests. They'll feed me on the plane. I'm already carrying some food. I have cash to buy stuff. I'm fat and dieting. Didn't matter. I still ended up carrying a fairly hefty package. "And this is for Kallol." Another package. A colleague travelling with me was an ex-roommate as well. I just hoped I wouldn't exceed 27 kgs. It was a KLM flight that would halt at Amsterdam. We were to land early morning in Amsterdam, take a connecting flight to Boston, and then over to Charlotte. We'd reach Charlotte by night, in time for the class next day. The flight itself was uneventful, except for my first non-vegetarian bite. And then the fun began. Breakfast was done by around 5:00am local time. The captain announced that we were near Amsterdam, fasten your seatbelts. 5:30am. No landing. 6:00am. No landing. When I pulled the shutters up, we were still flying over clouds. 7:00am. No landing. 7:30am. The captain announces that due to bad weather at Amsterdam, we would not be able to land there. We were being diverted to Cologne. Not having been on any long-haul flights before, I wasn't even worried. It was a KLM connecting flight. KLM would do something. But for feeling a bit hungry, things were fine. At around 11:00am, the plane began its descent. We were amidst clouds, though. For quite a while... and the plane kept descending... Until, all of a sudden, I could see the ground about 20 feet from the plane! The fog dense enough to be indistinguishable from clouds. (Or at least, I couldn't tell the difference.) Lucky the pilot managed to land, and I'm surprised he even tried. 8:00am. We're still in the plane, waiting. 9:00am. Hungry. No one has told us anything yet. 9:30am. We're all asked to get down. Delighted, we all got off, ready to board the next plane... ... only to be herded off into a glass building on the terminal, where our luggage was waiting for us. No problem. Pick up luggage. Wait. 10:00am. All the flight staff had cleared the terminal. And, looking out of the glass walls, we could see our plane taking off! There was a fair bit of confusion (and mild panic) in the room, but being the suave software engineers that we were, we stay put and relaxed. 11:00am. Still in the glass building. No flight has landed or taken off. Worse, no human in sight. I mean it: not a single human in sight other than us KLM passengers in this deserted terminal. We're still hungry. 12:00noon. My snacks finally come out. We all have a bite. That turned out to be our lunch. 12:30pm. Some official enters the building and is mobbed. The closest we could get to him (or her?) was about 50m behind many hundreds of raised heads. 12:45pm. Official vanishes. We ask around if anyone knows more than we do. No one seems to. 1:30pm. Another official enters. Vanishes after a few minutes. 2:00pm. Finally, word gets around that we'll be travelling via bus to Amsterdam. Clearly we'd missed our connecting flight. We'd be put in to the same flight the next day. 2:10pm. We hear a lot of activity. People start streaming out of the building. We try to join in the rush. 2:20pm. Ahead of us, we see a guy checking passports. Now, none of us had a German visa. Presumably it was OK, but in any case, we were entering Germany without a valid visa. The official stamped my passport without question. 2:30pm. We exit the airport. The temperature was 0 degrees C. I was still in my T-shirt. My warm clothes were packed. That day, I learnt two lessons. One, never keep all your warm clothes inaccessibly in the check-in baggage. (I had my check-in baggage. But it was packed, and if I opened it, I can't put it back in. Besides, we were being herded into a bus: not much chance of hanging around to open a suitcase.) Two, it's actually possible to get a headache from the cold. For 15 freezing minutes, we stood on the road waiting for the bus, and enjoying the pleasures of our first day on European soil. 2:45pm. Bus arrives. Mob tries to enter bus. Half of our group manages to get through. I am left behind. Fortunately, next bus is only 5 minutes behind. 7:00pm. Bus finally arrives at Schipol airport. We're herded out to the KLM counter. By now, it's been well over 24 hours since my last full meal. 7:30pm. We're told we'll get a hotel to stay in, and our flight is confirmed for the next day. At this point, we're famished. So we exchanged some currency, and decided to buy some food. I picked a green apple. This happened to be my first green apple. No one had told me that apples could taste sour. (While on that topic, I must mention apple pies. I love apple pies in India. I hate apple pies in London. I suspect it's the red versus green apples.) 7:31pm. I take one bite. Another bite. Have a funny feeling in my stomach. Burning sensation. And at that point, I collapsed. Physically. Just dropped on the floor and had to be pulled up. 8:00pm. Finally reach the hotel. Not entirely sure how. I'm too tired for anything but milk, so I get a glassful and go to sleep. PS: We finally reached Charlotte a day late. Fortunately, we didn't miss much. Apparantly, most passengers on the flight complained to KLM and received gifts / free miles of a substantial magnitude. We didn't know of that till much later. This remains my only trip to Germany till date. My passport still holds an entry stamp without a visa. We did get the bonus of spending half a day in Amsterdam, which is a rather nice place. Again, without a visa. Comments Bharath V V 30 May 2008 12:00 pm: Thoroughly enjoyed it. Nice first experience.\ Relived my first foreign travel with this blog of yours.\ \ Cheers,\ Bharath

Illegally in Germany


I leverage the implicit guarantees in puzzles and exams—such as the certainty of a unique solution—to solve problems using simple trial and error. I demonstrate how identifying even one valid case can reveal universal answers.

From what I've seen, puzzles and exam questions share two un-real-worldly characteristics. Firstly, you are guaranteed that a solution exists. Secondly, you are given that all the information provided to you is relevant. (Well, not always. Some case studies I've seen have had their share of contrived irrelevance. But that's often what it is, I think. People fill in the relevant stuff, and then try and distract by adding irrelevant material in the hope of making it more real-world-like. But that's just a guess). These are very powerful constraints. I know of nothing that has given me as much confidence in solving puzzles as the assurance that a solution exists (and that someone thinks me capable of getting it). But it's more than just a confidence builder. The guarantee that a solution (and invariably it's a unique) is a very powerful one. An extreme case is an objective type question, which explicitly provides three guarantees: 1. There is a solution 2. There is only ONE solution 3. It is among the choices listed below (Some papers try and take away the first guarantee by having an (E) None of the above category. But that's still leaving behind the other two more powerful guarantees.) Marking answers randomly, or marking (A) for every question would still get you 25% in an exam with 4 choices. (Marking (C) would prove just as good, unless you had a kind professor like this.) That's better than any real-world scenario I've seen. (Real-world strategies aren't much better, though.) Using guarantee 2, you can eliminate choices easily. If (A) and (B) do not satisfy some property of the solution, they CANNOT be the answer. There's only one solution, and these are not it. Using guarantee 3, you can pick the last remaining choice wihout having to check it. The solution is definitely among the choices listed. So you don't need to solve an objective type question. You just need to pick the right answer -- which is completely different. The principle applies even outside of objective type questions, especially in mathematically-oriented problems, or puzzles. And you can solve it by trial and error. For example, try this one from Martin Gardner's Mathematical Magic Show: Two brothers own n sheep, each of which is sold for n dollars. Thus they have n2 dollars in all. This is in the form of 10 dollar notes and 1 dollar coins, the number of 1 dollar coins being less than 10 dollars. The elder brother divides the money as follows: he takes a note for himself, gives one to his younger brother, takes a note for himself and so on. At the end, the younger brother complains that the elder took the first note as well as the last. So the elder gives the younger all the one dollar coins. The younger brother complains that he still has more. So the elder brother writes the younger a cheque to equalize their share. What was the cheque for? Now, this is a weird problem. Think about it. You're told almost NOTHING. And you have to guess what the amount is. (Note: you don't have to guess what 'n' is. That's impossible.) Here's how I solved the problem. I said, let me find even one case where the elder brother gets the first and last note. Let's see what the answer is. Whatever the answer is for that case, it has to be the answer for all other cases -- because otherwise, the problem does not have a unique solution. So I tried n=1. n=2. n=3. For n=4, the amount is 16. That's 1 $10 note and 6 $1 coins. The elder brother would get the first and the last $10 note. The younger would get $6. So the elder would have $4 more than the younger, and would write out a cheque for $2. (It's amazing how many people get as far as the $4, but forget to divide by two.) You can try if for any other value that has an odd number of $10 notes. It has to be for n ending with 4 or 6. That means n2 ends in 6, and the cheque has to be for $2. Notice that you didn't need number theory to get the answer. The assurance that there is a unique answer is enough. There's another kind of implicit information usually available: the amount of information there is. For example, take the following question: Which city has a higher population: San Antonio or San Diego? Children in the US apparantly had difficulty answering it. Children in Germany had less trouble. The reason? The German kids had heard of San Diego, but not San Antonio. They figured the one they'd heard of was more likely bigger. Knowing less may be better. It's the same principle you use to check spellings. Run a Google search on two spellings. The one that returns a higher number of results is the correct spelling. (Of course, Google has a spelling correction mechanism that works well, but I use it for Tamil words. I can never tell if I should use ர or ற.) Of course, the fundamental assumption here is: MORE INFORMATION = MORE CORRECT, which is not always the case. But the point I'm driving to is this: You're always given additional information. Even if you're not given any information, that's informative. Comments Sathyaraj 3 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: this article was "fucking" good..i was reading a book called fooled by randomness and i just could relate to the way you and the author went about writing this.. can you write more about monte carlo simulation too?? and how it is used in finance... Vasanth 3 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Very interesting post! New insight for me into puzzles. I had always realized, but never analyzed, that I never give up when it comes to puzzles and brain teasers. On the contrary I give up relatively easily with some technical or work related problem the minute it appears probable that a (reasonable) solution does not exist. S Anand 3 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: @Sathyaraj: Thanks! The sequel to "Fooled by Randomness" is pretty good to: "The Black Swan". @Vasanth: Another big problem, if you ask me, is that the problem is unbounded. In puzzles, you have a test case to determine whether you've solved it or not. In life, you aren't often sure. Jayanth Sankar 3 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Hey I like your posts. Pretty good. The question about the money between the two brothers.. I have a doubt here.. you had mentioned number of 1 dollar notes should be less than 10 dollar notes, so then 16 wont work right ? 1 - $ 10 and 6 - $1... what am I missing ?

Implicit information


I analyzed text editors like Crimson Editor and Notepad++ based on my needs for column editing, Unicode support, and responsiveness. While no single tool hits every mark, I currently juggle multiple editors to get work done.

It's amazing how hard it is to get a good programming editor. I've played around with more editors/IDEs than I care to remember: e Notepad++ NoteTab SciTE Crimson Editor Komodo Eclipse Aptana ... There are four features that are critical to me. Syntax highlighting . Over time, I've found this to increase readability dramatically. Look at this piece of code with and without syntax highlighting: Doesn't the structure of the document just jump out with syntax highlighting? Anyway, I've gotten used to that. Column editing . I want to be able to do this: Being able to type across rows is incredibly useful. I use it both for programming as well as to complement data-processing on Excel. Unicode support . I often work with non-ASCII files, particularly in Tamil. Unicode support comes in handy when debugging pages for my songs site . Auto-completion . This is 10 times more productive than having to look up the manual for each function. (Oh, and it's got to be free too. Except for e Text Editor, all the others qualify.) The problem is, none of the browsers that I've looked at support all of these features. Editor Syntax highlighting Column editing Unicode support Auto-completion e Text Editor Yes Yes No Yes Crimson Editor Yes Yes No No Notepad++ Yes No Yes No NoteTab-Lite No No No No SciTE Yes No Yes Yes TextPad Yes No Yes No UltraEdit Yes No No ? Aptana Yes No Yes Yes Eclipse Yes No Yes Yes Komodo Yes No Yes Yes Wikipedia has a more in-depth comparison of text editors . Actually, there's another parameter that's pretty important: responsiveness . When I type something, I want to see it on the screen. Right that millisecond. With some of the features added by these editors, there's so much bloat that it often takes up to one second between the keypress and the refresh. That's just not OK. I've settled on Crimson Editor as my default editor these days, simply because it's quick and has column editing. (Column editing on e Text Editor is a bit harder to use.) When I am writing Unicode, I switch over to Notepad++ . For large programs, I'm leaning towards Komodo right now, largely because Eclipse is bloated and Aptana was slow. (Komodo is slow too. Maybe I'll switch back.) There's many other things on my "would love to have" features, like regular-expression search and replace, line sorting, code folding, brace matching, word wrapping, etc. Most of those, though, are either not too important, or most browsers already have them. Well, there's the sad thing. I've been hunting for a good text editor for over 10 years now. May someone write a lightweight IDE with column editing. Comments Vinay 29 May 2008 12:00 pm: Anand:\ \ This is in response to your blog post at http://s-anand.net/Insearchofagoodeditor.html\ \ For some reason, couldn't post my comment through your web site.\ \ Notepad 2 is my favorite. Though even that doesn't have a "yes" in all four columns of your matrix. Auto-completion is missing and IMO for good reason (think responsiveness).\ \ http://www.flos-freeware.ch/doc/notepad2-Unicode.html Roland 16 Dec 2008 5:31 pm: On Windows boxes, I use UltraEdit32 exclusively. AFAIK, it doesn't have autocompletion, but it loads and responds super-quickly, has column editing, syntax highlighting, and a gazillion other features that somehow don't hog any resources. Sadly, there is no Mac version, so I'm forced to use the inferior TextWrangler. Ben Karel 4 Apr 2009 2:54 am: How about jEdit and Vim? Software for my new laptop 2 | s-anand.net 27 Sep 2011 7:16 pm (pingback): [...] Editor: Didn’t have Unicode support a long time ago, so I [...]

In search of a good editor


I built JPath to bring XPath-style navigation to JavaScript data structures. It uses abbreviated syntax to query deep objects or ragged arrays, replacing complex loops and mapping functions with simple strings like //title or para[0].

XPath is a neat way of navigating deep XML structures. It's like using a directory structure. /table//td gets all the TDs somewhere below TABLE. Usually, you don't need this sort of a thing for data structures, particularly in JavaScript. Something like table.td would already work. But sometimes, it does help to have something like XPath even for data structures, so I built a simple XPath-like processor for Javascript called JPath . Here are some examples of how it would work: jpath(context, "para") returns context.para jpath(context, "") returns all values of context (for both arrays and objects) jpath(context, "para[0]") returns context.para[0] jpath(context, "para[last()]") returns context.para[context.para.length] jpath(context, "/para") returns context[ all children ].para jpath(context, "/doc/chapter[5]/section[2]") returns context.doc.chapter[5].section[2] jpath(context, "chapter//para") returns all para elements inside context.chapter jpath(context, "//para") returns all para elements inside context jpath(context, "//olist/item") returns all olist.item elements inside context jpath(context, ".") returns the context jpath(context, ".//para") same as //para jpath(context, "//para/..") returns the parent of all para elements inside context Some caveats: This is an implementation of the abbreviated syntax of XPath. You can't use axis::nodetest No functions are supported other than last() Only node name tests are allowed, no nodetype tests. So you can't do text() and node() Indices are zero-based, not 1-based There are a couple of reasons why this sort of thing is useful. Extracting attributes deep down . Suppose you had an array of arrays, and you wanted the first element of each array. You could do this the long way: ... or the short way: But the best would be something like: Ragged data structures . Take for example the results from Google's AJAX feed API . If you wanted all the title entries, including the feed title , the choice is between: ... versus... If, further, you wanted the list of all categories at one shot, you could use: Comments Will 7 Mar 2010 1:15 pm: See also: http://www.w3schools.com/xpath/tryit.asp?filename=try\xpath\select\pricenodes\text

JPath - XPath for Javascript


I explain how to turn your browser address bar into a command line using keyword searches and bookmarklets. I show how to replicate Ubiquity features like word counts and social updates using the %s parameter and custom JavaScript.

Andre's mentions dumping Google Chrome because of lack of extension support, especially Ubiquity, and lists 15 useful Ubiquity commands. If you haven't seen Ubiquity, you should. It's a great extension that transforms your browser into an Internet command prompt. It is modelled on the Enso Launcher, which is a great piece of work by itself. I wasn't quite prepared to let go of Chrome that easily. On Task Manager, seeing 10 Chrome processes, the largest of which takes up 60MB, is a lot more comforting, psychologically, than 1 Firefox process taking up 300MB. (I rarely hit my 1GB RAM limit, so it shouldn't matter either way. Yet, the spendthrift in me keeps watching.) So the question is, can I do all the items on his list without using Ubiquity? Let's pick the easiest. Google search. If you typed "g some words" on Ubiquity, you get the Google search results for "some words". But you already have that. If you have Firefox, typing any words on the address bar automatically does a Google search for you. On Internet Explorer, it search live.com, but you can easily change that by installing the Google Toolbar. But the great thing is that this can be customised. On Firefox, click on the down arrow icon next to the search box and select "Manage Search Engines..." to see a list of your search engines. Select the one you want to use, click on "Edit Keyword..." and select the keyword you want. For instance, I've typed "google". Manage Search Engines Add Keywords So when I type "google some words" on the address bar (not the search bar, the address bar) I get search results for "some words". These are called keyword searches. On Firefox, you add your own search engines, but you do that using bookmarks. Press Ctrl-Shift-B (Organize Bookmarks) and create a New Bookmark. You can type in any URL in the location field. If you type "%s" as part of the URL, that will be replaced by the search string. So for instance, using a location http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s and the keyword "wiki" will do a Wikipedia search for "Harry Potter" if you type "wiki Harry Potter" on the address bar. It works on Internet Explorer as well, even with version 6. The easiest way is to download TweakUI. Go to Internet Explorer - Search. Click on the Create button. Type in a keyword (called Prefix) and a URL. If you type "%s" as part of the URL, that will be replaced by the search string. TweakUI On Google Chrome, get to the Options (what, no shortcut key?) and in the Basics tab, click the Manage button. Here, you can click on "Add" to add a search engine. Chrome So that takes care of all the basic searches: Google, Amazon, IMDB, Wikipedia, etc. \ Can we go further? Item 8 on the list caught my attention: Twit. As much as I love full-featured Twitter clients like TweetDeck, nothing beats the simplicity of hitting Ctrl-Space and typing twit [message] to so\and\so, or sending a selection of text using twit this to so\and\so. At the moment, there's no way to receive tweets or ping Twitter for new messages. I don't use Twitter, but I do use Identi.ca, and I would like something like this. Right now, I'm using Google Talk to update identi.ca. Two problems. I don't like chatting, and logging on exposes me to a lot of distraction. Secondly, I'd rather not have to open an application just for this. Something in the browser would be perfect. But is it possible? Identi.ca (and Twitter, and most micro-blogging services) let you update via e-mail. So if I could write a program that would mail identi.ca, I should be done. So I did that with a Perl script. So if I placed this at www.s-anand.net/identica (no, I haven't placed it there), I just need to create a keyword search with a prefix Tidentica" that points to www.s-anand.net/identica?q=%s. Then I can type "identica Here is a message that I want to post" on the address bar, and it gets posted. Actually, if you can write your own programs, the possibilities are endless. If you're looking for someone to host this sort of thing for free, Google's AppEngine may be a reasonable point to start. \ But the real power of this comes with Javascript. Those URLs that you saw for keyword searches? Those can be Javascript URLs. So item 9 on the list... Word count. As a student of copywriting, I’m frequently curious about an article’s word length. Highlighting the desired text and entering word count into Ubiquity will give you just that. ... might just be possible. It's easy to get the selection. The following snippet gives you the current selection. (Tested in IE 5.5 - 8, Firefox 3 and Google Chrome. Should work for Opera, Safari.) To get the word count, just split by white space, and count the results: Now, this whole thing can be made into a keyword search. Let's call it count. If I go to the address bar and type "count it", I want to use count the words in the selection. If I typed "count some set of words here", I want to count the words in "some set of words here". Here's how to do that. Now, put all of this in one line and add it as your keyword search. Try it! (Note: You need to replace { curly braces } with %7B and %7D in Google Chrome. It interprets curly braces as a special command. Also, Chrome replaces spaces with a +, so the word count will always return 1 if you search for "count some set of words here".) \ You could use selections to search as well. If you wanted to Google your selection, just use: Typing "google it" will search for your selected words on Google. "google some words" will search for "some words" on Google. \ I've configured these keyword searches on my browser to: Share sites. Typing "share google" adds the page to Google Reader, "share delicious" posts it to del.icio.us, "share digg" diggs the page, etc. Send mail from the address bar. Typing "mail someone@gmail.com sub:This is the subject. Rest of the message" in the address bar will send the mail out. (Of course, you need to have created a mail gateway. I'll try and share this shortly.) Add entries to my calendar. Typing "remind Prepare dinner at 8pm" adds a reminder to my calendar to prepare dinner at 8pm. Highlight parts of a page. Typing "highlight it" highlights what I've selected on the page. Even after I remove the selection, the highlighting stays. Typing "highlight some phrase" highlights all occurrences of "some phrase" in the entire document. The colours change every time you use it on a page, so you can search for multiple words and see where how they're distributed. Replaces tables with charts. Typing "chart it" with a table selected replaces the table with a chart. Typing "chart it as pie" or "chart it as scatter" changes the chart type. You could actually take any bookmarklet and convert it into a keyword search. Which means that practically anything you can do on Javascript can be convert into a command-line-like syntax on the address bar. So there it is! You can pretty much have a web command line. I wonder if we could add UNIX-pipes-like functionality.

Keyword searches as a Web command line


I replaced memory-heavy application launchers with a custom Perl script called 'o'. It indexes specific directories and lets me search and open files or programs instantly from the command line using keyword matching and filtering.

Opening programs from the Start - All Programs menu is painful. For many years, I relied on the quick launch bar. QuickLaunch But it's space constrained. There are only so many applications you can place there. I want space enough for frequently used documents as well. Recently, I decided that I need all the space on the screen. So my task bar is on auto hide, and that makes the quick launch bar a little tougher to use as well. And finally, I can't use the quick launch bar with the keyboard. That's important. So I switched to the pinned menus on the Start Menu. StartMenu This works better with the keyboard. I access Word, I just type the Ctrl-Esc, W. Excel: Ctrl-Esc, E. But I run short of letters soon. I have trouble between Powerpoint and processing, for instance. And I can't store documents. I tried Enso Launcher and Launchy, both of which are great products, but I just can't stand the thought of them hogging up all the memory that they do. Launchy in particular. Given that I almost always have one or two command prompts open, I write my own little tool to do the job now. It's a command line launcher I've written in Perl. I call it "o". At the first run, it indexes my hard disk. (Well, not all of it. I've picked what I need.) Now, if I want to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I just type: If I wanted to pick a Harry Potter book, I could: The program lists the files matching the words I typed, and lets me filter within that. I just wrote this yesterday, and already, I've used it dozens of times. Here's the source. PS: While I was at it, I downloaded a Flickr uploader for Perl. So I can now upload images with the command line. This easily saves me at least 5 minutes per article. Comments Karthik A 2 Aug 2008 12:00 pm: Oc here\ I got equally bugged long back and wrote a python program called fo (folder opener ;-)\ \ Here it is - crude but worked pretty well \ @setlocal enableextensions & python -x %f0 %\ & goto :EOF \ import os\ import ConfigParser\ import sys\ \ CONFIGFILENAME = "config.ini"\ CONFIGFILENAME1 = "config1.ini"\ cleanInp = ''\ scuth = {}\ \ Load all the config file details in a hash \ cfgFile = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()\ cfgFile.read(CONFIGFILENAME)\ cfgFileFP = open(CONFIGFILENAME,'r+')\ \ scuts = cfgFile.items("shortcuts")\ \ \ load into a dictionary \ for (x,y) in scuts:\ scuth[x]=y\ \ print """Folder and file rapid opener (FO)\ \ Ctrl-Alt-C - to start\ @shortcut,path - to add a shortcut\ x - exit\ """\ \ while cleanInp != 'x':\ inp = raw\input("Your wish Master!:")\ cleanInp = inp.strip()\ if cleanInp.find('@') == -1:\ try:\ os.startfile(scuth[cleanInp])\ except:\ pass\ else:\ tmp = cleanInp.split("@")[1]\ tmp1 = tmp.split(",")\ cfgFile.set("shortcuts",tmp1[0], tmp1[1])\ cfgFile.write(cfgFileFP)\ q Sathish 2 Aug 2008 12:00 pm: Anand,\ \ Did you try slickrun.. It is extremely slick.. S Anand 2 Aug 2008 12:00 pm: @OC: Hey, didn't realise you were into python. Neat!\ \ @Sathish: How much memory does Slickrun use up? Given some of the apps I'm running on my 1GB laptop, I'm having to count each byte! oracle 2 Aug 2008 12:00 pm: The method I use:\ \ enable google desktop by ctrl-ctrl\ \ in the search bar first few alphabets of the app..invariably it shows me the app i need. Saurabh 2 Aug 2008 12:00 pm: I used to use Launchy before switching to Mac an year book and have been using QuickSilver since then. Dont use the Apple Spotlight, neither the Google Desktop thing..QS does all the work - launching apps, searching for files and quickly accessing them, a nice article abt a great QS trick (for Mac users) here : http://www.43folders.com/2005/06/13/quicksilver-the-comma-trick\ \ BTW Processing.org seems to be interesting, plan to check it out soon!\ \ Cheers! S Anand 11 Aug 2008 5:35 am: @Sathish: 7MB is not too bad. Launchy was taking up over 25MB in my case.

Launching applications


I automate bargain hunting by combining Amazon's hidden discount search parameters with a custom XPath-based RSS feed. This lets me monitor specific price drops on MIDI keyboards without checking the site manually every day.

I'm thinking of buying a digital keyboard with touch sensitive keys and MIDI support. (The one other thing that I thought off -- a pitch bend -- puts the keyboards out of my budget.) I'd like a good deal. (Who doesn't?) But I don't like to spend time searching for one. (Who does?) So here's the plan. Firstly, I'll restrict my search to Amazon.co.uk. For electronics items, I haven't found anyone consistently cheaper. Tesco has some pretty low prices, but not the range. eBuyer is pretty good, but not often enough. Google Products is the only other one that gets me consistent lower prices, but I've had my credit card identity stolen once before while shopping online, so I'd rather not pick any random seller listed on Google. Amazon has a secret discount. You can search for electronics items with 30% off or more. And then you can narrow it down to Sound & Vision > Musical Instruments > MIDI Keyboards. Further cap a 100 - 200 GBP restriction. That leaves us with one product: MIDI keyboard on Amazon While that matches my criteria, I'm in no hurry and can wait for more offers to come up. But I don't want to keep checking this page every day. So, RSS to the rescue. You probably think I can't get enough of RSS feeds. And you'd be right. The thing is, as an attention mechanism, it is incredibly powerful, and I never cease to be amazed that the things it lets me do. Using my XPath checker and a bit of trial and error, I figured all product links link to "amazon.co.uk/dp/..." with a inside. So this XPath gets all the links: And I made an RSS feed out of that using my XPath server and subscribed to it on Google Reader. Combining a bunch of such searches, I have a shopping folder on Google Reader has all the items I'm searching for. Now that's lazy bargain hunting. Which is all very fine. But given that I'm buying a car in a hurry right now, and I'm not doing any bargain hunting, it's a classic case of being penny-wise and pound-foolish. Sigh... Comments Oracle 4 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Alternate way is to set-up a google alert for the specific item in the chosen sites. Do you see any disadvantages with that? Rajesh 11 Nov 2008 7:58 am: Never had someone's personal website kept me so drawn in. You are smart and very articulate (u probably know this already) and it shows in each intersting and very often informative article you write. you can even try writing columns in magazines, websites or papers. i've learnt a lot from your site already and haven't finished reading them all. i also see you play the keyboard and maybe interested in midis. i've sequenced some midis. u can can find them at http://rajesh.annamalaisamy.googlepages.com/rajeshmidis if u're interested. The best tamil song midis in my opinion are done by kishmu. His midi works can be found at www.geocities.com/kishmu/ Eagerly anticipating your next article. Regards Rajesh

Lazy bargain hunting


I reflect on how fear drives the creation of bloated, unread consulting proposals. By admitting ignorance and prioritizing brevity, I argue that "less is more" actually preserves focus and prevents the professional stagnation caused by corporate fluff.

The hours in consulting are pretty long. 65 hours a week used to be my norm, and that's ignoring the travel time to and from work. So there wasn't too much life outside of work. (I've come to realise, though, that what you do outside of work doesn't change that much with more free time. What does change is that you just enjoy it more -- both in and out of work.) We have a day, once every month or two, where you take time off from whatever project and head back to the office. One such featured a session with the managers telling the consultants how to succeed. Pretty good advice, actually... but that's not what I'm going to talk about. It's something about the nature of that advice. The advice had a lot of TO-DOs and suggestions. Do this. Do that. Focus more on this. Focus a lot on that. Great. Now we know what to do more of. My question, towards the middle of the session, was: OK, so what do we do less of, then? You can't do more of something unless you do less of something else. In most places, it's easy to answer this with: "Oh, you need to be more efficient." or "Cut the idle gossip". For us, none of these were applicable. The question pretty much remained unanswered. And with good reason. It's a tough question. Later, I got involved with a proposal. I wrote a few bits of it. (One page, actually.) Others wrote a few bits of it. And then some standard appendices were added to it. Finally, it ended up as a 180-page document. The interesting thing is, I can bet no human ever read those 180 pages end-to-end. I know no one at our end did, because we turned it around in 1 week, and I was the last to assemble the document before sending it out. I'm guessing no one at the client end did, because they'd have gotten 5 such documents, and had a week to shortlist down to 3. So if we didn't read it and they didn't read it, why did we put it in? I think I know why. In my IBM days, I had to make a presentation to the management on productivity. I knew nothing of management or productivity. So I put in a report that had a lot of high-sounding words (you know... value-add, leverage, etc.) that looked reasonably impressive and had no basis in fact. I did that mostly because I was scared. Of seeming to know less. Of being wrong. You know. (Funnily enough, the presentation was pretty well received. I don't know if it was because they were polite or had become numb to bullshit.) This fear is pretty common. I know how that 180-page document ended up as a 180-page document, and I'm sure you've seen this happening before. First, here's a sample conversation at the client end, when they're writing up a request for information. Martin: So, what do I put in the RFI? Clive: Here's a template we used. You can use some of that. Ask Nick for the one he used last month, and Natalie for hers. Maybe you should get something from our procurement team and information security group to be on the safe side. Martin: And how do I make the RFI out of this? (BTW, this is a "bold" question that's rarely asked.) Clive: Well, make sure you cover everything from all of these documents. So the RFI asks asks: if any of your 80,000 employees are a member of any one of the following 340 organisations that are considered disruptive, how many employees you have in each geography, function and vertical -- where the break-down provided is as per their definitions (we cook up numbers which, if you add up, totals to over 200,000) how much you spent on paper-clips last fortnight, and other such intimate corporate P&L secrets And we answer these. The answers to the above 3 questions were "No", a table of numbers, and "We are not at liberty to divulge this information..." Now, looking at the answers above, it still doesn't add up to 180 pages. It's hardly half a page. But you've got to take the following conversation at our end into account. Steve: You know, we've got to put in some details about our methodologies in this section. Me: I have. Steve: Yeah, but maybe we should add more, you know, like supply chain methodologies and change management. Me: But they're irrelevant! Steve: Well, can't say that. Change management is always relevant. SCM... well, no harm putting it in. They can skip it if they don't want to read about it. That's it, isn't it? There's no harm in doing more. I'll just toss it in. If you don't want to read it, skip it. I'll just ask you to do more of these. If you can't, skip the useless stuff. An innocuous sounding statement: do more. I tremble whenever anyone suggests it. There's no defence. There's a fundamental belief at work here. That more is better. This is fueled by a lack of confidence. Put in high-sounding words. They look impressive. What's missed is that experts use jargon because they understand what it means, and it conveys a lot in few words. Others follow a cargo cult science. What we lose, though, is subtle. Firstly, it wastes time. It wastes my time. It wastes your time. But hey, time is not all that important. (I'm not saying this sarcastically. I believe that wasting time is quite OK, really, and it's not such a big deal.) What's more important is that it destroys focus. Some things in the document are important. Most others are not. In a 180-page document, I can't find the important stuff! It actually does harm to put it in if it's irrelevant. That's the tough tradeoff, really. A tangible incremental value against an intangible loss of focus. The value looks attractive when you're less confident. The document seems completely unfocused anyway. So what the heck, put it in. Do more of this. And that too. So what can you do? Quite a bit, surprisingly. Firstly, you've got to believe that less is more. The response to "What's the harm in adding...?" is "It dilutes the message". There's two things here. Believing it. And having the courage to say it. Trust me, you really believe it only when you say it. Next, you've got to understand -- really understand -- before you write or speak. That requires not fooling yourself. And it requires a lot of practice. I've had nearly 20 years of training in fooling myself, so it's an uphill task. Many people are worse off, never having tasted true understanding. Third, you've got to be brave enough to shut up, or say "I don't know". Initially, this was tough for me, but I learnt from a friend. I always thought him not-so-smart, but honest. He'd ask, "But why?" and when I'd explain, he'd say, "I don't understand it." After two hours of trying to get him to understand, I'd realise that I was the one who never got it in the first place. After a while, I got into the habit of being very prepared before I explained anything to him. Saying "I don't know" doesn't make people think less of you, I've found. I know a lot of people disagree with me. One of the most consistent feedbacks I've received in the first half of any project or firm I've been in is, "He should speak up." Dammit, I don't have anything to say! If I know something, I'll say it. If not, I'll shut up. Now, despite this feedback, no one's quite objected to me. And in the second half, they're always amazed at how much I've improved based on the feedback. The feedback had nothing to do with it, of course. I just happen to know more in the second half of a project. There's a reason why your boss wants you to talk. It makes you appear knowledgable. In the short term, that's good. You talk about "value" and "leverage" and people nod wisely. In the long term, it makes you less able to say "I don't know." (What? This brilliant chap who knew all about value and leverage doesn't understand our way of calculating ROI?) It makes you less likely to ask questions. It makes you learn less. It makes you dumb. On the other hand, I've learnt to plead ignorance up front. "Do you understand ROI?" "No." Not even an excuse for it. Frankly, it saves time. Sometimes, a meeting's running late, I'm hungry, and I just nod at whatever's said, and you lose the window of opportunity to ask. Except, I've learnt, there's no such thing as a window of opportunity. If you don't get it, ask. If they've said it thrice, and you still don't get it, ask. More likely they're not clear about it. Postscript: This morning, I had to convert a document into a standard template. My document was 3 pages long. The template (just the headings) was 14 pages long. Why? Because someone wants all documents in that format. Does it help them? Maybe not. But it has to be done. Standards. Sometimes, it's easier to give up. The smart thing is to minimise the effort on pointless work. I took 15 minutes. Beyond a point, I protect myself rather than the poor reader. Comments Arun 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Great post! So much there that I can relate to! Aside, I haven't said this before, but your music search totally totally rocks! Far better than anything out there! Chandoo 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: really well written, I could relate to almost everyword in the post. I think this behavior is becoming more visible in consulting space, somewhere between adopting to processes, sticking to standards and working across global teams entire junta have lost focus on what is actually needed. and that thing with 3 page doc going into 14 pages template.. well I couldnt help but laughout loud coz that is exactly what I was doing yesterday evening... Ravi 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: So... how could you have made that post shorter? ;) I have a related question: what in the background of a consultant (or product manager, or any entry level MBA position) enables them to make recommendations about an industry they don't really understand well? For that matter, how much of decision making in most organizations is done on the basis of a wink and a nod, rather than any of the reports that aren't read? Most long reports exist just to justify decisions that are already made, and as such it is imperative that the "important" information be buried. Sanjeev Sujan 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Great post. I can't say how many times I have done that myself (fitting a 2 pager into 15 slides). Standardizing is something that is now ingrained in all probably because most people really don't know what they are doing and just want to play it safe (as you mentioned). ND 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Nice post. The person compiling the proposal has a very important job. Ensuring that there are no references to other clients in the “cut-paste” process! Usually there is some statutory requirement or other that requires canned questions on domains that may have little bearing on the immediate decision making. I sometimes feel these questions can be asked once or twice a year to vendors, instead of making it a part of every proposal. Saves time and the environment. I can visualize your proposal starting on a meandering journey before being safely ensconced in the cozy confines of an archives room! ritesh kini 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: :) Totally identify with all of it...Agree, less is...perhaps sometimes..adequate.. Deepak Mittal 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Sorry, but I still don't understand, what to do less or not do at all. Deepa Mohan 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Excellent post ! I have often wondered about those reports-that-no-one-reads-fully...but this was so much more articulate. Thanks. Aman 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Takes me back to my RFI/RFP response days when the measure of a good document was its weight - very rarely have i come across managers prescribing a less is more approach btw, how are you doing.?.dropped you a mail. Samir Desai 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Excellent post and very very well written! I guess it applies to almost any sort of service firm. Standards, templates, checklists, processes, books of knowledge, and what not ...sigh! :) Chitra 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: You hit the nail on the head! But is there a 'diplomatic' way to get around this :-)? Madhu 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Pretty good:) There shud be a law that shud make anything more than 10 slides/10 pages illegal:) priya 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Excellent piece. Can save time and brings in more clarity. jake 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: hey, good post. perceptive. Prashanth 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Your post is a perfect mirror! But in this labyrinth of standards, policies and global marks, many corporate "parrots" have lost the real motive behind these. And instigating "More or/is less" people like you to write such a long long long article:) So u wasted my time and even ur time,So u r effective at last! Nice article Maaaaaaaaan Ankush Garg 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Dear Anand, You have captured what I have sometimes always felt about consulting world. I have referred to your post on my blog - www.ankushgarg.com (and shared some extracts) and added some of my thoughts to it. Our firm is based on partnering model, where in our client engagement we are partners, not consultants. When you go with that mindset, you are the part of the client, there is no you and no client, there is only We. And We learn together and We execute together. p.s : let me know if you do not appreciate my pasting extracts from your post on my blog. I shall remove them ContentConcepts 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Hi Anand, You hit it on the nail. I ve been doing this all my life. Yes, am an Editor. I was chucked out of a consulting company for evangelizing less-is-more writing. Result? Am an entrepreneur now. We provide no-nonsense content. www.contentconcepts.in Kalidas 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: Brilliant one !Why such a long post to drive home the point :-) ?? me 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: and that's why consulting is short for con and insult? http://tinyurl.com/yedrju Moody 14 Jan 2008 12:00 pm: I was searching for a song and it hit your site - can you email me the below given song coz ur link to the song is not working Aa bataa dein ki kaise jiya jaata hai - Dost karthikeyan 16 Jan 2009 10:18 pm: Excellent Article. But I guess you covered the points you wanted to convey may in the first 25% of the section. So, Telling more to convey less is more (Just kidding).. May be i should stop here :-)

Less is more


I built this interactive quiz featuring interludes and opening lines from classic MGR songs. Challenge yourself to identify the original movies by typing the names as they sound to see if you can turn every box green.

Here is the first interlude and the first line from some MGR songs. Can you guess which movie they are from? Don't worry about the spelling. Just spell it like it sounds, and the box will turn green.

MGR songs quiz 1


I analyzed my HTTP logs and discovered mobile users outnumbering those on Linux or OS X. This shifted my focus from client-side Javascript toward plain HTML to ensure my site works better on small mobile screens.

When I analysed my HTTP log last week , I had another motive: are there enough people accessing my site on a mobile device? Or is it too small at this stage for me to care about? Well, have a look at the numbers. Windows 98.4% Mobile 0.6% Linux 0.5% OS X 0.5% Yes, there are more people accessing my site through a mobile device than there are using Linux or OS X. That's shocking ! Now, I'm not saying that this is representative of the rest of the world or anything, but at least it tells me a couple of things. Firstly, the whole mobile browsing thing is bigger than I thought it was. I started worrying about this a couple of months ago and got myself a HTC s620 phone and a BlackBerry (for free, through some innovative social engineering and smooth talking). It really does get pretty useful on the move... which is frankly anywhere outside of the home and the office, and sometimes even within. (It's handier to read recipes off the HTC than a laptop.) Google had caught on to the whole mobile browsing trend a very long time ago, and are rather well positioned to make use of it. Secondly, it means that rather than worrying about my site working on Linux or OS X (i.e. worrying about what plugins to use), I should worry more about it working on mobile devices (i.e. small screen, no Javascript / CSS). That's a fairly big shift in my thinking. Earlier, I had been all for shifting all the processing to client-side Javascript. Now it appears I need to design more towards plain HTML pages generated by Perl / PHP. Comments Dinakaran 3 Sep 2008 6:23 am: Nice to see that people visit your site your mobile. Mobile browsing is a very upcoming trend . It's yet to catch up in India for the telecom infrastructure limitations.If there are better band width's provided by the service providers , mobile browsing will move up to a new level.\ \ A day when I'm able to play 30 minutes of non-interupted podcast through my mobile while travelling down to the office listening to the latest technology discussion is some thing which I dream to come as a reality in the near future.

Mobile browsing


I treat my laptop as a portable library, reading books and movie scripts in bed or on trains. I make the experience better by rotating the screen to portrait mode and using hibernation for instant bookmarking.

I have the habit of reading books on the screen. It's something that started from the early 90s, when I got a copy of The MIT Guide to Lockpicking. Since I didn't have access to a printer, I'd spent hours poring over the document on the screen. And then I discovered Project Gutenburg... I've heard many people ask if I have a problem with this. Personally, no. I've been staring at screens from the age of 12, and I'm quite used to it. My job requires me to stare at a screen for most of the day anyway. (I'm not saying there's no a strain on the eye. My eyes are red at the end of the day. I don't know if they would be less red if I'd been staring at paper instead of a screen. But my glasses have remained roughly the same power over 15 years, so it's probably not ruining my eyesight much.) For those who are like me who reads all the time and spends a lot of more time facing their laptops, you might want to check this sd card, a very good quality card that can be handy in the future. To me, the main advantage of a book is that a book is a lot easier to handle. You can fit a book into your bag, sometimes into your pocket. You can hold it in your hand comfortably -- it's easy to grip, and light. You can open it instantly (no need to boot up). You can bookmark it (or even just remember the last page number) and quickly flip to that None of these is possible on a computer. Or is it? On a desktop, I agree -- it's impossible to read for long. Your back would kill you. I've done it for many years, and it's not worth the pain. With a laptop, however, you can lie down on the bed or sofa and read. It's a huge advantage. (For just this one reason alone, I'd suggest that everyone buy a laptop.) As for carrying books, I carry my laptop to work every day, so there's no incremental burden. But if you weren't doing that, it's probably not a great idea. When I travel on weekends, I'd much rather take a physical book than a laptop. This is probably the single biggest problem with a laptop -- that it doesn't travel as easy as a book. That's probably offset by the advantage that a laptop isn't really a book -- it's a library. I don't need to decide which book to read. I can bring them all along, pick what I like, and when I'm done, move on to the next. And I'm not restricted to books. I have a fairly good collection of movie scripts and comics. Depending on how long I have on the train, and my mood, I can pick between these. One thing that makes a laptop a lot easier to use is to rotate it. Laptop in landscape mode Laptop in portrait mode (rotated)") If you hold the laptop this way, it's surprisingly easy to handle. I find that I can read this way even when standing on a crowded train — which is as much as I can expect from any book. (Strangely enough, it doesn't seem to attract too much attention on the train either.) If you have a decent graphics card, you can rotate your screen using the graphics properties. (I'm sure there are are hotkeys to do this. My two-year old daughter somehow knows them, and manages to turn the screen upside down in a fraction of a second, while I spend then next 5 minutes struggling to restore an upside-down screen.) If not, you can just use a PDF reader (like FoxIt, which is better than Acrobat Reader) to rotate the page by 90°. A laptop takes care of the problems of bookmarking and load time as well. I usually leave mine on hibernate, and it takes about 10 seconds to open up to where I left off. Sometimes I just leave the laptop on in the bag — for example if I'm changing trains. The other solution, of course, is to try an ebook reader. Given my laptop, I haven't tried one. But other than the ease of holding it, there's no big I see. The other question is, how do you find ebooks?. Other than buying them, I find that the easiest option is to search on Google. A surprisingly large number of them are indexed. Here's a custom search engine for ebooks. Comments jake 22 Feb 2008 12:00 pm: I agree with you. I have been reading books on the computer screen for many years now. A laptop has the advantage that is has better contrast and the screen doesnt flicker. A crt with a badly set screen refresh rate can be quite a pain. I have found that the refresh rate on a crt for example has to be as high as your monitor will allow (75hz and above) for a given resolution, for your eyes to be completely comfortable. I'd also recommend anti glare screen. The LCD screens on a laptop dont have all these issues. Also one has to make sure there isnt any light reflecting off your screen into your eyes, and that the contrast and luminosity of your screen holds up even in bright light conditions. For all these, a real book is the perfect thing. The contrast of clearly formed letters over a clear paper background is the let work for your eyes. Ofcourse one can enable anti-aliased fonts like clear type and try reading on a terminal. A favourite way for me to read is on a text browser in a terminal. I render the text in html and open it in lynx or such and its amazingly easy to read. Borrowing on this principle you'll find the few ebook readers render their fonts as a clerar black on grey or white, and at high contrast settings. These might be worth a see if one is heavily into e-texts. Whew, that was a long ramble :) But this is a topic close to my heart, as I have an entire library, books, comics, et al. as documents on the computer. Ashwin Prabhu 22 Feb 2008 12:00 pm: Try http://www.wowio.com/index.asp . It allows upto 3 ebooks to be downloaded a day. For some strange reason, this site works only on non-Indian IPs. joseph 22 Feb 2008 12:00 pm: Amazing that you are able to hold up a laptop to read on a train and not have eyebrows raised. Guess the English are rather blase about stuff on the tube. Chittaranjan 22 Feb 2008 12:00 pm: I could never stick to the habit of reading on my Laptop. I get tired/cranky/irritable after the first few pages itself! I tried the 'read aloud' option in Adobe Reader but that is worse than self-reading. edgar dantas 22 Feb 2008 12:00 pm: hey nice blog and nice post i really appreciate it with regards edgar dantas www.gadgetworld.co.in Aman Patel 29 Aug 2008 8:14 pm: Nice post. I like your post. Happy Posting... Hari K T 3 Jan 2009 7:26 am: Yes, this is a good idea . Back pain its one of the problems that all professionals facing ..... :) Kavitha 19 May 2009 1:15 am: Hi, Could you pls let me know if it is possible to rotate a website in the manner you have shown above? I read a lot of books online and it will be very helpful if you let me know the keys to do it; at work i have sometimes accidently done it but i'm not able to remember which key i had struck. Thanks! krishnan 5 Jan 2010 7:02 pm: Yes..It is possible , there is a free tool called irotate...and another one called sakasa mouse tool... u\can tilt the screen and rotate the mouse in sync with this..as well!!!! Andrew 6 Sep 2010 5:49 pm: I've been doing this for years also. The Ipad is my ultimate goal but any laptop is great. I've had some hardcover books that were as heavy as laptops and that was just ONE book. A laptop can hold a thousand books/comics. Its a portable library that outweighs (no pun intended) all the negatives, if any. Anirban Mukherjee 24 Jun 2010 5:06 pm: In order to rotate the screen press CTRL+ALT+right arrow or CTRL+ALT+left arrow. Ref. http://getahead.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/mar/02/slide-show-1-specials-all-about-ebook-readers.htm#contentTop colin 28 Jul 2010 6:47 am: you should never turn your latop on it's side like that, the hardware really doesn't like that Lynn 21 Oct 2010 3:23 am: I am new at this. I just started looking around to see if I could get books on my laptop, so this is a good discussion. I still don't know much, but will keep reading what you all write and see if I can figure it out. Thanks to all who participate in helping the "new kid." Prashant 31 Jan 2011 7:39 am: Reading on netbook is better than laptop ,but the problem with these tools is that it hits one self's personality as eyes go red(straining over an hour) with stoop, staggering walk at worse ,so ebooks may not be better at this point but the other face of the coin is that if this tool is used for the very purpose of learning it does not hamper us rather wasting time on internet, porn,news reading(can be done with news paper),surfing unnecessarily can be lethal at its counterpart, so i am neutral to this fact that reading on laptop is good for ourselves. BKD 9 Jun 2012 11:04 am: Amazing! I struggled for days before i came across this. The only change is that I change my desktop orientation altogether. This allows me to not only read, but to annotate my PDFs too (highlight, comment, notes and stuff) using my mouse. As keyboard is obviously difficult to use when laptop is lying like this, I use on screen keyboard for petty stuff. Using Ubuntu 12.04. Works like a charm! Thanks !

Reading books on a laptop


I show you how to capture any online audio using Audacity and the Lame encoder. If your sound card lacks 'Wave Out' support, I explain how a simple stereo-to-stereo cable can turn your PC into a digital tape recorder.

In the 1980s, we rarely used to buy audio cassettes. It was a lot cheaper to record songs from the radio. It's amazing that in the 2000s, this technique seems to be less used than before. If you wanted to record a song that was streamed online, you could go through the complex procedures I'd mentioned earlier to download online songs, or you could use the 1980s technologies. Get a tape recorder, connect the headphones of your PC to the tape recorder's microphone using a stereo cable, and record to your heart's content. Except, of course, that tape recorders are rather outdated. And with the right software, your PC can act like a tape recorder. Here's how you can go about it. 1. Download Audacity and install it 2. Download Lame and save it 3. Open Audacity and select "Wave Out" as the source 4. Play a song online and click on the Record button. Press the Stop button when done 5. File - Export as MP3. (The first time, you need to tell Audacity where you've saved Lame) That's it. You can convert anything your computer plays into an MP3 file. (The general rule in digital media is: if you can see / hear it, you can copy it.) OK, lets' do this more slowly. 1. Download Audacity and install it. Audacity is a program lets you record and edit music. Just visit the link above (or search on Google for "Download Audacity") and install the program. This is what it looks like. Audacity 2. Download Lame and save it When you record something with Audacity, you'll usually want to save it as an MP3 file. Lame is another software that lets you do that. Go to the link above, download the ZIP file, and unzip it in some folder. (Remember where you unzipped it.) 3. Open Audacity and select "Wave Out" as the source You can choose which source to record from in Audacity. Do you see the "Line In" in the screenshot below? That's the source from which Audacity will record sound from. Usually, your PC will have a "Microphone" socket, and may have a "Line in" socket. It may also have a built-in microphone. Depending on what sockets and capabilities your PC has, you may see different things. Audacity source One of these sources will probably be "Wave Out". That lets you record any sound played by your computer. So if you want to record a song your computer's playing, what's what you should choose. Not all sound cards have the "Wave Out" option, though. Many laptops that I have used don't seem to have this option. If that's the case with you, there's a fairly simple solution. Just buy a stereo-to-stereo cable (shown below) and connect your headphone socket to your microphone socket. Stereo to stereo cable This transfers everything your computer plays back into the microphone, and you can select "External Mic" as your source. Buying this stereo cable has another advantage. Rather than connect one end to your computer's headphones, you can connect it to anything: your old cassette player, your radio, a microphone, whatever. So that means you can now: Convert your old tapes to MP3 Record songs on the radio as MP3 Record songs from the TV / DVD player as MP3 Record live conversations as MP3 Record phone conversations as MP3 etc. 4. Play a song online and click on the Record button. Press the Stop button when done That's easy. The Record button is the red circular button that's third from the left. The Stop button is the yellow square button that's second from the right. 5. File - Export as MP3 When you've stopped recording, you can actually do a bunch of useful things with Audacity. The first is to adjust the volume level. Go to the Effect menu and select Amplify. Then you can try different amplification levels to see how it sounds. The next is to trim the audio. Unless you're really fast with the keyboard, you probably have some unwanted sound recorded at the beginning or the end. You can select these pieces by dragging the mouse over the wiggly blue lines, and go to the Edit menu and pick Delete. Lastly, you'll want to set the sound quality. Go to Edit - Preferences and under the File Formats tab, set the bit rate under the MP3 Export Setup section. (If you don't know what rate to put in there, 128 is a safe number. If you want better quality, increase it. If you're short of disk space or want to mail it to someone, decrease it. Based on my experiments, even a good ear can't tell the difference at 128. I use 64 or 96. My ear is pretty bad.) All of the above was optional. If you just wanted to save the file, go to the File menu and select "Export as MP3". The first time you do that, you'll be asked to mention the folder where you saved lame\enc.dll (which is where you unzipped Lame.) Show Audacity the folder, and that's it. Comments Vivetha 26 Sep 2008 4:03 am: Hai Anand,\ \ Thanks lot for your technical supports and guidlines. Still I couldn't able to understand what have to do for recording my skype conversation. Can you help on this?\ \ I use Acer 2413 laptop which has one headphone port and another microphone port. I have Stereo to Stereo to cable. Can you tell me what the next step to proceed for recording Skype conversation, and next for recording online songs?\ \ Thanks & Regards\ Vivetha\ Madurai S Anand 26 Sep 2008 12:51 pm: @Vivetha: This link explains how to record Skype conversations:\ http://www.voip-sol.com/15-apps-for-recording-skype-conversations/ Preet 27 Sep 2008 10:12 pm: Hello Anand,\ \ Thank you for the updates.\ Can it download all Online songs from all sites?\ The Lame site says as follows: "Once you have unzipped the archive, you will have a file called LameLib or libmp3lame.dylib"\ However after downloading I am not getting the above files in the zip folder. There are 2 notepad files and one dll files in the zip folder.\ Could you please advise me what to do next.\ Thanks and Rgds,\ Preet\ Chennai Preet 28 Sep 2008 3:39 am: Also Anand one more help...\ \ The wave out option is not appearing in the Audacity version 1.2.6 which I downloaded.\ Thanks and Rgds,\ \ Preet\ Chennai S Anand 28 Sep 2008 4:48 am: @Preet: You need to copy the DLL file (lame\enc.dll) to your C:\Windows\system32 folder. (Or any other folder would be fine, as long as you remember to tell Audacity where the file is.\ \ If "Wave Out" does not appear as an option, your sound card doesn't support that option. Your only option is to use the stereo cable. Ashwani 18 Nov 2008 4:54 am: hi anand\ thanx for ur support\ i have a proble, no any option highlighted in ''SELECT COURCE'' area\ \ plz told me solution\ here i see recordind & save that but without sound\ \ Thanx & rtegards,\ \ Ashwani Shukla ssr 3 Dec 2008 2:14 am: how to download songs from www.devotionalsongs.com\ It is a challenging job? >kk; 9 Dec 2008 9:58 am: hi anand,\ great site and very helpful.\ My sound card does not support "Wave Out" so i bought a stereo-to-stereo cable, exactly as the pic you've put.\ After connecting the ends to my headphone and mic slots, i tried to record, but no positive results.\ The options shown by audacity both before and after plugging in the cable are "Front mic, Mic Colume, CD Volume, Line Volume".\ I've got a Logitech webcam,which is the "Front mic" i think, and it does record my voice when i record after chosing that as the option.\ How do i go about recording playback of whatever songs i play on my PC using audacity using the cable ?\ Any help is greatly appreciated. (....u're on vacation..)\ keep up the good work !!\ kk S Anand 9 Dec 2008 8:35 pm: KK, try plugging the cable into each slot (line out / mic) and try all\ options: "Front mic", "Mic Volume", etc. I usually do this hit-and-miss, and\ something eventually works. tk 29 Jan 2009 10:59 am: Hey\ \ My audacity doesn't even have that drop down menu. Its just a gray box...any ideas?\ \ Thanks S Anand 31 Jan 2009 5:57 am: In that case, the sound card probably doesn't support it. I'm afraid\ you may have to do it the old-fashioned way: play it on one computer,\ connect the headphone socket to another computer's mic socket, and\ record it on the second computer. swapna 6 Mar 2009 12:32 pm: Hi, Am Indian classical Music singer . I would like to sing and record my songs which people must be able to listen it on internet. Can you please tell me how it is possible . Thanks S Anand 6 Mar 2009 2:25 pm: Swapna, just record your songs on to a tape recorder. Then connect its headphone socket to a PC's mic socket. Install Audacity and select "Microphone" or "Line in" as the source. Play the tape and press the red record button. When done, press the stop button and save the file from Audacity. You can upload the file to sites like odeo.com Purushothaman 8 Mar 2009 1:38 pm: Hi, How can I record the conversations and online-music class in skype? S Anand 8 Mar 2009 4:06 pm: Here are some ways of recording Skype conversations: http://www.voip-sol.com/15-apps-for-recording-skype-conversations/ I haven't tried any of them myself. If they fail, you could always download Audacity, select "Wave Out" as your input and press the Record button during the class. S Anand 23 Mar 2009 7:44 am: This might be because MusicIndiaOnline is down. That's where I'm getting this songs from, ultimately. It's a pity that MusicIndiaOnline is down quite frequently these days. Could you please try again when their site is up? Valavan 23 Mar 2009 12:16 am: Hi Anand, I'm unable to download the songs of "Dance of Shiva" by Sudha Raghunathan from your website s-anand.net/carnatic. I'm using latest ver of firefox. I'm getting the error "Couldn't match M in" after saving the file name in local disk. I tried in i.e. 8 also and got the same error. Please help me in downloading the songs....... Kapil India 13 May 2010 5:17 am: Ahaan...why record that way ... simply using windows Sound Recorder and double clicking Volume Icon in taskbar with Recording Device selected as Stereo Mix will do the job and by default it can support mp3 at 56Kbps or else download Lame or other Mp3 encoders and use it in sound record...also some WinAmp Plugin will do that for you too. Simple Kapil

Recording online songs