the lost logbook

Baz Luhrmann’s – Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Utkarsh — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 06:50:42 +0000

Australian Baz Luhrmann included this “essay-song” in his album Something for everybody.The original essay – “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” published in the Chicago Tribune can be found here .

Simply #awesome!

Find the lyrics here

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Hadoop – The Future of Large Data sets

Utkarsh — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:14:12 +0000

Every one is talking about “large data sets”, “scalability” and “handling huge data being generated in the web day by day”. Which is supposed to be around 500 billion GB presently, according to the Guardian! Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, you think of a big company and they run Hadoop! Here are some of the companies which use Hadoop. In that last link, if you’ll notice Yahoo has a cluster of 4000 nodes!

Looking forward to the Hadoop Meet at Yahoo today!

Interesting reads of Hadoop

bp-3.com

Facebook: Hive – A Petabyte Scale Data Warehouse Using HadoopSimilar Posts:

Indian Republic Day – “Where the Mind is Without Fear”

Utkarsh — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:08:49 +0000

Time to retrospect; during my school days, we had our daily prayers and we used to recite this poem by Tagore every day. At that time, we did not realize the real significance of this piece of Nobel winning literature. Now, after 7 years, I feel nostalgic and saddened. I understand it was not only a poem, but a thought, an attitude which our freedom fighters had and wanted the same to be inculcated in the future generations. His poems and thoughts are still alive between us, children recite them daily in schools, but why does that ideology die when we grow up? Where does the feeling of “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high” go? Forget the world, why is India is still breaking up into fragments by narrow domestic walls? Because, we were never taught the true meaning of these lines, they were just a routine activity for us. Our class teacher used to punish us if we did not attend the daily assembly, but were we ever told, why do we need to attend the assembly in the first place?! Not really. At least not in school.

No body made me truly realize the importance of India’s freedom, its glory, except my Grandfather. When I was a child, I used to wake up early in the morning on 26th Jan to watch the Republic Day Parade, but as I grew older, my interest faded in the Republic Day. I was no more enthralled by the Indian Army’s might, by the President’s salute or by the colors of India, “the Jhanki“. It was just another holiday for me.

Anyway here is the poem (now when I read this, I feel inspired):

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action–Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

~Rabindranath Tagore (From Geetanjali, 1910)

The last two lines of original Bengali version are harsher. They state:

“Lord Father, strike {the sleeping} Bharat (India) without mercy,so that it may awaken into such a heaven.”

While Tagore was not a politician, his poem has continued to inspire Indians to create a free-thinking, united and dynamic nation. The poem is also very popular among the liberals in Bangladesh. – Source

I wish we start thinking about our nation first, respect it, unite together and destroy all the evil powers which try to harm us. This message goes out to all those young guns out there, respect your nation, it will respect you. The present state of India is not what our revolutionaries envisaged, we need much more that just a blog post or a Facebook/Twitter share. We need a revolution, a revolution in our thought and a revolution in the way we perceive things. Be the change you want to seek!

As Tagore said:

I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can’t make it through one door, I’ll go through another door – or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

I am very optimistic about India’s future, lets make it the Golden Bird of the 21st Century.

Update:

By a revolution I do not mean fight, kill others etc. What I meant was eradicate poverty, educate people, stop (and I really mean stop) discriminating people on basis of color, race, religion or cast. Divide and conquer might be a good approach in algorithms, but not in case of countries or people. Respect your country and each other.

Happy Republic Day!

You can watch the Indian Republic Day Parade, 2010 here Live!Similar Posts:

India vs China – A Bird’s Eye View

Utkarsh — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:56:56 +0000

Recently I can across this amazing blog post by Mr Sujai Karampuri, CEO, Sloka Telecom (It’s an Indian startup in the telecom sector). It is one of the new breed of companies in India Inc who actually innovate and not provide services to the west.

His post addresses an answer to one of the most common topic these days,

India is rising, India will be a superpower in the next 10 years, west is going down, India has an edge over China with it’s English speaking people etc.

But is India actually in a position to take over the west? Can it manage to transfer the center of gravity of the worlds largest companies (Like MSFT, CISCO, IBM) to India and itself start new ones?! I don’t think so with our corrupt politicians, lack on innovation, the great caste system, internal security, the education system and lack of infrastructure to name a few! Mr Sujai’s post details this case study in his blog, I will take some excerpts from his blog:

In reality China is leaving India behind by a bigger margin every year.

Chinese have built the biggest dam on the planet, built the longest bridges, built the fastest cities, built their own planes, submarines, ships, magnetic trains, and even the highest railways while India continued to lay another layer of asphalt on its decrepit roads after each rainfall.

India is not even showing a promise of catching up, It is still content to play a small game.

Is English really India’s edge? – how come their lack of good English not stop Huawei from becoming world #2 in telecom equipment?, How come it did not stop Lenovo, Haier and ZTE from becoming leading global brands? Just to give a perspective to Indian readers – 2 telecom equipment companies of China, Huawei and ZTE put together made USD 30 Billion in 2008 while the entire IT-ITES industry of India put together made USD 58 Billion in 2008-09.

Indians are in self-denial. They foolishly believe everything Thomas Friedman tells them, and they are happy serving their European and American masters setting up BPOs, KPOs, LPOs, software services, helping them do their things in a cheap and cost-effective way, “I am an Indian. I am good at services. I should just stick to it”.

China is even popularizing entrepreneurship as a cultural attitude with various initiatives including TV programs. Infosys, TCS and Wipro, the giants of Indian software services which the Thomas Friedman lauds, did not do much to sponsor or promote startups in India (barring few exceptions).

Here are some comparisons:

GDP: India has around $1.209 trillion and China around $7.8 trillion.

GDP growth: China grew by 9.1% where as India by 6.7%.

Per capita GDP: People say, more population means less per capita GDP, but China is even more populous than India! India has a Per capita GPD of $1016 where as China has $6,100. That’s a big difference and something to worry about!

Inflation: India’s inflation is 7.8 % where as China’s in in negative, -1.2 %

Labor Force: The difference is population is not much! India has 523.5 million where has China has 807.7 million

Unemployment rate: India: 6.8 % and China: 4.3 %

So, as we see, the Chinese economy has seen some radical development and has grown significantly, where as India has been pretty slow. As Mr. Gurcharan Das puts in his book India Unbound, “India will never be a tiger after 1991, it is an elephant who has begun to lumber and move ahead.“.

But is the lumbering good enough?!

Ok, so, what does all that mean? We need a solution right? Here are some for starters:

Provide quality education, which stresses more on the learning than getting good grades! (Remember 3 Idiots, the movie?). If we will have our next generation well educated (not just knowing how to write their names), we will solve some of the problems in India, which we tend to ignore, but the biggest evils in the Indian society like the caste system – what ever it preaches, it just wrong and not at all justified! The divide on the basis of cast, color, religion, region, skilled people which can look beyond the BPOs and KPOs.
Overhauling the Political System in India, I believe, this is the key to India’s growth. We really need to re-check the way our politicians run this country, it seems impossible, but its a dire requirement. Corruption has plagued the Indian society and presently there is no mechanism to correct it.
Dignity of Labor

This list could go on and on! But who will implement these solutions?

As Mahatma Gandhi said

You must be the change you want to see in the world.

It’s You…..

UPDATE

India’s voice BPO segment falling silent

China can overtake US economy by 2020, says PriceWaterhouseCoopers

India’s voice BPO segment falling silent

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Why is March 14, 2015 9:26:53 important?

Utkarsh — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:51:28 +0000

I recently came across this question, Why is March 14, 2015 9:26:53 important? I wondered, “Is it a trick question?, Some body’s birthday? or The world is gonna end in 2015 now?!”. But it was actually very different, it turns out to be an “important” day for my geeky mathematics friends. Mathematics?! Yes.

Here is why,

March = 3 (the third month and ignore the century). Then you are left with 3-14-15-9:26:53 and the decimal expansion of pi begins 3.141592653 ? Pi

They also have a Facebook fanpage for this!

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Epic Fail in Ubuntu – X Windows (The Copy Paste Bug)

Utkarsh — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:37:53 +0000

I have been using Ubuntu 9.10 for a while now and one major copy-paste problem in Ubuntu (GNOME DE) struck me!!

The problem is, if you copy some text from a file and you close that file (i.e. close the source), the copied text also disappears! Initially I ignored the problem, but after a while, I had it! It was really very annoying if you copied some important link and you close Firefox, the link was lost!

When I went out and searched for the problem then I found this, the actual bug report on the Ubuntu Bug Tracker. According to the Canonical guys, it is a system feature of the X-Windows System, as per its design, it does not have any persistent store mechanism and that sucks! (Here are the X-windows Clipboard manager specifications which is presently deployed on Ubuntu 9.10)

That means, the primary problem is with the X-Windows System and I hope this flaw is sorted out in Ubuntu’s next LTS release, The Lucid Lynx.

So the question is, how do you solve this problem for now?! I have the solution

The solution to this problem is to install Glipper, a clipboard manager for GNOME. You can simple install it from the terminal:

sudo apt-get install glipper

This will replace your current clipboard manager and it works perfectly!

So, that will solve your problem of the missing copy in Ubuntu GNOME! Similar Posts:

Who is lukeywes1234? – The Power of Web 2.0

Utkarsh — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:57:32 +0000

He is just a kid who had some videos uploaded from the Super Mario Bros like The Super Luigi Super Show: Luigi’s Room, The Super Luigi Super Show: Luigi’s Computer etc.

lukeywes1234 is one of the hottest keywords on the internet these days. Another star of the Web 2.0 world!

He requested YouTube users to subscribe to his channel, he had an target of 50 subscribers till Feb, 2010.

And here comes the shocker!

He got 7500 subscribers in few hours and a total of 9000 subscribers when YouTube suspended his account. He was himself not aware that he will get such a response! No body know how the hell did he get 9000 subscribers! To give you an idea, CNN’s YouTube channel has 12,527 subscribers!!

People are angry and they need an explanation from YouTube, that why was lukeywes1234′s account suspended?! There are hundreds of videos coming up on YouTube in support of lukeywes1234, check it out for your self here

Infact, 4chan has even started a protest against YouTube, covered by TechCrunch.

lukeywes1234′s YouTube URL

Update

He back with this ID – lukeywes123

Unbelievable!!Similar Posts:

Einstein’s “Simple” Puzzle

Utkarsh — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 04:51:44 +0000

This logical puzzle is called Einstein’s Puzzle (its a variation of the original Zebra Puzzle by Einstein) because it is said to have been invented by Albert Einstein. There are rumors that Einstein claimed that only 2% of people can solve it mentally i.e. without using pen and paper, computer or any other medium. If you are allowed to use pen and paper the problem is very easy and is not interesting.

The problem:

1. The British lives in the red house.
2. The Swedish keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Danish drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the left of the white house.
5. The green homeowner drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blend lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps the horse lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The owner who smokes Bluemaster drinks beer.
13. The German smokes prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water.

Question: Who owns the fish?

[Hint: Tabular Formatting]

Answer below as comments

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Amazing Video Wall by Blinkx.com

Utkarsh — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:43:16 +0000

You can get one of these Blinkx video wall by: 1. Hover the mouse to the top of the wall posted above; 2. Copy the embed code.Similar Posts:

3 Best Possible If-Else Construct Alternatives

Utkarsh — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 02:12:56 +0000

My current JAVA project requires a lot of check points, for example, 1. if the format of the ID passed is correct, then go ahead and 2. check if ID exists or not, if it does, 3. then check if ID has some kind of specific attributes or not and so on!

So, I was using the regular if-else for something like 6-7times!

if([condition]) { [do this] }else if([condition]){ [do this]}else if{[do this] }else if([condition]){ }else{ [do this]}

When I looked back at the code, it sucked! The deep nesting of the if-else construct made the code hard to understand and comprehend!

Comic Via

So, I searched a little for some logical if-else construct alternatives and I came up with these three useful techniques;

Ternary operator (?:) and
Logic Grid
Switch Statement (It is also a good alternative which makes the code look good. Its also pretty easy, so I won’t cover it here.)

Lets take a look at the 1st and a simpler process using ternary operator:

1. If-Else Construct Usage;

int opening_time;
if (day == WEEKEND)
opening_time = 12;
else {opening_time = 9;}

Usage of ternary operator in the above example;

int opening_time = (day == WEEKEND) ? 12 : 9;

[condition ? value if true : value if false]

Ok, so that was easy! Now lets take a look at LogicGrid technique which is very impressive and and an elegant way!

2. If-Else Construct:

if (a) {
if (b) {
result = 1;
} else {
result = 2;
}
} else if (c) {
if (b) {
result = 3;
} else {
result = 4;
}
} else if (!c) {
result = 5;
}

Using Logic Grid: (C++ code here changed to Java)

int getResult (boolean a, boolean b,boolean c)
{
int index = 0;
int[] results = { 5,4,5,3,2,2,1,1 };
if(a) index = index | 4;
if(b) index = index | 2;
if(c) index = index | 1;
return results[index];
}

The logic grid method is amazing!! Once you get hold of it, you will always use it, the code is much more organized and understandable now!

Hope it helps! Similar Posts: