Random thought

Intermediate binary release for MeTA Studio

This is a stop gap binary release for MeTA Studio. The current version is v 2.0.15052010

There are no noticeable user related changed in this release except:

- Jython libraries are integrated into binary release, so it need not be separately downloaded. Complete Jython integration is not yet done (Jython scripts for MeTA Studio cannot be run from command line yet, you can use wrapper though). You will still need to use the old procedure to get the Jython shell up : using the widgets, as described here.

- A number of bug fixes

Under the hood there are lots of changes:

- graphics APIs

- .mar - MeTA Studio archive format to package applications that run with in MeTA Studio environment

- scripting integration API changes

- added mt4j to experiment with multi touch features in MeTA Studio

None of these are currently exposed to UI and will take some time for maturity.

The downloads are available from usual place: http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/

Stay tuned and enjoy!

Important Update: Another binary update has been released with the same version number. This merely enables the online updates as well as updates the help set for the latest API documentation. I have also moved binary update packages to Google code as I don't expect to change their file names in near future. SkyDrive will still be used for hosting user scripts and is now managed by kritwik. You must update to this binary package, as in future I would mostly be releasing only online updates up-till a point where major update is required.

MeTA Studio project updates

Long time since I blogged on the status of MeTA Studio. Behind the scene there is lot of work going on, but has not come up to the point for a release. In the meantime have got two more developers who have expressed interest and joined in for contribution to the project. Hope this works out well :)

I will now be regularly posting design note on the current development of MeTA Studio code base. At this moment these are available from http://cid-76d41f4618b0b6af.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/metastudio/notes as PDF documents.

At a later stage, as I get in contributions from other members  I would like to make this process completely open for comments and modifications.

That is all for now. Expect to hear more in coming weeks.

‘Nameless’ people, who amused me

I keep meeting strangers, some of who amuse me quite a bit. I have met some ‘well known’ strangers: Chandra Babu Naidu, Arun Shouri and Anna Hazare are some I vividly remember. Of these I have quite a respect for Anna Hazare for the social work he has done in past and continues to do. I have been fortunate enough to have travelled with him as a co-passenger on train (from Hyderabad to Pune) quite some time ago. Had a long chat with him and he was actually fine with giving his autograph to me :)

But I have also met many ‘nameless’ people who amused me, like the once I described here. ‘Nameless’ because, I met them only once, and may probably never meet them.

In Oz too, I met some of these interesting people (affectionately, Aussies :)). Both seemed to have immense interest in Science, even though their current jobs had no direct connection with Science: one guy was a cleaner and another had come to do window frosting in the building I work in.

Both of these guys seem to be well read, and keeping up-to-date with latest Science news and happenings. And I must admit that I was totally impressed with their breadth of reading and knowledge.  The window frosting guy, was quoting from Richard Dawkins, ‘The Selfish Gene’. A book that I read quite some time back, but definitely cannot remember so much that I can quote from it!!

One of the guys (the window frosting guy), was a member of Creation Ministries (http://creation.com/), which seem to promote Science education. But am not totally sure about it, because it seems to have some church connection. Even so, talking to these guys made me feel and wish that people were like this in India :-)

Well, for some reason, I cherish memories of meeting these totally strangers … probably it makes living life fun; and I hope to keep meeting more :)

For Google and Chrome aficionados ;-)

... they do not seem to recognize each other as compatible ;-)

Or well there is some problem, but thought it was fun reading the error message.

iPad craze, and my Asus T91MT

Well the media is all praises over how "revolutionary" the iPad is. But for me it is a no sell, primarily because it is a consumer device: a device for consuming content and less of creating content. By content I mean write applications, not just make documents. There are other things that no one has bothered to check:

- For a tablet of this size, don't you expect to have handwriting recognition? Hey but iPad has a capacitive touch screen so that probably will not work.

- Does it have palm rejection? No one seems to say anything about this.

- Then there are a whole lot of other things: no multi-task, no web cam etc. etc. that many others have pointed out as obvious omission.

For me the Asus T91MT, that I have been using has all of this. Though it is not all good with palm rejection; it only works well with Microsoft Journal. I heavily depend on the Windows 7 handwriting recognition and has become my primary means of entering notes or writing lots of text; it just works for me. And it has a inbuilt physical keypad, in case you need one (write code?!). I have not yet tried programming on T91MT, but would do so soon ;-)

In any case it depends what you are looking for: if you want a fine balance between productivity and entertainment go for a tablet like Asus T91MT which has an integrated physical keypad. If you are looking for mostly an entertainment centric and content consumption device with which you would also like to get some productivity you might think of getting an iPad. Both of these, I guess, cost almost the same.

Three decades and a DSLR

Well that is a bit of farce. I had been planning to get a DSLR for quit a long time, but just have not been convinced to spend on it, until recently, I went ahead and ordered one (from digitalyes.com.au, whom I would rate as quite excellent and prompt online retailers). And they delivered exactly on the day I turned 3 decades old ;) … sounds like getting old.

Well so, I have done quite a bit of photography before but have never handled an SLR before. So the piece I ordered for is quite an entry level but good camera from Canon: EOS 1000D. This came with twin lens : 18-55mm and 75-300mm. Both of these lenses are with out IS, so essentially for the later one I would need a tripod (which I already have).

In any case, I am still learning to use this camera. In the mean time I tried to take various shots with varying settings to see how the photos turn up. These are just a some of ones that turned out to be reasonably good. All photos are taken in and around my home and other places in Canberra. All shots were taken mostly with manual settings, and no flash turned on. More to follow, as I learn more. Just got another reason to travel more :-)

Enjoy!

Spammed by Comments!

This has never so been bad. Over past two days I have been spammed by some Japanese comments littered all over my blog. So, from now on all comments will be moderated on this blog. If I still continue to be spammed, I would consider disabling comments all together for some time.

Cheers & Enjoy!

Why Windows 7 is still not "that" touch friendly?

#1 lesson about UIs I learned today ;-) : Without using the stuff, you don't really know how good or bad a piece of user interface it.

I have used iPod touch quite frequently (I don't own one, this one is used by my friend) and have been using Windows 7 on my T91MT for a few days now.

After using both these interface for "reasonable" amount of time, I do really feel that Windows 7 UI is not exactly optimized for touch screens; at least if they are the size of T91MT (8.9" screen). On a larger screen (like the all-in-ones), the story might be different.

What is good?

#1 What ever the MS marketing has advertised ;-)

#2 The super bar, the desktop and explorer arrangements are well done

#3 IE8 is quite well touch friendly

#4 The handwriting recognition and the math input panel are simply fantastic and work very well

And whats not so good?

#1: In the tablet mode on T91MT, there is no replacement for Alt-Tab or Win-Tab. I think this is a way big omission. Given a multitasking OS, I did expect to flick through open applications (only the super bar, and the live preview is *not* the solution, there ought to be something better).

#2: Any dialog with options in it to select, is simply not usable by finger, you end up using the stylus to operate it.

#3: Third party applications are not touch optimized. To me, most notably, Google Chrome.

#4: Interface elements need to scale appropriately for smaller screens with finger touch enabled.

Experiences: My first convertible, Asus T91MT

Ok, I was going to type the title of this post as “Experiences: My first tablet”. But then realized that, I in-fact have a tablet: Mobilis, even before I got myself a Netbook (MiLeap). That is partly because I don't like laptops: primarily because of their form factors and secondarily because of the price factor (they were too expensive back then, well still are!).

This made me first buy the Mobilis. However that experience was not exactly pleasing. I am still trying to figure out how best to use this device!

Then I got HCL-MiLeap-L. Which was a terrific machine. But when Windows 7 was released, I really missed the touch feature. So I installed Ubuntu 9.10 on this kid and gave it to my parents as a backup machine for Skype call in event of power failure (the primary desktop running Windows 7).

In the mean time I got an office laptop (Dell XPS). Though pretty good performance (well good for doing some serious work!), it has two major problems: Weight and Heat. Either of these makes the device not so mobile. Also even if Windows 7 is there on this machine, there is no touch screen. To be fair, I was looking for a very portable, light weights, not to expensive machine that I owned ;)

I have been searching for this kind of a device for couple of months, and finally zeroed in onto Asus T91mt (or its successor T101mt). But eventually decided not to wait for the successor and ordered one from techbuy.com.au (who, I guess is fairly good online retailers/ re-seller, that is my experience). Prime reason for that being that there is no public set release date for T101mt, and there is no concrete info on if this will sport an SSD or an HDD. I really did not want to get an HDD based device. For MiLeap too I wanted an SSD based model, but they were simply out of stock when I ordered one.

I don’t intend to write a technical review of this product here, but just my experience of using this, in short it has been fantastic as of now.

So what do I use this device for: every thing except for serious programming. My “every thing” doesn’t include playing games or watching high-definition videos.

The best way I like to use this device is in tablet mode specifically to read news and stuff. Touch typing is accurate and handwriting recognition is terrific (of Windows 7), it also correct spelling mistakes on the fly ;) Multi-touch (two point) is also pretty accurate and works flawlessly for me.

The keyboard design is pretty good (if I compare this to MiLeap, which was quite cramped).

Heat generation is “very low”. I have a feeling that it is better than my Mobilis, which at some point got so hot that I could not hold it.

There are no fans! So it is very quite, and I am quite happy about this.

The bundled software (Windows 7 with the touch pack) and Asus touch suite are pretty good. Though I found Asus touch suite to be bit buggy and unstable some times, hope they fix it.

As far as the windows experience index goes it is 1.9, the lowest one going to the processor. (Note: I upgraded the memory to 2GB, though the default 1GB is usable, I simply always have too many apps open when it comes to a desktop operating system ;)…).

Finally, this need not be mentioned, but MeTA Studio works pretty well on this device. And drawing molecules with fingers is pretty intuitive (but buggy, so expect a fix, now since I know what happens!) ;) In any case, MeTA Studio is not multi-touch capable (yet).

Update: After constantly using it for few days I have made the following changes-

- Removed all Asus applications except Hotkey, I don't see they are really useful and I find Microsoft touch pack to be much more stable and usable than Asus applications. Also the Asus applications simply make the machine too slow.

- And installed them again! after realizing that merely changing power settings to 'high power' makes it faster.

- Removed the super hybrid engine too and put the power options to High performance. With this T91 performs way much smoother even in the tablet mode. The heat is not much of an issue still. Though battery life could be, have to see how it goes.

- Installed Google chrome. But it does not support some cool finger gestures like kinetic or hold and scroll. IE is still integrated well with the touch gestures. (moved to firefox, much better integration with windows 7)

- With this (expensive ?) purchase, I plan to buy no further gadgets for next 2 years, at least ;)

Update2

One of the commentors requested me to check pressure sensitivity with Open Canvas. As far as I can see, yes there is pressure sensitivity.

Update3

I have been using One Note (2007) on my T91MT for quite a while now, specifically to quickly write design documents and record memos. And I find it to be quite usable and very productive.

Notion Ink: Another attempt at making a device in India

Wow! Now I am really excited about this one... and I really wish they can come up with a successful business model for tablet devices in India.

In my last post I mentioned about Pi, the e-book reader to be sold in India, and was not very happy about lack of "innovation" there. I also mentioned that Simputer was a remarkable product, but failed miserably in market (to read more about my views on Simputer look here: http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/simputer).

Now, a few guys (http://www.notionink.com/Home/about-us) have setup Notion Ink with the intent of creating a tablet for Indian market (http://notionink.wordpress.com/). And apparently they were at the CES.

This is good going. However, again for this to be really successful (as in consumers and developers appreciating it) there are few factors that I feel are important:

- Why would one want this device? A compelling reason(s) on why some one from Bharat will save and spend on this device, rather than just buying a mobile phone.

- The software stack. Merely porting an existing Android will not help. May I repeat, it will not help! It needs to create a whole ecosystem around it. What differentiates it from other Android devices, say for instance what Dell plans to introduce?

- What particular advantage is this device going to offer culturally? As in, culture in India. This is largely a software issue, and I think there is a lot of interesting things that can be done in this space, which address to some extent the above two points.

- Software developers are very important. You have to be able to attract "mindshare" in large numbers and it needs to be specific to your device. This cannot be just off the stock Android.

- Finally, price is a very (very) important issue in India. It has to be very rational.

I really wish that I can work with these guys. These are some of the issues that I would really like to address and seem fairly challenging to me.

(Update: The specs are out now http://notionink.in/adamtechspecs.php, still no news on how the software and sevices will stack up, but the device has quite interesting usage scenarios. The rotatable camera is something that is cool design :) In any case, as of now this is definitely innovative than that Jojoo or Crunch Pad, or what ever...)

The Indian Kindle!

The Kindle (from Amazon) is available worldwide, but is too expensive when shipped to India. On the top of it is English only (for the moment).

Now an Indian company (http://www.infibeam.com/) have come up with an Indian clone for Kindle and its called the Pi. So much so that the site also looks heavily inspired by amazon.com ... I did have wished that they would have been a bit creative here!

The plus point with this device is that it supports Sanskrit, Hindi and most of other official languages, which is missing in Kindle. The only truly missing point is wireless, the thing that makes kindle successful. To ignore it wont do good in long run, I think. Also the ability to make notes on kindle, along with the dictionary are two great reading aids, which I think would be completely missing in Pi.

The price of 10K is also too high, I think. The device should be below 5K to be popular in India. Some features like an SD card reader is actually not very useful, it should simply be removed and the cost saved.

Overall, I think it is interesting to see some thing like this come up in India. I think after the Simputer, this is the first IT hardware product made in India, and made for Indians. The Simputer was quite an innovation, which is missing to a large extent in Pi. Even then, kudos to Vishal Mehta and team for kick starting this. I hope he can open up the device for 3rd party programming too, possibly release an SDK along the lines of Amazon Kindle?

(Note: Pi is available for pre-order from http://www.infibeam.com/Pi)

Why search suggestions need to be a little better?

Just out of curiosity, I was searching “indian people” in Google, and and I was quite surprised to find the suggestions like this:

Personally, I don’t feel annoyed or hurt about this, but definitely feel sad. The world’s best search engine “suggesting” people are “ugly” or what ever, is also quite funny. I think the search suggestions are a good idea, but they should better be reasonable!

Bing, for instance seems to be not that great, but at least it doesn’t give you quite absurd suggestions.

Google, when are you fixing that ;-) ?!

 

Update: After though, just thinking how this could be automatically filtered. Probably should assign negative weights for words that qualify (living) person or words like people or person or human. Well to be truly democratic, that should not be done, but then there needs to be exceptions for the well being of society.

Alice in multicore land

.. Is a talk that I gave for a conference recently held for the 60th birthday of my Ph.D. guide Professor S R Gadre

The slides (available here) were prepared just a day before the actual talk, and that too while attending other talks! So don't expect them to be perfect.

Any how I enjoyed giving the talk ;-) Hope the ISSC public did get something from it :P

Eee of Tablet

Asus Eee T101MT. Unless some one comes with a superior model, I plan to get one of these as soon as it is available:

http://www.liliputing.com/2010/01/asus-eee-pc-t101mt-10-inch-tablet-coming-this-year.html

and ditch my heavy laptop, for ever. Well, as far as mobility is concerned. I will still use it at office ;-)

I really hope that they are fast enough to introduce it in Oz as well, given that they have already cleared FCC.

Update:

- I also found out Lenovo s10-3t

- But I also found another interesting thing, the Pinetrail processor GPU GMA 3150 is apparently less capable than the GPU used with Asus T91 MT which is GMA 500 .. Also T91 MT is mere 960 grams. Makes me think if the older version is better for me !

OzInd

I was not sure if I should ever write this .. but any ways just jotting down some random thoughts...

- Being on an India tour the most asked about question is: "Whats all the media reports about Bharateeya in Oz? Is that true?"

My conclusion: Belief of Indians in media reporting (especially sensational) is dropping, for good.

The bad: I almost felt like an Oz diplomat every time I tried to address this question.

The good: My very close friends did not ask that Q ;-)

That brings me to the Hindu report (http://www.hindu.com/2010/01/08/stories/2010010857021800.htm) and again a reason why I read The Hindu than any other media in India.

- Hopped a number for flights in India (10 to be precise!). Was the first time I ever visited domestic airports (train being my first choice of long distance travel). Of all the airports, I found the Kochi airport to be best managed and also cheap on food. I could get 120 ml coffee for 15 INR as against hardly measurable amount of coffee for 40 INR at Chennai airport! Also the Chennai airport was the worst airport I have visited so far. The other airports I visited (in the decreasing order of goodness): Pune, Mumbai and Madhurai.

- The rikshaw travel from Pune airport to my home (which is hardly 2.5 km) is 80 INR! For me this quite literally amounts to: looting! Or am I missing the point of Inflation? Next time I should get less luggage and just walk down.

ICONCT’09 : Again a not-so-technical view of another conference I am attending ;-)

Dha. I was supposed to post a technical round up for the eResearch’09 conference, but had been on travel so much and have been caught up with other “todos” that it has still not happened. But hope do that in at least next few weeks.

In the mean time I am attending this conference at Shivakashi, better known for fireworks, than probably an engineering collage ;-)

I have previously visited Tamil Nadu for only two purposes: Travel and Conference. This is my second conference in Tamil Nadu. The first one was quite boring. I did not have much expectations from this either. The only point here was that this was a computing technologies conference rather that a subject specific conference. Which thankfully took away most of my boredom.

My flight from Pune-Chennai-Madurai was so-so. While I discovered that the Pune airport is far better managed than the Chennai airport. I was quite astonished with the kind of checking these people do. Well this was my first domestic flight, so I should have expected some surprises. The worst part of the whole trip was getting from my home in Pune to the airport (which is barely 2.5 Km away). I was expecting this would cost me around 30 INR on a rikshaw with meter. When I actually went to ask for the fare the rikshawala said 100 INR! I said I will pay whatever comes on the meter, but he refused to do so (This is pretty horrible, there should be a legal system in place by the RTO, Pune, to place a complain. If there is one it needs to be publicized, at least I am unaware of it!). Any way this guy came down to 80. I simply said that I would pay nothing above 60 and he agreed! On a second though I should have said even lesser. If he was not prepared for that, I would have simply walked to that place (I have done this many a times, but not to catch a plane of course!).

The trip from Madurai to Shivakashi was not a bad one, I was escorted with a guy who was giving one of the keynotes, and eventually also turned up to be the chief-guest. Anyways, I was quite amused to find a 4 lane highway here. Only if people also could follow the lane disciplines. But then, we are Indians ;-)

Also there seems to be nothing so interesting to see around Shivakashi, or rather that is the impression that I got. Have no plans to go around Madurai, as I have already been there before, twice. The Internet connection is also so-so, am currently using Airtel GPRS, which is simply too slow for anything other than checking some mails, and posting this!

I did better not say much about the conference it self, but can be summed as: Ok (my talk day 1), bore (day 2), bored (day 3). Now I simply want to go home. Makes me think again and again that I should simply switch my field. Only thing that I really care about is whatever I do, I should be enjoying it :-)

As of the collage where this was held, MEPCO Schlenk engineering collage, I must admit that it was a pretty good experience. I even interacted informally with a couple of students out here and guess the facilities that the collage provides along with the kind of teaching that is offered here is quite good.

In the end I felt that, my visit was more valuable in terms of the feedback I gave rather than what I presented there.

No idea on how the journey back home will be!

Free internet kiosk at public places: best case for Chrome OS

Ok, so I am getting bored at transit. Lesson learned: never take a flight with huge transit time, even if it might be a bit cheaper. Awaiting my flight at this "buzy" Singapore airport. I finally got my "private" wifi connection. Rather than using the public free internet kiosk.

I did use these public kiosks at the Sydney and the Singapore airport before. But the interface is just too bad and wants for a better experience. At Sydney this is provided by Optus, and surprise surprise its an Ubuntu terminal with I think either boots into Firefox or Seamonky as the browser. The bad part is that it is so locked down that you can just use it for one thing: browsing simple pages. The real bad thing is the interface. I clicked on the "delete private data" before giving it to another guy in queue. And this process took 2 minutes! As it rebooted the whole kernel. As far as this experience goes Singapore airport has much better interface. But guess what it runs Windows and Internet Explorer. Yuk ;-)

More over people seem to be least bit worried about clearing private data on public computers. There just needs to be better user interface. At Singapore airport, each session is only valid for 15 minutes and it automatically terminates (clears all cache) after that period. Which is one step better than what was there at Sydney airport.

This brings me to the point where I feel Google Chrome OS can provide a substantially better user experience and secure access to Internet. In fact, in all these kiosks all the ingredients for best user experience for Chrome OS are already present. I look forward for this change the next time I try to access a public internet access kiosk. And it would be best if it also has VoIP built in (see for instance http://flaphone.com/).

Tired of reading articles with obvious errors

http://in.news.yahoo.com/32/20091028/1065/ttc-rekindling-the-market.html

An article in an Indian media reporting about Amazon's Kindle. Full of technical errors. Do the people who write such articles really know what they are writing about? Or is it just cut-copy-paste?! I wonder.

kindle update

Amazon updated Kindle firmware for PDF support the other day (and other improvements, like enhanced battery life). It should have been installed by now on your kindle if you had the wireless switched on. You can manually install the update from here (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200324680)

With this you can read PDF natively on kindle, however I found few caveats:
- You can't change the text size in a PDF document as you can do with default kindle format.
- You can change the orientation though, which is good.
- The PDF loading is slower than the native kindle format.
- The text brightness is not as good as with documents in native kindle format.

Still exploring... but the PDF support is actually very beneficial. Hope Amazon can improve it with future updates.

Missing link in ChromeOS?

Well, as the whole world tries to figure out who exactly will be using the Google ChromeOS (as is probably the case with Google Wave), this some how reminds me of Sun Microsystems days when they were releasing Jini and Jxta (which are surprisingly still highly active). There is one thing common between these two events, thinking ahead in time. While ideas of Sun were too ahead of time, Google might have got it just at right time, well may be…

There is one big missing link with Google ChromeOS; a dirt cheap (or even free) internet connection that is fast. If you do a comparison with traditional Operating Systems, this what is basically your RAM and Hard disk (they are extremely cheap to upgrade, as compared to the central processing unit) are supposed to substitute for. Google is trying to make a shift here, move the storage out, so that you need not worry about local failures (at this point I am completely neglecting all the privacy concerns). RAM still plays a crucial role, but then the OS is lean and mean, and the apps that run on that would also probably be of similar type (and possibly constrained too).

In fact, idea wise ChromeOS is bringing in nothing new. If you open up a bit this is exactly what was there in Windows 98 – IE integrated tightly into the OS, to the extent that there is not much differentiation between an OS and a browser. However, it is important to note that the design principles are totally different … and Google “assures” them to be safe.

Coming back to the “missing link”. I think this kind of model can only succeed if there is always connected device. This would probably mean this won’t be mobile. Mobile networks as of now are in no way great to provide good QoS while on move. Another issue is that the network should be absurdly fast, and cheap at the same time. Building this infrastructure from ground up for a company is simply going to take ages. However, if the experiments with providing internet access via powerlines would succeed, this would be the place where ChromeOS can win a majority market share… only time will tell where this is headed.

For me, I want complete control over all my digital content, and don’t really see myself using such a dumb device (probably ever dumb than my mobile phone!). Though, if ChromeOS catches on, I could imagine a world filled with computer (ill)literates who cannot do any thing without Google.

7 :-)

 

Well I finally got Win 7 upgrade disks for Dell XPS, and needless to say I immediately upgraded from Vista. And well I need not write another praise for it, as it is already good and tonnes of others have said so ;-)

But thought a few points from my perspective:

- The upgrade took about 3 hours to complete. Required me to uninstall Virtual Box and reinstall it. I also had to reinstall DisplayLink driver. But well everything went of smoothly.

- I dual-boot my Win 7 (32 bit) with Ubuntu 9.10 (64-bit), so that required me to reinstall the grub, which also worked out quite well.

- I am using Zune player as my music player, and it is simply fantastic (must test this machine now with Bose speakers). The best thing I like about it is that I can control this easily using the touch keys on XPS without actually opening the Zune player window, pretty much like a music player.

So that is with Windows 7 on my work machine, 7 :-)

……

On my Mac (iBookG4) I installed Fedora 12, which was not a smooth install, but then at the end I am able to get a quite workable machine. I might post a different item on this experience depending on the time I get ;-)

……

In the end, I am now seriously looking for a tablet with multi touch (Asus T91 MT is close, but I need better graphics, an Nvidia ION or Intel PineTrail) .. and yes it should be SSD and fan less design, reasonable batter life and of course Windows 7, Home Premium as OS :-)

……

Btw, I did hear (and read, and glanced through some of the code) about “that OS announcement” today. As of me, I only see myself using that on a internet access device, with absurdly huge battery life. In no way replacing my current usage patterns.

One day journey to Sydney for eResearch’09

On 10th I went to Sydney to attend and give a talk at AustralAsia eResearch’09. It was a terrific experience. Probably the first conference I really enjoyed being at. This is just the non-technical side of the experience I am posting here. I will later on post some of the technical sides particularly on the feedback I got for MeTA Studio in coming days.

Ok, so first of all this was unique travelling experience for me where I took road(cab and walk), air, rail and water(ferry) transportations [only missing in the equation was a “bail-gadi” or a tractor, but the well this is Oz :-)]. Taking all these modes of transport and still reaching well in time for the conference to start was quite an experience. The best part of course was the ferry ride.

The road and the air transport were rather standard, nothing exciting to describe about. But I was eager to experience a train travel in Oz. If any thing I came out not being really thrilled about it (may be next time I should try monorail). I do still feel though that train travel in India is a lot better experience. Next, I have travelled in ferry a lot before (in Kerala), but never so big (well this was actually a ship), and never in sea. This experience turned out to be the best of all them. The ferry ride was from Circular Quay to Manly (where the conference was being held). And on the way you see pretty much of every thing Sydney has to show on its shores. The best is the Opera House.

The beach on Manly is also pretty good, and the best part was that the conference was organized in a hotel just facing the beach :-)

The journey back was made by sitting on the ferry deck rather than inside, another wonderful experience. In short, any one coming to experience Oz, a ferry ride in Sydney is highly recommended.

 

 

And well finally some pleasing experience :-)

 

[Review] uCertify, certification preparation tool

Frankly, I never actually evaluate a software (until it is an consumer OS or a Linux distribution, or ultra cool stuff like Cooliris). A few weeks ago some one from uCertify contacted me to look into the usability of their certification preparation tool. I always wanted to give one certification (scjp), mostly for fun, but I had my other priorities. Though in the mean time did help some of my pals who were actually serious about giving these exams. So when this offer came, I was quite curious to know if these tools are really helpful. I do remember that I had used a similar tool for GRE preparations long ago, and to some extent these were helpful, but then the software interfaces and tracking tools were not so great.

The tool comes with a set of 10 practice tests (which quite fairly represent scjp in this case), interactive quiz etc. The idea is to start of via giving a diagnostic test that gives fair idea of your current level of capability in giving the test. There is also option to create a custom test, in case you are interested in improving only particular aspects of the test objective.

The best part the "Enhance your understanding" section which gives everything you need for preparing any kind of test including objectives, flash cards etc... but are tailored for a particular certification, in this case scjp. The "Track your progress" option is also very helpful and gives succinct information on past tests as well as test objective wise performance in all the tests taken.

There are few points to note though:

- The certification platform is really useful. However, one must note that the amount of questions available are only limited. A person practicing with the same test questions should understand at the back of his/her mind that just mastering the questions presented here will not be ultimately helpful in obtaining the certification. You really need to know your basics! This tool just enhances your grasp.

- The interface and the test suite is well done, however there is one thing that I think should be fixed: For a simple application like this, why would the installer need a UAC prompt (talking in the context to Vista and 7), this should be fixed.

- I wonder why this thing should not be made available on other platforms, people taking RH Linux certification exams would not be using Windows right?

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For you to test out or get a full copy visit: http://www.ucertify.com/

MeTA Studio bug fix, full binary release

A bug fix release of MeTA Studio (2.0.10112009) is available as a full binary release is available from the usual place http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/

Apart from fixing numerous issues reported, it also updates the API documentation.

There are no considerable new features in this release.

Enjoy!

In Memoriam: DeLano

The creator of one of the most popular molecule visualizers, PyMOL passed away recently. See here for some accounts http://www.macresearch.org/memoriam-warren-l-delano

a test post

directly from my e51 browser. Which seems to work fine. And works via opera mini beta 5 too except image upload seem not supported. With this i really will not miss my small laptop ;-)

Kindled !

I actually never planned this, but I always liked the idea of Amazon kindle. So when Amazon said they were releasing kindle to the rest of (US), I simply went ahead and ordered one for me.

And then it landed in my office yesterday, since then, have been lugging around with it ;-) So far liking it, quite a lot.

The reading experience is fantastic, the connectivity (well have been to a lot of places around ACT since I got it) is quite good, if not fast. I can access Wikipedia for free (with images), which is fantastic. Listen to MP3 while reading a book (wow, is a bliss). I can easily convert my PDFs to Kindle format, but only text and pictures convert correctly, not (vector) diagrams. I have not used the Amazon stores yet, but will be checking this out for some good books. I am not sure of how much I do have to pay for it though vs. buying a paper back.

And finally, that 20$ rebate was quite a surprise (but well should thank those Nook guys ;-)).

Next, I am waiting for Windows 7 (well for my copy to come), and hopefully some one releases a good (read with a real GPU), lightweight convertible tablet with multitouch :-)

1 mb boradband connection a legal right in Finland

Well, what ever that means. I presume, they were wanting to say 1 Mbps broadband connection is a legal right, no idea who pays for it though.

But this reminded me of Dewang Mehta (wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewang_Mehta) who was closely associated with NASCOMM India, and was instrumental in the growth of IT industry back home, used to always say:

“roti, kapada, makan, bijli and bandwidth”

We need visionaries like these to be always around ...

Another Blunder: IB asks gov to consider banning VOIP

A few months ago some one filed a case in Mumbai High Court with a recommendation to ban Google Earth saying that the terrorists used this tool to plan the Mumbai attack that took place a year ago. I am unaware of the current status of this case, but I had a very straight opinion (http://tovganesh.blogspot.com/2008/12/on-google-earth-mumbai-and-pil.html): you can not and should not ban a technology. If do some one will eventually develop a workaround. BANning something is NOT the solution.

And now to top all this, IB, supposedly the organization that is entrusted to provide top intelligence in India goes the same way: BAN the VoIP services as they can't track it! I am quite surprised, if this is how capable our premier intelligence is?! To suggest a naive and laughable solution like this to the GOI.

I heavily depend on skype (with video) to be in touch with my parents back home. And this is the only possible and viable solution for me at present to be able to work far away from home and be still close to them. And I am sure there are plenty of them like me. If the GOI is silly enough to follow the recomendations of incapable IB, I would eventually look for other solutions. Either I go back home, or better still develop my own VoIP with no hopes of any one blocking it.

The excuses that IB gives to GOI of inability to track calls is the encryption done by services like Skype. And the IB claims that Skype shares them with other countries like US and China. Is IB incapable of collaborating with intelligence agencies of some of these "friendly" countries. Does GOI not have enough power to do some thing positive other than merely following short cut solutions like banning?

If IB is incapable of breaking encryption (I admit that is hard, pressuming Skype uses 256-bit encryption, see http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/index.php?p=919), the GOI should seriously consider of making quick and urgent upgrading of capabilities of IB.

For me, now is the time to seriously consider other VoIP (with video) alternatives, or write up my own. But, I feel mentioning the "dehya wakyam" of the wonderful, though under staffed, Maharashtra police (http://mahapolice.gov.in/):

सढरक्षणाय खलनिगॄहणाय

which translates to "Protecting the righteous and controlling and annihilating the evil". Guess that sums up every thing, of what I always believe in.

An aspect of finding water on Moon

The press in India is all gaga over the recently published finding by a joint team of NASA and ISRO about confirmed presence of OH and H2O molecules on moon surface. This is stark contrast to all the negative press that ISRO got after it declared that it has lost contact with Chandrayaan. It is press after all, when are they going to do some mature reporting?

Cutting sort, see (http://m3.jpl.nasa.gov/NEWS/ and http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1178658) for more technical information on this findings.

Apart from the scientific (and possibly in longer terms practical) significance of this finding, the Chandrayaan-I mission has opened up a whole new shift in space explorations: of global collaboration. Yes, Chandrayaan-I has some amount of “pride” attached to it, but it was essentially a first space exploration program that involved as many as 20 countries. For this very reason it was chosen for AIAA Space 2009 award (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1#Award_for_Chandrayaan-1).

One needs to note that, space exploration in future should not be a just done for “pride” or for a mere “me too”. Space explorations are going to be expensive, of what benefits it brings to the human kind should be the prime objective of each mission. For me, Chandrayaan-I has given a glimpse of what can be achieved by collaboration and not merely showing off some false pride.

I wonder to what extent such collaborations can bring in more knowledge to the human kind. All of us just need to loose a little bit of pride. How much are we ready for this?

(After I posted this, I came across an article [letter] in the Hindu, which has similar things to say, albeit in more beautiful words :) To read head here: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/09/27/stories/2009092755981100.htm).

Numbers and Windows 7

Windows 7 is going to be released on:

22 Oct 2009

2 + 2 + 1 + 0 + 2 + 0 + 0+ 9
= 16

1 + 6
= 7 !!

Was that a coincedence or they planned it ahead? Has any one observed this before?

Interesting to observe this though :-)

(Posting this from Windows 7, RC)

MeTA Studio update: GTalk, other improvements and some experimental ideas…

A new full binary version of MeTA Studio (2.0.05092009) is available for download from the usual place: http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/

New features in this release:

- GTalk/ Jabber integration with the talk and collaborative framework in MeTA Studio, allowing one to have more means of communication than just direct LAN based talk. Note that both the parties need to be using MeTA Studio to take full advantage of this feature. To access this feature use Tools –> Down-arrow –> GTalk –> Sign in

Note that if you have a proxy you will need to make those settings first before trying to log into GTalk / Jabber. All features of MeTA Studio talk except voice talk is supported via GTalk. With this the issue reported here http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/issues/detail?id=11&can=1 is addressed. The original issue did mention yahoo and irc, but there are no plans to support these. GTalk and Jabber protocols are fairly open and are well supported by Smack APIs which are inturn used with in MeTA Studio.

- Staggered reading and connectivity formation for large molecules. With earlier version of MeTA Studio, large molecules (> 1000) atoms took long time to load, as there is huge amount of pre-pressing done to identify and classify bonds, rings and other structures in the molecule. Starting from 2.0.05092009, staggered reader and molecule builder APIs are introduced which allow for faster loading of molecules and at a later stage selectively obtaining the required details.

You might experience some problems using this feature, if you find problems, report them at: http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/issues/list

- “Share this!” feature in MoleculeViewer, allows one to instantly share a molecule object to peer MeTA Studio users on LAN or on GTalk/ Jabber network.

- The update sever has been changed to ohloh.net and with this the online updates are back. So expect quicker updates in coming days. **

- Support for Apache Derby embedded database has been added to MeTA Studio. Expect some interesting features based on this in near future.

- Additional BeanShell functions to ease programming:

atof(): String to float

atoi(): String to int

au(): Convert to a.u. (overloaded for value, Point3D and Atom)

angstrom(): Convert to angstrroms (overloaded for value, Point3D and Atom)

- Under the hood graphics and other API changes. And as usual there are assortment for other bug fixes and improvements. For a complete list of changes browse through http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/source/list

 

Experimental features with this release:

- I will be experimenting with symbolic language interface for MeTA Studio in coming weeks. A simple demo interface has been added for this purpose and is called a Workbook (accessible from Workbook –> New workbook). The only symbol currently interpreted is: Molecule[H2]

- An App Builder tool to simplify making completely new applications based on MeTA Studio runtime (accessible from App builder –> New app builder workspace). This is currently not functional, and is only a design spec.

 

MeTA Studio on Ohloh.net

MeTA Studio is also now hosted on Ohloh.net: https://www.ohloh.net/p/metastudio/, which currently is providing a means of on-line update. This also serves as a way of showing off the way for displaying users and developers of MeTA Studio. So if you use or develop for MeTA Studio, help spread the word, click on “I use it” Ohloh.net button at the bottom of MeTA Studio home page at: http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/

 

Have fun! And check out for some new updates with MeTA Studio in coming weeks.

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Update: Just realized that this is not the case. Once a file is uploaded on Ohloh.net, it is immutable. So this issue is not fixed yet. Any suggestions on online update server place are still welcome.