akrish

And so it begins; I think the most hyped olympics in awhile (at least in my short lifetime) starts today. Well technically it started earlier today. Since it’s almost 1am on Saturday in Beijing right now, I’m assuming that the opening ceremonies are over.

I’m really excited for the games because there hasn’t been much to watch on tv in the way of sports. This summer started of amazingly with the NBA Playoffs, the Euro Cup (probably the most excited soccer tournament I’ve ever seen), along with the French and Wimbledon Opens (also two of the more exciting tennis championships I’ve seen), and finally the Golf U.S. Open (which was absolutely amazing).

Usually I don’t watch sports that much, but this summer I’ve been watching more tv that usual, and have gotten sick of the same old garbage that’s ordinarily on. It also helps that I have people to watch sports with: Basketball with my housemates, soccer with people at work, and tennis with my dad.

So I always find the Olympics pretty exciting because it’s so competitive and it’s amazing to watch people who are that good at what they do (I guess you could say the same for anything though). But some of the events are more exciting than others. I’m looking forward to watching soccer, water polo, diving, some of the track and field events, and some of the gymnastics. I’m a big fan of watching the sports that don’t get much air time, so I also look forward to watching some of those as well.

In terms of nations that I’m cheering for, India seems to have a decent chance in both shooting and men’s doubles tennis, so it would be pretty cool if we could pull in a couple of medals. There’s also been some talk about China trying to oust the US as the “overall winner” of the games, so it’ll be pretty interesting to see how that plays out.

Rather than embed a video or something, there’s already a bunch of content on youtube and nbcolympics.com so just check those out instead.

I’ll be writing a bit about the olympics depending on how much I’m watching and wether I have other things to write about or not.

Check this out. After 11 weeks of work or so I think I’ve think reached the height of frustration with linux but at the same time I’ve learned a lot about dealing with those frustrations. I’ve always known that things are a little more complicated when dealing with linux, but I didn’t expect to get so annoyed with it. Anyway this xckd comic reminded me of some of the pains of messing with linux.

I spent most of today trying to install 1 (yes 1) perl module (DBD::Pg for those that care) and this was one of the most painful processes I’ve had to deal with. So I first had to configure CPAN which wasn’t that difficult but still required my attention for a bit. And when I tried install DBD::Pg the compilation failed with some C related error message. I spent some time trying to debug the module code, which I was pretty sure wasn’t the right thing to do (other people have installed it right?) Eventually after several hours, I found out that my machine had an old version of perl, an old version of a pre-requisite module, among other configuration issues so I fixed all of that and eventually got things to install.

And the other day, I got another monitor and was trying to set up TwinView on my machine and that opened another can of worms. I messed with my xorg.conf (the same as in the comic), and eventually I realized I had to install a new driver. This involved booting in a different run level and running through an installer which failed the first time for some strange reason. Eventually I got this to work, but this also took me a couple of hours.

And I guess what’s good is that I’ve come to accept that linux is more frustrating. At the same time, it’s good that I’m given a lot of flexibility to configure things and mess around with my system settings, so I guess it’s a tradeoff. A lot of stuff is oriented towards programmers; when I found compiler errors installed the perl module, I looked at the source code and made changes (although that’s probably not such a good idea in general).

Along similar lines, Vivek came over one day and he was all excited about partitioning his mac and installing linux on one partition. I warned him that linux isn’t all fun and games, especially if you’re not that computer savvy. When I stumbled on this comic, I promptly showed it to him as further proof that the warning is not to be taken lightly. But I’d still use linux over windows any day.

I haven’t written anything about music since I re-started writing here. That’s mostly because I haven’t been listening to that much music when I’m at work, and I’ve been running with other people so no music there either. But Kevin gave me a lot of music recently and I’m slowly processing and filtering through all of it and have recently found some cool no artists. Anyway, here they are:

1. As Tall As Lions – Definitely favorite artist right now. Both albums that I have (“As Tall As Lions” and “Lafcadio”) are pretty mellow but upbeat and very very catchy. They’re kinda indie and the fact that they’re up here means that my tastes have changed over the last year or so.
2. Bayside – One of my all time favorite bands. Last year I listened a lot to “The Walking Wounded” but more recently I’ve been enjoying “Acoustic” and “Bayside” which are also pretty amazing. I hear that they’re releasing another album at the end of September which I’m looking forward to.
3. 10 years – A think they sound kinda like the old A Perfect Circle, which I like a lot, so naturally I dig these guys. Kevin again introduced me to them a long time ago, but recently I’ve been listening to them a lot and really enjoying.
4. Jake Shimabukuro – Apparently a lot of people know who he is, but I just started listening to this guy and his ukelele playing is pretty insane. Really good to listen to while working because it’s kinda ambient. (actually I’m listening to him right now)
5. Evans Blue – So I’ve had “The Melody and the Energetic Nature of Volume” for about a year or so and have listened to it but never really got into it. Then Kevin gave me “The Pursuit Begins when this Portrayal of Life Ends” and I found this album much much better. I really like the vocalist (not the lyrics) but his voice is kinda unique.
6. Butch Walker – Pretty famous for “Take Tomorrow” but I also like a lot of his other songs. He’s a solid generic rock artist. A lot of songs are pretty catchy.
7. Portugal. The Man – Saw these guys in sf in April without ever having listened to them and really enjoyed the show (Their bassist is like crazy cool). Then I got one of their albums and listened to it like non-stop through finals and the beginning of summer. Got another of their albums recently, but haven’t listened to it yet. Pretty good music to work to, but they’re not very ambient which makes them kind of different.
8. Minus the Bear – The reason I actually saw Portugal. The Man in sf. Went to the show with Kevin and these guys were awesome. They were definitely my favorite band in April and May but I think I’ve listened to them too much and am taking a break. They’re in a similar genre to Portugal. The Man, like heavy indie… if that means anything.
9. The Shins – When I was listening to Minus the Bear like all the time I also started listening to the shins and started to like them. I find they’re music like really relaxing and a comforting change to my car playlist which has a lot of heavier stuff on it.
10. Audioslave – Kind of a classic, pretty popular band, but I’ve started to like them more and more recently. Tom Morello is a pretty sick guitarist and I really like Chris Cornell’s unique singing style. As a side, Chris Cornell has release a couple of solo albums that are also pretty good.

I’ve also been listening to a lot of classical music, rap, and acoustic guitar (yeah I’m all over the map). Didn’t really want to write much about any of them because I don’t distinguish much between the different artists.

As always my last.fm profile has more of my favorite music.

I spent last night in Berkeley and drove in from there to work in Palo Alto this morning. As I took the highway 84 exit. I realized that I would have to pay toll to cross the Dumbarton Bridge, and that I only had 1 dollar in my wallet (the toll is $4). A part of me thought that they would just let me pass, because would the seriously make me turn around and find an ATM and how does one turn around in a place like that anyway. So I just kept driving towards the toll and at the last second (literally the last exit off of 84 before the bridge) I took the exit and ended up in some random industrial/marshy place.

I pulled into some parking lot that looked promising (read wasn’t completely empty… and there were many of those) and before going to ask for the whereabouts of an atm, I decided to see how much change was in the car. I found $2.35, so including the dollar in my wallet, I only needed 65 cents to pay the toll. I went to the receptionist (actually security guard) and asked her if there was an atm nearby. She proceeded to give me directions and then asked my why I needed it. I answered truthfully (with minimal exaggeration) and then asked her if she had any change she could give me because I needed to get to work soon. Somehow the combination of my sob story, and my sincere frankness worked and she ended up giving me a dollar.

So, this is how you properly ask a stranger for money (from personal experience… because I have so much of it):

1. Come off as desperate: present an intricate story that is both interesting and slightly humorous while not being to farfetched (it helps if the story is true…).
2. Be subtle: demonstrate that you’re financially stable (lie if you have to). At the same time, make sure that they’re aware of your need. Take what I did, first ask for the location of an ATM (shows that I have money), but then ask if she could just give me a little change.
3. Be friendly: Don’t antagonize your “customer,” it’ll just make them less likely to cooperate
4. Don’t ask for a lot of money: you’ll be much more successful if you ask for change as opposed to asking for like hundreds of dollars obviously

On a more serious note. Some of these principles can be applied to entrepreneurship. Nobody wants to earn revenue purely from ads. If you could somehow convince people to pay you for your service, you could theoretically make a lot of money. So here’s how you do it (for simplicity lets say you have some website the offers some service):

1. Be subtle: your site shouldn’t come off as desperate. Don’t make the sight glaringly about money, it should be something in the background that just gets done.
2. Be friendly: Make your website really easy to use. Along those lines make it easy for people to pay you. If they have to jump through hoops just to pay, they won’t.
3. Don’t ask for a lot of money: If I charge a lot for my service, then less people will want it. (simple economics. as price rises demand declines). This also depends on who your target audience is. If your targeting enterprise customers, you can charge much much more than if your targeting ordinary people

Anyway, this is turning into a pretty long rambling post about nothing really that interesting so I guess I’ll end it.

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson (courtesy of CalvinandHobbes.com)

I stumbled on this comic just now looking for a different Calvin and Hobbes strip that unfortunately I wasn’t able to find. But this comic reminded me of the good ol’ summers that I used to have when I was a kid when I would by dying of boredom and excited to go back to school (yes I was a nerd even then). The summers where I would sit around in the heat all day reading, watching tv, sweating. Where my friends and I would have water fights, go swimming, play sports and on the whole be spontaneous.

We used to have this tradition in elementary and middle school where after the last day of school my friends, my brother’s friends, my brother and I would all come to our house and have an intense water fight. We’d just run around my house with super soakers (which by the way seem to have changed a lot since I last had one), hoses and water balloons and we’d all be dripping and shivering after a couple of hours.

Since none of us could drive, during the days when our parents worked we weren’t able to hang out with each other so everyone got bored, but it was the best boredom one could imagine. There were no cares, no deadlines, no internships, no summer school, no applications and it was truly amazing.

I already wrote about what I’m doing this summer so I won’t really talk about here (you can read about it here though). But since high school, summer was about getting ahead in school, getting into college, and learning how to be an adult (i.e. working). In high school, I took classes, tutored, taught clarinet, tried to get a job, studied for SATs, worked on college applications and even though there was a lot more free time than during the school year, it wasn’t the same as the summers of elementary and middle school. And now in college, I’ve spent both my summers working full time for pretty much the entire summer because I’m supposed to get ready for adult life.

It’s not like I don’t enjoy these summers where I am doing things. In fact I think if I were given a couple of weeks with nothing to do, I’d probably spend most of it programming anyway. It’s just that I think I would like a couple of weeks with nothing to do, and then I’d have the ability to spend that time however I want (programming…) and it would be really relaxing. I also think the not being able to drive around would be interesting, because I’d get a lot more time to myself which I need every now and then (especially when I’m trying to relax).

So things have certainly changed, but I wouldn’t say for the worse. Now I’m able to take care of myself, I’m rarely ever bored during these summers, and I still have some time to play sports and hang out with my friends. It also really makes me enjoy the weekends.

On a random note. I used to read Calvin and Hobbes pretty religiously. I have a lot of the comic books at home and really like Watterson’s creativity. Calvin’s imagination is amazing and I really enjoy a lot of the adventures that he has. Also I find his philosophies and social commentaries pretty interesting. If you haven’t read much of this comic I highly recommend it.