The Little Prince

Pleased that Google chose to celebrate Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, a book that I can go back to and re-read and re-read. Reinforces a cherished sentiment of never wanting to grow up.

Iyer samayal

Thanks to Neha, I discovered a mami-mama who most helpfully demonstrate terrific south Indian, dare I say tam bram dishes on youtube.

Future Proof

Do software applications that perform forecasting and projections remind you of  crystal ball gazing?  

There are a number of consultants who use technology and sit down with their clients and can help them make decisions about current situations or problems. There are various methods to do make projections. There are a few objectives to be achieved. A few parameters are input and collective lives churned and analysed. Pictures emerge, and with them, ways to give meaningful interpretations. Above all there is the simple faith driving the interaction. 

Whether appeasing divinity or wallets, whatever the means,  the outcomes are always subject to aberrations in the behaviour of gods and humans and perhaps the rains. But not to worry, there is software to cope with even the weather!

File conversion

Not Maha useful. See http://zamzar.com/ They haven't sent me the results of the file conversion yet. So I don't really recommend it.

Technology Invasion - The Intention Scanner

Call for ethical debate over possible use of new technology in interrogation

A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act.

This device has been developed for interrogation. What makes it different from a lie detector is that it can understand the intentions of the person. It is aimed to be used to interpret the mind of suspects to see if they had any intent to commit crime. The technology of the brain scanner may also be used in medicine. It could help a patient manipulate an artificial limb merely by thought.

Having worked with software - and software always has bugs - as a tester for several years now, I am not always filled with trust for anything that has code in it. Carefully programmed and thoroughly tested code has bugs. And this scanner claims to interpret thoughts in the complex human brain? It may even have power to decide the fate of the persons involved. For now, it reports a 70% accuracy. So, aside all the ethical issues, how does one trust its verdict?

[ Listen to the Guardian Podcast about this ]

Naming Ceremony

The wireless (network) that had served us for the last two years stopped working last week because of a fancy technical incompatibility involving routers cable and/or Adsl. A replacement was purchased from ebay at a very decent rate.

My overjoyed (programmer) spouse rushed off this morning to the post office to collect the parcel. It looked intact and in good health contrary to all fears about second hand purchasing on the internet. So despite a grand breakfast of adai and chai, he non-unanimously decided to set up the wireless without delay. In the backdrop of the mild cold and drizzle outside and Kanda Sashti Kavacham (i remembered my neighbour vaadyaar mami who used to play it at the crack of dawn and sing along with it) playing inside, I abandoned the kitchen premises and watched while he sincerely sat down, bent over, half rose, scratched his chin and frowned during the process.

What shall we name the wireless network, he asked. I promptly suggested Marthandan. After Marthanda Varma, a ruler of Kerala some centuries ago. Marthandan also means Sun and I have been enamoured of that name ever since. Besides, my history text books had drawings of him with a beard and crown seated grandly on a bench with curved legs and his hand resting on a sword and Without protesting, Ashok started to type it in ...'MARTHA N DAN' . I squealed with laughter and declared that clearly, he could not appreciate the beauty of the name. Lengthy discussion followed.

Do you want the name of a divinity? Narayana, Murugan, Dandapani,? Nah! Or a colourless repetition with our house name or number? Such as Alma Home Net? We could do Number 12 Home Net, couldn't we! Shall we join our names? No? Nick names then? Not the name of a car, please! No ragam either then. Okay. Silence.

Shall we call it vengaayam? (casually)

What? Vengayam, as in onion, ulli, pyaaz? (shock and excitement)

Yes?

Yes!

Good Grief ! All interview questions!

...are available on this site ... http://www.techinterviews.com Whatever is happening to the world?

My New Hobby On The Net

I have suddenly changed loyalties from Internet Explorer (IE) to Firefox since the last two weeks. I had got so used to the IE shortcuts and was stubbornly unwilling to look at another browser. But that was back then, when I was young and foolish. So let's hear me sing praises of Firefox.

This browser is neat and stacks up all the different URLs in tabs within the same browser so my desktop looks uncluttered. It has the very same shortcuts as IE, so I did not have to relearn anything. In fact, it imported all my favourite bookmarks too. It remembers my passwords more fashionably.

Okay, Firefox has this really creative plugin called Stumble. And it takes the shape of a little button. You tell this plugin all the topics of interest to you and then it lets you Stumble on websites of related topics. It randomly picks a topic and presents you a page. It was so much fun ! I think I was awake till around two in the morning Stumbling upon information and fun stuff on mathematics and science. I got pretty interesting things to read.

There was a site that explained the Kaprekar constant. Apparently it goes like this. Take any 4 digit number which may have repeating digits. Arrange them into the largest and smallest number and find the difference. The difference, which is also a 4 digit number and treat it the same way. Arrange it into largest and smallest digits and go on. Finally, one reaches a point where the difference will come to a constant value of 6174. This is the Kaprekar constant. The reason is that this process follows a sequence which is finite.

Another thing I found was that IBM has this monthly puzzle (and I found them truly puzzling) and most certainly makes for cerebral-wake-up. Oh yes, and before I forget, some passing reading on origami, mentioned that unfolding the paper would reveal a complex geometric pattern.

Oh well, I am getting so addicted to this ! This morning while I was having breakfast, I decided to read the Net instead of a book, like I usually do, so I didn't have to turn the pages. And I did a random Stumble. I got a dump of inconsequential facts like 2 out of 3 who voted for Bush go to Church although Bush is not a believer, that some sued someone else who was already dead, despite knowing that the second someone was dead, that 7% of Americans claim that they don't bathe, that a bar in London sells vaporized vodka so people smell, sorry, inhale instead of sipping it, that the Bible has been translated to Klingon - which is (an imaginary) language of the Star Trek characters, and that polar bears are left handed. Now did that matter to my existence ! Ah well, but it was an enjoyable breakfast alright !

AllPairs, A Test Case Generation Tool

The last couple of days, I have been fervently testing attributes that have multiple values, and I have ended up with enormous grids trying to cover every possible combination with the optimism that no webby corners have been overlooked. And all at once, I saw a light, a host of golden solutions ! Ok, flowery language (pun intended) apart, Rajeshvaran directed me to this neat little tool called AllPairs. So now, this tool is based on the Orthoganal Array Testing Principle and works out the minimum number of pairs for you, so that all conditions may be satisfied. I used it to reduce 43 test cases to 8 and still felt good that the testing had achieved satisfactory coverage. This page from James Bach lists two more tools for test data generation!