Avinash Meetoo: Blog

I’ve managed to upload (thanks Stéphane!) our best photos of India to my Flickr Pro account. Please feel free to comment!

(For once, photo courtesy of myself )

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written by avinash

An update: Stéphane Lee has just offered me a Flickr Pro account!!! I’m delighted! Thanks Stéphane. I owe you one massive beer (ek so gajack)

I’ve just (re)discovered Flickr and I would like to upgrade my Flickr account to a Pro account but I can’t!!!

The reason is that Flickr uses PayPal for payment processing and PayPal unfortunately does not list Mauritius among the countries from which one can pay.

In my opinion, this is just an oversight and I’ve sent mails both to Flickr and PayPal to that effect. PayPal has not responded. But someone from Flickr has replied:

Thank you for your feedback, I will share it with the team. You can also purchase your account offline [...]

But I don’t want to send them some bloody draft or international money order in 2006!!!

So I have only two solutions:

1. Wait for PayPal to include Mauritius in its list of countries…
2. Have someone from abroad (with a non-Mauritian credit card) buy a Flickr Pro gift for me… Naturally, I’ll reimburse the $24.95 in one way or another

(Beautiful image courtesy of madgirl)

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written by avinash

Seems that Nomad has lost the battle as both Telecom Plus and Mauritius Telecom have updated their websites with their new prices.

MyT

The normal MyT package is now Rs 750 + VAT (previously it was offered at Rs 990 + VAT). This is for 256kbit/s and 1Gb of “garantie d’usage”. In today’s difficult times, Rs 240 + VAT of savings is not bad at all.

Wanadoo ADSL

The normal Wanadoo ADSL package (garanteed 128kbit/s access) is also offered at Rs 750 + VAT. Personally, I prefer the MyT offer because of the Wifi connection but you may want (you bloody pirate ) a garanteed bandwidth…

Nomad

No price decrease at all! The normal Nomad Home (garanteed 128kbit/s access) is still being offered at Rs 890 + VAT. Of course, Nomad is also available at 64kbit/s at only Rs 550 + VAT.

Let’s see how Nomad reacts to these new offers…

(Photo courtesy of NaOH)

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written by avinash

While visiting Connaught Place and the various train stations and airports of India, I bought four books, three of which were in my Amazon Wishlist (so I am really happy)

Here they are:

I bought the Dragon Book as it is a classic on compilers published some twenty years ago. I suppose you all know my passion for programming languages. So it’s only natural that I want to know more about the process of compilation (and also interpretation). To be frank, I really want to know a lot more and I believe that the best way to do that is to teach compilers to undergraduate students. So beware kids, I’m coming

Programming Language Pragmatics is now considered to be the successor of the Dragon Book. I managed to get the second edition which was published only late this year. Quoting the blurb on the back of the book, Both students and expert programmers alike will benefit from its comprehensive exploration of the fundamental concepts underlying the most important programming languages. I’ve just started reading it and I am still trying to understand lexical and semantic analysis. But I must say that I find the book very readable.

Aha! This is a book that I was really interested in. And not only because of the girl In my opinion, the book is a comic book on Design Patterns. And it is great! I’ve just started reading it and I’ve already learnt a lot about the Strategy and Observer patterns (even though I own and I’ve read the GoF book). I’m dreaming of a day when we could prescribe this book as a textbook for OO classes…

Now I know you must be telling yourself that I’m getting old and the next book I’ll buy will be that crap men from Mars and women from Venus thing. But you can’t be further from the truth. This book is really a fantastic book. I’ve been longing to get it for one year now (Yep! It was on my wishlist). Of course, I have friends and I know how to influence people (ahem…). But sometimes I am too direct or cynical or even mean. This book will help me be nicer to others especially when I really want them to do something that I’ve in mind. I’ll tell you if Dale Carnegie’s method works or not. As an appetiser, the first principle is “Don’t criticise!”. So I’ll really have to change the way I deal with people after all

My bookshelf is really getting nicer and nicer!

(Photo courtesy of Watanabe Kanato)

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written by avinash

We are back!

Yannick Catherine, Madhav Ramlugun, Rajiv Perseedoss and I will most probably never ever forget this Indian adventure. In a way, it was a dream come true. Two months ago, no one would have thought that we would be able to organise this trip. But I must thank Sudha Cheerkoot-Jalim, Pascal Grosset and Anwar Chutoo who have really worked hard to make this come true.

I’ve discussed with some coaches there and I noticed that most competitors had had years of preparation before coming to the contest. And by preparation, I don’t mean rote-learning. The kids really are good problem solvers and excellent programmers. That’s the whole point of the event.

I believe that, with some changes in the way we present problem solving and programming to our students, their level will quickly increase up to a point where we can realistically say:

(Boat picture from Khairul)

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written by avinash