Avinash Meetoo: Blog

Randy Pausch, Professor at Carnegie-Mellon university, died yesterday of complications from pancreatic cancer at the age of 47.

A few weeks ago, Gavin and I watched his last lecture, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, and it was a nice experience. This guy knew he was going to die, yet he was happy to give a last lecture in front of a packed audience and talk about how he felt he had managed to achieve most of his dreams (like being in zero-gravity, working at Walt Disney Imagineering and creating Alice, a 3D environment to learn programming.) The video is available on YouTube.

What struck me during Randy Pausch’s last lecture was the fact that he had managed to do great things (Alice for example.) Like a lot of my heroes in fact. People like Linus Torvalds (of Linux fame of course), Paul Graham (of Viaweb and Y Combinator fame), Steve Jobs (Apple and NeXT), Richard Branson (Virgin) and countless other creators (like artists and programmers.)

Our world is what it is thanks to inventors and creators. And I’ve realized that most creative people are not working in a university doing research anymore. In his very interesting Why I am Not a Professor or The Decline and Fall of the British University, Mike Tarver writes:

The mandarins in charge of education decreed that research was to be assessed, and that meant counting things. Quite what things and how wasn’t too clear, but the general answer was that the more you wrote, the better you were. So lecturers began scribbling with the frenetic intensity of battery hens on overtime, producing paper after paper [...]

[But is] the paper important?  Is it something people will look back on and say ‘That was a landmark’.  Applying this last test requires historical hindsight - not an easy thing.  But when it is applied, very often the list of one hundred papers disappears altogether. Placed under the heat of forensic investigation the list finally evaporates and what you are left with is the empty set.

Mencius Moldbug is more direct in his What’s wrong with [Computer Science] research blog entry:

The reason why [Computer Science] research produces so little that can be called creative programming these days is that the modern process of grant-funded research is fundamentally incompatible with the task of writing interesting, cool and relevant software. Rather, its goal is to produce publications and careers, and it’s very good at that.

Bureaucrats build academic empires which churn out meaningless solutions to irrelevant problems.

And this is what made me realize that I was on the wrong track. I do not want to churn out meaningless solutions to irrelevant problems. I am not (and never will be) a bureaucrat. As from now, I’ll do things.

Thanks Mike and Mencius. Rest in peace, Randy.

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written by avinash

I will be succinct: Watch “Into The Wild” as it’s one of the most beautiful and breathtaking movies ever…

For those who have some time, let me tell you that Kyan, Anya, Christina and I watched Into The Wild yesterday and we were mesmerized. Here’s the plot (courtesy of IMDB):

After graduating from Emory University, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters that shape his life.

Nothing too fancy. No mafia killer. No special effects. No pounding music. Only a young guy who meets extraordinary (yet apparently “insignificant”) persons while hitchhiking towards Alaska.

At the end of the movie, you’ll really understand what exactly happiness means.

Thanks Sean Penn. You’re a bloody excellent film director.

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written by avinash

I am a fanatic user of Last.fm. Whenever I listen to a song either on my MacBook or my iPod, this information is sent to the Last.fm service which dynamically creates the chart shown above. It shows the artists I’ve been listening to during the past week. Here is what I feel about some of them:

Radiohead

I has just discovered Kid A which is an album that Radiohead did in 2000 just after OK Computer. I’ve been listening to it a lot this week and I love it. OK Computer is a fantastic album but Kid A is arguably better in the sense that it is much more experimental. I love artists who don’t rest on their laurels after having obtained a massive success and try to innovate.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD)

I discovered electronic music in the 80’s listening to Depeche Mode. But Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Art of Noise also played a big role in my musical education. OMD was very successful during this era with countless hits and platinum albums. A few days ago, I found out that OMD also liked experimenting and released very interesting tracks on the B-sides of their hits. All those B-sides have been collected on one CD and I’ve been listening to that lately. Furthermore, they also reworked some of their tracks for John Peel and I’ve also been listening to those.

Moby

I am a fan of Moby since listening to Go and then Play. I’ve been listening to his last album, Last Night, this week and there are some real gems on it. Moby is the grandson of Herman Melville hence his choice of artist name. The next step for me is to listen to the ambient version of Hotel. I’ll do that when I’ll have some free time at home without the kids jumping on me…

Avinash Meetoo

I like listening to my own music. They remind me of that saying: “1% is inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Composing, recording, arranging, mixing and mastering your own music is really really satisfying. And, remember, “la critique est facile, l’art est difficile.” I really need to start working on my third album. I do have some (relatively complete) tracks waiting for that elusive magic dust.

Depeche Mode

I am a die-hard Depeche Mode fan. This has been the case since 1985 when I was introduced to them by a good friend of mine, Yash. Since then, I have bought all their albums, lots of DVDs as well as a substantial number of singles. For new kids on the block, here is an excellent best-of courtesy of Last.fm:

Asian Dub Foundation

I’ve only discovered them two days ago. I’ve been listening to one of their best songs, Rebel Warrior, repeatedly since. Here is an excerpt from the lyrics:

Ami bidrohi!

I am the Rebel Warrior

I have risen alone

With my head held high

I will only rest when the cries of the oppressed

No longer reach the sky

When the sound of the sword of the oppressor

No longer rings in battle

[...]

Ami Bidrohi!

Yes the unity of the Muslim and the Hindu

Will end your tyranny

Ami Bidrohi! Ami Bidrohi!

Tricky

Considered by some to be the god of trip-hop ahead of Massive Attack and Portishead. I’ve have just discovered his 1995 album, Maxinquaye, and I’m hooked. The music and vocals by Martina Topley-Bird are close to being perfect.

—

I know that different people listen to music for different reasons. Personally, I don’t like to do what some call background listening. I rarely play some songs and do something else in parallel. For example, I am not listening to music while writing this blog entry.

What I like is foreground listening or active listening. I like playing a song or, better, a whole album and read about it and its creators on Wikipedia or Last.fm. I also love reading the lyrics at the same time as, like many of us, I have a lot of difficulties grasping them when they are being sung…

I wonder what would happen if music was banned?!?

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written by avinash

A lot of bloggers I know display Google advertisements on their respective blogs in order to earn some money. Naturally, I also have two Google advertisements on every page of this blog for exactly the same reason… (I’d like to point out that I have not received any cheque from Google up to now.)

This service from Google is called Google Adsense.

I got a comment today from Josh who told me that I need to have a privacy page on this blog to comply with Google’s Adsense latest Terms and Conditions. Using Google (what else?), I discovered a blog entry by Jennifer Slegg explaining in details the changes brought by Google. The most relevant paragraph is:

You must have and abide by an appropriate privacy policy that clearly discloses that third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your users’ browser, or using web beacons to collect information, in the course of ads being served on your website. Your privacy policy should also include information about user options for cookie management.

The idea is to make explicit that Google uses web beacons aka web bugs and cookies to track visitors. I suppose this brings some peace of mind to Google lawyers.

Then I realized…

This blog, noulakaz.net, is in violation with the terms and conditions and Google might terminate my Adsense account anytime. Fortunately, Jennifer Slegg has also thoughtfully written a sample privacy policy which she has made public. I read it and realized it was much too long for my blog. With some cut and paste, I finally came up with:

The privacy of visitors to noulakaz.net is important to me. Like most other websites, I collect and use the data contained in log files. I do use cookies to store information, such as your personal preferences when you visit my blog. To support my weblog, I also use third party advertisements which may use cookies and web beacons. You can choose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies in your browser settings or by managing security preferences. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with noulakaz.net as well as other websites.

Nice and compact! I’ve added this to my About page.

15 Common Mistakes

Not having a privacy policy was a mistake. But it’s arguably a cosmetic mistake. The baddest mistake as far as Google Adsense is concerned is for someone to click on his own Adsense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason (e.g. click on my links coz i need to pay for my hosting.) I came across this list of 15 Common Mistakes that violate Google Adsense Terms & Conditions and I would strongly advise all bloggers using Adsense to go through it once or twice.

Addendum

The “Software Failure / Guru Meditation” picture shown above should bring tears to those happy few who had an Amiga 15-20 years ago… To the rest, this is what we got when the Amiga crashed. No blue screen of death. No core dump. Instead, we had a flashing Guru Meditation message. People were cool at that time…

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written by avinash

Once more, I’ve been thinking about that one thing that regularly prevents geeks like us from sleeping peacefully: What is the text editor that I prefer?

I’ve always been a vim guy. I think I started using it on my Amiga or something about 15 years ago. I used it daily when I was studying in France and ever since. Of course, I’ve read a lot about how Emacs can help one reach nirvana and I’ve tried it a number of times but I’ve never managed to like it. I’ve even aliased vi to emacs for some time but this didn’t help a lot…

As a Mac user, I’ve bought TextMate which lots of people consider as being one of the best text editors around. In fact, it is regularly described as a 21st century Emacs. It looks great and has lots of very cool features. It supports loads of different programming languages and is extensible through plugins.

Even though I use it from time to time (especially when editing Ruby programs), I tend to quickly open a terminal and launch vim far more regularly. I wonder if I should alias vim to TextMate to help me recover my financial investment

When programming in Java, I always use Eclipse. I know, it’s massive and complex but I love the syntax completion and refactoring facilities. I tried NetBeans but I am more of an Eclipse guy.

What about you?

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written by avinash