Too many editors drive you crazy

We like to get used to things we do. Like using a text editors. Most of us are so used to using editors with GUI that after every few lines we mechanically press Ctrl+S to save our work. However, It becomes a real PITA if we are forced to use different editors with totally different shortcuts.

I have ended up in a very frustrating situation. I used vim for some basic shell script editing (especially when connected through ssh). For all my local work I used Kate or Kdevelop (KDE IDE), both of which are pretty standard when it comes to shortcuts (so Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V and Ctrl-S works). These days I have been using MATLAB a lot and that too using X11 tunneling :-( Although basic MATLAB editor is standard, the one which uses X11 tunneling has a totally different (and weird) shortcuts. For example, to save, you have to use (Ctrl-X Ctrl-S) and to copy Alt-W while (Ctrl-W) and (Ctrl-Y) is for cut and paste respectively.

The problem comes when you get used to using all of them. Now I type :w in matlab and expect it to save stuff or (Ctrl-x, Ctrl-s) in kate and wonder why did it cut the selected text.

It looks like even though this is exagerrated, it is not very far from truth :-) User interfaces do have profound impact on the way you do work ...

The Departed

Saw "The Departed" the other day. Nice movie. Keeps you guessing all the time. Even better is the sound track. Most of us seem to know "shipping up to Boston" which is rocking... But the main theme and "the departed tango" just mesmerized me. Not to forget "comfortably numb"

All in all its one superb soundtrack

Sweet summer sweat...

Today was the first day in year 2008 when I sweat without doing anything physically tiring.... This confirms that summers is finally here.

Piano is a string instrument

I always thought that Piano works on the same principle as Organ or Harmonium. But today I saw a program on Piano making. They actually put strings in side it which are hammered when a note is played...
That was a news for me :-)

I can drive :-)

This had been dragging on and on for a long time. But finally, it's done. I can now drive on my own in state of Michigan.

Grad student productivity

I know Jorge Cham has done something like this. But I would like to present my findings here...
The graph above shows productivity of a grad student wrt amount of workload. The slopes of two sides of the curve are affected by student's interests, time of year, his dedication and motivation from peers.

Comments are welcome !!

P.S. Is there a journal/conference where I can submit this ???

P. P.S. Its Friday, 30th May 20:50 hrs here. But for some god forsaken reason, blogspot is showing date as Saturday 31st May.

Interesting C program

#ifndef __NONSENSE__
#define __NONSENSE__

#include religiousviolence.h
#include dirtypolitics.h
#include popularculture.h

BOOL lesson_learnt = FALSE;


void History()
{
if(Checkstabiity(fanaticism) && CheckCorruption(BoomingEconomy) && CheckPublicDesire(SocialProblems))
lesson_learnt = TRUE;

else
History(); //repeat History
}

#endif



Building....
Link error ...commonsense32.lib missing...
exit..
ld returned status 1..

The Fellowship of The Ring

Today I completed first part of the great book by JRR Tolkien. Many may consider this absolutely insignificant. But some who know me will appreciate it. I must accept, I am nowhere near a good reader. I don't even read newspaper completely. It took me many months to read this one. So for me it is an achievement. It renews my confidence that I can complete the entire book.

Anyways, Having read it, I must say that Peter Jackson has done a splendid job. He has captured all that is important without hurting the theme much. Of course, he has changed a few things here and there, but that's acceptable as "cinematic liberty". In fact I did find the book boring and uninteresting in places and Jackson has smartly abridged those portions or dropped them altogether. Otherwise, he really has tried to capture the exact words of Tolkien. In fact, I would have never considered reading this book if it was not for the Jackson's trilogy.

USB pendrive can be washed!!!

I may forget my wallet , but I never forget to carry my usb flash drive (Transcend Jetflash 1G... not something I can boast of, but still...). I find it handy to have it with me in case there is a need to transfer stuff . It is much lighter than my lappy and It's faster and much more convenient than a CD.
To make the long story short, I always have it in my pocket and last week I forgot to take it out when I laundered my clothes. So it underwent a nice 40 minutes hot water wash. I came to about this only when I was putting my clothes in the dryer. And to be frank, blood froze in my veins for a whole minute, when I realized what I had done. I had few important PDFs some, songs and most importantly my graphics project in it. I literally kept it on my room heater for two full days ......... for drying :-) On the third, I put it in my lappy.............and it worked as good as it ever had. Not a single byte was lost. Now thats what I would call true data-clean-up.

Moral of the story : You can wash a pendrive ......just make sure to dry it before use :-)