2010 recap

The year went fast ! But then a lot of things also happened... just a minor recap in no particular order

Movies seen

• Avatar ( non 3D version)
• Dabang
• Ishquiya
• Udaan
• Shrek 4
• Percy Jackson and the Ligtning Thief
• The Social Network
• Tron

Bike Rides/Bikenomads

• Rode to Neemrana Fort. The only ride this year :(
• Had to cancel the BN calendars due to delays in the printing. Now 2011 calendars are on the way to being printed.
• Had to cancel the BN annual meet - again due to delays and low response. However 20XI meet is planned for Goa and seems to be getting good response.

Other Trips

• 2 trips to Dehradun, one in car. Love that place. 
• 2 trips to bangalore
• A trip to Singapore
• A trip to Santa Clara, went via the North Pole ;)

Gaming

• World of Warcraft : Cataclysm got released. I have a level 85 character now. My favorite game for many years now, and my wife's nemesis :)
• Started a Guild in World of Warcraft called 'Vinash'
• StarCraft 2 : completed the single player. Dont have any enthusiasm about the multiplayer part. 
• Batman : Arkham Asylum : Neat game. 
• Assasins Creed II : Classic game. Love jumping off the buildings. 
• Civilization V : The best civ game so far 
• Torchlight : an Indie game - the closest to Diablo you can get. Since Diablo seems to be delayed indefinitely, this is a good passtime.

Sports

• Football World Cup Yeah ! 
• Olympics
• And how can one forget the Vuvuzelas
• CWG gold rush in Delhi
• I dont follow cricket, so please do not ask anything for that.  ;)

Government/India

• Mostly can only remember the corrruption. 
• CWG scam
• Radia scam
• 2G spectrum scam
• Wikileaks 

Work/Tech

• Joined McAfee. Working with the WaveSecure team - the whole reason for me to join McAfee. This is phone software not AV software, so do not ask me any AV questions
• In One97 worked on an OutBound Dialer - which got shelved just as we got the 1st version running and stress tested on 1500 ports - tripple that of the previous best. Worked on PayTM a mobile payment initiative.
• Tried out ChromeOS from hexxeh's builds, booting off the USB drive
• Did a bit of prelimnary coding on Android. 
• Learning Django coding.
• My Configuring Bugzilla post was a hit this year. Lots of people were able to install Bugzilla and left their thanks in the comments field :)
• iPad got released this year. Waiting for iPad 2 before I buy it ! :D

 Hmm, now I look back - damn. Thats a lot of stuff for a year ! Lets see what 2011 has in store.

Mark Zuckerberg : Time person of the Year

Oh man ! The youngest billionaire in the world - just by getting people to connect to each other ! 

Reading his biography, you figure out that he was a genius from a young age. I guess that defined his success. 

Congrats Dude ! 

The Magic of Flying

Usually I just take the aisle seat while flying on night flights - what all can you see outside the window - right ? Flying has become so common-place that we just dont give much thought to it. Its another boring 2 hr flight is what we think.

But, I chanced upon this video a few weeks back.



So, this time I decided to keep my mind open. At checkin for the Delhi-Bangalore flight I asked for a window seat ... and experienced the magic of flying... again.

The Magic of Flying

As the flight took off, the lights on the runway start rushing by and with a final heave the plane takes up to the air. Isn't that amazing ? We are there - in a small tube - up in the sky ! Peering down, looking at delhi lighted up I wondered about the amazing amount of electricity needed to run the city. Houses, streets all lighted up. And yet, the most intense light was from the columns of cars lighting up the roads, making even the street lights look dull.

The plane took off in a direction where we were headed towards central Delhi, and had to take a U turn to correct the direction. The world from above looks so different , and as I was peering around for where we might be, I got my bearings by a beautiful sight - the Lotus Temple lighted up ! In the distance I could see the tall buildings around CP.

As the plane started approaching the Delhi suburbs/ Gurgaon, the topography of the houses changes to single or double story houses. Suddenly a flash caught my attention and looking in that direction I saw another unforgettable sight - fire crackers bursting. From ground level, we look up at the glitters these cause, but from the plane they are way below - just above the house levels. Different ways of seeing the same thing !

Pollution Line

Suddenly I got a feeling that there was some kind of shade above me. It felt wierd... a blackness and I was wondering ... untill ... all of a sudden I realized that it was actually an atmospheric effect. The blackness was actually the air at this level, free from the pollutants, while below it was the brownish glowing air with all the trapped pollution of Delhi. God ! It suddenly struck me how much of an unhealthy place we live in.

Just above the line demarcating the pollution line was the moon. A thin crecent moon, and since the air was so clean up here, I could make out the dark side of the moon - where the earths shadow was falling. So, I could see the entire sphere of the moon - the lighted part and the showded part. Mesmerizing.

I see shapes

As the flight progressed, and the pollution from Delhi became lesser, the entire country side started to become darker as the dispersion effect of the pollutants became lesser. The small towns and villages were dotted across the landscape. A beautiful sight. The villages in India are not really well planned, so they have these amorphous shapes - which take the shape that your imagination gives them - something like how you give shapes to clouds. The most interesting one I think was the JellyFish. The main town was the body of the creature, and since it was a big enough town, there was a bit of dispersion effect from the smog - giving the body a bloated kind of image. The tentacles were the roads leading to the town. Some Imagination eh ?!

MoonSet

Near the end of the flight, I saw the moon set. The moon by this time was at the horizon, and as it was slipping below it, all sorts of light refraction effects were happening. First the crecent changed from being circular to more angular with two vertical ends attached to a flattening horizontal line, till only the stright horizontal line was left, which itself winked out of view. Unforgettable. A MoonSet , seen for the first time.

I did not have any books with me this time. But the flight was anything but boring, and flying is such a wonderous magical experience which we seem to have forgotten.

Microsoft shooting itself in its foot ?

For sometime I have the feeling that Microsoft is shooting itself in its own foot.

My observation is not from the angle of an industry pundit but from a gamer's viewpoint.

Today, we have a lot of operating systems - Windows, Linux, AppleOS. They are quite polished and basically on par with each other. However, Microsoft Windows has the unique distinction as being the only desktop OS for which games are developed actively - and I do not mean games like Farmville, but AAA games like World of Warcraft, Need for Speed etc.

However, off late, the games on PC seem to be going down as Microsoft focuses more and more on the XBoX. For me and a lot of other gamers, this will mean that the PC as a gaming rig is loosing its significance. If I need to have a gaming console to play games, I do not need to get Windows for my PC - I would rather get a Mac or install Linux - most probably Linux for my desktop ( which is already dual boot for many years) or a macbook if I buy a laptop.

I predict that if Microsoft continues to neglect desktop gaming in favor of pushing its Xbox systems, they will be surprised to find that their desktop OS share dropping...

And if you think that I am wrong here, just compare with the OS growth for mobiles. iPhone has become such a big phenomena because its also a gaming platform. No other OS has realized this apart from Android which is trying to get more games up on its app store - as the recent Angry Birds release shows.

Leaving Microsoft to Change the World

Leaving Microsoft to Change the World

The book's name grabbed my attention as I was browsing the books at Om Book Shop. Intrigued I picked it up and started to read the first 2 pages... and I was hooked. This was a man working on a mission ... trying to get literacy to the schools of Nepal and then the rest of the world.

Have just read a few chapters, and it is hard to put down. I highly recommend a read and also check out the foundation : Room to Read.

Edit : 12/10 Finally finished the book yesterday. This is a great book. John Wood, ex Microsoft started an organization with the aim to provide books to children in various places. Its a touching book - descriptions of how the people reacted on getting the things.

Takeaway from the book.

• If you find your calling in life - its the best you can give in your life. Finding it means that you achieve more than what you can ever hope to do. John was a great exec, but once he found out his inner calling - he became a positive force of change for the unprivileged children.
• When you do something will all your heart - people around you get influenced, and help you do better. 
• Its better to concentrate on the good stuff rather than to criticize. e.g. in the book he mentions that some NGOs use pics of crying kids to get grants on the basis of pity. He on the other hand used pics of happy children going to their new school or reading a book. 
• You dont have to be a billionaire to change the world.

Loved the book. I recommend it to everyone. 

Ebb and Flow of the Yamuna

Took this pic a few days back from the Delhi metro as it enters the Yamuna Bank station:

The river was full and filled with water from bank to bank.

Today, the river looks like below:



there is a large island formed in the middle due to all the silt deposited by the flooding river. The area around the river would have been very fertile if the river had been allowed to overflow the banks - but now its all concrete and houses.

The Roger Federer Video

Just wow ! Thats what happens if you are able to reach the pinnacle of your profession

Jailbreaking the iPhone

Ok. So I finally succumbed to jailbreaking my iPhone. The main reason is being that I am now in Singapore, and the 'unlocked' iPhone I bought in India does not accept a SIM from singapore. What a stupid thing !

After a few days of carrying two phones, one which was actually 'unlocked' I decided to jailbreak the iPhone. As per a recent US Ruling, iPhone jailbreaking is legal.

Scouting around the web, the easiest way to jailbreak is to just browse to Jailbreakme.com. It shows a nice page with a "slide to unlock" . Ho ! this is going to be easy I thought. But just before doing the jailbreak, I thought about doing a backup... and thats when things went horribly wrong. So, this blog post is also an attempt for people who may face the same issues.

The adventure started with the update. I did not realize that a new iOS4 version ( 4.0.2) had come up, and without thinking I cliked 'update'.

Now, the 4.0.2 version from apple is a sneaky piece of software - it only blocks the jailbreak hack. So, ofcourse Jailbreakme.com did not work. Looked around on the web, and the only way forward was to downgrade the iphone.

Here is how you do a downgrade.

1. Download the relevant build. Go to this page to download the relevant firmware. Choose 4.0.1 (thats the latest as of now which can be jailbroken).
   
2. Start iTunes.
   
3. Connect your iPhone and select it.
   
4. You will see a button which says 'Restore'.
5. While pressing SHIFT click on Restore. This will prompt you which firmware version to restore to. Select the firmware you downloaded in 1 above.
   
6. The restore process takes some time. Go make some tea or something.
   
7. Once restored to 4.0.1 , navigate to Jailbreakme.com in the browser on the device. Slide to start the jailbreak process.
   
8. Jailbreak is just part of the process. What it does is opens up the iPhone to be able to install other 3rd party apps which is not part of the Apple Store - cause apple does not allow applications which messes with the system internals. The next step is to open up the SIM.
9. In point 8, one new app gets installed. Its called 'Cydia' which is an app store not controlled by Apple. Search for ultrasn0w in that. This is the SIM unlocking software. Install it.
   
10. Now you are good to go. Change the SIM to a local one.
    

Have fun now.

Issues etc.
One has issues with supported software, and here we are talking about unsupported software. So there are bound to be issues. Here are a few things that I faced.

1. For some firmware versions ( e.g. 3.1.3 ) you need to put the phone in the DFU (Device Firmgrade Upgrade) mode. If you are not able to get out of this mode after putting in the firmware, you will need RecBoot installed to get out of that mode.
   
2. Sometimes you get an error ( error code 10) during the downgrade portion. This will kind of leave your device in the hanging state ( happened to me). If this happens, disconnect the cable from the computer to the iPhone and use it on another USB port. Also make sure that the cable is the original iPhone one. I am using a different cable which was cheaper, but that causes problems.
   

Resources:
I did not dream up this process. The following sites were incredibly useful. Check them out:

• U.S. declares iPhone Jailbreaking Legal, over Apple's Objections : recent ruling in the USA makes it legal for users to jailbreak the iPhone.
  
• Rolling back your iPhone 3G to OS 3.1.3 : If you are not happy with the iOS4 as it really slows down the device, you may want to follow this guide to downgrade to 3.1.3. Just make sure that you download and install RecBoot before you begin the process as you are definitely going to need it.
  
• How to Downgrade Your iPhone 3G[S] from iOS4 to iOS 3.1.3 : Similar to the one above, but has a good video of how to get into the DFU mode.
  
• RecBoot : Download RecBoot from here.
• iPhone firmware files : List of all firmware restore files.
• How to Unlock the iPhone 4, 3GS, 3G using UltraSn0w.
• iOS jailbreaking : Wikipedia article on jailbreaking.

Hello World - in Android

Its been quite some time since I coded something in Android after setting it up. In the meantime, my system got formatted, and change in office project meant I was not getting much time to work on programming. After all, Managers don't code - eh ?

Well, I dont know. I like coding. Its an itch I have to take care of. So, after the initial Android examples, I tried a little change in the Android's Hello World. I was awake anyways watching the Uruguay vs Netherland's World Cup match! :)

The code changed a bit from the default 'Hello World'. Instead of static text, I added a edit box and an 'ok' button. Clicking on it will make an alert box pop up with a small message.

Its a small piece of code - about 40 lines. However, the API is a bit confusing for me, especially since I am also relearning Java as I go along.

Next on the agenda - make a small graphics app.

Microsoft's Kin is no more

It looks like Microsoft has pulled the plug on developing their own phone - which they had named Kin. There are a lot of theories around why it did not do well, and why they shut down the Kin.

I think that the KIN was killed due to 2 major reasons :
1. It was not doing well.
2. Politics.

1. It was not doing well

Here, I think that the problems were 2 fold.

First the shitty name which no one can identify with. It just does not sound cool. The chap doing the branding , he is not worth the money that was being paid to him.

Two, it was being targetted at the teenagers - but in a way that is patronizing. It was supposed to have all the wow features - facebook , twitter integration etc. However, I doubt they even tried to look at the psychology of teenagers. Teenagers hate it when people tell them what to do - and that was exactly what Kin was doing. Teenagers love to be treated as adults - which Kin was not doing. Teenagers go for brands and cool names - the Kind did not have that.

However, I dont think that this was why the Kin line was pulled up. Microsoft has very deep pockets and can afford to have a loss making product in the market for quite a long while - as one can see from the xbox.

So, my hypothesis about pt 2.

2. Politics

I think internal egos and politics killed the Kin. The people in the Windows mobile had much more of a say than the people developing the Kin. There would have been a power struggle behind the scenes - and Kin eventually lost out. Interestingly, people seem to shun talking about office politics - its taboo to speak about it - but not speaking about it does not mean that it is not existing.

Now, I got a bad feeling about the 'Kin'nect - the motion detection stuff that Microsoft is building. They should change that name to something else ...

How Google can clean up the Android Market

Google has an application market just like Apples AppStore called the Android Market.

Apple naysayers have been touting the benefits of the Android market saying that it is open and anyone can submit apps to it, quite unlike the draconian process for the Apple AppStore. This has lead to its own problem with a deluge of apps on the store which are malicious or substandard.

Om has written an article on ways to clean up the Android Market.

I have a different take on it.

Google can ill afford to go the Apple way and start certifying all the apps. Neither can they go putting the kill switch on the apps. What my suggestion is that Google go the way Twitter has and start to certify legitimate apps.

The process will be simple.

The company which wants it apps to be certified will submit its application to Google. Google after its due diligence can certify it, or point out what is wrong with it.

For making this work, Google will have to :

• Setup a system for recieving applications.
  
• Setup QA for certifying the apps.
  
• Make a few changes to the market application (both web and mobile) to show that an application is certified.

This will go a long way towards making sure that people can get around all the fluff that is there and be sure that genuine applications exist.

At the same time, it also allows developers to put their app onto the market even if they have not been certified - giving a better time to market.

Related Posts :

• Jon Lech's : Google's Mismanagement of the Android Market
• Om's : 4 Ways Google Can Clean Up The Android Market