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I recently came across someone who called himself a “full stack” developer. By his definition of the term, I am at best a “full queue” developer. In my entire career, I have never written my own stack implementation. But I recently wrote my own working queue. I didn’t have the heart to break his illusion. I know, I should have educated him and become a better person myself. But I also know, from a lot of my students, that am the worst teacher they ever had to learn from. I don’t disagree with them. ...

I sort of went into an exile since the last post. I think none of this blogging platforms in working for me. I hate to type with my phone, in spite of its bigger screen. I don’t carry my pad everywhere either. Not so much of the mac too. Basically, I travel only with my phone and I don’t want to have to type with the phone. That means, I lose all the brilliant thoughts for a post by the time I get to the mac or to the office laptop that I usually write these posts from. Last week, I tried another “brilliant” attempt. I quickly logged in from the phone and wrote the title alone for two posts. I forgot about this when I got back home. Then when I logged in over the weekend, I have completely forgotten what those titles are for. So lost two more posts, effectively. ...

As usual, I have started running another experiment.But this is only two days young. I should wait for another month or so to see if I really hold this up. The routine is the SAVERS routine that I came across in techcrunch or mashable recently. The actual routine is like this: Sit in silence; Meditate Affirmations Visualizations Exercise – my usual yoga Reading – currently “War of the worlds by H.G.Wells” Scribe – for the first time, am writing a journal with pen and paper. Each of the steps, except exercise is about 5-10 mins long. Overall it costs me about an hour or so to finish. But the best part of this is, I don’t touch my iPhone or mac until this is done. And usually, there are some tasks like watering the plants and replacing dry plates and cutlery back in their aisles. Then I have only enough time to give myself a bath and start for work. Of course, I don’t wake up that late either. I just managed to start work quite early on both these days. Maybe most other days, I ll have a lot of spare time. ...

I found out recently that I don’t use Facebook all that much anymore. Ever since they created a separate app for messaging, I don’t really chat up anyone on Facebook anymore. I have nothing against the move, I just hate to have one more app. I haven’t posted anything on Facebook in a very long time. I don’t tag the places I go to anymore. I don’t check-in anything I do. To think about it, I don’t even click pictures when I go some place. I just enjoy it in my eyes, get mesmerized and leave it that way. ...

I spent some time listening to some TED talks on creativity (yes, again). And I noticed something that I had missed all the other times I did this. The first step to being creative is being engaged to your environment. Duh! That is quite basic understanding right? But somehow I missed this part. And this is something I complain to Noni about a lot. I keep telling her that I can’t seem to find any problems around me. Just about everything seems to be working fine for me! Clearly, am not engaging with my environment. I have a whole lot of assumptions that make my environment work for me. Or am making an “ass” out of “me” – flicked that from “Silence of the Lambs”, creative huh? ...

So I got about 60% of one app working on my iPhone to a satisfactory extent. I still need to add a couple of features before it can used as an app. I thought this is perhaps a good time to think about and generally fix the horrible UI that I have created so far. Thinking about it, I suck so bad at UI that I have never written a GUI application all my life. I briefly dabbed with GTK, PyGTK, PyQT, Tk-Wish, WxWidgets and a bunch of others (including VB and VC++). I failed at each one of them. As in the buttons usually clicked and the labels and tables got updated as needed always. But I was never proud of how it looked. I almost hated myself for this failure. But then I stumbled upon websites of many programmers (friends, some times stuff that I just stumble upon) and found that most of them were really bad. And they didn’t seem to have a problem with it. That is when I started feeling very good about myself – at least I could see that my work is not presentable, even if it was worth presenting. ...

What I am about to discuss here is not a basic need. It is more of a luxury, good to have setup. Nobody quite misses it now, but maybe it will become essential in the future. Or maybe not. During the formative years of the foetus, parents get to see their baby(-ies) take shape through the months with the help of the ultra sound scans that the doctor uses. For the first 6-7 months, the baby is still not very active. But around 7 months, it becomes quite active and is almost able to listen to sounds from outside and maybe also responds to them. Usually, you would have to be in luck to see this happen during a regular checkup visit. And not a lot of us would be that lucky. ...

The sector that really needs better marketing folks is the real estate sector. At least the residential real estate market in India and to some extent in Singapore also. Today someone from India wanted me to buy a house in Bangalore. Apparently I could do that with just a 7lac payment and then rest upon possession. I had a couple of problems with the call: It was made at a completely inappropriate time. I dunno if there is a way to say what is a more appropriate time, but it maybe polite to ask after you make the call. Assuming that picking up means am idle is a tad incorrect. And keep your opening line simple and clear. Maybe I have an answer as soon as I know what you call for. Or maybe after you tell me the city you are talking about? Do some research please – I have never, all my life so far, searched for even rental spaces in Bangalore. I have never written on any of social networks that I’d like to settle down in Bangalore. Not even once. Thinking about it, I don’t think I even talk about Bangalore unless I have to mention something about my cousins there. But then, I have never had to mention them on any social network. Oh yes, many of my friends are in Bangalore. But please check my interaction levels with each one of them. No. I am not going to Bangalore. And I don’t intend to own real estate in places I don’t want to go. Don’t tell me you don’t have this data. I didn’t give you my number in the first place. Remember? I made the mistake of attending a real estate fair about two years ago. I thought – now that I am an NRI, maybe I could suddenly afford all the houses in India. I got my answer about 10 minutes into the fair. I never went back again. There have been 6 or 7 fairs since. And my absence is each one of them should tell you something – either I already picked something or I am not interested. What part of my absence don’t you guys understand? Even in the sole fair that I attended, I only visited stalls that had properties in Chennai and Coimbatore. Neither of these places are a 2 hour drive from Bangalore. Not yet, at least. And please stop advertising and marketing the fact that your properties are very close to international airports. Let’s look at this a little closely Nobody goes to work in an aeroplane in India. Unless they were pilots. Nobody goes to work in the airport unless they are staff or security. No, I don’t have my own aircraft. And please think about the number of people who picked your property that have their own aircrafts. I don’t intend to buy one any soon either. And I might even consider proximity to domestic airports – but international airports just beat me. I don’t want to own a property that I stay in for a few days a month. I am better off staying in a hotel. And I don’t see how I could rent my property to pilots, airport staff or security. Given how bad most airlines are doing, this doesn’t seem very exciting. It doesn’t help either that the property is very close to engineering colleges. For what it is worth, I don’t have a kid yet. And when I have one, it is very likely I don’t want him in Engineering. Oh, the engineering colleges that are near your property are neither Anna University nor IIT. Even if my kid decides to study engineering, I won’t pay up unless he/she studies in an IIT or a Anna University. Of course, there is a very good likelihood that the obscure college near your property does better research than both these places combined. I don’t mind regretting my decisions in that case. And all this is at least 19-20 years into the future. Maybe the college would close down by then. Or maybe they would be a different state or a different enrollment examination? So don’t bother selling something so distant in the future. The only thing that matters is the proximity to a healthcare facility. One with good doctors and good equipment. Rest else fall flat. And yet, only a few can claim this. For singapore only – While most of the above are not applicable to Singapore, they do claim proximity to MRT. Once I saw a property ad that was just 30mins from a very prominent interchange. I was stunned given its pricing. But then you need to think again. 30 mins from that interchange could potentially take me anywhere on the island. And that is quite bad for your marketing 🙂 Wake up guys. Already the market is volatile and stressed. Bad marketing on top of this cannot do much good. Or at least, leave me out of your loop. ...

I attended the Singapore MiniMakerFaire this weekend at Tampines. It was fun. I had to keep it a short trip for other reasons, but am happy that I didn’t miss the faire at least. Next year, I really should present something or volunteer at the least. One of the things about attending this event is, it kinda puts me to shame. I can give you reasonably detailed steps on how to make most of the stuff in display. Yet, I haven’t made even a simple four wheel bot on my own. Shame on me. ...

After a lot of deliberation, discussions, depressions, planning and meticulous budgeting, Noni convinced me to just stfu and pick up that damn device. So we did just that. I am still a little unsure whether I like the feel of the device. I love my iPhone 5 because the form factor is just about perfect for me. This is my first 4.7″ device in the last 4-5 years that I have held a smartphone. Way too old for tech? Maybe. ...