Retailmenot.com coupon codes

This site: http://www.retailmenot.com/ seems to have relevant coupon codes. Often places like hotels in Las Vegas give a very good price, it is just that you need to save the magic word which is a coupon code. I saved about 30% using coupon codes, which is quite a chunk of money.

Novice Swimming Class

Yesterday i finished my Novice Swimming Class for the fall quarter. We had a kayaking lesson in the de-anza swimming pool. I paddled an ocean kayak and learnt skills like getting back into the boat if it capsizes in the water. Once again, I strongly recommend Mary's classes for learning to swim and to improve one's swimming abilities.

Here is my swimming teacher Mary Donahue's homepage.

The Beginning Swimming classes that she teaches in winter are listed here.

Winter classes are from Jan 3 - March 25.

Hand-Sharpened Pencils, Just $15 | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

say what??...

Hand-Sharpened Pencils, Just $15 | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

apps folders in itunes

>>o It is not clear why itunes doesn't support folders for apps. It is a big pain to reorganize apps on every device that connects to itunes.

Cancel that. It seems like the latest version of itunes has this feature where i can reorganize apps through DnD.

ios 4.2 update for ipad

It took about an hour fromshows up my home computer over DSL internet to download 551M of the OS update which sounds about right. The ipad update finished in about 10 minutes.

Some things that I was eagerly waiting for:

o Multitasking: Pandora Radio worked all the while I was syncing the device.

o Search within a page: finding it was a bit difficult, but it is just integrated into the search box. As you typed the string, there is a Next button that looping you thru the hits.

o It is not clear why itunes doesn't support folders for apps. It is a big pain to reorganize apps on every device that connects to itunes.

o So far I have not been able to use the Airprint to print on a printer shared by my Visa PC.

I have to see how this OS compares to the 4.1 on my iphone which keeps choking often. On ipad the OS appears to be very stable so far.

ios 4.2 update for ipad

It took about an hour fromshows up my home computer over DSL internet to download 551M of the OS update which sounds about right. The ipad update finished in about 10 minutes.

Some things that I was eagerly waiting for:

o Multitasking: Pandora Radio worked all the while I was syncing the device.

o Search within a page: finding it was a bit difficult, but it is just integrated into the search box. As you typed the string, there is a Next button that looping you thru the hits.

o It is not clear why itunes doesn't support folders for apps. It is a big pain to reorganize apps on every device that connects to itunes.

o So far I have not been able to use the Airprint to print on a printer shared by my Visa PC.

I have to see how this OS compares to the 4.1 on my iphone which keeps choking often. On ipad the OS appears to be very stable so far.

iOS 4.2 will be released at 10 AM today

Here is the ios 4.2 announcement.

iOS 4.2 Now Available, Brings Multitasking to iPad

I checked itunes and the update is not yet available.

This post says the update is available only at 10AM PST

http://techpinger.com/2010/11/apple-ios-4-2-to-be-released-at-10-am-pacific-time/

I am very curious to check how the servers are going to hold up. I am going to check at 10AM today.

Kind of like the online version of standing in the line outside the Apple store for a new release of an Apple device...

Amazon.com: How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond (9780316098304): John Powell: Books

Amazon.com: How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond (9780316098304): John Powell: Books

I heard about this book from Science Friday show today:

Science Friday Archives: How Music Works

Giants Win First World Series for San Francisco - NYTimes.com

Giants Won! Renteria and Lincecum and Wilson were fabulous!

Giants Win First World Series for San Francisco - NYTimes.com

And the sweet thing is George W came for all the world series games in the Rangers stadium and their team lost :))

RT @davewiner: "Getting Things Done" sounds like "Using An Outliner." http://r2.ly/729c

Totally right.
I had connected these concepts when I read this book 2 yrs ago.
In practice it works very much like an outliner.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Novice Swimming Class

Today we went into the deepwater pool (up to 16 feet) in the swimming class. We first practiced our underwater swimming stroke in the shallow pool, wore our flotation pad and then headed out to the deep pool. In the deep pool, we then got a hang of the pool, lost our fear of the deepwater with help from the pad.

Then we removed the pad, pushed ourself up in the edge of the pool and sank in the water. This gave us a sense of going inside the deepwater and then we floated up. All along, 2 lifeguards were assisting with the training. We then jumped into the water from the deck and then floated up and then swam to the sides with assistance. Finally, we used the springboard to dive into the pool feet first and then swam or kicked to the side. All along, we could also wear our flotation pad and practice treading in the deepwater pool.

It was an exciting class and I never thought I would ever get into the deepwater pool. It was looking very daunting in the first day of the class. Now I have a feeling that I could deal with it. Mary, the instructor, says that we could dive head first into the pool by the time the class would end. That would be awesome. Actually, If I am able to tread water by the end of the class in that pool, i would have achieved what i wanted to achieve from this class.

Obama, Jon Stewart and Change - NYTimes.com

Obama on Daily show was gripping. Jon gave Obama some tense moments. I watched Obama's appearance when he was a Senator and he was a bit loose then. This time, he was acting a bit tight (presidential as some would say). I thought obama really did say: "larry summers did heck of a job" echoing George Bush's comment on Brownie. But he recovered very quickly and sharply once Jon tried to make fun of him and said it was "pun intended".

Obama, Jon Stewart and Change - NYTimes.com

Yes they Cain! SF Giants, Matt Cain take 2-0 World Series lead!

Absolutely joyful to watch!

The bayarea is abuzz with October baseball fans! (including myself)

SF Giants, Matt Cain take 2-0 World Series lead

I never thought baseball would be this much fun to watch!

List of unusual words beginning with X

While looking for words starting with X: List of unusual words beginning with X,

I came across this interesting site:

http://phrontistery.info/x.html

World Series Backdrop Comes in Red and Blue - NYTimes.com

I said it before here and NYTimes is also saying it.

This year's World Series is Blue Vs Red!

World Series Backdrop Comes in Red and Blue - NYTimes.com

Paul the Octopus Who Predicted World Cup Winner Has Died - ABC News

The Octopus that entered the pop culture, including some bollywood movies, has died.

Paul the Octopus Who Predicted World Cup Winner Has Died - ABC News

Wi-Fi Direct Promises Device-to-Device Connectivity: Tech News «

Wi-Fi Direct Promises Device-to-Device Connectivity: Tech News «

If this pans out, it will be nice. I can have hopefully have a Wifi-direct adapter for my printer, hard drive, camera, stream data, music and video over the wifi, etc. This will probably replace AirPlay but probably not in the next couple of years.

Using feedburner to connect twitter and blogger

This weekend, I discovered the blogger and twitter extensions in chrome. It is now very easy to blog about anything very very quickly. I was also trying to kickstart my twitter habit. While doing so, I found myself blogging an entry and then tweeting that entry at the same time. I always wondered why blogger wouldn't tweet for me when i posted my blog entry. Maybe its because they are competing tools in a sense.

I then found out from this link that feedburner allows posting tweets for every blog post automatically. feedburner was recently acquired by google apparently. I then created a feedburner feed for my blog and in the feed preference, i requested for twitter connection. This was fairly easy to setup and in a minute or so, i am now setup to tweet for every blog post. If it worked, this post will be the first one for me that will appear as a tweet as well.

Picture of a Mosquito Heart

This Picture of a Mosquito Heart Is The Year's Best Microphotograph | Popular Science

Novice Swimming Class

Im taking the novice swimming class at DeAnza college. The class is from late September to first week of December. The instructor Mary Donahue is a very good swimming teacher. I think that subjects like this taught by really good teachers like Mary will really develop people with good skills that can be used through the rest of our lives. I think community colleges are such a good use of my tax dollars. The facilities in de-anza college and the teaching quality are just so good.

Here are my class summaries:

Class 1:

This class was all about getting used to the water. We had to dunk our head and immerse ourselves inside the pool. We learnt beach ball float and got used to floating in the water learning about the nature of our bodies in water (i.e. your body floats naturally!). We got used to holding our breath and floating in the water.

The final exercise in the class was to do a somersault by doing a beach ball float and then a windmill hand rotation.

It was a lot for the first class but it got our attention.

Class 2:

In this class we learnt about treading water, watched videos about water safety and practiced the previous class material. We did more of somersaults and floats. Then we started floating in the water and doing flutter kicks.

Class 3:

We learnt about jumping into the water from the deck and swimming from there. We learnt about underwater stroke, i.e. swimming under water. We learnt about backstroke (soldier, monkey, bird(or airplane)) and swimming while facing up. Using the underwater stroke we swam to the bottom of the pool and did handstands. We also learnt about the rudiments of freestyle by keeping our hands like chicken wings and swimming that way. The other drill was to keep our arms well stretched and swimming forward using flutter kicks.

We jumped into the pool from the deck and swam facing down and later facing up using backstroke.

Class 4:

This class was all about learning freestyle swimming. We watched videos about freestyle swimming, the entry, pushdown, pushback and recovery (maybe there were different terms for these). We were not supposed to learn breathing while swimming yet. We did a lot of drills of swimming in backstroke and then freestyle, swimming under water and then freestyle, etc.

Fear the Beard!

Crazy persona of Giants' Wilson has sober roots - MLB - Yahoo! Sports

Apple ipad purchase

We bought an ipad this month. It is a very cool device and reinforces my desire to switch over to Mac. It is really a media consumption device and not a computer. You can browse, read books (but too heavy to be a good ereader), read mail, calendar, write simple docs, notes, mails, etc., listen to music, watch netflix and youtube, tweet or blog, use all the cool apps, play games, etc.

And you get to do all these in a very enjoyable and interactive way. That is what i like about ipad. You can do almost all of these on a PC but you will not enjoy doing any of these as much as doing them on ipad. Usability makes all the difference in using these devices.

For example, i felt that my PC became really usable only after i switched over to google chrome (firefox sucks and IE is horrible), itunes, latest version of thunderbird, picasa, etc.

What i dont like about ipad? The screen just has too much glare. The device is a bit too heavy. The screen gets too smudgy after a few minutes. You cannot search within the page in safari web browser.

Another major gripe, you cannot watch any flash content. I think Steve Jobs just picked a religious war and not a technology fight. His reasons for rejecting flash are not very convincing. However, i do agree about the poor quality of the current Adobe plugins. My chrome browser and firefox crashes too often in shockwave plugins.

Apple ipod and ipad are surely "walled gardens". But im not complaining too much because I think the "walled gardens" like the one that Apple built are pretty convenient, pleasant (not many virus infections or mcafee caused slowdowns to prevent them) and makes me very productive. If i want the freedom and anarchy of an open environment, i will go to my PC and Linux machines, but i am happy that i have a choice of going into beautiful but restricted "walled gardens" like what Apple provides.

Amazon to Allow Book Lending on the Kindle - PCWorld

Amazon to Allow Book Lending on the Kindle - PCWorld

Final: Giants win National League Pennant - NYTimes.com

Final: Giants win National League Pennant - NYTimes.com

I thoroughly enjoyed this game. Was a REAL TORTURE!

And loved every innings of it, especially the last one!

This year's world series is BLUE state vs RED state!

FEAR THE BEARD!!

GO GIANTS!!

First class postage stamp

As of today, it seems like it is 44cents for 1oz first class US postage.

Early Voting in California 2010

I voted early for this election. This year's voting sheet was really long. It had a long list of different propositions. Some of them really are about lawmaking which in my opinion should be in the hands of the legislators. Isn't that the way "democracy" is supposed to work? You elect legislators and they are supposed to make laws?

California's "Direct Democracy" through the Proposition process, in my opinion, is out of control.

However, I wouldn't want to get rid of it altogether. For example, in the last election, there was Proposition 17, which changed California to have "Open Primaries". I am eagerly hoping to see a lot of moderate candidates as a result of that Prop.

As for the long voting sheet, I really hope that they bring in some good web applications to show the voting recommendations from notable opinion makers, from newspapers or even from your social network. With a very busy schedule, I really do not have the time to read about the merits of a little known proposition in my county government. I would rather take the word of someone that I would trust for this one.

Cellphoon Reapars

I found this from Neeru Khosla's (wife of Vinod Khosla) blog. A very interesting blog post from the director Shekar Kapur. Very heartwarming story reminiscent of "slumdog millionaire".

Who fired Steve Jobs?

Given Larry's comment ( "The H.P. board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago."), I was curious about the smart ones in Apple board who fired Steve Jobs.

Here is the link where i found the answer. The bright businessmen who did this smart move were:

A.C. (mike) Markkula

Peter O Crisp

Arthur Rock

Henry Singleton

Philip Schlein

John Sculley

I remember reading that Steve Jobs insisted on getting rid of Mike Markkula from Apple board as part of his taking the role of Apple CEO again.

I always wondered about this list because when I worked at Taligent, people used to point to a conference room in one of the buildings and mention "this was the conference room where Steve Jobs was fired".

Matt Taibbi on the Tea Party - Rolling Stones article

This article is sure to get more publicity:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/210904?RS_show_page=0

Malcom Gladwell's Post in Newyorker about social networks

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell

(good takedown of social networks as an agent for political change)

Pidgin Docking windows on my desktop

I am using pidgin 2.6.5 (our current IT standard issue) and it has a really bad default option that docks the windows in an annoying way. Once you bring up the buddy list, it will shove the desktop and the other windows to its side. I really couldn't find a way to disable it easily. After googling,

i found this:

http://pidgin.im/pipermail/support/2009-July/004511.html

I followed the advice in this post:

> You've enabled the "Dockable Buddy List" in the "Windows Pidgin > Options" plugin and then dragged your buddy list close enough to the > side of the desktop that it has docked. > > If you disable that feature, it will no longer dock. 

I invoked: 

Tools->Plugins->Windows Pidgin Options->Configure Plugin and disabled (Dockable Buddy List)

Ripping a DVD for iPod/iPhone

Moving workout videos to ipod/iphone makes them easier to take out.

Here is how it is done:

o dvdshrink or dvddecrypter can be used to take the vob files out of the dvd into filesystem.

o Handbrake for Windows can be used to convert the vob files from the file system into mp4 files.

o The desired filesize can be configured during the Handbrake conversion so that the output file is small and can fit in the ipod/iphone.

Remastering the video files into a different DVD turned out to be a challenging task and i gave up on it. I tried with adobe premier and with windows dvd maker and both of them crashed or took too long and hence i gave up.

itunes upgrade problems again and iphone issues

itunes asked me to upgrade to version 10. I took up the offer because i wanted to upgrade to the new ios 4.1 that was made available today. My iphone got very slow after i upgraded to ios and the 4.1 version was going to fix some of those bugs.

Unfortunately, itunes upgrade on my xp machine did not go well. After upgrade, the ipodservice that connected to the devices did not start up. I got the error:

iPodService Module (32-bit) has encountered a problem and needs to close...

I was going to follow Apple's advice and downgrade itunes when i came across this thread:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2565060&start=0&tstart=0

It was a lifesaver. The suggested workaround really worked for me:

Morgane wrote:
I have encountered the same problem related to iPodService.exe v10.0.0.68, also running WinXP SP3.

I experimented a bit and found a workaround, simply using the old iPodService.exe from v9.2.1.4. It seems to work fine so far.
You can do it as follows:

1. With iTunes v9.2.1.4 installed, make a copy of the folder "Program Files\iPod".
2. Install iTunes v10.0.0.68 (confirm/ignore errors related to iPodService.exe).
3. Delete (or rename) the folder "iPod" in "Program Files" and rename the folder "Copy of iPod" (or whatever you named it) created in step 1 back to "iPod"

iTunes now uses the old iPodService.exe.
It works with all my devices (several generations of nano, classic, and iPhone 3), but I don't know if the new devices released yesterday will also work.

Poincare Conjecture

A video that introduces the history of Poincare Conjecture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUoaTrQTM5o

The quote that i liked in it:
By logic we prove by intuition invent
- Henri Poincare

A good primer on this topic: http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/what_is_the_poincare_conjecture/

iphone problems and resolutions

My iphone 3GS stopped working on Friday and required me to upgrade when i tried to sync.

It seems like it was coincidental that there was a new iphone OS release and i had hardware problems at the same time. I spent the Friday trying to get it fixed.

Multiple attempts to upgrade the OS and trying to "Restore" from itunes did not work. I kept getting Error 23 while trying to restore. I took it to ATT store. They tried to sell me all kinds of crap without getting my iphone problem resolved. They directed me to the Apple Store. I went to the Valley Fair Mall Store and unfortunately it was just too crowded and I couldn't get an appointment to get my iphone fixed. Apple Stores have a service department called "Genius Bar"s which address Apple hardware problems. The next appt I could get was on Sunday evening which was too bad. I checked the appointment scheduler on the Apple Store website late at night and I got an appt at 9AM at Palo Alto Store. I drove to the store and the "Genius" guy there got me a new iphone 3GS device. He got it upgraded to ios 4.

But the sync did not work and i thought i would not get my data. Fortunately, when I did a "Restore", I got all the data from the backup. I couldn't be happier. I still had to type in all of the passwords again but all of my data showed up.

iOS 4.0 upgrade seems to be ok. The device freezes infrequently and you had to push the power button to kill the app that froze. Lifehacker site has some good tips about iOS 4.0. My main pet peeve about iphone was that the device changed orientation unpredictably and there was no option to lock the orientation. We now have that feature. My next pet peeve was addressed by the folder functionality which helped in organizing Apps into folders so there was no clutter.

I am now able to use Voice Control feature of iphone. It never worked for me before. But after reading some of the websites, it seems like you have to do 2 things:

o wait till it emits a beep/ding before you say your command

o say your command clearly and confidently like a Jedi master.

If you get the hang of it, it works really well and i am very happy with this feature.

Other cool things are the "Universal Inbox" with the mail, the calendar looks better somehow (I now started receiving invitations properly and it never worked before), so is the mail app.

Overall my gloom about iphone gave way to a good feeling with the brand new phone and the OS upgrade. I think Apple has a store that is as good as its products and a phone that is a lifechanger.

Orthogonal Defect Classification

I have been reading up a lot on this interesting methodology, which specifies a very simple process for capturing the necessary information that can help the stream of defects reported against a software product into a stream of information that can help in improving the software development process. This is a method for doing ongoing rootcause analysis on product defects that is lightweight to implement but turns about high value.

Related to this is an intersting book that i am reading:
Handbook of Software Reliability Engineering
There is a chapter in this book discussing ODC as well.

emacs-clipboard gotcha

I was using emacs on linux and i was accessing emacs window on a vnc terminal window on a windows box. I couldn't seamlessly transfer copy paste, clipboard contents between the windows. Here are the things that must be done:
o For enabling copy paste between vnc and windows, use the app: vncconfig
o For enabling copy paste between emacs window and the other windows on the linux box as well as the windows box from which i was vncing into, you should do this in your .emacs file:
(set-variable (quote x-select-enable-clipboard) t)
o I tried invoking the emacs function: menu-bar-enable-clipboard but it didn't enable the clipboard but once i evaluated the above lisp fragment, things seemed to work fine.