Idle/Random/whatever Thoughts of a Demented/Idle/Whatever Mind

1. The Genius Behind the Quantum Navigation Breakthrough - This is the World's First Unhackable Quantum GPS. Using the coldest atoms in the Universe, it may revolutionise the way we navigate. This Youtuber to got to go behind the scenes and see their device up close to try and understand just how important this breakthrough is. My Take : This video goes into more details about how quantum navigation works as well hits the home run in explaining why its really needed. I had also mentioned about Quantum Navigation in a previous post where IEEE had covered it. This video goes to explain more details of it and if you are a physics nerd, you would enjoy it.   2. Forget ChatGPT: why researchers now run small AIs on their laptops -  This article talks about the different small and locally runnable LLMs which various scientists are using for not just poetry but also for medicine. The locally runnable LLMs have the distinct advantage of preserving privacy, fine tuning using the open...

 1. Our Memories Are Stored in Triplicate - This is an article about how the brain stores memories. It discusses what part of the brain is involved in memory storage and how different types of neurons are involved. The article also discusses how memories can change over time. Some important points are that memories are stored in multiple copies and that different copies are used for different purposes. Also, early-born neurons are involved in long-term memory and late-born neurons are involved in short-term memory. My Take : The research on the brain is fascinating, as it delves into the least understood part of our body. It reminded me of the 3-2-1 backup rule for data, emphasizing the importance of preserving memories. The most intriguing aspect is how memories can evolve over time, a phenomenon we all experience to some degree, particularly when reflecting on past experiences. 2. The Illustrated AlphaFold - This is an article about how AlphaFold3 works. It discusses the goals ...

Well all this started with this one tweet disruptive, IIM, ninja, passion. leverage, LSD, enterprise. this takes buzzwords to whole next level and more https://t.co/BTKniycDxa — Sathya (@SathyaBhat) March 9, 2015 And finally ended with this one @jackerhack thanks, got it @SathyaBhat @mehulved — 100rabh™ (@the100rabh) March 9, 2015 And I had the entire dump of Hasjobs postings. It was pretty cool of Kiran to send them across to me and saving me the time and effort to scrape that data. At that time I had very little idea what I would do with it. I am aware of R and this was the moment when I thought I could make use of the little knowledge of it I had. So I got on with it. Step 1: Step R on my system. Step 2: Write some code to extract the data and cleanse it Step 3: Generate the counts for words Step 4: Manually pick up the technology words with counts Step 5: Generate the image with language popularity So as it stands the top 5 of required technolog...

Nokia R&D invited some of us to preview their pilot project of WeMeet application. Its an interesting application. Its a simple application which allows you to have threaded sms conversation with friends as group chat generally does. Its a simple application though still in its testing phase or the pilot as the Nokia guys call it. It has a simple interface ( screenshots nicely compiled by Prashanth at TechBangalore ). You can create groups in simple steps. Send message to friends is a breeze as  well. Just like other group SMS services like SMS Gup Shup , it allows you to send SMS to all your friends in that group in a single SMS. It sends a message to a local number in Bangalore(not a premium number), which in turn broadcasts this to all the people in the group. As this is currently only in pilot phase, its free and available only in Bangalore. To join create, modify and send message to groups an SMS is sent for your cellphone. When you receive an SMS from a group message, ...

Well its was well known that mobile numbers with 8 are going to start soon . But it so happened that my dear friend Daaku took a new Tata Docomo connection. Now the amazing thing was that it starts with 805xx-xxxxx. So now if I try to call this friend of mine, my Vodafone network tells me that its an invalid number. I was confused and so I asked my friend daaku to call me. I got his number in caller ID but calling it was again not possible. Obviously its not mistake in dialing the number, rather its a stupid things that Vodafone and possibly other networks too have done. So here is my guess what has happened. Vodafone, takes the number +91805xx-xxxxx as 91 for country(that India), 80(Code for Bangalore) and 5 would be Tata Indicom as they provide landline with that series. Interestingly Vodafone seems to have not configured its network to this change which happened for mobile numbers starting with 8. I tried contacting Vodafone customer care, they seemed to be unaware of the issue...

Mobiles are something which we now take for granted to call anyone. I remember the days when I thought who the heck will pay  Rs300+ rental and then Rs16 /min for receiving or making calls as airtime charges. Obviously the call charges were separate. Who thought that things will reach this far that at Rs175 rentals, you would get 300 mins calling free. Its truly amazing. Another thought that I had not very long back actually was that I had written on how my mobile should look like here . There were a few people who thought that its entirely impossible to achieve what I was wanting. But then today there was this story on CNET that talked about Toshiba coming out with an amazingly fast 1GHz smartphone. Well, I am not surprised by it. But what I am surprised at is that it runs the crappy Windows Mobile. It sure could have done better with Android or Symbian. Windows Mobile, duh. Dude I would need multi-touch, just to make sure I can give the three finger salute of Ctrl+Alt+Del. S...

Well building on my knowledge of WxWidgets and frustration with ever growing size of music players like Winamp or Windows Media Player, I decided that did not need those many features most of the time. So what was that I was looking for 1. Play Mp3s 2. Have a playlists, retain it and ability to add all files to the player at once. 3. Mp3 tags are mostly useless, filenames make more sense 4. Shortcuts should be simple and also alternative global keys 5. Small size, preferably below 2MB. 6. Multi-platform code. 7. Playlist Queue This was my priority, in no particular order, while I was designing this Mp3 player. But then I got some feedback from friends who wanted search feature as well. So there it was. All done and over. But then again most my friends and me felt that the UI sucked. Well it continues to. I am not good as styling so still looking for help from friends to make a better looking UI So now its a 716Kb file which you need to download and the...

Barcamp Bangalore is one of those events which I just wait for. Its a time when I rejuvenate my thought process which is drained thanks to the often hectic work at office. Also this is one place where geeks can feel at home and talk about anything under the sun. Its pretty cool that its not just Tech thats discussed but also other topics close to us, like politics and life. Like most times, the paper wiki was filled completely as soon as it was put up. I actually saw a few people going disappointed with not being able to put up their talk. And like most other times, it started with the intro session for the first timers. This time it was Pradeep BV taking charge and explaining it to the first timers, what barcamp is all about. After that it was realized that one of the four rooms were actually not available for Barcampers. Anyways another great thing that happened was that an Impromptu Sessions paper wiki was put up. Amazingly it too was filled in a matter of minutes, it was put up...

Barcamp Bangalore 7 is here again. Because of the crazy times at work, I have not updated by blog for a long time. I dont know if I will be able to do it in the next few weeks also. But I wish I could. One thing is for sure that I am going to Barcamp and it will be a good time. Startup Saturday is happening at the same place and the same time. Its the very same ppl who were organising Barcamp Bangalore who are behind it. I am still wondering what made them move to a conference like event rather than an unconference. Anyways its for me to find out in the next few days. I am looking forward to a session by @mataal on Process vs Thread. Another one if by Ujjwal on how to chase your dream project while keeping your day job. I am sure a few more interesting things will pop up, as always. Anyways I am also leading a discussion on ELearning and what it hold for us in the future. I hope that I will have some interesting people to talk over it.

It was time again DCamp or Design Camp Bangalore.  Amit Pande, Sarit, Muthu , Anil Gupta among others worked hard to get this event going. I must tell you that I had an awesome time there. The presentations there were truly awesome. Let give a short summary of the things as they happened at the DCamp, though Vinodhn already has kind of everything on twitter . So heres how the event unfolded for me. I happily landed and Mekhri Circle expecting Aditi's office to be close by. So I begin walking from there towards Cauvery Circle. Cool I was looking for directions and I see someone looking at me from an auto. Oh ok I recognize this guy, hmmm....ok he is Gilberto from Thoughworks. Fine he is going to DCamp but is lost and does not know where is it happening. Ok fine I said, let walk to towards the Aditi Office and let so we walk. A few meters down the road, there is Muthu and Sudhindra at the gate of Aditi. So next thing we do is register and head for the terrace where the event was ha...

Well there has been a lot hoola hoo over the recent releases of Firefox and Opera. But here are certain things that still suck and would like them to be removed. 1. Better plugins and make them such that they dont hang that tab or window. 2. Download accelerator be integrated in the download manager of the browser itself. Hardly makes sense keeping them dumb. 3. Super fast start is not possible for various technical reasons but a preloader program would definitely be kind of must have. 4. Get more screen real estate to the page and make rest of the things like toolbar, menubar and optionally even status bar visible on a need basis like the playbar in video players in full screen mode. 5. Subscribing to an RSS feed to Google Reader or iGoogle is  a dumb two step process now. Google Reader or iGoogle be made two different options. 6. Tabs must have a 3D effect or something really cool. Switching like pages is so yesterday. 7. Make download dialog unobtrusive. Make it so...

Wow this was something I did not expect. But this surely did hit me hard the first time I got through it. It seems like I could access most Airtel Broadband users routers using simple telnet. Once I was connected, all that was required was username and password. Boy and I am in. I have access to the router now and I sure can do a lot of crazy stuff with it. Wait a minute, did I say you need username and password. How would I get the username and password. Well actually not very difficult. Is it. No one ever changes the username and password of their router. Actually no one expects anyone to be able to access the router without their knowledge. But the sad fact is, anyone on the internet can access their router. Most people do not even realize that their internet connection can be easily compromised. How? Well simple steps to follow 1. Press Window Key + R  to open the Run Command Dialog 2. Press cmd (Enter) 3. Enter 'telnet xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx' Where 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx...

Well as I had been following mobile phones. What I have found is that actually there are just two worthy competitors. Rest are just like that. One is iPhone and other is Openmoko. Well iPhone because it has the glory. It has the backing of Apple and support of Steve Jobs behind it. But there is none of that sort for Openmoko. But it has the guts. Its has probably what it takes to make a real revolution. Just making a phone with a bigger screen and touch sensitive does not make revolutions happen Mr Jobs. The best part of the Openmoko phone is that its open. And surprising its priced at $399 and in India its around Rs 20k. Not bad for the phone which has Assisted GPS, WiFi, touch screen, bluetooth, microSD Card support and powerful 500Mhz Processor. To top it all, a user replaceable battery.  Well the only blemish that I am able to spot is the internal memory. Its a mere 256 MB. Though I can carry all the data in my SDCard but then its not the most convenient way to do things. A...

Well I read this story sometime back I thought it was some sort of rumor. But it seems that the software is now available to the general public via the rapidshare.com . Heres the page which has the complete application which can create gmail accounts for you in a jiffy. Though I am not sure of reliability of this app because I dare not install apps from such location for the fear of malwares and rootkits. After this report I dont trust my anti-virus to be of any help in identifying these. I would not recommend you to use it either. Here is what the application claims to do. Create Unlimited Gmail Accounts in Seconds Flat. Setup Auto-Responder automatically! Setup Forwarding automatically! Use random or custom names! Enable POP3 automatically! Proxy support: HTTP/SOCKS4/SOCKS5 Multiple exporting options! Automatic self-updating software! From the image its clear that you can either create a single gmail account or a number of them with letters or n...

Its always been that one post for Barcamp Bangalore is not enough. Its always that I have had multiple posts. This one could not be an exception. I not being an RIA fanboy did not care to attend the marathon hijack sessions on it. Neither did I care to attend Myspace thing. I kind of hated the fact that those RIA guys did not care but take a room for themselves for the entire time after lunch. Not that I did not like it happening but would have loved if there were people talking about other things also. After all this was not an RIACamp. Anyways there were these interesting parallel sessions which happened. Among the first which I attended was Blogathon India. Me being an planner for Blogathon India started the session. Later it was taken over by Sanjukta. Next I preceded to help people with their wifi connections to the extent I could . Anyways gurus Akash and Cruisemaniac aka Ashwin were always there. After some loitering met a few people who were interested in my idea of BuddyHe...

Well it all started with a small revolution called Mobile Monday, Bangalore . It was an initiative of some minds behind the mobile technology in Bangalore(Keshav, S R Raja, Rajan & Rajiv). It was actually a success. The reason behind the success of the Mobile Monday has been its unique concept. The community meets every 3rd Monday of the month. They have a set agenda and people with passion. So much so that many communities in Bangalore are planning to adopt a similar approach. Like all good things he success of this has lead into a next step, which make use of Saturday. Now what rhymes best with Saturday, well one of thing is Startup. So here we have Startup Saturday . An interesting concept building momentum. What I expect next is the following, Testers Tuesday, Web Wednesday, UX Thursdays, FOSS Friday, Startup Saturday and finally Sleepy Sunday. Guys at least Sunday deserves a break :-) Anyways I dont see this thing not materializing. For a very simple reason, the community ...

Well this was one thing that I had thought a lot about. In college when I was totally unaware of the alpha blending technology. So I wondered how the ppl would have had got hold of it. I had this weird idea of having a pixel taken from background and using that to make us believe that its semi-transparent. When I learned about Alpha Blending I thought my idea was really childish. I should have thought beyond. Then came the question of how to make the splash screen transparent. Well as many of u might be knowing, splash screens are bmp images by default. You cannot have any special effect using them. But then I had an idea, how about taking a snapshot of the current screen and then generating a splash bmp giving a nice semi-transparency. This was one among the many ideas that bumped by head at some point of time.  Coming back to today. We all must have used the Windows Live Writer or other applications. If u havnt then give them a try. This application has a nice splash screen wh...

Devamp Bangalore happened yesterday and I was there to witness the event. It was a real cool place to be in first place. A real gathering of geeks. You could hear people talking passionately about the semantic web, AIR, mobile technologies, JSON and many others. You could see ppl blogging or working with their laptop. It turned out to be a wonderful event. I had shortlisted 5 sessions to watch out for, and I am happy that out of those 2 were really cool, Microformats and Semantic Web and Clutter. Microformats and Semantic Web talked about poshzone, which is an acronym for Plain Old Simple HTML zone. More details here . Clutter is a new Library which is a wrapper around OpenGL and OpenGL ES. It allows you to do the same cool stuff with a lot smaller code that you could achieve by coding endlessly in OpenGL. Its a new thing which is coming up and we should collaborate and work on developing it further. The best part is that it can run on the mobile platforms as well. Another cool t...

Devcamp Bangalore is another attempt to have a good unconference style developers conference. But I feel its been plagued by several issues. I am writing it today because I did not want to generate negative publicity around an event which could have been one of the bridges for moving of Indians from coding coolies to tech giants. Still there were certain things which made me doubtful of the motive of the event. I am post now about it because there are only a few hours left for the event to start and I am going to attend it. But these are something which the organizers on their part must make sure does not happen. First thing is, probably this event was there because Martin Fowler was coming to Bangalore. He is being treated as the chief guest. His topic too is yet to be decided. In true Barcamp spirit, this does not happen. I dont know if Martin Fowler is driving this camp or the campers themselves. The event homepage at one point of time had link to a post by a gentleman who had ...

Whats started as a small idea in the last Blogalorean Meet, snowballed into a big one during the mailing group discussions. Finally it was planned that all interested people would meet at Koshy's on a fine Saturday evening. It was 19th of Jan around 4:30 that I entered Koshy's to find five of them there, busy discussing and finalizing how it should be done. I jumped into that whole thing and soon their infectious enthusiasm got into me. After some random bakwas of mine. Then that waiter was like pushing us out. So last round of discussion happened across the street on the footpath. Finally we decided on something which were worded right by Sandil and put up on the Big Bangalore Blogathon . There are still a lot of things to be done for it. I am right now not in Bangalore to be physically involved but will be providing all possible support virtually and ofcourse by blogging during the Blogathon. I hope this event generates a lot of positives. Some of the people working behind th...