Of Lazy Summer Afternoons, Yahoo! Answers and Origami

Summer this year has been going from bad to worse as far as the weather is concerned. It started on a warm note, then went cold with unseas onal rains and now its back to hot now. Its that time of the year when you need to take shelter under the cool air-conditioning vents and refuse to move out from there. Which is what I am exactly trying to avoid. I have made a resolution to stay away from AC (ACs seemed to have contributed to global warming by releasing harmful CFCs and affected the ozone layer) this year. So, this is my contribution to green living. Which means I’m sweaty, smelly, grimy and frightfully dehydrated. Perhaps I should chuck out green living and get back to healthy living before I fall sick.

To keep my mind off the heat (and the smell, grime and dehydration), I found a new pastime. Which is, contributing to Yahoo! Answers. In case you didn’t know what it was, it’s a site where people will ask questions and then some serious experts, not-so-experts and some people with enough time on their hands (like me, for example) post answers. Most of it is done in good faith. Till I started on Y! Answers, I didn’t realize that there were so many people willing to help for free in this world. I now get the feeling that the world’s not such a bad place as it is made out to be, after all. Good for us. And with the points system (which doesn’t earn you anything like those stupid sky miles), its painfully addictive. Everytime I try to reach a certain level, I feel egged on to go to the next. But I’ve made a promise to myself that I will be answering only those questions about which I know a bit or if I can find the correct info when I google. So far I’ve kept that promise. No point in giving stupid answers or on issues I know nothing about. Instead, I try to learn about them from others' answers.

Speaking of which, that is how I came across some interesting websites with equally interesting information. In a way, asking questions spurs your imagination or makes you think the way you never thunk (sorry, thought) before. For example, some of the things I learnt about are, how to keep cats from littering on your front porch? what’s the biggest state in the US? how to restore a Ford Model T? and so on. But the most positive outcome of Y! Answers was my learning Origami. Yea, that very same Japanese black art of twisting paper into various shapes such as a dove, swan, airplane, etc. If you’ve seen the TV series “Prison Break”, you’d know what I am talking about. Michael Scofield (the main character, portrayed with near perfection by Wentworth Miller) leaves telltale origami swans as his callsign, which play a big role in his escape from a high security prison. Its such good fun that now I put all those useless catalog mails to good use. I’m turning those ugly screaming ad-filled sheets into beautiful doves, swans, airplanes, etc. Now, I see a 3-D shape in every 2-D paper. I feel I'm doing the same thing as they do at the Ford Model Agency. Turn everyday common material into supermodels. Its so satisfying that it feels like zen. Maybe I’ve found my true calling. So until I find something better to do, its Origami for me. Ciao.

Of iPods, Tourism and Books

Do you listen to books? I mean not read them but listen to narratives? I'm sure you must have had someone read out from picture storybooks when you were young. As you grew up to decipher the alphabet, you were on your own, straining your eyes at different prints and scripts and absorbing the thoughts of the writer and making opinions of your own. If you are reading this blog I'm sure that you must have formed an opinion of me already. Well, that's what books and essays are for. And good for us too.

I use my iPod almost exclusively to listen to music. Once in a while when I'm bored with the music tracks I've been listening to again and again, I just put away my iPod and then forget about it. That is, till the next time I feel like to listening to music.

Anyways, I recently found two other great utilities for my iPod. One of them is, listening to audiobooks. Speaking of which, I was aware that audiobooks existed but was skeptical about them. I felt that they would take the fun out of reading. Then one fine day, when I was bored out of my wits and was browsing aimlessly, I came across this site called librivox (http://librivox.org). Out of plain curiosity, I downloaded one of the audiobook's chapters for a trial run. And I liked it. Since then I keep visiting this site for new updates. Most of the times, the readers do a good job. Some of them (not all) even modulate their voices and accents to suit the characters in the book. Sometimes, it feels nice to close your eyes and listen to someone reading out passages from your favorite books. You get to relax in a nice way and at the same time are giving your strained eyes a bit of rest.

Coming to the other use of iPod. This is what I call the "iGuide". While, preparing for my trip to Paris, I was researching for a good site that would guide me around the city while I was there. There was way too much information for a first time visitor when I googled and I was totally lost as to where to start. First, there were printable maps. Then there were Bus tour sites that would pick you up from your hotel and take you on a tour and so on.

And then I found two other cool things due to my persistent googling. One of them was a nice interactive map software (trial version) of the city for my Palm. If I keyed in my present location, I would be able to find my way around the city and also easily locate the famous tourist spots and hotels. Which also meant that I could do away with carrying those cumbersome street maps which always tend to get slapped onto my face by the wind just as I am trying to desperately locate the "You are here" spot.

The other most interesting find was this iGuide thing. There is a nice site called Zevisit (http://www.zevisit.com/) which had audiocasts of famous tourist spots. These audio files contained narratives about famous spots in the city of Paris. For a first time traveler with a limited budget and no tour guide, this is a real useful tool. All I needed was an mp3 player (which I had) and I could start to listen about the site as I roamed around it. This would save me the trouble of reading from a guidebook and walk around at the same time. Of course, I just plugged in the earphone into one ear so that I could listen to the city sounds with my other ear. The narratives in the podcasts were nice and well made. They made my experience of Paris all the more interesting. Wish they come up with such good stuff for other cities too.

Now, I truly feel that I'm making good use of my iPod. I'm not into music in a big way. So I used my iPod occasionally. With the audiobooks and the tour trips' podcasts, this little tool has made itself indispensible. Good for me.

How I made "Virtualization" a reality

Sometime last year I attended this session that was hosted by Hardware Tech Gurus. Lucky me, I get to do these things once in a while (Yawwwwn!). Everyone who was anyone came up with something or the other that they claimed would change the way we would work and it will be the next best thing after the invention of the wheel. A revolution of sorts. But the one thing that everyone agreed upon as a great useful concept was something called Virtualization. It Seems that virtualization is a great leap ahead in data storage. And there was a valid reason that the Hardware gurus to be excited about it. And that is the amount of data being added is growing by the second in terms of terra bits. Interesting!

Another interesting fact: It seems that 50,000 people log on to the internet for the first time, every day!

So considering the amount of traffic and the volume of data you have, its not surprising that the hardware is simply not able to scale up to the required level. A study indicated that 8-10% of the power generted in the US today is used by these servers. Massive! So the great computer engineers came up with this concept of virtualization. If you ask me what this means, I would be at a loss to tell you because I myself could not understand enough of it. What I understood though was, that it makes a single physical resource appear to function as multiple logical resources. Or make multiple logical resources appear as one. Yes. Duh! To me it sounded very much like Michael Keaton's movie Multiplicity where he duplicates himself to do different chores around the house. Simply put, this is in a way similar as what you would do if your home PC's disk got to near full capacity. You would have to either delete some files or add another disk to add more stuff. Since data in servers is sacrosanct and cannot be deleted just like that, hardware engineers add more disks (at different physical locations) and spread the data across multiple disks. But when you access this data you never would know that you are accessing info from multiple storage areas. Amazing, isn't it?

And I am proud that I've had a miniscule role to play to make this thing exist from being non-existent. How? You might ask. Go ahead, ask. Simple. By writing this blog. You see, just as tiny drops of water make an ocean, in the same way millions of people like me who store all this worthless information (which no one reads) on others' free servers. So one fine day the servers do not have enough space for storing important data like your friend's anniversary, pics of your ex, pics of your present, videos of us doing goofy things, your favorite music, the forwarded joke (which you would never read but will store for eternity thinking you'll read them someday), etc. This has led to a crisis of sorts in the computer world.

To resolve this very crisis, scientists had (didn't have a choice, did they) to come up with ideas of creating storage spaces out of thin air (now you see the connection? "virtual"ization as in "virtual"?). So now I revel in the fact that in reality (or in virtuality or virtual reality or virtual whatever) my data might be stored in different computers across the world but is still accessible at my finger tips. Just like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces fall into their respective places the moment you command them to. Some technology this! Want to read more about it (I mean virtualization)? Just google and you'll get enough information that'll fill up a couple of terrabit servers to their overheated gills. Happy Searching!