The World according to Nautiyal

Would personalized news interest you?

2006-08-05T09:16:52Z

I started doing an India news aggregator at http://www.newscola.com and sent it out to a few friends.

Everyone came back with some request for categorization. I think the real need is for personalization. What do you guys feel about the relative importance of the two for you? Is "personalized news" with zero-input on your part (apart from reading specific news items), something that you have been looking for?

I know reddit is doing this with collaborative filtering, but I want to take a shot at analyzing the content for it - so let me know if this interests you.

Got a call

2006-08-05T09:09:32Z

Caller: Sir, I am calling from I see my sea eye Bank.
Me: OK.
Caller: Would you be interested in a personal loan?
Me: No.
Caller: Any reference?
Me: I said No.
Caller: What company you work for?
Me: *Slams phone* *Slams head*

O Lame Picks

2006-05-02T19:44:13Z

Korup Tweener was president of the IOC, and in addition, a worried man. This would have surprised anyone who had been keeping up with the news.

As Korup had planned, LaserFriedEyes had jumped at the opportunity to sponsor the 20/20 Timbuktu Olympics. He negotiated a handsome 3% royalty of future eye-correction-procedures done by LFE in return. LFE had been sold on the 20/20 sponsorship plan - he chuckled to think they had not SEEN it themselves. LFE went on to suggest the slash in the year and a respelling of the Olympics to LympidOptics but Korup had firmly resisted. He might be slightly venial, accepting a slash here and a cut there, but he was a man of ideals. The specific ideal here was that 3% was diddly squat for a full-blown renaming. He suggested 10%, but that would have a big cut and LFE, only believed in small, carefully controlled cuts.

He should have been singing this morning, but something was amiss. Count on the bloody athletes to mess up a supremely exquisite deal. If only he could have had sports without those silly sportsmen.

Every venture of his life brought him to a similar conclusion.

He had built a hotel, which took reservations over every possible communication channel. It took them over the phone, email, grapevine and carrier pigeon. He even built a site on the totallymeganet, which had replaced the dysfunctional retro curiosity called the internet.

The hotel was a gleaming hunk of smooth granite carved out of a single rock, dazzling with diamond chandeliers and fountains of wine. Korup’s office had a private indoor beach, with its own sun. He used it for surfing, beach-side drink-swilling, and arousing jealousy in his fifth grade classmates. Fifth-grade had been the last year the educational system had endured him before sobbing quietly in a corner and shooting itself in the head. The hotel had six practice racetracks for his chauffeurs, twenty frolicking areas for his masseuses, a nine-level garage and a five-dimensional hall for private parties. The hotel had been booked up for twenty years before construction. The only thing the hotel had lacked was rooms.

The irritatingly demanding customers had whined and complained and shouted. When even that failed to get any action, they shot at him. It was enough to put a hardworking businessmen off his fourth drink. If only his customers just paid up instead of wanting to stay in the rooms, the hotel would have been an outstanding success.

After that, he wrote a book on his teenage adventures as an amateur mac-and-cheese and PB&J sandwich chef. He applied the adjective "amateur" later, for which he qualified only on the basis of having been fired from every restaurant he worked at before the first payday.

The book was advertised heavily and received tons of acclaim from those critics whose children had been recently kidnapped. They agreed unanimously that it was "an awesome top-quality book, Nobel material. Also Oscar and knighthood material, a thrill-packed fantastic page-turner actually. Really, believe us. Buy the book. Please! For Bobby." It had not sold a single copy. The huge pile of printed copies had threatened to collapse and petrify under its own weight into a new mountain range.

He got around the problem by mugging people into buying the book. All over the world, people reported being held up by burly men with guns who thrust copies of "A tale of two pastes and pasta: pastimes of my past" in their bags despite all their pleas and cries for mercy. The muggers then demanded $13.75 and returned precise change when presented with $20 bills, before running away in embarrassment and pining in street corners for their previous honorable, if low-paying, careers in noose quality assurance, pet psychiatry and sewage stirring.

"People are the problem," he summarized to himself. Customers, readers and sportsmen - all people, damn them. He brought himself back to the present.

2020 had broken a record. Every single one of the medalists (including those in rhythmic solitaire and synchronized tech support) had tested positive for banned substances. Partly, it was because so many substances had been banned in recent years. Before the Olympics, there had been a flurry of news reports about new drugs and there had been talk of adding them to the list of banned substances.

Damn drugs! There were the classical ones to increase muscle mass, reduce fat content and weight. There were now drugs to smooth the skin and make all hair fall for that aerodynamic body. There was a drug that made a swimmer shoot out his sweat in jets all over his body instead of passively leaking it. There was a drug that increased typing speed, so athletes could write all their emails faster and concentrate on reaching peak form. Every single one had been banned.

Actually, Korup had no problem with the drugs. He just had a problem with people making noises about the issue and upsetting him just when he was starting to enjoy his job, the perks and the bribery.

Korup had defeated Pers Ist Enbagar in the elections and that rankled. Today, Pers was waving a report stating that the cost of testing was more than the cost of the Olympics. The committee reacted to this bombshell with outraged snores. Someone in the press-box poked them with the telescopic lenses of their zoom cameras. Once the committee had digested the information and their lunches, they went to dinner. Just before leaving, they also decided that rather than testing, all three medalists would simply be declared positive on the evidence of their victories and the medals would be handed to the next three athletes.

The 2024 Olympics, were quite painful to watch. In every race, the contestants rushed to the finish line and stopped ten feet away. They then spent hours jostling and pushing the other contestants. Once three had been tossed across, there would be a mad sprint to get to the fourth to sixth places. This ridiculous situation was adversely affecting the dignity of sports and more importantly, television ratings and advertising revenues.

By 2028, there was a lot of athletic espionage to try to figure out the top few competitors in each race and the best strategies to end up fourth. Athletics became more about poker and the other person's psychology than about simply running fast. This was a welcome diversion to everyone but the purists, who are not worth listening to anyway.

Hysterically successful movies were made about this new genre. They involved a character who said, "My name is Pawn. Games Pawn," followed by elaborate explanations about being born of a mutually embarrassing union between the Goddess of Sports and one of the sixteen minor Gods of Chess. The movies consisted of weak puns and silly villains who explained all their plans before failing.

Several game theorists were able to get a job helping with the spying and they arrived at the final solution. In every event, three light and obscure competitors were allowed to waltz through the heats into the finals along with three former shot-putters. When the event began, the shot-putters threw the three flyweights across the finish line. The rest of the competition proceeded as in the good old days.

After a few races, the shot-putters went on strike. Their jobs were then outsourced to comic-book heroes because they could get themselves across the finish line first themselves. It made perfect sense that they should win everything and also that they should be disqualified for being superheroes.

Their PR folks realized the opportunity to advertise on the yards of their clothing. Even Tarzan succumbed to peer pressure and switched to trousers. He successively added a shirt, a cape, a mask and public humiliation when his chimpanzee Cheetah blasted him on Jay Leno for being a sell-out.

Around 2032, someone suggested that the IOC remove the ridiculous ban and let the athletes compete on a combination of hard work and research rather than on the mere genetic accident of athletic talent. This sounded compelling to the drowsy IOC members between their dreams of power, pelf and pineapples. Guest speakers from sneaker companies, sports banks, and cereal bar makers helped them overcome slight flaws in the argument by explaining how this was in line with the spirit of the CorpOlympic motto, "Just do outsourced IT, CitiUSA, Altius, Fortified-with-vitamins".

A motion was passed when the committee regathered after the bathroom break - since Altius reminded people of mountaineering, which had no connection to the modern Olympics, and there was no one offering a trillion dollars to keep it, it was dropped from the motto.

The committee members retired to their lives of public luxury with the satisfaction of a job done, whether well or not. And everyone lived happily ever from that day because they could safely take all the Prozac they wanted without having to worry about anything at all.

Who's getting your goat? Flame the Jerk!

2005-09-22T18:20:45Z

Something sticking in your craw?

Something annoying your eyeteeth out?

Something irritates you and you want to spout off with a swearword or a long flaming missive. I think the common prevalence of that situation was the entire basis for the creation, adoption and success of the USENET, of email, of satirical novels, of cartooning and, lately, of blogging.

So why not combine all those flames, insults and rants you have been bottling up in your gut and your subconsciousness into a Public FIR for the world to smile at and shake its head in agreement! Check out this friend's site and send me suggestions. Or of course you could put an FIR at the site itself with your suggestions.

Books to read, books to write

2005-07-05T08:55:32Z

In the http://del.icio.us style, I will maintain my books-to-read, my thoughts about books, my ideas which I think might make reasonable books etc at one central place and take opinion from other people.

If you are tired of Airtel spam

2005-06-27T10:35:35Z

sms "MCA CNCL" to 222.

A friend got a call from them asking how satisfied he was with Airtel. He said 3/5 and explained that it was because of all the unsolicited calls and the random sms and post-call message spam. She probably got disoriented for a moment at the precision of his dissatisfaction and divulged company secrets.

Have sent the sms Saturday - no spam so far, let's see if this really works.

Microwaves are awesome

2005-06-22T10:42:54Z

Living in the US had accustomed me to the notion that microwaves are only good for reheating TV dinners. In particular, they were useless for making any Indian food.

However, the models being sold in the India are quite something else - you can make almost 90% of Indian dishes in the microwave+grill+convection models here. We just bought one. The food tastes better than with the traditional cooking methods and should be much healthier. Cooking time is much lower. You dont have to mess about with one set of utensils for cooking, one for serving, and one for the refrigerator.

They are a great example of tweaking a product (huge microwave and a separate monstrous oven) to the needs of a local market. Even bachelors can start to cook at home now! Go out and get yours now. We have a LG Healthwave in case you need a name. mekin asked about recipes... here is a link - http://www.indianmirror.com/cuisine/cus3.html Quite amazingly simple. Check out "Spicy Bhindi" - THAT is what all recipes should look like!!!

The burst of the US housing bubble

2005-06-21T11:32:41Z

Saw this Slashdot post. Another one another one in the same discussion mentioned interest-only loans. Wow, talk about leveraging! And this article estimates that more than 20% of housing loans in the US are interest-only. If this is not the sign of a bubble, I do not know what is. However, what I do not know is WHEN the bubble will burst and HOW to profit from this with the minimum risk. Anyone know?

Vertical Search for Jobs

2005-06-20T10:11:05Z

In the search for the best vertical search to build, jobs seems to be coming up #1. There are a number of job aggregator sites coming up - Indeed and Simplyhired are two of the known ones. A third one is Bixee, which focuses exclusively on Indian job sites.

Some companies are building out vertical searches for a large number of domains instead of focusing on just one - Oodle is one. Interesting stuff, but again, business models are not crystal clear.

Get your Yahoo 360 invite

2005-04-01T13:21:00Z

Post a comment here with your email and I will mail you one.

It is a fantastic product.

Les Concierges Bangalore negative review

2005-03-30T08:44:56Z

Wed 1pm:	I ask Les Concierges desk at my office to book 2 tickets on Karnataka Exp III AC for 13th May. Desk rep asks me for all my preferences (train, dates, classes). I have checked on the net that the tix are available, but ONLY for that combo, so he better get them. He says that tickets will be booked once his reps go to the station and he will call me at 5pm. "Go to the station" makes me antsy - will they wait till they have "enough" tickets to book?
Wed 5pm:	I get a call. Desk rep tells me no info from office. He will call me as soon as he has info. Tickets are still available.
Thu 10am:	I am sick today, so I dont go into work. I see on the net the two tickets are gone, but I dont know if Les Concierge got them. No response from them. My mistake: I did not take the guy's number. Cannot call him.
Fri:	Sick again. No call - it is Holi, so maybe there won't be anyone in their office anyway.
Sat:	No call. Desk rep later claims he called his own office on Sat but got no info.
Sun:	No call.
Mon:	I go to the Les Concierge desk and ask him if he has the ticket. He says no. He says it is Waitlist #7. Asks if he should buy. I can see on the net that it is WaitList #1. This company is thoroughly incompetent. I ask what happened. He tells me he called his office on Sat and got no info. He blames his office. I am not happy and I tell him I will send this mail. Profuse apologies. I just need the ticket.
Wed:	I buy the ticket myself.

On being too early

2005-02-24T11:19:28Z

Writing browser-based apps using Javascript, DHTML and the DOM to hide the server interaction is suddenly wickedly cool and innovative with the G-company introducing these services

http://gmail.google.com
http://maps.google.com
http://groups.google.com

I was part of a team that wrote a browser-based app for email customer service at eGain using exactly this methodology. This was in 1999 when browsers did not support intensive use of these technologies too well - the app was moderately successful, helping to fuel eGain's $60 million IPO and subsequent $2 billion valuation. In terms of the richness of UI elements and even functionality, it was far superior to gmail. Obviously, gmail would score much better on performance, scalability and search - we were targeting a few thousands of users per customer.

For a while, no one was interested in developing more such web-based apps with rich UI.
Now suddenly, with G's moves, this is in the mainstream.
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/23/1859222&tid=189&tid=95&tid=217&tid=8
http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php
http://ifindkarma.typepad.com/relax/2004/12/weblications.html

The architect of the eGain Mail UI, Somnath Banerjee, is running his own company MEC Technologies, which is doing well now, but they do server-side enterprise software mostly.

Why do I suspect that they might be making a lucrative change in direction in the near future?

Astrology is all bogus, isn't it?

2005-01-17T02:09:07Z

A friend told me about this guy who can do predictions. He took my info and told my friend my name is formed of the letters "Ma Ha Sha" in the Hindi alphabet.

My name is Himanshu, so it fits "Ma Ha Sha", but the odds of that are 1 in 400, so it is not TOO impressive. The impressive part is this... I always knew that my parents were considering another name also for me. The other name is Mahesh.

I started to think about other name coincidences in my life and found another one. Here are the names of ALL my roommates ever.

Sanjay
Sanjeev
Sanjay and X
Sandeep and X, Y
Rajeev and X
Simon and X

X, Y are names that dont fit the pattern, but "Sa Na" occurs very frequently here.
I was Sanjay's guest, not roommate, but I stayed with him a fairly long time.

Why is Rajeev not marked X? Of the above, the first Sanjay, Sanjeev, Sandeep all have exactly one elder brother. All three have the same name - Rajeev.

I cant calculate the odds of this, but they seem very low. It is quite unsettling.

India: Local information sharing

2004-10-28T07:06:09Z

Check out http://www.glogblog.com.

It enables easy share/seek/discuss/find on city information.

GlogBlog provides one network, one place to reach out to the entire population of a city. It tries to make information sharing effective and optimized.

Here are some of the things you can do there
- Looking for a rented house.
- Selling goods like your two wheeler
- Selling extra tickets for a concert that you have purchased.

The idea is to make this the one stop place for any kind of information sharing relevant to the people of a city. Check it out.

After the blazes

2004-10-22T11:01:25Z

Post from my friend aaj_veeru - check out his blog.

Myself named Veeru Singh. Not the fellow with the big moustache or the bat. I am the man who should have snapped Gabbar's neck. Instead, I left him to the bloody rational Thakur to kill only to honour Jai's wishes. Brave, honest, dead, fool. To kill, Thakur, to kill, not to listen to the cops and hand him over. But that was five years ago and all of us have passed a lot of water under the bridge since then.

Friends call me "Paaji" from love and enemies call me "Pajeee" from behind my back. They have huge fear that if they speak before my front, I will get behind them.

After capturing Gabbar and subsequently Mrs Basanti Singh in Ramgarh, I decided to enter politics but I was just a first-level contributor in crime world, so I could not cope. I intend to become respected citizen, possibly a farmer. My dear little Basanti tells me good education is necessary to be respected. She is telling me something 24 hours. For my education, I decided to pursue a BA in English (without Honours) at Barkatullah University, Bhopal. I requested Mr Soorma for use of one room and he kindly vacated his house in Bhopal and went to celebrate pilgrimage in Kashi.

To get practice of the language I am studying, I am going to write my diary on the web. All suggestions for improvement welcome.

Bangalore dogs have competition

2004-10-21T04:50:30Z

Yahoo News is carrying a news article about the Albanian town of Mamurras being overrun by a pack of 200 dogs "headed by a clearly identified leader". Maybe if there weren't a leader or he were not so easily identifiable, the attack would not have been so vicious.

I have written before about my own experience with Bangalore dogs, but thankfully the outcome of that encounter was much tamer for both me and the dogs.

Curses to the curs I say!

Dave Barry hangs up his pen

2004-10-21T04:46:54Z

Dave Barry has decided to stop writing his column for an year. He may return to the Herald in 2006.

His tagline reads ... Dave Barry has been at The Miami Herald since 1983. He won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1988. Barry writes about various major issues relating to the international economy, the future of democracy, the social infrastructure and exploding toilets.

I hope he decides to return. Meanwhile, we will be reading his old columns.

Clinton endorses Bacchan for prez: Dishoom

2004-10-13T13:08:44Z

We have our own Indian Jibjab now at Badmash. The Dishoom flash from Badmash beats the latest offering from Jibjab by a mile. Do let the Dishoom audio run even after the credits start to roll - the exPrezB endorses BigB for president.

The ideal school

2004-10-12T11:01:23Z

In the last few days I have been talking to a few people about the travails of gettin their 2-4 year old admission to a good school. We have also had discussions about what we liked or disliked about our own schools.

There is some antipathy towards the rote learning that our generation feels it endured for twelve years. I am not sure all of my time at school was as bad as "rote learning" makes it look.

I am curious to hear about this from other people. What do you think about your experience at school? What do you want in the ideal school for your kids? Thanks for your responses.

Elegant silliness

2004-10-08T14:15:58Z

A friend sent me a link to Honda's famous Cog ad. The ad was actual footage and uses no CGI. It took 606 takes to execute flawlessly and about 6 million UKpounds were spent on it. This is one of the few forwarded emails that turned out to be true.

Reading the snopes link above reminded me of two illustrators, Heath Robinson and Rube Goldberg, who are famous for coming up with ridiculously elaborate machines and algorithms to do very simple tasks.

Here is a Heath Robinson "The first aero wedding"

and here is a Rube Goldberg. To see more of Robinson's work click here. I think Robinson, who was British, was the more inventive artist of the two. However he seems to be less well known then the American Goldberg. (Complete article...)

The elephant tracker

2004-10-08T14:13:30Z

"I will watch," he said, pointing to his eyes. We were glad to be in the hands of a jungle guide who watched with both his eyes.

"... for animals," he added after about 3 minutes as we were walking to the car. Our joy was unbounded. (Complete article...)

Teen patti discovered to be elaborate prank

2004-10-08T14:11:26Z

In our eyes, the game is now thoroughly discredited. It is widely suspected that the rules of teen patti may have been devised by the same population that plays it most enthusiastically - drunk college students! We hope that all players will now migrate to the more respectable Texas Holdem version of poker. Complete article...

Animal tales

2004-10-08T14:09:16Z

Carmel residents are being harrassed by aggressive raccoons in their midst.

The article quotes Carmel Police Chief George Rawson told the City Council that the department's response will be "swift and sure." I hope the raccoons have read the article and are quaking in their cute little boots at the impending strike. Rawson understands that "we have to coexist with our wildlife."

An animal control officer is quoted as saying a mixture of water and Listerine discourages the animals. Apparently, they are not big fans of minty fresh breath. Complete article...

Caddyshack

2004-10-08T14:07:14Z

Ty Webb: You take drugs, Danny?
Danny Noonan: Every day.
Ty Webb: Good. Then what's your problem?
Danny Noonan: I don't know.

Ty Webb: You're rather attractive for a beautiful girl with a great body.

Judge Smails: Ty, what did you shoot today?
Ty Webb: Oh, Judge, I don't keep score.
Judge Smails: Then how do you measure yourself with other golfers?
Ty Webb: By height.

Judge Smails: You know, you should play with Dr. Beeper and myself. I mean, he's been club champion for three years running and I'm no slouch myself.
Ty Webb: Don't sell yourself short Judge, you're a tremendous slouch.

Complete article...

Office banter on the friday

2004-09-24T13:57:11Z

So today, we had a quiz in the office where the quizmistress awarded 25 points for passing questions and only 20 for answering them. That was a slip of tongue on her part, but what the heck, let's ignore that fact.

As the audience answered questions that the teams could not handle, they were thrown stressballs. This led to much attempted wit in the cubicles back at work. Amongst the statements that were overheard. (Complete article...)