Carthik Sharma

Shashi Tharoor is contesting the upcoming Lok Sabha elections from Trivandrum, representing the Indian National Congress.

I wish him luck, though I may not see eye to eye with the Congress party’s policies, attitude, and approach, I do see the merit in being represented by someone who is knowledgeable, and prepared to take politics to a higher plane. I am glad and proud that my constituency has a fighting chance to be represented by a person who once was in the running to be the Secretary General of the UN.

Been working on a paper this weekend, listening to music. Random old crappy songs keep popping up, distracting me. I need a consistent system for rating songs on a 1-5 scale. This corresponds to the “stars” that you see in most music players that support star ratings. Thought I would write what I wrote down on a notepad here, so I can refer to it later.

So far, the rating I assign to songs has been pretty random. The finger trembles and the brain does a “wait, wait, are you sure?” before I give something five stars. The brain also can’t decide if something is two, three or four stars.

The goals of the system are three – assigning a rating for songs should be quick process, the ratings must be independent of the mood I am in when I rate a song the first time, and songs that I don’t want to hear again must be clearly identifiable.

0 stars – Songs that have not been rated yet
Listed here for the sake of completeness

1 star – Songs that I do not like, and don’t want to listen to, again.
I hate deleting informartion, files. So these are songs that will stick around – the 7th song in a 7 song album that saves the album from being incomplete, for example. Or maybe popular songs that someone else might like. But, as far as I am concerned, I couldn’t care less about these songs.

2 stars – Songs that I might want to listen to again, sometime in the future, but not because I like them. Bhaja Govindam, for example, or, say, some songs by Björk. I really don’t think I will want to listen to it, but its not a song I never want to listen to again. 2 star-songs can move up the ladder later depending on how it “grows” on me.

3 stars – I like the song. I don’t get the urge to skip the song every time it plays.

4 stars – I love the song.

5 stars – Absolute all time favourite song. I can listen to these any time, any day and not be irritated. List of songs I would take with me to a desert island – that kind of thing.

Note to self – Directions for rating songs:

1. Listen to the song
2. If you just cannot listen to all of it, and won’t miss it for sure, it’s a 1-star song.
3. At the end of the song, if you can’t make up your mind whether you like it, and might want to listen to it again, pick 2-stars
4. If you like the song, 3-stars
5. If the song has 3 stars and you think it should get more ear time, give it 4-stars
6. If the song is an all time favorite, 5-stars. Brand new songs never get 5 stars. If it is a brand new song you absolutely love, give it 4 stars and leave it at that. If it deserves 5 stars, you will know it when, even after a month, you love it as much as you did the first time you heard it

Orson Scott Card, on reviews of his book Ender’s Game, on Amazon.

To quote him:

First, I’m embarrassed, as the author, that I have to give a rating in “stars” in order to comment here. But since I do have to do so, I’m not about to bring down the average by rating my own book any less than five .

I have often wondered if writers ever read reviews of their books at Amazon.com, apparently some do, and some actually respond.

What I also found amusing is 51 out of 52 people say they found that review (which is just Orson Scott Card’s comment on his style, and what people had to say about it) useful. How did it help them in choosing the book, I wonder. Perhaps, like me, they thought it was neat that an author cared enough to read the reviews and write a response. Perhaps, they wanted everyone to see he had responded and said they found the “review” useful.

No, I am not kidding.

If there ever was a pencil that was well-appreciated, it was this. I have a terrible urge to write with one of these.

I have been late to the party, but there is nothing like a legal pad, and a pencil, to get your thoughts flowing. I also hate yellow pencils. Which brings us to why pencils are mostly yellow, not counting the “Nataraj” and “Pinky” pencils I grew up on. Pencils are mostly yellow because that is the color associated (or previously associated) with royalty in China, and that’s where most of the pencils came from in the early days.

Good to know this.

Weird stuff, useful stuff, and really, really cool stuff. Camping gear, science kits, heck even a jeopardy/quiz buzzer kit. Have to come back to this site someday. I am afraid if I buy stuff now, I’ll buy way too much. The prices sound real low and reasonable too. I’m already loving it, though I wish I was a kid, and I had an uncle who loved this store.

http://www.sciplus.com/

If you have stared at the name Seetharaman Narayanan as the Adobe Photoshop credits roll by when Photoshop starts up, and wondered who this guy could be, you are not alone. I found this interview with the guy at Ironic Sans. By the way, you pronounce the name as “Sita-Raman Naaraa-yanan”. The last “n” in the name has a nasal, twangy sound, probably impossible for many westerners to reproduce. I wish I had a microphone so I could record the sound for you. I am glad I read the interview, quite serendipitously (I don’t even remember how I got to that page, or why). It turns out that there are quite a few pages on the web where he’s mentioned – even a couple of fan clubs.

The reasons for the name getting stuck in your head might be because the name is so long, and “exotic”. For me, however, I used to wonder how an Indian, from the same community as me (South Indian, probably (90%) Tamil, and (75%)Iyer/Iyengar), got into the credits of Photoshop.

My father(Appa)’s name is, after all, V. Narayan. Before he changed his name to what it is now, his name was V. Lakshminarayana Sarma. The “V” stands for Vydianath, which is also my grandfather’s given name.
So Mr. Seetharaman Narayanan studied at the Regional Engineering College, Trichy. I note this with pride, since I studied at another REC – the Regional Engineering College, Warangal. He’s called “Seetha” – which, though a handy name, also happens to be a feminine name – that of Lord Rama’s consort. My dad’s old name would be shortened to “Lakshmi” (yeah, just like the Lakshmi Singh you hear on NPR’s news). Maybe that is one of the reasons he chose to rename himself. I don’t want to get started on naming procedures in our community – that would make for an interesting post all by itself, and so I will save it for the future.

make_u_smile

Found this one on Go! Flavien who somehow found what I wrote earlier. I’m still amazed at the the chances of someone finding something I wrote and I accidentally finding out that someone found what I wrote interesting. I mean, there are, what – 100 million blogs out there? 1/100,000,000 * 1/100,000,000 = Wow! Okay, that was a very naive mathematical model, but still.

I have had to revoke my PGP key since I forgot the passphrase – mea culpa. Not that I have had too much use for it in the near past, but really, my Social Security Card, and passport haven’t seen the light of the day in more than a year now. My passphrase had 5 phrases/words in it, and though I can remember the last four, no amount of thinking in the shower, going to sleep while telling my mind to recall it from the subconscious and reveal it in a dream, and trying to recreate the instant when I thought up the passphrase is helping me. When I created the passphrase I had taken special care to make sure that I can recall it if I remembered at least one of three things, and yet, though I have the last four phrases/words I can’t for the life of me remember the first. I am sure it will come to me one day when I am lounging in my beach chair in a remote beach with a book on my chest.

So, friends, my keys have been revoked, using the instructions I wrote myself when I created the revocation certificate. The Key ID is 1878779A. Previously, the key with the Key ID 702814C0 had also been revoked. Searching the MIT PGP KeyServer confirms the revocation. Strangely though, the Veridis Keyserver doesn’t seem to know about the first revocation.

Anyway, the following is the revoke certificate:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: A revocation certificate should follow

iI4EIBECAE4FAkKUqn1HHQBSZXZvY2F0aW9uIGNlcnRpZmljYXRlIGNyZWF0ZWQg
YXQgdGhlIHRpbWUgb2YgY3JlYXRpb24uIE1heSAyNSwgMjAwNS4ACgkQPEhXdhh4
d5rUDQCeMdyDBHIh4rGGnFrsw6yWi99Db5EAni81qyTuNVBZu5OwE7bOcvuO0psb
=3bl3
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

The only reason it took me so long to revoke this key-pair is that I had encrypted the revocation certificate with a symmetric key cipher, and thought I had forgotten the password for that too. I know, how smart. I had encrypted the revocation certificate using Gringotts – a very neat little encryption/decryption application. Then when I tried to decrypt it a while ago, the dang file wouldn’t get decrypted. So I feared the worst, and thought maybe I had forgotten the password for that too. Being unable to revoke keys is a lifelong sign of stupidity – much worse than a tattoo, I hear. Fortunately I just found out that Gringotts was broken and it was not my fault. So I tried with an up-to-date Gringotts, and voila! – I could decrypt my revoke certificate.

I will create a new key pair shortly – I have to get it all perfect from the get-go this time.

Update: New Key ID: BB0B8176
New key is below:
—–BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–
Version: SKS 1.0.9
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=BJmr
—–END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–