simulacra

I haven’t updated my blog in ages. I don’t know why, for the last few months, I just couldn’t write.

I write in order to help myself think. Putting concrete words to my thoughts is the best way (that I know of) of clearing my head, and enforcing some sort of order to the chaos that is my mind. I think I’m addicted: ever since I stopped writing, I have been getting more and more distracted…

There’s so much going on, I’m just going to capture some highlights here and will try and be more regular in the future.

I’ve been very busy: learning to drive, getting a driver’s license (at the age of 25!), reading awesome books and discovering new music.

Driving is joy. I thought I would hate driving a car, but it turns out to be surprisingly fun. I think the fact that I work from home, and don’t have to drive everyday is why I like it so much: Mumbai’s rush-hour traffic, if I have to face it daily, is sure to suck any joy I have out of the activity and turn it into a chore.

Some book-related excitement:

1. I read the entire Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, and it's really good. I recommend it to everyone who has an imagination.

2. Have started reading Eoin Colfer’s sixth Hitchhiker’s Guide book, And Another Thing. Am mid-way thro’ it, and it’s a fun book. Not a Douglas Adams book, but a fun read nevertheless.

3. Speaking of someone else continuing the works of the original author, I have in my possession The Gathering Storm, Brandon Sanderson’s attempt at completing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. I haven’t read it yet, because I’m busy re-reading the original 11 books in the series. Have currently finished re-reading book 7, only four more to go!

By the way, the US cover of The Gathering Storm is my nomination for the worst book cover, ever.

On a more serious note, I am planning to pursue further studies. I am almost certain about the courses/universities I want to join, but I’m not going to talk about it publicly unless everything is final, and my applications have already been sent.

Fun projects:

1. amfiquery—a small web-based API to get the current NAV of Indian mutual funds.

2. My version of trac’s SVN post-commit hook—with a few customizations that may be useful to others.

There are few other such mini-projects that aren’t online yet. I’ll publish them if I can…

I’ve been waiting for an Android-based phone to be ‘officially’ launched in India for a while now. My wait seems to be near its end; there are (again) some rumours flying around that HTC is going to launch one of its phones in India in the near future. Sooner or later, there’s bound to be an Android-based phone available in India—if it’s not HTC, then it’ll probably be Samsung.

Why Android? If I wanted an ordinary smartphone, I could have bought an iPhone already. The iPhone’s problem is that I can’t really develop apps for it myself—the development environment is Mac-only. And I can’t install applications that aren’t on the official app store—unless I mod the phone, which I’m unwilling to do.

Android doesn’t have have iPhone’s polished UI. None of the Android-based phones out so far look as sexy as an iPhone. These issues don’t matter.

Android has a pretty decent (Eclipse-based) development environment. I was reasonably sure that I would be able to develop applications for my small needs myself; and that was before the awesome Android Scripting Environment (ASE) was announced.

ASE allows one to write tiny scripts (in Python, Lua or BeanShell) that can do awesome things. Like allowing me to scan a book’s barcodes and looking-up its details, sending messages, finding my location, using text-to-speech, and creating notifications.

Of course, all this is possible via a normal application. But providing a decent scripting environment really lowers the bar. The possiblity of creating a script in a couple of minutes that’s useful right away allows one to experiment with all sorts of crazy ideas.

The only thing I’m worried about is that when I do end up with an Android phone, I could end up wasting all my time customizing and scripting it. Technology is supposed to be unobtrusive, not all-consuming.