Vista doesn't suck! Not with time atleast...

I’m sure everyone by now has read the infamous Vista sucks… article. I don’t know if it was a deliberate attempt at trying to catch information, or they really believe what they wroteBy the looks of the explanations, looks like the latter is true, but I really don’t think putting Vista 10th on the list of worst things —- and not even of 2007, but all time —- is the right thing. We know Microsoft got a lot of things wrong, but Vista surely deserve’s better.

Personal experience

I’ve been using Vista for about a month now. It is a better operating system than XP, that’s for sure. Integrated search, the memory management, the looks, usage pattern recognition algorithms are all much superior. Sure, something that took 6 years to make should have much more to speak for, but I think this is a worthy product. Not worthy of the $300+ price tag, but worthy nonetheless. Somethings that are wrong with Vista are probably one’s that become clear over time. The hardware requirements are high. 1GB just doesn’t cut it anymore, if you’re a multi-tasker like me (Photoshop, Firefox, Outlook all at once :P). The final cost of using Vista is much higher than the price tag of the OS itself. And one thing that irritated me tons, and still does a bit, is that Microsoft very clearly traded features for performance. XP was ‘way’ faster than Vista has ever felt; even a clean new installed Vista seems like a slug compared to my year old XP SP2. And from what I’m hearing, Vista SP1 doesn’t seem to help issues.

Someone who wants a fast operating system, should certainly have no qualms about how it looks. Hence, turning Aero off should sit decently well with them. I like my OS to look top notch, and hence, would rather keep Aero on. But I can see a good difference when the load starts to mount. Also, I was also re-introduced to the concept of ‘restarting the computer’ after long periods of use to speed it up again. I hope Vista’s garbage collection and repopulation of the memory cache is improved in SP1.

So why doesn’t it suck?

In a single line, I’d have to say because once you get used to it, and with UAC off ( :P ), you will really see your productivity increase. Vista is extremely intuitive. It has made repetitive tasks simpler, and will make you a much more efficient user. From simple things like hitting the windows key, and starting to type to launch applications, to creating advanced scheduled tasks. And after a month, Vista does feel faster than it used to in the beginningWhich I think is because it has understood over a month the applications I use the most, and loads them up in the cache everytime it finds the space.. It’s networking is much better than XP’s, with creation and recognition of networks, and their settings far better and easier. Device installation is a breeze for most of the things, since some or the driver is already present for it. And security … even with UAC off, it seems to be a stable and hardy operating system coupled with Windows Defender (and constant updates from Microsoft).

I’d really say that bar the price, Vista is a good operating system to try out. And I don’t suggest a day or a week for a trial. Give it atleast a month. Get used to the slightly different ways of doing things. Instead of making a giant leap, Microsoft has eased the changes in, so that we can get used to them slowly and steadily. It will take a little time to get used to them. And once you do, you’ll see it isn’t ‘all’ that bad :)

Facebook downtime, iPhone and my stinkin' exams

Facebook went down today for a couple of hours, citing ‘maintainence’ as the reason. They were down for a couple of ours for ‘me’. I don’t know about the others, since it said ‘your account is not available’.

This is the first time Facebook has gone down since it released the Platform, and I think we can put some blame onto that. Having to roll out fix builds almost everyday while keeping the site up and running like a jet engine. There are tons of new applications already (I have four), and they’re being approved by hundreds in a day. Every application added gets exposure in the directory, and starts getting more users. This adds to Facebook’s server load.

Platform has been hugely successful, and you can begin to see a visionary in Zuckerberg. Even though any data regarding the application itself (users, referrals, how many adds per hour etc.) aren’t availableThere are some applications which scrape this data out of Facebook, but that’s against Facebook TOS (scraping), so I don’t think they’ll be around for too long., the data and integration options make up for it pretty well :)

iPhone!!

We’ve all heard about it, read about it, and know as much about it without having it as the person who does. The iPhone has been the most hyped gizmo in a ‘very’ long time, and little surprise it comes from Apple. People have been flocking to get their hands on one. Twitter saw increased activity thanks to the people waiting in line busy micro–blogging to get their experience out. The iLoser reached celebrity stardom for all the wrong reasons … with people howling for him to thrown out. But he maintained his place.

Now that the iPhone is out, it’s managed to live upto its hype, and Apple has lived upto it’s reputation. I’m sure Nokia and Blackberrys all across the world are feeling a little lonely right about now (when was the last time they were excited about ‘their’ phone?), although it’s a sad time for anyone ‘not’ in the U.S., since the iPhone launch was U.S. only. They will be announcing a model for the European market on Monday (as per reports), and Vodafone is being touted as the carrier. India, Australia, and all the countries this side will only be graced next year, same time.

I for one am actually glad that Apple’s taking it’s time to bring the iPhone here. It will give them time to iron out the bugs, hardware issues, compatibilities and problems, and give us a more polished and finished product. But the people who ‘have’ got their hands on with it, are surely not complaining! :)

Exams, exams! :(

Yes, the rants of a college going kid continue. I’ve been riddled with exams yet again, which is why my beloved little blog has been ignored so much the past days. All is not lost though. I’ve been keeping busy with a few projects, ideas and Facebook ofcourse. My end term holidays start in just over a week, and I’m planning big things for that this time around.

So! Here’s to a great iPhone for all those who have it, and who’re going to buy it! And I shall be back to blogging full time very, ‘very’ soon! :D

Getting 'em while they're young

It’s truly rare to see a young coder/hacker. While I started when I was 16, not everyone is ‘geek’ enough to do so. Partly to do with this is the whole not cool factor, but a good part is to do with the fact that languages are many, most of them not being easy to learn. If you target a learning group of say 13–15 years old, try and find me a tutorial on the web which caters to this group, and can get them programming quickly, even basic programs un–helped.

Not rocket science

It’s a known fact that kids learn the fastest when they’re young. So, not aiming for these young kids is making everyone lose out on so many potential coders, we probably cannot imagine. Given the right language, training and a friendly push, everything falls into place. Even if it means starting out with BASIC, or LOGO. It’s not particularly rocket science, and doesn’t take much to understand when someone starts getting interested. Advanced concepts like pure Object oriented programming can be kept for a later date. Don’t tell me they won’t understand int i = 5; …

Hackety.org has released a version o.4 of a Ruby starter’s guide. It’s basically a friendly way for kids to learn the basics of programming, using Ruby. Ruby has pretty straightforward reading–English type syntax, so it makes the learning curve flatter. I downloaded the guide for myself, and am mighty impressed by the sheer simplicity (while not compromising power) of Ruby. I’ll surely be looking more into that, later … :)

Get it rolling

We need more efforts like Hackety Hack, which aim to help out and start early with the teaching thing. Once the concepts are in place, other languages become easy to understandNot learn though. I think Ruby is a good language to get started on since the syntax is simple, but not to continue using if you want to progress with learning concepts. Acquiring the knowledge of a language and the basic concept just needs a bit of time and practice.

Kids have more time than grown ups do … sadly!

Blogger feeds re-ordering #

Edit: As the comment by Pete goes, Blogger has added an orderby query string, that can take two values, namely published or updated, depending on how you want your feed ordered. This cuts out Pipes out of the equation as of now, and hence remove the overhead being added. Go Blogger! :)

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You could call it Blogger Feed Corrector part deux! :) Carrying over from Ramani's post, I have worked up a new pipe which will re-order the feed coming out of Blogger, sorted in descending order (latest to earliest) of the published date.

This pipe comes because of the bug being filed by Ramani (which went unnoticed by Yahoo! inspite of high votes). I have worked it to correct the RSS version of the Blogger feed, to overcome the ATOM weirdness.

You just need to enter a simple URL, and get the final URL as RSS. Doing so will however give your feed a weird title (see for yourself! :P), so you'll be better off cloning the pipe. Also, as Ramani pointed out to me, the feeds are cached by feed readers, so don't worry if you don't immediately see any updates to your posts. Give it about half an hour or so, and you should see your new posts popping up :)

Ofcourse, once Pipes is fixed to properly parse ATOM, I'll change the pipe to not hack it's way out. But I'd wish Blogger would fix this natively, would reduce the big Pipes overhead being added to the feed call. Maybe we're all missing some GDATA query strings? :P

Let me know if you find any bugs!

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Update (24/02): Ok, A Pipes employee responded to my feedback (Suggestion), and said that the error I was getting (below) has been fixed. He also said that it'd go live in a day or two, but I'm yet to see anything change. Let me know if you do...(27/02) This has been fixed now! Enjoy :)

Update (19/02): I don't know what's wrong, but the content from the feed being generated by this pipe has disappeared. If you're using it (cloned), tell me if you're seeing this (you will only see the titles). So now an ATOM to RSS transfer doesn't transfer the date, and an RSS to RSS transfer doesn't transfer the content! :( I don't know what's going on with Pipes!

Pipes to the rescue!

Update: There is no need to do this anymore. Check out the update on this post.

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It seems like at every step of the way, the fact that feeds are becoming ‘the’ way to get information and updates, it turning out to be true. It’s just fascinating how there have been so many new start–ups based around feeds, which is in itself so simple and logical you begin to wonder how we did without it all these days.

Blogger’s inherent mistake

Everyone who uses Blogger’s feed directlyYou’re making a mistake by doing so, and should serve it through FeedBurner. If not for any of the amazing statistics tracking features, then for the smart conversion of your feed to different formats and enabling different readers to get the format they’re compatible with., would have noticed that whenever you update an old post, it get’s bumped to the top of the feed. This works to disorient subscribers (although is a good way to bring to attention old posts), and can be a big headache. There are a couple of quick ways to get rid of it, but I’d not recommend anything but the pipes method. Just simply run it through Pipes, and you’ll have your feed sorted to your requirement. Pipes offers so many more options to filter/sort/merge and–what–not your feed. You don’t need any other feed masher, or jumbler, or blendr, or any of those things.

The next good thing

Pipes has tremendous potential, which you can see from the sample feeds they offer to show you when you first try to make a new pipe. It’s dead simple, and anyone can use it because of it’s simple interface.

One can create dynamic query strings, which can take inputs and give your proper outputs (something which can be used to sort multiple Blogger feeds with just one pipe). The output can be taken as RSS or JSON, and then worked upon by your code. It’s absolutely fantastic what can be achieved if someone just thinks hard enough.

I can’t come up with any ‘very’ fancy use of it at the moment (just got over with a heavy duty coding competition :P), and I’d love to hear new ideas. And I’ve got a feeling Avatar will come knocking here! :) So what’re you waiting for?

Furthur reading

5 cool ways of using Pipes!
Rewired Feeds

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Update: Looks like a flaw in Pipes is preventing new posts from being detected by feed readers because the published dates remains empty. Ramani has made a suggestion about this, and to make it more visible to Yahoo!, you should vote for it.

It’s a good thing Pipes is in beta. It’s got quite a lot of bugs they need to iron out, some of which were discovered by Ramani and Stephen.

Looking back at '06, on to '07

It has surely been an amazing year for blogs, the Internet, The Last Word, and me. Looking back now, I'd really like to chronicle all the things that made a difference and I'd like to share with everyone.

What started off as a relaxing 'try-out slowly became a lovely and fulfilling hobby. Yes, The Last Word graduated from humble beginnings, as a way for me to share my thoughts with friends and people who bumped in, to a full and complete review and reflection (thank you Jen) blog through which I now share everything I think and know about the Internet world around me, programming and designing. I have introduced quite a few hacks and user-scripts [Pg 1 & 2] which have been implemented and used by many people. Just knowing that someone out there is benefitting from my work is enough to make me work for 'one' more hack :) Nothing like a little encouragement to keep you going!

Towards the middle of the year, when the old blog surfaced as a mainstream blog thanks to inputs and help from Avatar, I didn't expect to get so much viewer-ship and support from people. I guess I chose a more lucrative path of becoming a 'hacker' for Blogger, which made it easier to be spotted on the radar. I quickly took the opportunity to convert a generic blog to a theme related one. I had to give up the freedom of writing anything on my mind for that, but now on looking back from here, the change was nothing but a necessary growing step, which I'm glad to have taken at the correct time.

Through codes and scripts, I came to make friends in the community who are now my good friends over the Internet. They know who they are, and my sincere thanks to each and every one of them for making the year such a wonderful learning experience, and taking me from being just a kid with a penchant for codes to the status of 'Young gun' (thank you Phydeaux3!). I formed a satisfying partnership with Stephen and we created quite a few innovative hacks together. Now that we're both in college, we don't get to brainstorm like the good ol' days anymore. But I sure hope to reach the same peak of ultimate hackery with him in the future.

I learnt that certain methods work, and certain don't, when it comes to getting your point out to the world. But nothing works if you talk without any authority on your subject. I learnt how to write 'to' the people, something which I didn't know. I was too used to writing for myself. This was again explained to my by Avatar. Subtle changes brought more people to read my blog for articles, and not just a new hack. Even now as I check my statistics, my feed subscriber-ship shows a solid 140 subscribers. So close to new years, and many people out enjoying with family, it is a very encouraging number :)

My attempt at going commercial ended in quite a big thud! I wanted to take up designing for people as a small side-profession, but I guess I lack the creativity to generate a lot of innovative content quickly. I might try my hand at it again in the future, and hope to have more encouraging results then. But at the moment, there are no prospects of me taking up anything related to the Internet as a profession or a commercial hobby.

Together with Avatar, Bloggeratto came into existence. Although he gives me credit for the quick development of the blog, plus a permanent link to here, it has been completely his brainchild and hardwork which has put it where it is today. I did nothing more than place a few codes, and give him a few CSS tricks to put in! I wrote some codes specifically for Bloggeratto, which are now lying tattered and broken, begging for a rework. The task rests in my 'To-do' for the new year! More so now because Bloggeratto will be resurfacing soon in a new avatar! :P

The biggest turnaround was the onset of the new Blogger, and my hiatus from blogging. I entered college, and things became hectic. I left at a time when the magic was just beginning, and sadly missed the best part of it. But still, the moment I got a chance to make a return, I took the opportunity again. Trust me, there was a time where I had decided not to return to blogging, because I realised how much of my time it was eating up. Even now, as my examinations are going on, I take every break time I get to write out a little bit. But again, encouragement and questions with ideas from Avatar and many people out there who had implemented my hacks compelled me to make a fresh start. What better way than to switch to the new Blogger, and design a completely new blog?

The new year seems promising enough. Hopefully Blogger will keep things rolling at their end, and I will continue to share my thoughts and articles with you the way I have all of last year. And hacks! They will pop their heads every now and then to make your blogging experience simpler and more fun!

Hello 2007!

Tag, I'm it!

As it turns out, I've now been tagged by two people. The first, good friend and a hacker in his own right, Efendi. And the other is our very own Avatar, staying on top of everything with the word 'blog' in it! He demanded this post from me, and I shall comply. Although a good friend had made a post Things you didn't know about Aditya Vikram Mukherjee on these lines quite a while back, I guess I could add some more to the list :) So, here's my list of the five things you didn't know about me :)

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• I'm one of the biggest music freaks you'll ever get to know. I play five different instruments, and I sing. People say I can dance as well :P I can play the Piano, Keyboards (they are different!), bass, guitar, a little bit of the drums and (one I don't count) violin :) I listen to 'anything' rock, and anything else, you should think twice before recommending it to me. Very strict and hard headed that way.


• Until 3 months ago, the only computer I had used on a parmanent basis was a 7 year old HP Brio, with 64MB RAM, 800 Mhz Pentium 3, 10 GB HD space and Windows 98 SEThese specifications were amazing for the time and price when we bought it in January 2000! The Brio series isn't meant for home use, and I think it has been discontinued since then, with the merger of HP-Compaq and the Presario's and Pavillion's taking over.. I used to design my sites, write my scripts and work with that configuration. Heh! Yep, it can be done!


• I began coding only a year back. I knew a little of Javascript, but whatever I know, I've learnt it through writing hacks and coding for pages that I made. Now, I know 4 languages, and one at a basic level. Javascript, HTML & CSS (I'll count them as one), Java, C/C++, and beginning with PHP :)


• I love reading fantasy novels and story books. A few good examples would be everyone's favourite Lord Of The Rings, Dragonriders of Pern, Harry Potter and Eragon. However, I'm 'not' a fan of Harry Potter as a lot of people are. I think after the fourth book, it lost the shine and glow of a quality story. LOTR seems eons ahead in terms of quality, and out of the new books, DOP seems the most promising!


• I am completely self taught in almost all the things that I do. From learning those instruments, to coding and designing. I have never undergone any 'proper' formal training of any sort. Sometimes, that's a bad thing since you don't know what's the right way of doing something. But it sure gives me pride to be able to say that :)

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There you have it! Five things you didn't know about me, which now you do! I'm not very good at revealing stuff about me, but it sure was fun remembering all those things, since they have somehow been pushed to the past now :) I believe the process now is to tag five more people? This one will be a toughy, because I want to tag people who will actually write about themselves! :P Heh! So here are my taggies:

• Phydeaux3: One of the nicest people around and my good friend.
• Singpolyma: As Avatar said, 'the' hacker of our times! :P
• Ramani: One of the most creative hackers around!
• Deepak: The newest coder on the scene.
• Gregory: The man who's hack (Freshtags!) got me into hacking the first place! :)

Warning! You have been tagged! :P

Integrated solutions

The notion that something done alone is done well, isn't really selling well. If you make something that communicates in just one mode, or works with (or for) just one thing, chances are people will lose interest quickly. This is not a rule, and I don't want people coming knocking on my door citing examples where my theory falls. It's an observation, not a prophecy! :P

Amalgamation of good things

Take for example something we use everyday, and yet not notice the importance of it. A chat client! Which one do you use most frequently? Windows Live Messenger? Yahoo! Messenger? Or maybe the underappreciated Gtalk? Chances are, if you're not a power user, you use one of the above listed. If you are one however, in 9/10 cases, you'll be either using a open source multi-protocal IM-er. Something like Psi, or Miranda. If you're not one for OS, you might go for Trillian!

My point, is that today people who like to get the most out of what they use, go for integrated solutions in their most frequently used things. I'm sure no-one likes to switch around applications and things to get their things done. If offered one application that does most of the things decently, as compared to ten applications that do their parts well, most people would pick the one application solution. Why? Ease and convenience of use! Your work gets done faster, much more easily, and let's face it, with the least amount of looking and hunting around. We are all lazy somwhere deep down! :D

I take the example of IM-ers because that's where the most amount of examples struck me. But I'm sure if you think carefully enough, you'll see the pattern emerge in your everyday life. Do share them with me, I'd love to make my point stronger! :)

The mistakes corrected

Now, companies are looking to join up their core competences, to come up with products that are superior in more than one facet. The recent tie between Microsoft and Yahoo! to combine compatibility of Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger is a perfect example (although Google and AOL got their first! :P ). They are realising that instead of trying to outdo each other, it's much better to work together to come up with a truly superior product, that everyone can use and enjoy. Trying to deny usability and compatibility with others just to keep an edge over the competition, is not only lame, but puts the proverbial 'thorn in your side' as you use the thing everyday. But you can't leave it because it does just that one thing which you love so much! Thankfully, this is being reduced slowly and steadily as access to data is opened up.

Monopoly isn't always a good thing. It stagnates the field, and makes us resistant to change. The classic debate is Windows and Macs. There is a story on Digg every 3-4 days about how some big business man changed over, and now is seeing his productivity increase! They make me happy, not because Mac wins in the tussle, but because it shows that people are waking up to better possibilities and doing something about the things they use. They are looking for more productivity than a comfort zone. This means that startups and other companies can offer smaller, but better solutions, and actually expect people to use them. But finally, it just proves that people have brains! :) After all, its the ability to think that makes us human, isn't it?

Have you made a switch or change you were glad about? What do you recommend in place of an estabilished (big but comparitively bad) product? Share them with us! :)