Category: Life and Personal

Not many people that spend their day in front of their computer screens playing Halo or other MMORPGs are aware that Bill Gates was responsible for writing probably the first ever color graphics game for the IBM PC!

I remember playing this game in 1990 and spending a couple hours on it. Click on the Wikipedia link above for more information about the game. Trivial by today’s standards, Donkey was a really fun game at the time. Not to mention the wow factor of using an expensive PC to play games on it.

This came to my mind while I was responding to a post on JobsBlog about a TV program where Bill Gates will grant a wish to a kid. I have always admired Gates for what he has done for the industry as a whole (the anti-competitive practices notwithstanding), and have always aspired to be like him some day. Only time will tell if my wish would be granted.

🙂

ADDENDUM: While I am at the topic of Mr. Gates, I would like to share this funny video where Dr. Dave Bradley “compliments” Gates for making the “Three Finger Salute” so pervasive. I was Dr. Bradley’s assistant for about a year, and his “I love Me” collection has to be one of the most inspirational things I have seen in my life.

I have been talking about the idea of using an in-built GPS system in cars to track them for a long time. Turns out that is indeed going to become a reality with the Government announcing grants to develop such systems.

Their main premise is that such a deployment would allow them to setup a mechanism of “value pricing” for cars using public infrastructure like bridges etc. I am not sure if that’s the only true use of such a promising technology. As usual, privacy advocates are going to be up in arms about this, but I wouldn’t agree with them.

Let’s see where this goes!

I am not very active when it comes to posting interesting, timely, well planned, and somewhat controversial tidbits on my blog. In fact, I don’t think I am addicted to this *culture* enough. There are bloggers who make it a point to make very regular additions to their log. They aim for a certain level of readership, and strive to spread word out by religiously posting comments on other blogs. I have not done all that until now.

This made me wonder. What’s my blog about? Do I have an agenda?

I have written about my predicament about the purpose of my domain before, and this time I am trying to actually rationalise the purpose of this blog. I believe that every blog should have an agenda (well defined) anyway. In fact, most blogs are highly polarized about what they talk about.

I am going to be out of school very soon, which would translate to increased involvement in some real world projects. I guess that at that juncture I would be able to form some experience based *lessons* for my readers. I would also start thinking more about what to use my second domain, cerebrawl.com, for. One of the grand ideas is to use it bring some independent hobbyists together and find resources for them to actually commercialize their inventions/ideas/discoveries. I see a very strong model for this kind of a service in the coming knowledge based global economy.

So, in a nutshell, I think my agenda would basically evolve from a more “ad-hoc” mental rambling to a more formal technology and politics “aquarium”.

Hey! I am back after a very long hiatus! I was basically tied up with so much stuff that I had little time and motivation to get myself to update my blog.

I was going through the best of Craigslist when I noticed a very interesting post by the CEO of experienceTHIS.us giving out advice to people applying for jobs online.

The gist of the post is that it is always better to be honest, elucidative, simple, concise, and professional when initiating that first key hiring related correspondence. Of course, different recruiters have different preferences, and some might prefer the traditional cookie-cutter emails/correspondence with “tasty” phrases and lots of magic keywords. I remember sending in an application for recruitment to SuSE Linux straight out of college and receiving an email from a recruiter saying that it was one of the most “interesting” applications he had seen. Too bad, at that time, SuSE was not doing good and was actually looking for someone to buy them (which was later done by Novell). That notwithstanding, “interesting” could hold connotations that could be either positive or negative.

Personally, I believe that the best way to sell yourself is to highlight your successful projects/achievements and lessons from mistakes. That minor in communications could be a good idea in the increasingly competitive technology jobs arena.

I finally relented and bought myself a new Dell DJ music player tonight! My last portable music player purchase was a Sony Discman I bought in 2002 for my sister. I thought it was finally time for me to get with the times and gift myself something I could use to listen to music while mobile.

My new gizmo has a 30GB hard drive, and comes with a neat docking station. It cost me $200 after $95 in coupons and customer appreciation discounts. I just couldn’t give up on this special opportunity. Another driver for the decision was the fact that I am absolutely amazed at the quality of Dell products. I have been a very happy Dell customer since early 2004 having bought a PDA, a top-of-the-line desktop computer, and a powerhouse Inspiron 9300 laptop.

I did consider getting the 20GB photo iPod before I ordered this, though. One of the main reasons I dislike the iPods is the way they try to lock you in into proprietary formats and services. They don’t work with major music subscription services, and are way overpriced for the value they carry. I don’t support music piracy, and paying 99 cents for every musical track isn’t my cup of tea.

The next gadget on my shopping list is a new cellphone. My current Sony Ericsson T637 has about given up on life. I was looking around for newer Sony Ericsson models (I have taken a casual vow to stick to Sony Ericsson phones for the rest of my life), when I came across the W800i. It is a mix of a Sony Walkman, a Sony Cybershot 2.0MP camera, and a cellphone. Unfortunately, it works on the 900/1800/1900 frequency bands, while Cingular mostly uses the 850/1900 frequency bands in North America. I guess the phone is more geared towards T-Mobile suscribers. The yet-to-be-released W600i works on the 850/1900 frequencies, and has a smaller form factor, not to mention EDGE compatibility. I can’t wait for the price of that phone to fall down.

I should have my Dell DJ 30 by Wednesday!