Learnt something very interesting about research today. In most cases it is possible to tell the quality and importance of a piece of research by its simplicity. The more complicated a solution, the less good the research generally is. Well, this is not true always, but most of the time. Let me try and explain why...
Any paper that is so complicated that it requires one to read ten other papers before it can be understood is in all probability nothing more than an aggregation of those ten papers. There is very rarely something new and brilliant in such papers. Most such papers are about incremental advances in the science. The bright new idea was in those ten prior papers.
A paper that is simple and easy to understand is generally an indication of the best research. In most cases it has a solution that seems so obvious, it makes one wonder why no one come up with it before! And in most cases it is not because no one was looking, but because no one realized it! Thats what makes this research so brilliant. Also it is these papers that get cited the most, and often lead to advances in areas the original authors never even thought about. And indeed it is these papers that people generally enjoy reading the most, and have the greatest WOW effect.
Well, perhaps all this is a huge generalization, but it is true in most cases!
So here is the key to doing good research: think simple, think elegant, think generic.
Nikon finally announced their new consumer Digital SLR, the D70 today. The specs look amazing! Unlike the EOS 300D, this is not a crippled sibling of its pro-cam brothers. Several things are better than the D100, and comparable even to the D1. Well, all this is still only on paper - it needs to be seen how well the camera performs. But I would not worry too much about that - its a Nikon after all! And all this only for $999 (body only)! Only problem is the build quality - it is plastic (I can live with that).
The first review of the D70 is up at digitalreview.ca. There is also some info on dpreview (the full review would take a few weeks, i guess). Also the forums are buzzing with activity: here, and here.
The price of entry level digital SLRs has halved in the last year. The features have increased. The era of hobbyist Digital SLRs is finally beginning to dawn on us. Another couple of years, and film will be all but dead (for most hobbyists atleast).
I went in for this movie with no expectations at all. I came out pleasantly surprised, and somewhat satisfied.
The movie is about the decisions we make in life, and how one small decision can change the lives of everyone around us almost completely! In this, it is somewhat similar to Lola Rennt. But there is a subtle difference. Lola Rennt actually showed that some things are completely outside our control. For example, depending on whether a dog barks at you while you are going down the stairs or not, you’ll either live or die at the end of the day! Butterfly Effect, on the other hand is all about the effect of small conscious decisions and actions that we make all the time. It is kind of the same thing, but looking it from the opposite direction.
[MILD SPOILER ALERT]
So the story is about this guy who had these blackouts every now and then when he was a kid. Every now and then he just has no memory about what happened during short periods of time. Then when he grows up he finds a way of not only rediscovering this memory, but is also able to change what he did during these periods! So he can basically go back in time, change the way he behaved, and when he comes back he is a different person at a different place! Interesting idea.
While I was writing that, it occured to me that he actually goes back and changes ALL the blackout occurences. So could it be that the blackouts occur because he came back to change them!? Could this be something to do with parallel universes, and the blackouts are corridors to another universe or something? And could these new corridors be created at random where he wishes? I think the movie suddenly became more interesting than I first thought!
The movie reminds me of Donnie Darko. Both had this thing about time travel/parallel universes etc. But sadly Butterfly Effect is not even in the same league as Donnie Darko. The acting was awful all around! I kind of liked the way the story was presented, specially the way the blackouts were handled. Direction and editing were fairly good. But the acting spoils the movie…
Another thing I did not like was the ending. There would have been about a million better ways to end the movie. In fact, if they just ended the movie about 10 minutes earlier than they did, it would have been just awesome! Perhaps just after he talks to the doc and we get an alternate explaination for everything. Ending it right there would have left a big open question, which is something I like in movies. There could have been other cool endings as well.
Well, the great news is that the director initially had a different ending for the movie. It was changed to make it more suitable for a mass release, and the original ending is going to be included as an extra on the DVD. Here is a quote from the director:
That was one of the problems over the years—the ending. Everybody thought it was amazing, but they didn’t know a mass audiences would take it. But we got the opportunity and thank God for DVDs, because the theatrical ending is great and thematically, our [original] ending and that one are the same — it’s just how we go about it. It’s crazy, and it’ll blow your minds.
- Mackye Gruber
I cant wait to get my hands on the DVD. A better ending might change this movie from a good one to something that is truly great!
Edit: Interesting paradox in the movie (possible SPOILER). This is kind of like the Grandfather Paradox. Let us assume that the theory that the protagonist can actually go back to any point in time he choses, and that would it would result in a blackout for that period. Now, for going back in time, and even discovering how to do that he would have needed his old journals. But the journals started only because he was having those blackouts! So, which came first: the blackouts resulting in the journals, or the journals resulting in time travel and blackouts? Or is this theory itself flawed. Maybe the story really is quite simple and linear : he has blackouts, and then he uses them to change the past (he can go back only for the periods he had blackouts)? I think this is quite interesting, and the movie goes deeper than it appears. I’ll post more if I come up with any other ideas about this…
A new teaser for Kill Bill volume 2 was shown on TV a couple of days back. It is available online here now. Its just a minute long teaser, not the complete trailer.
Two more short (like 10-20 seconds) teasers are available on the Japanese Kill Bill website. I really liked the one titled "Trailer-1". It is amazing what can be achieved in such a short clip!
Also, according to many on the imdb forum for the movie, the release date has been bumped back by two months to April 16 (it was supposed to be Feb 20 earlier). Really looking forward to this one...
Amazing analogy over at Penny Arcade…
The iPod is the modern-day equivalent of the Samurai sword.It is a bit emasculating to admit this, but portable electronics have replaced sidearms in our culture. I draw upon the Japanese katana for my analogy for several reasons. First, the katana was much more than a mere weapon or cutting tool. It was a portable symbol of status, power, and class. The warrior class, the Samurai, were actually quite numerous. At their height they were nearly 10% of the population of Japan. Before 1876, wearing the katana conveyed to the casual observer that the wearer of the long and short swords possessed a rank and status of an elite group.
The simple fact that people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars more for an iPod, when equal technology is available in a less impressive-looking package, points directly to this analogy. People will pay more for a status symbol, and in doing so, they have made the iPod one of the most important cultural icons today.
The iPod is indeed beautiful, artfully designed, and really still is quite impressive technologically speaking. One of the most intriguing things to me remains that even though the headphones that come with it are of famously poor quality, people seem to hang onto them, since they seem to say, “I am a charter member of the iPod fraternity!”
- Penny Arcade
I would completely agree with the earphones part. I can tell another iPod user from a mile simply by the distinctive white earphones! And though I’ve never liked stock earphones with portable electronics (thanks my obsession for portable MP3 players, I’ve seen quite a few), I continue to use the iPod’s rather crappy earphones!
But I strongly believe that it is not only about pride and having a status symbol. A very big reason for the iPod’s success is that it is very attractive and has great looks and design. The touch wheel, the glowing buttons, the backlit screen - use it once, and you’ll want one for yourself. It is a a fact that Attractive things work better.
Wash and polish your car: doesn’t it drive better?
For a long, long time computers have been badly designed. Not just software (we all know how awful user interface on most software is), but even the beige colored boxes. Lian Li, for example makes awfully expensive ($150+) but really amazing computer cases. With a slide out motherboard tray, removable front panel and power supply tray, these attractive cases really work much better than ordinary $20 ones. And then there is this whole range of great looking products from Apple. It is no surprise that they also have the best Operating System and applications for the desktop. Things like this certainly add to the overall experience when one works on them. Most of us spend a majority of our day on our computers (why else would anyone be reading this) - and this is all the more reason to use hardware and software that one enjoys working on!
Edit: Found this article that talks about the packaging of the Powerbook and the iPod, and the difference such small things make to the complete ownership experience. Lots of thought is put into seemingly unimportant things - but they have a huge impact on the user. Isnt this true for all forms of art?
In the early 1900s, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii conducted elaborate photographic surveys of the Russian Empire under Tsar Nicholas II. The thousands of pictures that he took of people, architecture, transportation, etc. are one of the best record of the Russian Empire before the Revolution. What really intrigued me about this is that all this work was done in color!
He developed a really ingenious technique of photography. Using three filters (red, green and blue), he took three pictures of a scene on ordinary ordinary black and white glass plate negatives. These pictures were then projected using the same filters to get a single color image. Very neat work!
The Library of Congress came to possess huge collection of these triple-negative plates and photographer Walter Frankhauser guided in cleaning and alignment of about 120 plates to get hi-res color pictures. Now it is possible to easily view these pictures the way they were meant to be seen - in full vibrant color! Make sure you check out the Library’s online exhibit, The Empire that was Russia. Do explore this site for a while - it is well worth the time!
The quality of this work is simply amazing, specially the color. Most digital cameras today come nowhere near the vivid color these images display. That brings us to, is Digital Photography correct today? This is one of my advisor’s favourite topics of discussion. I would not go into details here, but one thing that is obvious is that digital cameras should not try to mimic film cameras. Digital has far greater potential that film ever had, and a new way of thinking about Digital Photography is needed to make use of it.
Well, back to the topic, Frank Dellaert (at CMU, now at GaTech) made use of vision techniques for automatic alignment and colorization of the plates. Though his results are not as good as the 120 that were manually done, he has almost the entire slide collection colorized. Addison Godel has a decent gallery that he generated using Photoshop.
The picture on this page is “The Bukhara Emir”. Click on it for a bigger picture. Notice the vivid color in his dress.
Three movies I saw over the past month but didnt find the time to write about here. Two were OK to bad, and one was surprisingly good.
Edward Norton is what made me watch The Italian Job. Surprisingly bad acting all around. Poor direction. OK, but overused story. Some nice photography was the only saving grace. Disappointed.
Philip K. Dick prompted me to watch Paycheck. An excellent example of a great story thrown away by extremely poor acting and some very ordinary direction. The action scenes were fine but could be much improved. Had some pretty good scifi fundas though. The whole idea of erasing memory seems quite intriguing. The movie makes a great case for Open Source, and against Intelectual Property and patents. Note to self: Check out some books by Philip Dick.
Peter Hedges' directorial debut Pieces of April was unexpectedly good though. Unlike the first two, this is a small budget, inde movie with no big stars. Though the story is not all that great, good acting, music, and direction transform it into a great movie. It is a perfect example of making a good movie by getting the basics right. I particularly liked the background music. Unfortunately the much touted iTunes Music Store knows nothing about it...
I first came across the name Hubert Selby, Jr. on the DVD inlay of the movie Requiem for a Dream, which is based on a novel by him. The director of the movie, Darren Aronofsky was deeply influenced and impressed by Hubert Selby. This is what the DVD inlay said:
I was a public school kid from Brooklyn facing my first exams freshman year of college (Harvard), and I was terrified. I hit the library and tried to learn. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the word 'Brooklyn' Now, when you're from Brooklyn and you see anything related to Brooklyn, you're immediately interested. I pulled a worn copy of "Last Exit to Brooklyn" off the shelf. This was before the movie, and I had no clue what I holding. From sentence one, I was done, and so were my finals. I blew them off and I read. I read and I read and I screamed and I connected and I recited and I rejoiced. This was storytelling. This was understanding. This was a deep yet simple examination of what makes us human. I now knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to tell stories. -Darren AronofskyLast Exit to Brooklyn is easily one of the most gross, terrifying, intense and brutal books I've ever read. It is also perhaps the best and most powerful. The book is set in the 1950s, and is about the lives of people in Brooklyn. Full of violence, drugs, sex, and the most hideous crimes imaginable, the book examines the other side of the American Dream. The book actually has a bunch of short stories, each of which ends in the most horrible way for the main character possible. No one dies, but most would wish to rather die than go through all that they did.
This is not an easy book to read. Paragraphs extend to pages, and sentences go on for miles. Very wierd punctuation. No quotes. Its one of the most unusual styles of writing. And add to that the detail the stories are presented in. (WOW!) Hubert Selby has an amazing eye for observing what is going on around him. He presents such an honest, ruthless and brutal account of the stories that at times it becomes painful to read. But putting down the book is simply impossible. The writing style varies with the character that is being discussed. While talking about an educated and intelligent character, the narration is grammatically correct, while for others it becomes exclusively slang with no sense of grammar or spelling. There are some pages completely in uppercase (for a very loud and raucous character)! Also the tone varies according to what the main character is going through. When someone the main character is extremely drunk, for example, there are pages of completely incoherent text. In fact it becomes impossible to tell when the author is using first person and when he is using third person. This is art, and this is what makes the book a real master piece. Absolutely brilliant!
That said, this is not a book for everyone. That this book was banned in England and several other countries when it first came out gives an indication of this. However, it was later made into a movie by german director Uli Edel. This has become a major cult movie, just like the book. However, I am not sure if I am brave enough to be able to watch it...
I got my new iPod today. Wow! I've never been this impressed by any gadget! Yea, yea... its just an mp3 player. But I was totally blown away by the packaging, the great attention to small details, the quality, and all the other things most company take care of only as an afterthought. Opening the iPod box has been described as a religious experience by many. I would have to agree on this. Everything is so very neatly packed. Everything looks so clean, so perfect. The headphones, the power adapter, the CD, the cable with plastic tabs at either - awesome design everywhere!
The iPod itself is great as well. I really like the white body and the backlight. The touch buttons and touch-wheel are a great idea. One thing I would have liked is the ability to tap the touch-wheel instead of hitting the center button to select whatever is currently selected. The interface is really simple to use. iTunes transferred about 6GB of music in around 15 minutes. All my playlists were imported. All my song ratings, the top-played songs database etc. I can set song ratings either on the iPod, or the computer, and everything gets syncd the next time the ipod is connected (I wonder how it handles conflicts though). i am yet to play with all the non-music related features it has to offer.
I didnt like that they gave only a firewire cable. A USB cable is another $20. For this price they should have included it. Unfortunately my laptop doesnt have a firewire port :(
Totally worth the price. Why did I not buy this much earlier! Boy, I want an iBook/PowerBook more than ever now. Apple's strategy is working just great!
I've always enjoyed listening to radio more than my own collection of music. This is mainly because of the uncertainty that radio offers, and because I really like to discover new and different types of music. For a long time I tuned in to Delhi's only FM station (102.6), daily at 1AM for something called the "Wicked Hour". Believe it or not, this was the only hour with bearable music in Delhi back then.
Then I found Internet Radio. This was a whole new world! Quality radio with no (or very little) irritating ads! For the past few years I've been listening to Radio Paradise almost exclusively! With a tagline of "Eclectic intelligent rock", it suits my tastes almost perfectly. Has a great forum where you can discuss music that is being played and rate it in real time. Pretty amazing! It is playing almost 24x7 on my desktop (sometimes even when I'm not home!!)
Recently I found a great little piece of software called Stream Ripper. This basically runs either as a winamp plugin, or from the command line (even in linux!), and records whatever is playing on a shoutcast stream. The great part is that it even splits the stream into individual music files complete with ID3 information! There are variants of this, such as Stream Ripper 32, and the more powerful Station Ripper. Station Ripper allows you to rip upto 200 shoutcast streams at the same time. It even maintians a database of the songs it has downloaded to avoid duplication.
Now all I need is a shinny new ipod, and I am all set to have my favourite radio stations on the go!
Edit(01/12/04): Finally gave in to the temptation and ordered a 10GB ipod through amazon today. Got a pretty sweet deal ($236 including shipping) on it. Cant wait for it to get here!!
Probably the best thing to come out of Steve Job's keynote at Macworld 2004 - a modified version of the famous 1984 Macintosh ad. This ad was widely shown for the first time at the 1984 Superbowl. It was directed by Ridley Scott, and introduced the original Macintosh system. The ad is widely regarded as a classic, and was highly successful. It was named the "Commercial of the Decade" for the 1980s by Advertising Age. The ad shows how the Macintosh would free the people from the Big Borther.
The change made to the ad is that the runner carrying the sledgehammer now also carries an ipod (neat!).
On January 24th,
Apple Computer will introduce
Macintosh.
And you'll see why 1984
won't be like "1984".
The $249 ipod mini was a disappointment though (with expectations high for a price more like $99). Most people would rather spend another $50 to get the 15G one. But then, no one has ever been able to explain Apple's strategies. I guess I'll just breakdown and get the 15G one... Wait a minute, maybe thats what Apple wants!
For the past few weeks I have been looking for a good RSS aggregator. This gives pretty good list of the popular ones. Having tried some of the fancy ones, I was very disappointed. Most used Internet Explorer, or Outlook Express, or MS .NET. Having avoided MS internet products all these years, I was not going to start now. Besides, there is no way I would change my default browser/mailer, and using a two browsers would be clumsy and awkward. This rules out options like News Gator, SharpReader and FeedDaemon. Since I do not use Apple (too expensive for me!), NetNewsWire was also out.
One other requriement I have is the ability to seamlessly synchronize everything on atleast two different computers. (Ideally, I would also like synchronization to a handheld/cell phone, but I doubt there is any single solution that would do that.) So I tried some of the online aggregators like NewsIsFree, Feedster, and Fyuze. All were slow, clumsy and somewhat limited.
Then I tried AmphetaDesk. This is somewhat better than the others. Cross platform, relatively easy to use. But I found no easy way of syncing stuff across computers. Since it has a client-server model, I tried running it on a remote server, but the perl dependencies killed it :(. Maybe I'll try this one again later.
Then I tried NewsMonster. My biggest problem - its in Java. This increases the startup time of Firebird, and I really like to have a lean browser.
phew... I was about to give up. Then I find an entry in my Recent referrals that appears to come from someone using Feed on Feeds. I decided to give it a shot, and boy, am I impressed! This is probably one of the simplest aggregators. And also the best (imho). Takes 5 minutes to setup on a server with MySQL and PHP. Has a nice bookmarklet that lets me subscribe to sites. Supports atom. Since it runs on a remote server, I can access my news anywhere and not bother about syncing! Everything I was looking for, well almost. It doesnt have categories. The UI isnt great. There are some bugs, and marking a feed as read is somewhat clumsy. But, what can I say. It is the best I've tried so far.
Then there is the bigger thing about news aggregators that I dont like. They all work only in one direction. I am yet to see anything that allows you to post comments without going to the actual website. Now that would be really cool. Some allow you to make an entry into your own blog, and send a trackback to the original story. But a simple "Post to MT" bookmarklet does that. RSS itself seems somewhat limited to me.
I have been thinking a lot about what the ideal community interface should be. How do blogs, News sites, discussion forums, emails etc. come together in one place.
But this material for another post. For now, I am happy to have found a news aggregator that I like, atleast for now.
When someone asks Donald E. Knuth about his contact information, he quickly points out that a google search for don brings up his website as the very first result (interestingly, Don Norman is third).
In less than one month since its birth, with sixteen entries, lucis.net is the first result on a google search for ankit. This is primarily due to blogchalking, and having a rather uncommon name. Nonetheless, I think this deserves some celebration! Now lets see how long it stays at the top...