Year: 2006

Pulitzer Prize non-fiction

March 30, 2006 / Top 10 lists / 5 Comments

These are the Pulitzer prize winning non-fiction books. I’ve read only two: Godel, Escher, Bach and Guns, Germs and Steel. These were the very best books I have EVER read. If that’s any indication to go by, I want to finish this whole list.

Software that builds on hunches

March 26, 2006 / Links / Leave a Comment

Software that builds on hunches.

… is a filter for images that allows a naive user to improve digital photos without understanding complex tools like Adobe Photoshop, by choosing from mutations of the picture to make it better. “My grandmother doesn’t know anything about improving pictures,” says Bonabeau, “but she knows which pictures of her grandchildren she likes.”

Wired News tried out the photo selector. After loading the photograph you want to improve, the application shows you nine mutant versions. In the case of a dark photo, it’s easy enough to pick a lighter version and move it to the seed area so that it becomes the foundation of the next crop of mutation pictures. You can keep selecting and mutating indefinitely. When you find the version you like, you save it. In a photo of a dark house and a moon, seven iterations were enough to lighten the photograph adequately.

This is from Icosystem, who’re doing some cool work like using ants’ logic to route BT’s telecom traffic or Fedex’s packages.

How I buy gadgets

March 26, 2006 / How I do things / 9 Comments

I’m a cautious gadget freak. I love buying gadgets, but think a lot before buying them. Invariably, I use spreadsheets to help me decide. I try to buy only those gadgets that are right for me at the cheapest possible price, and I look at two things: features based on usage and breakeven.

Usage-driven buying

I pick the features I want based on my usage. For example, when I bought my first mobile, I listed the my most likely uses for the phone:

  • I’m in the car (e.g. 2 hr drive to airport), and want to catch up
  • Emergency calls (means, carry the phone always)

So I need high battery life (at least 2 hours). I need low weight, if I’m going to carry it around. I don’t need colour display or MMS for my usage pattern. Then I ran through all available mobile phone options, filtered them against my criteria, and picked the cheapest (Nokia 3310).

Another example was my digital camera. The reason I wanted one was:

  • I can take a lot more photographs and print only those I want
  • For low light shots, take multiple snaps, so at least one will be OK
  • I can just take one snap and print it, and not have to complete a roll

So my camera should be light (to carry around and take lots of snaps), have a high ISO rating and flash (to work well in low light), and needn’t have much memory (I transfer it to my laptop pretty quickly).

Having identified such features, I compared models (Internet / visit shops) in 2002.

Product Price Size Flash Mpx Zoom Mem Comment
Kodak DC3400 16500 Y 2 2x No — 2x zoom not enough
Canon S10 20000 Small Y 2 2x No — 2x zoom not enough
Sony DSC P50 20000 Y 2 3X 4MB No — too little memory
Nikon 775 19000 Small Y 2 3x 8MB OK
Fuji FinePix 2600 15000 OK Y 2 3x 16MB OK
Olympus D-230 15000 Small Y 2 None 16MB No — No zoom
Nikon 885 27500 OK Y 3 3x 16MB Too little manual control
Canon G1 40000 Y 3 3X Too expensive
Sony DSC S85 40000 Y 4 3x 16MB Slow shutter
Canon G2 45000 Y 4 3X 16MB Too expensive.
Olympus C4040 45000 Y 4 3x Too expensive

I finally picked the Fuji FinePix 2600.

Breakeven

I had a normal camera. Would a digital camera be economically worth it? For a normal camera, the roll costs Rs 2.5 (Rs 90 / 36 shots), developing costs Rs 2.8 (Rs 100 / 36 shots), and each print costs Rs 5. Total cost per photo: Rs 10.3. I don’t need prints, I see pictures on the computer. The digital camera cost me Rs 20,000 including customs duty. So I break even when I take about 2,000 pictures. That sounded feasible, so I switched to digital in 2002. (I’ve taken about 2,800 snaps since.)

For similar reasons, I also decided I didn’t need a colour printer. Given my expected usage, it would have cost me Rs 34 for a single 4″ x 6″ colour photo printout. I could get the same at a shop for Rs 8.

Recently, I bought a DVD writer. DVDs cost about the same as CDs in bulk. (I bought a 100 DVD pack for 14 pounds, and 100 CDs for about the same.) A DVD stores 6 times as much as a CD. So for every DVD I burn, I save the cost of 5 CDs, about 70 pence. A DVD writer cost 50 pounds. So after burning about 70 DVDs, I’d break even. Once I’m through with my pack of 100 DVDs, I’m guaranteed breakeven. (I’ve burned about 25 DVDs till date.)

Tracking

I don’t stop there. After buying, I track my usage. Where I’ve done a breakeven, I try to track quantitatively. Otherwise, I track my usage pattern (high / medium / low). So far, my best return-on-investment has been on my webcam and mic, followed by my digital camera, CD writer, video camera and DVD writer. The worst have been my TV tuner card (I didn’t really record many movies), and my second mobile phone (turned out I didn’t really use GPRS).

I once started doing this sort of analysis for my clothes, but stopped… maybe I was carrying this a bit too far…

How to be happy

March 25, 2006 / Links / Leave a Comment

Advice from Tal Ben-Shahar, who teaches a Harvard class “Positive Psychology”, or how to get happy.

1. Give yourself permission to be human. When we accept emotions — such as fear, sadness, or anxiety — as natural, we are more likely to overcome them. Rejecting our emotions, positive or negative, leads to frustration and unhappiness.

2. Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning. Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable. When this is not feasible, make sure you have happiness boosters, moments throughout the week that provide you with both pleasure and meaning.

3. Keep in mind that happiness is mostly dependent on our state of mind, not on our status or the state of our bank account. Barring extreme circumstances, our level of well being is determined by what we choose to focus on (the full or the empty part of the glass) and by our interpretation of external events. For example, do we view failure as catastrophic, or do we see it as a learning opportunity?

4. Simplify! We are, generally, too busy, trying to squeeze in more and more activities into less and less time. Quantity influences quality, and we compromise on our happiness by trying to do too much.

5. Remember the mind-body connection. What we do — or don’t do — with our bodies influences our mind. Regular exercise, adequate sleep, and healthy eating habits lead to both physical and mental health.

6. Express gratitude, whenever possible. We too often take our lives for granted. Learn to appreciate and savor the wonderful things in life, from people to food, from nature to a smile.