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Computing, Libraries, Tennis, India & other interests of Vikas Kamat
Crowbot Goes Multi-user | | Lone Crowbot Goes Multi-user! The word Lone Blogger is used for someone who uses his or her own
blogging tools (courtesy: Blogicon).
I've been a Lone Blogger, using my own tools, and
as Yourish says,
"Being a Lone Blogger isn't bad at all".
Till someone else needs to use your tool, that is.
My mother started a blog recently, and I
evaluated Blogger and Radio Userland to make her blog.
We needed the
advantages of both the tools which seem to be
mutually exclusive -- edit from anywhere as well as content managed blogs. After struggling for a week
to join our CMS with either of the tools (which I am told, is
not possible, because the XML/RPC interface supported by both systems (Blogger API, Radio API) is
at a very high level, and not at a granularity required for
sophisticated publishing), I decided to make my tool multi-user capable. It was a painful undertaking, because at every decision making process,
I had to distinguish between my blog and her's, my shortcuts and her
shortcuts, my templates and her templates.
The BLOGSearch had to be modified
also. But I am getting there. See a test blog. The obvious next question now is, how can I make this tool available to public?
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Saturday, June 1, 2002 Last Modified: 1/29/2003 |
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Historians See More | | Historians See More I was writing captions for some of the pictures and came across this
sculpture in which the two women seem to be arguing.
© K. L. Kamat
I asked my mother, a historian, as to which period the sculpture belonged. "Probably 16th century A.D." she replied, and
pointed to the following details in the picture, that I'd missed.
- The women are not fighting, but playing a game of exchanging colors -- possibly
on the occasion of the Holi festival. The syringes and the refill of colors in the hands indicate this.
- Notice the hook on their blouses. One can be certain that the
blouses were tailored.
- Notice the frills on their skirts. It probably shows the contemporary way a saree was worn.
- Notice the decoration on the pilaster. We can see influence of Hoysala school or
art, even though the sculpture belonged to the Vijayanagar period.
Links for History Buffs
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Sunday, June 2, 2002 Last Modified: 1/29/2003 |
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New for May 2002 | | New for May 2002
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Tuesday, June 4, 2002 Last Modified: 1/30/2003 |
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Review of French Open Website | | The French Open Website First, link to the Roland Garros Website. Second, Story on Technology Behind the Website Then, a Review of the Website. Summary: Very good in usability, content, and navigation. Web designers must study the layout of this site to build
high traffic portals. The font is very readable, with distinct sizes
emphaizing the importance. What I Liked The color combination used in reporting scores & schedules The interesting "Did you know" factoids. I'll be copying them High quality pictures Smart search engine found players even when I mis-spelled the names My Suggestions for Improvement I want to know how a player got to this stage. I tried to buy a ballkids polo shirt, I couldn't figure out the size nomenclature. I don't want to choose a language every time I go there! Link to Paris time in the toolbar. Very thoughtful.
See Also: Review of Ericsson Open website
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Thursday, June 6, 2002 Last Modified: 1/23/2003 |
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New Contents | | New Contents
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Monday, June 10, 2002 Last Modified: 6/10/2002 |
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Blog Vacation | | nice +19 blogs I will be extremely busy till July 15th making a living, and regret the sparsity of blog updates. My surflog for this morning: BBC: Kashmir al-Queda Nexus -- as if that is news What I want for this Christmas Rediff: Terrorist Vs. Terrorist -- now the army can withdraw
If you are wondering what the title of this blog means: nice is the UNIX command
to lower the priority of a task.
19 is the lowest
priority allowed on my server. BTW, if you are Microsoft Windows user, changing priority is something you cannot do. Search AnthoBLOGy for Unix, Microsoft Windows
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 Last Modified: 1/24/2003 |
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How to Handle Request Stampede | | How to Handle More Customers than You Can I have been swamped with projects. Each demanding top priority and great diligence. There's no way I can handle 'em all. So, I'm performing what is known as the Tirupati Haircut.
Tirupati is a place of Hindu pilgrimage in Southern India, where
the devotees tonsure their heads in sacrifice to the deity. On certain
days there's so much rush and stampede at the barbers' that the barbers
just cannot handle
the demand. Each devotee loudly demands that their head be shaven
immediately, lest they go to a different barber. So the barber has a trick. He shaves off only a part of the head and
moves on to the next customer. Every customer thinks that his turn has
come, but has to wait a long time before the shaving is complete. At the same
time, the barber has effectively garnered the business because you won't
go to another barber with half your head shaven! That's exactly what you should do when you have ten top priority tasks.
Begin one, don't finish it, but move on to next. That way you have
engaged the customer (rather than losing him), while denying the
opportunity to the competition.
Links: Business Wisdom from the Streets of India
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Friday, June 14, 2002 Last Modified: 1/29/2003 |
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The Business of Aggregation | | Weekend Wisdom I did a lot of magazine reading this weekend, and hereby I share what I've
learnt :-
- Poverty is reducing in Asia and increasing in Africa
- Pakistan's ISI and
Terrorist nexus is far thicker than we know
- The challenges
Microsoft faces in the future has much to do with business processes
than with technology.
- Attorney General Ashcroft's seat has become very hot. He might have to
resign.
- An eminent Muslim is running for the President's office in India.
BTW, I know of two entrepreneurs who built a large empire based on what I
just did (read magazines and summarize them for friends).
The Story of Jerry Seaman and Tim Collins Gerald Seaman and Tim Collins of Topsfield Massachusetts were both magazine
enthusiasts and used to read a lot of magazines. They shared the list of most interesting articles with friends and family and discovered that this compilation was very much appreciated. So in 1984 they started Popular Magazine
Review (PMR) that published summaries of articles from periodicals such as
Time, and National Geographic, which was an immediate hit. With PMR you no
longer needed to weed through lots of stories -- the best stories were compiled and summarized for you
by Seaman and Collins! Seaman and Collins expanded the idea to include popular magazines, hobby
magazines, and then to cover journals and scholarly publications. Their company,
eventually merged with EBSCO, is the
largest aggregator of content today and is the lifeline of reference content for
libraries in the Western hemisphere. Here's a hat tip to Jerry, Tim and EBSCO for the vision to see the need for intelligent aggregation.
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Sunday, June 16, 2002 Last Modified: 1/24/2003 |
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The Meaning of Largest | | The Meaning of Largest Apropos: Earlier today we were amused by a press release that claimed that
AllTheWeb.com had overtaken Google in the size of their document index. Soon after the release came out, the AllTheWeb.com
site was down, perhaps too busy to handle the sudden burst of traffic and load. In the afternoon, I had an opportunity to poke around. Remember the
FastSearch.com that provides the search for many of the blogs? It's the same
engine, and the 2.1
Billion web pages they claim to have indexed are really the 2.1 billion permalinks
(the name anchor) the bloggers so enthusiastically and automatically insert in
their blogs. So one page of Winer's Scripting News (who btw is hospitalized, I hear -- "Get well soon Dave") is consided as 100 documents by AllTheWeb While I welcome a new search engine, I am not blown away by AllTheWeb.
Further, they seem to provide deep links to images (unlike Google) in their ImageSearch
which prevents display of copyright notices, and is a sure invitation for
trouble. Publishers typically frown upon linking only to images.
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Monday, June 17, 2002 Last Modified: 1/26/2003 |
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The Wonder of Ghotuls | | The Wonder of Ghotuls
Where in the world can a brother and a sister sleep in the same room with their respective lovers?
Answer: In the Ghotuls of India. Read about the fascinating educational institution of Muria tribals in
Schools of the Jungle. Now enhanced with newly added pictures.
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 Last Modified: 1/24/2003 |
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Wolrd Cup Soccer | | Korea Runs Out of Red Cloth! Spoke to my wife's family in Korea and shared some of the excitement of
Korea's shocking
victory over Italy. They said the entire nation has gone soccer crazy.
Yesterday, 3.5 million people poured into the streets to celebrate the historical
victory and the country ran out of red clothes (the jersey color of the
Korean team). And cry baby Italians have fired Ahn Jung-Hwan and are blaming referees and FIFA.
Starbucks Coffee Getting Bitter? The company the popularized drinking coffee in a coffee-shop is
now under criticism from two different circles. First for
trying to profit from the WTC look-alike twin-coffee-mug campaign, and then
for showing insensitivity to
the Palestinians. I'd like to see someone boycott Starbucks for the right reason -- overpricing of coffee.
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 Last Modified: 1/26/2003 |
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Immature Indian Press | | Immature Indian Press? I am concerned by the number of stories carried by Indian press
criticizing an article in Time Magazine showing the prime-minister
of India in not-so-good light. C'on people. Until we start criticizing and rediculing the leaders, India won't become a mature democracy. The parivar (coterie) seems to be upset that Time Magazine disclosed Vajapayee's drinking
habits (drinking is frowned upon in India). I say it is not as embarrassing as the drinking habits of one of his predecessors FYI: Morarji Desai,
a former prime-minister of India, and a distinguished parliamentarian,
practiced urine therapy.
Perhaps the problem is not with the press, but with the people. What's the role of press in a nation with low literacy and where even smaller percentage that
actually buys newspapers? Links for the day: Jay Dubashi provides a reality check (article at NariWorld)
for Indians and Indian journalists. Engrish Quotes compiled by Aaron in Japan (first seen at Camworld)
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Thursday, June 20, 2002 Last Modified: 1/29/2003 |
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Technology and Racism | | Technology Will Cure Racism This morning Wired News has a story of how a DNA study
shows close relationship of Appalachian people with an ancient tribe in India. Earlier this year I also read a research paper (citation is shown below)
that found elements of the same tribe in the
genes of southern brahmins. So, down with the superior race and superior caste theories. We are all really same! Citation:
Gutala Venkata Ramana, Bing Su, Li Jin, et al.. Y-chromosome SNP
haplotypes suggest evidence of gene flow among caste, tribe, and the migrant
Siddi populations of Andhra Pradesh, South India. European Journal of
Human Genetics, 9/1/01 (Vol. 9, No. 9) , pp. 695-700
Vi Users Never Die VI (pronounced /V-I/ never /siks/) is the first visual editor I knew
and my fingers learnt how to use it. When I developed
the Programmer's Disease I tried to go back to vi, hoping to reduce
my usage of the mouse. Like bicycling and
swimming, you can really never unlearn what the body learns, and vi skills
came back to me naturally. This week, I was very pleasently surprised to discover that Google keyboard shortcuts
actually supported vi keys for navigation. Very Cool.
Vi users never die, they keep yanking (vi's mechanism for copy & paste) back.
Also, I didn't know Bill Joy (the creator of NFS and Java) was the
author of Vi.
Some people have all the ideas....
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Friday, June 21, 2002 Last Modified: 1/24/2003 Tags: racism |
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Indian Mafiosi | | Ugly Faces of Indian Mafiosi
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Saturday, June 22, 2002 Last Modified: 1/29/2003 |
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What's New | | What's New
What's Updated
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 Last Modified: 6/25/2002 |
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Links for the Day | | Links for the Day
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Wednesday, June 26, 2002 Last Modified: 1/29/2003 |
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What's New | | Updates to Kamat's Potpourri The June Newsletter is out. Sign up for
Friends of Kamat to receive
it every month. AsiaFirst has a very flattering review (scroll
to fourth paragraph) of Kamat's Potpourri. Amma's Column is now full-text indexed. You can use
either the search box to the left or the BLOGSearch to search through the archives of Amma's Column.
Arun, a longtime patron has a suggestion -- Why not include technical details of the photograph (film, camera,
aperture settings etc.,) in Kamat PICTURESearch
Still considering.....
I am working on a AutoBlog to be released soon. Sneak Preview of Kamat Community Typewriter.
There's no documentation of the coolest features yet. Like
typing the name of a picture to include it. Eg: [[56052]] will give you a picture of Taj Mahal. [[stub 56052]] will give you a stub of the same picture, etc.
Nor are the coolest features enabled. Eg: Updating your blog via MetaWeblog API. Wait a minute. Perhaps I should stop developing and install Movable Type instead.
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Thursday, June 27, 2002 Last Modified: 1/23/2003 |
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About Me:
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This is how I surf the web. Turns out
creating your own start page beats all portals, back-flipping,
personalized corporate pages, and book-marking tools. |
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