ujjwalgrover

Blog Moved

2010-01-14T10:13:00.000-08:00

This blog has moved. please head to www.ujj-laptop.com :)

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Flatmate Wanted

2009-10-24T04:42:00.000-07:00

Wanted a male flatmate for a 1BHK flat in BSK 3rd Stage in Bangalore. Preferably a cricket fanatic geek. House is well equipped with broadband, instruments of personal fitness, washing machine, telly, a hard drive full of films, basic kitchen paraphernalia and a flatmate that takes a fancy to cooking once in a while. The place is already in the contact list of most restaurants so all one has to do to place an order is state a particular phone number. The place is well connected via BMTC and autos. Parking place is also available for a bike or car.

If you are interested, please mail at ujjwalgrover@gmail.com. First person to mail gets to see the Anil Kumble signed cricket ball.

PS: Special discount if you are on twitter ;)

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Last four and a half minutes

2009-10-06T02:47:00.000-07:00

One of my entries for the RCB Chief blogger.

He does what he has been doing for the last three balls. He follows the cycle. The cycle of looking at his partner, looking at the dug out, looking at the field and looking at his bat. None of it is planned. He knows his partner at the other end isn't the man for the job. He might as well expect the bowler to get possessed by that bowler from college he so wacked around. Its nine needed off three. He's always dreamed about living in a moment like this. To be given a chance to prove that he's that proverbial stuff that legends are made of. But its one thing wanting to be at a particular place at a particular time for a particular purpose and another to score nine runs off three balls. That too off someone who has bowled three yorkers out of three, all of which he somehow managed to hit away for a couple each. Nine off three. Thats three per ball, three runs to run of every ball to follow? His legs shake at the thought of it. He takes his stance, eyes mid on. Yes mid on it is. His best chance. Dammit, its another one of those ankle breakers, but he's gotten it away to mid on. Its racing away to the fence, his heart is pounding as he sets off for the second, hoping against the hope that the outfield helps him. In comes the throw. Its two. Dammit!

Seven off the last two. His legs are giving up now, he's run eight runs in the last four balls and plenty before them. He knows now for sure that he hates the game. May be his dad was right. May be Physics Honours isn't so bad. Ah his mind digresses. He follows the cycle again. Its seven off two now. He can hear his heartbeat now, but he isn't complaining, at least its suppressing the noise from the stands, at least he can now hear himself think. He contemplates peddling it over the short leg or better still over the keepers head like Dilshan. Yes thats perfect, he's practiced that in the nets and he's almost certain he can pull it off. Almost certain! Dammit! Two balls, what the hell is he thinking, this isn't a time for some childhood excuse of a shot, this is the deal, the deal he grew up dreaming of being a part of. He knows he will either win it or lose it for his team now, nothing else matters to him, his personal best score, the fact that he's been running all those doubles with cramped legs, nothing. He knows he cannot run another two and he knows his partner isn't an option. It is this ball or its over. He has to get it away. Yes, thats his plan. He will get this one away. He wont eye a region. He will play it as it comes and get it away to the boundary. He takes his stance, looks at the dug out through the corner of his eye. He can see most of them have given up. The joy, they say, in life lies in doing stuff that other people say you cant. He clears his head, looks straight ahead, the bowler runs in, its a tad short and wide, just the way he likes them. He rocks back, a little further than he normally would to give himself a few extra milliseconds to place it perfectly. And perfectly he does. Nobody's cutting this one off, he knows it from the moment he hit it. The fielders don't move. The stands erupt. The dug out is on its feet and cricket again feels like another day in office. His partner comes and pats him, says another one of those and we can spend the rest of the night drinking and that he'll buy. Sweet proposition.

Three more off the last one. His heart is a bass drum now. He's almost certain that the stump mic will pick his heart beat. He breaks the cycle. He just looks at the field once. Nothing unexpected. He's going to keep it simple. It will be another boundary. He cannot run anymore, thats for certain. He takes his stance, tries not to predict where the ball is going to land but he can't help it. He is anticipating. He knows it. He knows its going to be a yorker. The guy bowling is a genius. He's bowled four in this over already. Its going to be another one. He cant possibly get it away to the boundary. Hands begin to shake. Eyes blur. Heart has already broken his ribs. He finds himself clueless. The bowler runs in, shoots in another one of those yorkers, he gets it away with a flick towards mid on but places it exactly where he wanted it to. He's quick of the blocks, knows he's good for two, he has tied the game, a game that was lost, that has got to be enough but he notices the fielder will need to change the arm to throw the ball back, he leaves the crease for the third, the most important third in his life. Twenty yards more and he is legend. Sixth sense tells him the ball has been thrown and will win. He is really stretching those cramped legs, one final push, he dives, fully stretched lands in the crease, the throw comes in. He is safe. His legs are bruised but his spirit isn't. Not anymore it isn't.

Next thing he remembers is being fed all sorts of liquids in the dressing room, people chanting his name in the stands, the scorecard reading his teams victory and his teammates delirious. A twelve year career and all he remembers now are those four and a half last minutes. He doesn't want to think about it. He just wants to sleep. The sleep that beckons one after a job well done.

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Be nice to others willya

2009-09-05T09:17:00.000-07:00

I have recently begun commuting about 10 kms daily to and from my new workplace (more about the change later) by bus (this is Bangalore btw) and apart from acquiring interesting data showing insight into the co-relation between brands of cars and traffic violations, I have come to realize that our cities are developing with complete disregard towards its citizens. And you know what, its not just the infrastructure thats cold to people. Its people too. I daily see youngsters like myself sitting comfortably in the buses while the old stand and revisit practical inertia. I know they're tired having looked at Dr Chaudhary on youtube all day long but its people of their own parents' age we're talking about here. The drivers of the buses care more about waving to their friends driving pass them than the safety of the passengers inside the bus or waiting to get down. The autorickshaws deny taking people to where they want to go, probably only because they can. Basically the whole analogy of city and jungles that I once thought was so over poetic (especially with no news of a Cafe Coffee Day sighting in a forest), it actually makes a lot of sense. After all almost every person is hostile to every other person in their struggle for more comfort and unfortunately its a zero sum game.

Someone needs to stop this development of utter disregard for the other. Someone needs to, for the lack of a better expression, show everyone some Animal Planet and explain how close we are in our behavior to the four legged vertebrates. Someone needs to be out there telling people about the forgotten values of extending courtesy to their kind. I really hope someone starts a campaign for 'being good to the other'. Something on the lines of Gandhigiri but much more elaborate and reaching out to more people and hopefully a little more prolific.

The idea is to build better cities, cause its the people that make cities. Cities that offer a life worth working hard for. Cities that treat all men equal (the one driving a hummer and the one getting down of a BMTC bus and crossing the road). Cities that are safe for citizens and hard on law breakers. Cities that offer free wifi, cheap food, open air theater shows and ..ah well I digress.

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An Open Letter to MSD

2009-06-16T04:43:00.000-07:00

Dear Dhoni,

Shit happens.

Not so long ago, a young captain, under whose leadership the Indian cricket team (yes the whole one billion of it) realized they could win on hostile territories abroad, was made responsible for everything bad that happened to Indian cricket thereafter. His personal form suffered and reached an all time low, giving free reign to the people who wanted to crucify him. In my humble opinion you have a lot to learn from the way your predecessor was treated.

Unfortunately this is India, where people who once named their kids after you burn your effigies, media that followed you as you rode the streets of your hometown, air every piece of unconfirmed news about you, some of which is extremely personal to you and even the useless excuse-for-an-ex-cricket-player finds fault with your technique and strategy.

Fear not, they don't matter. Yes it may seem like an easy thing for me to say, but really, they don't matter. What matters is, you and your men winning again. Do not take any of the bullshit thrown at you personally, its a matter of time the same people will start loving you again. Have faith, not in the people of your country but in their love for the game and your team. Just keep up the good work and this will all pass.

Hope you run over South Africa tonight and clean sweep the coming West Indies tour.

Sincerely Yours
An Indian cricket fan since 1986

PS: I am supporting Pakistan for the wt20 now, hope you're cool with that.

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Are women over unfriendly?

2009-04-07T14:24:00.000-07:00

Yes. I hate to be the one to break it to you but yes they/you are, most of them/you are. Don't draw a picture of a chauvinist, women hating, multiply dumped, frustrated software guy, living alone with his pet dog who swears to never marry and learn cooking. I am none of these, except the software guy part (to which I will just say, generalization is a sin). I completely understand the need for a woman to be careful, cause lets face it there are desperate men out there who take so much so as a random look to be a sign for 'phas gai! yay!'.

I understand it, but I have to say women overdo it. They just do it several times over. For instance the other day, this new guy in our company bus asked this lady about the timings of the buses to his place, route details, drivers phone number, number of stops, alternate buses, drivers' managers number and he also asked something that sounded like 'what if I miss all the buses'. Stupid set of questions I agree, more so because they were all asked together and a somewhat non helpful answer that ended with a full stop communication punctuation was expected, but the response was a virtual middle finger and abject rejection of his proposal to marry him that was somehow encrypted in all those questions. The thing I didn't like about the whole incident is why the outright rejection of the thought that the guy was just stupid? Why was he being treated like a womanizer when all he wanted was a fool proof travel plan?

May be women can put up that 'id much rather go and marry a bulldog than go out with you' look on their face, on a case by case basis? Trust me, not everyone who tries to talk to you is hitting on you or wants to take you out or has enough money to take you out or is stupid enough to choose going out with you against watching the first five overs of a t20. It might be difficult to believe and all but men DO like other things and DO have other interests and at times DO find themselves in a situation that demands them to open their mouth and utter a sentence or two in a swearwordless language to a woman. Uncomfortable as it may be for them, they just have to do it because nobody from the same gender or having some part of the same gender is there around them at that particular moment of time. Least you could do for a fellow human being (yes men are your fellow human beings) is ask yourself once whether he actually needs the information he is seeking or did that question come from '100 indirect ways to get a girls phone number By anonymous'.

Really 'can you please watch my bag for a sec' is not a guy asking you out, its a guy asking you to watch his bag while he goes out to get a pen to fill out his reservation form. Its okay, just say 'No I have to go somewhere' if you dont want to watch his boring bag but don't give him that look. That look that makes men feel they committed the greatest most sinister act of all times and are a disgrace to other men.

PS: the author has never hit on any woman indirectly and he wasn't staring at that girl in Massala on Sunday, he was just drooling at the tangdi kebab she was having.

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24 magic hours to Search Spin

2009-02-16T03:27:00.000-08:00

Ingredients: @dkris, @enginerd, @jerrymannel and @privarma and for dessert our @ujj

hour 1: Discuss the idea again, everybody convinced its going to be a serial killing app. Heard someone say snacks, off to get some. Back to the table. Back end design in progress. Dkris and Anand take up UI. Jerry, Priyanka and I are on algorithm and database.

hour 2: A simple workspace for search spin up and running, does nothing but serves as a platform for further development. Integrated Boss Mashup framework with GAE, so far so good.

hour 3: Stuck, bloody stuck in getting related keyterms for a searchusing BOSS. Bad bad documentation, no help for you and here comes @t3minator, a guy from yahoo who says he doesnt know BOSS, comes and spots a minor bug in our python function call and there we are. good to go. now we've got all we need from BOSS (never thought id say this about any BOSS)

hour 4: Coke and hot dog, FTW! and @daaku, @ashwin make their way in. Its going to be a long night. the valentine party's about to begin so we want to be done with the keyterms algorithm before then. Jerry's on it assiduously.

hour 5: Database implementation now in progress. Heres what I like and dislike about App Engine, makes it easy to create and manage the tables but its not relational, lot of the stuff you know, you have to un-know to survive here. Priyanka and I are on it, Anand joins in. Dkris is taking help from Chris on Yui.

hour 6 & 7: party time! dance performance by Shadow 1, couples dancing and wait! whats that? is it a monkey with one leg, is it a large chicken, no its Dhempe FTW! he's dancing! that has to be the funniest moment of my life. Thank you God for the food we eat and the stuff we see. Meanwhile some basic data entry/retrieval api's in progress. Btw theres one beer a person today.

hour 8 & 9: food! more food! and a round table conference with all the bangalore twitterati. Discussions generally around Dhempe and Dkris and how procoder always wanted to dance. Laughter is the best stress buster, the next hour passes away just like that.

hour 10: Now writing a simple javascript for showing search results and integrating with v1.0 of jerry's algorithm for keyword matching. Things getting to move ahead now. Now we can see something happening. not much but something.

hour 11: Coke and Red Bull keeping people up and working. Some people who had other people's beer too, fallen around wasted. Mediamama (m not n) AKA @narayananh next to our team's hack place and Dhempe goes and sleeps next to the stage that made him the man of the moment for 60 seconds. Those suckers!

hour 12: Testing out the basic features, a test url set up. Good habits coming in handy today. Spotted a major issue in the db queries, now fixing it, will take time, but better late than later.

hour 13: Out for a walk, its becoming gloomy, half of the room now sleeping. Its become very silent. Good time to get everything done. I want to have a fully functional UI-less version up and running in the next two hours. Everyone agrees, Anand and Jerry finalizing on the v 2 of the algorithm. Dkris working on UI and me and Priyanka on the backend.

hour 14 & 15: Coffee for some, coke for some, sleep for the rest. Found another issue with the database updates, we're all becoming slower now. Dkris is over and out. I am at my slowest best and cant think of a simple workaround. Advise from Jerry and Anand is to catch some sleep but Priyanka and I decide to keep going.

hour 16: Done! a simple UI version up which works the way we want it to. Few high fives and I decide to catch an hour of power nap. Priyanka decides to do a small code review, Anand and Jerry too get some sleep.

hour 17: woke up, did one round of testing. It is working! time to freshen up and get some breakfast! Another round table conference is in order! with discussions on some nice pics taken by the bangalore twitter group of people sleep-working.

hour 18: UI integration on with some slight optimizations on the algorithm. It all seems cool now. We've made it. Anand working on the final CSS and Priyanka and Jerry doing a final code review. Me and dkris having a chat with @Daaku, @narayananh and @Dhempe.

hour 19: Done, now final testing and submitting our app to the final list. We're no 13 on the list. The lucky 13. All done now, time to just hang around and help jerry prepare for the presentation.

hour 20-24: Fun and masti, another round of round table conference during lunch. This was the awesomest weekend of my life. Worked like an exploited dog and had a great time with the twitter group.

As soon as Jerry went for presentation, the bangalore twitter group screamed their intestines out. Everyone knew who the most popular team of the hack day was. It was grand! jerry wrapped the presentation in 88 seconds and it just couldnt be better.

We didnt win anything but after having worked for 24 hours, all we needed was a 12 hour sleep and nothing more. Some really cool apps were on demo and hope some from them makes it big. Do check out our app Search Spin.

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Not another Ghajini review

2008-12-28T04:31:00.000-08:00

Ghajini isnt the name of the actress, just in case you were dumb enough like me to think that way. Besides what sort of a name is that for a guy. I am not going to talk about the story of Ghajini or its plot (a lot of other films have done it in the past), but let me tell you (and warn you in advance that I am not being sarcastic when I say) that Ghajini was an out an out entertainer. In fact it was hillarious. It was Mr Khan, doing, at times a Daniel Craig, and at times a Rajni saar. Asin was awesomly cool and Jia Khan was kind of hot.

The songs were very colorful, not metaphorically, really, visually colorful. All of them. Not a color was missed. From clothes to hair to cars to background walls, even a lighthouse, all were colored. It could make an ad for Asian Paints. Picture this, a family went out to watch Ghajini, saw these songs and started yelling mera wala pink, mera wala naples yellow, mera wala tangy green. I digress.

The background score for all fight sequences was deafening. It was the sound of two iron bars hitting each other, so much so that after a while, each punch of Aamir Khan seems to hurt you. Speaking of hurt, my legs were hurting by the time I walked out of Urvashi Cinema, now Ive traveled in buses with little leg spaces but Urvashi Cinema is a legend among cramped leg spacy environments. If you cared to recline you would be in the lap of the person behind you. In my case there were guys both in front and back and all three of us never reclined. I just randomly looked around and it was the same everywhere. Guys behind guys, girls behind girls. What a plan ! anyways I digress.

I loved the college in which Jia Khan went. It was the coolest college one can go to. Imagine you telling a professor that you want to do some project and he tells you, dont do it. Well, it happens in that college. Is that cool or what. Also you should check out that college's cultural festival. It makes any God damn Cine awards look like the birthday party of the poorest guy in class.

One thing I want to just tell out loud to Bollywood is "stop using the surname Singhania for rich people". It is so bloody overused. Let me tell you about a Singhania who studied with me in school, he was dirt poor. He was like Kenny from South Park. He would collect broken small pencil pieces. He would eat from my lunch box, every single day. Horribly poor,or atleast so he behaved. Why dont you use some new surnames like ..say Grover. Then again, I digress.

I also saw Sreesanth in one of the scenes for almost 3 seconds until he's dead on the ground after taking a punch from Mr Khan. Ok so all Im talking about are the fight sequences, thats unfair even for a film like this, but honestly thats about all I remember. I sincerely hope you haven't seen Memento and liked it. If you haven't, do go and see the film, you wont regret it (unless you are paying for it yourself).

Btw Ghajini, the bad guy (in case you haven't been told that already) had an iphone! that son of a phone.. its haunting me ! !

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An ode to the Google Phone

2008-12-08T10:26:00.000-08:00

प्रिय गूगल,

आपके फ़ोन के बारे में पढ़ा, अच्छा लगा। बड़े दिनों के बाद मार्केट में ऐसी चीज़ आई है जिसे देख कर दिल में उई उई हुई, अगर सच कहूँ तो iphone को देख कर भी ऐसा ही लगा था पर वह साला बहुत मंहगा था। मेरे तो क्या, मेरे और मेरे दो साथियों को मिलाकर भी औकात के बाहर था। बड़ी चाह थी की iphone के लिए applications बनाऊं पर सारे ख्वाब, ख्वाब ही रह गए।

इस कारणवश आपसे विनती करना चाहता हूँ की आप अगर अपने फ़ोन को भारत में लॉन्च करें तो इन बातों का ध्यान ज़रूर रखें, ताकि हम जैसे गरीब (यद्यपि शौकीन) लोग भी इस तकनीकी अजूबे का मज़ा उठा सकें

१ कृपया कर किसी टुच्चे सर्विस प्रोविडर के साथ टाई उप न करें। सर्विस प्रोविडर ढूँढने का सर दर्द लोगों को ही उठाने दें
२ फ़ोन सभी बड़ी दुकानों में उपलब्ध होना चाहिए।
३ फ़ोन के साथ एक CD में development software ज़रूर दें
४ बंगलोर जैसे शहरों में हमारे जैसे वेल्ले लोग बहुत हैं, वहां एक developer conference ज़रूर रखें और अच्छा होगा अगर ये किसी ५ सितारा होटल में हो तो, क्यूंकि येही एक मौका होता है जब हम जैसे लोगों को ऐसे होटलों में घुसने मिलता है
५ और अंत में मैं इतना ही कहना चाहता हूँ की पैसा तो हाथ का मैल है, अगर हो सके तो इस फ़ोन की कीमत १५-२० हज़ार के बीच में ही रखें, वरना मुझे और मेरे जैसे कईयों को वोह पैसे खर्चा करने पड़ेंगे जो हम अपनी अपनी बेहेनों की शादी के लिए बचा रहे हैं

उम्मीद करता हूँ आप हमें निराश नहीं करेंगे। Larry और Sergei को मेरा नमस्ते.

आपका सेवक
एक फुक्कड़ भारतीय नागरिक

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Google Friend Connect - initial thoughts

2008-12-05T10:37:00.000-08:00

Google Friend Connect is a way for sites/blogs to go social without having to build registration process, user authentication, maintain users profile data and their social connections. It basically gives you these functionalities in a gadget that you can paste on your website. I am not going to spend time on how to set it up and all, its really child's play, what I am going to talk about is my initial feelings about it and what I feel it holds for us in future.

Google Friend Connect has a lot of obvious advantages. It allows people to invite their friends over to your site and allows people to maintain their profile and add friends all from within a small gadget. This obviously gives your site a slight viral functionality as people can invite more people to join your site. This also means the visitors of your site can view your site's members, their profiles and their friends' profiles, which are again engaging social features, but lets face, it this might get a few extra eye balls to your site but is definitely not going to make your site a social sex bomb.

Lets go a few steps back, why are you interested in friend connect? I take it that you want to socialize your site's content which would probably be a way to get more attention or to explore new channels for your content's distribution. Either ways you want your content to go out and reach its target audience. Thats where friend connect is bigger than just those few gadgets that are available right now. Since it is built on the Open Social platform, everything that your sites' members (people joined into the friend connect gadget of your site) do on your site can be basically called an open social activity. This means that if I join tempostand as a member and write/post a review on song, it can be sent as an activity feed to my orkut account. So all my friends on orkut will see that update in their friends' updates list. Thereby pushing my activity (my review on a song on tempostand) to my friends on orkut and thus getting across to more people than just those who are joined to your site via Friend Connect.

I think with Friend Connect's launch, we will see more generic gadgets being developed that can be used across all sorts of sites/blogs. One such simple gadget that Id love to see is one that is able to push excerpts of my comments/reviews/ratings etc that I do on a site, to my twitter stream. So that I tweet everything I do on any site, but this should come with functionality to turn it off, we don't want another beacon now do we?

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