HowTo Install molokai on MacVim

HowTo Install molokai on MacVim Heard about the Molokai theme for vim editors from one of my friends. But the challenge I had was in knowing where to install this .vim file for the MacVim RunTime to detect this theme.
Useful Pointer: Its about knowing the $VIMRUNTIME (intuitive variable name FTW) value. Once you know this, you know where to install the molokai.vim file.

After some search I was able to install using the following steps:
Download molokai.vim and place it in $VIMRUNTIME/colors folder and you are all set.
MacVim lets you use this theme in 2 ways: 1. Traditional vim way of saying :color molokai 2. Edit->Colorscheme->molokai

Happy Molokai. (one of the reasons i like molokai - dark theme)
PS: Also you might need to Enable usage of Experimental Renderer in MacVim.
Preferences-> Advanced -> enable experimental renderer

Be smart, be professional! (In defence of the Indian Cricket Team)

I guess this post is in a way influenced by the fact that I am a big-time supporter of the Indian cricket team. People may find it really odd and might even go to the extent of tagging me as a jobless fellow and all, but still why I felt the need for such a post is because, this experience has taught me the importance of being a smart, professional cricketer. It applies not just for cricket, and this is the biggest take-away here, but for each and every profession, in each and every point in our lives.

Coming to the core-idea, I guess the Indian players have got it all wrong in prioritizing the matches. After having won the world-cup, after a grueling 45 days of cricket, they "Ideally" should have taken some time off to enjoy, relish, cherish the moment of glory. Instead what followed, in just 5 days time after the finals, was the big IPL dhamaka. With it came the injuries, along with the big-bucks and attention.

Looking at the turn of events, I think, the players thought was to take some time off during the WI tour so that they could have a nice time, infact have time to think about the WC glory; and they wanted to come back and play their part in the English tour. Meanwhile, the English were licking their lips and were waiting for their opponents to come home to face some music. In strange waters, Indians found the going tough. To add to the lack of preparation and match-practice is the fact that not many were even match-fit, courtesy taking time-off the WI tour to bask in WC glory; Waist-lines of Harbhajan, Yuvraj and Zaheer is a testimony to this fact.

And so here is the moral of the story: Ideally Indians should have skipped the IPL and should have come all guns blazing for the English series, and who knows the results could have been slightly different. But, its easier said than done. So, the Indians failed to be smart, failed to show professionalism, which cost them the No 1 ranking.

And the problem I guess is deep down in Indian mentality. I always had a feeling that we are emotionally attached to so many thing that we come across in our lives (atleast majority of the people that I have come across in my life, so far) that we fail to act smart in most critical of the times. I believe it is going to take some time for the Indians to overcome this emotional hurdles and to display some smartness during tough times. Ofcourse, I am not saying we are not being smart at all, always. But however, I do think that we could be much better off controlling our emotions and display our smartness instead!!!

(May be I am talking to myself :D, I don't know honestly!. This post came out of the chat I had with my brother over the weekend. Felt like making a blog-entry out of it.)

(Added "In defence of Indian cricket team" in the title, to grab the attention of the casual-onlookers :) )

Why Kindle is compelling a Gadget!

Oh Ya it is bragging rights! I am a Kindle 3.0 Owner! It has been a week since I started using the gadget, and I must say that I am really impressed!; there is value for each and every penny paid for it!.

The Interface:

With all the smart phones and Tablet PCs thronging the markets these days, the interface of the Kindle reader, I must say, is not that compelling. In fact it takes time to get used to it; but once you get used to it, I can guarantee you a blissful reading experience. I spent some quality time with the kindle3.0 User Guide that my reader had pre-installed, and it is pretty comprehensive indeed. The best part of the interface is how effective it is, once you get used to it, and it does not eat out on the battery as well. So overall the design of the interface is well thought-out and effective cum efficient.

Highlights:


e-ink. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink, Need I say more

Dictionary -> using the 5 way key (Amazon calls the key used to move the cursor while reading a book, as the 5 way key) As you read, you can move the cursor to a word, and the dictionary automatically pops up either at the bottom or at the top, depending upon the cursor position so as not to hide the line that you are reading, with the meaning. I found this to be a compelling feature; for word/vocabulary buffs, who are lazy, it is a blessing :)

Read the book aloud feature!: Best part is you can listen to the native english speaker pronounce the words and there by you can learn not just the meaning, but also the pronunciation. double treat eh :)

Making PDFs kindle ready:

Mail Books to the device via registered mail-id to username@kindle.com : Awesome feature; also the mail server is intelligent enough to convert PDF files to kindle ready MOBI formats, when the subject line of the mail, via which one is trying to mail a pdf to the device, reads "Convert". Smart huh! :)

http://calibre-ebook.com/ -> heard it is a very good tool to make some pdf books kindle-ready; although I haven't tried it myself yet.

Experimental Features:

Songs: We can have a bunch of songs in the Device to enrich the reading experience. (But one annoying factor here is that we cannot shuffle the order in which the songs are played. You put in a bunch of songs, and listen to them in the same order in which they are added to the reader)

Rudimentary Web-Browser: Can be handy sometimes, especially when wi-fi is available. I did not buy the one with the 3G option, since I thought when wi-fi is available why 3G. (Atleast I thought I would not be needing 3G access)

TeamViewer FTW

Easy to use UI - Need to know just the ID of the person at the other end

One of the common tasks of geeks these days is to enlighten people around them, who are not that tech-saavy, to share a few tips with them. It becomes a day-to-day task when the people you are trying to educate are your parents; you get to see them ask some interesting questions every day. However, it becomes a problem when you are not living with them, which is the case typically with most of the Indian geek-youth (If I may call the group that), that you need a simple solution to access the remote PC so as to help your parents out with. This is why I love Team Viewer so much; not just because it is free, but because it offers just what one wants.

Very easy-to-use UI makes it all the more compelling solution.

Click here to download for free. (Free for non-commercial use)

Its enough we know the ID of the person at the other end. The ID generated is the same across sessions, so it is like knowing the ID one time and saving it. The UI remembers the recently used IDs as well for us. The password that the UI generates keeps changes on a session basis. However, we could tweak it slightly and setup any password of our choice so that we could easily connect to remote-pcs knowing user ID and password before hand. Caveat: I could set up this non-secure access only on Windows OS version of the software. I am not able to do the same on my macbook pro running OS X 10.6.8 

A note on Passive Aggression

This is the most difficult of all emotions that one could deal with; actually one can never deal with it but succumb. Often in our upbringing, we would have faced this. I know that parents do not know want their children to make any mistakes and suffer, but at times they do go beyond what is necessary and end up feeding them with a lot of negative thoughts and confuse them. By doing so, ever so cleverly, they ensure that their children follow/avoid following a particular path in their lives. This is perfect example for the saying, "Too much of anything is good for nothing!".

Of-course, parents are showing their affection this way, but I guess children are much better off, taking life as it comes. This need not apply only to the parent-child relationship; it is ubiquitous in any old-young, senior-junior relationship that one comes across. People should save their advices when the individual is actually looking for some. Otherwise, the younger ones should be left to do things on their own!.

This is certainly one thing that I will have etched in my mind forever!.

Something on the Soundex Algorithm

The idea as such amazed me, when I first heard about this. I was rather under-estimating the power of Perl community, thinking that it is an obsolete piece of technology, before I got to know about the existence of some very good modules like Text::Soundex in Perl. Still, Perl is widely used hmm... Perl 6 will at-least have some takers.

Coming back to the Soundex, it is quite an interesting idea to think of ways to index words based on how they are pronounced. It is quite intuitive. Whenever we hear a new word, we try to spell it out based on the sound and based on our knowledge of the language, in that way idea is intuitive.

More importantly, it cuts the barriers of language apart. It unifies all the searches and therefore it is something special. However, it could be used only in limited places. Catalogues(Library/business) could have some soundex defined over them that can simplify the search. Basically, one can say that soundex algorithm can be used to index words more than anything else.

http://creativyst.com/Doc/Articles/SoundEx1/SoundEx1.htm I found this link to have good information about the Soundex algorithm. More importantly, it provides the implementation of the algorithm in several language. Free Source Code!.... Have fun!

Perl hashes - effective way of iterating through the hashes

I came across this very useful link about iterating through the perl hashes. http://www.perlhowto.com/iterate_through_a_hash. All the while, I thought that I was doing pretty good with iterating through the perl hashes, untill I saw this link. It seems that best way to iterate is to use each and not the other paradigm listed in the link.

I am posting this, just to give myself a reminder, and also a note for the perl-programmers, who have overlooked this aspect. Time to do some code-refactoring/optimisation.

The Social Network Conundrum

It seems that no one in facebook/twitter does not want to hear about the pains in others lives. Only the messages with positive connotations is percolating the masses and is gaining in popularity; which is a good sign. However, I was wondering whether this is a good sign which is when I remembered the goodness the positive vibes can bring to your life. By spreading such messages, be it inspirational quotes or post/tweet about someone being happy and all, the positive energy is made to float all along the web. Sometimes, especially when I am low, I wonder if people are even faking these posts, saying that they are happy. This thought is cynical as it is, I already know that, but still one has to agree to the fact that once in a while, people do slip in such posts, just to get attention. All in all, it is a good-sign that social network is having such a good influence in our lives, because that is where we seem to be spending a lot of time at.

PS: The reason for the title: I wanted to use the word conundrum somewhere, so I chose it; ofcourse BBT is a big inspiration for choosing this word. Still not sure whether it is the right word to use here, though.

Perl CPAN - install cpan modules easily

I managed to install a new perl module on my Snow leopard. Till now, I was of the opinion that installing perl modules is a tedious task. Thanks to CPAN, that I was proved wrong.

All I had to do was type $> cpan on the terminal.

This command took me to a special cpan shell. In that shell i installed Text::Soundex module, just by saying

(notice the new cpan prompt here)
cpan>  install Text::Soundex
done!

It is so easy and does not take a lot of time. On a side-note, Soundex is the algorithm by Donald E Knuth (Don) that will index names based on the phonetics of it. The idea is startling and is wrought with many possibilities. It would be interesting to explore the algorithm and I would try to add more details to the algorithm in my next post.

FTR: I am using perl 5.10.0 that came pre-installed with my snow-leopard. Not sure whether cpan takes care of perl version dependencies.