INTP

In spite of facing quiet a struggle in completing the personality test , especially since most of the questions there would have different responses in different situations , managed to be as accurate as possible.
Seems that I am an INTP (Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving) - more info available here 1 , 2.
Reminds me of the facade verses arena "discussions" that Alok and I had in college after taking some personality test by the IIM students there :) (More info)

Thanks to Noufal for pointing this site out.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Try this :)

1) Open www.google.com
2) Enter he search string "weapons of mass destruction"
3) Hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button
4) Laugh :)

For easy access to the required link , click here.

Operating Systems

Was reading a very interesting and extremely thought provoking presentation by Rob Pike (here).
His views though initially a bit jarring are quiet true (Well he is Rob Pike after all so they will tend to be true !! ;-) )

This has made my resolve stronger .... my plans to write my own OS which I ditched quiet a few times in past is going to be restarted again.
I do consider myself a much more mature and better programmer now than in past and so possibilities of falling in implementation traps and losing the bigger picture will hopefully be lesser now.
Going to start designing and writing basic kernel this weekend ... in a few weeks , if nothing else comes up , should have a basic OS up and running .....
Will be posting design docs soon ... but basic idea is "My OS is not Unix/Plan 9/Windows/etc/etc".
I was considering adding complete pluggability of evaluation function to chess engine ... though I dropped that path , it has enlightened me on some pretty cool ideas on pluggability in general and generic design principles - should allow basic design to be helpful for future extensions (Reminds me of the really cool interpretation on "Expected the unexpected" by Billy Bob Thornton in the movie Bandits).

Sood , hope you recall about the guy who wanted to write filesystem code in some interpreted language ;-)
Though his approach was flawed - by concentrating on the how/what of the implementation , the "why" of the idea is not essentially flawed ..... will be thinking more on those lines too.
Have decided that I will need to get full marks in Tannenbaum's class :) - so NO monolithic kernel ... anyway I dont really like the idea of a monolithic kernel and would prefer well defined seperation of responsibilities.
Lots to think and design .... hope you guys also get similarly motivated by Rob Pike's article .... I think the article has traces of mocking and a direct challenge to the industry/research field - will try to take it up in my own way :)

Back from Home

A very very relaxing vacation ... and a much needed one at that !
Now to learn german among other things :)

Off on a Vacation !!!

Leaving today evening to Pune for a 10 day vacation !!
It sure has been long since I went home ... time to relax , get pampered and chill out :)
BTW , anyone I know who is currently in Pune , mail me so that we can get in touch ....
To the rest of you unfortunates who will be working while I enjoy , I will be back to join your ranks on Sunday 18th :)

A depressing day

Yesterday night , around 1 at night I heard the shocking news.
Reserving my comments for now , but I would say this is very unexpected and something that should have been avoided.
The phrase "sell-out" comes to mind for some reason .....

For Best Results, Forget the Bonus

A very very interesting read : http://www.alfiekohn.org/managing/fbrftb.htm

I will be commenting on this soon ... right now , have to rush to office (yes it is only 9:50 !!! man aren't people not going to have a shock ;) )