adarsh bhat’s blog

I had heard of Web Vastu from my colleagues before, mostly in the form of a joke. Web Vastu is the application of the traditional art of vastu shastra to websites. Wired did a story on this and got Web Vastu expert Dr. Smita Narang to evaluate Slashdot for vastu correctness. I think the report is ridiculous.

Slashdot’s Vastu

Vastu is a big deal here in Bangalore if you are thinking of constructing a house. I agree that some of the rules specified in vastu shastra are applicable to this very day. They reflect sound common sense that could be easy to overlook. After all, what could be wrong with realigning the design of your home to make sure that air and light are plentiful? But this turns in to a problem when people deviate from obvious common sense only to adhere to some rule, no matter how little the rule may apply to the circumstances at hand. If you have a really small plot of land of dimensions 30×40 feet, which by the way is the rule rather than the exception in Bangalore, there is very little room for design changes based on esoteric pseudo-sciences. But people here insist. The unfortunate outcome of this whole mania is that you are forced to build a vastu compliant house even though you may not really believe in it. If your house does not conform to vastu you are going to have a really hard time selling your house in the future. Besides, the resale value is going to be much lower.

Everything is good in moderation. Personally, I believe that this latest application of vastu to the web does not make too much sense. It is one thing to improve the aesthetics of a website by recommending a harmonious colour scheme or layout. But attempting to equate elements on a web page to fire and water simply sounds like a load of BS.

society, web

Child Labour Banned in India

Starting October 10th 2006, child labour has been banned in India. Children below fourteen years of age are protected by the law. India has a very long way to go in actually eradicating child labour. But having a law is a good first step.

The National Sample Survey 2000 reported, “16.4 million Indian children aged between 5-14 years were engaged in economic activities and domestic or non-remunerative work. Another 46 million school-going children are unaccounted for, neither enrolled in school or officially working.” This makes India number one in the number of child labourers in the planet.

Domestic Violence Act 2005

The Domestic Violence Act came in to force yesterday. The message is clear. Stop committing acts of violence against your women, or be prepared to pay hefty fines and cool your heels in prison. Again, the act is in place — but there are no mechanisms to enforce it. This is just the first step, a positive one though.

New Jersey Court Upholds Marriage for Same Sex Couples

This one was a bit of a surprise to me. The jury decided 4-3 in favour of marriage or a marriage-like institution for same sex couples, beyond the current civil union arrangement. NJ shall become the second state in the United States to have such a law.

Bush contemplates change in Iraq strategy

Bush is now finally contemplating changing the strategy in Iraq. I hope that means there is going to be a withdrawal of forces in the foreseeable future.

Underage Drinking Barred in Bangalore

You will no longer be sold liquor in bars and pubs in Bangalore unless you are over 18 years of age. You will have to present an identification card. Unfortunately, the age limit is set at 18, and not 21. The open question is: What would be used as an ID card?

society

I am:

• 70% trusty
• 60% cool
• 80% sexy

I some times wonder which freak of nature would give me such ratings on Orkut.

I strolled by Crossword, the book store on Residency road last week. With nothing specific in mind, I was looking around the store when I spotted the book The Inscrutable Americans by Anurag Mathur. I had heard good things about the book. Besides, it was small and inexpensive. So, I decided to pick up a copy.

Gopal, the main character in the story, is a bright young Indian from one of the remote parts of the country. The book narrates his experiences as he makes his first trip to America to further his education. Mathur does a great job exploring the psyche of the character as he fumbles in between alien surroundings and people. Gopal’s English is really bad, and provides for a kind of comedy that you have to be Indian to understand. (My head is eating circles)

This book is really funny. If you are looking to have a good time without forming any opinions, go for this book. I feel that many Indians would identify with Gopal’s opinions on Americans and their ways. If you are an American and are looking to understand the minds of Indian students, this book is nothing to go by. The time in which this story is set is speculated to be in the 70s. And Gopal is from a rural place, hardly what an Indian student from a city would be like today.

All said and done, this book is a great way to spend an evening and get a few laughs.

books

I got my Diwali gift this morning. I had the most pleasant experience riding to work today. The streets were almost empty. It was almost like the old Bangalore — the one that we loved — was still alive somewhere there, trying to rear its head one last time.

As they say, an earthen lamp burns brightest just before it dies. Come November 1st, and Bangalore will lose its name as we’ve always known it. Bengaluru is going to be a completely different place. Will it be a better place? I’m not too optimistic about that. The old Bangalore will be simply gone.

Now is the time to enjoy it when it lasts. Here’s wishing a very happy Diwali to all my readers.

My Bloglines backlog is really growing — it now stands at a 1500+. I decided to start a clean-up operation today. What that really means is that I browsed through 100+ articles at once in headline mode.

The biggest news I had missed was that Microsoft has released IronPython 1.0 now. I should play around with this thing a bit. It is interesting to read that the lead developer claims in this post that the .NET version of Python runs faster than the C version.

Indian author Kiran Desai has become the youngest woman to win the Man Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in literature for contemporary fiction.

The prize winning work is titled The Inheritance of Loss.

books

I made the move from Blogger to the new Blogger Beta. I like what I see. I hope you do too.

Google seems to have done a good job with the upgrade. Blogger feels faster overall. The template system is now usuable by non-geeks. Changes in settings are immediate, without having to constantly republish.

Those of you who have subscribed via RSS may find many older posts marked as new.

blog

If you have worked in the software business long enough, you know that there comes a time in all projects that we developers dread — it is that time when you have to come up with a time estimate of how long the project is expected to take to complete. This happens early in the life of each new project. But each attempt at estimation leaves us developers none the wiser. We continue to fear the day when the manager walks down to our cubicle and says:

“Let’s meet this afternoon. Please make a list of all the tasks in the project and add time estimates against them. Let’s come up with a timeline.”

The first reaction to this is usually total shock and horror.

“How could he ask us to do this?”
“I have NO clue about what needs to be done.”
“Isn’t this his job?”

We enter in to a state of denial and simply refuse to do it. After all, there is no way we can predict the future — we’re not astrologers, for heaven’s sake. At this point, the manager says:

“Look, I’m not looking for exact dates. Only tentative ones. We’re only trying to get a rough idea here — will it take months or years?”

(Try saying “5 months” now, and you’ll promptly get back a “Why?”)

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to hold you against these dates. These will not turn in to deadlines.”

(Riiight.)

We know better than to believe that. After further delay, the big eye in the West decides to have a chat with you. He repeats pretty much the same thing as the manager and adds,

“Don’t worry. I won’t publish these dates to upper management. But we need to have a rough idea to get started with the engineering approval process. We need to set customers’ expectations about when the product will be in the market.”

“Hmm.. ok. yeah.. ok. Fine. I understand.”

After much hestitation, the developers sit together and come up with a break-up of the tasks that need to be done. The granularity of the tasks is this list clearly reflects which parts of the project the developers are familiar with, and which parts they have no clue about. The familiar parts are represented using fine-grained tasks. The grey areas are well.. lumps.

Still, no dates against the tasks. When you don’t know what some of those tasks are (and even if you have all the tasks in there), it’s hard to put dates against them.

The manager by now is totally pissed, and he calls all developers for a meeting. It is time for him to take things in his hands.

“How much time will this one take..? And this one?”
“Uhh..”

I’ll spare you the grueling details, but at the end of this meeting, we have a date. Necessary evil. Let’s just say that as a team, there is born this astonishing capability of pulling numbers and dates out of our collective ass.

Once the ordeal is over, it feels surprisingly good. In fact it feels so good that some may think that it was the process of estimation that gave us the goosebumps.

Obviously, estimation is good for us. It has always been good for them. Everybody wins.

Stop reading this post. Head straight to http://india.gov.in.

Or wait to hear me go ga-ga over it. This is the most f***ing beautiful government website in the whole country. I can’t believe how organized and navigable it is. They’ve even got a site map with an expandable tree view! This site is *so* what I wanted. What’s more — they want your feedback, and even your contribution! I wanted to sign up, but that doesn’t seem to work yet. But the photo gallery makes you forget that.

You may feel that I’m being overly dramatic about this. But you’ve got to see it yourself. Go now!

This site gets a permanent link from my blog. Yes, with a small banner. I think I’m going to cry.