Akshay Surve
a computer engineer by education, an adventure enthusiast by instincts, a designer for fun and a programmer by choice.
‘Coding on the Late Shift’ Stream
Blog stream about code I write and technology
Till Eternity’s End
In: All| Coding on the Late Shift| I Am| Nuby on Mac| Quote-Unquote| Tumblelog
29 Jun 2009
Lake Raleigh - (click to see the bigger version)
Trails could reach places
But the road couldn’tWoods were dark and motionless
But the birds weren’tRipples travelled far and wide
But the water didn’tTime passed and skipped beats
But the moments didn’tLife will take a turn and shall try to move on
But thankfully the memories won’t- Akky
P.S: Liked this one? Would love to hear back from you. Click here to browse through few others. You may also like the Quote-Unquote series.
social|median design contest and invites
10 May 2008
social|median harnesses social filtering to help you keep up-to-date with news that matters to you.
From their website:
socialmedian is a social news service that connects people with personalized news and information. socialmedian enables you to easily keep up-to-date on the news that matters to you and to people who share your interests.
Currently, they are in ALPHA (heard of web applications in BETA before? eg: Gmail. Alpha is a milestone just before BETA ;)
What I like about them the most is their approach. Jason the founder and his team at TrueSparrow are not churning up code all the time (like you would like to believe of a product in ALPHA) but constantly looking for feedback from their ALPHA users. At the time of writing this post they already had 2468 alpha users signed up and most of them active.
Now, it is this approach of theirs which I highly appreciate and when Jason announced the social|median design contest I had to pitch in.
I throughly enjoyed the whole experience of participating in the design contest while the product is in its ALPHA and probably help shape its vision/roadmap. My participation in the contest is a story in itself and it will probably unfold sometime soon on this blog (may be partially).
Interested in seeing my entry for the contest? For you all I have a special annotated version of the files I sent to Jason unlike the ones uploaded in the contest.
(I would recommend you to see the first and the third at its original size by clicking on the preview images below. The notes would also help you figure out what’s the application about.)
User’s signed in homepage:
User’s signed in homepage after clicking on expand profile:
Web 2.0 network on social|median:
You can go through all the entries here. To vote for me you can follow this link. I would highly appreciate if you take time out and make an informed decision by going through all the entries. Since, all the designs are also effectively ALPHA ;) do leave your comments here or on the individual design pages for the designs.
Thanks for taking time out and participating in the voting process. Looking forward for your feedback.
Update
Jason has been grateful and has extended some ALPHA invites to social|median for you! Grab them soon before they are gone. Leave me a message along with your email and I shall send you the code for the ALPHA invite.
Results are out:
Results are out and you can read more about it here. I didn’t win but I hope I did add value to the whole process. In all I am extremely happy with the contest and my entry for the feedback I received from fellow contestants, unknown friends (from what I noticed there were atleast 3 comments which went missing from that post after I read them. so if you see your feedback missing do push it to me on my email as I really value it) and well wishers. Thanks once again for your support.
- (2) Comments
- Tags: code, contest, design, hackathon, photoshop, socialmedian
Look who’s talking about PHP :)
5 Apr 2008David, creator of Ruby on Rails recently made a post on his blog related to PHP. He did have some good things to say about PHP and as he rightly pointed out that it deserves some more respect from the community in general.
I’ve been writing a little bit of PHP again today. That platform has really received an unfair reputation. For the small things I’ve been used it for lately, it’s absolutely perfect.
I love the fact that it’s all just self-contained. That the language includes so many helpful functions in the box. And that it managed to get distributed with just about every instance of Apache out there.
For the small chores, being quick and effective matters far more than long-term maintenance concerns. Or how pretty the code is. PHP scales down like no other package for the web and it deserves more credit for tackling that scope.
I have always respected and utilized them for tasks which leverage their inherent strengths :)
- (1) Comment
- Tags: php, rails, ruby, ruby-on-rails
The programmers and the ABCDEFG problem
7 Feb 2008Again and again I am reminded of the ABCDEFG problem I read in “The Nudist on the Late Shift — and Other True Tales of Silicon Valley” by Po Bronson.
“The ABCDEFG Problem.” I call it that because all good programmers have tons of choices to work on, A through G. Some choices seem cooler and some seem dumber, some possible and some improbable, but as to the payday lurking behind the door, they all look alike. They’re just A through G, take your pick. Choice A may be 3DO, and choice G may be $2 million of Microsoft stock, and Choice C may be a quarterback with four Super Bowl rings, but you just don’t know. It’s sort of like choosing one million units of foreign currency by which country’s paper bills have the splashiest colors, or making a million-dollar bet on the NCAA basketball tournament by whichever team has the sexiest cheerleaders. The variables that programmers have to go on (A-G) are not the variables that determine the outcome (X, Y, and Z).
And rightly said, “The variables that programmers have to go on (A-G) are not the variables that determine the outcome (X, Y, and Z).” So, do what you love and have fun coding :)
You can read an excerpt from the book here.
P.S. Hanisha, I still have the book I borrowed from you. Thanks :)
ErlyWeb: ErlangOnRails
2 Feb 2008
I have been playing around with Erlang for some weekends now and I find it to be really interesting. I like the functional programming paradigm too. The syntax reminds me a little of Prolog (from my engineering days).
Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World is the Pickaxe book for Erlang written by Joe Amstrong. Joe designed and implemented the first version of Erlang in 1986.
What’s all this fuss about Erlang?. This and recent articles on reddit got me interested in Erlang.
Yariv Sadan has also developed a web framework on Erlang named ErlyWeb. ErlyWeb is in its 0.7 version and has some Rails kinda feel to it but doesn’t look as clean as Rails because its on Erlang. Not many people get it but its actually because of Ruby that Rails does most of its magic its said to do. ErlyWeb is a commendable effort and I really want to give it a fair shot before I form a opinion about it.
I have a very interesting project in mind where Erlang fits the bill perfectly. More about it sometime later ;)
- No Comments
- Tags: erlang, erlyweb, rails, ror, ruby-on-rails
Enhance GMail - Use keyboard shortcuts
12 Dec 2007I have made a switch from Yahoo to Gmail for my primary mail address in the last few months and its been a pleasant experience.
Have been using the keyboard shortcuts of Gmail now and I must say I am addicted to it. Highly recommended for anyone who loves to use the terminal or like editors like emacs and vi. I feel the shortcuts have more of a vi feel to it.
I would recommend Gmail if:
- Volume of mail you have to respond to is huge. On Gmail alone I have had 226 mails in my sent folder in the last two months. Most of them were related to CodeCampMumbai
- You want to receive the registration confirmation mails quickly. I have noticed that its faster on Gmail than on Yahoo.
- Discover Archiving. Yeah, archiving is beautiful.
- You are looking for a GTD app.(link)
- Oops, I just figured out that I can go on and on…
Which reminds me I have to update my Contact page.
- (2) Comments
- Tags: codecampmumbai, emacs, gmail, gtd, vi
Jaagte raho ;)
18 Nov 2007I am here at the CodeCampMumbai and we are hitting our keyboards real hard at this time in the night(2:00am). It’s 8 of us here still remaining and the enthusiasm is contagious. Me and Pavan are sitting in the balcony with our laptops while Deepak, Kurund, Ankur, Fenil, Latesh and Varun are sitting inside. It’s chilly out here and you have the balmy breeze making us feel comfortable all the time. We can hear birds chirping even at this time in the night.
It feels sublime and I feel I should enjoy the moment and the code and not blog about it now ;)
‘Jaagte raho’ is hindi for ‘Keep Awake’
- (2) Comments
- Tags: all-night, ankur, codecamp, codecampmumbai, deepak, fenil, latesh, mumbai-night, pavan
Signal vs Noise
8 Oct 2007Just pruned my feed subscriptions in Google Reader from 800+ to less than 300. I feel lighter now ;)
P.S. Leave me a link to your blog below in the comments. Thanks.
- (4) Comments
- Tags: blog, google, reader
Xcercise your right to vote ;)
26 Sep 2007Did I tell you that you can vote for anonimity.net at railsrumble.com?
Yes, you can!
If you feel like voting for anonimity.net or other apps follow this quick procedure:
- http://vote.railsrumble.com/signup
- activate your account
- visit: http://vote.railsrumble.com/teams/70/visit and vote
- browse to see other apps. i must say there are some awesome apps out there
Happy Voting!
anonimit.net is live!
13 Sep 2007anonimity.net is live!
anonimity.net is an ideal get away from social networking apps. its a one of its kind testbed for anonimity on the web with comments, tagcloud and postflood.
features:
* anonimity at all times
* celebrate anonimity: confess, ask, poll, comment
* track:if you create a login you can track everything. though any which ways we make no distinction between a person who has created the post or is just tracking a post. so at all times we never know who created a post.
* no profile, no friendlist, no community, no followers, no apps, no networking, no poke, no wall posts (thanks, i can hear the applause!)
reasons to pursue this idea:
* people (atleast i,) find social networking today annoying at times. i must thank it for finding my old friends and helping me connect with them but it ends there. now-a-days i find it becoming too intrusive.
* ideal platform for people to share, confess, poll and discuss away from their social network. there is no “me” and along with it there are no inhibitions. One can reach out to this whole world anonymously.
* it would be interesting to see how people interact,react,contribute by being anonymous.
read announcement here:anonimity.net is live !
I am ready to rumble… where are you?
8 Sep 2007I am taking part in the railsrumble live for the next 48 hours. I would be anonymous most of the time for the next 48 hours. To know why and follow to me live track anonymous serendipity » anonimity.net blog.
- No Comments
- Tags: anonimity.net, anonymous, hackathon, rails, railsrumble
Can someone please explain this to ME ?
24 Apr 2007Just stumbled upon these domain names while checking out alexa rankings and after discussing about a simple domain name extractor with a friend of mine.
What do you think of these domains:
sina.com.cn & com.cn
Oh! Fine they are in chinese can’t make out what those websites are all about but I would always think that sina is a sub-domain of com.cn (Not sure whether its the case here)
Now to add to the complexity I google and found these domain names too:
www.google.com.cn & www.com.cn
www.google.com.my & www.com.my
In both these cases IMHO the former would qualify to be a fourth level domain for the latter second level domain.
Am I right OR is there something I am missing here ?
Humanity to Others ;-)
21 Apr 2007Ubuntu which means ‘Humanity to others’ is back with its latest version Ubuntu 7.04 whose release code name is ‘Fiesty Fawn’. It was released on my birthday April 19th. Isn’t it a cool birthday gift >? LoL I have kept my desktop for an upgrade to this new version and I am really excited about it.
- (2) Comments
- Tags: birthday, humanity, ubuntu
Did I tell you my research paper got accepted?
20 Apr 2007The research paper “Optimizing Web Search Results using User Feedback” based on the prototype feedee has been accepted at the International Conference on Business and Information (Tokyo, Japan).
I am really excited about it. Not sure whether I would be able to make it to the conference (anyone ready to finance?). I would like to congratulate Manav (co-author) and our guide Prof. Amiya Tripathy (co-author). Big thanks to DBIT(Don Bosco Institute of Technology), Dr. Revathy Sundarajan, Dr. S. Krishnamoorthy, Reshma Nayak (who also burnt some mid-night oil ;-) and so many others.
I would surely try working on another paper as it been a full-filling journey and this time it would be more concrete and thorough.
- No Comments
- Tags: amiya, dbit, feedee, manav, manav shah, research, search-engines
Pretty GNU Emacs with XFT goodness
5 Apr 2007I have been using Emacs for most of my ruby and rails programming. I tend to like it and now I can say that I am an Emacs addict. A week back I stumbled upon this article Pretty Emacs while search for some popular themes for Emacs. I tried installing Emacs from the repositories but the installation was never successful. Later I also followed posts GNU Emacs with XFT goodness and Emacs font joy.
Finally, I have it working(most probably) and here is my screenshot:
Looks Yummy! isn’t it?
At the eleventh hour
28 Feb 2007Came across this interesting option of ‘Trends’ within my Google Search History account. I had enabled search history long back when I started working on feedee. I find it pretty useful and would recommend it to everyone who use Google extensively for their research work.
Key advantages over social bookmarking websites are:
- Its Transparent - It saves all your queries and search results clicked once activated.
- Its intelligent (At least its made to be intelligent) - There are options like ‘Interesting Items’ which is a search query or web page discovery tool based on your past queries to Google.
- Its Useful - There are so many times when you forget to bookmark a web page you found through Google. Now , there is no more disappointment.
This still is not a replacement for social bookmarking websites but very nifty utility for someone like me who instinctively presses Control+k (shortcut for Firefox search box) on his keyboard when he needs to find anything.
Here is my Trends chart:
The initial section lists Top queries, sites and clicks. Most of the picks there were pretty obvious. (I confess I do a lot of egosurfing)
Search activity section is what interested me the most. The graphs reveal my work pattern. They also justify the title of my blog stream, Coding on the late shift and off course this post title too. Looks like the eleventh hour is when I get going and pretty much sums up my life till date too.
Google Search History also has a option of ‘Interesting Items”. It suggests search queries, web pages, videos and gadgets related to your searches. I didn’t find the suggestions interesting may be the algorithm still has a bit of learning to do.
Have you signed up for Google Search History?
powered by performancing firefox
- (2) Comments
- Tags: , Coding on the Late Shift, google
The State of Search Engine Marketing in India
27 Sep 2006U Thought I was busy with something all this while?
- Yup !
Here is what it was all about > A Report on The State of Search Engine Marketing in India
About the report from Pinstorm - News channel
This report is a first-of-its-kind in the field of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) business. You can expect to find some very interesting data, comparisons & revelations here.
- Find out where the SEM industry in India stands today.
- What sectors are hot.
- How much the key players in every sector are spending- Naukri vs Monster, HP vs Dell, Shaadi vs Jeevansathi. You name it, we have it.
- Are other players catching up with the giant eBay in the retail market?
Some coOL, funny and interesting tit-bits straight from the report:
Rs. 230 crores of ad spend on this media is aimed at Indians alone. Of this, about a third, over Rs. 70 crores is spent by Indian companies. For an industry that barely got off the ground a couple of years ago, it’s a huge leap.
A note of thanks. An enterprise of this scale wouldn’t have been possible without the help of some very smart people. A big hand to Dr. V. Vinay, Pinstorm’s technology guru (with flowing locks to match) who wrote much of the code and algorithms to make these calculations possible. A doff of the hat to Akshay Surve, Ansoo Gupta, Hanisha Vaswani, Harish TM, Indrojit Chaudhuri, Milan Zaveri, Netra Parikh, Nikhil Sheth, Ratan KK and Reshma Nayak - some of the other Pinstormers who temporarily gave up sleep and sanity to make this report happen. And to the redoubtable Subho Ray of the IAMAI, Doc, here’s to making history together!
Delhi is more expensive than Bangalore, which is more expensive than Mumbai. But only in search marketing terms.
So, here we are, many nights, many cups of Barista coffee, Punjab Sweet House samosas and Snack Shack sali botis, many lines of code and charts on Excel later.
You can download the report for free ;-) from here.
- (4) Comments
- Tags: pinstorm, sem, work
About this blog
This is the personal blog and online identity of Akshay Surve. If you would like to know more about him click here.
Blog Streams
- All (302)
- Coding on the Late Shift (27)
- I Am (208)
- Nuby on Mac (5)
- Quote-Unquote (27)
- Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2006 (26)
- Tumblelog (17)
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