Remembering Aaron Swartz - Raw Thought

Be curious; Read widely. Try new things. I think a lot of what people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity.

 - Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz (1986 - 2013)

Last week, I was saddened to hear the news about the death of Aaron Swartz. I have never met Aaron in person but I was a regular follower of his blog and work for many years. Both of these led me to deeply admire and respect him. His tireless work against the passing of the SOPA bill was of significant interest to me because of the serious implications of the bill. As a programmer his talents were legendary and as an activist his tireless efforts admirable. His passing is indeed a great loss. The Economist has a nice obituary here that perfectly reflects this sentiment. 

As an avid reader of his blog, I am deeply saddened to know that there will not be anymore updates to the site. So I decided to collect all of his blog posts over the years and compile it into a PDF/Ebook. So this past week, I wrote a simple Python script that crawled Aaron's weblog and retrieved all of the posts one by one and complied them into a single file.

Happy Holidays!

Its time for the holidays and the normally bustling campus is now relatively quiet. The weather seems to be quite erratic though. Its sunny, rainy and chilly all within the same day and on most days the skies look like this. 

Not that it dampens the spirit of the holidays though. Happy Holidays!

Anatomy of a busy month

February 2012 was a very busy month for me. I have survived numerous busy days and weeks in the past, most of which usually culminate in important deadlines, but I don't ever remember having had a hectic month in recent memory. The trend has however been the same though - it usually results in me compromising my sleep. This past month was going to be something similar, but this time I decided to keep track of my sleeping habits for the month. Initially, it looked like just a fun thing to do, but as the month progressed the data I gathered showed some interesting patterns. It wasn't until the end of the month that I decided to analyze the data that I had collected and study it.

In conversation with Tan Jie Yim Priscilla

An edited version of this article was featured in the July 2011 issue of ENGINEERRUS (The official magazine of Temasek Engineering School) under the title of "Tower of Strength". Below is the original transcript of the article that I had written before it was sent for editing and publishing.

Standing at a mere 147cms tall, Tan Jie Yim Priscilla can easily be mistaken for an ordinary girl who follows the ideal life of a student. This is true until you take a closer look at what she does. Unlike many others, this former TP student, who graduated in 2010 with a Diploma in Business Process and Systems Engineering (BZE), has a rather unique and rare pasttime of stilt walking. She works as a performer with Tian Eng Dragon and Lion Dance Centre and has been regularly performing with them at several major events and shows that include Resorts World Sentosa. She credits her penchant for learning and the interest to try out new things in life as the key reason to why she was attracted to the sport.

“Stilt walking is not an easy task and it needs balancing which is most important” says Priscilla who has been performing since 2004. “When I started off, it was very scary and I took a few hours to learn and balance myself fully”. Standing at a height of two meters, seeing Priscilla perform often leaves viewers in awe in addition to giving them goosebumps. “After you tie everything up and are ready to take the first step, you are always wary of falling and keep wanting to hold something” When asked if she had any bad experiences while performing, Priscilla mentions a time when she fell during one of her performances after accidentally stepping on a patch of water and some flowers. “The key is to fall forward with your knees bent, instead of backwards, as the shin guards and hand pumps offer protection and support.” She mentions determination and discipline towards practice sessions as vital traits of a stilt walker’s success.

She acknowledges her family and friends who supported her during her studies and encouraged her to work hard towards her aspirations. “I had a hard time coping with my studies, but I always had my family, especially my Dad and boyfriend, whose constant encouragement kept me going” recalls Priscilla who now works as an Admin Executive at Trillion Lifestyle Pte. Ltd. She hopes to work hard and eventually tour the world with her parents who, despite setbacks, kept going and never gave up.

With her hardwork and persistence, we are certain that she will reach even greater heights in life - those that lie beyond the realms of stilt walking.

Fireside chat with Ms. Wang Yuyan

An edited version of this article was featured in the January 2011 issue of ENGINEERRUS (The official magazine of Temasek Engineering School) under the title of "No Mountain Too High". Below is the original transcript of the article that I had written before it was sent for editing and publishing.

Back in 2006, TP introduced its new Diploma in Integrated Facilities Management (IFM) course. Five years on, it has become one of the most sought-after courses in TP. We caught up with Ms. Wang Yuyan, one of the students from the pilot batch of 2006, and who graduated in 2009, to see how she was coping with life after TP.

Ms. Wang recently graduated from the prestigious International Hotel Management Institute (IMI) in Lucrene, Switzerland with a BA (Hons.) in International Hotel and Tourism Management. It is interesting to note that Ms. Wang’s acceptance into IMI throws light on how versatile and well recognized TP’s Diploma in IFM is. Taking time out to answer a questionnaire, she credits TP for preparing her for the future. “My Diploma in IFM provided me with the basic foundation for the hospitality industry. It has helped me to better understand what was being taught in class and as a diploma graduate it allowed me to advance to a higher level of study” she remembers. Some of her favourite subjects included Introduction to Hospitality and Tourism, Introduction to Language and Culture (French) and Attractions Management and Club and Resort Business. She fondly recalled memories of staying late in school with friends to meet project deadlines and how much the facilities provided by TP helped her to conduct her own self- study or for doing group work with friends.

Talking about life in Switzerland, she described how much she thoroughly enjoyed studying in Europe. “In our free time, my classmates and I would take the opportunity to travel around Europe. So far I have been to Milan, London and Amsterdam, places I would never think I'd visit. It has been quite an experience so far as it is my first time studying abroad and I am enjoying every single bit of it”.

Ms. Wang aspires to hold a managerial position at a five star hotel someday. We wish her all
the very best in this endeavor.

21

I turned 21 today. This post honoring the passage of time in my life would be regarded incomplete without...

...You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death...

                                                    -- from 'Time' by Pink Floyd

Till next time... <3

A student friendly Mocha Latte recipe

The mornings these days in Singapore are rainy and chilly.  A few days ago, it rained so heavily that I was awoken at 4 am with the sound of the rain pelting on my bedroom window. This carried on all through the morning and eventually forced me out of bed. Although it ruined my sleep, it was so nice that I sat beside the window watching the rain bounce of the concrete floor 6 storeys below. I grabbed my phone and tweeted sleepily about craving for a hot cup of coffee.

Later that day one of my colleagues at work helped me make a hot cup of mocha latte. It was so nice that I thought I should share the recipe. I call this a student friendly version of the mocha latte recipe as I found it quite easy to make and it required minimal resources. So here goes...

What you'll need:

My first ever mocha latte

Coffee Powder - 2.5 tablespoons
Sweetened chocolate powder - 1.5 tablespoons
Milk - 1 cup (roughly 250 ml)
Chocolate Syrup - 2 teaspoons
Sugar - Optional
Marshmallows - Optional

Method:

Add the coffee powder to about 70 ml of water and boil it to make a really concentrated coffee solution (This is something alternative to an espresso if you don't have an espresso machine at home). Naturally, strain (filter) the coffee residue from it so that you are left with only the solution. Add the chocolate powder to this mixture and stir briskly till the solution is slightly viscous and brownish black in colour. 


Heat the milk to about 140 deg F and add it slowly to the above mixture, stirring constantly as the milk is being poured. Add sugar as per your requirement. Add some foam to the top of the drink and put 2 -3 pieces of marshmallow. Decorate the top with the chocolate syrup.

Now you would be in a better state to appreciate the beauty of a rainy morning. =)

In conversation with Mdm. Oei. Tsu Min, Charmaine.

An edited version of this article was featured in the July 2010 issue of ENGINEERRUS (The official magazine of Temasek Engineering School) under the title of "Please Hit Me!". Below is the original transcript of the article that I had written before it was sent for editing and publishing.

How would you like to have whipped cream splashed onto your face repeatedly for 4 hours? An engineering school lecturer did just that in the name of charity. Urging students and colleagues to have a go at her, Ms. Charmaine Oei, a Communications Skills lecturer urged: “Please think of all the bad things I’ve done to you, and now you can take revenge”.

Amidst her hectic schedule, she spared time to tell me about her rather remarkable experience. It all began when she and her care group were brainstorming ideas for the CCN Day. Their stall, being located at the concourse level near the Short-Circuit canteen, was right in the middle of the excitement and prospects for a good earning looked promising. They settled on a game stall that they said was going to be ‘different’. Two of the ideas that arose from the discussion were dunking a person head-first into a tub of water and throwing pies at someone’s face. While the former was deemed a little too violent, the latter was still worth exploring. Flinging pies at a person’s face may have looked really exciting; however, no one volunteered to be at the receiving end. After further discussions, they settled on plateful of whipped cream instead of the pie. This attracted just one volunteer. So Ms. Oei surprised everyone by agreeing to be the other. “I thought it would be fun” she said, adding that she didn’t think of it as a big deal.

While the stall did attract a huge crowd of surprised visitors, however, not many people stepped up for the challenge. Both students and staff were equally hesitant inspite of Ms. Oei literally “begging” them to take a shot at her, at least for charity. While those who did step up for the challenge ensured that they missed their target, other simply paid the money but refused to take the shot. “It was a unique learning experience” admits Ms. Oei. Her perception of students changed forever after that. “I realized that they are not vicious but very respectful”. The greatest thing she said she learnt was that people are naturally very considerate and supportive about CCN day. “I didn’t feel embarrassed at all, instead people appreciated the hard work that we put in” adds a modest Ms. Oei.

Along with another game of guessing the number of chocolates in a jar, her class was able to raise a total of $89. When asked if she would do it again next CCN day, she happily agrees but expects to see more volunteers. We may see her again next time, with more innovative ideas. Perhaps it might be something about dunking a person head-first into a tub of water. 

Connecting to TP-Secure on Linux (using Ubuntu 10.04)

My previous post on this topic involved connecting to TP-Secure using Fedora 11.0. That was when Ubuntu 8.10 refused to cooperate and crashed repeatedly. The good news now is the latest version of Ubuntu (Version- 10.04 Lucid Lynx) connects perfectly to TP-Secure without any hassle. The procedure is the same as Fedora 11.0.

The previous distro - 9.10 was known to have problems connecting to the Internet due to a software bug involving drivers. Its a known issue and I was faced with a similar problem. Even connecting to an ordinary WEP connection proved to be a challenge. This problem was addressed widely across many forums by people who faced similar problems. All these problems are solved in the new version.

As for me, I'm currently enjoying Lucid Lynx. The purple interface is really nice and it comes with a lot of handy programs like Gwibber and Empathy IM. The IM in particular is nice because it helps to chat with friends from Facebook, Gtalk, MSN, Yahoo etc. simultaneously. The boot time is noticeably fast too. A program called Wubi Installer makes installation alongside Windows really simple.

Its like you feel encouraged to try it. For me, this upgrade felt like a real image makeover for the Ubuntu experience. I'm enjoying it and hope you do too.

Till next time,

How I learnt Time Management the hard way...

These days I'm so caught up in the middle of things that it hardly leaves me any time to do something I totally enjoy 100%. Of course, I enjoy doing everything that I'm involved with right now, but there comes a time eventually that when things don't work out the way you want them to, it gets on your nerves. In my case, I'm left with no choice but to finish it because there are other things that have to be attended to after that. But then again, you don't achieve the results that you hope to achieve because your attention keeps getting diverted due to various reasons. So, I decided to do some things differently.

I recently attended a leadership training camp conducted by by school's international student's interest group. We began with a personality test that identifies you on the basis of an important characteristic that broadly classifies you as a person. When working in a team or a committee similar to the one I'm in, it becomes a lot easier to choose the person you want to delegate tasks to. The test was conducted in part by our beloved Ms Boey, TPIS advisor and mentor.

My test results showed that I'm a very conscientious person with a strong penchant for detail. For me things are never 'fine' or 'okay' until they meet my expectations, which is something that I noticed about myself and it takes me more time to arrive at decisions than most others. This is after analyzing the pros and the cons of my judgement. This could be a good or a bad trait depending on the situation I'm dealing with. Something that I noticed was that when I applied it to my studies, the outcome is something thats very impressive, to both myself and others, particularly my teachers. People are happy with your work and ask you if you want to try out something similar or more challenging. The offer is often irresistible particularly if you've enjoyed working on that particular project. Unfortunately, that may not be the only project at hand and finding a time slot to allocate for the new one can often leave the others in jeopardy. Meeting deadlines becomes really hard and the process leading up to it can often leave you exhausted to do anything else. I learnt this the hard way. Procrastination is something thats easy to do but is never the solution. If looked upon it from the correct perspective, it can have a tremendous influence on ones own personality. When you ask yourself the question 'Why', it often highlights your weakness or the method of approach that you're probably getting wrong. This approach did it for me. It helped me find out that it is better to excel at a few things rather than being an average at many others. So these days, I'm more cautious when it come to accepting responsibilities, no matter how tempting it may be.

This doesn't mean that I have a relaxed schedule now. Boy oh boy, I'm already paddling in deep waters. I sleep much lesser than the hours required, that doctors recommend to people my age, and you'll probably find me answering my cellphone even in the wee hours of the morning. But then again, one of the key advantages I have on my side is age. I am young and I know I can push myself a little further every time. And as time passes, I keep getting better and better. And whatever I do, I try my best to enjoy it. Even the all-nighters seems enjoyable. I'm just wary of reaching my tipping point.

As for my conscientious nature, I think I'll let it be there for a while and take care to be that way only when required. In places which doesn't require much detail, I'll forcefully pull myself out of it. By doing this, I find that I have a lot of time to do carry out my errands and I'm able to achieve the results that I had hoped to achieve. It has been a great learning experience for me personally and I enjoy every bit of it.

Till next time,

Ciao, <3

Its been a really long time since then...

Its been long since I was actively blogging. Truth be told it was one crazy year. Fully loaded with suprises. My racing heart has only just begun slowing down.

It was just another ordinary summer, at least that's what I expected it to be. The city turned warmer day by day until it became rather uncomfortable to stick around. Met Sam, Diggy, Ciril, Nigel, Harsh, Purav, Darshan and few other friends. It was nice to catch up with these folks after a really long time. Had lots of fun in the city as well as Panchi. Diggy was kind enough to have us stay over at his place and in return, we turned the world upside down in his sleepy town of Satara.

Whats in a name?

After a long while I'm finally trying to get back to blogging again. I decided to mark my return by getting a better name for the page. After brainstorming for several hours and bouncing the idea off many people, I was able to settle with this one.

While C++ is an addition of the C language, similarly R++ is an addition of me in Cyberspace.

An Uneventful Meeting...

It all began with a pleasant morning,
Which didn't bestow any kind of a warning,
A little boy awoke with a start,
Yawned, stretched and smacked a small fart,
On his face lay a sly flat smirk,
For it was time to get back to work.

Time passed, days rolled, years strolled,
Yet the boy considered himself bold.
Skeptical about what lay ahead,
He was paranoid and so nothing he said.
He was inviting an unusual guest,
Who would prepare him for life's ultimate test.

The boy didn't quite recognize him,
In the room with the light quite dim,
Hesitantly he welcomed the stranger,
Hospitality first so he treated him as a ranger.
Little did he know, the man was here to dwell,
For a period that made his life living hell.

Initially it was all quite well,
Suddenly began ringing the alarming bell,
Awestruck by the sudden turn of events,
The boy struggled miserably with every passing moment.
Someone who was once so authoritative,
Was reduced to a being so contemplative.

It was a series of events culminating in a bizarre situation,
Bit by bit it increased his frustration.
Unable to bear the tension
Quite soon he became overwhelmed,
His agony was now turning into a wicked dell.
Not many folks could dare,
To stay alive with a living nightmare.
Its root cause was still unknown,
Little did he know that his guest had overgrown.

Life was difficult to manage for both of them,
Meanwhile, the guest had found a new gem,
He bade the little boy goodbye,
Who by now was emotionally very high.
"Beware", the man said, "I might visit you again",
"At that time, too, there would be nothing for you to gain".

It was a bolt from the blue, the boy realized,
Now, he seriously had his life to analyze,
The boy wondered what further omens did he lure,
Frightened about what else he had to endure.
As though reading my thoughts, the man replied, "By the way, my name is Failure..."

My Cleopatra

I was born sometime around fall of '89,
I guess at that time all was quite fine,
Precisely it was quarter past three,
When I self declared that I was born free.

That’s when I developed this strange affection,
With someone who would save me from any dangerous action,
Believe me this is no fiction,
And truly, between us there isn’t any friction.

Many don’t even get an opportunity to even see this strange friend,
They develop a fake one only according to their future’s trend,
But I was lucky for this very cause,
So my life continued without any pause.

When I think of this person, tears trickle down my cheek,
For, this person underwent a lot of trouble to reach me to the peak,
So 18 years I grew in Sun and Shower,
Most said, I was even prettier than a Lotus flower.

When eyes are red and body warm,
This person would sit beside me holding my arm,
This happened not once, but several number of times,
The very presence felt like the good luck of the wind chime.

This person was as beautiful as Cleopatra,
And could sing even louder than an orchestra,
Who would love and cuddle us when we were small and soft,
Try to remember whom we were all very fond of.

Who is this Divine Manifestation?
Many may ask out of total frustration,
I’ll say they answer awaits you,
Coz those who realize its value are very few.

A step closer to the answer is a clue,
By which most of you would think it was so simple,
Where would you find this person who does care?
Don’t search the world for such people are very rare.

Who is this dear person whom we actually love,
Before whom we must join hands and bow,
You may get puzzled and ask others,
But I tell you my friend, its none other than our very own ‘Mothers’