I have an axe to grind with Siri. I use Siri every day to time my yoga routine. These are short reps of 30s poses. It takes about 30 mins to complete them. I searched for a good timer a couple of times in the past and then gave them up altogether once I figured I could use Siri to set up the timer for me. On a good day, it’s all good....
I have been writing web applications for quite a while now. For a more significant part of this experience, I had been developing on top of an existing CMS type environment; moodle, drupal, WordPress, or the like. Very few of these are web applications written from scratch. I typically used PHP when I write for the web because it has the lowest barrier of entry. You can write HTML and then insert your PHP wherever you need dynamic content....
Yet another year has gone by! I was just running by my last year’s birthday post. It is sad to see that not much has changed from that post although quite a lot has happened in the year. I still cannot call myself an entrepreneur. Not even a freelancer. I still am trying to beat the blues from last year. Maybe I’ll just count my blessings this year and set some realistic goals for 2016....
It was an insightful morning today. I was getting my 1-month-old to sleep after his feed so that we can get our day started. Noni is sort of jealous of me on this: Unta seems to love my arm couch better than hers. Even though I squeeze him like an orange. Maybe he feels super cozy! Ok, please don’t advise me on why I should not squeeze a 1-month-old like an orange....
I sort of went into an exile since the last post. I think none of this blogging platforms in working for me. I hate to type with my phone, in spite of its bigger screen. I don’t carry my pad everywhere either. Not so much of the mac too. Basically, I travel only with my phone and I don’t want to have to type with the phone. That means, I lose all the brilliant thoughts for a post by the time I get to the mac or to the office laptop that I usually write these posts from....
I spent some time listening to some TED talks on creativity (yes, again). And I noticed something that I had missed all the other times I did this. The first step to being creative is being engaged to your environment. Duh! That is quite basic understanding right? But somehow I missed this part. And this is something I complain to Noni about a lot. I keep telling her that I can’t seem to find any problems around me....
So I got about 60% of one app working on my iPhone to a satisfactory extent. I still need to add a couple of features before it can used as an app. I thought this is perhaps a good time to think about and generally fix the horrible UI that I have created so far. Thinking about it, I suck so bad at UI that I have never written a GUI application all my life....
What I am about to discuss here is not a basic need. It is more of a luxury, good to have setup. Nobody quite misses it now, but maybe it will become essential in the future. Or maybe not. During the formative years of the foetus, parents get to see their baby(-ies) take shape through the months with the help of the ultra sound scans that the doctor uses. For the first 6-7 months, the baby is still not very active....
I have recently got on an exercise regimen to fight my back pain problems. It is sort of like Yoga but in a controlled manner. I don’t know if its fun, but it definitely helps to keep pain away. Typically, I’ll need to do 4-6 exercises twice a day. Each exercise is repeated three times and lasts 30 sec each time. Pretty simple, right? You need to keep aside about 30 minutes twice a day to take care of this....
There are a lot of websites to plan your vacations and trips. I don’t want to list them all here. But the most common theme is along these lines: you have a budget and I have a package. you have a destination and I’ll tell you the budget. Well, I really wish there was a third category. I have a budget and number of days. I’ll tell you the sort of hotels I am looking at as well....