Procrastination

Three days late, here are some poems in honor of Valentine’s Day.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

This was a poem by famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

And here’s love and statistics.

You are perfect; I’d make no substitutions
You remind me of my favorite distributions
With a shape and a scale that I find reliable
You’re as comforting as a two parameter Weibull
When I ask you a question and hope you answer truly
You speak as clearly as a draw from a Bernoulli
Your love of adventure is most influential
Just like the constant hazard of an exponential.
With so many moments, all full of fun,
You always integrate perfectly to one.

(hat tip: Andrew Gelman)

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I had been lusting after a Google Voice account for a while and finally got it a few months ago. To my disappointment, there was no way to port my existing phone number to the service, so I had to get a new number.

At first, I was slow to give out my Google Voice number to people, but over time it’s becoming my default phone number.

Of the features of Google Voice, voice transcription is still a bit problematic as the speech recognition doesn’t work as well as it should. I love it that it can ring all my phones and that I can switch from my cellphone to landline during a call to save cell minutes. Also, I can have different call forwarding rules and voicemail greetings for different people (using groups) in my list of contacts. One pitfall there is that a phone number should only be in one group otherwise you can’t be sure which rules will be applied to it.

There used to be a couple of Google Voice apps for the iPhone and I had bought GV Mobile but when Apple rejected Google’s official Voice app, they also removed all the other previously approved apps from the App Store. (Yes, Apple is more evil than Microsoft!) So now I have to rely on the Google Voice mobile website on my iPhone.

I have also moved my cellphone voicemail to Google Voice. Yes, I like the visual voicemail on the iPhone, but Google Voice gives me a centralized voicemail (with SMS and email notification and voice transcription) and there is more potential there.

On my AT&T landline phone, I have also subscribed to Call Forwarding Busy Line and Call Forwarding Don’t Answer with Ring Control with my Google Voice number as the forwarding number. Thus, if my landline is busy or I don’t pick it up, the call is automatically forwarded either to my other phones or to my Google Voice voicemail.

Since I receive a lot of telemarketing and other junk calls on my home phone, I have set up Google Voice call screening so callers who are not in my contact list are asked to say their name the first time they call me. This has cut down on a lot of junk business calls I was receiving because my home phone number used to belong to a business a few years ago.

I also signed up with Gizmo5 (which has now been acquired by Google) and linked my Google Voice and Gizmo. So now I can receive my Google Voice calls on my computer with GizmoCall open in a Firefox PermaTab.

Finally, dear readers, through the magic of Google Voice call widgets, you can contact me by phone now on my contact page.

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I am a parent, a nerd and love gadgets. So of course I had to create flashcards on my iPhone for my daughter to learn reading.

My daughter is in Kindergarten right now and she’s learning to read. Her teacher sent us a list of 122 (Dolch) words that she will be learning to read by sight this year.

To help her, I printed flashcards. Then I thought that since she uses my iPhone to play, draw and learn, I should look for a flashcard app at the iTunes store. After trying several apps, I settled on Flashcard Deluxe (developer’s website).

I created a spreadsheet of the word list based on the Flashcard Deluxe format. The front of the flashcard shows the word and the back has the word along with a sound file pronouncing that word. That way, Michelle can use it independently.

For the word pronunciation, I downloaded the sound files from Wiktionary and converted them to MP3 using WinLAME.

You can access the final result here.

To download it to your iPhone/iPod using the Flashcards Deluxe app, start the app. Press the + button on the Decks screen. Then click on Private Deck and then Deck Code. Type the following in the text box:

http://www.zackvision.com/wp-content/uploads/kid/sight-words/sightwords.txt

Save it and then tap on Download Cards.

You can also download all the files together in a zip archive to your computer.

It’s been a success with Michelle who’s doing well ad enjoying the flashcards on the iPhone.

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If you are wondering where I have been in the last three weeks, I have been busy. I had to transfer all the non-bloggy content of my website to WordPress.

Since I do book and movie reviews, I started using the Now Reading Reloaded plugin for book reviews and links to Amazon. However, I couldn’t find any similar plugin for movie reviews.

After getting permission from the developer, I forked Now Reading Reloaded 5.1.1.0 to make it work with movies and DVDs.

This plugin which I am calling Now Watching is now available on the WordPress plugin repository.

If you find any bugs or issues or have feature requests, please let me know.

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Specs listed the podcasts she listens to and Razib also mentioned a podcast recently, so I thought I should list the stuff I have been listening to on my iPhone and may be Razib and others can chime in with some suggestions.

Here’s my current list of podcasts:

• BBC Radio 4 Beyond Belief
• BBC Radio 4 In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg
• BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed
• NPR Planet Money
• NPR On Science
• NPR Science Friday
• NPR Technology
• Science and the City: I just started listening to this podcast, so not sure yet if I’ll continue.
• This Week in Google: Interesting, but too long at 1 hour every week, especially as it has some filler and could be shortened.
• TED Talks: Some good talks, some just boring.
• The New York Review of Books Podcast
• The New Yorker Comment, Out Loud, and The Political Scene podcasts
• President Obama’s weekly address
• White House Speeches (I don’t listen to all of them, but subscribe to keep track)

In addition, here are some courses and lectures on iTunes U and as podcasts that I have been listening to or that are in my listening queue:

• Historical Jesus
• The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877
• Slavery and Abolition
• Lincoln and the Civil War
• The History of Rome
• The Roman Empire
• Imperial Rome and Ostia
• Introduction to Ancient Greek History

What do you recommend?

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ہفتہ بلاگستان آج اختتام کو پہنچ رہا ہے۔ سو آخری قسط حاضر ہے۔

ٹیکنالوجی اور انسان کا چولی دامن کا ساتھ ہے۔ کچھ لوگوں کا تو کہنا ہے کہ یہ ٹیکنالوجی ہی ہے جو ہمیں جانوروں سے ممیز کرتی ہے۔ اگرچہ کچھ جانور بھی محدود طور پر اوزار کا استعمال کرتے ہیں مگر انسان اوزار ایجاد کرنے اور مختلف ٹکنیکس استعمال کرنے میں ایک علیحدہ ہی کلاس میں ہے۔ اس کا آغاز لاکھوں سال پہلے ہومو ایریکٹس کے پتھر کے اوزار بنانے سے ہوتا ہے۔ مختلف ماہرِ عمرانیات و آنتھروپالوجی ٹیکنالوجی کی تاریخ کو مختلف طریقوں سے تقسیم کرتے ہیں۔ ماضی کی اہم ٹیکنالوجی میں پتھر کے اوزار (25 لاکھ سال پہلے)، آگ کا استعمال (شاید 10 سے 15 لاکھ سال پہلے)، کپڑے (ایک لاکھ سال پہلے)، جانوروں کو پالتو بنانا (15 ہزار سال پہلے)، زراعت (10 ہزار سال پہلے)، تانبا، کانسی اور پھر لوہے کا استعمال، پہیہ (6 ہزار سال پہلے)، لکھائ (6 ہزار سال پہلے) وغیرہ ہیں۔ ان مختلف ٹیکنالوجیز کی بدولت انسان شکار اور چیزیں اکٹھی کرنے سے بڑھ کر گنجان آباد زرعی سوسائٹی کا حصہ بنا۔ پھر اٹھارہویں اور انیسویں صدی میں صنعتی انقلاب نے پہلے یورپ اور پھر دنیا کو بدل دیا۔

آج ہم post-industrial دور سے گزر رہے ہیں جہاں انفارمیشن کے انقلاب نے دنیا کے مختلف خطوں میں رہنے والوں کو قریب‌تر کر دیا ہے۔ کمپیوٹر، ٹیلی‌فون، انٹرنیٹ اور سروس اکنامی ہمارے دور کی اہم ایجادات ہیں۔ نہ صرف یہ کہ ہم باہم رابطے میں پرانے وقتوں سے بہت مختلف حالات میں رہتے ہیں بلکہ آج ترقی‌یافتہ ممالک میں صنعت سے زیادہ اہم انفارمیشن ہے اور بہت سے لوگ manufacturing کی بجائے information سے متعلقہ جاب کر رہے ہیں جن میں معلومات کو اخذ کرنا، انہیں شیئر کرنا، تعلیم، ریسرچ وغیرہ شامل ہیں۔

کل ہمیں کیسی ٹیکنالوجی دکھائے گا؟ اس سوال کا جواب ایک لحاظ سے مشکل ہے کہ ہم اپنے کل کو آج ہی کے تناظر میں دیکھتے ہیں۔ جیسے بیسویں صدی کے پہلے حصے کے لوگوں‌کا خیال تھا کہ جیسے ان کے زمانے میں گاڑی اور جہاز کی ایجاد سے سفر بہت آسان ہوا اسی طرح مستقبل میں اسی فیلڈ میں ترقی ہو گی اور انتہائ تیزرفتار اور فضائ کاریں دستیاب ہوں گی۔ ایسا نہ ہو سکا بلکہ تیزرفتار کنکورڈ جہاز کچھ عرصہ پہلے بند ہو گیا۔ مگر آج ہوائ سفر اتنا سستا اور آسان ہو چکا ہے کہ سال میں کروڑوں لوگ دور دور کا سفر کرتے ہیں۔ اسی طرح 1969 میں چاند پر قدم رکھنے کے بعد انسان کا خیال تھا کہ چند ہی دہائیوں میں انسان خلاؤں کا سفر کرے گا مگر آج ہمیں لگتا ہے کہ unmanned space exploration ہی پر اکتفا کرنا پڑے گا۔ روبوٹس اور آرٹیفیشل انٹیلیجنس اگرچہ کافی کامیاب رہے مگر ساتھ ہی انتہائ مشکل ثابت ہوئے۔ روبوٹس کا استعمال صنعت میں تو عام ہے مگر سائنس فکشن کے انداز میں مصنوعی ذہانت سے بھرپور جنرل پرپز روبوٹس دیکھنے میں نہیں آئے۔

ہم انفارمیشن کے زمانے میں رہتے ہیں تو بہت سی انفارمیشن آج ڈیجٹل شکل میں دستیاب ہے اور اسے کمپیوٹرز سے پراسیس کیا جا سکتا ہے۔ اس سے جہاں معلومات کو دنیا بھر میں پھیلانا آسان ہو گیا ہے اسی طرح انٹلیکچوئل پراپرٹی اور پرائیویسی بھی متاثر ہوئ ہے۔ آج بہت لوگ آسانی سے گانے اور فلمیں کاپی کر کے مفت میں بانٹ سکتے ہیں جس پر میوزک اور فلم انڈسٹری نالاں ہیں۔ مگر اس کے ساتھ ساتھ ہمارے متعلق بہت سی معلومات بھی ڈیجٹل فارمیٹ میں دستیاب ہیں۔ مثال کے طور پر ہم آجکل ای‌ٹکٹ پر جہاز میں سفر کرتے ہیں اور ہماری جہاز، ہوٹل، کار وغیرہ کی بکنگ تمام آن لائن ہی ہوتی ہے۔ کریڈ کارڈ اور بنک اکاؤنٹ کا تمام ریکارڈ بھی آن لائن ہوتا ہے۔ یہ تو پھر پرائیویٹ ڈیٹا ہے مگر ہمارے بلاگ، فورم، ٹویٹر، فیس‌بک وغیرہ بھی ہمارے متعلق بہت سی معلومات رکھتے ہیں۔ اسی طرح فون‌بک بھی آن لائن ہیں اور بہت سے کالج اور یونیورسٹی کی ڈائریکری بھی۔ ہم آن‌لائن سٹور سے خریداری کرتے ہیں تو وہ ڈیٹا بھی ہے اور اگر کسی لوکل سپرسٹور سے تو اس کے ڈسکاؤنٹ کارڈ ہیں جن سے آپ کی خریداری ٹریک کی جا سکتی ہے۔ بہت سے پبلک مقامات پر کیمرے نصب ہیں اور ہمارے سیل فون میں بھی اکثر assisted GPS موجود ہیں جن سے یہ معلوم کیا جا سکتا ہے کہ آپ اس وقت کدھر موجود ہیں۔ چہرے پہچاننے کی ٹیکنالوجی بھی اب کافی حد تک میچور ہو رہی ہے اور وہ وقت شاید دور نہیں جب آپ کہیں بھی جائیں تو خود بخود آپ کو پہچان لیا جائے۔ اس سب ڈیٹا کو کون کب اور کیسے استعمال کر سکتا ہے اس بارے میں ابھی فیصلہ مشکل ہے البتہ یہ لازم ہے کہ کچھ نسلوں بعد انسان کی پرائیویسی کا آئیڈیا آج سے کافی مختلف ہو گا۔

سال کے شروع میں ایج نے سائنسدانوں، مصنفین اور نامور لوگوں سے پوچھا کہ ان کے خیال میں ان کی زندگی میں ایسا کونسا سا سائنسی آئیڈیا سامنے آئے گا جو دنیا کو بدل ڈالے گا۔ ہر کسی نے اپنا خیال پیش کیا۔ اگر مجھ سے پوچھتے تو میرا جواب ہوتا: بائیوٹیکنالوجی۔ اس میں سٹیفن پنکر کا اپنا ذاتی جینوم sequence کرانا اور اس کے نتیجے میں آپ کی جینز کے مطابق آپ کے ڈاکٹر کا آپ کا علاج کرنا بھی شامل ہے اور جینز یعنی وارثت کے ذریعہ پھیلنے والی بیماریوں‌کا تدارک بھی۔ اس کے ساتھ ساتھ جینز کی بدولت ہم شاید یہ بھی معلوم کر سکیں کہ ہمارے اباؤاجداد کہاں سے تھے۔

کیا ہم مستقبل کی ٹیکنالوجی سے مثبت فوائد حاصل کر سکتے ہیں؟ ایک ٹیکنوفائل کی حیثیت سے میں تو یہی کہوں گا کہ بالکل بلکہ سائنس اور ٹیکنالوجی ہی ہمیں کئ مسائل سے نجات دلانے میں ممد و معاون ثابت ہو گی۔ گلوبل وارمنگ کے نتیجے میں انسان اور دنیا جس تباہی اور تبدیلی کا شکار ہو رہی ہے اور ہو گی اس کا تدارک energy conservation کے ساتھ ساتھ نئ ٹیکنالوجی کی ایجاد اور استعمال بھی ہو گا۔

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We returned from a fun vacation to Italy a couple of days ago. I’ll have an account of the vacation along with photographs soon but first some technical notes.

I checked air fares on Expedia and Orbitz but in the end booked on the Delta website since they were marginally cheaper. Also I was using frequent flier miles to get one ticket for free. The only way I found to book one award ticket (bought with frequent flier miles) and other regular fares was to first reserve the award ticket (since they are less common), then buy the regular fares on the same flights and finally book the award flight.

For hotels, I checked reviews and prices on Trip Advisor to shortlist a few and then used the hotel websites to make reservations.

For planning all the sightseeing and for making a shortlist of restaurants, I used Fodor’s Italy Gold Guide and Lonely Planet’s Italy Guide.

I took my Garmin 60CSx GPSr with me. I found that Open Street Maps had maps available in Garmin format. The ones I liked the best were OpenMTBMap since they were routable and could route for hiking or mountain biking instead of cars. That was a huge success for us in Italy. We never got lost and we used the maps to go everywhere and find restaurants etc. near our location. It made life much easier and even when we wanted to walk around in the back alleys in Venice we could do so without any fear of really getting lost since whenever we wanted to go back we could use the GPS.

The maps came with lots of POIs(Points of Interest), but I wanted some specific ones too: the hotels we were staying in, train stations for travel between Rome and Venice, restaurants, Cafes and Gelaterias that I wanted to go to specially and some important sightseeing. So I used Google Maps to locate these places and saved them to My Maps there. Google Maps’ My Maps allows you to export the list of placemarks in Google Earth (KML) format. Then I used GPS Visualizer to convert the list to GPX format and used Garmin POI Loader to transfer the locations to my GPSr.

I plan our vacations in detail and these maps and list of locations on the GPS were very useful everyday as we went about sightseeing and enjoying Italian food. In fact, while walking around, I would notice that there’s a nice gelateria nearby and we would go enjoy some gelato.

I read almost three books on the Kindle during the trip, even though I read only on planes and trains. While it was a fun experience, I found one some hitch: Flight attendants want you to turn the Kindle off during takeoff and landing.

UPDATE: One thing I forgot. I tried to reserve train tickets between Rome and Venice on the Italian Rail website but it just kept denying my credit card. Apparently, it’s a common problem for credit cards with non-European addresses. However, I didn’t really need to buy the tickets before going there. There was enough space when I made reservations three days before the train travel at the Rome Termini station.

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I had been thinking about getting a Kindle for a while. Then one day a package arrived at home somewhat unexpectedly. In it was a Kindle 2.

I have read a few books on my old Treo 650 as well as on the iPhone. So I didn’t mind reading on a screen, though of course the small screen was awkward. I have read a little bit on the Kindle now and mostly like it. I have also bought a couple of Kindle books for my upcoming vacation and might have more to say about using the Kindle after I return.

The Kindle screen is not very bright. It’s quite grey, more like a mass market paperback than a hardcover with more white paper. That also means it’s easy on the eyes (and has long battery life) but doesn’t look as neat as a hardcover edition.

The interface is somewhat intuitive, though we have been spoiled here by the iPhone which my 4 year old has mastered. I don’t particularly like the feel of the keyboard however. I don’t usually buy books or browse the web from the Kindle, so it’s not much of an issue for me.

One thing I would have liked is some sort of book organization. If it can hold 1,500 books, I should be able to organize them into folders or labels.

I love the fact that there is an iPhone application which syncs with the Kindle and I can read a book on both. However, any non-Amazon books or documents I put on the Kindle are not synced.

Michelle loved the text-to-speech system. She was very happy to listen to stories. Of course, the text-to-speech system is for listening for a short while since its monotone would bore you after a while. It’s not a real substitute for an audiobook and that’s how it’s going to be due to technological limitations.

The Kindle is lighter than a lot of books and I love the fact that I don’t have to expend effort trying to keep the book open with one hand when I am reading in bed. Bookmarks and annotations are important features I really needed as well. I need to look into the annotations feature which I have really used yet.

I bought a leather cover for the Kindle which makes it look like a book.

In addition to the three books I have bought in Kindle edition, I have also downloaded a number of books from ManyBooks.Net. I have also tried converting a couple of large PDF documents to Kindle format via Amazon’s free conversion service (it’s free only if you want to get it back via email and costs money if you want the book transferred directly to the Kindle) with varying results. In some documents, the formatting got all screwy but in others it stayed okay.

Lest I forget, thank you, Badtamiz.

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When the original iPhone came out in 2007, I really wanted one but I decided to wait for a while because I had my Treo 650 and had a cell service contract with AT&T as well.

I am glad I waited because I got the iPhone 3G last year and fell in love with it. It really is a revolutionary phone. Even Michelle loves it and found the touchscreen interface very intuitive. She loves to watch YouTube videos, take pictures (she has even figured out how to take screenshots), play games (Touch Hockey is her favorite), draw (Doodle Kids is the app she uses), and look at Google Maps.

There are a couple of things I do miss:

• Lack of copy and paste is the most annoying and I hope Apple adds it as soon as possible.
• Push notification support for applications and Gmail.

I have setup the iPhone to use my wireless network at home and also the AT&T wifi network at Starbucks and McDonald’s, etc. However, 3G data speeds are also very good.

In accessories, I bought a Jawbone 2 bluetooth headset which reduces noise quite a lot better than any headset I have seen.

Since I use the iPhone a lot, I have to charge it every night regularly. The iPhone battery cannot be changed by the consumer, so once the battery’s gone through enough cycles, I’ll have to get Apple to install a new battery.

The applications I use the most are the following:

• Toodledo for task list
• The Weather Channel for weather forecasts and conditions
• TwitterFon for Twitter
• NetNewsWire as a feed reader for blogs etc.
• Facebook
• Loopt for tracking current location
• Palringo for instant messaging
• fring for Skype and other voice chats
• Google Mobile for searches etc.
• Geocaching
• Evernote for quick photo or text notes
• Jolt for quick audio notes
• “Mint.com” for bank accounts/finances
• New York Times
• BBCReader for BBC News
• Bloomberg for financial news
• Touchterm for SSH
• Stanza for e-books
• Urbanspoon for restaurants
• OpenTable for restaurant reservations
• Trailguru for trail tracks
• WordPress for updating my wordpress-based blog
• Easy Wi-Fi for logging into AT&T Wifi hotspots
• Pandora radio for streaming music
• AirMe for uploading photos to Flickr
• SimCity

I recently switched my ZackVision email accounts from being hosted by my webhost to Gmail using Google Apps. It should not change anything for those sending me emails, but I like the Gmail interface and their spam filter is also much better than the one I was using at my webhost. One problem with the email switch was transferring the tens of thousands of emails I had in my different mailboxes. Google has an Email Uploader for the purpose but it was not transferring a significant number of my emails. So I just had to set up IMAP accounts in Mozilla Thunderbird for my old and new (gmail) accounts and move the emails folder by folder. This took some time.

In addition to email, Google Apps also provides me with my own calendar and documents. So I uploaded all my Outlook contacts to Gmail and decided to switch completely away from Outlook. Instead of syncing my contacts and calendar between Outlook and iPhone via iTunes, now I am using “Google Mobile Sync”http://www.google.com/mobile/apple/sync.html to sync over the air between my iPhone and my Google calendars and contacts at my own domain. So the only real thing I need the iTunes sync for is podcast subscriptions.

And now I am salivating over the Kindle 2.

Related Reading:

Today is Darwin Day, the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, the man who revolutionized biology. 2009 is also the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, On the Origin of Species. Thus there are events planned all through the year. Some fun reading is:

• Nature Darwin 200
• Science Magazine Origins Blog
• Discover Magazine’s Darwin Special

I have not actually read On the Origin of Species yet, but I plan to before November 24, which is its original publication date (in 1859).

Of course, everyone has heard of Darwin and his theory of natural selection. But it was only while doing some literature search for my graduate work that I actually read one of Darwin’s works. That is his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. I found it a fascinating read and my estimation of Darwin as a great scientist grew as a result.

You can read the book on Google Books or Project Gutenberg and see the images included on Wikimedia Commons.

Related Reading: