UI/UX analysis of Indian homes

I've never been much of a traveller, so this is the second time I'm staying in one. And I'm impressed how some of the minor UX niggles I've always felt at home are handled. Of course, homes vary, and ours is a bit old, at about 15 years, so this may not apply to everybody.

1. Bedding - A bedsheet on a mattress is the bedding norm in most Indian homes. But the issue is that the bedsheet gets messed up as people sit on it.  Here, I find the bedsheet, the duvet, and the quilt neatly tucked beneath the mattress - although I'm not in favor of such soft and comfy beds - and things don't get messed up.
2. Bed - My bed itself is a mess. Indians like to use their beds as storage units, so everything from the back to the bottom is designed to hold plenty of clothes/pillows/razais. Unfortunately, this occasionally comes at the price of the sleeper's comfort.
1. My bed has a wooden - for the lack of a better word - footer, that's higher than the mattress. I find my feet routinely hitting it, which is highly uncomfortable. Any kind of footer is a strict no-no. Better to let 2 inches of feet hanging over.
2. Again, for the purposes of maximizing storage, the backrest of beds forms a shelf of some sort, affecting a person who's lying upright. This shelf needs to be done away with, as it keeps 'pinching' you on your neck or back, depending on the angle at which you're lying.
3. The backrest also has handles that open storage areas at the back of the bed. These handles also keep hitting you at the back and affect your comfort. These should be flushed with the surface, or the mechanism used to open beds should be different.
4. Nightstands with drawers are a must. THEY'RE SO HANDY.
5. Light switches should be on both sides of the bed, at convenient locations.
6. Reading lights - again, not sure of their utility.
3. Room
1. Lighting should/can be diffused. This provides for a better ambiance, and does not cause glares in your laptop screen.
2. Lighting can also be 'global' per room. Like multiple lights and levels can be defined - dim, medium, high, and sets of lights are automatically turned on depending on the level.
3. A work table at a convenient distance from bed is cool. Ergonomics of a work table are a whole different chapter.
4. Shades - they're just so cool! You feel the sunlight is a bit too much, and bam, the sun is in dim mode.
4. Bathroom
1. Bigger mirror!! It's an absolute joy to have a big mirror
2. Lights should be mounted in front of a mirror. This allows for an extraordinary level of detail since light hits your face directly.
3. A handheld shower to clean your ass is a bliss, and also probably saves water. No jets though, I believe they cause fissures and hemorrhoids and all (read somewhere, don't remember). No tissue paper also. In fact, do away with western toilets. Indian toilets with showers are the best. (Who said revolutionary UX is conventional?)
4. Taps that need to be turned 20 times for water to flow are so 19th century. Slight nudges should turn them on and off.
5. Showers should be dual - can be both hand-held or mounted above your head.
6. Soap and shampoo holder should be located at convenient distance from the bather.
7. The sink should have a decent shelf for all your toiletries. 
8. Sinks with pluggable drains - not sure if they're very useful.
9. Shower panels - again cool, not sure if they have a UX aspect. (Other than filling the whole bathroom with water).

I probably sound like a Justin Beiber fan girl, and most of the things I've mentioned are standard in most parts of the developed world. But it's cool to be living in a place that has been designed more thoughtfully.

Lenskart Lies

I just purchased a pair of glasses from Lenskart. On first glance, they have loads of frames, attractive discounts and a generous returns policy. They also ship pretty fast.

So far so good. But something I came across recently, left a bad taste in my mouth. They have introduced a new brand of 'lenses', called Klar. The problem is, they totally mislead the customers about the origins of this brand.

Here's a description of one of their so-called Klar HD Unbreakable lenses.

The problems?

1. KLAR is owned by Valyoo, the parent company of Lenskart. A quick WHOIS lookup confirms that.

Yes, they mention that in an obscure link here - http://www.lenskart.com/know_more_klar, but it's not very clear, and it's not a distinct brand per se. Which means, if something goes wrong with the lenses, you're again at the mercy of Lenskart for replacement.

2. They're not available anywhere else, much less Europe (note the point in the description above - Most recommended lens in European countries).

3. No ophthalmologist by the name of Dr. Roger Dahl comes up when you do a quick Google search.

4. That image of a doctor is picked up from a stock photos gallery - here

http://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/ophthalmic.html

5. The claimed "Market price" thing is probably bogus as well, since they are not available anywhere else (if you google for other brand-name lenses, you get price lists of some popular opticians who carry those, but nothing like that in case of Klar).

It's not that they are bad or sub-standard lenses - (I don't know, I just got a pair yesterday, don't have any good/bad experience to speak of) - but how do I trust them when they say these are made of MR8 with UV coating, among other claims given that they're lying about the very brand itself?

Not good, Lenskart. Not good.

Some awesome blog posts on system internals

These posts on system internals seem pretty interesting.

http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/motherboard-chipsets-memory-map

http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/how-computers-boot-up

http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/kernel-boot-process

Personal Music Library

Since my music library and knowledge kindda sucks, I've decided to give some of the classics a try at the rate of one new song everyday. Feel free to post suggestions in comments.

23/07/2013
Pull Me Under - Dream Theater (cover) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h2h4zIhwuM

24/07/2013
Soothsayer - Buckethead - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWgOC4xCVPI

A 10,000 line OS!!

Hey peepulz!

I recently came across a 10,000 line OS, written for educational purposes. It's called xv6, and it's pretty basic - just a shell with very limited ability to create files, but it's a fully self-contained OS that boots on it's own. It's used by MIT folks (and many other universities) for their advanced Operating Systems course (6.828, video lectures here).

It also comes with a free textbook that details its internals. You need to have qemu installed for running xv6 in a VM.

Get source code here:

git clone git://pdos.csail.mit.edu/xv6/xv6.git 

Instructions on booting

http://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs422/2013/lec/l2-hw

Manual:

http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/xv6/book-rev7.pdf

More info:

http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/xv6.html

50 Things [Reblogged]

Reblogged - is that a term? Anyhoo, came across a lovely blog post and thought I'd share it with you guys (also serves as a personal reference in this age of broken links, you wouldn't believe the amount of browser tabs and bookmarks I've lost track of).

Original source - http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/50_things

---

Dear Class of 2010,
This will be my last entry written specifically for you; beginning with the launch of our new site in early September, I'll begin focusing on the future class of 2011. I hope that you guys won't be strangers; stay in touch either in person (come visit us!) or online (please drop by the blogs from time to time and say hi).
As you begin your college experience, and I prepare for my 10-year college reunion, I thought I'd leave you with the things that, in retrospect, I think are important as you navigate the next four years. I hope that some of them are helpful.
Here goes...

1. Your friends will change a lot over the next four years. Let them.
2. Call someone you love back home a few times a week, even if just for a few minutes.
3. In college more than ever before, songs will attach themselves to memories. Every month or two, make a mix cd, mp3 folder, whatever - just make sure you keep copies of these songs. Ten years out, they'll be as effective as a journal in taking you back to your favorite moments.
4. Take naps in the middle of the afternoon with reckless abandon.
5. Adjust your schedule around when you are most productive and creative. If you're nocturnal and do your best work late at night, embrace that. It may be the only time in your life when you can.
6. If you write your best papers the night before they are due, don't let people tell you that you "should be more organized" or that you "should plan better." Different things work for different people. Personally, I worked best under pressure - so I always procrastinated... and always kicked ass (which annoyed my friends to no end). ;-) Use the freedom that comes with not having grades first semester to experiment and see what works best for you.
7. At least a few times in your college career, do something fun and irresponsible when you should be studying. The night before my freshman year psych final, my roommate somehow scored front row seats to the Indigo Girls at a venue 2 hours away. I didn't do so well on the final, but I haven't thought about psych since 1993. I've thought about the experience of going to that show (with the guy who is now my son's godfather) at least once a month ever since.
8. Become friends with your favorite professors. Recognize that they can learn from you too - in fact, that's part of the reason they chose to be professors.
9. Carve out an hour every single day to be alone. (Sleeping doesn't count.)
10. Go on dates. Don't feel like every date has to turn into a relationship.
11. Don't date someone your roommate has been in a relationship with.
12. When your friends' parents visit, include them. You'll get free food, etc., and you'll help them to feel like they're cool, hangin' with the hip college kids.
13. In the first month of college, send a hand-written letter to someone who made college possible for you and describe your adventures thus far. It will mean a lot to him/her now, and it will mean a lot to you in ten years when he/she shows it to you.
14. Embrace the differences between you and your classmates. Always be asking yourself, "what can I learn from this person?" More of your education will come from this than from any classroom.
15. All-nighters are entirely overrated.
16. For those of you who have come to college in a long-distance relationship with someone from high school: despite what many will tell you, it can work. The key is to not let your relationship interfere with your college experience. If you don't want to date anyone else, that's totally fine! What's not fine, however, is missing out on a lot of defining experiences because you're on the phone with your boyfriend/girlfriend for three hours every day.
17. Working things out between friends is best done in person, not over email. (IM does not count as "in person.") Often someone's facial expressions will tell you more than his/her words.
18. Take risks.
19. Don't be afraid of (or excited by) the co-ed bathrooms. The thrill is over in about 2 seconds.
20. Wednesday is the middle of the week; therefore on wednesday night the week is more than half over. You should celebrate accordingly. (It makes thursday and friday a lot more fun.)
21. Welcome failure into your lives. It's how we grow. What matters is not that you failed, but that you recovered.
22. Take some classes that have nothing to do with your major(s), purely for the fun of it.
23. It's important to think about the future, but it's more important to be present in the now. You won't get the most out of college if you think of it as a stepping stone.
24. When you're living on a college campus with 400 things going on every second of every day, watching TV is pretty much a waste of your time and a waste of your parents' money. If you're going to watch, watch with friends so at least you can call it a "valuable social experience."
25. Don't be afraid to fall in love. When it happens, don't take it for granted. Celebrate it, but don't let it define your college experience.
26. Much of the time you once had for pleasure reading is going to disappear. Keep a list of the books you would have read had you had the time, so that you can start reading them when you graduate.
27. Things that seem like the end of the world really do become funny with a little time and distance. Knowing this, forget the embarassment and skip to the good part.
28. Every once in awhile, there will come an especially powerful moment when you can actually feel that an experience has changed who you are. Embrace these, even if they are painful.
29. No matter what your political or religious beliefs, be open-minded. You're going to be challenged over the next four years in ways you can't imagine, across all fronts. You can't learn if you're closed off.
30. If you need to get a job, find something that you actually enjoy. Just because it's work doesn't mean it has to suck.
31. Don't always lead. It's good to follow sometimes.
32. Take a lot of pictures. One of my major regrets in life is that I didn't take more pictures in college. My excuse was the cost of film and processing. Digital cameras are cheap and you have plenty of hard drive space, so you have no excuse.
33. Your health and safety are more important than anything.
34. Ask for help. Often.
35. Half of you will be in the bottom half of your class at any given moment. Way more than half of you will be in the bottom half of your class at some point in the next four years. Get used to it.
36. In ten years very few of you will look as good as you do right now, so secretly revel in how hot you are before it's too late.
37. In the long run, where you go to college doesn't matter as much as what you do with the opportunities you're given there. The MIT name on your resume won't mean much if that's the only thing on your resume. As a student here, you will have access to a variety of unique opportunities that no one else will ever have - don't waste them.
38. On the flip side, don't try to do everything. Balance = well-being.
39. Make perspective a priority. If you're too close to something to have good perspective, rely on your friends to help you.
40. Eat badly sometimes. It's the last time in your life when you can do this without feeling guilty about it.
41. Make a complete ass of yourself at least once, preferably more. It builds character.
42. Wash your sheets more than once a year. Trust me on this one.
43. If you are in a relationship and none of your friends want to hang out with you and your significant other, pay attention. They usually know better than you do.
44. Don't be afraid of the weird pizza topping combinations that your new friend from across the country loves. Some of the truly awful ones actually taste pretty good. Expand your horizons.
45. Explore the campus thoroughly. Don't get caught.
46. Life is too short to stick with a course of study that you're no longer excited about. Switch, even if it complicates things.
47. Tattoos are permanent. Be very certain.
48. Don't make fun of prefrosh. That was you like 2 hours ago.
49. Enjoy every second of the next four years. It is impossible to describe how quickly they pass.
50. This is the only time in your lives when your only real responsibility is to learn. Try to remember how lucky you are every day.

Be yourself. Create. Inspire, and be inspired. Grow. Laugh. Learn. Love.
Welcome to some of the best years of your lives.
-B

Reference for some nifty Linux tricks

CLI is fun, but the commands can be a bit of a pain to remember. Here's some stuff I'm writing for my own reference, but it might be useful to you too.

1. Create a disk image

dd if=/dev/sda of=<fileName>

Web references also specify block size etc, but I didn't need them, apparently.

2. Mount that disk image

mount -o loop,offset=$START*512 -t [auto|FSType] /path/to/image /mount/point

loop - used to mount files as block devices or something

$START - the start value of that partition in fdisk -l or fdisk /path/to/image

3. Turn screen off (as in power save mode)

xset dpms force off

xset dpms force off; xscreensaver-command --lock #[Locks screen also] 

4. Find the process using a file

fuser /dev/sda3

fuser /path/to/file

5. Spindown your HDD (eject from nautilus doesn't work)

Obtain the sdX->sgY mapping

sg_map

sdparm -C stop /dev/sgY

6. Install Ubuntu on newer UEFI systems along with Windows 8.

Ok, so Wubi won't work on the newer UEFI-enabled systems. So don't even bother. Either use Ubuntu as a Virtual Machine (tsk tsk...) or follow this guide.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/221835/installing-ubuntu-on-a-pre-installed-windows-8-64-bit-system-uefi-supported