October 2010
1 post
Mobile Usability (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox) →
Jacob Neilson says mobile usability sucks.
Also useful is the finding that we are search-focused on mobiles; despite the poor input modalities.
From the article:
Mobile users face four main usability hurdles:
Small screens. For something to be mobile, it must be easy to carry and thus relatively small. Small screens mean fewer visible options at any given time, requiring users to rely on...
July 2009
3 posts
On measuring the wrong things
One of the Techcrunch stories last night was about MixPanel, a Google Analytics for Facebook company. Mixpanel allows developers to track user behavior (what they click on, what actions they perform, when and more) more comprehensively than was previously possible.
There is nothing wrong with MixPanel. In fact, it’s a great example of a company leveling the competitive field— after...
Biking in WA
It’s supposed to be the biking capital of the country, or so I am told. And if you don’t mind hills and valleys, biking here can be fun, as I’ve realized since I bought my bike yesterday.
Like any upright CS student, the first thing I did once I bought the bike was to figure out how to hack the system. Here’s what I’ve discovered so far:
You’re a pedestrian...
On comments
You see, commenting on the Web has a serious deficiency— there’s no incentive to post good comments. Which results in three undesirable species of commentators— the Morons, the Trolls, and the Verbose.
The Morons are the folks you meet on Youtube. The Trolls are them misguided souls on Techcrunch, Digg and other websites who argue venomously, tail people and in general make the...
June 2009
2 posts
Car country
I’m beginning to think that America consists solely of freeways, with some condos thrown in for good measure. Why doesn’t anyone actually walk on the street? Maybe it’s because of these huge cars too big to be built for real people. I’m tired of firing up GPS on the phone just to figure out which way to turn at an intersection.
I also hereby pronounce drive-ins evil....
First day story
Today was the first day at my internship at Microsoft Research, Redmond. Lots of interesting things happened today, but I guess everyone has a particular first-day-at-work story. Here’s mine. As usual, it was my fault.
A thoroughly disoriented Chinmay (jetlag + US public transport being the culprits) walked into the long line of interns at Building 92. We were all queued up to get our...
February 2009
1 post
Brevity: Six developments of a thought
This is an experiment inspired by Picasso’s Bull (eleven developments of a lithograph). I’m nowhere close to the artist, but here’s an attempt.
I’ve a hunch that brevity in an idea is correlated with how important it is. Take for example the idea that 80% of success is in showing up (attributed to Woody Allen). (168 chars)
In my opinion, brevity of thought reflects how...
July 2008
5 posts
“Plug in the headphones. Plug in the second display. Plug in the Ethernet. Plug...”
– Me about my Vaio
“Most of the time, life is beautiful.”
– Abhilash Ravishankar
“My newest hobby: creating weird exceptions in Java. Best so far is...”
– Me
“An Indian guy asks an Italian for an address in Paris in Spanish. And of course,...”
– Me (it really did happen, btw)
April 2008
1 post
3 tags
Florence is beautiful.
And I’m having a whole lot of fun. Photographs in the next post. On bed using the free wifi, and too tired/lazy to get up. Hehe.
March 2008
4 posts
Life. 24X7
Me: Omg! 15 evaluative components in 15 days!
Arushi: Yea, that's assuming none of them are postponed...
Me: Hmm... I think I should only sleep on Sundays
Arushi: You can't do that... We have onlines on Sunday.
Arushi: You could sleep in June, though.
“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably...”
– Daniel Burnham
July 2007
1 post
June 2007
2 posts
May 2007
20 posts
Some useless info
Some folks wanted to have a little behind-the-scenes of this whole me-and-tumblr-thingy. So, here goes: I’m Chinmay, a plant-eating 20-odd-year old compsci undergrad out of BITS Pilani, India. I draw these doodles when I’m frustrated, or am feeling overly creative. (Either of which occurs nearly daily.) I use Macromedia Flash for the doodles. It’s kinda nice, coz it’s got...
“It is yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.”
– Arthur C Clarke Just an addendum to the graph above (via Abhishek)
“And miles to go before I sleep…
(Sleeping: Please DND)”
– Some bloke’s Gtalk status
“For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals Then something...”
– Stephen Hawking, in PINK FLOYD - KEEP TALKING
“Things could get worse. They probably will.”
– Me. Just before ES 2.
“If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”
– Kevin Rose, on seeing Digg users revolt after stories about DVD keys were take down at Digg: Digg the Blog
April 2007
2 posts
“I’m Abhishek and don’t do much.”
– The most realistic About Me ever. On Abhishek’s New Blog: A-site-a-day.
“You will remember something that you should not have forgotten.”
– The bash script/thingy called “fortune”