I read with interest this nifty commentary by Steven Wittens on his extreme redesign of the concept of the bland linux terminal.

One of the Unix principles is nobly called "Least Surprise", but in practice, from having observed new Unix users, I think it often becomes "Maximum Confusion".

From:

And I can't help laughing. How true.

I would love this on my system. I think it's still in development (on not). It's SO confusing to find out what's good to install and what isn't on linux sometimes...


I also want the CLICompanion: But again, is there a Debian port? or isn't there? Who knows... See the confusion here? Basic questions like "Alright, can I install this application now?" grow into gargantuan complex flowcharts on linux. For eg. the simple question above can only be answered after ALL the following have been sorted.

• What distro are you on?
• What kernel are you on?
• What architecture are you on?
• What are the dependencies of the program you want?
• What are the versions of these dependencies specific to the program you want to install?
• Do you have the source repository of the versions of the dependencies that is best suited to the program in your sources.list?
• Do you have an updated sources.list?

Fine then, you can install the program but... I can only give you the source code because I am SO open source. Here you go, my precious tarball lovingly gift-wrapped in some cryptic archival format for you: Sourcecodeblablaobscureversion000.tar.bz

Which leads to:

• Can you compile this source code on your system?
• What are the developer tools you need to compile the code?
• What are the dependencies of the developer tools you need?
• Are these dependencies in the repositories on your sources.list?
• Do you have the requisite linux kernel headers (what the hell does that even mean?)

And finally, you compile the source into an executable binary and you are met with more challenges because some of the other dependencies can STILL be missing and you have go hunt all round the internet and repeat the above algorithm for each dependency.

God forbid, you find an easy way to do things on Linux. Because you see, the great Linus Torvalds didn't plan on the system being used and abused by novices and nobodies like you.

I took a break and read some fun studies that came out this week in Science (pdfs below). A professor at Columbia conducted some experiments about how our memories operate in the presence and absence of assured information sources online such as Google and Wikipedia.

She found, not surprisingly, that our priorities have moved not towards memorizing trivia but towards more efficient ways to retrieve this trivia from where it might be stored online. And since remembering trivia is a relatively easier task than remembering techniques and algorithms to retrieve this trivia, our IQs are actually getting sharper as technologies progress and our environments become richer with information.

As (e:paul) said to me not long ago, Google has pretty much become everyone's mother. And we are constantly thinking of ways to jog her memory and get relevant information out.

Science is an interesting magazine/journal. For people in academia, publishing in Science and Nature are the pinnacle of achievement. But somehow, a large number of studies from humanities and behavioural sciences which do get published in these journals (Science way more than Nature) seem to get away with the simplest of experiments, approaches and super-obvious hypotheses. More arduous basic and clinical science that takes a ton of effort to perform gets rejected routinely.

I often wonder if we, as basic and clinical scientists, place undue importance to getting published in these so-called lofty journals, and agonize too much about where we get published. After all, some of the finest nobel-winning impact-making science was not published in these journals but obscure journals with lowly impact factors when they first came out. (It's another matter however that these "lowly journals" have since become really prominent and elitist.)

Academia is a funny twisted world.
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Refs:
::READ PDF::
::READ PDF::

I wanted to go to the BPO concert on canalside today. But I had forgotten what Beethoven's 5th sounded like... So I just put it on and it's too much military turmoil packed into one symphony. I am not sure it fits well in my mind with a perfect sunset on a balmy summer's day.

Why can't they have chosen Beethoven's 7th instead?! It's so much more stately, beautiful, nostalgic and fitting.


Or even some of the Strauss family waltzes...


I am not going. I cannot hear mismatched music over sunset.

I need to remember these four commands

Purges configuration files.

• sudo apt-get purge PACKAGENAME

Purges dependencies

• sudo apt-get --purge autoremove

Finds any stragglers

• find / -iname '*PACKAGENAME*'

Purge configuration files for ALL the packages removed.

• aptitude purge ~c

I made my own Gmail theme.


I was just about to head out but I was super-irritated that the clouds seemed to have rolled in from some forsaken place and completely squashed my hopes of seeing a spectacular sunset.

The new Gmail theme is so washed out and sterile, I can't stand it. All the other themes are starting to look tired and the Android theme that I have had for quite a while has no saturation to speak of. Considering I stare at this Gmail interface for a good chunk of time in a day, it was high time I tweaked the damn colours.

Another variation on the theme (this one has legible formatting buttons as opposed the the earlier one that was just too black and drowned out all the buttons in the pane where you compose messages). I like the earlier one, it looks dramatic and sharp but the invisible formatting buttons are a dealbreaker.


Colour Codes for Reference:

Main Background
Background Colour: #000000
Text Colour: #9fc5e8
Link Colour: #ffffff
Background Image: Black to Transparent blur gradient on this awesome pic:
Allign: Right
Tiling: Horizontal

Frame
Background Colour: #bcc896
Text Colour: #000000
Link Colour: #444444

Box
Border Colour: #444444

Box Content
Background Colour: #000000
Text Colour: #bfde83

Button Bar
Background Colour: #bcc896
Text Colour: #000000
Link Colour: #674ea7

Messages
Background Colour: #bfde83
Text Colour: #000000
Snippet Text Colour: #444444

Selected Message
Background Colour: #d6c6ff