Chirag Mehta - Personal Web Log - 'blog - Chime Softwares - Indian Blogger live from Saint Petersburg, Florida, St. Petes, FL Chirag Mehta 2010-03-10T01:39:14-05:00 http://chir.ag/?20100228#201002281805 kitchen buffet online and got free shipping. It looks better than what we saw at Ikea and is made of solid wood instead of particle board or MDF.

Juliet spend the entire day cleaning the house and I rearranged the office / computer room. We still have a lot of stuff to move around but it's finally feeling like home. I need to get rid of my plastic cabinets and get some decent filing cabinets for all of our documents. Maybe once the house is painted, I will start looking. Tonight I have lots of homework to complete so that's it from me. 2010-02-28T18:05:00-05:00 2010-02-28T18:05:00-05:00 http://chir.ag/?20100226#201002262320 Ikea that opened in Tampa last year to buy some furniture for the house. I'm excited! 2010-02-26T23:20:00-05:00 2010-02-26T23:20:00-05:00 http://chir.ag/?20100221#201002211805 MCG & Associates. Mike's entire crew was awesome and did a fantastic job.

In addition to getting new tiles, we rearranged almost every room and gave away a lot of my old furniture. The baker's rack, kitchen table + chairs, kitty post, a small sofa, and tons of smaller things are now gone. This makes the house more spacious and now we can have a guest bed setup in the office room. Now we have to get all the rooms except the bedroom painted, the bathroom renovated, and give away a lot more stuff (old clothes, computer equipment etc.)

Last few weeks I've been so busy with school and this week is no different. I still have three more weeks to go before the semester is over. Since we're going to India in May-June, I don't think I'll be able to take summer classes. So in my free time, I think I'll work on some software projects that I have been thinking of for a while. I'll share more once I get started. 2010-02-21T18:05:00-05:00 2010-02-21T18:05:00-05:00 http://chir.ag/?20100218#201002180940 2010-02-18T09:40:00-05:00 2010-02-18T09:40:00-05:00 http://chir.ag/?20100210#201002102245 Chat Roulette and I swear I never want to visit that website ever again. Chat Roulette lets you chat using a webcam with strangers from around the world. At first glance, it looks like a great idea - harnessing the power and diversity of the Internet to see and talk to people from around the world. But in reality, we talked to at most five decent people for about five minutes total during the half-hour. The rest of the time we ended up being shocked by how insulting, racist, idiotic, and just plain rude everyone was. I have a pretty strong stomach for criticism and insults but I seriously felt violated at times because people were saying things to our face that you only see in prison movies. My faith in humanity just took a nose-dive tonight.

In slightly more civil news, I started reading In Defense of Food. I will write more about it once I've read it. Till then it's work, college, and regular home life. 2010-02-10T22:45:00-05:00 2010-02-10T22:45:00-05:00 http://chir.ag/?20100208#201002080745 2010-02-08T07:45:00-05:00 2010-02-08T07:45:00-05:00 http://chir.ag/?20100129#201001290730
I had been talking on and on for years about getting a 6-LCD setup and I'd even predetermined what I'd do with each LCD in a 3x2 layout (top1: IM/Chat, 2: Graphics Editor, 3: Putty/Shell, bottom 4: FTP/Explorer, 5: Text Editor, 6: Browsers). My techie friends laughed at me but at a resolution of about 2048x1152/LCD, I would have ample resolution for just about everything and I wouldn't have to alt-tab at all. My productivity in web-development would absolutely sky-rocket. And since could rig my own stand to hold the 6 LCDs in place instead of buying one for $600, I could get my dream-setup for about $1500. I had built my workstation in 2007 to easily handle 6 DVI ports when the time was right. Now all I needed was an excuse to splurge.

Last month, two of my Dell 19" LCDs died, leaving me with just one monitor. My wife joked that I needed new monitors because she didn't wanna be married to some one-LCD guy. She practically kicked me out of bed and told me to find my 6-LCD X-Mas gift. I spent three hours surfing Newegg, Dell Outlet etc. and finally found my dream setup. Right before I clicked 'Place Order' I yelled out "Honey if I click this button, I'm never leaving my computer room." I don't think she heard me but I clearly did and for some weird reason I didn't like it. I cleared my cart and started looking for a laptop instead.

I've always been anti-laptops because come on, how can you even compare a 3 or 6-LCD setup to a laptop with a tiny screen, tiny keyboard, and crappy batteries. However, something went off in my head at that point and I realized I didn't want my perfect 6-LCD setup even though it was right there in front of me. I have wanted 6-LCDs every single day for the past decade - ever since I started making websites. But it was when I yelled that I don't want to leave my room that I realized that I actually do want to leave my room.

Now I take my laptop with me everywhere I go and program whenever/wherever I want to. It's a very big change for me and my productivity has definitely taken a hit. However, my desire to code has risen and that is important. Who cares if I'm capable of being highly productive if I don't feel like it most of the time? I guess the take-home lesson here is that it is not the specs but the environment and experience the setup fosters. I still might buy my 6-LCDs someday, if I ever have a crazy do-or-die idea, but for now I'm just happier with a laptop. 2010-01-29T07:30:00-05:00 2010-01-29T07:30:00-05:00 http://chir.ag/?20100117#201001172245
We got to Madison Square Garden right before 8pm to see comedian Eddie Izzard. It was a sold-out show with about 15,000 people in the audience just laughing constantly for a good three hours. Definitely one of the best comedy shows I've ever been to and certainly the one with the largest crowd. After the show we had some amazing desserts and called it a night.

Today morning we had some breakfast and left for Newark airport shortly before noon. An hour before our flight was supposed to take off, an airline attendant announced that they were offering free plane tickets to anyone willing to give up their seats on the current flight and take the next flight three hours later. Juliet and I said "sure, why not" and gave up our seats on the 2:50pm flight and took the 5:45pm one. We got home at 10pm instead of 7pm but now we have two free plane tickets on Continental Airlines. I'm looking for another weekend destination now. Any suggestions? 2010-01-17T22:45:00-05:00 2010-01-17T22:45:00-05:00 http://chir.ag/?20100112#201001122355
A lot has changed in the past decade in the world of hobbyist hardware. There is a whole ecosystem now surrounding a tiny computer called Arduino that costs only $30. Arduino lets anyone write small programs that can interact with the world using sensors and motors to make things happen in rea-life. No matter how smart my code is on a regular computer, the most effect it can have on the real-world is to send an automated text-message or make a loud noise unless I buy some expensive hardware. Arduino can let me turn on/off LED lights, measure room temperature, detect infrared light, turn on/off motors, and much more. Basically, now my Lego toys can cheaply become tiny machines or robots and the best part is that I still get to write software to make it all work together.

I'm still waiting for my Arduino to arrive and already have an idea for my first, second, and third projects. The good thing is that being a beginner in this field, I get to learn a lot of new things in a very short span of time. After you have been working in a field for a decade or more, coming across new things becomes a rare event. It's not everyday that I hear about a revolutionary programming language or database system. But a tiny $30 PC that can inform me when my cats enter the kitchen? That's revolutionary! 2010-01-12T23:55:00-05:00 2010-01-12T23:55:00-05:00 http://chir.ag/?20100102#201001020100
Oh ya... Happy New Year! 2010-01-02T01:00:00-05:00 2010-01-02T01:00:00-05:00