The first thing to understand about the Indian Traffic system is that there are no rules per se. Just suggestions. Here’s a list of suggestions that may be seen on the roads:
My trip to India was via Kuala Lampur, on a Malaysian Airlines flight. The flights were not bad and the flight attendants were nice. On the other hand, the seats were quite cramped, even for economy class. I had a hard time getting to sleep, although that could be attributed to the lady who’s infant decided to sing to us all night. The in flight entertainment was on a tiny common screen, and the headphones had very poor audio quality, making it unbearable for me to watch. Long story short, the service was generally ok, but some things could have been better for the price of the flight.
Just a quick note, I’m currently in India, so most of the posts from now will be about the things I see / hear / smell and generally experience. It’ll be a temporary break from the usual technology posts until I’m back home (except maybe a few about the tech I’m carrying with me on this trip). I’m also hoping to get a lot of photography done, so expect some posts with pictures from my travels :)
I use both Facebook and Twitter extensively, and while there have been some big steps in integrating the two platforms for users, there’s room for more. One of the important features of this integration, for me, is that the status messages that go in either direction need to be modified to match the destination platform. Twitter and Facebook are fundamentally different services, and copying a message by a user from one platform to the other should be about more than just the text that was entered.
One of the tools I install every time I install a new OS is Dropbox, a multi-platform file syncing service. For those who haven’t heard of it, Dropbox basically allows you to sync a folder across multiple computers connected to the internet. Any file changed on one computer, gets updated automatically on all of them. The latest build has a feature called LAN sync that I’ve been waiting for eagerly.
So I haven’t posted in a while, and before I left off, I wanted to discuss Bing vs Google, from my perspective. I ended up using Bing for over a month rather than 2 weeks as initially planned and this is a summary of what I found.
For general searches (looking up websites, searching for names of places, etc) Bing did fine. I found what I needed and most of the time the site I was looking for was among the first few results, as the case tends to be with Google searches. For technical content however, I quite often found that what I was looking for wasn’t on the first page. Upon looking the same query on google, I’d find a much better results set, especially with niche topics, such as the Player-Stage robotics studio that I have been developing with. For such topics, Google far outshone Bing in my experience.
The one place Bing does great however, is images. Bing’s image search page uses ajax to allow you to keep scrolling down for more images, and they are loaded up as needed. This reduces the need to jump from page to page, as is the case with Google image search. Like Google searches, Bing has some filters that can be used to narrow your search down. It also has, -unlike- Google, some recommendations relevant to the type of search. For example, if you search for “Jay-Z” under images, it offers you a list of “related people” that is fairly accurate in the searches I performed. Whether this is actually useful to you or not largely depends on what you use image searches for.
I’m still going strong with my 2 weeks of Bing attempt. In the meantime however, I read a recent post on lifehacker that points to three sites for doing side-by-side comparisons of the two search engines:
I’ve decided to try out Bing. Except, not like the average person “tried” Bing, with just a few searches to compare with Google. I’m a fan of Diggnation, and on a recent episode, Alex Albrecht suggests that people should try out Bing for a while before passing judgement. I completely agree. Its not fair to say Bing isn’t as good at search based on a few single searches.
So, to rectify this injustice, I’m going to switch to using Bing exclusively for 2 weeks, and I’ll see if I’m happy with it. It seems like a fair trial of its abilities.
I recently came across an interesting article on Ramit Sethi’s blog, “I will teach you to be rich“. It covered an ebook – Recession Proof Your Career – which had some interesting pointers on how to secure a graduate job doing what you enjoy even in the current job market.
Head on to the article to read the book, its only 30 pages and I highly recommend going through it. The advice is definitely not your standard “Have a good resume” and “Send it to all the companies”. One section for example, starts with:
Throw away your resume, you wonʼt need it anymore.
Check it out, and while your at it, have a browse through the blog. There are some useful ways of saving money without giving up things you enjoy, like in my case, my daily coffee.
Landed in Singapore at 5.30am this morning. Despite how much JetStar staff hassled me in Perth, the Changi Airport staff had no problem with my Kenyan-ness. I’m getting ahead of myself … basically, in Perth, JetStar was not going to let me board my flight because they thought I needed a visa since I was Kenyan, with a Kenyan Passport, stating my nationality as Kenyan, but I was born in India! Indians need visas for Singapore, Kenyans don’t. They eventually let me fly, and hey, I didn’t need a visa. Surprise Surprise.
Actually, the Changi Airport part of the trip was awesome. One counter where my passport was quickly stamped, then pick up bags and leave. Sharp contrast to the Australian customs process -> X-ray all bags, Radioactive test all bags, get Superman to look into all bags, get 3 different dogs to sniff the bags, have a fortune teller feel the aura of the bag, and then open up the bag and manually check, making sure to overturn as much as they can in the process.
Anyway, once we were out we had to wait until 11am to get our rooms at the Hilton, so we decided to grab breakfast at the big M, then walk along Orchard road. Not much is open before 11am, so after getting my room, I dropped my bags off and ventured out again. This is upmarket area of Singapore, so its mostly big brand names, D&G, Armani, LV, YSL, etc. Ridiculously overpriced item: $300 pair of Armani briefs.
Finally, SingTel is awesome, free 512kbps wifi around most of the shops and shopping areas. Bonus points, with my laptop near the window, I can access that wifi, and that way I don’t have to pay for hotel wifi! Yes, I may be in the Hilton, but I’m still me =P
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