Abhi Yerra

[tags]sicp, programming, cs61a, berkeley[/tags]

SICP the book that is used for the introductory computer science class at Berkeley. It is both lovable and very much detestable at the same time. It is a good book that has a lot of information and I mean a lot.

However, I don’t know how well it is as an introductory book. It makes computer science seem dry with its examples. This is so because most of the problems seem to have a math orientation. I don’t have anything against math examples, but there are other things computers can do other than being a big calculator.

That is all I have to say about that book.

[tags]buddhism, talk, podcast[/tags]

Getting High on Vesak by Ajahn Brahm is one of the best talks I have heard on the practice of Buddhism. He gets to the point and says that the best way to be a Buddhist is to give love and give it all you have at anything you do. It is a great talk and I recommend anyone to it Buddhist or not.

[tags]design, website, photoshop[/tags]

I modified Mental Disorder Theme designed by Razvan Teodorescu for the design of this site. God knows I can’t create a brand new design from scratch so I guess modifying someone elses is the way to go.

Well along came the header so I went wild and created it from the Used concert I went to a year ago. The photo was polarized in Photoshop and cut so only the guitar and singer are really showing. Although it has nothing what so ever to do with the site, I still like it and for a first creation it isn’t that bad. So that is all for now.

[tags]design, website[/tags]

So I updated the design of this site. I will probably be changing a few things along the way so please bear with me while I do this. Sorry for the mess if anything is not working!

[tags]vim, editors, emacs[/tags]

I admit it I’m a text editor addict! Specifically a Vim addict, I just love this editor so much. It is just an all around good editor that doesn’t get in the way to what is important editing text! Yes, I’m picking on Emacs hell it has Tetrix on it (M-x tetris)! I love the world same tools are beautiful and Vim is by all means a (big) small tool that focuses solely on text editing.

Here are a few things I like now that I love about Vim!

• Net Edit! I love this features. I can edit over the network using nothing more then :e sftp://hostname/path/to/file. It’s such a nice feature as it saves me so much time from logging in and finding the file and editing the file, but finding some of my customizations aren’t there so getting annoyed. Emacs has this too, but not built in by default.
• Spell checking! Alright, emacs has this, but I love the little swiggly lines. If there is one thing that I like about Office it is the
  little swiggly lines that mark my spellings wrong. I am a most mediocre speller so this is great for me.
• Tabs! What doesn’t have tabs these days? Anyways, they are so nice to work with. I can have a whole bunch of split screens each with
  random code, while another is me blogging this entry.
• Python programming of Editor! Alright, so you may be complaining Emacs has Lisp! I like Lisp it’s a wonderful language, however people are more comfortable with Python nowadays then with Lisp so having a Python programmable interface is much better. I was able to write a Vim WordPress publisher in very little code and when I attempted it with Emacs Lisp it didn’t work out too well. I got it to post to the blog, but it seemed like I was doing a lot of extra steps.
• Modal Operations! I love modes because they make my brain switch back and forth between I’m writing stuff to I’m editing stuff. Instead of I’m just editing some text and may choose to write new stuff of Emacs and most modeless editors. When I am in insert mode my brain is thinking what should I write, what do I need to do right now to this code, etc. When I enter out of insert mode my brain is more along the lines of what do I need to change, what do I need to screw around with. It’s a natural switch between the different modes in the brain.

[tags]buddhism, dhammapada,[/tags]

Through many births
  I have wandered on and on,
Searching for, but never finding,
  The builder of this house
To be born again and again is suffering.

House-builder, you are seen!
  You will not build a house again!
All the rafters are broken,
  The ridgepole destroyed;
The mind, gone to the Unconstructed,
  Has reached the end of craving!

This is my favorite verse in the Dhammapada. It is said to be uttered after the Buddha attained enlightenment. It’s so beautiful and it sends so much imagery into my mind when I read it!

[tags]innovation, users, design, creating[/tags]

We can’t leave innovation up to our users is a post I agree with quite a bit! I say quite a bit because there are times when the users want innovation to happen. For example, creating vaccines for diseases.

When something new is created the user doesn’t know they needs it. For example, when I first started downloading mp3s (I was in middle school student and Napster was popular) I didn’t know I needed an mp3 player. I just thought I could burn the music onto a CD and play them on CD players wherever I went. It wasn’t until mp3 players got popular that I wanted one and really understood why I needed one since CDs were expensive and I was thinking of saving money in long term.

“The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need,” by Louis Kuhn makes complete sense. The user just wants to use things that help them and they won’t know about them or care about them until they are created!