So far, we have gone over the theoretical difficulties is learning to spell. That is - the problems with the languages themselves. Now lets take a look at the practical difficulties - the problems with me.

Not Interested

The main reason I don’t learn spelling is because I don’t want to. I don’t have the time or the inclination to learn spellings. In the time of text messages, instant messaging and LOLCATS, does it matter? When was the last time you saw a text message without any spelling errors? Exactly! Plus, I’m very lazy.

US Vs UK

Another problem I face is which spellings should I learn - the US spellings or the UK spellings. I’m from India and officially we follow the UK version of spellings. But I write for the web - and the rule of thumb for web writing is to use US English. My final decision is to use Binny English. Its a special version of English spellings in which all spellings I use are correct.

Dyslexic

That’s it! Who’s the wise guy who gave it that name? Really? That’s the name you choose for an affliction that makes people unable to spell correctly? Did a dyslexic kid beat you up when you where a kid or something? ADD - now that’s a mental affliction that I can spell. OCD - that’s simple as well. We Dyslexics need a simpler name.

Now that I got that rant out of my system, lets get back to the topic at hand - my spellings. I’m a dyslexic - and that makes my spellings extra interesting. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not complaining about being a dyslexic. As a matter of fact, I consider it to be one among my many super powers. But that’s a story for another post.

Spell Checkers

As long as I have spell checkers, I don’t have to worry about learning spellings. I could be the worst speller in the world - and no one would know. Actually, scratch that - I am the worst speller in the world. And if it weren’t for these Useless Skills series, you wouldn’t have known it. Thank you spell checker!

In my last post I ranted about the futility of trying to spell English words. I said that English is a bad language created by morons. Before any one accuses me of being a lingual bigot, let me reassure you - I don’t have any discrimination toward any particular language. I hate all languages equally. To illustrate my point, let us take the case of my native language - Malayalam. I truly despise Malayalam.

Malayalam

In its defense, English has just 26 alphabets. Its relatively simpler than say, Malayalam - the subject at hand. Malayalam, for all you non-malayalies in the audience, has 56 letters. That’s not too bad - that’s what I thought initially. But then I found out about letter-fractions. These are not complete letters - but a fraction of a letter that can be combined with other ‘full’ alphabets to make even more new alphabets. I understand if all you mono-lingual, English-speaking people are confused. I was too - when I was five years old and the teachers started teaching me this stuff. Now I understand why they taught me all that - just to make sure that I would be as bitter and hateful as they were.

So, Malayalam has full letters, letter fragments, and letters+letter fragments. Stay with me here - this is where it gets really weird. With all the permutations and combinations, Malayalam grew to be a 500+ alphabet monster. If you think that’s bad, this is the simplified new script(puthia libi). The old script is a 1000+ alphabet monstrosity that haunts the nightmare of little children(who where taught Malayalam).

The old script was removed because it was practically impossible to make typewriters to include all the letters. So we switched to the new script and lived happly ever since - or as happily as possible with a 500+ glyph language(ie. not so happily - as a matter of fact, down right angrily). Now, with the coming of computers and Unicode, this limitation of glyph in no longer there. Consequently, there is an effort to bring back the old script(or as they call it, the ‘true script’). Apparently, torturing school kids with a 500 character Malayalam was too tame for their tastes - they wanted to bring in the big guns.

As a result of this wonderful system, I cannot read or write Malayalam well even after spending 10 years trying to learn it. But I don’t care. Me and Malayalam has parted ways a long time ago - we are no longer on speaking terms. Malayalam can do what ever it wants to do - and I’ll do what I have to do. I have learned to live with English. Its not a bad language. As long as I don’t have to spell anything.

End of Part 4

I am stopping this rant here - many of you non-Malayalam would be terrified at what we are doing to our kids - and many of you malayalies would be horrified that I was assault their precious language. Don’t worry you Malayalam fanatics - my assault is aimed at many Indic languages. Hindi also has this wired letter+letter fragment method of writing. I think Tamil has it too - considering the fact that Malayalam came from Tamil(Disclamer: I do not know Tamil - so I could be wrong).

Now that the Barcamp Kerala has come and gone, I can resume my Useless Skills series. Let us start a skill I truly detest - the ability to spell correctly. I honestly see no benefit to memorize countless alphabet orderings. Even if I am the best speller in the world, the simplest spell checker can still beat me. And it would be embarrassingly easy for them. If they really have to strain - you know, smoke coming from the monitor and all, I could live with it. But no - to a spell checker, finding the correct spelling is going through a text file - one of the simplest thing a computer can do.

I will never say that I am a bad speller - I would say that I am a Creative speller. If I use the same word three times in a sentence, I usually end up using a different spelling for each instance. That’s creativity! Its a Good Thing^TM.

English

Since I mostly write in English, I reserve a special hate for that language’s spelling. But don’t underestimate me - my spelling mistakes are not restricted to just one language - I have made countless spelling errors in English, Malayalam and Hindi. My spelling error skills are multi-lingual. But I digress - back to the topic at hand - English spellings.

In English, what you write and how that is pronounced has little or no relation. In fact, they had to invent another language just to make sure words are pronounced correctly. Don’t believe me? Here is some simple proof…

Example 1: Read - It can be spoken as reed(present tense of read) - and as red(past tense). Exact same spelling - two different way of saying the word.

Example 2: Buy, Bye, by - Exact same pronunciations - so you would expect the spellings to be same too, right? Noooo! They had to invent different spellings. And it in by no means restricted to these three words. I choose them to make fun of NSync - they had an song called Bye, Bye, Bye. Or was it Buy, Buy, Buy? From the marketing point of view, the latter one makes more sense.

Weight - were was eye? S - same pronunciations - butt different spellings. The last too ore three sentences wood make it abundantly clear that this phenomenon is note restricted two bi, bie, bai. This not only make it hard for humans - it makes the job hard for the spell checkers as well. Don’t believe me? Here is a poem for your non-believers…

Eye halve a spelling checker,
It came with my pea sea,
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I'm shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it's weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.

End of Part 1

OK - just writing this has made me really mad at English - and the genius who invented it. Nice going there, *censored*. Now let me take a moment to calm down. Think happy thoughts… computers … programming … javascript … linux … ahh. OK - I’m back.

I am better - but still a bit angry. I’ll have to end the I Cannot Spell, Part 1: English here. Wait for the next part, I Cannot Spell, Part 2: The Other Languages. Did you think this was the end? No - this is just the beginning - my hate for spelling cannot be contained in just one post.

BarCamp Kerala 5

The story of fifteen people(so far), with something to share, brought together by fate(or the organisers). The story of hundred and forty people(so far) who want to learn - and what they do when they where given that oppurtunity.

Coming to a Technopark near Trivandrum on May 3^rd - book your seats today!

Credits

• Producer - Kenney Jacob
• Director - Anand, The
• Cinimatography - Ben Jacob
• Editing - Aravind Jose
• Script Writer - Binny V A
• Sound Editing Operations - Mani Karthik
• Casting - Arun Basil Lal

The Actors

Vishnu Gopal as the Mathamatician

Watch him achive his lifelong goal of finding the value of pi - by getting help from others.

Binny V A as the College hater

See Binny in his most contrivertial role yet. Watch him bad-mouth the college eductation - and his attempts to teach the people a better way to program

Prasand Pai as Himself

Join him in his attempt to create a compiler from scratch - using the net(aka .NET)

Kenney Jacob as the Starter

Learn the ways of a startup - from the master.

And more…

Muneef Hameed, Juwal Bose, Mark Cijo, Sultan Arun, Jayakrishnan Kurup, Shwetank Dixit, Sudhir Sreenivasan, Rajesh Venugopal, Aravind Jose and Cijo Abraham Mani

Reviews

“Best in the BarCamp Kerala series - can’t wait for the next one.”

Your’s Truly

“The biggest unconference in Kerala is happening this Summer! Will you be there?”

Nuju Mohan

B4rc4mp K3r414 R0x

l33t H4×0r

“There is NO d.o.u.b.t. about that. Biggest BarCamp ever - #BCK5″

Aravind Jose

“BarCamp Kerala 5 is going to rock this time”

Kenney Jacob

“Do they have free WiFi?”

Guy with a Laptop

In my last post, I said that using the ‘pen’ is stupid. Because its an obsolete device used to make squiggly lines on thin slices of dead trees. And also because there is a better technology available - called the keyboard. There is another aspect of ‘writing’ that no longer needed - the handwriting - or specifically, a good handwriting.

Beautiful Squiggles

Just to be clear, writing is the method of making squiggly lines using pens. The lines should not only be squiggly - but also be squiggly in a very specific ways. Many teachers insist that your squiggly lines must be good looking. They call it having a ‘good handwriting’. I have tried to explain that ‘looking good’ is very subjective and will differ from person to person - but they will have none of it.

Due to this friction between the teachers and myself, I had, what they would emphatically claim to be a bad handwriting. Even un-biased third-party judges called it a ‘horrible, un-understandable chaos’. But it was not all bad - as a matter of fact, my handwriting won an award. My handwriting got the 2^nd best encryption award from the Indian navy. I thought they were being unfair - I obviously deserved the first price. But they proved that their ruling was correct. My handwriting could be decrypted by only just one person - the original author - namely, myself. The handwriting which won the best encryption prize could not be read by anymore.

The Future of the Pen - or Lack Thereof

Nowadays, good handwriting is meaningless - all that matters is your choice of font. The pressure with which you hit a key, the angle of the pressure, the hand posture of typing - they all mean nothing. As long as the character appears on the screen, you have the same handwriting as the best writer on earth. Its not how you write that matters - its what you write. Now, if only someone could make the teachers understand this simple fact.

Even though the pen is obsolete, it still has its uses. For me, that is signing checks. And other documents. And empty pieces of paper to make sure my sign looks cool. But mostly checks.

I have tried to convice banks that physical squiggly-line method of signing is unsafe. That a much better method of doing it is signing it using private keys with 4096 bit, munition grade keys generated using the DSA/Elgamal algorithm. But as of yet, I have no progress in that front. But I will keep up the fight. One day, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day - I will be able to stand up and say, “the keyboard is mightier than the sword”.

When we were kids our parents, our elders and teachers lie to us about a lot of things. When we grow up the situation becomes better - only the government and the media lie to us. The lies told to us by our parents/elders/teachers are very funny - now that we have grown up and know that they where fibs. Unfortunately, not everyone finds it funny - many people become bitter and revengeful when they find their PETs(Parents/Elders/Teachers) where lying to them. Afterward they take their revenge on their own kids - by repeating the lies that where taught to them. One of my favorite lies in this category is about schooling. Somehow they managed to convince me(at least the 8 year old version of myself) that learning to write was important. You might find this hard to believe this - but there was a time when I believed that - but not anymore.

The Pen

Just to be clear, by writing I mean the ‘making of squiggly lines on paper‘. This is usually done using an instrument called a pen. I know, this is ancient history in these days when writing is all done by pressing small buttons on things like a computer keyboard or a mobile keypad or a PDA input device. The pen is not used a lot these days - it is one of those old, obsolete devices - like triangle wheels(also known as wheel 0.2) and square wheels(wheel 0.3).

A decent amount of people visit this blog - so it is statistically possible that a few members of a particularly sad portion of society sees this post. I am talking about people who know what a pen is and, God forbid, use it in a daily or a semi-daily basis. If you fall into that section, well, I have some bad news for you. I do not want to tell you this, but, your parents/teachers belong to the bitter, hateful, out-for-vengeance category. And they are taking out their frustration on you. Sorry.

Back to the regular people - so, in short, pen = very old device. My PETs actually had me convinced that my future, my career and my worth as a human being depends on how well I can use it. Funny, right?

Pen as a Combat Weapon

Many of you have heard about the adage ‘Pen is mightier than the sword’. Apparently, in the old days, pen were often used as a melee weapon. I must admit, I am not sure how they can compete against much bigger and sharper objects - like swords. If it’s a fountain pen, you can squirt ink into the eye of your opponent, making pen a ’slightly-long-range’ weapon. But I cannot be sure - I am not much of a pen warrior.

People who know me(and by know me, I mean know me in real life. Not know me as just another guy among the millions of semi-physcotic people in the blogsphere) know that my vision has some problems - or to be more specific, I wear glasses. Glasses has been a part of my personality for as long as I can remember - it gives off a studious/bookworm/computer geek vibe. Its mostly correct(2 out of 3 at least - I have never been considered studious by anyone. As a matter of fact, I am the most anti-school, anti-college guy I know. But that’s a post for another time.)

Anyway, why bring up the subject of glasses? Because I lost them. No, I didn’t misplace them - I don’t have to wear them anymore. I know what you are thinking - you think I got contacts, don’t you? You are wrong - no contacts for me. Lasik surgery? Wrong again. My body auto corrected my eyesight - my eyes healed themselves. If you want to put that in another way, I have Wolverine like healing powers.

If you have not seen X-Men, you probably will not understand the last sentence. Let me rephrase that for all the Heroes fans out there - I have cheerleader like powers. No - wait. That did not come out right. I have Wolverine like powers - nothing else - if you have not seen X-Men yet, well, see it.

Admittedly, it took my eyes around 14 years to heal itself - so my mutant abilities are a little different from Wolverine. He would have done the self-correcting in half a second - while I would take a little longer(14 years). So my abilities are slightly less powerful than that of Wolverine - but only slightly.

Anyway, if any of my readers are of the ‘pics or it didn’t happen‘ persuasion, I have photographic evidence. Here are the before/after pictures…

Not everyone agrees with my I-have-Wolverine-like-mutant-healing-power theory. My auntie who is a opticologist opticologer ophtalmologist optition opti eye-doctor says that it is normal. She says that if any one has Hyperopia or positive power glasses(like I did) as a child(as I was), they tend to fix themselves as the person got older. But that’s nowhere near as cool as the Wolverine theory. So, I am sticking with my ‘I am a mutant’ theory. Doctors - what do they know?

What is RSS? RSS is a political party - no, wait. I’m not thinking about that RSS. I am talking about the good RSS here - that is Really Simple Syndication. Or Rich Site Summary. Or RDF Site Summary. Yes, that one acronym have four(that I am aware of. I am sure that there is many more) different full forms. They don’t call it ‘Really Simple’ for nothing.

The Party(not the happy kind)

I always liked RSS - we have been good friends as kids. Yes, RSS is the name of an Indian Political Party(IPP) - but I cannot hold that against RSS. Its not its fault that some politicians took its name as well. For my readers who are not Indians(Really? I got international readers? I thought it was just me and my mother), RSS(Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) is a famous party in Indian. You must have at least heard of one of its members - Nathuram Godse. Yes, he is the guy who shot Mahatma Gandhi. And he was a member of RSS. To be absolutely fair, he left RSS before he shot Gandhi. So, in summary, RSS is a famous Indian Political Party. And it is not the RSS we are talking about.

Anyway, let me reiterate - RSS is not RSS. I mean, RSS the web technology is not RSS the Indian Political Party. I just wanted to make sure you got the message - I don’t want you to make the same mistake I made. The other day, I saw a parade with people holding RSS flags. And since I preferred RSS over the Atom format, I tried to join in. Big mistake. I really don’t want to talk about what happened next.

Why this Post?

I’m trying to increase my subscriber count. Since this is a non-technical blog, most of you readers don’t know what a feed is. No, it is not something that you eat. What I am trying to say is you don’t know what RSS is. No, not the political party. What about Atom? No, I am not talking about a very small particle. Why can’t the people choose unique name for these? Like ‘mugabo’. Or ‘franious’. Its not that hard - as a matter of fact, its down right easy. I can do it all day long. See - ‘magoti’, ‘neoor’, ‘mella’, ‘loral’ and so on. But when they choose names, it had to be some word that’s already in existence. Why? To make me work harder at explaining what it is. Its a conspiracy, I tell you.

But I digress - back to the point at hand - RSS. RSS is a way to simplify collection of information on the web. But I am not going to explain it more - the guys at Common Craft can do a much better job than I can ever hope to do on my own…

In conclusion, subscribe to my feed…

http://feeds.feedburner.com/BinnyvaBlog

Or if you still don’t know what RSS is, you can subscribe using your email address…

I’ll be checking my RSS stats tomorrow. I expect to see a spike in the numbers - from 2(me and my mother) to 3(me, mother and you).

I rarely do anything interesting due to my physical and mental disabilities. So what I do is wait for something interesting to happen. Along comes CERN/LHC with the possibility of the end of world. That might be interesting.

If you haven’t heard anything about this until now, shame on you. Basically a lot of scientists have been building a huge circular tunnel in Europe for 20 years so that they can smash atoms together. And along with the smash comes a small(very, very small) chance of creating a black hole and bringing about the end of the world. I would give it a 7 in my 1 to 10 Interesting scale. 9 if it manages to end the world. Of course, that’s not what the scientists are trying to do - they are searching for the Higgs particle - also called the God Particle(apparently Higgs=God). They want to see what all new particles comes out of the collusion. Yea, science!

Collisions like this happens in our Sun thousands of times every second - but does any of them do something interesting(like make a (sustainable) black hole)? Noooo. I was hoping our scientist can increase the propability of that happening by creating one of those collisions ourself.

When I am really bored, I go to barcamps, blog camps, create web apps etc. - but that’s no where near as interesting as a possible end of the world. So you can understand my expectations for this event.

Don’t get me wrong - its not like I have anything against this world. As a matter of fact, I like this planet(most of the time). I enjoy living in it(most of the time). Its just that now a days, its deadly dull. As Tyler Durden said “we are the middle child of history“.

Anyway, as you might have heard, all my expectations has been in vain - there were no collisions. Of all the things that ended the experiment, it had to be faulty wiring. If it had been a black hole, or visitors from the future, or aliens, or anything interesting, I would have been happy. But nooo. It had to be faulty wiring. Now I have to wait until 2009 to see anything this interesting - thats how long it takes to reboot LHC.

Just for the record, I am not afraid of a black hole. We have a similar(ly named) phenomena in my home town - its called the black death.

Some LHC Humor from the Net

• LHC Web Cam Live Feed
• What Could Go Wrong?
• Paris Hilton Starts Large Hadron Collider Today
• Evolutionary Acceleration Research Institute Ready to Start “Squirrel Smasher”
• Large Hadron Rap
• The LHC Yields Unexpected Results

More on LHC

• Brian Cox: An inside tour of the world’s biggest supercollider
• News on LHC start-up
• Large Hadron Collider ( LHC )
• Higgs Boson

As with any other guy with a finger on the shutter button of a camera, I too get delusions about my artistic talent. Put a camera in my hand, and suddenly I think I am the best photographer on the planet. But the fact remains that my artistic skills are well hidden within the recesses of my mind. Very well hidden. If you need any proof, I designed this site. One anyone sees that site, they will understand the truth about my artistic capabilities - that I have none. By the way if you are a graphic designer, don’t visit that link - they have an adverse reaction to my designs. I have seen one designer drive nails into his eyes to get that image out of his head. So before you decide to visit that site, remember - once you see something, there is no way to unsee it.

The only person to say something nice about my design was, not surprisingly, my mother. When she saw the site in question, she said something to the effect of “Ooh, green. I like green.”. Diplomatic, my mother is.

Back to the point at hand - me and a camera. Its a Canon PowerShot A460 - my partner in crime. Its a good camera for its price range. But then again, what do I know - I have only had experience with this camera.

Like many other talentless hacks with cameras, I also want to inflict my “beautiful” photos on the unsuspecting public. And flickr provides the perfect opportunity for this. Lo and behold my flickr page. Its has only a few images right now - but there will be more.

I would encourage leaving comments. I have heard a lot of comments about my works in real life - I am waiting for a few comments from the virtual side. Mainly because few of the real life comments were positive. “Atrocities against art” - one of my viewers called it. But then again, what does those uncultured ruffians know about photography?

Cochin

Recently, I tried to upload an image to flickr - but flickr managed to kill it totally. So I thought that I will upload it to this site…

Click on the thumbnail(it shows only a small part of the image) to see the whole image - but be warned - its a 2 MB image - it will take some time to be downloaded. But its worth the wait - especially if you live in Cochin.

This is an example of how two wrongs make a right. My photography skills are in the negative - as is my skills with a graphic editing software. But put both together, like I did, and you get something positive. So, -10x-10 = +100. I love maths - especially now that I don’t have to study it anymore.

For those who are curious, the image was created by clicking 10 photos and manually stitching it together using GIMP.

Fine print: About the copyright for this image, its in Attributions-Share Alike Creative Commens license. So, if you want it, feel free to take the image, modify it, use it on your site, sell it, etc. But please, don’t hot link - its a 2 MB file, and I don’t want my servers stressed out because of it.

Blogcamp

So, why suddenly, the intrest in Cochin landscape? I was always interested in Cochin - I just did not have a digital camera earlier. I have been a citizen of Cochin all my life. Citizen of Cochin - is there a better word for that? Cochiner? Kochies? No - not good enough. Yes - I got it - Kochen^*. Citizens of Cochin(plural) will be Kochens. Its got a good ring to it.

Anyway, I have a renewed love for Cochin and all the Kochens in it now - I have to leave it for a day to attend Blogcamp Kerala. I am homesick already. When I reach the boat, I will be too busy being seasick to be homesick.

So, in short, I will be at Blogcamp Kerala - if any among you are attending as well, be sure to say Hi. I like to meet the people I torment.

By the way, the blogcamp is in a House boat. I like the idea. I think its to make sure that the audience don’t leave. I hear they will release piranhas into the water once they start. Piranhas and Crocodiles - crocodiles add a native touch to the arrangement. Thoughtful.

* Note: For the non malayalies in the audience, sorry about this. Its a Bi-Lingual Pun that cannot be translated easily. Only malayalies with a firm understanding of the native slang will get the joke.