Neha Narula

If you don't use twitter, you won't care about this post. FYI.

I wrote a little python commandline script to tell me followers I've gained and lost. The gained part twitter already implements (you can get emailed or just visit your follower page; new followers are at the top) but it doesn't give me a way of seeing who has stopped following me, and I got curious when I saw the numbers fluctuate a lot. I have been meaning to hook this up as a cron job to email me once a day; that way one could theoretically track if certain tweets are making people unsubscribe :) I need to install some mail server thing on my machine though.

This was a tiny little twitter-related project to poke at the API when i was sick, not something i did because i'm really crazy about who is following me (i realize you probably don't believe that). If anyone knows how to adjust the code so that I don't constantly run into the 100 requests/hour limit, please let me know. Oh, and I did not pay attention to performance, robustness, or portability when writing this so don't make fun of me.

If you want to use it, download the script, make a subfolder called "gold" and run

python tw.py gen neha

to generate a gold file of who is following neha, and

python tw.py diff neha

to see followers neha has gained/lost since the last time you ran it. After the initial gen you will not need to run it again unless you want to fastforward a lot.

Wow.

People -- particularly if they're under 40 -- have news priorities other than those of the editors of The New York Times or producers of the "NBC Nightly News." A new tablet from Apple -- or last night's episode of "Gossip Girl" or the adventures of the hipster grifter -- is a bigger deal than the latest petty scandal in Albany. You think that's a damning indictment of modern society and a recipe for idiocracy? Fine. Start a nonprofit to cover all the local-government news you think a healthy society needs. But don't expect advertisers -- or commercially-minded publishers or readers, for that matter -- to share your interests.

compare the XKCD comic making fun of twitter and swine flu and the actual twitter search results page for swine flu.

ha!

I am doing this out of the goodness of my heart. And also because I enjoy complaining about it but people have stopped listening to me.

So, you're going to Germany. Great! Oh but you're worried about not having a mobile phone? No problem! SIM cards are easy to purchase and you can probably google around and figure out how to unlock your phone. Unless you have Sprint or Verizon, in which case go hide under a rock until you feel ready to join the rest of the modern world on GSM. Do not just "use" your regular US phone abroad (it will probably work), unless 1) you are very rich and 2) looking at ridiculous bills doesn't give you a splitting headache. If you're fine with that, then go right ahead.

If you hate actually talking, then clearly a phone is not enough and you also need a data plan. I recommend blau.de. Setup is a little tricky though, as all instructions and messages and the entire website are in German.

You can purchase a blau.de SIM card at places that sell ePlus once you're in Germany, which is nice. It's about 20 euros, but that comes with 20 euros of credit. The shop keeper can set it up for you, but he will need an address in Germany for the form.

Once set up, you basically just need the first PIN to activate the SIM card and be able to make calls. You can turn off the need to enter it over and over in your phone. At the time of this post, blau.de had 1 GB of data in a month for 9.90 euros, a pretty good deal. I even used it to tether to my laptop and I didn't use anywhere near the whole GB in two weeks. You order it by calling 1155, and following the menus: press 8, press 1, press 2, and then (THIS IS IMPORTANT) pressing 1 again to confirm. Do not use data until you receive TWO text messages (the first will come immediately and say that you ordered it, the second will come within 2 hours and say that it's ready).

To enable data, set up a new APN. APN internet.eplus.de, username eplus password eplus. Especially if you are using the G1 (google phone), DO NOT DO THIS UNTIL YOU GET THE SECOND TEXT MESSAGE. Otherwise your stupid phone will churn through your credit eating data while it downloads a whole new android operating system. Sigh.

Notice that I haven't told you how to reload your credit. At the time of this posting, they wouldn't take credit cards with an American address. I managed to convince them to do it once but I still had to call customer service number (which costs like 0,30 euro per minute) every time I wanted to recharge, and my friend couldn't do it at all. If you have a credit card attached to a German address, you can do all of this through the website. Run it through google translate.

Good luck and have a great time in Germany!

Smaller pictures this time in an effort to save some of my limited 1 GB of bandwidth provided by blau.de! They have no English customer service and couldn't aufladen my guthaben (recharge my credit) over the web, but that's a whole other post.

In case you didn't know, I'm in Berlin! One of my favorite cities. I lived here for 3 months in 2001, and it's been cool to come back and see how things have changed in eight years. I still wish it were warmer.

A delicious way to start the day. Schokolade Croissant and a Kaffee at Cafe Impala.

More cooking I've been up to. I had some bananas that turned brown, but I vaguely remembered that's the best for banana bread! I found an amazing recipe that involved cinnamon, chocolate chips, and candied ginger. oh yes. i am going to devour the remaining candied ginger soon.

I'm blocked.

Most of the people in my group are furiously trying to finish a paper for SOSP, and I'm off on my own thinking about web security.

It's not that I don't think this is an important problem -- I truly believe that the security model in today's browsers is a patchwork of brokenness, and could perhaps benefit from being rethought from the ground up. However every time I try to do that I end up meandering off into nothingness, or reading a blog. And it doesn't help that it seems like the problems are getting solved as I meander -- the Gazelle browser, from Microsoft, seems like a step in the right direction.

Also, I'm taking two classes this semester, Natural Language Processing and UI Design, which seem to be taking up increasing amounts of time. And of course there's my other job. It's so much easier to hack on Native Client than try to come up with a viable research project. By the way, we're having a security contest. If you're interested in security, or just interested in that sort of mechanism for validating your self-worth, go try to find some bugs!

I'm thinking of switching. To multicore, which the rest of PDOS seems to be working on, or something scalable-webapp related. I'm not sure how this research thing is supposed to work -- are you supposed to keep beating your head against a wall until something happens, or is it sometimes appropriate to give up and move on? How do you tell? Thoughts are appreciated.

I went to Pecha Kucha Boston last night, which is totally awesome. I highly recommend finding/starting one in your city. It's 20 slides X 20 seconds, so if something is boring, fear not, it will be over soon! Plus it's fun to watch the speaker get flustered cause their slides are blipping along. Yay emax for organizing!

Anyway, there was one talk that I haven't been able to get out of my head. Robin Chase from GoLoco gave a talk about sharing. What is totally awesome is that by just trying to find her name right now, I found out she was the former CEO of Zipcar! Her talk totally mentioned them and now I know she really knows what she's talking about.

Anyway, she believes that sharing is integral to sustainability. And I totally agree with her. I don't own a toolkit, so I usually borrow my roommate's hammer when I want to hang a photo. It's annoying to go find him every time I need his hammer, but it would be more annoying to buy one. What I realized is that we probably don't even need a hammer per house -- we could survive with a hammer per 4 houses or a hammer per block. How often are you using your hammer? Would it kill you to have to wait a couple of hours for one? How much stuff could you get rid of if you knew you could borrow it, no problem, from a neighbor?

Our culture has way too much stuff -- everything is all about getting your own, new things. That "new car smell". Old mattresses have bedbugs. I want a new computer so I know there's nothing wrong with it. Thrift stores are gross. Ew, eating food out of a dumpster is disgusting (sometimes, it's not!)

We don't need all this new stuff! There's so much out there to reuse. The problem is figuring out a way to share, and to distribute ownership responsibilities fairly. My car is sitting in SF right now, unused. Why should I ship it to Boston when there are already so many cars here, and I don't even need one all the time? I've been using Zipcar, but it's kind of pricey, and not good for regular, short trips. I would like to let other people use my car in SF, but dealing with the insurance is a hassle. And what happens if something breaks? How do we figure out who should pay for repairs? Similar problems pop up with me leveraging other people's cars in Boston. I get that slimey feeling asking to borrow someone's car.

The other day I was walking down 6th street in Cambridge, freezing, and I found myself wishing I could hitchhike a ride with one of the people driving down the street past me (warm and snug in their cars), to MIT. Maybe I could set up a regular arrangement -- they drop me off at MIT (3 minute drive, 18 minute cold freezing walk) and I could make them coffee. Or a bagel. I would totally bring someone a bagel every morning if they'd drive me to school (I make good coffee too).

Food for thought. I want to live in a community where we all have less stuff!

I am having a problem with blogging vs. Twitter.   I keep having all these little thoughts which I think to twitter, but then I realize I have too much to say, and I should do a blog post instead.  Which I never do unless I am seriously procrastinating (as I am now).   Also, I suspect way more people read my twitters than my blog.  

Hi, my name is Neha, and I'm an addict.

I had my 4 wisdom teeth taken out, but a 5th one has grown in. I'm getting it out on Wednesday. My friend Eugene Wu drew this awesome picture:

I'm scary.

I was just reading some of last Sunday's Business section of the NYT out loud to my sister, trying to distract her from her nausea (she has a stomache virus). Have you ever read a newspaper out loud? It's weird. Sometimes things unintentionally (i can only hope) rhyme.

Anyway, there were two articles that got me thinking. One was about Facebook and social media advertising by the big guys, like P&G. Summarizing, it's totally not working. Everyone is an idiot. P&G has some sort of fan page for Crest Whitestrips that has 18,000 fans, and they had to do a massive amount of college promotion just to get that. As I'm sure you know, 18,000 is pathetic for something that's supposed to have as wide appeal as Crest Whitestrips.

The second article was about Jay Leno and his move to the 10 PM EST/9 PM CST hour. The author was in favor because he has a lot of trouble staying up late anyway. He said something about the midnight 6 minute commercial break, and I was totally confused. People still watch things real time? And are subjected to commercials! How novel. I DVR, download, or stream almost all of what I watch.

Here's something that I'm not sure I really believe: did TV advertising ever really work? Maybe it used to work, but does it still work? I really don't think seeing an ad for some GM car while watching Heroes makes me any more likely to buy that car. Does it work for anyone? It usually just makes me cranky. The thing I miss most from commercials (since I watch everything on DVR or online) is seeing what's happening on other shows, and what new things are going to be on. That's because, duh, I'm watching TV. I probably will watch more TV in the future, and showing me some new show is a well targeted placement.

That's one of the problems I've always had with social network advertising. The targeting is so crappy that the ads are just annoying, and people are never willing to shill out their friends (the NYTimes article had 3% responding to a survey saying they might do this). Showing an ad for Tide or Crest Whitestrips is a shot in the dark. Ads on search engines are so much better -- you actually know I'm looking for the thing and probably in a buying mood.

But I finally made a connection in my head (everyone else probably already knew this) -- social networks really could be awesome for recommendations. This relates to thoughts I've had recently on the fashion/style/beauty blogs I read, but I'll get to how in a second. First, the situation: I want a new pair of boots. My sister keeps raving about her Kenneth Cole Bard Tenders (I don't know what that name means either). I am probably going to buy a pair based solely on her recommendation. How powerful is that?

I posted on Friend Feed that I bought a pair of Steve Madden boots, and someone said that they're crappy quality. I got them, and lo and behold, they sucked. The recommendations from my social community can be really valuable, and I'm more likely to take them. Most of the people on Zappos said the boots were great. Of course, almost all the reviews for shoes on Zappos are positive. Clearly people who order from Zappos are crazy.

The problem is when you introduce compensation into this lovely circle of recommendations. I'm not going to trust people if they're getting paid (ugh. the Sugar blogs), but at the same time, shouldn't they get paid? My sister loves her shoes, and tells everyone about them. She's helping me and she's really helping Kenneth Cole.

I've found that I'm even willing to take recommendations from random blogs, if I like the authors enough and feel like we have similar tastes. I read the Daily Obsession, and I keep thinking I should unsubscribe because they keep recommending things that I have no need for at the time that I read the post. But then a post will come up for something lovely that I am interested in at that time. I absolutely hate that about blogs -- they broadcast information at you when you might not be ready to get it. How much has not been useful to me because I got it at the wrong time?

Social networks should do a better job of mining and relating my favorite brands and products, and making it accessible in a highly targeted, time-independent way. Maybe I can't make money from my purchases and findings about products because of a conflict of interest, but someone should.

This post [penelope trunk] made me want to hire an attorney just so I could yell at him when I get stressed. Can you really do that to attorneys? Can I yell at my CPA? I have one of those. Of course, I avoid him and leave his emails unread in my inbox because I still haven't filed my taxes for 2007.

Back on the stage at the King of Prussia Mall, Mr. Pattinson continued to stand awkwardly but, somehow, fantastically beautifully at the same time. A local radio D.J. fed him written questions from the audience, but his answers were buried by screaming.

“Do you guys care about the questions, or do you just want to talk about nothing?” Mr. Pattinson asked.

A young woman in a shirt emblazoned with the Cullen family crest spoke for many: “We just want to look at you.”