Of Androids and the Everlasting Fetish

It's just been an year since I bought my Moto Milestone, but it has already started looking very old and outdated in terms of hardware. The 600MHz single core processor on it pales in front of the 1GHz dual-core Tegra's and Snapdragon's that have come out. Responsiveness is the most essential feature of any cellphone, and the Milestone seemingly lacks that now, in comparison with those dual-cores. Not to mention the buggy 2.2 Froyo upgrade from Motorola that kills my home screen time and again, and adds to my frustration.

I have been contemplating buying a new blazzzing-fast, top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art android for sometime now. Samsung's Galaxy series automatically comes to mind, even though their reputation is notorious when it comes to delievering pure android experience. They spruce up the UI quite a bit I hear. The other option being Nexus-S that has launched recently, but looks overpriced when compared with a similarly juiced Galaxy. The Galaxy S-II with its super hardware, was looking very tempting and then came the news of Samsung working on its next flagship Galaxy S-III. Though the release is slated for 1st quarter next year, another news that has grabbed my attention, and put my Galaxy plans on hold, is that of Nvidia being in the process releasing a QUAD-CORE(!!) mobile processor, code-named Project Kal-El. Even my laptop doesn't have a quad-core as of now! The details about the graphics performance are impressive, and makes me longingly look forward to its release and subsequent release of an android featuring it.

Besides, now that not many handsets are being released with hard qwerty keypad, the focus having been shifted to swype instead, I think I will need to reorient myself towards swype, let go of the hard-qwerty drool, and grab the first Tegra quad-core android that comes out in the market.

Beyond Crossroads - A Month Goes By

World beyond C++ has been perplexing and kind of intimidating so far. Probably the same reason makes it quite exciting. I mean, it's not like c++ was a cakewalk or something. I had worked hard to get some good purchase on the linux workflow - builds and makefiles and scripts and editors and gdb and the gamut of technologies that make a c++ backend work.

By the way, this 'getting purchase' thing has come from John Krakaur's highly influential Everest disaster saga - 'Into Thin Air'. I was blown away after watching 'Touching The Void' and then was literally breathless reading 'Into Thin Air'. Couldnt put it down. Anyway, I better keep this newfound fascination for mountaineering, for some other time.

So coming back to c++, I never had a full grasp of how much different the world is outside c++. Python, ruby, rails, php, java, javascript, jquery, struts, ejb, soap, xml-rpc, spring, swing, ajax, django, php frameworks .... the world was oozing with tools and technologies for the web platform, and here I was sustaining some glorious yet already-implemented c++ backend for last couple of years. I was happy only learning and reverse-engineering the marvelous architecture, even though I knew it wasnt going to be implemented again.

I kept neglecting my hunch that entrepreneurial chances are more prevalent in emerging technologies, precisely due to their relevant immaturity; rather than in a time tested technology that's losing its relevance over time.

God knows how much time I am going to take to get a grip on this fish-market of web-technologies, but till then it will be very painful to feel so incompetent whenever I come across a fabulous webapp (or framework) and understand zilch about its internals.

These days I feel like some stone-age tribesman from the amazons. Just out of the wilderness and smack into a modern civilization. I know how to make a stone-spear and hunt using it; but hey, these modern civilizations eat processed food and besides have sharper weapons much more effective than my hand-made stony meanie weenie. So where do I go? All that's useful, and left with me, are some leaves wrapped around my waist ...... and some instincts.