This is my second attempt at creating a  game console. This makes use of laser cut palstic parts for the enclosure, it makes use of a raspberry pi and mame.  The game play is not very good. However it feels good :).   But I am still learning and after many attempts – I will finally build an awesome game console.  Nividia Jetsons dev board is very powerful but expensive at the same time.  May be I will get one when get a deal somewhere.

I have used several tools mind mapping before ( freemind, xmind, vym and their likes), but vim is my favorite editor and wanted to do everything from vim itself. To do mind mapping in vim, my solution is to use the DrawIt!  plugin.

My brief notes on concurrent programming facilities available in android. I will update it i find something interesting, do comment if you think that I missed something.

• Threads :- Plain old java threads! and synchronization primitives , classes in java.util.concurrent , java monitor objects –  http://developer.android.com/reference/java/util/concurrent/package-summary.html
• Andorid Services – – http://developer.android.com/guide/components/services.html
• Loopers and Handlers :-  http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/Handler.html  , http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/AndroidBackgroundProcessing/article.html.  http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/Looper.html
• Async Tasks :- http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/AsyncTask.html
• IPC using Broadcast Receivers : http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/BroadcastReceiver.html
• Alarm Manager  :- http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/AlarmManager.html

I just finished reading the book the passionate programmer by Chad Fowler ( No! , he is not related to Martin Fowler!) .  Although i do not necessarily agree with all his views. Here are the few take away points for me.

• Try to understand business domain which you are working for ! – I am a typical techie who considered business meetings to be a complete waste of time, from now on i will at least make an effort to understand it better
• Do not stagnate keep learning something new everyday!
• “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” – Even if the job is boring and trivial try to do a good job instead of avoiding  or procrastinating.  I was very immature at my first job at Microsoft – this is a key thing!.   Employers do not want a super hero, but some one who can execute well and is pleasant to others.
• Take some more risks! 
  

This my answer to quora query. I thought it is good to archive it here.

I learned about this African musical instrument ( from Mali ) from udemy

GNU plot is very helpful for plotting data and quite powerful too. After some searching I found the book GNU plot in action.

I fount this website very useful for surface plots :

http://lowrank.net/gnuplot/plot3d2-e.html

This is another useful reference :

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~zov1/gnuplot/html/intro.html

This always helps : http://www.gnuplot.info/.

Hint:  I think its a good idea to use awk to combine different columns. etc

I learned to do cut out animations in Synfig. I am all set to make animations using Synfig.

I will finally make the series – The Sandman Chronicles. The idea is simple just like any Indian movie the main story remains the same – the trick is the come up with interesting variations. The world is tormented by a mega cruel villain, all the the super heros in the world put together could not save world. Finally it’s upto Sandman ( the last super hero to save the world), Sandman does something really silly and saves the world.