Quotes: To Kill a Mockingbird

I finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird sometime back.  One of the good novels I have read.  (Many thanks to the friend who gifted me the book :)  As with many other books, I collected quotations as I read.  Here is the collection:

• Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.  One does not love breathing.
• The things that happen to people we never really know.
• When stalking one's prey, it is best to take one's time.
• People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.
• It's not necessary to tell all you know.
• You're not gonna change [anyone] by talkin' right.
• One must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do anything about them.
• A mob's always made up of people, no matter what.  Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man.
• Maybe we need a police force of children.

GPRS/EDGE configuration for Android G1

I just figured out today how to configure Android G1 (aka HTC Dream) phone for using Vodafone India's (formerly Hutch) Mobile Connect GPRS service.  All we need to do is to create an APN with APN set to "www".  For Idea phones the APN is "internet".

Detailed steps for configuration:

1. From home screen select Menu > Settings
2. Select Wireless controls > Mobile networks > Access Point Names
3. Select Menu > New APN
4. Type any name you like for "Name" field.  I typed Vodafone Mobile Connect.
5. Enter www for "APN" field.  (You will enter internet if you have an Idea connection.)
6. Leave everything else to default values.
7. Select Menu > Save
8. Select this APN as the default one by touching the red green circle next to its name.  If there is only one APN, that would be selected by default.

Base 10

You might remember this scene in Matrix and the dialogue "There is no spoon".  It's not very obvious for us to realise that there is no spoon, when the spoon is just right there which we can see and feel.

Like the kid in the movie, a comic strip on Cowbirds in Love puts forward the idea "every base is base 10".  When I think about it something is clear: there is no base other than base 10, and at the same time there is no such thing distinctly known as base 10.  All this while I was thinking we were using base 10.  Oh well, math and philosophy never cease to surprise us!

Two mobile phone tips

Note Taking
Mobile phones are handy for scribbling down notes on the go.  But the trouble is when you want those notes on your computer so that you can merge the notes to an existing document or continue editing the notes with a bigger screen and keyboard.

I use AK Notepad on my Android G1 phone for taking notes.  Whenever I need a note from my phone on my computer, I choose the option to send the note by email.  That opens Gmail's mail compose interface with the note's contents.  I save it as a draft and force an email sync (by choosing Menu > Refresh).  Now, Gmail in my computer browser has the note as a draft.  I can now copy the note text and discard the draft.

Opening Long URLs

Let's say you are viewing a web page that has a long URL on Firefox on your computer, and you want to open the same page on your mobile phone.  Mobile Barcoder Firefox extension creates a 2D barcode (known as QR code) for the current URL.  You can use an application like Google's ZXing to scan the barcode from the computer screen and open the URL on your phone's browser.

Excerpts from The Idiot

[Lebedyev to Myshkin]
"I am naked and a beggar and an atom in the vortex of humanity.  No one respects Lebedyev; he is fair game for everyone's wit, and they are all ready to give him a kick.  But in interpreting revelation I am equal to the foremost in the land, for I am clever at it."
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Myshkin got up.

"Stay with me a little," said Parfyon softly, sitting still in his place with his head resting on his right hand.  "It's a long time since I've seen you."

Myshkin sat down.  Both were silent again.

"When you are not before me I feel anger against you at once, [Myshkin].  Every minute of these three months that I haven't seen you I have been angry with you, on my word, I have.  I felt I could have poisoned you!  I tell you now.  You haven't been sitting a quarter of an hour with me, and all my anger is passing away and you are dear to me as you used to be.  Stay with me a little..."
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Taken from The Idiot.