ramg

Joined 16 years ago

Karma
37
Submissions
25
Member since
Dec 19
I'm Ram Iyer.

I've worked in tech for a number of years and took a break to do something different. I wrote a novel:

https://www.amazon.com/Retribution-Ram-Iyer-ebook/dp/B09VP2L2GR/

and am working on a second novel. If you do read any of my book(s) feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or want to provide feedback. Heck, if you want to embark on your own writing, I'm happy to share what I've learned.

[email protected]

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Recent submissions

Comment · 3 years ago
Does the Monument device have the option to share albums/folders across the Internet? Do I need to open a hole in my firewall for this?

Edit: I've reached out to the Monument team as well.

Comment · 3 years ago
Did I read that right? You have no other woodworking tools?

edit: and if I did read it right, share some of your woodworking projects!

Comment · 3 years ago
Your rock climbing post was not fun to read and scared the crap out of me :-( I'm sorry that it happened to you. I enjoy your writing style!
Comment · 3 years ago
> I don't want to help those people. I want them gone.

I'm sorry you have this attitude towards people. I wish you the best.

Comment · 3 years ago
This is not helpful.

Why not suggest a more appropriate workflow without the chastising or denigration? C'mon, you can be supportive.

Comment · 3 years ago
I like this idea! Thanks for sharing.

Will I be able to point it at any podcast? The ones I saw look interesting but are not what I normally listen to.

I assume you can take any audio sample (say, a monologue) and generate a summary of it. I wonder if students would do this with their lectures.

Comment · 3 years ago
What is the camera mounted on? Do you have a picture of the setup?
Comment · 3 years ago
We use gcc/javac/etc almost daily and having some understanding of what your toolchain is likely to be very beneficial. Here are a few things I've done with my compiler knowledge:

1. Wrote a simulator of sorts for a 68xx CPU. User passed in assembly files and I simulated the execution and spat out cycle counts. The real-time application had a fixed time window it could not exceed. I did this in my first year out of college with compilers fresh on my mind.

2. Wrote an automated test tool for a proprietary protocol. The protocol had the usual opcodes but they could only be played in a certain order (cannot send B before C or can send B any number of times and have it be idempotent). The QA engineers were doing this by hand. I asked them if they could automated the test case generation and they looked at me as though I was an idiot. I developed a tool with its own simplified grammar that they could use to build test cases which exercised all combinations/permutations of the opcodes. Saved us a ton of time and made the developers more productive.

3. My hackiest project was an SGML parser that was used to generate hypertext documents. Tech writer wrote docs in FrameMaker. My hacky parser found the places where the TOC and the Index could be linked and inserted hypertext links. Net result is we had a document that could be printed and viewed online. Think 1993/1994.

I've sat with a number of engineers who thought the compiler was wrong and sat down and looked at the assembly with them and mapped it back to C only for them to realize the bug was in their code.

Compilers are fun. You should take a compiler course just for that!

Comment · 3 years ago
I like to know how much incremental disk space I'm using so I have a series of scripts that tell me the files which have been deleted/added and outputs to get the sum (yes, I know there are better ways). The impetus for checking disk usage is a tale in IT stupidity which I don't talk about! But now I use the script for other purposes as well such as verifying that my mirror has the same deltas without doing a full compare. I hope I haven't disappointed you with my usage :-)

I really should rewrite this but it was written many years ago and grew into something more than I originally intended. Plus, it works.

Comment · 3 years ago
This is really cool. I use 'bc' in a small script that I run almost daily.
Comment · 3 years ago
Ok. You convinced me to update my profile. I'm mostly a lurker on HN and now I feel like I should contribute more.
Comment · 3 years ago
I wrote a novel (action / psychological thriller). Second book is again a thriller but with time-travel, but it isn't sci-fi.

I haven't tried writing science fiction but enjoy reading the genre - currently reading Dust by Hugh Howey. Thus, I tend to stick to the current world as I understand it better.

Your books sound interesting! I'm impressed!

Comment · 3 years ago
Can you talk about your two books? Fiction, non-fiction? Genre. I'm always curious to know more about successful writers and what they did - even if I'm not wired to do the same.

I self-published one book and am working on a second. I have done zero marketing as I wrote the book primarily for myself. Those who have read it really enjoyed including people who are extremely blunt about their opinions.

Comment · 3 years ago
I've now self-published one book and have started a second. I haven't made enough money to even pay for the cover art! But I'm doing this for myself and if it results in a back catalog that generates income, cool. If not, then also cool.
Comment · 3 years ago
I wonder if you and I read the same series.

https://www.amazon.com/Not-Gentle-Book-One-Discovery-ebook/d...

Mark's writing style really pulled me in and I'm bummed he didn't finish the series. I still have hope that he'll get back to it one day.

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