Paul David Krishnan

Um yes, I have been away, for 5 months that is. Hey, I'm a busy guy, deal with it :p

Following the responses I got from the Pilot 78G review I wrote not too long ago, I’ve decided to do yet another pen review (actually, this will be one of 2 reviews I’ll be doing, now that I’ve actually have some time to myself to write these things) I’ve recently been discovering that the price of a fountain pen does not necessarily reflect on it ability to write. My Hero #299 (which I also found in Tesco) and my RM3.00 Youth Pens from China are good examples of these. Recently, I came across a posting in FPN that spoke about a mysterious ‘Cartridge Pen’ that could be found on the cheap from Tesco. Very Intrigued, I made a point of looking a bit more carefully the next time I was there. Suffice to say, I found one that cost me a grand total of…RM2.50. I have to apologize in advance because I’ve thrown away the packaging for this pen. It comes with 3-4 generic Short Standard International Cartridges of Blue Ink. Absolutely no idea what make the ink actually is by the way. I just threw away the cartridges and slotted in a Pelikan Violet. Here’s a first look at the said pen:

Unposted (without the cap on) it measures about 12.2cm, Posted the pen measures about 16.3cm. The cap is a clip on type and is transparent with a one piece black tip and clip unit. The rest of the pen is made of plastic (all of it actually, except the nib which seems to be made of stainless steel). No clues as to what converter it will take. But I’m not too anal about using cartridges anyways. Its RM2.50 for god’s sake! Takes both long and short International Cartridges. On to the weight factor, it’s the lightest weight pen I’ve ever used. Hardly feel the weight as I’m writing. The barrel has a rubberized feel to it and the business end of the pen has grooves cut into the grip (which is made of shiny black plastic) and does not slip in any way while writing.

The nib is stainless steel and has a slight flex to it. (Thin Iridium Stainless Steel I’m told) As far as the point is concerned, it’s an ‘F’ Nib. Absolutely nothing engraved on the nib too. The underside of the nib is the now familiar black but smooth with no vertical nor horizontal grooves. The inking system makes use of cartridges. I doubt I can find a converter for it. Then again, I ain’t no snob when it comes to inking systems :P

So, unto the actual writing bit. This time around, I used some really nice Conqueror paper and wrote a few lines. I noticed that while it was an ‘F’ Nib, it was a bit thicker than my Sheaffer No-Nonsense’s ‘F’ nib. Writing was smooth, uninterrupted (I did flush the pen out before slotting in the cartridge). Writing sample as below, Tesco Pen in Violet and the Sheaffer No-Nonsense in brown.

Ok, last thing that needs mentioning, this is a pen which is made in China. Which could be a good thing or a bad thing. I do have a post written up about Chinese made pens, but I’m still tweaking it so wait for it. Chinese pens are either very good or very bad, it can be a crapshoot sometimes. A few months after I wrote this review (yes, I take ages to write one blog post, that just shows how dedicated I am to my art :P) the pen began to leak rather badly from the cartridge part. I suspect that this had to do with a little rough handling the pen took in my bag (yes, this was BEFORE I discovered RM5 faux-leather 3 pen cases from Daiso), so do take care not to handle the pen too roughly.

Final Impressions:

Pros: Cheap, lightweight, slightly flexible nib. Smooth writing performance.

Cons: No converter so you’re stuck with whatever International cartridges that comes your way. (long or short), dubious durability.

PS: This entire blog post was written as usual in long hand with the subject of this review, the Tesco Comfort Pen

Well, following a pen review, I'm following it up with an ink review. My favorite color when it comes to writing ink is Blue-Black. I spoke to my Mom some time ago and she told me that in the late 50s and 60s, Blue-Black was the choice of ink for many people. She told me about giant Parker Quink bottles that will be in the corner of the office and people coming up to fill their individual ink wells/bottles. I have seen those bottles for sale by the way. Seems like I'm stuck in that era too :P

Hey there! its been some time but um...I did a handwritten review of the Hero #331 that originally was posted in the Fountain Pen Network forums. A little different this time, its all in pictures. Enjoy!












PS. My photos are squashed for some reason. Click on 'em to see it in its entirety.

Now, I'm acutely aware of the fact that this blog does not really have a million subscriber count but I need to post this and implore you, yes you who's reading this right now about the issue I've specified in the title. For over a year now, I've been very very actively using Plurk.com, a microblogging service first introduced to me while I was reading a Twitter post by Veronica Belmont. Along the way, numerous tech luminaries like Leo Laporte, Robert Scoble, Molly Wood, Tom Merritt, Jason Howell (Last 3 being of Buzz Out Loud fame) and many others came on and still from time to time, peek in and update their Plurks.

That however was just an intro for me into this new world, very different from Twitter, Plurk featured updates in a left to right scrolling method with 'karma' points and other badges being awarded for introducing your friends etc. Here's a screen shot:

Looking at Twitter for the last 2 weeks, I was moved to do this piece of nonsense-ory. Some kudos is in order tho:

Inspired by: Jessica Hagy and frequent Twitter Outages.
Blog Post powered by: Crappy Graphs!
Special Thanks to: Amber MacArthur - for finding Crappy Graphs!



So, without further ado:



Original Post

Continuing the Fail concept, MIC (Malaysian Indian Congress - The 'Guardian' of all things Indian in Malaysia) claimed that they will take efforts to woo professionals by looking at cyberspace. Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu, Dictator for Life, Party President, stated that the party will be using the internet to reach out to professionals and youths. “And, for this reason, our leaders need to teach themselves to surf the Net and, if possible, create their own blogs.” Yeah Right!

Get Your Sexy Name

Thanks Leo..

I've spent a good number of years on the Internet and one of my serious gripes has always been about search. From the early days of Yahoo search, there has been a discontinuous series of improvement of how search engines strive to be more accurate etc. Which meant that along the journey of Internet Evolution, I hopped from one search engine to another trying to find which one suits my needs the best. What a journey that was. Moving from Yahoo to Altavista, Dogpile, Teoma, Looksmart, Hot Bot, Vivisimo and even the graphical search results of Kartoo (Which is still around and still pretty awesome for an alternative way to search). Note that I have lumped all these names under the loose term 'Search Engine'. Some of them are meta-crawlers. That is a subject for another day. :)



Kartoo: Graphical search results ..mmmmm

Heck, I even wrote an entire chapter on how to optimize search, search engines and metacrawlers for research in our company training manual (for sales people and program developers). However as the years went by I started having some hope that search will be more accurate and I don't have to use Boolean operators, quotation marks and the like. That was partly satisfied as Google refined their algorithms and currently, I use their excellent, unbranded experimental search engine, searchmash.

Somewhere last year however, a project was dropped into our (as in my company) lap. Titled "Semantic Search" it was described as a more accurate, more user friendly and natural way to search. Unfortunately the project got dropped. (we're still trying to make time to design around Google's search algorithm patents tho!) So what is the meaning of this 'Semantic Search'? For that you gotta have a little understanding of how conventional search works. The most basic way an internet search works when a search request is sent is that an algorithm searches, computes and returns the highest number of occurrences of that particular search term. The rest of the programming in the search engine then displays the pages that have that number. (Disclaimer: that's how I understand it. I don't work in this industry and have no deeper knowledge of this unless I go do more research which i don't have time for. Dammit Jim! I'm a Sales guy not a Google employee!)

How is Semantic Search different then? Instead of searching, computing and returning the occurence of the search term, a Semantic Search algorithm actually looks at the meaning of the search term and then displays results relevant to the meaning. Still confused? Check out this video:



So I heard some mention of Semantic Search this morning on Buzz out Loud (ep 722) when the Awesome Threesome (Tom, Molly and Jason) discussed a website called Powerset. This was based on an article written by news.com writer Dan Farber on his 'Outside the Lines' column. Powerset is a search engine that uses Semantic Search algorithms to search. However it only searches Wikipedia and Freebase.com at the moment. Relatively new, their 'About Us' claims that their goal "is to change the way people interact with technology by enabling computers to understand our language". Also, "In the search box, you can express yourself in keywords, phrases, or simple questions. On the search results page, Powerset gives more accurate results, often answering questions directly, and aggregates information from across multiple articles."



So far so good. A video demo of what Powerset can do can be found here:



The official Powerset blog is here:

Ok, Ok. On to the hands on test. Here are some screen shots of some search terms I tried:











Overall, I was very impressed. It almost felt like I had a magnifying glass to Wikipedia. Again, the technology is very new and Powerset utilises technology licensed from PARC's Natural Language Processing patents . While this may not immediately shake Google's entrenched position, it will up the ante in terms of what needs to be incorporated into future search engines. An interesting observation that I recall from a few years ago is that most people will willingly embrace new search engines...for a few minutes and then return to the one that they've always been comfortable with. Whatever the case maybe, I hope this would be a good direction for search companies to take us into the future of search

Meanwhile, Jason Calacanis (who I think is cool!) has written his thoughts on Powerset (better written than mine). I find this blog post very interesting as he offers some good counter points and a more in-depth look at Powerset. You can read his views here.

Some more links for you to read:
http://www2003.org/cdrom/papers/refereed/p779/ess.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_search

Its not very often I recommend music in the blog cos I'm busy being an elitist bastard listening to my blues stuff and some classic rock thrown in for good measure. But I was kinda jaded (musically) last week and decided to go look for some new stuff that might tickle my musical fancy. Lo and behold I came across Jamendo. A website where 'artists allow anyone to download and share their music. It's free, legal and unlimited..' Now, I'm the type of guy who's a bit reluctant to try out new music whether its artists or simply a different genre. I guess I was feeling mighty adventurous that day when I came across this Canadian band called Staggered Crossing. They had their album called 'Burgundy and Blue' available as a free download on Jamendo. Of course, I had a chance to listen to it before I downloaded it. (*CC licensed of course)



I was instantly hooked. Nice riffs, not too heavy pop-rock stuff that I forgot I liked once upon a time. Pleasantly surprised, I looked them up and to my horror, they had stopped playing as a band. Or in the words of the band themselves, 'going on hiatus indefinitely' Man I was crushed. Here was a band that wrote honest lyrics, had nice singing and supercool playing..and they've disbanded? The band state that 'As our lives have changed and evolved individually we have found it increasingly difficult to devote the time and energy to the band that it deserves' Honest again. You can't find this kinda honesty in today's world of sampled-fecal-matter-passing-off-as-music. That really made me want more from the band. But, they're gone. So go check them out if you can on the net.

The band line up:

Julian Taylor, vocals and guitar
Dan Black, bass guitar
David Marshall, guitar
Jeremy Elliott, drums




The requisite Wikipedia Article is: Here (Some citation needed :P)

and here's a video.


Staggered Crossing - Felony -


Good Luck boys..wherever you are

* CC= Creative Commons.