The Definitive Blog on All Things Vague

Handling Unicode filenames in Windows with Python 3.0

2011-05-15T01:23:00.004-06:00

You will find this post useful if

1. You are on Windows

2. You are using Python 3.0 or above

3. You are having problems with os.walk or os.listdir because some of your filenames are encoding in Unicode

While using os.walk, you encounter and error similar to the one below.

File "C:\Python32\lib\encodings\cp437.py", line 19, in encode

return codecs.charmap_encode(input,self.errors,encoding_map)[0]

UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character '\u2013' in position 226: character maps to

What would have gotten you going in Python 2.7 but will not work in Python 3.0:

rootdir = ru'D:\COUNTRY\ROADS\'

for (root, dirname, filename) in os.walk(rootdir):

You will be irreverently pointed out a Syntax error.

What will work (or to be more precise, worked on my system !):

rootdir = r'D:\COUNTRY\ROADS\'

for (root, dirname, filename) in os.walk(rootdir.encode('utf-8')):

# do your stuff here

Useful links:

If you are on Python 2.6 and face a similar problem, checkout this thread on StackOverflow.
Python 2.7 Unicode HOWTO (lot of details and good material on Unicode)
A general discussion of what's changing in Python 3.0 (aka Py3K, Python 3000), esp. w.r.to Unicode.

5 Ways to Kill a Post-Mortem

2009-05-31T06:11:00.001-06:00

Software projects fail.

One of the techniques you could apply to a project not going well is a post-mortem. A meeting where the critical participants meet to discuss what is going wrong. Preferably when there is still time to salvage things. But before you run a post-mortem of a project, here are some things you would want to consciously avoid. Hopefully as a project lead or in similar capacity, this will help you facilitate the meeting and shape positive outcomes. It starts with you.

The Final Blame-Game

The idea of a post-mortem is to take an earnest look at some of the things that went wrong and understand why and how to avoid them. In brief, make mistakes, but please make new mistakes.

If the meeting degenerates into blame-fixing, then you are headed in the wrong direction. Rule the meeting politely but iron glove. Don't let it become a mudslinging match.

If you have been deeply involved in the project, chances are high that you would have your own frustrations as well. Keep them under control. Appoint a watcher. Pre-discuss with your watcher that should you lose control in the heat of things, watcher makes a signal ("Is it Monday today?") to remind you and get you back.

Let loose over some beer

An often-asked question is, "Should I take the team to our favorite watering hole to allow people to relax and be more open ?".

Err on the side of caution. Stick to a formal atmosphere. I am not recommending mandatory business attire, but setup a proper meeting, let people know the time and purpose in advance. Restrict the meeting to the critical few, the ideal size of effectiveness ranging between 3 - 10.

Let's keep the beer-party to celebrate when things are fixed and we succeed, shall we ?

Anything short of brutal honesty..

will impede success. Having said that, this is one of the things you will not have much control over. Candor in an organization is a non-trivial task. The few things you can do are to listen without prejudice, repeat the value of candor, and have an iron-hand over anybody resorting to an aggressive defense in the meetings.

Almost always, candor starts with the leadership. If you fail to explicitly demonstrate candor (maybe by owning up your own shortcomings), why will others do the same ? Furthermore, what ethical right would you have to expect people to be candid if it does not start with you ?

I fixed the process

We, software engineers are great at creating processes. The crux of our profession is to create procedures for inanimate (well, until now) machines to obey. So we happily create processes to fix other broken processes.

Remember, a post-mortem is not only about fixing processes.

At a post-mortem, pay close attention to the personal and interpersonal behavior of the team. Who gels well with whom ? Who can confide in whom ? Who will refrain from giving you bad news just because you may think he is incompetent ? Who will refrain you from giving bad news just because she will be happy to see you fail ? Who is not pulling their weight on the team ?

Processes are important and many a times they need to be fixed. But if you are oblivious of the interpersonal dynamics that makes up a software team and consequently can make or break a project, prepare for further failure.

The One-time PM

Unlike human autopsy, be certain of failure if the post-mortem is a one-time event without follow-ups. In that sense, the word post-mortem is a bit of a misnomer. Make sure people understand that there will be follow-ups, better yet, schedule them up-front, to make sure the right metrics are improving and the needle is moving in the right direction. A word of caution: if the problem was anything major in the first place, be prepared that the first couple of follow-ups may not show remarkable progress.

Persevere.

Siddhi talks at GE

2007-08-03T02:10:00.001-06:00

Yesterday, Siddharta came over to our GE office. A few of us huddled in a small quiet conf. room and Siddharta gave a splendid demo of the software he is working on. And we had some great discussion on agile, agile in restrained environments, such as those controlled by regulatory agencies like FDA. Post session, Lavanya, Siddharta and I finished off at the cafeteria jostling details and efficacy of stand-ups.

I met Siddharta at Barcamp Bangalore 3, a few months back. A guy with incisive views, he is one of the more-meat-less-talk tech-entrepreneurs I have come across. It is good to see fruitful social and commercial relationships spring up from Barcamp -- he has some good leads now.

I struggle to make some people understand that one aspect of the Barcamp community is to build and support business relationships and networks. Some people get mad at even one single job-post. "Don't spam me", the vociferous will cry, giving little or no thought to somebody who might actually be looking for a change. "I do not want you to use my email bandwidth to make money for yourself/company".

These same people will beeline for the startup talks at Barcamp.

As long as we do not shed our hypocritical attitude towards making money, a vibrant entrepreneur community will remain a distant dream.

Barcamp Bangalore 4: Collectively speaking

2007-07-20T03:12:00.001-06:00

Bangalore is a fascinating city. BCB4 is happening on 28th and 29th of this month at the Indian Institute of Management.

The Barcamp out here is spectacular for at least three reasons.

big
With over 600 registrants at BCB3 in March/April, this is the largest Barcamp in the word. And if you talk to the people who make it happen, they will, in classical duality-of-life style, tell you that quality rules over quantity.
times
Organising anything of this size is rope-climbing tough. And doing that once a quarter. Oh my God. And that too, when there is no direct monetary profit to be reaped. I am neither an economist nor a sociologist (And never wanted to be), but this calls for some serious introspection into human behaviour.
new

Bangalore takes the definition of an unconference to a new level. When the definition of unconference itself was starting to gather a cruddy layer of formality -- the same new Ajax, Web 2.0, ROR, Bangalore just tore the definitions with BCB3: SocialTech. And this time around, BCB4: Collectives. Whether you like it or not, whether you like your screens in "Beta" sauce or "Classic", doesn't matter; you have to raise your hat to this communities immense momentum to initiate, drive and execute new untested ideas. There are, like in all such situations, a few thought-leaders, and I wont embarrass them by calling out their name, but to drive these ideas through a jungle of a thousand techies (who by design are themselves anti-authoritative, anti-norm), needs a different kind of drive.

Collectives

For those who have not seen the definition or are just wondering whether this has something to do with the paradigm of Java Collections, fear not. It has a simpler name -- BoF - Birds of a Feather. In any conference, you are likely to find small groups of people sticking together and discussing their own personal sweet thing. Could be a passion, could be a problem-of-the day.

Collectives are just that. You get together around a topic or domain and have fun. Two days of camaraderie (oh that's one more thing.. I do not think any Barcamp comes in a two day package).

There are collective around

core interests: Internet, Ruby, Python, Ajax -- the works
classical stuff : Compiler design, functional programming, memory overflows
offbeat stuff: Bicycling in Bangalore, Music (jam/clinics)

And yes, there is also a "Bored of Collectives" collective.

Complete List

Hack Night

Two nights of unbound fun. What more do I say ? I like this a lot, at times I felt that the last three Barcamps was more on the "say" side of the say:do ratio.

SpeedGeeking

As far as I recall, siddhartha came up with this idea to have this at BCB4. Here are more details.

In all, I am looking forward to this. I will have my usual baby-sitting duties on Saturday, so will be in late. Build new ties, renew old ones, and oh, I am doing a guitar clinic, to answer "all the questions your ever wanted to ask about guitars but found no one with short enough hair".

Technorati tags: barcampbangalore4, bcb4, barcamp, collectives, bangalore

The counter-inductive science

2007-05-04T05:55:00.001-06:00

The most unmathematical thing about computers is that the law of induction does not hold. Just because things have gone right for 74,362 iterations does not guarantee that things will be all right on the 74,363 rd time.

Smarty error: Now that's a neat one !

Barcamps over the world: BCB3/Minnebar

2007-04-22T13:22:00.001-06:00

I think I am kinda special. Not quite like Paris Hilton special, but getting a chance to attend two Barcamps separated by 8000 miles in a span of 3 weeks has got to be some kind of special stuff. I think the big guy above is smiling at me. Invest in my equity.

This is an article outlining some of the interesting differences I saw between the barcamps in Bangalore (BCB3, 31 March -April 1, 2007 ) and Minnesota(Minnebar 2007, 21 April). This is not an article intended to compare or pass a judgement. Just throwing up some observations, fwiw.

I am not offering explanations, I am not a socio-anthropology by training. Some of these do not require a degree to arrive at the reason of causation, but I want to keep this blog close to what I saw, not what I think. At most, some "could-be"s.

Both the barcamps have a local flavour and preservation of local flavour to me, is inherently good. Consider food, for example. A predominantly South Indian buffet spread for lunch at BCB3 and Pizzas/soda cans/deli at Minnebar. (I missed the beer party at the end, I had to drive back). Haha ! What can I say. but this glutton loves both !

Pre-Event Mixer

Minnebar had one, Bangalore did not. I could not attend the one in Minnebar, but I am guessing this gives the people a chance to meet each other and establish a network before the show (face-to-face).

Population distribution

Lots of college students at BCB3, few in Minnebar, although the UoM has a huge campus nearby. I was pleasantly surprised to see the number of people above 45 at Minnebar. I could spot at least 10 people who (by looks) are above 60 (though at heart I am sure they are coasting at 23). The crowd in Bangalore caps out at 35, mostly. The difference in the age group was stark.

Hands on

Quite a few sessions were hands-on. Particularly the one by Jesse/Scott from Refactr was cool. Jesse took us through the creation of a Groovy/Grails app in about 50 minutes. The steps were scripted before hand, but the presentation had a flair of spontaneity.

The two-feet rule

"If you do not like the session, vote with your feet" -- that's the two feet rule. Happened at lot at BCB3, rarely at Minnebar. I was talking to some of the folks here at Minnebar and they agreed; it would be very unMidWest politeness to up and leave from the first row.

50-min slots

BCB3 had 30 min slots, Minnebar had 50 mins with 10 minute breaks. This was nice because of a few reasons.

a) the presenter had more time to delve into the material and have time to take questions

b) the 10 min breaks let people breathe and not have to run from one session to another

c) the Q&A could continue while the next speaker was setting up.

d) Sticking to time was good. I do not recall a session where the speaker overshot.

Crosstalk

Minnebar had two floors of "rooms", some of them essential open lobby spaces with chairs thrown in. while other enclosed spaces with chairs thrown in, without any door (that could be closed). This lead to too much of background noise and interference from the other talks. Was a bit of a distraction.

BCB3 had formal classrooms/galleries (well/pit) at IIMB. The problem was that it threw too much spotlight on the speaker and participating became difficult at times.

Way too many Macs

Looking at Minnebar, you could mistake it for an Apple Conference. I did spot a Dell XPS and a Toshiba Mini, as if it were some rare animal, but it was Macbooks and iBooks all the way.

BCB had its share of Macs, but clearly Windows/Linux laptops were in larger proportions.

Pre-arranged schedule

The schedule of talks were pre-arranged, so the participants knew what to expect and where. One nice touch was a A4 printout of a synopsis on each of the talks scheduled to be held in front of the appropriate room. So you could always go and get a quick preview of what you would be getting, were you to go inside the room.

BCB3 was more spontaneous with people coming in and sticking up index cards on a softboard as they came in. Talks could be rearranged to meet certain constraints.

Geekspread

Nice term, I coined it 7 seconds back. It alludes to the spectrum breadth of geeky things happening, with Internet/CS/Web 2.0 as the median. I found both to have a high geekspread, but in different directions.

Minnebar had more demos/talks on things that edged on other geekisms, such as how to make a potatogun and scout robots.

BCB3 focussed on socialtech issues such as eGovernance and organisational psychology. BCB3 also had a lot of application technologies, with companies coming up and showing how they were using Web 2.0 / Mobile and a lot of interested (and interesting) entrepreneurs.

To sum it up, I like the differences. And I hope I can be at the next editions of both. Nothing like too many barcamps, say what ?

This thing called Minnebar

2007-04-22T11:32:00.001-06:00

The drive from Milwaukee to Minneapolis/St.Paul is about 320 miles, each way. Takes about 5 hours, you can do it in 4.5 if you push it a bit. The drive cannot really be called scenic, unless you put it in compare mode against Ohio, I guess.

I really wanted to see a barcamp outside India and there was no way I would this one in Minneapolis (since I was already in the area.)

So I got up at 3:46 am. The rest is sweet memories.

Minnebar (pronounced minibar) is in its second edition. It is a BarCamp organised by enthusiasts in the twin cities of St. Paul/Minneapolis, Minnesota.

You can see the pictures here.

William Gurstelle literally blew us with his presentation on explosive underground technologies: potato guns, pumpkin throwers, tesla coils. He is the author of 5 books on how to increase the entropy of the unverse by factors of 10 or alike.

In some sense, the starCamper, if there be one was David Hansson. Jamie Thingelstad did an open interview which on a couch, that was so sinking, that they had to set on the backrest to let people be able to see them. I punched some notes and thought would post them, but I am so lazy that my brain is trying to make me believe that there is some strange beauty in the raw notes and that the act of cleaning them will rob the notes of their spontaneity and origninality. So, if you want to read the notes, drop me an email, I will send you the version verbatim and then if you have any questions, clarification, the notes are not clear blah blah blah, we can always talk over email.

Look carefully at the image below. A teen-shopper trying out a dress without wearing it. The image is projected on a thin film backed by a mirror so that it gives an appearance of being worn. She can change colors, sizes and send videostreams to her aunt in Germany and best friend in New Mexico, by interacting with the touchscreens that double up as mirrors (or the other way rouond?). They can realtime send here suggestions back, suggest new dresses and engage in an interactive shopping experience, all from the comfort of their web browsers.

Christopher Enright, CTO of IconNicholson, presented, what to me was the coolest tech presentation. The underlying concept is to connect the online and offline behaviours of people, so you do not have to go to second life to experience it. Chris already has a prototype up at Bloomingdale's in NY. Will this be the future of social retailing ?

Mike Janssen of the Distributed Robotics Center, Univ of Minnesota, gave a demo of the scout robots his lab builds. The picture below is interesting. I I thought I was waking a picture of Mike. What I didn't realise was that the robot was taking a picture of me, too. Look at the screen carefully. The guy in a light t-shirt (trivia: thats the BCB3 lemon-yellow t-shirt) is me. The other guy is Luke Francl, one of the organisers of Minnebar.

Scary.

Technorati tags: barcamp, minnebar, minnebar2007

No WiFi in Indianapolis Marriott

2007-04-14T03:30:00.001-06:00

There is a lot of talk about the last mile problem in developing nations as to how people do not have access to the Internet.

Today I feel that some parts of the apparently civilized world are not yet broad-hearted enough to let you get on the Internet seamlessly. Compare this:

Hotel	Homestead	Marriott Downtown
City	Brookfield (tiny town)	Indianapolis (large city)
Rate/night	$36	$150
WiFi in room	Yes	No
Cost	$5 per stay	10 per night

Downtown Marriott, Indianapolis sucks. Somebody is going to hear an earful from me today.

The Unofficial BCB3 Photo Contest

2007-04-06T05:20:00.001-06:00

Identify the three campers at BCB3. No exciting prizes.

HeadlessException

Hint: This is the photographer at the time of the shot. The one with the camera the above shot it a few seconds before.

"Ssssh children, His Holiness is Clicking".

The caption makes sense only if you see the whole picture at flickr by clicking here.

SlideShare & India

2007-04-04T01:01:00.001-06:00

www.slideshare.net seems to have a large loyalty base in India. So much so, that a dropdown list on their registration screen has quickfinds for USA and ....

I never knew we had so much national fascination to create powerpoints (ok, also Impress presentations).

Talk at Barcamp Bangalore 3

2007-04-02T20:46:00.001-06:00

Rakesh and I shared some thoughts on unstructured innovation such as unconferences and codejams in large, well-structured (and somewhat paradoxically) very innovative companies.

Technorati tags: barcampbangalore3, innovation

Bambi 2.0

2007-03-22T08:49:00.001-06:00

Bambi is a small coding-fest that we organise in our group at GE Healthcare. It was inspired by Yahoo Hackday after I heard about it at BarCamp Bangalore last year. I still remember, I came back all charged up after BarCamp and with some help from Arun B, we put together the first version of Bambi. Ours was a small team, roughly about 60 people, so spreading the news was not much of a problem. Getting people out of their workload was a bigger problem. The load is high and the work is, I guess, somewhat exciting ;-)

It is sometimes tough to lure people out of writing indexing algorithms for proprietary image databases or mitral-valve plane adjusters for segmentation of the human heart.

Today we had the demos for Bambi 2.0

The quality of demos were much improved and people came on the last day with some utterly cool demos. Unfortunately, I do not think I can write about them in detail owing to Intellectual Property issues but a mash of Biometrics, Bluetooth, MRI scanners and Yahoo widgets 4 can be quite a potent combination !

Software programmers and art do not always go together.

A bunch of people had questions about the name and the etymology. The rest were clueless and could not allow such things to bother their memory allocation. Today it is better; I recall with mild amusement and shudder how I had to remind people it is not "Bumbee".

And the butterfly is not "Bum - bee".

Technorati tags: hackday, bambi, barcampbangalore3, yahoo widgets, GE

Youthanasia : Taking away the internet

2007-03-21T11:03:00.001-06:00

The Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, is turning the Internet lights off to force students to go to sleep early and be fresh as a flower for the class the next day. Reminds me of what I sometimes sing my 3-year old to sleep.

Pray, now what will happen to those night-out coding fests ?

In a a previous post, I indicated how UWM was threatening to take away Internet connection as a form of punishment.

UWM against RIAA: Protector or Pain ?

2007-03-20T22:39:00.001-06:00

A good coverage of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's response on the RIAA P2PLawsuit appeared in the Consumerist.

(Grant Robertson's now extinct blog has a good introduction to the issue).

This page apparently loads up when you try to access the Internet from within the University network.

The recording industry is threatening lawsuits against those who may have engaged in illegal file sharing. They are currently targeting students who live in university residence halls. Recently, UW- Madison and other universities have been notified that they will receive settlement letters that are to be passed on to the individuals whom the senders believe to be guilty of copyright infringement. Consistent with current network management procedures and our understanding of federal law, UW-Madison does not plan to forward these letters directly to campus network users. We will, of course, comply with a valid subpoena.

If from this it seems UWM seems to take a reasonable "I -will-protect-you" stance, the following could shake that foundation a bit.

However, if the UW-Madison is given cause to believe that a student, faculty or staff network user may have infringed on copyrights, it will take action. University network policies empower the CIO to terminate that person's network access until the matter is resolved.

Ummmm, now termination of network access. That is a serious price to pay.

Desktopography

2007-03-20T06:45:00.001-06:00

The selections for Desktopography 2007 is out. If you are looking for really spohisticated desktop wall appers, this is one expo you need to checkout.

This goes well with my XP Olive theme.

Linux on a USB stick and desktop unreadiness

2007-03-17T13:20:00.001-06:00

I got my Dell Latitude D600 to boot off a Sandisk 1GB CruzerMicro USB stick running Knoppix 5.1. It booted much much faster than my normal Windows XP2 (which is a real pain). Booting off a USB was easier than I thought it would be. The screen passes my eye-candy requirements and the icing on the cake is a sophisticated female voice, arguably on the bridge of a USS Enterprise, saying "Initiating startup sequence".

If you try this, you may need to change the BIOS bootup sequence, which may confuse Windows when you get back to your normal, boring life.

I had a good mind to boot up from my cell phone by extracting the Knoppix image on the phone itself. However, with just 512 MB of expandable memory, it would not have made the cut. Interestingly, I have Motorola A1200 "Ming", which runs a customised Linux distro from Motorola.

I could not get my WiFi to work with pump or Kwifi Manager. That was the sad part. I wish these things were easier. Is Linux ready for the desktop yet ?

My answer is a thundering no. Brief reasoning.

Display and Fonts. Windows font kerning rules anyday. You may attribute it to better driver compatibility owning to non-disclosure agreements that Microsoft signs with most major hardware vendors. But at the end of the day, viewing characters on Windows is far more pleasant than on Linux. One can argue subjectivity, one man's witch is another man's Moonielizzo. However, I hold a fair amount of confidence that if you sample 300 unbiased people, the jury will rule in my favor. you will have to arrange for the logistics though :-)
Device Support. Support on Windows for common devices is way much more better than on Linux. Once again, the non-disclosure element come into play. Specific hardware device details are not available to the Linux developer and so the device drivers operate at a generic level unable to utilise vendor-specific optimizations of feature-improvements. The other problem is that for many vendors, Linux is not considered mainstream enough to warrant writing a device-driver. Take my M-Audio FastTrack USB guitar recorder for example. It comes with only a Windows and Mac driver :-(

The second one could change. I am not optimistic enough to say "soon", but it could. Earlier in January this year, Linux kernel maintainer/developer Greg Kroah-Hartman made an astonishing announcement. It was an open announcement addressed to the large number of companies that have devices and corresponding drivers on Windows/Mac/ Sun but not on Linux. His rather generous offer to these companies is that :

Linux Kernel developers will develop complete and working device drivers (free-of-cost) for their devices and the source will be distributed as a part of the Linux kernel. In return (or rather, to assist), the company would have to provide:

some kind of a spec of the device
an engineer with who Linux kernel developers can talk to, send emails etc for clarifications and deeper understanding (XP: The Customer is always available)
a sample device to test and debug ( methinks its so that the dev knows whether it is a stun-gun or a washing machine (s)he wrote the code for.

The good news is that apparently Greg and his team has figured out some ways around the non-disclosure agreements.

I would recommend you checkout Greg's Monkey Log for a very well articulated description.

Are you game ?

2007-03-16T00:21:00.001-06:00

I was never a gamer. My favourite games have always been playable on a computer which did not sport a fancy, dedicated video card. Some of these are so archaic, I could not even spot a decent link on the web.

Bricks
Test Drive
Grand Prix
Caesar
Sin

Gaming.Wikia

And today is a big day for the gaming community because Jimmy Wales, the poster boy behind the wiki movement announced the launch of gaming.wikia, a Wiki based gaming magazine.

There has been Wiki-encyclopedias on gaming, such as GamerWiki, but this is a magazine, inherently of a different temporal characteristic. Will need to watch out how Jimmy Wales and his team spin this.

Evil Lord of the Rings ?

Peter Jackson, Oscar-winning producer/director of The Lord of The Rings trilogy is going to work for Microsoft. Recently, it was announced that he is going to be developing some game-episodes for XBox 360 based on (the now-shunted) Halo.

"And this year's Oscar goes to Microsoft.."

Absath Art

An emerging genre, a blend of comic-book and game-scene is catching my fancy. Take a look at Tim Absath's blog or his famous three finger salute site. Afraid, I do not understand much gaming lingo or contexts, so the storyline of this strip did not make much of an impression on me. However, I am confident, some smart guy somewhere gets it all.

Bootstrap

2007-03-14T02:57:00.001-06:00

This is a blog. I write this.

I am, as I write, a Senior Systems Specialist at GE Healthcare. Well, that is a good title to have. I am not what sure that exactly means though, but it is a mouthful. My in-laws are impressed. And so was my ex-landlord. Small things matter.

I have been with GE Healthcare since 2000, the year I was declared to be mentally and educationally competent to hold a full-time job. That explains the seniority. Seven years is not exactly a short time. Especially, when you can learn Java in 24 hours. Or, the Bible.

The team I am on, develops advanced post-processing applications in the Molecular Imaging and Computed Tomography. That's again, quite a mouthful, but this time I can stand to defend myself. The stuff people do on my team is pretty awesome, actually. Things like segmenting out the left ventricle of the heart from a gated PET cardiac scan and then detecting which muscle tissues are not getting enough blood.

I try to help from time to time, but they keep on giving me important tasks like setting up meetings, making sure the projector and the cord are in the same room, updating dates on a website to notify that the product is not getting delivered this quarter because the lead system designer is going for her honeymoon to St. Lucia; stuff like that. They also call me the "Lead Program Integrator" and I am told that I am responsible for end-to-end delivery of a couple of our premium products.

I am also told once I figure how to make these ends meet, I will be up for promotion.

When I am out of errands to run, I write. Poems, music and another blog. By now, you must be sure that this is yet another blog, even if you are not sure about what.

That's definitely vague.