Google Minus

So for some reason anything I post appears on Buzz. I already have Google=Skynet issues and this particular bit of nifty-we-own-it-all-anyway code that makes whatever I write appear in bold all over the internet frightens me. I admit that's great advertising but this also censors what I write.
Which is good too... sometimes...
Anyway we decided to go off Google plus since there's just too much social networking going on and I'm beginning to feel that my entire social life is currently sitting on a rather precarious fence between real and virtual.
Again, I have to pose a counter-argument to my own rants with the old  - "some people are better off being virtually networked than in real life". And there are enough of them to make hiding behind millions of miles of fibre optic and copper cable and facebook a far better option than meeting over coffee.
But those concerns apart, this is largely a test post to make sure this blog is not broadcast across the fields of google and thus read advertently or otherwise.
More on the travails of the cooking bachelor and the undying nature of the world's most annoying coming up if this doesn't go viral.

Peace out

Virtual Reality

So after many profound brain things inside my head I'm back on Facebook. While my angst against social networking is not entirely gone and now that there are a million others claiming their individual superiority and new nifty applications that get sued by toy manufacturing giants, I've decided that a known evil is better than an unknown possibility of a good time. Yes, I humbly accept that that makes no sense. It wasn't meant to.
And thus I'm back on the wild world web having decided to let nifty little applications determine my social life. Of course there's also the fact that compared to the real world, the illusion of the matrix is pretty good.
Anyway profile updated and random socially acceptable likes and dislikes are in situ and I can go back to ignoring the site.
In interesting news Madagascar 2 has finally arrived in our fair part of the world and much as i would like to see it... again... for the fourth time I think I shall pass. I can now recite King Julian's new and improved insanity when woken up from a dead slumber. I feel, deep inside, that it will not be appreciated by the hoi polloi around me. So I shall continue to watch it in the privacy of my laptop. Streaming is so cool. As are cheap dvds of the streamed videos. Except of some time lag in the audio which was, after much wrestling, fixed.
But as I wanted to say but as usual got sidetracked, Madagascar 2, some say is not as funny as the first installment. Nay. I refute thy claims, critic. King Julian of course has been put on steroids for his mental condition and it's worsened. The penguins are a trip.
Alex, Marty and this time even Gloria and Melman go into the usual sentiment trip and considering this time it's in Africa, some much self-discovery and emancipation and yada yada happens that serves only to distract us from the real hero.
Bernie Mac will be sorely missed.
Go watch. Watch it. Maurice, you naughty little monkey, shake my arm.
In other such things the Mekaal Hassan Band (which I remember mentioning) and Shafqat Amanat Ali's solo album (Tabeer) and to say the least very good. I'm not going to go into the cool production, the mature fusion of hindustani and rock and the very excellent voices in detail but you get the gist. Some disappointments though especially with Tabeer. Dum Ali Dum and Naina in particular lack any kind of substance. But like always it's worth a listen and some songs will stick on.
So there it is life in a nutshell. More whenever.

PS I'm back on facebook because some mental plans for ganging up and consuming insane amounts of alcohol are made and propagated therein. It's just easier to plan the hangover thus.

Vista.

So it comes to pass that my dad got himself a suitcase disguised as a laptop. Or a laptop disguised as a suitcase as the case may be. It said 15 (inches) but looks 17 (like most of the women I meet nowadays, I mean what is it with precociousness(?)) and runs on Vista. While I agree that Vista is pleasing to the eye and when given enough time, space and energy, performs like none other, but who has 40GB of harddisk space and 2GB of RAM to spare. And spare is the key word. If you have 2GB and you have Vista, then even Solitaire, which I strangely cannot find, doesn't move the cards like it should. But it looks good. That I have to give the boys at MS. Clean lines, transparent windows and good hardware intensive animation effects on opening, closing and copying and deleting. But the hyperactive security that apparently makes Vista so much more safer to buy things off of Ebay and the like is the one thing that bugs the life out of me. Any new software, anything deleted, any internet activity is questioned close to 3 times. And I don't yet know how to turn that off. I'm sure some smart ass somewhere is smirking and saying, "Dude, if you turn that off it becomes XP with cool graphics?" And considering I don't really give two hoots for cool graphics I think I'm going to stick to XP for a while. Call me old-fashioned but I think Vista in my life shall wait a while.

In other things, watched Die Hard 4. Full paisa vasool only. Bruce Willis quips and shoots his way through a million bad guys and one bad girl (maggie Q, I like.) and does stuff that would make the Boss (you know which one) look with a raised eyebrow and say, "I want an F35 to jump off a 20 wheeler truck onto whist some freeway all around me in collapsing. And I want it to look good."

Overall I'd give it about 3/5 for decent effects, good screenplay (what soopar whistle evoking dialogues) and bruce willis. Some sentiment gets dished out at random points through the movie which wasn't quite there in the first 3 movies but hell everyody gets old...

Also watched Dogma and came up with the conclusion (again) that Bennifer and Matt are brilliant and that movie in the midst of all the jokes hits a hard lesson home. Watch it if you haven't yet.

And finally the techies at my source of great internet connectivity this north of the Vindhyas set up a hardware firewall to prevent others such as myself from downloading copious quantities of someone else's intellectual property. And like the builders of that labyrinth, they can't bypass it. So many megabits of bandwidth lie unused and underutilized and I bleed...

Fear Of The Dark

It's been around for a while but I recently discovered a software that can replace Apple's Operating System on the iPod. Why? To make it more functional. Not that it'll cook breakfast or be a more active replacement for a spouse... Or even send emails or access the GPS to tell you where in the world in Carmen Sandiego. But what it can do is make file and music transfer a lot easier since it makes the 'Pod behave more like a hard drive than Apple's positively insane file system. And it can make the screen look like this.


This is the Vista Theme for those who haven't seen anything like it before, and there are more which look even better.
Add the options of using the device as a PDA (though typing involves scrolling through character by character), playing Games (maybe Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego, tetris for sure), easy file organisation a la the Creative Zen (as drive:\Artist\Album as opposed to F004 or whatever inane naming system the 'Pod already uses).
The only problem is I'm dead scared of hacking the iPod. Fooling around with Windows is not an issue. You can tweak, pull, rip to shreds anything at all and still get back to some bare bones version with only a bad memory of the incident. With the 'Pod I'm just not sure if I'll lose the 20GB of music, which is backed up somewhere but it's a Himalayan task to get all of it back and together with the proper tagging and album art and whatnot.
So here's the dilemma. To Rockbox or not to Rockbox.

More on the Orkut

It's like a online central park. There's people yelling and screaming at each other. There's people snogging in full view of the world, there are even specimens indulging in scrapsex, if it can be called that. After phone, cyber and bluetooth, now it's scrap sex. How depraved can humanity or whatever breeds in the inner recesses of networking sites get.
It's bad enough most people I know are socially inept in real life. On orkut that ineptitude just persists. Now we all know that the only way one can get someone else to appear interested in oneself is by bending the truth. At least when it comes to an online profile.
Tall, handsome, athletic, intelligent, rich, smart, funny the list goes on... Even then it's often once in about 200 profile views that someone is going to sit up and say hey here's a tall, handsome, athletic, intelligent, rich, smart, funny person to interact with. Maybe have scrapsex or something. Or perhaps coffee.
But no. In some weird ideal people will persist on writing things like I'm here for "dating (women)". We do realise that most people are twenty-something never-been-kisseds frustrated and often desperate. I think the term for that is horny. But this is a PG13 blog so if you are less than 13 years of age and don't have mommy or daddy around you this is where you press Alt+F4. Actually it was two lines ago but that makes it a catch-22.
Broadcasting that situation out to the world, getting back to the main point in debate, is not going to get a response. It's Catch 22 again.
And there's profile views to tell you which one of the denizens on orkut voluntarily or by error decided to browse through your page and you politely browse back and that's like eye's meeting. So you walk across the room, hesitantly, drink in hand, bumping into old friends but maintaining eye contact. Perhaps making a few new friends along the way with a mental note to check them out but all the time you're eyes are still on that person. And when finally the twain meet there's the all pervasive orkut pickup line - "Do you vant to make fraandship?" which is equivalent to an ooga-booga, if you know what I mean.
In essence though I'm guilty of being on orkut and I shall plead so on judgement day. It does give me enough reasons to laugh and occasionally someone might just message out of nowhere and then maybe things'll look up.
But here's the typical profile, collected from various sources and amalgamated to make the ultimate deal with instructions.
about me: (whatever you want, you're star sign, how cool you are? yada yada - creative writing. nobody ever believes a word but it just might be a good idea to write a good one here)

relationship status: single (duh?)

birthday: (if you're planning to lie here just make sure it matches with the star sign)

here for: (this is the dating (women) column)

children: (lie here)
ethnicity: (again whatever, make sure it matches the picture)

languages i speak: (a creative zulu, abo, ennui, not that's innuit etc would help)

religion: (nobody cares)

political view: very right-conservative - (this is not what you should be putting here)

humor: campy/cheesy, friendly, goofy/slapstick - (again, no difference)

sexual orientation: straight - (very important)

fashion: alternative, contemporary, natural - (lies - "percentage bags, and vernacular film watching pants" - I owe a friend for this.)

smoking: no
drinking: no
pets: i like pet(s)

living: with roommate(s), friends visit often - (with parents is a strict no no here too. Lie.)

the rest of the passions movies music thing is tough and go. try not to put in stuffed toys in your bedroom, or accessories for sexually deviant behaviour.
And this is turning into an advice column.

Just be yourselves. It'll give me something to laugh about.

Leaving wells alone

Many years ago when lounging in the corridors of the hostel where many of us boys became men, some persisted in staying boyish and others might actually have become women if they managed to lay their hands on the money for the surgery, a friend of mine asked me to solve a particularly noxious crossword clue. It was on the lines of not fiddling with water sources - Leave well alone. Of course it doesn't sound half as cool as it felt when I solved it but we aren't here to discuss whether or not I'm cool. On my usual aside there's a difference between thinking you're cool and being cool.

The point is leaving things to their natural state of progress, egress or entropy is not something we as a race have ever managed to do. My life and work to a large extent is founded on some intrepid man who decided that maybe cutting someone up could save his life. As opposed to poking clay dolls of his mortal enemies, or poking him with enemas as the case and civilization in question maybe. This troublesome meddling thankfully is not restricted to surgery, or to just what mother nature made. It extends everywhere. It would turn out that no self-respecting intelligent being can sit and watch a creation (of any body's - God, Nature, Other beings) and not meddle with it. To see how it works, to improve it and occasionally to just take it apart and see what's inside. Category III includes 5-8 year olds and pathologists.

Why is this relevant? It doesn't need to be but it is. Permit me to meander some more. I'm on a long exam-going leash that allows for random ruminations that may or may not be... relevant. But like I mentioned surgery aside, man's need to mess around with other men's creations has in a very broad way benefited us all. Sony, Open-Source Programming are just tips of the iceberg. How does one get that sentence right? Sony and open-source are on the same tip, so to speak of the iceberg, but most icebergs (including the famous one) don't just have one tip. English apparently is a very phunny language.

The missing Navbar (for those of you who're here for the first time, you'll never know) and the cool drop down menus are the result of people refusing to sit around and let someone else's code take over their lives. Their urge to prod, tweak and hack, ethically of course, established templates is what keeps us from settling into what would have just been another web page.

Not that this blog would win awards for best design, it's the spirit that makes a difference.

Hell it's made me want to learn html, javascript, css and now gml.

The new links acknowledge this. Thanks for the code snippets.

In less intense stuff, more new music - Snow Patrol. It shall be reviewed sometime. And Haiku.

Beta late than never

So blogger's gotten itself this brand new upgraded, beta functionality thing that would at some point of time become the alpha blogging service in the world, in tune with the rest of google's grand scheme to take over things. So despite this having issues on the lines of not being able to post via ftp servers and me not able to comment as a blogger on any other blogspot blog, I've decided to migrate. Those of you who tried accessing this space around dinner for about fifteen minutes a couple of days ago would know this already, those of you who didn't this is it. New and improved.

As is generally known thanks to my attempt at getting a comment box inline with the main post page I now know enough html to make a mess of things and not know how to set it right. It turns out that beta is a lot more complicated than that. True it has labels for each post and this might just be labelled general blade, which I guess most of the posts would be, but editing templates now requires an in depth knowledge of GML. Google Markup Language. See what I mean by world domination.
But cool things do exist. RSS feed subscription, so I don't have to depend on Feedblitz or Bloglet, just click on the link right at the bottom and I think you all would know when I updated. And the hierarchial display of previous posts on the sidebar.
Technicalities aside, Steve Irwin fell victim to one of the dangerous animals that he was chasing. It is a sad thing. Much as I detest snakes and other such relics of the evolutionary past that constantly remind us that we shouldn't be taking our pinnacle-of-evolution-status too lightly, he made them both entertaining and interesting. His trademark outfit, thick australian accent and unnerving tendency to piss off a poisonous reptile made him special. It's only right, I suppose that he died from a sting ray sting, doing what he loved most and did best. Go Steve!
Relics from my past keep visiting to haunt me. Orkut was bad enough (shall expound on my theory that if I don't stay in touch with certain sections of society, it's for a reason, some other time) and now I was reminded of this really irritating song called "Are you Jimmy Ray?" by none other than Jimmy Ray. Incidentally this also came up since the lyrics in the middle are on the lines of "Are you Sting Ray..." He looks like plastic man I thought. Do You?














A week remains.

Comment Box

After much HTML screwing around here's the comment box that Chait asked for. This is a test post so all ye who come by please feel free to comment and put the new feature to rigorous examination.

Much Thanks.

Geek

A geek ([giːk]) is a person who is fascinated, perhaps obsessively, by obscure or very specific areas of knowledge and imagination. (wiki, where else)

After much profound searching of cupboard and soul, I've come to the conclusion that I might be one. Of course I might also be a nerd. The dispute continues in international semantic forums once they come to a decision regarding who is a geek and who's a nerd I'll add an addendum to this post clarifying that controversy. But as of now for argument's sake let's assume that I'm a geek.
A spate of cupboard delving happened a couple of days ago. It happens once in every ten or so years like the Kumbh Mela or Swift-Tuttle or Halley's on steroids/nitro-boosters. And like the Kumbh it's a time of rediscovery and often just Discovery. But isn't the Kumbh about separation at birth? Nevermind.
So I pulled my spelunking gear out took two courses of prophylactic antifungals and antibiotics, some four immunisations against newer drug resistant mutations of anthrax and did a Radio City - dove in.
Found the following that led me to confirm my diagnosis of geekness.
- Learn Elvish (after JRR Tolkein) in 30 days, with margin notes in the first ten pages, in pencil. In my handwriting. I don't remember much Quenya except for elen sila lumenen, omen tielvo, which is "a star shines brightly on our meeting". But evidence would state that I tried learning it. Also I feel strongly when in the Preface (yeah who reads those) of the single-book paperback edition of Lord of the Rings, Tolkien shows distress and displeasure at the errata in the edition. And joy that people around the world write letters to him in Quenya. Or Sindarin.

On an aside, someone telephoned the man up and he answered, "Hello, this is JRR talking..."

- DOS Manuals. From the time when graphics was high end, monitors were green phosphor, screensavers were a necessity (lest A:\> got permanently burned onto the top left corner of the monitor. That was also the time when Harddisks were an extravagance, Windows ran on dos, chatting meant smileys like :-) :-( >:- and :-[ (my personal favourite - stands for dracula), and downloading porn was a nightmare involving tabbing across pages of text to find something like [IMAGE] downloading it with all expectation only to find it was an advertisement for cheese.

On an aside, it's like taking pictures with a regular camera (with film) and then waiting for the film to develop and print. The anticipation of the picture and the realisation that it looks nothing like what you wanted in the first place. Also downloading on dialup those days took almost as long as getting a negative developed.

Back to the good old days story. Mice ate cheese and could be trapped with pieces of coconut or vada. Which reminds me there's a blighter running about the house need to set that trap.

- Some secondhand hard cover edition of Silmarillion.

Watched House and found errors. Streptomycin tablets.
Watched ER and found errors. Zavanelli's manouvre for Shoulder Dystocia, who does nonsense like that anymore. I mean Zavanelli, not watching ER.

And a desperate need to read the History of Middle Earth.
An understanding and appreciation of statements like "May the 4th be with you" and joy at seeing a list of the top 10 puns. And here and here.
A raised eyebrow at Platypus' album names - Ice Cycles and When Pus comes to Shove.

A part of my brain says I need to get a life the rest is trying to smother it.

Nai Valaraukar tye-mátar. Hannon le.
(may balrogs eat you. thank you)

.Net

The internet, the web the vast repository of utterly useless and occasionally enlightening information is the worst thing that happened to mankind. True, I may not have been writing this and perhaps you wouldn't be reading this if it wasn't for the wonderful connectivity that we all share. Also true that many people with otherwise utterly meaningless existences who'd have otherwise been culled from the human race by ennui or invention, now have a platform to do what they do best.
For that past month or so or perhaps more I've been trailing autos all over the city with mouthshut.com painted boldly on the rear end of the canopy. Thought it was a polite way of saying the opposite of horny ok, please. Well this is Bangalore, the heart of the IT boom and the BPO escalation, which would explain the cool ".com" suffix to whatever the automan wanted to say.
Like iwantsocialjustice.com.
Or iwantunlimitedbeer.com.
You get the drift. It turns out that mouthshut is a product review site where all and sundry, essentially clones of the purpose-free man who started the site, can write in about which ever product they wish. Choice picks from there include reviews of Skyline (NEPC), the Sony w550i and almost every other product. They are looking for a review of Nostradamus-The Lost Manuscript by Ottavio Cesare Ramotti. Feel free to do the needful when you want to. I don't know if either the product or the site pays you for it. If you do get paid though, feel free to let me in on some of the moolah. Of course there are google ads on the side that continue to freak me out.
Then linked to some even more inane stuff. Blogthings.com. Cool stuff to put on your blog. Like a personalized monster, a tarot card, some normalcy indicator and enough weird stuff that you wouldn't want on your blog. Turns out, for the record that I'm 55% normal, have the Sun as my tarot and would've been Batman. Not bad for a start but refused to look through what mixed drink I'd be or how evil I was. I know the answer to one and couldn't care about the other. If you do go there, again feel free to let me know your results for the dating purity test and perhaps what is your japanese subculture.
A clock has been put up for those of you who didn't notice yet. It's black, digital and tells you the time in India. First thought it would be one of those smart things that would pick up the time from the system clock but that's apparently invasion of privacy. Google knowing everything you searched for since you discovered them is not. It's the way of the world.

Still lost in Zappa and Shankar.

And what is the basis behind all chinese philosophy?
To Confus-us.