After a long hiatus …

… during which the world seems to have taken a U-turn on its head, I blog again.

Manchester United stutter after their money making trip to Riyadh and drop points drawing with Spurs and losing at home to City. That the loss was on the 50th anniversary of the Munich disaster is a matter of further chagrin. The logo free retro jerseys and one minute silences are all right but IMO a win would have been a better tribute to possibly the finest set young players England has ever seen,  Fergie’s Fledglings and Wenger’s Wedglings included. Capello on the other hand seems to be instilling the winning mentality, the lack of which is the latest scapegoat for England’s failure in international competitions. Now that Joe Cole has made the left sided position a matter of non-issue they had to find a new excuse but seem to be running out of options here.

Big fish attempts to eat big fish fight big fish. Microsoft, the big bad wolf seems to be very keen on eating the lost and wandering Red Riding Hood that now is Yahoo!. With no presence whatsoever in the web domain MS is seeing its leadership position in matters relating to personal computing erode away at rate faster than Carl Lewis record breaking sprint and Yahoo!, though a rambling and directionless firm, has enough user base to give a semblance of competition to Google. Now whether Google is the benign woodcutter or an evil warlock is yet to be seen. But the fate of Red Riding Hood in this story seems to be sealed.

Financial markets continue to their Samudra Manthan, with each new day bringing joy and sorrow in some measure. Indian markets have taken to liking the sine wave functions, rising and falling with the phases of the moon. On the global front, UBS seems to be the hardest hit institution in every financial crisis. They seemed to have discovered some earlier unknown positions in subprime mortgages. Talking of the unknown, Societe Generale or SocGen suddenly discovered that they had been Leesoned by a rogue trader who manipulated their effective management controls to plunge the bank into almost a crisis. If they were a little more aware of their trader’s activities than and not of their obvious frenchness, matters might not have come to this stage.

Lastly, me has been not reading and trying to get a new job so that I can read books and see even after I pass out of IIMA. Hopefully, I will blog again soon.

The "Drunken Sailor Gait” Robot

Imagine a robot that seemingly crashes to the ground every instant and  yet assiduously manages to overcome the obstacles that come in it’s path without any effort. That does not rely on wheels for locomotion in rough terrain. Researchers at NASA have developed such a machine.

A key challenge in the development of walking machines is how to effectively maintain the position of the center of gravity. Too much shifting of the CG would make any machine or human topple. Walking comes to us so naturally that the complexity of the process is not immediately evident to us. Wheels are so popular because a fixed base with wheels keeps the CG within spatial limits and thus allows people to concentrate on locomotion rather than the stability aspect of the problem.

What the researchers above have done is to convert one of the greatest challenges in the area of locomotion studies into an opportunity. With a robot that naturally falls, maintainance of the CG position ceases to be a challenge. Flexible limbs give the robot its shape shifting capabilities. This is thinking out of the box at its very best.

technorati tags:technology, robotics

Blogged with Flock

Retrospectives – Hamara Bajaj

There was a time when Bajaj scooters ruled the roost on Indian roads. Supers and Chetaks were the order of the day; Lambys had become unfashionable and Vespas tried to compete but just. And bikes with 100 km a litre had not captured the imagination of the masses.

If in those days one had to picture a quintessential middle class Indian family, it would be a snap of a Bajaj scooter with: the father driving,  trying hard to concentrate on the task at hand – that of herding his family safely to their destination; the younger kid, standing in the front, wind rushing through the hair, elation written on the face at this chance of discovering the world outside; the mother, sitting sideways, clucthing the stepney tire, with a rather vacant expression; and the elder kid sandwiched between both parents, twisting his head this side and the other, desperately trying not to miss the view on account of his position. Driving further this picture into the Indian psyche was the famous “Hamara Bajaj” advert; the idea behind which was clearly that a family isn’t complete (or middle enough) without a Bajaj.

And what a vehicle it was. Not particularly appealing to look at, it made up for the lack in the looks by its sheer versatility in usage, its durability on Indian roads and the fact that whatever the problem be it would probably be solved by tilting the vehicle for 30 seconds at an angle of thirty degrees. A popular joke -  “The Indian rocket did not fire. What to do? Just tilt it for a second.” – only helped to reinforce the hold of this vehicle on the Indian mind.

This picture however has gradually faded into obscurity (atleast for me); the once ubiquitous scooter gradually getting replaced by the more fuel efficient bikes; first Hero Honda and then followed by Bajaj Kawasaki amongst others. Therefore, on my way to Airport Road, idling away my time in an auto, I was pleasantly surprized to see this picture in front of me in life. Where earlier it would have looked perfectly natural on an Indian road, today it looked incongrous in a menagerie of vehicles; Santros, Ikons, Pulsars, Autos. And I was struck by how quickly images fade away, confined to the dusty environs that many like to call history. Till once in a while someone gets them out of that cobwebbed corner of memory, glances upon it reminiscing about the days gone by, before casting it back to the same corner.

What then has replaced hamara bajaj? Is there something that would define the state, aspiration and the hopes of the Indian middle class  today? Or is the idea itself anachronistic – with the middle class so diverse as to escape a minimalist generalization of one picture?

However, I believe that this picture remains important milestone in the history of Indian society. It signalled the mass acceptance of an urban lifestyle and of the nuclear family which were important precursors to the widespread changes that liberalization of the economy entailed. In a country of such vast cultural differences, it remains one of the few symbols that was once understood all across the country. If only for this reason, the picture of Hamara Bajaj will remain etched in our memories.

digi-self-evaluation

I picked up the following from Apoorva’s blog and bizarrely both of us seem to have similar tastes … may be thats why I read his blogs
Heck one of these days I might end up writing something on the nature and popularity of these “What you are?” tools

Your Quirk Factor: 82%

You’re beyond quirky… You’re downright bizarre. You’ve lost touch with social norms and what’s appropriate. And you’re loving every minute of it!

How Quirky Are You?

The Movie Of Your Life Is Film Noir

So what if you’re a little nihilistic at times? Life with meaning is highly over-rated. Your best movie matches: Sin City, L. A. Confidential, Blade Runner [shit ... I really like all of these ]

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

Those were the days …

Reading this post (picked up from Desipundit), I was suddenly transported to an age when the world used to revolve around waiting for the next batch of Raj Comics series to come out. This was before Superman, Spiderman, Batman were known to me; and Tintin and Asterix would have then sound like Greek and Roman philosophers. I had grown fairly bored with the Amar Chitra Katha stack in my house and had completely missed the Diamond comics revolution. So I had jumped straight into the Raj Comics bandawagon – Nagraj, Super Commando Dhruv, Bhokal, Paramanu and later Doga became the super heroes of my childhood.

As with most super heroes – most of these had fairly angsty beginnings; Nagraj was a mutant developed to be a hired killer, Dhruv had his parents killed in front of his eyes (Batmanish I know, but who really cares), Doga had his entire akhada wiped out by a rival gang and so on. Somehow all these incidents made them mentally indestructible endowing them with a will and powers beyond mere mortals. Most of these guys were based out of Rajnagar, except Bhokal who displayed his powers in the ancient world. I personally liked Dhruva the best, he had no special powers per se (except that he could communicate with animals) and succeeded mainly because of the agility of his body and mind. Nagaraj was what I started with; but the series became drab after he went around the world eliminating the different villians who had gathered in the first comic bidding for his services as an assasin. Dhruva series on the other hand continued to be interesting for a much longer time.

Talking of super heroes, can we not talk about super villians? Nagraj’s villians had a global flavour; american gangsters, african poachers, egyptian mummies included. Their motives were mostly power and rarely destruction; they were almost never competent without their armies and henchmen whom Nagraj quickly and efficiently dispatched with the snakes out of his hand or when stretched with that ultimate weapon, Visfoonkar (poison breath). Dhruvas’ were more classy (at least after the first few ones). They were mainly scientists gone mad (Dr. Virus, Grand Master Robo, Bauna Vaman, Chumba) or insane protectors hunting for the objects of their affections (Kirigi, Samri); they were people who had merely flipped, not necessarily born bad. Sometimes these heroes (primarily Nagraj and Dhruva) came together to fight a common evil (Lady Killer). That was a lot of fun. You would two for the price of one !!!

When I started, these comics were priced at Rs. 7 /- for the normal ones and Rs. 15 /- for the digests which were thicker, involved the more glamorous and deadly villians and had glossy covers. Every month five of such issues would come out and the local bookshop would lend out each for a day at Re 1 /- or Rs 2 /- for the normal ones and digests respectively. I still remember me and my brother tossing coins as to who would get to read first. Another vivid memory is that of us playing the comic vs comic game. We would each pick out one comic and pit the characters of each against the other in some kind of battle in our minds and somehow come come to conclusion that one character would win. Almost always the person who took “Kirigi ka Kahar” won; primarily because it had duplicates of the major characters.

I remember reading these till 10th standard but seriously followed the series till around 8th. First Hardy Boys and then the Forsyths, Archers and Ludlums took over their places in my bookshelves. And though it has been close to 10 years since I picked up one of those, the images remain vivid in my memory and only a small push is needed to trigger a wave of nostalgia.

New Media vs Old Media; a revolution?

Reading the special survey of the Economist on new media, one will probably end up believing this. The above statement begs the question, what exactly is “New Media”? What does it change? And exactly why is it revolutionary?

For a moment let us look into media without distinguishing between “new” and “old”. The primary function of this entity is to filter and aggregate useful and interesting information and serve them to consumers. This is in effect a kind of a circular linking because any information is generated by the masses and not “media” and to them it is ultimately passed. In the past, however, technological limitations warranted a centralised structure (with the media companies sitting at the top) so that events distributed in time, space and domain are not missed out by others not subscribed to the same; every thing that was to be distributed became an industry – movies, news and music – dominated by few players.

The crux of the arguement presented in the survey is that due to technological advances and recent developments the existing structure of the media industry is under threat and that the existing players have to radically change or risk being outdated. Revolutions are a natural consequence of power getting centralized and concentrated in too few hands that hold all the cards. It is a disruption – sometimes gradual and peaceful and on other occasions violent and sudden, of the status quo, of the established norms, of the ingrained ways of being. While publishing managed to free the masses from the grip of the liturgy making education accessible and affordable, over centuries it has itself turned into a mafia (reading Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent, will make this clearer than daylight), which has stodgidly refused to either improve or change the with the times. And they have been able to do this because the barriers to entry remain unscalable for new entrants.

What the so called new media – blogs, wikis and podcasts – has done is take a dig at the existing hierarchy using methods completely alien to them. They leverage the increasingly ubiquitous presence computers and broadband connections to sidestep the entrenched players. Internet with some help from companies like Google and Yahoo! (providing services like Blogger, del.icio.us and Flickr) has allowed them  to reach out to the masses without even investing an extra buck, revolutionizing both content publishing and delivery. Everyone today with a broadband connection can become a publisher (as I am being with this blog) and similarly anyone can become a consumer without relying on the media giants for distribution.

Another huge change in the “new media” is that pieces of information published rarely remains static; any information published is merely the starting thread for a conversation between the publisher and the subscriber. The content is in the truest sense dynamic, atleast for wikis and blogs.

Since everyone is now able to publish and each information snippet ensues a conversation the basic challenge of media companies change from information gathering to information sieving; separating the wheat from the chaff. Information changes from discrete entities to a continuum and search along this continuum becomes a task of primary importance. Another valid question is, how does one compare the wisdom of the masses to the wisdom of one known knowledgeable man? Does the name “Albert Einstein” at the end of an article entitled “Relativity” mean nothing and is rated equally with one written by a high school geek just learning about Relativity? While wisdom of the masses is all good, when the time of reckoning comes how many will stand by it? Good search techniques should ensure that the name “Albert Einstein” does indeed mean something.

And so we come to the question of what are media companies? Given the trend of search becoming so important are Google and Yahoo! media companies? Is MS with live.com trying to become one? Though each of them is trying to solve the problem of search in a different manner, this point of view is not without justification. Additionally Google and Yahoo! generate most of their revenues [>98% and ~85% respectively] from advertisements the standard revenue source for all media companies.

However as the new media marches on against the strongholds of the media strongmen, there is a chance that the flagbearers of the new wave, the Googles and the Yahoo!s themselves are in some danger of being overrun. Most of these companies rely on huge and costly infrastructure in the backend to drive their innovations. The availability of building such backend support is a barrier to entry for new players. However with the arrival of services such as Amazon’s S3 this might not remain true for a long time.

It is however again important to note that the aim of the new media and their publishers (not pushers) is rarely to generate commercial gains. These innovations reduce the entry levels for people trying to gain knowledge and give them atleast a flavour of the topic. That way they help increase the market base for the traditonal companies because somebody who becomes really interested in Programming will buy a boxed set of Art of Computer Programming rather than reading my rants on the same. Businesses are already maturing towards these synergies; we need to look no further than the record giants and Apple for the iTunes and the still in rumour phase linkup between Apple and Disney for examples.

Technorati Tags: media

Two eventful days …

The last 2 days of my uneventful life have been pretty eventful.

First, I got calls from all IIMs (Indian Institute for Managements). The process of waiting for the results was nothing less than excruciating and the final hours were downright nail biting. Ya ya I know, I make it sound like a Hitchcock thriller but the suspense was no less intense for me. It was made worse with the IIMs announcing that the results would be declared on the 12th of April. Hence started the watch from around 11 p.m. of the 11th. Calcutta was the first. Sharp midnight. Through and a sigh of relief. Something atleast. And then the ordeal started. It was made worse by the fact that IIM Bangalore had put a final calls link on their home page without really linking to anything. Refreshing IIMs homepage every 30 minutes while trying to work on bugs is not really my idea of fun. Finally gave up and saw “Baton Baton Main” for the second or third time on Zee Movies. And then devoid of sleep and hope of seeing results, started to work. Around 8 in the morning news comes that the results will come after 11. So went to sleep, instructing roomies to wake me up at the appointed time. And hardly had I slept for 45 minutes when I was rudely awakened with the words “abbe tera A main ho gaya”; and all I could say was “whatever”. And then the flurry started; B, L, K and I followed. Went to the office around noon. The news is yet to sink in.

The second does not have an happy ending. Hardly had I started to work when news reached that Dr. Rajkumar, the iconic Kannada actor was no more. Since his residence was right behind my office and at the minimum, thousands of people were expected in an outpouring of grief, we decided to close shop and head home. Had to madly scramble up energy to draw money and stack up the house with food for atleast the night and the next day. What has followed since then has shook my belief of Bangalore being a cosmopolitan haven. Bangalore has been turned into a ghost town with burnt vechiles and glass offices with broken windows with an unspoken curfew in place. Some semblance of life returned in late evening with people appearing again on the streets. In the afternoon as the body of the legendary actor was passing before my eyes towards its final resting spot, I saw for the first time in my life , a mob; and it was not like in the TV. From my balcony I could see the individuals, laughing all the way as they clashed with police and ransacked the In&Out store as well as the petrol bunk next to my house. Theirs was not a farewell of loving fans to a great actor. They were just lumpen elements out to have some fun, hiding behind the grieving masses. Grossly outnumbered the police shot teargas shells and barely managed to control them but not before they had done the damage. I find it hideous that such events mar the end of an era, the final journey of a person for whom humanity came before everthing else. A person who had fought for Kannada language and culture, but with dignity. The people of Karnataka could not have given their hero, their champion a final farewell any worse.

Which Movie am I??

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

I was hoping I would get GodFather or something like that

Trying out this post from Flock

Blogging might become much more easier than ever before. The reason: Flock is here. A browser based on the Firefox codebase it makes many of the standard browser tasks much easier. As I was going through the feature set, I realised that what Flock has done is not introduce any new technologies but make the existing ones more accessible and easier to use. However big a fan of del.icio.us you may be [I am a big one], it would be preposterous to say it is user friendly. Using it well requires the understanding of nuances of tagging and folksonomies as opposed to our folder based taxonomic way of thinking. It is not a easy thing. What Flock aims to deliver is a bridge between these new concepts and the existing ones, making the user experience seamless and yet so much more enriching.

As for me I might finally be convinced to stop writing on one note and then copying it to blogger.

What am I ??

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.

Postmodernist		94%
Cultural Creative		63%
Materialist		63%
Modernist		56%
Existentialist		50%
Fundamentalist		38%
Romanticist		38%
Idealist		31%

What is Your World View? (updated)
created with QuizFarm.com

ps:: I have to say that this is pretty accurate.

My photos

After months of deliberation I finally created a account in Flickr to upload some of the photos I have taken with my [now not so new] camera. Link

Bouquets are welcome. Brickbats even more.

[Football] La Liga 2004 – 05: The Interesting Teams

“Viva Barcelona” or whatever the equivalent be in Catalunya should be the chant of all fans of the Primera liga. For this has truly been the season for Frank Rijkaard and his wonderful attractive brand of soccer. While in rest of the major leagues it has been mean defences (Juventus, Chelsea) that have triumphed, Barca have played throughout the season an attacking brand of football that epitomizes the epithet “The Beautiful Game”. The best part of the entire campaign is that Barcelona FC achieved their first title in 6 years after losing many crucial players to injury (Sylvinho, Edmilson, Gerard, Larsson etc). Their exit at the hands of Chelsea from the Champions League might be the only sore spot in this years’ campaign but I think it did them good by allowing them to concentrate solely on the league. For the race to title heated up in the end and any more slips might have been harmful for Barcelona. However the team still needs to find it defensive bearings – for success in Europe, as teams like Chelsea and Milan have demonstrated, is based on a mean backline. Also they need to reduce the profligacy in front of the goal. But for now, its party time in Barcelona.

Is it the last flourish of the famed “Los Galaticos”? Probably so. Luis Figo is leaving, Zidane talking of early retirement and rumours about Ronaldo, Beckham and Raul abound. Occasionally brilliant, sometimes mediocre and most of the times just average sums up the season for Real Madrid. With a set of players named above all that is needed is one glimpse of genius to win a match. However the team looked jaded most of the time and was pale version of the all conquering armada it was it was a couple of years back. Last year failures for Madrid were blamed on their defensive frailties. Summer transfers Jonathan Woodgate and Walter Samuel were supposed to strengthen the backline. It did not work. Samuel never lived upto his nickname “the Wall”, he earned at Roma. And as for Woodgate, he did not even play a single game. But the problem lay not so much in defense as in the holding midfielder role – a position where Makalele played in the heyday of this Real team. Christmas signing Thomas Gravesen was brought in to fix this leak but probably too late for Barca had surged ahead by miles. However it did help them to get to the second spot and automatic qualification for Champions League with a series of consistent displays. Changes are due in this club and they will probably happen this summer with a large scale clearout and introduction of new blood.

Valencia were the winners of the past season and the summer signings of Corradi, Di Vaio and Fiore seemed to make a strong team even stronger. But what use is a aircraft without a rudder. For that was the state of Valencia throughout the season. They inexplicably let Rafa Benitez go and brought in Claudio Ranieri. It seems the Benitez had differences with the board on his transfer kitty. He had been crying out for a quality striker for years, and the board always showed him the empty coffers. But when Ranieri came they suddenly got a cornucopia and dished out quite a sum for the three aforementioned Italians. Valencia however never got into the Ranieri mode. Their game in the past seasons was the Benitez brand of restrained possession football interspersed with quick counters. Ranieri’s English long ball game just did not catch on at the Mestalla. Plus in the beginning of the season they had their two most effective offensive players, Vicente and Aimar, injured. The Italians never settled in, apparently due to discord in the training room due to their inflated wages. And Valencia went downhill. Ranieri was sacked mid-season but the team did not regain its composure and the champions of last year might be out of Europe in the coming season.

A spent force? Probably the term describes Deportivo La Coruna better than most. Last year was their swansong when they reached the semi-finals of the Champions league, eliminating giants AC Milan after a 4-0 win in the Riazor. And then it went downhill. However their problems were not thrust upon them overnight. The squad was tottering last year. Internal strife was rampant. And things reached a head when Pandiani was benched and subsequently shipped to England. No escape for these guys unless they start building up a new squad. In any case they are doomed to a few seasons in wilderness now.

Where Valencia and La Coruna have faltered teams like Villareal, Sevilla and Espanyol have gone strength to strength. Villareal look a good bet for qualifying into Champions League this year. Their heroes are two rejects. Forlan who had forgotten where the goal was in Old Trafford is suddenly finding the back of the net on a regular basis. But the real catalyst has been Juan Roman Riquelme, the Barca reject once touted as the best thing to come out of Argentina since one Diego Maradona, who with his vision and reading has the maximum assists in La liga. For Sevilla ex-Valencia striker Ricardo Oliviera does the striking, though their success is based on a more solid defensive approach based on the excellent season of Sergio Ramos. No wonder Real Madrid are said to on lookout for him. And Espanyol, the forgotten Barcelona club, might not be so forgotten after all. With the current standings they will edge out Valencia out of Europe. No mean feat definitely.

Laptop Waptop and metal debates …

Me got a new toy … yesss, you guessed it, a brand new laptop (A dell Inspiron 5160) … A big thank you to PI, my new workplace after one and half years in Talisma (some of my friends even think that I shifted jobs to get a laptop).

Anyway a new comp meant that I had to re-aggregate my entire music collection, which though a painful task led to my re-prioritizing my collection. The stuff that I rarely listen to remained in the CDs while the good old bands like Metallica and Maiden got back their rightful place. Also re-surfed the net looking for some quality discussion and new stuff on metal. Found this excellent debate. I agree with the debate on the principle that metal should always have that outpouring of energy in a slightly rebellious or seditious fashion. It is this energy which defines this genre of music. Also Metal is by far the most overtly individualistic of all musical genres. Individuality here is revered and the lack of it is enough to tag artists as “also rans”. It is this aspect of metal which probably explains why metalheads are amongst the most colorful and controversial artists.

Home and back

After almost a year, I managed to get a week and a half off to visit my parents in my native place. Technology has made communication simpler and accessible but definitely is still far from the day when it can distort our realities into what we want. Anyway my stint at home as is the custom consisted primarily of four activities in any random order: Sleeping and Eating (primary activities) and Reading and Visiting (secondary activities).

The first 2 do not merit any justification. Visiting, hmmm…  It seemed that this time everybody I have known in my 22 years of existence was in town and wanted to meet me. Actually I was genuinely happy to see some old faces, uncles who used to buy you candies or aunties who gave you that extra sweet when you went to their place. But in some cases the familiarity felt like overkill. I would have rather slept at home.

And finally reading … My vacation reading list (including to and fro journey times ….)

1. Rommel by Desmond Young – An excellent account of the exploits of The Desert Fox by a British officer. Also throws some light on how the uniform branding of the Germans in WW2 as Nazi  is both unfortunate and wrong.

2. Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre – The new age “Catcher in the Rye”, Vernon is a cross between Holden Caulfield and one those boys in BAckstreet BoYz. Again highly readable if not for anything else then for the slandering dysfunctional humor.

3. Phantoms in the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran – Amongst the best popular science books I have laid my hands on and also probably amongst the most accessible. Starting from extraordinary neurological cases Dr. Ramachandran manages to wriggle out facts and hint at truths on the very basis of our existence, the human mind.

4. And finally managed to go through 10 chapters of Automata theory and languages by Ullman and co as well as a similar number of chapters from the OS book.

And now I am back …. Looking at a change …

 

 

Who am I ??

Merci Vibs ….

Seer

The ULTIMATE personality test
brought to you by Quizilla

I am Butch.. my name ain’t mean shit…

Pulp fiction remains one of those movies which I apotheosize. Thanks to kalyan.. I now know which is my character in pulp fiction

Check out your PF character at http://www.pyrrha.org/pulp/

Tired of being underappreciated and manipulated by powerful “others,” you fight back. Though possesssing a cold, violent outside, you have a soft, scentimental inside. You love your partner, you cherish family heirlooms, and you want nothing more than to be geniunely happy — but you don’t mind having to kill a couple of nimrods who happen to clutter your path. Take the What Pulp Fiction Character Are You? quiz.

Blogging again … at last

Not that I was really busy or anything. But a few notable incidents have happened since I last blogged.

For starters I broke my hand. It all happened in a extremely innocuous way. I was playing football as I do on most evenings and we were almost closing when trying to fight for the ball I tripped and fell. This happens atleast 3-4 times daily but this time I fell rather awkwardly on my left wrist resulting in what the doctor termed as a burst fracture. To my mechanical mind it looked like a simple case of impact failure when the end of one bone hitting the other caused a crack in one of them. Takes a lot of force to do something like this and I guess I must have fallen with a lot of momentum (with my weight not unlikely) or I have turned into Mr. Brittle Bones.

Anyway the upshot of the whole incident being that my left forearm will be in plaster till the middle of November. No footer and typing is a pain in the ass. Anyway now after almost 3 weeks I can get some modicum of normalcy back since I can move my fingers and so typing has become as lot easier. Anyway I hope this gives some impetus to the my frequency of blogging.

 

Now playing: Simply Red – Lady Godiva’s Room

Hobby being your job …

Could Your Hobby Be Your Job?

Leaving books in the wild ….

I started on Google searching for more info on Ursula Le Guin’s EarthSea series, and landed up on this site …. http://www.bookcrossing.com/

Now what is bookcrossing … Very simple …

• X reads a book.
• X goes to the site, reviews the book and announces that it is in wild. The latter words mean that X just gives away the book, just leaving it away in a public place.
• Y also a book crosser, sees that the book he wanted for so long is in the wild… and nearby …
• Y drives across, picks up the book, updates the status on the site and when done repeats the cycle.

In their own words …

The 3 R’s of BookCrossing

1. Read a good book (you already know how to do that)
2. Register it here (along with your journal comments), get a unique BCID (BookCrossing ID number), and label the book
3. Release it for someone else to read (give it to a friend, leave it on a park bench, donate it to charity, “forget” it in a coffee shop, etc.), and get notified by email each time someone comes here and records journal entries for that book. And if you make Release Notes on the book, others can Go Hunting for it and try to find it!

Does this work?? I dunno but what I realised is that the people who are affiliated to this site are genuine book lovers, who realise that rather than holding on to a book that you have read and are not rereading, it is better to give it away.

Btw, there is a copy of Heidi lying around in a Bombay local train, in the ladies compartment … Maybe you can get lucky …

Gotcha …

Finally got the song I have been searching for all this time … after seeing Lars Von Trier excellent movie … Nevers fails to move me …

the lyrics follow :

i’VE SEEN iT ALL

I’ve seen it all, I have seen the trees,
I’ve seen the willow leaves dancing in the breeze
I’ve seen a friend killed by a friend,
And lives that were over before they were spent.
I’ve seen what I was – I know what I’ll be
I’ve seen it all – there is no more to see!

You haven’t seen elephants, kings or Peru!
I’m happy to say I had better to do
What about China? Have you seen the Great Wall?
All walls are great, if the roof doesn’t fall!

And the man you will marry?
The home you will share?
To be honest, I really don’t care…

You’ve never been to Niagara Falls?
I have seen water, its water, that’s all…
The Eiffel Tower, the Empire State?
My pulse was as high on my very first date!
Your grandson’s hand as he plays with your hair?
To be honest, I really don’t care…

I’ve seen it all, I’ve seen the dark
I’ve seen the brightness in one little spark.
I’ve seen what I chose and I’ve seen what I need,
And that is enough, to want more would be greed.
I’ve seen what I was and I know what I’ll be
I’ve seen it all – there is no more to see!

You’ve seen it all and all you have seen
You can always review on your own little screen
The light and the dark, the big and the small
Just keep in mind – you need no more at all
You’ve seen what you were and know what you’ll be
You’ve seen it all – there is no more to see!

 

Now playing: Radiohead – I’ve Seen It All (w/Bjork)

A neat idea on group dynamics ….

tompeters! leadership training development project management

and something that I really believe in ….

.NET Developer’s Journal

.NET Developer’s Journal: “erformance tuning for real-world applications often involves activities geared towards finding bottlenecks: in code, in the network transport layer, and at transaction boundaries. However, these techniques alone cannot solve the dreaded problem of uniformly slow code, which surfaces when large bottlenecks have been resolved but the code still exhibits inadequate performance. This is code that has been written without attention to correct usage, often by junior programmers, in the”

In theatre – The Woman in Black

Yesterday evening was most productively spent in attending the play “The Woman in Black” written by Stephen Mallatratt based on the novel of the same name by Susan Hill and excellently directed by Robin Herford, who incidentally has directed every single cast of the play at West End since 1989.

The plot is gripping. A young solicitor, Arthur Kipps, is asked by his senior partner to settle the papers of one of their clients, the recently deceased Alice Drablow. Mrs Drablow lived in some of part of the British Isles which Mr. Kipps admits he had “never heard of till an hour ago”. He however sets out in his errand in rather high spirits thinking that it will be nice diversion from the fog and grime of London. How little he knows what fate awaits him in the Eal Marsh house beyond the Nine lives causeway where Mrs. Drablow had taken up solitary residence till her death. Years later Mr. Kipps now an old man, takes it up to tell his story to his near and dear with the help of an actor who will play Arthur Kipps. It is actually from this point that the narrative starts and the continuous switch between the real and the acted parts makes for a interesting aside in the play.

The Woman in Black does not rely on magnificent and huge props or sets for the effect. Rather the chilling and sometimes terrifying atmosphere by the means of innovative lighting and awesome sound effects. Indeed, the characters take a dig at the use of lavish props when discussing how the hell will they get a pony and trap onto the stage. And the acting was of the highest standard to say the least.

All in all it was experience to remember and I am rather grateful to Nishta for pulling to the last show of this amazing play, which otherwise I would have surely missed.

ps:: In typical British tongue-in-cheek style Robin thanked the audience at the end for making if aware of various aspects of Indian life including the ring tones of their mobiles.

Now playing: Epica – Feint

Metal radio

Finally got the metal storm radio thingy working … I had earlier tried with winamp 2.x and 3.0 but winamp 5 seems to have taken care of the problems.

Being on not a very high bandwidth line allows me to listen to the songs only at 24 kbps but it does sound pretty decent. The best thing about the radio station is that you can queue in your own requests and they have a huge collection to chose from. And that they do not stick only one form or style. Black, Death, Prog, Speed, Symphonic they play it all. Provided of course someone says its metal.

MetalStorm Radio rulez ……..

Now playing: Tristania – Crushed Dreams (Metal Storm Radio – Experience the Storm! 24/7 Requests!)

The bike trip …

Went on my first bike trip to Chunchi falls and Mekedattu, some 100 odd kms from Bangalore, last weekend. You can find the log here.

Got BlogJet …

Finally got a desktop tool for Blogging in blogger.com …. BlogJet looks the part till now. It even has a detect music feature .

Kudos to Nari for the discovery …

Now playing: Pink Floyd – Shine On You Crazy Diamond

What is BlogThis! ?

“Blog this!” is cool …. gives almost all the basic functionality of the desktop client. I guess that this is in the development phase and many new features can be expected to make this very much like a desktop client. Users will remain users… Give them something they ask for, they ask more.

Also checked out the MSN messenger (BETA version) on the web. Pretty neat. Very much like the Desktop client, not only in functionality but also in look and feel. Genuine effort has been put in by MS in making the existing users comfortable with the web client. Alerts and customized friends list yet to be implemented.

Thanks to Ajay for the above.

ps:: Just read that Gerard Pique (the new ManU youngster from Barca) might be playing in the Arsenal v/s Manchester United match today. 17 yrs and at the centre of Man U’s defence …. awesome achievement. This dude must be something. Hope Viera does not leave Arsenal. Not because I like the Gunners but I dislike the Les Merengues more.

“Bounce” in US presidential elections

Watching CNN tonight, I came across this very peculiar term in the US election jargon, “BOUNCE”. With my limited faculties I comprehended bounce as the amount of upward inflection the popularity ratings of a candidate recieved after any convention. The one in question being that of John Kerry’s in Boston.

We Indians being followers of the noble game of cricket would clearly define bounce differently from the baseball loving Yankees. And bounce in cricket is inextricably linked with wickets. So in case one is on a sticky wicket, the bounce for him would not be high. On the other hand if someone like Narendra Modi is on the juicy wicket of Motera, the bounce is better not predicted.

Thus for Indians elections “bounce” might be defined as the inflection in the vocal emissons of the crowds hoarded in the election rallies from neighbouring villages when the candidate in question derides his opposite number.

More or less same to the US one. But to a Martian, cricket and baseball won’t be very different? Would they be ?

Blogger vs Livejournal

Blogger clearly scores over livejournal in many areas, primary amongst them being that of customization and presentation. I really do not like html and hence the trying to get my livejournal site look better would have taken a lot of effort on my part. Here on blogger however I found a style sheet which had exactly what I needed.

But on the flip side is the unavailibility of desktop clients for blogger. I wished it had something like Semagic for livejournal. Big hit for someone like me who is extremely lazy.

But again since Blogger uses the Atom standard, I am thinking if a small application could not be made that allows me to post blogs from the destop. Already have found a C# implementation of the Atom RFC.

Moving on to blogger ….

My first post at blogger …. As of now checking out its functionality as compared to livejournal.com