Not really life with a dumbphone

One of the worst things on the Internet is attempting to outgeek geeks. Only one thing is worse, and that is trying to out-hipster hipsters.

For the uninitiated, I'll try to define "hipster" (in its Internet sense) a little more concisely than Wikipedia and UrbanDictionary.

A hipster is someone who actively rejects the mainstream, and a large part of the reasoning is that the idea of a "mainstream" seems to run counter to their need to stand out from the teeming, unwashed masses who have seemingly been brainwashed into their 'preferences'.

I (try to) pass no value judgement on hipsters, as sometimes I can come across similarly (being a Bieber-hater, for e.g., although I try to convince myself that it's because he's shite.)

And yet, when I try to draw on other people's experiences in a life with a dumbphone, I come across examples that are either not really dumbphone enough (GPS? Music? Podcasts? WTF?), or way too smartphone-hating.

The problem with the first linked post is that the blogger's reaction is a little extreme. He tries out a Moto Cliq tied to T-Mobile, and after a terrible first experience, continues to do the exact same thing! He then moves on to a Huawei Comet (again with T-Mobile), and has an even worse experience, promptly pronounces renunciation of smartphones, and goes for an LG "feature"-phone. Which can still do GPS, music and podcasts.

So it's not really "life with a dumphone", but more like "life with a non-shitty phone and service provider, but let's start small". He's basically gone hipster without knowing it.

My issue with the second linked post (in two parts, One and Two) is that it is phenomenally hipster, in that it denounces the typical smartphone user as being a socially inept person in real life, who dumps all over real-world relationships, based on a survey done by a phone systems company ("81 percent of survey participants said they would prefer being single and keeping their smartphones!", "on average, an adult spent nine hours a day playing with a smartphone and only about 27 minutes per day talking with their significant others!") Except that the study it cites was an April Fool's gag, as confirmed by the company in question on their blog. There's an important lesson in there about getting your data from the right sources, as well.

After having to forcibly live with a "proper" dumbphone, it is a little strange that there is such little chronicling of such experiences. Ah well, if the mountain will not come to Muhammad...

The Metallica "Angry soon-to-be-ex Fan" is stupid

Nearly everything in this "Open Letter To Metallica from an Angry soon-to-be-ex Fan" is either wrong, misguided or plain foolish.

What have Metallica said or done that betrays a lack of concern or knowledge about the fans feelings? Their news update is pretty clear (IMHO), and just about stops short of an apology. What more do you want them to do? You're taking them to task for not wanting to perform in a - by your own admission - "shitty venue"? And you're mad at them for this? To paraphrase the hackneyed t-shirt slogan, "They've upped their standards. Up yours." :-)

Spirit of personal integrity? Laugh and a half, that one. "Put on our headphones and tear shit up"? Well, that's what the Metallica 'fans' did at the concert venue, and look how well that worked out for them.

Saying "we can behave like idiots because you do too" is far too childish for someone in the age-range of the average Metallica fan.

The absolute kickers were these lines:

See…you shouldn’t toy with the affections of people who love your music…they will react like homicidal lovers. They will set u on fire.

..followed shortly by:

Heavy metal is supposed to represent a spirit of rebellion and independent expression but it seems like you expect less from your fans.

Allow me to say: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

There are strangely unsettling parallels between the thinking that drives this blog post, and the apologists for the London rioters.

Gotta get down on Sunday

1. Take a train to tiny speck of a station.
2. Trek through the Sussex country-side on roads without sidewalks.
3. Step back into the late 18th/early 19th century of railways.
4. Hop aboard a choo-choo train.
5. Stare at guy in dirty overalls shovelling coal into the firebox of ancient steam locomotive.
6. Inhale coal gas fumes in moving train.
7. Gawk at adverts for companies, brands and products long since extinct.
8. Take shortcut across a meadow that turns out to be grazing lands.
9. Watch woolly and shorn sheep gambol.
10. Marvel that gambolling doesn't just happen in books.
11. Wade through a slushy path to a delightful little patch of green.
12. Curse at rain for threatening to deprive a day of its cricket.
    
13. Rejoice at the senior citizen players deciding to play anyway.
    
14. Rejoice even more at the clouds relenting and deciding to let the sun through.
    
15. Get picture taken with one of the finest commentators of all time.
    
16. Laze through a cricket match with a pint of bright Sussex ale.
17. Laugh at random commentator who keeps quietly asking spectators and players the names of the batsmen and bowlers.
18. Shoot the breeze about cricket obscuridae with genuine lovers of the game.
19. Run back through aforementioned meadow to catch taxi and train back home.
20. Feel like a character out of a chilled out Enid Blyton novel.
21. Crash.

Best. Sunday. Ever.

Showing the URL protocol in the Firefox address bar

A fair amount of people seem to be using Firefox Aurora.

Unfortunately, the latest Aurora 7.0a2 build (as of tonight - 12th July, 2011) has enabled a 'feature' as part of the Firefox team's efforts to copy Google Chrome's efforts at being different: they have gone and disabled showing the "http://" (the protocol) part of the URL.

I was dreading the day this would come to my beloved Firefox - but fortunately, Firefox retains the ability to make quick, under-the-hood changes using about:config.

Here's how you go about ensuring your URL bar isn't screwed around with:

1. Go to about:config
2. Find the value called browser.urlbar.trimURLs
3. Double-click and toggle it's value to false

And that's that!

Suspicious Gmail IMAP Activity

Quick note for future reference: if your Gmail activity window shows frequent IMAP access from the United States IP 67.220.123.24, don't panic (as I did initially).

It's just your Nokia phone polling Gmail for new mails. That IP resolves to em.outgoing4.messaging.nokia.com.

Just FYI. And FMI.

Kurt Vonnegut is awesome. And very scary.

I finished reading Slaughterhouse-Five on a Sunday night.

Monday morning, the better half informs me of weird bed-side behaviour and ramblings about time travel.

I then flip through my phone, and realise I'd typed this out in the "Notes" section, reproduced verbatim (except for the timestamp bit; that was generated by the phone)

Date: Monday, 20th June, 2011
Time: 00:21

Time is like a fractal tree. The past is always the trunk, the future always the branches, and the present is always the junction of the two.

To the simple mind, time can be visualised as an endless 3-dimensional matrix of amber. And every moment of our lives is captured in it as bugs. Except we are all the bugs, in every direction. But our actual physical manifestation can only be one point in time, because is is not a spatial dimension!

This seems to make sense at some points, but is also disturbingly out of reach to my conscious mind and brain. Hence recorded here.

What. The. FRACK?!

Dear Mr. Vonnegut: what have you made me smoke, and may I please have some more?

Sending all the wrong signals

From BusinessInsider:

The investment banking career path is now even more attractive than it was before the financial crisis, when it drew 9 percent of the class of 2008.

Shortly after the dot-com bust at the turn of the millenium, I was able to waltz into any computer/IT course as there were suddenly no takers for an industry that had caved in on itself. It would be 2005 at least, till people considered a career in tech a good option.

And now, despite the entire global economy coming to a grinding halt not two years back because of the investment banking industry shenanigans, students are flocking to it in greater droves than before.

Why? (My theory follows.)

The bailouts. "Privatise profits, socialise losses" has found a large number of takers (surprise, surprise), and the concept of "high risk, high reward" is only an abstraction now. Now that the US government has clearly indicated that highly risky behaviour will definitely be punished with a stern warning and a slap on the wrist, MBAs around the world are essentially going "cha ching!" with the cartoon-y cash symbols in their eyes.

I'm all for the the government showing that failure in business ventures is not a cardinal sin, but most certainly against fostering blatantly amoral behaviour.

Shucks.

London, baby!

[Title link]

Amidst downing the occasional drink on a very firmly un-occasional basis (in the presence of superiors, no less!), I had an inkling that this trip to London was going to be very different from my previous wide-eyed jaunt as a wee lad of 12 summers past. This feeling was strengthened by an alcohol-induced clearheadedness, which I had to fight a little bit to catch my first glimpse of the London Eye as we swooped down to land. And the minute we settled into the hotel, I was convinced: this *was* different already - I most definitely did NOT stay in a matchbox the last time, and my family's luggage could co-exist with us harmoniously in the same hotel-room.

But there was more to come. Keeping aside minor trifles such as work, there was a lot more to be done. I was older and had done most of the touristy stuff already 15 years ago - now was the time for adventure, the off-beat, the road less taken! So with a heart resolved against going to the Big Ben, I set out towards London Bridge (which was, disappointingly contrary to some expectations, NOT falling down) to meet a few friends for a drink. I had no idea then, of how regular a feature of the Londoner's life that was - drinking, that is, not setting out towards London Bridge.

The Bridge was about 4 km away from the hotel we were staying in, and I bravely decided to hoof it. The brilliant weather of a London summer evening, combined with the stunningly detailed architecture of even the most mundane residential and commercial establishments, did their part in endangering my life every step of the way. So awestruck was I by my surroundings, I rarely ever stopped gawking up at the buildings and the skies! A decidedly modern city in a developed country, yet so mindful and proud of its long and varied history. Nearly every step of the way had a delightful snippet of historical trivia, which completely won over the quiz geek in me.

And that quiz geek ruled dominant for most of the weekends - the Saturday-Sunday trips consisted primarily of one to the Royal Observatory as Greenwich (home of GMT, where everybody steps on the Prime Meridian), Bletchley Park (site of the World War II code-breaking efforts and workplace of Alan Turing, the Father of Computing), and a host of museums! Of course, such elitist snob activities were reserved for only when the sun was up. Dusk and beyond only saw vicarious pleasures, whether it was watching Sallu become cool again, a campy 3D horror flick, adding a notch in the gun of trivial pursuits, or just plain stumbling back into the digs after more than a few rounds of 'experimental indulgence' at a host of the local establishments.

There was the occasional day-time fun as well - London certainly knows how to manage party events. A long week-end saw the Notting Hill Carnival, and my last weekend there was the Thames Festival - both primarily open-air parades of the various cultures that make up London. The former was firmly Caribbean in nature, while the latter delved well into the realms of downright freaky, with samba dancers, zombies, pirates, giant flamingoes, dinosaurs, and robots as well! After capping off my last weekend on-site with a fireworks display of sheer brilliance, it was time to wrap up as many loose ends as possible in the remaining couple of days, down a few bagels at the Heathrow airport while waiting for the darned delayed flight to show up, pick up the customary 2 litres (and a couple of fridge magnets to prove I don't have a one-track mind!) at the duty-free stores and head back home.

If I do get an opportunity to return to the (in my humble opinion) best example of urban planning in the world, I will "mind the gap" this time.

Lalit Modi's colourfully dopey past

Conspiracy to traffic cocaine: Charged [screenshot], and indicted [screenshot].

How many Lalit Kumar Modis from New Delhi would have gone to Duke University in the mid-80s?

Oh the irony, having the misdemeanours of your youth exposed by the same company you've - a quarter of a century later - struck a hojillion-dollar with.

Step away from my tomayto/tomahto

The Word of Mouth blog over at The Guardian is running an analysis piece into Tesco's claims of a "super tomato". Specifically, Tesco says that the new breed's non-leak nature will revolutionise the world of sandwiches - by retaining the bread slices' pristine firmness.

As the in-(my)-house expert on making sandwiches with tomatoes in them, allow me to pass profound comment on this new fruit-vegetable-bastard-child:

Phooey.

A little bit of background might be useful here.

Being too cheap and lazy to hire a cook, the domestic arrangement for sustenance translates into me being the maker of morning meals, better known as the Breakfast Bandit. This worked for me, what with my prior expertise in obscure cuisines such as instant noodles (no, I am not a brand slave - I will not call it 'Maggi', even though that's all we use) and Marie-biscuits-with-cheese-and-ketchup.

However, the combination of a sudden interest in fitness and one-too-many listenings to Sir Mix-A-Lot hammered home the reality that all items mentioned above had to be abandoned in favour of what society at large considers 'healthier' alternatives. Simplicity, taste and cost were still pretty high on the list of priorities, which ruled out karela juice and assorted 'organic' produce.

After a few false starts (warning to reader(s): 'dinner leftovers' as a suggestion for breakfast to the ol' ball-and-chain might get you slapped. Or kicked in unpretty places. I'm not saying this happened. Just a warning.), we finally zero'ed in on a solution towards the end of 2009, which is still going strong: Tomato slices on toasted bread-and-butter with the occasional embellishment in the form of cheese spread or chutney. In short, tomato sandwiches.

Now let's look at the role of tomatoes on sandwiches.

Tomatoes aren't meant to have a 'taste' - they're basically water and random red pulp, that is ideal for absorbing anything. The purpose of a tomato on a sandwich is not to impart flavour - the humble tomato slice is a medium for masala, a carrier of condiments, a purveyor of pepper-salt. It is the perfect seasoning delivery mechanism.

Juiciness is, ergo, a necessary property of the tomato, as part of its duties as a seasoning delivery mechanism. But I wouldn't stop here. In fact, I even assert that LEAKINESS is an integral part of a tomato in its role as a slice on bread! In fairness to the article, I do mean toasted bread here, but who in their right mind makes a sandwich without toasting the bread first? I scoff in their general direction.

A reasonably toasted slice of bread should be browned. Toasted bread, however, has this weird property wherein it gets harder with time, if left in dry company. This results in some not-infrequent teeth-gnashing and quite a bit of cursing when attempting to consume such a (shoddily prepared) sandwich.

In summary, the perfect tomato sandwich consists of well-toasted slices of bread, on which the tomato slices have been placed. The requisite seasoning is then sprinkled, sprayed, spritzed or slathered atop these valuable vegetable vehicles (fruit, technically, but that destroys my alliteration, so…). The leakiness of the tomatoes then, over time, ensures that the flavours of the seasoning are well-distributed across the surface of the bread, while still managing to concentrate the total awesomeness of the sandwich right at the centre. This would not be possible if the tomatoes were not leaky.

TL;DR version: Non-leaky tomatoes => non-awesome sandwiches

Consequently, Tesco's tomatoes can, IMHO, go jump their genetically modified (my baseless accusation, not The Guardian's), non-leaky selves off their shelves and onto sandwich Luddites' bread-slices all they want - as long as they stay away from mine.

Note: This does not absolve tomatoes of their two other key requirements.