Whirled Peas

Not really life with a dumbphone

2011-10-31T13:21:00.000Z

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

2011-10-31T09:42:00.001Z

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

2011-07-19T14:42:00.004+01:00

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

Best. Sunday. Ever.

Showing the URL protocol in the Firefox address bar

2011-07-12T23:54:00.004+01:00

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:

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

And that's that!

Suspicious Gmail IMAP Activity

2011-07-01T14:09:00.000+01:00

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.

2011-06-20T13:43:00.004+01:00

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

2011-04-08T11:52:00.001+01:00

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!

2010-10-01T19:21:00.002+01:00

[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

2010-04-13T13:29:00.004+01:00

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

2010-04-09T20:19:00.004+01:00

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.

Horrendous privacy fail

2010-03-30T07:12:00.003+01:00

Quiptxt.com had a really popular iPhone app that let users send pics of themselves to other users via their servers. Except these pics were supposedly made 'private' by the following genius algorithm:

Save image in a URL thusly: http://pic.quiptxt.com/[arbit 5 characters]
Don't tell anybody else about it

So basically, anyone could just go to any random pic.quiptxt.com/[5 chars] and chances were pretty good that you'd end up seeing a photo someone sent to someone else. Which was thought to be private, hence was pretty much uninhibited.

Folks on Reddit found this out, and quickly whipped up a script that scraped all the images off that site, and found out one more really interesting thing - the site stored the users' real name along with the pics. This spurred on the hundreds of thousands of jobless intarwebs folks to neatly cross-reference these names with profile pages on Facebook and Myspace. So now junta could, if they were so inclined to (and many were), put a face to the dirtybits in the photos.

Moral of the story: If you don't want your pictures of a 'questionable' nature ending up in undesirable places, do not send them across the Internet. If you must, then verify a few hundred times that it is truly private, then ask your friendly TRUSTY neighbourhood geek to do the same. Then think again a few hundred times if you truly wouldn't mind if the picture(s) ended up in places you didn't really intend it to. After all this, consider the downside of that scenario happening. If you (think you can) can live with it, or shrug it off, or ride it out, then go ahead and hit 'Send'. If you think it won't really matter some time in the future, you are being stupid. At best.

His Noodly Appendage is acknowledged

2010-02-26T07:30:00.004Z

This is awesome. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster can rejoice - Pastafarianism has officially been recognised as a religion.

Sample these two screenshots of my thwarted attempts to read about certain subject matter. Focus on the "Target group" heading.

Eminent wootage.

More of the same

2010-02-26T06:56:00.003Z

India is now on the "trading naughty list" for government-mandated use of open source software.

From the report (scroll to the end):

The industry is also concerned about moves by the government to consider mandating the use of open source software and software of only domestic origin. Though such policies have not yet been implemented, IIPA and BSA urge that this area be carefully monitored.

We like capitalism. But only if it works in our favour.

Why I like Windows 7

2010-02-19T08:07:00.005Z

It's just... nice.

Reality Distortion Tautology

2010-01-28T12:04:00.006Z

When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, they held a company-wide town hall meeting, which saw this gem of an exchange:

Someone from the audience asked whether Apple was concerned about cannibalization of business from the iPod with the introduction of the iPhone, and Steve answered that if there's going to be cannibalization of Apple, they want it to be by Apple.

Tell us this, oh Lord Steve (albeit 2.5 years later): How would it be cannibalization, if it were by some other company?

Notes on the Chennai Open 2010 visit

2010-01-13T09:02:00.006Z

(Yes, most of these are sweeping generalisations from a limited set of data points. Sue me.)

The impossibly obtuse, grumpy and obnoxious folks over at the Hotel New Woodlands had 'lost' our reservation. This meant heading towards the extortionate "deluxe" rooms of Hotel Palm Grove, where the 'bellhops' expect to be tipped for any number of activities ranging from acknowledging your existence, looking at you, and horror of horrors, even smiling at you! One of them who accompanied us till our room after forcibly yanking the Strolley out of my hands refused to leave till explicitly asked to GTFO. Later, yet another helpful soul would expect a palm-greasing for having performed the incredibly complicated and delicate manoeuvre of folding the hotel bill receipt and handing it over from across the counter. Steadfast resoluteness in not responding to such evolved signalling mechanisms would result in a stream of glares and dirty looks from bellchaps unfamiliar with the "Sticks and stones..." axiom.

The most benevolent auto-rickshaw drivers felt that the 1.5 jiggabillion light years (JBLY) of distance between Palm Grove and the SDAT Tennis Stadium in Nungambakkam could be, with some effort, traversed for a measly 40 cowrie shells (CS), down from 60 CS for us unwashed masses. After marvelling at the generosity that enabled such fantastic discounts, said unwashed masses (who hailed from lands where rates on lowly clones of similar vehicles ranged from 5 to 7 CS per JBLY) undertook the decidedly arduous journey on foot, which took an excruciatingly long 8-10 hojillion millenia (HJM). (Pedants who insist on standardised measures can refer to end of the post for a conversion table.)

Nothing can quite rival the resolution of the human eye. No amount of pictures or videos or HDTV viewing will quite match up to the awesomeness of watching a game court-side. Also, no Charu Sharma. Almost. He did some post-game chats which were thankfully barely audible due to the spectators.

Indian tennis spectators are hooligans in general, and downright boorish when Indians are playing. The number of kids squawking and random dudes hollering mid-rally and at the ball-toss was staggering. Seldom have I wanted to strangle children so much.

The ballboys (some of them qualified as ball-mamajis - absolutely no trace of ballgirls) were singularly the least enthusiastic people around the stadium. Easily the laziest ever set of ballfolk in the ATP tour, they waited for the players to knock over the stray balls to them! The listless shuffling around was embarassing - I have seen (and been) bored backrow students during "Thought For The Day" and "Param Pita Ko Karo Pranam" recitals in school morning assembly sessions more alert than this bunch of stragglers.

The linespeople had collectively decided to share about 40% of their workload with the Chair Umpire, who had a LOT of over-ruling and covering up for late calls to do.

I am not too sure what happens at other ATP events, but the scheduling for this one was beyond terrible. The entire stadium, including television and media crews, seemed to wrap up and go home after the Devvarman-Sanam Singh duo were ousted in the first doubles semi-final (which itself saw - surprisingly - poorer attendance than the singles semis), resulting in an eeriely deserted atmosphere for the second semi. Much pomp and circumstance marked Marin Cilic prevailing over Stanislas Wawrinka in the final, following which Granollers-Ventura were left to savour their victory over Lu-Tipsarevic in relative anonymity. Santiago Ventura sent down a couple of unreturnable serves. Ace Ventura jokes were made. Loudly.

Dudi Sela - Best. Name. Evar. For cheering, that is. What A Dudi, Sindbad the Sela, international best-Sela, four of us yelling out a syllable at a time, Sela Sela How You Said It To Me, Pothy's Pattu Sela, Kannagi Sela. All this and more.

Janko Tipsarevic seems to be the new most popular tennis chap in Chennai, going by the number of yells of "Come On Janko!" and "Go Tipsy!". Helps that he is tres cool.

Sanam Singh might be next in line for Great Indian Tennis Hope.

Cricket-type armchair criticism in tennis matches trumps bawling babies as single biggest annoyance.

Players' Box seats are next best seat in the house, after Chair Umpire Chair.

Limiting daily ticket sales to one per head to folks spending upwards of two hours in queues, after doling out truckloads of donor/sponsor/corporate passes that never get used, is Not Cool™. Claiming a sell-out crowd then, with swathes of empty seats starkly visible, is just plain disingenuous and dishonest.

Pondicherry is great this time of year. French Quarter - good. Beaches - better. Dolphins - best!

** Conversion Table for Units **
1 JBLY = 1 kilometre
1 HJM = 1 minute
1 CS = 1 INR or Re.1

Stuff amidst fluff

2009-12-25T04:10:00.003Z

Caught up once in a bout of arbit enthu, I added a bunch of "business"-related feeds to my Google Reader subscriptions. Roughly a month after that, I into a routine of diligently reading the webcomics, the occasional update by an XLer or two, items shared by my Google Reader buddies and promptly "Mark As Read"-ing everything else.

Earlier today though, a post titled "Are You Programmed to Fail" from a blog called "Sales Machine" (I know, I know...) caught my eye. This is one of those hardcore "everything you do is a sales pitch" blogs, so one has to click through to the actual website to read the post, which usually annoys me enough that I avoid doing so, barring one or two intriguing Freakonomics posts. But then again, I really did want to If I Was Programmed to Fail.

Wonder of wonders, amidst the most patently ridiculous premise, was actually something interesting!

Everybody has a set of arbitrary rules defining the meaning of events in their life. Most people don’t set these rules consciously; instead, they just “grow” into them based on their temperament and upbringing. Because of this, many people have rules that tend to make them miserable.

I’ve known people who, in order to consider themselves really happy, must be on a wonderful vacation, win the lottery, fall in love, eats some rare delicacy, or some other unusual or even once-in-a-lifetime event.

In almost every case, these same people can find virtually any excuse to be miserable. If they miss a stop light, they get upset. If they can’t get a jelly donut in the morning, they’re upset. If they can’t watch their favorite TV show, it ruins their day, etc., etc., etc. They have an endless list of tiny things that steal away their happiness.

People who have those rules about life, are programmed to be miserable, because they’ll encounter dozens of things each day that irritate them, and very few events that will make them happy. And being unhappy or irritated most of the day is the ULTIMATE expression of failure in life.

[...]

The solution, of course, is to get off your emotional duff and start doing the hard work of changing your rules. Because here’s the exciting thing: if you switch the two sets around, you’re re-programming yourself to be happy, and therefore to win.

Want to be successful? Here’s how:
Decide to have rules that make it easy to be happy. Let little things that happen every day be cause for celebration. Find every excuse possible to take a little pleasure out of life.
Decide to have rules that make it difficult to be miserable. Save your misery for truly awful things, like the death of a close relative, financial disaster, or a major, debilitating illness.

Well played, sir. But. B-U-T but! Seeing as I have no other way of paying for the "content I consume", I urge you, dear readers, to trundle on over to the Sales Machine blog to see what the real point of that post is.

Linky to consume and pay for.

There goes the day

2009-11-26T09:32:00.002Z

One Hundred Interesting Wikipedia Articles:

As the disclaimer over that blog says: I will not be held responsible for the many MANY hours of lost productivity resulting from the exploratory clicking around that will inevitably ensue as a result of following above links.

Ancient history (sort of) repeats itself

2009-11-19T08:23:00.004Z

THEN: Xenophon with Cyrus

While a young man, Xenophon participated in the expedition led by Cyrus the Younger against his older brother, the emperor Artaxerxes II of Persia, in 401 BC.

NOW: Xenophon against Cyrus

Senator Nick Xenophon launched a scathing attack on Scientology, citing letters from former followers alleging extensive criminal activity. Scientology spokesman Cyrus Brooks said the senator's attack had been an abuse of parliamentary proceedings.

One expects the battles to be no less bloody, though.

Combining theory with practice indeed!

2009-11-10T05:33:00.004Z

So tell me, is this how one manages the studies of one's faculties?

Apple users are gullible

2009-10-30T08:18:00.004Z

MediaPost is carrying an article about a study done by a mobile ad network called Quattro Wireless, which looks at click-through rates on online advertisements via mobile devices.

The results:

The article itself also mentions that the total number of ad impressions were the highest for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

So basically, iBlahWhatever users are more likely to click on ads, or in other words, fall for marketer-bait. QED - these folks are gullible and like to splurge on shiny thingummies. As, it would appear, are gamers, but that was never in question :-)

Kick-ass food!

2009-10-27T08:27:00.003Z

(My review of Cafe Thulp in Koramangala, which I put up on Burrp! Bangalore, slightly edited)

While I'm not quite the burger connoisseur, I certainly know my meats and breads, and Cafe Thulp is pretty awesome in this respect.

I called up and asked for directions to the place, which turned out to be a good idea, as the placement on the map here wasn't entirely accurate, and had my expectations raised by the courteous and cheerful way in which the chap directed me.

On reaching, both me and the significant other were impressed with the decor of the place - bright, and stacked with board games and books near the entrance!

The place-mats on the table had some funnies on them, and the menu was a delight to read (funky names for the items, and a couple of margin scribbles), which made us delay our order by quite a bit! We finally settled on a hummus with pita bread, a chicken sub (The Funky Chicken) and a vegetarian spaghetti (don't remember the name.. Alphonse something?), a lime-mint cooler (Sour Puss) and the apple/cinnamon smoothie. We also packed a grill-cheese sandwich (PETA ka Beta) and a burger (Moo with Cheese) for a friend.

While the food was outstanding, the Sour Puss really only felt like watered down Limca with a few pudina leaves and a lemon slice floating around (our standards for lime-mint coolers are sky-high - we hit the Fruit Shop on Greams Road in Chennai pretty often!). Also, the smoothie/milkshake felt slightly meh - probably not enough ice-cream, too much milk? I dunno.. But this wasn't too sore a point - I plan to come back later and try out the other shakes (including the Snickers Blizzard, which sounds yum..)

Summing up: both of us loved it, and the friend who we parceled the food for also loved it. Hence, while I haven't eaten at too many burger joints in Bangalore just yet, for now, this is the best of them all!

A few nit-picks:

Personally, we felt the tables were a bit broad - i.e. when sitting facing each other, we seemed to be really far apart..
The waiter in his enthu to be enthu, comes uncomfortably close to the diners (read, me) :-|
The bill took AGES to arrive - but this might not be the norm, as the staff had vanished to the back of the restaurant temporarily for some major dressing-down the manager seemed to be dishing out :D

Such is life

2009-10-26T10:38:00.003Z

Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner gave me a good couple of hours, when I read Freakonomics. "Exploring the hidden side of everything" was (to me, at least) a novel concept, which was why I also gobbled up The Undercover Economist by Tim Hartford.

These days, though, when the advantage of information (and data!) asymmetry is being gradually eroded by the likes of the Big G, 'counter-intuitive' pronouncements require a phenomenal amount of legwork, and nobody can get away with being contrarian just for the sake it, thanks to the meddling bloggers.

Hence, after Levitt and Dubner get called out again and again, and continue to not "take responsibility for their failed attempt to be cleverly contrarian", I was reminded of a Seth Godin conclusion from about a month back:

You don't have to like the coming era of hyper-measurement, but that doesn't mean it's not here.

Such is life.

Happiness

2009-10-07T14:21:00.007+01:00

Dan Gilbert, Harvard psychologist:

Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted, and synthetic happiness is what we make when we don't get what we wanted. And in our society, we have a strong belief that synthetic happiness is of an inferior kind. Why do we have that belief? Well, it's very simple. What kind of economic engine would keep churning if we believed that not getting what we want could make us just as happy as getting it?

Wow. Quite possibly, the most enlightening 21 minutes of my life. Watch it. Ideas worth spreading indeed.

Tech fundoo

2009-09-29T11:53:00.005+01:00

"Tech fundoo" is term first made known to me by Krishnamurti (G, not J). It appears to me to be the Indian form of a hacker, as defined in its 'original' form.

I have always felt that I was tech fundoo, and sometimes attempted to back it up with a few blog posts. But most tech fundoo I have felt was, curiously, NOT when twiddling with hardware/software innards or some arcane Linux-y fundaes. These two occasions, by some weird coincidence, involved the use of the Character Map in Windows XP.

The first time was when ant poop had eaten into my laptop's keyboard circuitry, rendering some keys useless. As Murphy would have it, one of these alphabets had a double occurrence in my Windows password.

Living in a relatively boondocky area in Chennai then, rendered me completely unable to get a USB keyboard, so some other ingenuity had to be thought of. Which is when I used a cybercafe computer to look up the Alt code for the missing alphabet of my password, and used this to peacefully log in to Windows. Such technological satisfaction. Such tech fundoo-ness. Ah!

The second time was the previous night, whilst waiting to board a Jet Airways flight from Bombay to Bangalore. (Aside: This was via Jet Airways Konnect, but Travelocity losers never informed me of this in any manner throughout the booking process, or in the e-ticket. And I would rather go hungry than pony up Rs.100+ for a sandwich that wouldn't be enough for Kate Moss.) The waiting area at the boarding gates of the domestic terminal at Bombay Airport has 4 Internet kiosks. Two of them are your standard kiosk fare - LCD screen, hobbled laptop keyboard with touchpad. The other two are touch-screen LCDs, one of which was switched off. The other one was running, and logged in to WinXP, but had no keyboard, and no apps running! This explained why people would wander near this terminal, scratch heads for a few minutes, and walk away. So the question now was: how were we to check up on cricket analysis/bulletins?

Easy. Fire up the Character Map, click-select 'cricket' letter by letter, open up IE, focus on search box, Page > Paste (This took a couple of minutes to figure out - IE8 is frickin' counter-intuitive!), Go. Bam, reading Cricinfo!

Happier still this made me, when after we were done, the stream of people to this kiosk increased. As did the subsequent head-scratching and walking away. We did end up slightly miffed that we'd forgotten to erase the browsing history, so an enterprising kid fired up the browser and used the History to get to CricInfo.

Occam's Razor takes a while to slit one's throat though - I realised much too late that happy online-ness could have been attained via the free airport wi-fi on my trusty Nokia N82.

Still. I am tech fundoo.

On mistakes

2009-09-25T15:12:00.003+01:00

Today's so-called 'avant-garde' crowd over-rates making mistakes. The precise load of horse-manure that captures this kind of thinking is spewed by Alyson Hannigan as Lily in How I Met Your Mother:

OK, yes it's a mistake. I know it's a mistake, but there are certain things in life where you know it's a mistake but you don't really know it's a mistake because the only way to really know it's a mistake is to make the mistake and look back and say 'yep, that was a mistake.' So really, the bigger mistake would be to not make the mistake, because then you'd go your whole life not knowing if something is a mistake or not. And dammit, I've made no mistakes! I've done all of this; my life, my relationship, my career, mistake-free. Does any of this make sense to you?

What a steaming load of tripe. Some things are just wrong, religious or philosophical eloquence notwithstanding.

The gut is right!

2009-09-09T15:40:00.008+01:00

Preface: BOCTAOE.

Happiness usually results when one's subjective instincts are validated by more or less scientific methods.

In our somewhat sports-nutty home, Sumana and I made the observation that top mens' tennis players, as general practice, seemed to cruise through their early games without expending too much effort. Basically, they would take it easy, clinch a break, and sail through the match, one set at a time, and by and large on a single break of serve. Imagine my delight when I found out that not only did economists agree, but that this had also been objectively proved!

The basic premise of the linked blog post and the PDF are actually different: the post talks about how the clustered scoring system in tennis differs from a cumulative one like, say, basketball, and the paper is about "Gender Differences in Performance in Competitive Environments".

The paper is pretty revealing about several aspects of tennis though, and a particularly good commentary on the state of the sport in the 2006-2007 period. From its abstract:

It finds that at crucial junctures of the match the probability that a point ends in an unforced error increases substantially for women, but remains unchanged for men. Data on serve speed, on first serve percentages and on rally length suggest that women play a more conservative and less aggressive strategy as points become more important.

I am going to use the blog post and paper to make some (wholly unsubstantiated by data, as of now) observations.

On the whole, in the last 5 years or so, mens' matches seem to be more evenly matched. This can be attributed to both the phenomenon of the top players cranking it up a notch at crucial points, but also to the fact that the 'spread' in the abilities of the top mens players appears to be a whole lot lesser than the similar 'spread' for the good ladies of the WTA Tour.

I suspect that the top players realise both this and the findings of the paper intuitively, and hence the women set out to 'demolish' their easier opponents, while the men prefer to conserve energy to 'peak' at the right time, which might be proved if one looked at the number of bagels and breadsticks for the men vs those for the womens' matches, over the last 5 years.

Ah, if only there were a StatsGuru equivalent for tennis!

Random thoughts on growing older

2009-09-04T15:06:00.003+01:00

(as paraphrased from arbit website - note to creator: don't sue me, pretty please)

Is it just me, or are 80% of the faces in the "people you may know" feature on Facebook, people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?
You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything productive for the rest of the day.
Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realise you're wrong.
I don't understand the purpose of the line, "I don't need to drink to have fun." Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they've invented the lighter?
Have you ever been walking down the street and realised that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.
I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.
The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase "Regards" again.
Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There were no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.
There is a great need for sarcasm font.
Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realise I had no idea what the fuck was going on when I first saw it.
I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I'll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone's definitely watching and laughing at the right parts.
I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.
I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
The only time I look forward to a red light is when I'm trying to finish a text.
Was learning cursive really necessary?
LOL has gone from meaning, "laugh out loud" to "I have nothing else to say".
I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.
Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".
How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?
I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!
While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it... thanks Mario Kart.
Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using 'as in' examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss's last name to an client and said "Yes that's G as in...(10 second lapse)... ummm... Goonies".
Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.
Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!
I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.
Bad decisions make good stories.
Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do!
Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection.
As a driver I hate pedestrians and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.
There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.
I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.
"Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this ever.
I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There's so much pressure. 'I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren't watching this. It's only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?'
I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Darnit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What'd you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?
I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.
When I meet a new girl, I'm terrified of mentioning something she hasn't already told me but that I have learned from some light internet stalking.
I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.
Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.
Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time...
I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.
I think the freezer deserves a light as well.
More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.
The other night I ordered takeaway. When I looked in the bag, I saw they had included four sets of plastic cutlery. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimated that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There's nothing like being made to feel like a fat bastard before dinner.

The Not-So-Big Read

2009-08-27T07:28:00.002+01:00

Picked this up from some random blog. Just because it's been a while since I've actually picked up a book, here's hoping that this provokes me enough to stop reading only Reader and become an actual reader.

The original list was flawed (clubs entire series together as one book, and it doesn't accurately reflect The Big Read's Top 100 books) so I've taken the liberty of modifying the meme with the actual list.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

Look at the list and bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read.
Mark in RED the books you LOVE.
Reprint this list in your own blog.
(this point added by me) Having seen the movie/cartoon/TV series is not the same as having read the book.

The List

The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
Persuasion, Jane Austen
Dune, Frank Herbert
Emma, Jane Austen
Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
Watership Down, Richard Adams
The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
The Stand, Stephen King
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
The BFG, Roald Dahl
Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
Mort, Terry Pratchett
The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
The Magus, John Fowles
Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
Perfume, Patrick Süskind
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Matilda, Roald Dahl
Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
The Secret History, Donna Tartt
The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
Ulysses, James Joyce
Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
The Twits, Roald Dahl
Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
Holes, Louis Sachar
Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Magician, Raymond E Feist
On The Road, Jack Kerouac
The Godfather, Mario Puzo
The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Katherine, Anya Seton
Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

And just because I can, and because the number is ridiculously manageable, I tag whoever reads this blog post :-)

Say it isn't so!

2009-08-25T07:19:00.005+01:00

Is IIT-M going the way of IIPM? Or was this deliberate? One can never know. Found in the Super Manager event page for Shaastra 09, the rules & regulations read thusly:

I suppose if a manager is 'doing their undergraduate', then they REALLY must a super manager..

Nice

2009-08-18T10:10:00.001+01:00

Computers never get old. They just become incompatible with the state-of-the-art.

Well said, sir.

This is awesome

2009-08-10T13:33:00.002+01:00

(I hope the commenter doesn't sue me for the verbatim lift. Linky 1 and Linky 2 from a Hacker News discussion on useless Time magazine article on why exercise is useless.)

Self-restraint is a hackable psychological phenomenon in one's brain. I agree that it is not an innate moral power, but I disagree that it is a distinct human quality that can be strengthened. Self-restraint boils down to optimism. People can put themselves through anything if they have faith that it will pay off in the end. Rational knowledge doesn't help, and it isn't a matter of simply being harsh with oneself, either: harshness and pessimism just produce a paralyzed, chubby, self-loathing person. If passing up a cheeseburger leaves you with a dead feeling inside -- "I'm deprived now and screwed in the long run anyway, what a waste" -- then you won't be able to keep it up. If you have faith that passing up the cheeseburger will have a long-term payoff, then your brain gives you a down payment of happiness that cancels out the displeasure of depriving yourself.

That's why thinking about a distant, glorious end result (like a smoking hot beach body) works for some people but is counterproductive for others. It's motivational if you really believe in it. For many people, though, it's just a reminder that they're making sacrifices for something that they don't believe in at all. Those people are better of thinking of less distant payoffs that they can really believe in, even if the payoffs are trivial by comparison.

Some people think that your brain will simply not accept passing up food that your body thinks it needs, that it's completely unnatural and therefore impossible. But you do things all the time that have energetic costs and distant, uncertain payoffs. Hard work, saving money, hell, even just getting out of bed: these are things that impose immediate costs. Your brain does emotional bookkeeping to incline you to avoid costs that have no payoff. If you've ever been depressed, you know that getting out of bed is sheer misery if you believe that nothing good will come of it. Yet it's normal to get out of bed, get to work on time, and work at a job for a payoff that comes a few weeks later. (Or, for a startup, months or years later.) In the same way, it can be normal to pass up food. You just have to have faith in the payoff. You might think that food has some special status in your brain, and it might, but your brain is surprisingly abstract and adaptable. (Consider the recent article about money!) Also consider that physical labor is basically the opposite of food, but people manage to habituate themselves to physical labor despite the complaints of their body (which are, initially, totally out of proportion to the physical cost.)
Having faith isn't easy; in fact, it's really hard. But it demystifies the question of why people eat or don't eat, and why they feel good or bad when doing so. I find it much easier to deal with my "faith" than to struggle directly with my impulses.

[...]The strength of one's restraint is measured against the strength's of one's desires. You improve results by strengthening restraint and weakening appetite.
I see self-restraint as a limited amount of discretion that a person has to override his natural tendency to maximize emotional reward. As the article says, self-restraint is tiring and unnatural; it's a stopgap measure at best. The primary conflict is in your emotional brain's cost/benefit analysis of the situation. You have to hack your emotional reward system so you don't have to employ as much self-restraint. When you naturally derive satisfaction from eating well, because you have faith in the ultimate payoff, your natural tendency will not be as strongly tilted in favor of overeating.

Your subconscious/emotional/whatever brain is smarter than most people think. You aren't doomed to have an out-of-touch brain that fills you with irresistible, self-destructive impulses to overeat. We may have evolved on the savannah, but if you can stand on a subway platform, surrounded by strangers whose personal feelings about you are unknown, waiting for a huge steel structure to come whizzing by you at high speed, without feeling scared, you can learn to leave food on your plate. You just have to program your brain properly (cultivate faith) so that you feel, subconsciously, that limiting your eating leads to well-being and happiness (and, according to the highly publicized recent study, more sex if you're a man.)

Like another commenter said, made me think in a way that I've never thought before.

Purpose

2009-08-10T00:57:00.005+01:00

I flit about every day, one Slashdot post after another, one Hacker News article after another, one Google Reader entry after another. Snippets of work. Email, Facebook, Twitter. Sporadic bursts of exercise. Passing off pretty much anything edible as food (glorious food!). Books. Reading beyond books. Meeting friends. Conversation. Some of it stimulating, some of it inane. All of it fun.

The fact is, I quite enjoy almost EVERY aspect of my ‘typical’ day (except fending off diatribes on how I need to eat better – another day, another post...)

Then along comes some young whippersnapper who, barely into her 3rd month of the ‘corporate’ life, has the audacity to look for purpose in life. While there are those of us who are waltzing through it with nary a thought about what the future holds in store, there are these little ones who are actually want answers! This can NOT be good, I tell myself. What’s MY purpose? Where’s my drive? What do I want to become?! Who will I end up with?!? Oh wait, that last one’s answered... well, that still leaves the others.

The truth is – I don’t know. I thought I knew, but I don’t. And, for better or worse, I do not seem to care. I have settled into a comfortable routine punctuated by intermittent blips up and down. Do I need a purpose? Is current and immediate-foreseeable-future happiness not enough?

Sudden outbreak of common sense?

2009-07-30T11:45:00.005+01:00

Well, almost. So while the Delhi HC giving the finger to a couple of PILs against 'Sach Ka Saamna' (the desi 'Moment of Truth' - like the 3 readers of this blog (including me) needed any explanation) is a step in the right direction towards slapping down the morality crusaders, the judgement also set up this neat, lubricated-for-your-benefit-with-the-best-WD40-money-can-buy slippery slope:

"You are asking us to entertain an area which deals with perceptions and opinions. Further, morality yardsticks are to be decided by the government. We cannot decide the issue," the judges told the counsel for petitioners...

Yay. Such joy fills the heart. What could possibly go wrong?!

Edit: Bombay HC nixes a "think of the children during dahi handi" PIL, but says the government can frame guidelines. (HT: @aadisht) Retard PILs? Check. Courts saying the government can pretty much do what it wants? Check. WTF is going on?

Cricinfo FAIL

2009-07-28T13:13:00.003+01:00

Edit: A little clarity for the ???? crowd - where is the 'smiling Ricky Ponting'?

TOIlet paper living up to its name

2009-07-28T09:05:00.005+01:00

Taken from here:

The text in the article reads (reproduced verbatim):

HYDERABAD: A 15-year-old girl chained by her father for not obeying him, was rescued by Longerhouse police in the city here.

"We have rescued the girl and her father Akbar was taken into custody," Nagender, Sub-Inspector of Police of Longerhouse police station, who is probing the case said on Tuesday.

Angered for not heeding his warnings Akbar, an illeterate, had chained her daughter of his second wife Unissa Begum to a table for the last 10 days in their house in order to control her movement, he said adding that Akbar had warned her daughter not to go outside without informing him.

Though Unissa Begum pleaded about the inhuman treatment of Akbar, he did not freed the girl.

The police swung into action after Unissa Begum lodged a complaint at Langerhouse, the SI said.

Amidst the so many things wrong with the above, lies nestled the delicious irony in the mis-spelling of 'illiterate' :-)

Falling in line

2009-07-15T11:24:00.000+01:00

..with random social experiments - you should follow me on Twitter.

Open letter to motorists

2009-07-13T09:06:00.002+01:00

Dear motorists,

Turn indicators and hand-signals are used for signalling intent to go this way or that. They are NOT meant to advertise action currently being undertaken. I can see (and crash into) what you are doing at this instant. Please to be indicating at least 3 seconds in advance.

kthxbai.

GTIYF

2009-04-30T13:41:00.005+01:00

Or, Google Truly Is Your Friend.

Burdened with the onerous task of moving out of my comfy, convenient Bandra (West!) digs by the end of April, I decided that I had to get a move on with all the packing. Such thoughts thus thought, I lugged out the luggage, only to reach a startling flaw in my assumptions. My giant suitcase's combination was NOT, in fact, 000.You know, the ones that look thusly:

Having exhausted all 'known' possible combinations, I came the to rather dreary conclusion that I would have to manually plod through all of 'em, 000 to 999 minus the 12-something I'd already attempted. So I fired up a playlist of some 12 episodes of Arrested Development and got to work. But when I reached 225, brainwave hits, and I consulted with the Big G. And whaddaya know? The Big G is all-knowing, all-seeing.

And all this happened 10 minutes back. Psyched me up so much I had to post!

p.s: In other, unrelated news, I believe Andy captures my current feelings perfectly:

WTF?!

2009-04-30T12:03:00.003+01:00

'Trade secret'?

2009-04-23T06:40:00.004+01:00

Ultimately what we seek are protocols for a series of tests that ascertain what
the best drug for each patient is at a given time in the development of the
disease.

When we look for donations, "Give us a million $$s to find a
cure for cancer" sounds a lot better than "Give us a million $$s to find a
million cures for a million types of cancers".

So often, the thing that enlightens, also scares. This is one such.

Innovation!

2009-04-23T06:23:00.003+01:00

Innovation, more often than not, comes about by looking at a problem differently. So, unemployment could be looked at as either:

People not having JOBS!

Or:

PEOPLE not having jobs!

Japan chose the latter, and is offering a ‘citizenship buyout’ to people of Japanese origin who were born abroad, but are now settled in the country. Weird, possibly effective, and very creative!

Why the small 'i'?

2009-04-07T17:01:00.001+01:00

IE8 the Interwebs!

2009-03-19T19:20:00.001Z

Growing up

2009-03-17T20:48:00.002Z

The older I get, the less I believe in capital punishment.

Monkey business

2009-02-06T04:42:00.000Z

Between 50 and 100 monkeys

I'm most like Between 50 and 100 monkeys.

Take More Surveys

Damn you!

2008-12-01T17:50:00.001Z

Get out of my head!

Help make him an Internet legend? Hehe

2008-11-22T06:28:00.000Z

Open source: enabling the small-time entrepreneur

2008-11-09T05:47:00.004Z

Many people by now have heard of Gogola, the "Google-inspired" golawala on Linking Road, Bandra.

But what is this?

A Firefox window

An Apache webserver

Go FOSS!

I picked a winner!

2008-11-05T19:59:00.002Z

Miscellany

2008-10-31T12:03:00.002Z

** It is possible to have a "the best fifteen minutes of my life" over and over again.

** New addiction discovered.

** Old addiction re-discovered.

** Why should Microsoft, Apple and Canonical be fighting tooth and nail to recruit LA Laker Lamar? 'cos OdomOS would be bug-free :-)

** Being without the Internet for an extended period of time is painful. Being on the verge of getting a connection for a week is moreso :-(

** The damn POTUS comes on television way too often, hence I would vote for Obama because he appears more presentable on TV. Image is everything.

** The tech world is bubbling with news about Microsoft decentness, be it Windows Media Player 12, Secondlight or the INR 15k price-tag on the Xbox 360 Core system.

** The Wii has flown out of one's list of desirables. Primarily due to price gouging by Nintendo, the lack of a decent TV comes in a distant second.

** Hooray! Wikipedia search has spelling suggestions!

21st century, not 1984

2008-10-27T10:07:00.001Z

In a way, the world-view [...] imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

Wake up, sheeple! Stop swallowing the modern spew that passes for journalism! Think for yourselves!

Do you really want those people?

2008-09-30T07:08:00.000+01:00

Do You Really Want Those People? (Score:4, Insightful)

by John Hasler (414242) on 1:55 Monday 29 September 2008 (#25186841)

2007: "IT? That's sooo 2000! They all lost their jobs in the dot-com bust! Finance is where it's at!"

2008: "Finance? That's sooo 2007! They all lost their jobs in the Wall Street bust! IT is where it's at!"

Is Google female?

2008-09-29T06:25:00.001+01:00

Via Slashdot (like most of my recent posts):

Let's just hope Google (and her telco partners) don't f*** it up.

Extending that thought - can brands themselves (and not the image they project) have gender?

Just not cricket!

2008-09-25T05:53:00.002+01:00

Via Slashdot:

The recent problems at the Large Hadron Collider will now keep it idle until spring 2009. The official press release is here. [...] The total amount of time to [fix things] will spill over into CERN's scheduled winter maintenance/shutdown period, which is partly done to save money on electricity during the period of peak demand.

Nooooooooooooooooo!! I want the End Of The World to happen due to a science experiment, well before some crackpot 'world leader' decides he can't keep his grubby hands off the Big Red Button!

And also, as another commenter said:

I spent all my money over the last 6 months on alcohol and parties, secure in the knowledge that the world would come to an end this October when the LHC came up to full power.

This is unacceptable. I demand they destroy the world now.

Amen to that!

Microsoft Morons

2008-09-24T11:48:00.004+01:00

Yuval Sinay's native language might not be English, but that still doesn't excuse this TERRIBLE Knowledge Base page:

Via.

Update: More Microsoft KB hilarity.

Quintessential Googleness

2008-09-03T10:55:00.001+01:00

Google shadiness

2008-08-28T08:48:00.003+01:00

Google has this habit of testing out new features without so much as a peep. Just today, I discovered this: an option to search the "I'm Feeling Lucky" site (for sites that offer additional options below the main search hit) from within the main search results page.

Nice. Saves me the effort (sometimes) of doing a "site:example.com" manually. I don't think that site would like it too much though, as it could detract from their pagehits.

iMeh, redux

2008-08-20T09:52:00.002+01:00

What's that sound? I feet a great disturbance in the iForce, as if millions of voices cried out in iLust, and were suddenly silenced.

The Nokia N96 was tipped at a price-point of 36k. I guess Nokia might peel that back a tad and make it more like 32-34k. At 16gb + features that iPhone lacks in + the non-requirement of Our Lord & Saviour Sir Steve Jobs' blessing for everything you do, should see this slick piece do a fair bit better than the iPhone.

Sadly, however, it seems likely that the type to plop down 30k+ for a cellphone might not be too sensitive to a Rs.2000 difference, and forge on ahead for the "TEH SHINY!!1" and "2 KEWL 4 U LOL!" factors..

Have Babelfish, will use

2008-08-02T07:28:00.003+01:00

I wonder if there's a Chinese bar called 403 Forbidden. That would be cool..

iMeh

2008-07-18T12:44:00.003+01:00

Why I will not buy an iPhone:

Although I'm tempted by Apple's user interface extravagance, I simply can't live without a hardware keyboard, microSD slot, and the countless other features that Lord Steve has deemed unfit for his iChildren.

Amen to that, brother.

Update: Crowing about aforementioned countless features.

Limeritech!

2008-06-09T13:16:00.002+01:00

Paraphrased from the QDB:

A programmer started to cuss
Because getting to sleep was a fuss
As he lay there in his bed
Looping around in his head
was: while (!asleep) sheep++;

Ha ha, indeed :)

Interesting thought

2008-05-18T15:35:00.004+01:00

Oscar Pistorius, a 21-year-old South African double-amputee sprinter, wanted to compete in the Olympics. NOT the Paralympics, but the regular one - with prosthetic limbs.

The IAAF (fairly, in my opinion) disqualified him because of the ridiculous mechanical advantage he would have over the other runners because, essentially, the man's wearing springs where his legs should've been! However, recently, the CAS upheld his appeal and overturned the IAAF ban, thus allowing him to compete.

This is where I get to the point. It would be terribly interesting to have some sort of a "Supralympics" where basically, anything goes. Steroids, bionic attachments, jet-engines in shoes, and other assorted artifical enhancements! A commenter on Slashdot echoes my feelings:

I've wanted this ever since I watched the Olympics and realized how bored I was. Putting people who won the genetic lottery into similar training programs and seeing who comes out on top isn't that interesting to me. But pushing people 'beyond' their natural limits, and in the process potentially expanding the meaning of being human and the possibilities for the species at large...that's interesting.

It would be, indeed!

Reflection on the Mumbai Indians vs KKR whitewash

2008-05-16T17:48:00.002+01:00

It wasn't a Twenty20 match, it was a Twenty match.

Badum-tish!

Not cricket? Think again!

2008-05-14T17:49:00.005+01:00

All too often, one is left stranded for words when Captain Jojo brandishes his cricket-purist tendencies in one's face. The combination of a lack of suitable eloquence, and laziness in bothering to string together a coherent argument meant one would always come out second-best in such discussions. The hunt for a reasonable argument in favour of Twenty20 games of cricket was well afoot. Okay, not WELL afoot, but it was chugging along (again, that laziness..)

Until now.

Peter Roebuck's article, and a very nice clutch of comments following it, do the job very nicely.

No version of cricket featuring fearless tacticians, shrewd selections, daring strokeplayers, fast bowlers, legspinners, swift running and athletic fielding deserves to be scorned.

As I see it, all that is stiff-upper-lip talk for:

In your face, purists!

Update: As bolsters, a couple of earlier articles, one again by Peter Roebuck, and one by Lawrence Booth.

Short open letter

2008-05-01T17:13:00.002+01:00

Dear IPL commentators,

Stop ruining the sixes that are hit - nobody gives a rodent's posterior about the DLF Maximum Sixes.

Kindly STFU about it.

kthxbye.

London

2008-04-30T18:01:00.007+01:00

The actions of a government reveals its proclivities.

So, for instance, when Nandigram chaps are fired at, you know the West Bengal government means business. When a state government concerns itself with regulating attire at cricket matches, you know where its priorities lie.

But what happens when government entities show an rather disturbing tendency to make decisions that tend towards the pelvic region?

In early-to-mid 2007, the Beeb asked its users to come up with their own attempts at designing a logo for the 2012 Olympics. And ended up selecting as one of its 12 best attempts, a most sneaky, yet hilarious design.

And now, the UK's Office of Government Commerce finalized this logo, in their re-branding efforts.

which, on a simple 90-degree clockwise rotation, becomes this:
That guy certainly looks happy, eh?

Hmm... does this mean the UK's relations with The Netherlands and the Down-Under nations will see an upswing? Only time will tell.

In the meanwhile, some ponderables remain - what conclusion can be drawn from this? Is all this intentional, an honest mistake, or a damning psychological indictment of the government's true tendencies?

Simple cricketing hypothesis

2008-04-28T18:57:00.005+01:00

Hmmm...

Race - a metareview

2008-03-24T21:59:00.004Z

After a long hiatus, the combination of a good night about town with the utter joblessness that one feels while waiting around for a diploma pushed me into attending one of the "New Release!!" Hindi movie screenings that happen on campus.

This movie, as the observant amongst you readers will have noticed, was (surprise!) Race.

Usually, after watching a movie, a good friend and I scrounge through its IMDB and Wikipedia entries to see if we can dig up nuggets about said movie. And if it happens to be a very new one, we look up the reviews online, to see if it conforms with our opinion of the movie.

Our opinion of this movie: BLARGH!

One of the crappiest Hindi movies to have ever seen the light of day, it is rendered worse by the fact that so many otherwise decent actors agreed to work in this craptacular waste of time. Even our joblessness felt cheated!

HOWEVER!

What totally, completely, utterly rocked our sensibilities (even beyond the McKinsey Life Insurance shown in the film!) was the existence of a shocking number of positive reviews this movie was receiving! So I decided to pick through six random reviews, just to bring to light the awesomeness in the perception gaps between different people.

1. 'Race' - An okay entertainer

Starts off well by saying subtlety and restraint aren't exactly the hallmarks of Abbas-Mustaan (how the heck do you spell that second guy's name?!), but then actually lauds Akshaye Khanna on his performance! To be fair though, he wasn't bad, but certainly not praiseworthy. Acting cannot be graded relatively!
They do mention that Sameera Reddy sounds dumb quite convincingly. What they fail to mention is their opinion on whether this is by design or not :-D

2. “RACE” - One of the 10 Best Thrillers

The most shocking review of them all! Its title alone makes one cringe. The entire body of the review is so stuffed with hyperbole, one is actually left wondering if it isn't really poking fun at the movie. The one thing they do get right is a square-peg-in-round-hole reference to Sameera Reddy.

3. Indiainfo Movie Reviews

Another review calling this movie a sure-fire "Best" for 2008 - with the 3rd month in the year not over yet! Worse yet, it goes on to heap praise on the writing and (urk!) the dialogues! The dialogues, incidentally, was unanimously voted as the corniest, most predictable tripe to ever be dished out on-screen, after our screening.

4. Economic Times Review

Finally, sanity prevails! Finally, a review that gives this movie its rightful place in Bollyworld! Finally, somebody gathers up the cojones to look past "dumb", and call Sameera Reddy (in the movie) silly, naive, stupid and irritating!
Only one gripe though: it pans the movie in totality, and then labels it 'not bad'. BZZZT!! Wrong!

5. Rediff: Too many twists spoil this Race

My most favourite review of the lot. Praises Kapoor's "Sanjay Dutt-Musafir" knock-off look, but captures the movie best in two words: vague mess.
Says it isn't objectionably bad, but that's okay, there's not much that needs objecting to.

6. My own review

This one's simple and short: what is wrong with this movie?

Answer:

Not bad? Bah. Avoid at all costs!

The life

2008-03-20T10:55:00.003Z

No obligations.
Sitting under a tree.
Ass on grass.
A cup of tea.
A good book.
A sporadic hearty laugh.
A light breeze.
The occasional drop of rain.
Passers-by giving longing glances.
And of course, good company.

This, my friends, is the life.

Sign-out offer!

2008-03-02T04:04:00.001Z

An Index Expurgatorius

2007-10-27T22:30:00.000+01:00

(Found here, en route to scrambling to a submission on Managerial Ethics, which has previously also been proved productive..)

The man who marks or leaves with pages bent
The volume that some trusting friend has lent,
Or keeps it over long, or scruples not
To let its due returning be forgot;
The man who guards his books with miser's care,
And does not joy to lend them, and to share;
The man whose shelves are dust begrimed and few,
Who reads when he has nothing else to do;
The man who raves of classic writers, but
Is found to keep them with their leaves uncut;
The man who looks on literature as news,
And gets his culture from the book reviews;
Who loves not fair, clean type, and margins wide --
Or loves these better than the thought inside;
Who buys his books to decorate the shelf,
Or gives a book he has not read himself;
Who reads from priggish motives, or for looks,
Or any reason save the love of books.
Great Lord, who judgest sins of all degrees,
Is there no little private hell for these?

Great ethical questions

2007-10-24T08:38:00.000+01:00

Who let the dogs out?
Who shot the sherriff?
Who framed Roger Rabbit?
Do the handicapped go to Hell?
Who flung dung?
Noodles or rice?
How much is that doggie in the window?
Where's Waldo?
Who are 'they'? What are 'they' saying?
To be or not to be, that is the great ethical question...
How you doin'?
Where's the party tonight?
Where is the ID Cod?
Are those real?
Are we there yet?

All formulated in an extremely productive Managerial Ethics class. Any more suggestions?

Back home!

2007-06-23T22:59:00.000+01:00

After (a really hot!) summers, brief encounters with relatives and family friends, and a much vaunted traditonal annual encounter with the little/fat/smelly/funny/snarky/gabby/all-of-the-above one at the traditional point of encounter, I'm back where I belong. (What do you know - exactly a year since that post!) And out come the lists, in no particular order, of course..

The good:

Double breakfasts in Cognizant
Leh Berry
Cup N' Saucer
The Fruit Shop On Greams Road
Eden
Casa Piccola
M.A.C
Delta Peripherals
ThinkPad Service
Realizing true "comp-fundoo"-ness of oneself
Murugan Idli Shop
Decent pay :-)
Non-PITA project colleague
XLRI Alumni Meet 2007, Chennai Chapter

The bad:

Randomly having to go hungry on occasions
Internet access issues

The ugly:

Chennai weather
Data loss :-O

The freakin' brilliant:

Alternate weekends
Hutch-to-Hutch STD @ Re.1/minute

Back to the grind, for now, with the occasional dip into the Indian Maddox.

Continuing...

2007-06-21T08:58:00.000+01:00

..the PJ-ness - even though mine is shamelessly ripped off-a Plastic.com - here goes,

Q: What should Lady Rushdie change her name to, if she ever became the President of the United Status?

A: Baberaham Lincoln.

Yes. You may die laughing shortly after you pay me for the privilege :-)

What are Western values?

2007-06-05T13:42:00.000+01:00

Taken from this discussion:

Western values? like supporting dictatorships in Chile, central America countries, Greece, Pakistan etc?

Western values like allowing friend countries to invade and occupy foreign countries (Turkey over Cyprus) while doing the exact opposite thing with non-friend countries?

Western values like increasing the price of imported goods from Africa in order to protect domestic production?

Western values like economically supporting all the 'orange' revolutions in former soviet union countries in order to get the geopolitical advantage?

Western values like dismantling Yugoslavia because the southern part has the largest deposits of a rare metal which USA wants for replacing enhanced uranium in its weapons?

Western values like lying about WMDs in Iraq?

Western values like taking the culture of one country and arbitrarily assign it to another (yeap, I am talking about the so called country of 'Macedonia', one of the biggest thefts of cultural identity in history) ?

Western values like giving money under the table to enemies of Chaves so as that he is overthrown, even if he is legally elected?

Western values like illegally giving money to Israel under the table, as well as advanced technology that no other one has?

Western values like don't doing anything about Israel's 200 nuclear warheads, even when they openly admit it?

Western values like privatizing everything and leaving over 60 million americans in the mercy of god, without medical insurance and health care? and with private health care companies sucking everything out of their clients?

Western values like banks increasing their profits 500% each year while the average payment of an american employee has remained almost the same in the last 30 years?

Western values like stealing ancient artifacts from all around the globe and displaying them in your museums?

Western values like changing the borders of other countries (for example in the Balkans) so as you can divide and conquer, while in Africa there are thousands of slaughtered people every day in Sudan, yet you say 'it's not your problem'??? (as Angela Merkel told us a few days ago)...

Western values like not destroying the drug factories and plantations of south America, even if you have accurately mapped all the globe with your satellites?

Western values like not doing anything for the environment because it will hurt your wallet?

What western values are you talking about? all your values were invented somewhere else, and you might not know it, but almost all your habits and things you use daily come from other countries that you bash as 'non-western'. Your clothing habbits probably come from Europe. Your food from Europe and Latin America. Your language comes from Europe. Your political system comes from Europe. Your music comes from Africa. Your religion comes from Middle East. Your sports come from Europe and the Far East. The foundations of your technology come from West Germany, where almost all top scientists came to USA before and after WWII.

Get a grip on reality. The battle between USA and Russia is far from over, because Russia got the biggest natural energy resources, and USA is scared to death about Europe depending on Russia for its energy needs. That about sums it up, really.

B-schooler chest thumping

2007-06-01T07:27:00.000+01:00

What the Supergirl witnessed was work embedding itself into life. What is witnessed here is too many marketing case studies embedding itself into life..

To be fair, I think most B-schoolers would be guilty of this :-)

Bounds have been overstepped

2007-05-30T15:16:00.000+01:00

Long legitimate comments on my blog posts - I love (who doesn't??)

Not so long legitimate comments - I welcome.

Long spam comments - I tolerate.

Long spam comments that sound like they come from all the way from Jerry Falwell roasting on his spit in hell - I grit my teeth and put up with it anyway (hey, what can I say - I'll sell my soul for more visitors to the blog..)

Long spam comment that sounds like it was written by a right-wing, think-of-the-children, Dubya-fellating, homophobic, ID-loving, propaganda-spewing, wannabe neo-Nazi - ouch. Damn. Fine, I'll let it be.

But the title of this post is justified when said long spam comment messes up a perfectly nice post page (with comments from a couple of girls I don't really know! woohoo!) and then adds insult to injury by bad-mouthing BOTH Apple and The Simpsons.

Do not call Homer a bad influence! Die a slow painful death!

I still wont delete the comment, though ;-)

Bwaahahahahahahaha

2007-05-23T15:21:00.000+01:00

My Inner Hero - Wizard!

There are many types of magic, but all require a sharp mind and a cool head. There is no puzzle I can't solve, no problem I can't think my way out of. When you feel confused or uncertain, you can always rely on me to untangle the knots and put everything back in order for you.

How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.

Ooh that Chris Rock...haha..

2007-05-23T06:04:00.000+01:00

You know the world is going crazy
when the Best Rapper is a white guy,
the Best Golfer is a black guy;
the Tallest Guy in the NBA is Chinese,
the Swiss hold the America’s Cup,
France is accusing the USA of arrogance,
Germany doesn’t want to go to war,
and the two most powerful men in America are named Bush and Dick.

Well, That Seems Clear Enough

2007-05-21T08:05:00.000+01:00

(Paraphrased via a Quicklink from Plastic)

Guess why the average American can't figure out the complexities of foreign policy, domestic violence or other contentious issues? Because their primary sources of news are, to put it succinctly, a bunch of numbskulls, corporate shills and just plain dumbasses. And of course, as the Hoffmanian blog says..

I'll stick to Google News, blogs and discussion forums, thankyouverymuch.

Repost - May The Force Be With You

2007-05-19T06:53:00.000+01:00

This was done quite a while back. Reposted for the sake of garnering more eyeballs. [Thanks to AB Wan Kenabe for reminding me of this.]

Vivek and I were doing what software engineers usually do - chatting on the intranet IM service.

Now, Vivek signs off each email of his with "May the Force be with you", so we were discussing how one would use this to wish someone other than Luke Skywalker good luck.

And this is what we came up with. Some of these may not be too correct, but hey, that's the best we could do..

Stockbroker - May the bourse be with you
Golfer - May the course be with you
Richard Stallman - May the source be with you
Boatman - May the oars be with you
Obelix - May the boars be with you
Soldier/sailor returning from a long hard time looking for a good night out - May the whores be with you
Congenitally seasick landlubber - May the shores be with you
Viking lover - May the Norse be with you
Lion recovering from sore throat - May the roars be with you
Personal lawyer - May divorce be with you
Banker - May endorse be with you
Sponge - May the pores be with you
Quadruped - May all fours be with you
Marvin the Paranoid Android - May the bores be with you
Telegraph operator - May the Morse be with you
Mallu guy stranded in the desert looking for a way to escape - May the horse be with you
Big B/Sachin - May the crores be with you
Terminally lazy person - May the snores be with you
Housemaid - May clean floors be with you (aside: a housemaid's hesitant lover might say "I may clean floors to be with you")
Mafia don - May the chors be with you (can also be used above - chores)
Horny Peahen - May the mores be with you
Jim Morrison fan - May The Doors be with you
Democrat American population in 2000 - May the Gores be with you
Winnie the Pooh who's just stolen the donkey's tail because he wants it for himself - May Eeyore's be with you
Sutherland employee - May outsource be with you
Miner - May the ores be with you
Shopaholic - May the stores be with you
Selfish person - May what's yours be with you
Hot babe who keeps getting annoying IMs from unknown idiots wanting to be friends - May ignores be with you

Any more suggestions?

Orkut hidden SWF

2007-05-15T13:06:00.000+01:00

For a few days, I have been noticing a tiny Flash object in every Orkut page I visit, called "datastore2.swf" (full URL - http://www.orkut.com/talk/datastore2.swf)

Every page, bottom right. And it doesn't scroll with the page. Detected, almost just like my random buddy here, with AdBlock Plus.

Poked around the HTML, which says:

<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.orkut.com/talk/datastore2.swf" name="plugin" height="100%" width="100%">

Intriguingly, it doesn't seemed to have caught the interest of the Google-baiters. Yet. A Google search for "datastore2.swf" throws up only that blog above, and the directory listing of some enterprising chap who has all the items from the Orkut front page. And an '0wn3d' graphic. Interesting aside, that was - Orkut h4x0r3d? *shakes head* MSN Live Search gives bupkes. Yahoo! Search gives that blog again, with another Portuguese (?) discussion forum. A few (three) Diggs. Some speculation that this is somehow linked to Google Talk.

No doubt this would trigger another wave of privacy concerns with Google. Shady fellows. Can't say they don't deserve it either, not giving Roofie a job properly and all that..

Getting to work

2007-05-10T05:57:00.000+01:00

I stay in Chromepet, Chennai for the duration of my summer internship with Cognizant. (Not CTS – Cognizant it is) My office happens to be in this really far-off place called Navalur. A very commonly recurring joke is the appearance of many addresses ending in “Navalur, Chennai”. Navalur, in Chennai? Bah! :-)

In order to reach Navalur, I have to take the office bus. Every day. This is not mandatory, but the company does its best to make you believe it is, by conveniently keeping offices that are closer to Kancheepuram than Chennai. Nobody who lives in Chennai could disclaim knowledge of the Cognizant buses. The organization has so many offices in “Chennai” that it deploys a veritable Armada of buses to every conceivable corner of the city, and then some. This is ostensibly to cater to the commuting needs of the employee, but an ulterior motive does exist – ensure that the employee cannot afford to saunter into office late, or leave early. Well, at least make it decidedly inconvenient to do so.

Which is where I get to the point of this post – every time I am unable to (or prefer not to) catch the bus, I have to whip out the trust old Bajaj Discover DTSi (the 125cc variant) to get me there. With only a small hitch – getting me there involves traversing 27 km of weird roads, with confusing terrain. Yes, twenty-seven kilometres. In one direction. I must add here that I am exceedingly fortunate to be in Chromepet now, as compared to being in Kodambakkam earlier. In that case, my distance would have been closer to 40 km. Would you know it? Not being within city limits has its advantages :-)

I had always figured I could handle long distance bike rides. Hey, I did it for a year when gainfully employed with Verizon India (whose existence Verizon, Inc. will never acknowledge) – traveled 20 km at least, depending on post-work activities, in one direction. But I had failed to reconcile an important factor – boredom.

Every trip to or from Verizon had been with a Nokia 6030 in my pocket, tuned into Radio Mirchi (mostly) and earphones firmly held in place by my blue helmet (which some people take issue with!) The morning rides especially were quite the pleasure, owing to Suchi, and the more than decent breakfast that would follow in the Tidel Park Food Court. The evening/night rides were also tolerable, because of the (usually) kick-ass dinner that would have prefaced them.

In stark contrast, every trip to or from Cognizant, Navalur has been with a Nokia 6680, for which I was too cheap to buy extra storage, and too dumb to bring the earphones along. So no music. 27 km of silence. At least music-wise. Otherwise, there are always the trucks with their air-horns and other random idiots who believe the accelerator and horn are coupled devices. Thus far, I am ashamed to admit, the only fun I’ve ever had on these rides was racing with a female on a Honda Activa.

Add into all this, my paranoia about getting a flat, and you have a recipe for a thoroughly terrible ride, which I enjoy nonetheless, for it lets me use my bike, which I have foolishly brought with me all the way from Jamshedpur. And yes, I also intend to take it back. Sigh...

Spoems

2007-05-09T09:12:00.000+01:00

As distant memories, through the fog-dimmed light,
and turn it into something cartoon-funny.
Scrawny wolves, and you,
Life, or only joy, that stands out
Grateful, I know, for just such compensations,
Dim, and die tonight?
In Florida, it's strawberry season—
Not so much of place as of renewed hope,
Onto my frozen fingers.
Hoarfrost is in his bones and on his head,
Appendices
Partly stone, partly the absence of stone,
Cascading snowflakes settle in the pines,
Everywhere, utterly.
III. Earliest Recorded Northern Explorers: The Greeks and the Vikings
XI. Franklin's Last Voyage
(Our fortitude grows dim in
XXI. Flying in the Arctic
How bittersweet it is, on winter's night,

VIII. Russia: The Great Northern Expedition
And trumpet at his lips; nor does he cast
Thinking of your abiding spirit brings
But when, on the timepieces that we call
Shadows keep piling up as surfaces
Beneath a pile of corpses, lying massed
trainer flips young alligators over on their backs,
Like some poor wounded wretch—long left for dead
Snow haze gleams like sand.
In dense bare branches, or the ubiquitous
By bloody pool—rattling, gasping his last.
And I would like
Snaps of ice cracking in the hidden air.
That patch of white at the very end of the road
Toward something that the world is pointing toward
With my foot the supple ball, for perhaps
In Winter Haven, the ballplayers are stretching
At these masses the snow hides from me.
Figures of light and dark, these two are walking

The paths of childhood.
IX. After the Great Northern Expedition
Glimmering of light:
Cascading snowflakes settle in the pines,
From there. Toward . . .
From point to point of meaning—open? closed?—
He never even dreams, being sheer snow;
And the wide arrowhead the road itself
Before those virile women!
The weight of being born into exile is lifted.
And I would like
Shadows keep piling up as surfaces
Covering the land—
And half-starved foxes shake and paw
Will sound, then the Lord's face will luminesce
Glimmering of light:
III. Earliest Recorded Northern Explorers: The Greeks and the Vikings
Nor, indeed, the bit of paint itself can know of.
And Mère Chose's square of world, even as they

All three bits of verse via spam asking me to download Adobe Photoshop CS3 for only $89.

Heh.

The places one ends up when reading Slashdot...

2007-05-08T10:45:00.000+01:00

I wanted to check up on the progress of the Low Budget HDV Filipino Horror Movie in NYC (TM), where I find out that Tulsi Ramsay has made a vampire movie.

Big deal, one would think. He's always does this kind of stuff. Except, this movie is Malay/Indonesian! About a legendary Malay/Indonesian ghost thing!

From the page (which in itself is most interesting):

Penanggalan
Country: Malaysia / Indonesia
Date: 1967
Directed by Tulsi Ramsay
SUMMARY: (from IMDb): Tara (Tanny) is a village girl with extrodinary powers, capable of harvesting both black and white magick elements. However, this girl holds a dark secret that her mother and father (both are magick researchers) have been keeping from her. Tara's sister, Durgha (Suzanna), is a Penanggalan, an undead being that could remove it's head at will to swallow the living whole and has bloodthirty qualities, later turning Tara into a Penanggalan. When Tara finds this out, her family, her boyfriend Rocky and even Tara herself must watch over Durgha and monitor what she does. When the town finds out about Durgha and talks about slaying her, Durgha promises Tara to hand down her powers, so she could break Tara's Penanggalan curse and live a normal life, still having control of her extrodinary abillities.
AKA:
'Headless Terror, The' (1967) (USA)

Friggin Hutch

2007-05-04T07:38:00.000+01:00

Hutch - where rationality does not exist.

Hutch - where "Your complaint has been resolved." really means "Your complaint has been forwarded to the concerned department."

Hutch - where the systems screw up, gobble up my money, Customer Care accepts their mistake, and refuses to return my money.

Hutch - a major consumer court case waiting to happen.

This has to be

2007-05-02T15:28:00.001+01:00

..one of the oddest URLs I've seen in a while. Oh well, let's see how long this blog lasts...

Extreme annoyance

2007-05-02T10:04:00.000+01:00

And that would be putting it mildly.

Not getting to eat at Eden (The Besant Nagar one) the previous night was bad, but the beach air and an LMC at The Fruit Shop has unmatched healing potential. But that's where the okay-ness ends. At least till now.

Woke up too late to be able to take the bus to Navalur, which meant another ~55 kms on the bike.

Enter office to find out that the A.C's turned up pretty high. In Chennai! Goddamn! It feels like 30°C in here!

Crappy lunch.

Hutch screws around with call rates. There's another big wad of money I'm never seeing again, for no fault of mine.

Got chewed out by manager.

Weather sucks. As always, in Chennai.

Sigh...Oh XL, how I pine for thee..

'Dumbing Down Our Kids' by Charles Sykes

2007-04-26T09:45:00.000+01:00

[Hat tip: Part 1 and Part 2]

Rule 1: Life is not fair; get used to it.

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will not make 40 thousand dollars a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you screw up, it's not your parents' fault so don't whine about your mistakes. Learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way by paying your bills, cleaning your room, and listening to you tell how idealistic you are. So before you save the rain forest from the bloodsucking parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades, they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off, and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Rule 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for "expressing yourself" with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.

Rule 13: You are not immortal. (See Rule No. 12.) If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven't seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.

Rule 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you'll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now. You're welcome.

Hmmm..Largely targeted at Yanklanders, but interesting nevertheless..

Oh man...

2007-04-25T13:13:00.000+01:00

This took me a while to comprehend, but once I got it, I died. Laughing, of course.

SEC could someday require [Steve] Jobs to resign

Would he then change his name to "Steve Pinkslips"?

The Yahoo! Messenger =)) emoticon multiple times over.

Step away from the chocs..

2007-04-24T08:03:00.001+01:00

OK, that does it! (Score:4, Funny)

by Quiet_Desperation (858215) on 9:39 Tuesday 24 April 2007 (#18849929)

REVOLUTION!!!!!!

First they came for my fats, and I said nothing. Then they came for my carbs, and I said nothing. Then they came for my sugars, and I said nothing.

But NOT MY FUCKING CHOCOLATE!

(insert Star Spangled Banner here)

One nation. One struggle. One destiny.

I had a dream! A chocolatey dream!

One for the veggies

2007-04-24T08:02:00.001+01:00

Re:EU has much higher standards for chocolate (Score:3, Funny)

by Mr2001 (90979) on 11:02 Tuesday 24 April 2007 (#18850623)

Just remember the next time you rinse with Listerine Citrus Burst that you're swishing crushed dead pregnant beetles in your mouth.

You know what's even worse... a lot of people like fruit, but don't realize fruit is basically the reproductive organs of trees. Those seeds inside are like the tree's sperm. Eating an apple is the same as chewing on a tree's balls!

Other plants aren't quite as gross as that, but even still, they all grow in dirt. Just think about that next time you're having a salad. Would you eat food off the floor? Well, everything in that salad used to be on or in the ground, and the ground is nature's filthy floor that never gets vacuumed!

Long time, no post

2007-03-16T08:10:00.000Z

Hence this arbit-ness.

Sign the Open Letter To Steve Jobs

Oh Bushy

2007-03-05T11:25:00.000Z

Tiny request

2007-02-18T21:31:00.001Z

Pliss to be leaving your name in the comments. I'd like to know who's saying what :-)

An Ode to Sameer

2007-02-18T14:37:00.000Z

If Sameer had gone to school,
He wouldn't be such a fool.
His head would have some brains,
Instead of cotton wool.

Sameer likes weird games,
I feel like calling him names.
But what to do? I'm jealous,
'Cos he attracts all the dames.

Sameer deserves a KITA,
'Cos he's such a major PITA,
He's also such a sissyhead,
He's forever complaining to Geeta.

These songs about the freako,
Are written during Eco.
It's time to stop this silliness,
Says the display on my Seiko.

[Largely sung to the tune of Whose Line Is It Anyway's "Irish Drinking Song"]

Macroeconomic scribblings

2007-02-14T09:31:00.001Z

Money is a matter of functions four,
A medium, a measure, a standard and a store.
But I don't really care, I just keep wanting more,
And that's why, dear readers, I didn't vote for Al Gore.

I now regret it, such terrible luck,
Having supported that goddamn Texan shcmuck.
But what can we do now, with Dubya we're stuck,
Impeachment? Nah, no intern did he fuck...

Wait for the next elections, we thought.
Let us remove this unsightly blot.
But personality and balls, Kerry had not,
A better kinda asshole, but not by a lot.

(This was written down in a class on macroeconomic theory. Hazzah.)

Blatant but valid generalization

2007-02-07T22:04:00.000Z

Most Indian I.T people are common sense challenged.

Even worse, a large percentage of this are basic intelligence challenged.

(Empirical evidence only, statistics pulled out of you-know-where)

MIT?! That's XLRI!

2006-12-27T12:46:00.000Z

Field notes from the field in question (Score:5, Interesting)

by iabervon (1971) on 8:32 Wednesday 27 December 2006 (#17373136)

I went to MIT, so I can explain a bit about the culture in which this research was done.

First of all, there's always something you're supposed to be doing. If you have three assignments for a class due at the end of term, you'll definitely have more important things to get done all term, and then you won't have enough time at the end of term to do the assignments. Even if you didn't do anything fun all term, you'll have procrastinated by getting more of each of the assignments for other classes done than you would have had you worked on the end-of-term assignment earlier. It's really hard to give up on an assignment that's due tomorrow because you haven't started on the one due in two months. It's not just that you have a more immediate reward if you procrastinate the stuff that's not due tomorrow; the reward is calculated and reported to you in advance in percentage points, and you definitely lose those points if you don't go after them immediately.

Also, assignments are designed for maximizing the standard deviation, which gives the most detail for grading. This is achieved by having the average be 50. This, in turn, means that, if you're doing fine, you could do twice as much work and still not get everything done. And you could check over your answers if you really wanted to, and take even more effort. So it's not like you're ever done with all your upcoming assignments and have time to work on the long-range ones.

Also, the main risk isn't doing badly in classes or failing them, it's going insane. If you pass any of your classes (or even if you don't, really), you're better of than if you have to take a term off. So doing something fun and relaxing can actually be quite important. I heard claims that sleeping at night sometimes helps, too, but I didn't try that. Relaxing when you need to is always on a shorter deadline than the end of the term, so it takes precedence.

And, of course, every class has something or other due at the end of the term (or a final just after classes end). You're in trouble if you've got three things due for this class at the same time as every other class has some project or exam.

So the optimal strategy is probably to choose deadlines around when your other classes have big assignments and exams, and stick to those deadlines, but tell the professor you'll have everything in at the end of term (but then forget that you didn't specify your deadlines).

The thing I'd find most interesting is how many students chose to have the deadlines at the end of term, but then turned in the first assignment in the first half of the term.