I won!!!

I managed to win a copy of the book "Life beyond code" written by Rajesh Shetty.

Muchos thanks to Kiruba.

online muzik

Since the time I've had access to 'broadband' and have been spending a majority of the day fooling around in front of the computer I've been fiddling with the internet as the source to fill my insatiable need to listen to muzik.
So, a quick laydown of where I get the juice from.

• Winamp’s Internet radio playlist – This is normally a good source for quite high end streams. Best bet is to search by tag/genre and then by stream quality. I’ve tried the trance and rock sections.
• Yahoo Launch – My personal favorite. Really lets you customize. Though over the last few months, they’ve been pumping too many ads into the free service. Also, their way of providing content is problematic: with browser support restricted to IE and Yahoo Messenger also as an alternative (but beware it’s crashes).
Of course you can listen to MY launch station too.
• Virgin Radio - This is probably the only broadcast only station that can hold me. Though i listen to the Classic Rock station only. Listen out for the super sexy RJ Leona Graham
• Pandora.com – This site claims to classify songs by “studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song. … [like]…melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics…”. They do come up with good suggestions. Another pro for Pandora is that they play pretty high quality over low bandwidths. The only con I can think of over the top of my hat is that they have a desperate lack of width, no classical!
• Last.fm – This is the latest place I’ve hit. Carries all new buzzwords ‘social networking’, ‘web 2.0’, ‘tagging’(which is nothing but a personalized station) but lacks a seriously good interface and selectibility. Though i did like the parts about it going through your desktop playlist and updating your likes.

** One thing I haven't done, is test the delivery robustness of these on the Linux platform.

All that's been going (wr)on(g) with the world this month...

The last couple of weeks has had big cataclysmic events-(obviously not cataclysmic in the cosmic sense... but cataclysmic to the people involved and of the level that'll be mentioned in those the-year-that-was series) terror attacks in Mumbai and the "anti-terror" war in Israel. I have been planning to blog on them, but didn't really have much substantial to say. But then, i felt like boring you anyways happily assuming that if you were really vella enough to read my blog, you have a huge ability to accept pain and won't really be affected by this one too....

The Mumbai blasts on the eleventh of seven-
Was co-incidentally home early and caught the news channels interrupting their boring daily-drivel with first reports of the same. Was quite amazed by the amount of information they were collecting in real-time out of the chaos. Immediately called up all my friends in Mumbai to do a status check. The buggers were even aware and were happily going on with their daily ministrations.
Was totally sympathetic to the crowd in Mumbai cussing the authorities, who showed the timings expected of them in Hindi movies- proverbially late after the climax has climaxed...
Was sick of the continuous babbling of the journos who kept harping on about the spirit of the Mumbaikar that accepts any abuse, from external terrorists or internal authorities or a pissed rain god or who ever wishes to, and doesn't give up. I maintain that this is all that distinguishes any Indian. The stoic ability to continue living life without hardly a shrug no matter what has happened in the environment as long as it doesn't directly affect oneself directly.
Then was shocked by the blanket ban on blogs and did my little bit and signed up at Bloggers Against Censorship. I would still be pissed if it wasn't a blanket ban but one that specifically included mine. Though I am not a lawyer, isn't it a part of my "constitutionally granted bit of freedom" to blog-bitch about things? Even if they have a religiously/communally bias/rant? (No, I don't support religious extremism and would rather they all eat shit.)

The Israel-Lebanon war-
Any kind of targeted cleansing be it ethnic-cleansing, religious-cleaning or the newly coined terror-cleansing is a farcical excuse to wreak havoc on a population that cannot fight back. That's what Israel proved when they invoked phrases from the Bush-book of warfare politics and invaded neighboring Lebanon when two, yes TWO, of their soldiers were kidnapped and killed by the Hezbollah terrorists.
And now they have managed to bomb to death a few hundred poor Lebanese, whose role in supporting the Hezbollah would have been from nothing to moral/financial at the most.
I feel the reason that Israeli nation will never be able to live in peace, is that they react to every aggravation with might, and cause equal or more damage. There is no equilibrium towards zero. I admit, that Muslim terrorists/Jihadis are known for their diligent doggedness (take Kashmir as example) but responding by random might is never going to help.

All opinions above are mine. If they cause you any distress/anger/hurt, bad luck. It's a part of my freedom of speech. Express yourself in the comments' section or your own post.

Amazing video snippet.
Jeremy Clarkson@Top Gear - "Range Rover versus the Challenger Battle Tank"



What a jobJC's got!

Movie review - 'Bandidas'

Watched the movie Bandidas last week.

The movie is worth watching for the sheer viewing pleasure derived from the co-habitance of Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz in one screen.




Apart from that the movie didn't have anything worth commenting about. Just two very sexy revenge-driven Robin Hoodish bank-robbers.



In all I would summarize with Bill Buck's (the character is their professor for a crash-course in Robbery 101) dialogue "I liked having you girls around".

Shifted base....

Finally, after slogging through mounds of junk and dust, I managed to pack my belongings and shifted to a new rented place. The geophysical shift is just about half a click.
Pics of the new place later....

Wiki Update

My first substantial(?) contribution to wiki - My nom de plume ;-)

expensive development

I just realized that I happened to know one of the most expensive software developers in India...
The chappie in concern has been assigned to a project for almost 3 months...
And finally yesterday checked-in 4 (yes FOUR) lines of production code.... That at a salary of around 35k a month makes it around 575 USD (at today's rate) per line of code...

Phew!!

What's my life become...

I met a friend's dad this week. To set up the context I was supposed to meet up for high tea, but thanks to yet another crisis situation at office- I eventually reached his home at 11 pm.
The first thing the respected elder had to say was "either you are really dumb or have sold your soul to be working this late". Yikes what a greeting!

Then, as people more than one generation older than you are wont to do, he starting relating to us the working hours of most of the people in his generation...
9-5. Yes 9AM to 5PM, both in the same calendar day...
This included coffee breaks, lunch breaks, pick-up-kid-from-school breaks, pay-the-man breaks....
As the cuckoo cuckoos( or coos?) 5 times it's time to hit the club (not a disc, a real club) and a few drinks interspersing a couple of hours of stimulating 'adda' with a dedicated and exclusive circle of a few...
Then one reached home spend a few hours of 'quality time' (though I guess the reason that it wasn't referred to as that back then, is that it was 'normal').


My routine (and most of my friends' too, whether they be in IT, banking or even construction) has boiled down to this now...

The same old soul-sucking grind from Monday to Friday (8AM to 9 PM normally)- Boring,frenzied,exciting, depressing, fun all at the same time...
And then the desperate partying (read boozing) and socializing (read boozing again) to wipe the weeks ugly pug mark from one's consciousness...
Leaves one bone tired... And blog-bitching** about it. :-)

**Edited: Updated to the new phrase as per popular opinion. One of the better feebacks- "My blogs my bitch"...

The fairer side of the world cup

http://danielfranklin.blogspot.com/

ogling pleasure... ;)

Upsets et al

I had predicted yesterday would a day of change...
Me told everyone who cared for a bitter argentine supporter's view that Portugal and France are gonna rule the day...
And so we have an all-European semis
Shit.. should have bet pots of money man... :(

Argentina down...

Fuck.. fuck..fuck...

Fuck the mental short-sightedness of a fuck of a coach...
It was the most spirited play by Argentina this Cup...
Hats of to Tevez and Maxi...

Fuck.. fuck..fuck...

Argentina Vs. Holland

For those who missed last night's match....

Last night's match should definitely have been sceduled as at least the second match that either team played... The biggest expected clash in the first round of the WorldCup '06 fizzled out totally due to the fact that both teams had managed comfortable berths in the next round...

Which is what most probably triggered the decision on both sides not to play lots of their star players (Sorin, Crespo, Saviola, Robben etc.) at all..

Even then the match was damn good in the first half... both teams aggressively going for goal.... And Argentina coming off considerably better... but lacking the teeth to penetrate the Dutch seven foot tall goal armor- Van Der Sar...

The second half was terrible (I almost dozed off!)... Me visualizes both team coaches telling their players not to try to hard on a match that doesn't affect anything other than some vague international soccer matches' statistics...

Viva la abliceleste!

Edit- On a note that i have been harping on for quite some time- It's time the Netherlands stop wasting a spot on their squad by giving it to Nistelrooij (is this new spelling thanks to some Astrological/numerological manipulation, a la Indian Politico/Movie Star style?)...

Go Albiceleste

Looks like all the ruddy superstars in the Albiceleste have decided to play together as a team! That's what everyone else should be afraid of...

social web evolution...

"dude...ym is yesterday...orkut is today...get it??"
-Seen on a Orkut newbie's scrap!

random CAP(copy and paste)

The core secret of design....

Principle of Least Surprise---things work the way you would expect them to...

Wish that were so easy!

Yay!!

A Google Videos Workaround

Caveat: Please hold JovianStorm responsible for the said feature not working if and when you try it!!

Weddings and Tax...

My rantings on the two topics that I can't seem to escape from nowadays. What with the end of the financial year in India approaching at a fast clip. And Pundit's setting marriage dates uncomforatbly clumped together.

If, perchance your neurons' share the same twisted logic, and you managed to arrive at wedding gifts, full marks to you!!

I demand the right to be able to claim wedding gifts as tax-exemptable items. It is a legitimate business expense if you lay claim to being a part of society!

So, my current views on this subject are not unlike that of Carrie (of Sex And The City fame) though I wouldn't go to such an extent over the same.

**PS: This blog is no way personal, and the gifts that I buy you guys come from the bottom of my heart... :)

Collaboration Sites

Dear Ashish, Your friend XYZ has invited you to join him/her at XXXYYYZZZ.com
XXXYYZZZ.com is the new way to stay in touch with your friends .... Yada Yada Yada

Are you also sick and tired of subscribing to half a dozen collaboration sites in order to stay in touch with friends... seeing their blogs... checking out their photos... and ***ing them online? And then after signing up at all these places do you find that you're still keeping in touch with you friends over e-mail/mobile/SMS/over drinks...

Maybe, it's high time someone comes up with a 'panacea-like' protocol which allows one to exchange all of one's friends' data (maybe even something as simple as reusing/enhancing the vCard RFC) so that one can choose only one collaborative tool, based on it's features, thereby eliminating switching costs based on data-locking.

If wishes were horses,....!

Exams and devious answers

Today has had heavy traffic on the mail forwards front.... especially examples of sarcastic/humorous answers to various exam papers...

Thus... me feels the need to spread such pearls...


Another one I'd got aeons back... good read though

The following is an actual question given on a University of
Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so
"profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet.
-----------------------------
Bonus Question:

Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law
(gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or
some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So
we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate
they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul
gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different
religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state
that if you are
not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is
more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to
more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of
souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because
Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in
Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand
proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1) If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which
souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will
increase until all
Hell breaks loose.

2) If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls
in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until
Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Sandra
during my Freshman year, "...that it will be a cold day in Hell before
I sleep with you",
and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in
having an affair with her. Then #2 above cannot be true, and thus I am
sure that Hell is
exothermic and will not freeze over."

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"

* I obvously don't garuntee that these were actual answers to actual questions at actual exams!