AJ

That some songs were longer than they are? That they would not end and keep going on and on?
And no, looped repeat is not what I am talking about!

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

Just returned from a quick trip to Hong Kong and China (Visited Xi’An, Guangzhou and Shenzhen). Very hectic and busy trip. Did not get too much time for sightseeing or shopping but for half a day in HK.

China is a very nice country with pretty good infrastructure but very clean cities but food is a HUGE problem for people like me. There is barely any vegetarian food available at all and that also is quite rare and usually fixed (like a cheese pizza or white rice etc..)

The people in China are exceptionally polite and nice to talk to. Almost every is very courteous and more than ready to help. It really was a different experience from the Europeans (experienced during my visit to Paris). In a way the culture is similar to India since the people are very friendly and homely. Overall a very nice experience and an enjoyable trip.

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

id Software, the legendary makers of Doom, Wolfestein 3D (Wolf 3D), Quake has been sold to Zenimax Media, owners of Bethesda Softworks, creators of games like Oblivion, Elder Scrolls IV.

id Software holds a special place in my heart for the countless hours of entertainment they gave me through Wolf, Doom and Quake. Wolf was the first FPS I ever player and absolutely loved it. I played it to death, in all modes, without and with cheat codes.

Then came Doom and Doom 2, absolute classics, amazing games. And then came the kings, Quake and Quake 3. Somehow I missed playing Quake II but the others more than filled up my time to allow me to miss it.

And of course, John Carmack was my childhood hero, always seeing his name whenever I started Doom up.
I’m glad that with this deal, id will live on and produce new games. Hopefully I will be able to make more time and play those new games as well

Bonus: A nice interview with John Carmack after the sale of id Software

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

I came across an interesting article which articulates much of my own thoughts on the entire Microsoft Internet Explorer antitrust saga. The article on a blog JCXP which I came across for the first time. The blog seems to be by MS fanboys supporters is calling for a boycott of Opera Soft, makers of the amazing Opera browser. The article, Opera Boycott: Clearing up a few things is actually a follow up article to the initial call for boycott.

I have some thoughts on the points presented in the second article but before that the disclaimer: I’m not a MS supporter or an Opera hater. In fact the two primary browsers on my laptop was Mozilla Firefox and Opera. I dislike IE (at least 6 and 7) primarily because of the headaches they have given me and the PITA they have been to the whole design and web-development industry. This article is not an evangelizing of IE or MS but broader thoughts on the anti trust calls when an organization starts to succeed and gains significant market share.

With that out of the way, I quote a part of the article:

"But it’s against antitrust laws!". Good to know. I’ll gladly admit I know very little about European antitrust laws (ie. barely anything). All I know, and this has been my stance since the very beginning, is that Microsoft has (or should have) every right to include their own Internet Explorer web browser as the only and default option in Windows. This applies to any and all companies on any matter, not just Microsoft. If Microsoft were to file an antitrust complaint agaisnt[sic] Apple for including Safari as the default browser in OS X, I would be just as peeved. Many have been saying that Microsoft has been taking advantage of its dominance of the market by bundling IE with Windows and that they are forcing it on customers. I do not see how that is true in any way. Nothing has changed in the last 15 years. Internet Explorer has been an integral and key feature of Windows ever since Windows 95, before Microsoft "dominated" the market. It’s not like Microsoft only recently started bundling IE with Windows, it has been there all along.

This is a view point I agree with whole heartedly. Why should an organization which has succeeded so wholly and entirely on their own suddenly be branded as cheaters? If this is the case, than is it not applicable for _all_ utilities being bundled with an OS, any OS (calculator, graphics program, image viewer etc). Isn’t Apple being anti-competitive by bundling Safari (and only Safari) with OSX? Or consider this – If Intel manufactured CPU cooling fans and they were bundled with the CPU, would they be behaving anti-competitively? Even though there are a zillion other brands and types of CPU cooling fans available for the buyer to choose

Let’s take another example: IPods are the most popular portable media players. They work primarily with ITunes which is what is bundled with those devices. Additionally, installing iTunes also forces a user to install QuickTime (a very bad media player and bloat ware IMO). Is that not forcing the consumer out of a choice?

Yes, there is Winamp, GTKPod and hundreds of other apps which can be used to manage the iPod and view the media files. But they are NOT bundled with the iPod. Why should they? Apple should and is free to bundle what they want with THEIR product. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. And if you still buy it, don’t install it (ITunes that is. QuickTime unfortunately is SHOVED down everyone’s throats by ITunes. Ugh)In the same vein, there are lots of other browsers available on the Internet, most of them definitely better than IE. But that does not mean that MS should start bundling everyone of those with it’s OS. You don’t like the components, then either don’t buy Windows (there is always Linux) or don’t use the browser.

I am not saying that MS is all holy. If they use their influence to force computer makers to install their software or to pressurizing them against installing competitors software then they should be taken to task. That would be an abuse of monopoly, NOT including their own software in their own product.

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

Coming a bit late but I wanted to jot down my thoughts on Opera Unite. My first thought, it is an awesome concept with the potential to change the way the Internet is used and also a huge boon for the us users, but in a different manner than envisaged by the Unite team. But I also feel it is a bit lacking as I will explain below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

So I’ve been busy. Old news what!

Past few weeks have run away like seconds.

Two trips - Jaipur for a wedding and Pondicherry for a holiday. More trips likely this year with one definite. Want to try and go to Goa at least once this year. Could not go last year which sort of broke my promise to myself to go there at least once a year.

Work has been hectic and killing. But is sort of fun because I am in charge. BM coding has slowed down too slightly since folks at home so am always with them. This sucks because I have a lot of stuff I want to do but do not have the time to

No time for photography. Reading has slowed down too. Sleep seems to always hover around me but not for enough time.

Time seems to be flying away. Apparently relativity is hot around me but without the pretty girl.

Found this lovely video of a addictive song and an beautiful voice. Have listened to it at least 15-20 times in the past 2 days. I think it was a very good discovery. Nice songs on the singer’s (Emily Wells) myspace page too. I think I really like her voice and her unique style of singing. Will keep track of her.

(Direct link to the video if the above embed does not work correctly)

Birthday was celebrated in the trip to Jaipur. Turned out to be a fabulous day capped off by an awesome party; not due to my birthday but the bachelor’s party of the groom whose wedding I was attending there. His wife is lovely. They are staying with us for this month so yay..

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

Quick last post before my hard disc is formatted and before I leave for my trip!

As most of the movie going world knows by now, Slumdog Millionaire has won 8 oscars. That’s right, EIGHT. That is quite an achievement.

For those living under a rock, it is about a poor Indian teen who lived all his life in a slum winning the “Who Want’s to be a millionaire” equivalent show and hence winning a million rupees.

So the movies is related quite a bit to India. Okay, it is entirely in India. However, the director and most of the crew of the movie is not Indian; the actors all are.

Among the eight oscars, 3 were won by Indians - AR Rahman, Gulzar (Shared wiuth Rahman) and Resul Pookutty. They won for Original Score, Original Song and Sound mixing respectively. However, none of the actors were nominated for any of the awards and so obviously, none won. The director was not Indian, the movie itself is classified as British. So how is this a win for India as it is being claimed by all most news channels?

I have nothing against the winners from India. But that does make it a win for India. An Indian win would be for a movie directed by an Indian (No, M. Night Shyamalan does not count or any of the other NRI or directors of Indian origin. Shekhar Kapoor does though ) or made by an Indian company.

Please folks, cut out the hype. It is NOT an Indian movie, it is not a win for India.

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

A virus from an infected flash drive infected my system. So I basically spent the last 4 days (including today) trying to clean out my system. Having run at the least about 6 different anti-spyware/malware/ware and 2 Anti Virus applications to scan my system, all of which show the system as clean, the system is still not usable. Any application which connects to the Internet starts using close to 100% of the CPU.

So this brings me to the topic of this post. If I found the author of this virus/spyware (whose name I don’t even know) I have in mind some very enjoyable activities to take part in, enjoyable being for me of course. Due to this infection, I have essentially wasted 4 days of my time when I should have been working. Office can be so boring if the comp is down.

And also thanks to this virus, I called the IT support at work to try and clean it. So this gentleman, brilliantly, manages to lose ALL my open tabs (numbering in the high 80s, low 90s). All gone, collected over a period of months. Oh, did I also mention that he suggested that I use Netscape Navigator. What’s that you ask? It’s the old, discontinued browser which was so crappy near it’s end that even Netscape developers would probably not use it.

Anyway, so apparently the end result is that even was unable to determine the cause of the system freakiness and I have to get the system formatted tomorrow. Which means that I will not be able to take it with me on my trip which further means that I waste another 5 days without managing to do any work which means that someone seriously deserves some nice, slow, delicious torture.

ooh

Ps. And no, I did not wish to bookmark those tabs because I had other uses for them and bookmarking them would mean I forget about them and I did not want to forget about them cos I needed to go back to refer info from them.

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

I was reading this excellent essay by Roger Ebert and found it a very good read.

I really connected to the following words from that essay:

It is not important to be “right” or “wrong.” It is important to know why you hold an opinion, understand how it emerged from the universe of all your opinions, and help others to form their own opinions. There is no correct answer. There is simply the correct process. “An unexamined life is not worth living.”

This has always been very important for me. To have my opinions independent of others influence. Not always easy but I try to ensure that I keep my opinions uninfluenced until I have had a time to examine them and come to some sort of a conclusion. While this sometimes lead to being judgmental it serves me well as I can look at issues and ideas with my own perception and perhaps provide a different perspective.

Ps. Yes, sometimes I’m too strongly opinionated to the point of stubborness

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

So… I’ve been off the blog for quite a while now. Travel, work and other stuff have kept me away along with a general sense of lethargy related to blogging.

However, I’m trying to get rid of it, re-prioritize my activities and try and do stuff which I enjoy.

Anyway, a belated happy new year. I’ve been on two trips the past 3 month, and two more in the next 4 months. But none of them “travel trips” which is what I want to do. Swetha (who btw, got a Canon Rebel XSi, the 450D) mentioned that I have not mentioned my cam. Well mid-last year, I got a DSLR, a Canon 40D. It is an awesome cam, amazing features and amazing picture quality.
(Du..uh.. Of course it is, that’s why I purchased it

Work wise, it’s been boring and frustrating past couple of months. Project mostly at a standstill and progress is sluggish if any. Almost like déjà vu.

My thoughts for 2009:
I think this will be a good year for me. I have positive feelings and expectations from the year. I expect a lot of changes in my life this year, mostly good ones. Hopefully

I’m also participating in the development for a game that I’ve been playing for quite a while (Battlemaster), which is fun..

Well I had move to say but then I forgot.. Sigh..

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

Barcamp Bangalore 8 was announced sometime recently. So I headed to the Barcamp Bangalore site to check out the details and was shocked.

The site’s homepage has been changed to something so tacky, and my first reaction was, wtf, it’s so fugly. Ugh.. C’mon guys, do something better than that..

Anyway, Barcamp Bangalore has been announced for March 7th & 8th.. I’m booking my calendar today

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

This is one of the few posts on politics I have ever written. I feel it is significant and so I have put across whatever came to my mind.

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Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

I have secrets. So do you and everyone else. We keep secrets out of embarrassment, fear of hurting others or importantly hurting ourselves. But a lot of times we keep secrets because we just do not know how to express our feelings - elation, hurt, sadness, love. The liberating effect of letting a secret out is the focus of the community powered and supported PostSecret project.

In 2004 Frank Warren launched a social experiment in community art, inviting strangers to mail him anonymous homemade postcards with their secrets written on them. The only rule is that it has to be a true secret that you have never before shared. Be creative he told the masses. The response he received was overwhelming.

The PostSecret idea is to ask the community to send their deepest secrets anonymously, written on postcards, decorated (usually as a collage) however the sender wants. Of these, Frank, as the editor of the PostSecret project selects the ones that touch him, and posts them on the blog, in a book (four books so far) or on the traveling exhibit. Warren doesn’t select for any particular theme just those which touch - some are happy, some sad; some are humorous, some morbid and some just of desolation. Almost all secrets are personal, many times an incident from the sender’s life, while some are just how they feel towards the world and life. Most times, those that connect the most with readers are the simplest (like “I still love you” or “I am stuck in my marriage”) and the most profound.

Each Sunday the PostSecret blog is updated with all new secrets sent by readers from all over the world. Each week it’s different set of secrets, which make the blogs readers laugh or cry, feel happy or sad and almost always empathize with the sender. PostSecret has become a social phenomenon in such a short time that it is one of the most widely visited blog on the Internet. The popularity of PostSecret can be explained by its therapeutic effect on the reader, the connection they make with the sender and most importantly the realization that others have deep, dark secrets too and hence they are not alone. Over time, the project has gained a cult following of readers of all ages - angst ridden teens, mid-life crisis affected women to the aged who miss their lost loved ones.

Over the course of the project, Frank has released four books containing a selection of the postcards sent to him over the years. The latest book, “A Lifetime of Secrets” is the most different. In A Lifetime of Secrets, Frank says “I’ve selected postcards that show how secrets can reveal a momentary impulse or haunt us for decades and arranged them by age to follow the common journey we all take through childhood, adolescence, adulthood, maturity. Stretched over a full lifespan, the secrets expose the meaningful ways we change over time, and the surprising ways we don’t.”

This fourth PostSecret volume, like the blog, is a collection of postcards. “A Lifetime of Secrets”, however, approaches the secrets a little differently, in that they are arranged chronologically, approximating the stages in one’s life. While the previous books were arranged thematically, this book is literally an attempt to present a progressive story — of life, a lifetime of secrets. Starting from childhood, the book span a child’s fear in the kindergarten, to the teen who wants to spill their love, to the elderly who “Just wants to die happy” The predominant feeling, while reading this book, is like taking a journey through life, and simultaneously going through the changing experiences as we grow older.

I have been following PostSecret since 2005 and have always found it to be thought provoking and on many occasions therapeutic. The connection that I made with many of the PostSecret writers, the feeling of “I feel the same as you” when reading any of the cards is sometimes just overwhelming. When I received this book, I lent it to a cousin who had just gone through a traumatic experience in life. As she read it, she found comfort in reading the secrets and a little peace of mind connecting with the others. I heartily recommend this book to any and everyone, of any age!

While I have not written any secrets myself, if you have a secret, Share it! Let it go, write to the project and I’m sure there will be someone out there who will identify with your secret, or come to the realization that they are not alone nor life as unforgiving as it seems. Liberate yourself and send your own secret to

PostSecret
13345 Copper Ridge Rd
Germantown, Maryland 20874

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

Some people are going to go watch The Dark Knight at 3 AM in the morning. Not me cos I just finished watching it.
My thoughts on The Dark Knight below (Warning: Definite spoilers)

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Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

Well it’s about time I posted. It’s been a long break. Have more than a few topics I want to blog but just cannot motivate myself. To add to it, the lack of time keeps me away as well.

I’d typed out a fairly long description of what I’ve been upto over the past few weeks but then removed it. Did not feel like rambling so much.

Anyway, several important events have happened in life. Some for the good and some I’m not that bothered about.

Life is a lot more simpler right now. Am quite busy with work (am volunteering for extra projects) which provides me with a reason to avoid people.

Anyway, more coming up. Soon. Hopefully.

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

Today is April Fools day (like you didn’t already know!). In the recent years this day of the year is usually when a lot of lame April Fools pranks are played out across the Internet and blogs. This is getting so old and lame that its irritating, let alone humorous.

This sentiment is shared by others who are tired of the crap being passed off as April Fools day pranks. We need something really good and funny. Not the same prank rehashed year after year. Come on. It’s the Internet which has so many talented funny people creating loads of good stuff. Let them get more coverage than those listed above!

Update: Another one from Gmail

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

OMFG, it’s raining hailstones in a Bangalore. After such a LONG time.

Wow. And the weather is lovely. I don’t even remember last when there was a hailstorm in Bangalore.

Yeah

Update: Tried to get a few pics of the hailstones but was unable to. Got some pics of the heavy rain though. The haze is the heavy rain. The photos do not do justice to the actual scene though.

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve started to use Twitter increasingly and find it to be a great tool. I joined Twitter when it was quite young, a couple of months after it launched but never used it much (my tweetstats graph) but have started using it more often in the past couple of months.

The main point of Twitter is the conversations it fosters as well as meeting new people. The advantages of Twitter over other forms of communication? Short 140 character messages and the ability to follow someone’s “tweets” without them having to follow you, which in my opinion is a good system.

But it is also flawed. As I stated, Twitter is the new medium for quick conversation outside of email, IM etc. Now the web-interface of Twitter is designed such that if someone posts a tweet to you, it comes in your replies tab but not in your message timeline. For those who have many followers, friends on Twitter, they will get a lot of @replies so can easily miss this.

And this has been a frustration. Many times I have tweeted someone but received no reply. No I guess it because they missed my tweet (and assume that they are not ignoring me ) . I think is fundamentally due to the design of twitter. There should be a way for the recipient to know that someone tried to contact him/her. Not necessarily in their normal timeline but somehow, distinguish that someone who is not on their friends list said something to them. In this manner, twhirl/snitter etc are much better because they show all @replies to the twitterer.

Anyway, I have also come to decide that I will only start following me those who follow me. (with a few exceptions of course ) If I follow someone and it is not reciprocated in a few days (a week or two maybe) I will un-follow. I think it is just a matter of courtesy if s/he feels that we can, at some point share a good conversation.

My twitter profile is here. Add me if you want to follow me there

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.

Why is it that a single win can elevate the India cricket team to new heights?

A loss in the next match and the same media will slam the team into the ground and then some more. While I agree that the win by the Indian cricket team was truly magnificent and the whole team performed as a unit and very admirably, labeling a single as redemption and a comeback is carrying it too far.

This match alone, as linked above has been called the greatest test win by India. Other reports claim that the “invincibility” of the Australian team has been shattered (not that I believed there was such a concept).

India’s ascendancy to the 2nd place in the world test rankings will further increase their arrogance, one that will be shattered both by the next loss and the overwhelming criticism that will be directed towards them due to the loss.

All this hype takes place every time India prepares for a tournament, or happens to complete an increasingly rare victory. While it is not bad to celebrate a win, it should also be tempered with humility and cautioned with not becoming complacent.

Slightly away from the topic, I found this article very well balanced and while not vitriolic, also points out the errors committed by the Australians in the infamous 2nd test in this series.

Originally published at Living Life. Please leave any comments there.