Indian girls are LOUD!

Er…no offense to any of the ladies but I’m sorry, this is something that gets me annoyed every single time I get on the bus for groceries on my way home from work.

I guess its fair game to state that we as Indians are known for our ‘social’ nature; we chat with perfect strangers on trains and busses, play games and sing songs during fun college trips, even play games that involve singing songs and the like; but I think its only right that living in a foreign land means showing a bit of respect for the local culture.

In this case; the fact that the only things Germans are fond of on public transport are reading or staring out at the window with the earphones plugged in.

Anyway, every time I take the bus – the 72 towards Russelsheim – I almost feel like I’m back in India the moment I step in.
This bus is half full of girls (alright, women!) chatting away non-stop in Hindi, usually with a Bollywood song playing in the background from someone’s I-wanna-flaunt-it mobile phone. More often than not, there’s one member of the party stuck in the middle of the bus, but not that this stops these girls (women, okay!) from shouting out to them halfway across the bus, as if the rest of us were stone deaf or something.

And I’m no expert, but I'm guessing people think they can be loud just because apparently no one else understand a word of Hindi.
Well I’ve got news for them:
People know exactly what they mean because, though I didn’t wanna say it this way, the Hindi (or Tamil) we speak, is so far out from the original and has so many English words that anyone can get a fairly good idea of what’s going on.

I mean come on, when you point to someone and say,
“Dhek, uski eye color blue hai”,
…it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure what you’re talking about!

The height of this fiasco is reached when the bus gets to the stop of their hotel and some of them realize they’re already there only when the first half of the party is already outside, and then jumps back in to shout out to the rest to get off. Seriously, I’ve seen circus clowns less hilarious than this!

I think that just because we’re a social lot doesn’t give us the right to abuse upon those of others – and create a thoroughly negative impact on our culture in the process.

I’d also like to think of this as social service, so in case you know someone who’s loud, I please suggest that you print this out, and leave it on their desk or someplace they’d see it.

Particularly  if they happen to work in the Avionics Training Center in Kelsterbach and take the RMV 72 to Mercure Wings Hotel, Raunheim at 5:42PM everyday.

I’d really appreciate if they could read this.J

A phone through the spin cycle

In case you’ve ever wondered what it’d be like for a mobile phone to go around in a washing machine…
…I can tell you: they DO NOT like it.

And I found that out the hard way this evening after I stuffed my laundry into the washer, turned it on, and then three cycles later discovered that I forgot the phone in my jeans.

And needless to say; it died a sad, wet death under layers of suds and fabric softener; and I’m still mourning over the loss of my poor Nokia 6230i.
May she rest in peace.

Now moving on and getting to the realities of the situation; I still have another phone – a clammy old one from work; and I’m not missing a lot of phone numbers because the only people who call me are either from work or concerning work; and I already have their numbers on Outlook.

The biggest loss for me though, was all my data that it took along with it. I had a list of all passwords I use for pretty much everything online; I’ve marked important dates on the calendar; scribbled in a bunch of notes; even put in a little to-do list for the week.
All of which I don’t have anymore.

In a way it kinda freaks me out because it draws us to realize how so very much we are dependent on these little electronics which you can lose at any time.
I mean, when my laptop died last year (yeah, this evening wasn’t the first time I lost data to gadget hell) I was absolutely lost because that is where I had almost every aspect of my online life; from Email to documents, pictures, contacts, videos…pretty much everything.

And in a way it teaches you too; it was only after that mishap that I realized you should never stash data all in one place; and that it’s important to take regular backups. And that you should always keep written copies of passwords.

But I guess no matter how prepared you are, nothing prepares you for that one sudden moment when it all turns black; and you realize its all over.

Just like our own lives.

A New Beginning

Yes, we are finally back.
New blog, new template, on a fresh new domain. And boy am I excited.
So let’s get started right away.

Firstly, you’ll notice that this isn’t Random Thoughts anymore. To be honest, coming up with a new name and domain is the part that took the longest time because I was so comfortable with Random Thoughts.

But then I realized it wasn’t very original – there must be like a hundred sites out there with the exact same name; just try the words “random thoughts” (with the quotes) on Google, you’ll see what I mean. In fact, it took me over a week, after the design template was completed to finalize on the name to use.

Now why “The Square Circle”?
For the same reason Steve Jobs ended up with “Apple” – one week of domain hunting later I was so frustrated (did you know ALL the good domains are taken; most of which are just stupidly parked) that I started looking for something random, pretty much anything I could find and so, here we are.

Getting down to the technical side of things; my old blog (http://rahmannoor.blogspot.com/) still redirects to here. And I’m yet to import all my previous posts and setup my widgets, but I promise I’ll do this soon.

Coming to credits, this design is an adaptation of Blogy-illacrimo for BlogandWeb from DesignDisease, and I truly thank them for the wonderful template.
I say ‘adaptation’ because the original template had three columns which I didn’t like, so I changed it to just two and rewamped some of the original artwork.
There was also a whole mess of broken image links in the original template file which I had to find and upload to my own image-server; not to mention invalid xml and missing script references which I had to fix.


Btw, I’d prefer to think of this as “still in beta” (now don’t give me that look) because I tested this on a few browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome and good old IE but I guess there are still a few glitches to it.

Oh, and in case this is the first time you’ve landed on this blog, here’s a snapshot of how my original blog looked like.
(I know, lame wasn’t it?)

Do let me know what you think, and how I can take this further. After all, in the end, it’s only the readers that count!
:D

Better Blogging. Now.

I have been blogging for quite a while now, and although today is not any specific day like “exactly-two-years-ago” or anything, it struck me how far it has come, and how much further I’d like to go.

Now, a long time ago I stumbled upon sites like BlogBloke with expert advises on blogging and the like, but somehow never really paid much attention to it.

When I logged in this afternoon however, it suddenly stuck me how lame the whole thing really looks.
I mean come on, a terrible looking design template, less-than-creative URL (that’s my name there), minimalist stats tracking and comment control, and no RSS…it really doesn’t get much dumber than this.


With this in mind, I’d like to take a deep breath, and announce that effective immediately I’m putting all my current blogging activities on hold and working full time over this holiday season on getting my blog back on track and in better shape.

I’m thinking maybe I’ll switch platforms, to something with better control (and a much nicer custom template!) or maybe even go pro on an owned domain; with my very own CMS and all the fireworks.

Whatever I do, I just wanted to let you guys know that I haven’t quit, so just in case you come back a month later and still find this post on top, you know I’m still working on it!

Very Punny

"What should I write" I was thinking all night, when suddenly, it dawned on me!

(p.s. This was my quickest post ever; usually I spend hours, sometimes days thinking on a post. This one happened in less than 3minutes...hurray for anti-boredom!)

Getting "Bushed"

I guess it’s been all over the news more times than necessary that the outgoing US President George Bush was thrown a pair of shoes at during a press conference in Iraq. In case you missed the news, here’s a link.

Now, putting the serious and insulting nature of the issue aside, I’d like to take this as an opportunity to introduce a new phrase into English; and I really hope this catches on.

I mean after all, not so long ago, when J.K. Rowling introduced us to the world of Magic and Muggles, hey the Oxford English dictionary brought that out and officially introduced the word in 2003!

So here’s my contribution to the world of words in our beloved language:

Bushed [bůshΔ] (verb):
The act of throwing footwear at a person, either individually or in a group, with the intention of insulting or otherwise humiliating the person; see also Getting-[v]: being a victim of such an act; [v]-ing: throwing footwear, esp. as a form of occur disrespect and the highest level of insult towards the subject.

Here’s a few examples:

When the burglar broke into the barn, he took off after the boys bushed him with leather boots.
The local judge ordered the shoplifter to be tarred, feathered and bushed.
“If you do that again, I’ll bush you in front of the entire village” threatened the town Elder.

Although I must say, something like “The president was bushed” does sound a tad bit too insulting. But I guess that’s the way a language grows :D

The Blame Game

(Technically, this post should’ve actually been on Broken Fishtank which is the usual place I write stuff like this, but I just did a post there yesterday and I don’t want it to sink to second place already.

This is going to be a long post; and a serious one. If you’re busy now, please come back and read it later. But I do implore you to not skip paragraphs)


I’m probably the last guy on the planet to write on the recent Mumbai attacks, nearly two weeks after the whole thing was over; but in a way it got me thinking about a lot of stuff we seem to take for granted…including who we routinely blame for it.

First off, the politicians who are a bunch of idiots and we all know this. In fact, we know better because we’re the ones who put them up there in the first place, so in a way, we’re to blame for it.

And who can forget the “Deccan Mujahideen” who supposedly claimed responsibility for the attack…and then the media went into overdrive with home-grown terror.
Until someone was intelligent enough to expose this as a bad joke by some prankster, every news channel in India (and even CNN, but I don’t count that) was sure it was the Deccan Mujahideen based on one pathetic Email anyone could have sent.

…why?
Because Muslims were the bad guys. Muslims were the terrorists. Muslims were the people who like to blow up stuff.

Quickly, give me a no-hard-feelings answer: what’s the first image to pop into your head when you hear the word “terrorist”?

If you get an Osama-bin-Laden-look-alike with a turban, a long beard, wearing a robe, you’ve hit home base – along with a million others.

Now here’s where it starts getting confusing, because if you look at the one picture of the terrorist we’ve seen far too times on TV, there was no turban, the guy was wearing a black tee, cargo jeans and (gasp!) no beard. And then you have this other report that the terrorists apparently had stashed up 3days worth of food; chicken and liquor!

The chicken part, I buy, but alcohol?
I’m no expert but I’m guessing you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure who the only terrorists who don’t drink by principle – as opposed to not drink before an attack – are!

Now I’m not denying or alleging anything, but for all we know, they could have been college-dropouts or unemployed graduates taking out their frustration to the world…and the fact remains that no one still knows who the attackers were or where they came from or what they wanted (despite what you see on TV) but what makes me mad is that we’re quick to again blame the Muslims for it.

And again, why?
Because hey, if it’s not them, who else could it be?

In fact, a while ago during another bombing, an Indian news-magazine ran a story with the racist headline: “All Muslims may not be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim”.
Note here how the LTTE, The Naxalites, the IRA of Ireland and the FARC of South America all suddenly cease to become terrorist organizations just because apparently in someone’s mind; only Muslims do all the dirty work; with the dislodging clause that, “well, maybe not all of them though”

And thus, effectively alienate part of society by calling them the bad guys, throwing the blame on them and view them with suspicion at every turn in society.

No, it does NOT feel nice to be looked at as part of the problem and a potential terrorist when you have nothing to do with it.

In short: terrorists are our common enemies…and you can’t fight them by blaming a community or a country or a religion for it and alienating them.
Regardless of whether they are “jihadists” – that’s the usual term; or RSS extremists – we’ve seen this in the Melagon attacks; or by the United States – which pokes into Iraq, Afghanistan and pretty much the rest of the world; call a terrorist a terrorist.

And unite to fight them.

“Dude, you on a diet or something?”

…my roomie asked eyeing me, as I skipped the section with the full-cream yogurt and reached out to the one marked “0.1% fat”.

I scowled back at him. I don’t know why but most people I know have only two kinds of food habits.
a) eat like there’s no tomorrow (“dude, this is the age to eat”)
b) go on a diet and cut out on pretty much all the good stuff. (“I’m dieting”)

My biggest problem is convincing people that you don’t have to be ‘on a diet’ to make sensible choices when it comes to food.
Sensible choices, for me includes choosing whole wheat over white bread, light cheese, trimming the fat on the chicken, using the oven instead of the deep fryer and yes, picking 0.1% fat over full-cream yougurt.
And no I am not on a diet.

In fact I’m nowhere close to a diet – I live on chicken 2 to 3 days a week, ice-creams (inspite of the snow outside!), munch on Pringles and have a Twix every once in a while.

Which is exactly why I’d want to eat more sensibly.
Because the kind of activities I do on a day-to-day basis hardly justifies my food-ability. And I’m guessing most people reading this aren’t exactly Rambo look-alikes either so it’s not just me who has to worry about going through the day on a chair getting up only in case of necessities.

In a way I’m angry at people who don’t care about their food habits unless something happens. For these people a ‘food habit’ pretty much means whatever they can find and are allowed to eat where they live. I know a lot of my friends who have deep-fried delicacies almost everyday because “this is what you get here dude”.

No its, not! And and no points for guessing the side effects. True, when you’re living alone, (and on a tight budget) healthy eating’s not always an option but hey, we can try, right?

Remember; a ‘diet’ is what you routinely eat, not what you go on for a month – and having the right attitude makes a good diet; One of these days I really got to talk to these guys, after all…


“Hey, I’m still talking to you”
I blinked as I snapped back to reality. I was still reaching out for that yogurt and there were other people starting to stare at us.

I just looked back at him and smiled. There isn’t much you can say sometimes.

NFS: Undercover

(I know a lot of people reading this probably aren’t gaming fans, but NFS is one of my weak spots, and when EA Games came out with the latest installation of the series last Thursday, I knew I had to do a post on it)

Need for Speed: Undercover hit the streets last week on the 18th of November and it got me excited.

Historically, the Need for Speed series has always been the hallmark of EA Games ever since the first installation came out way back in 1995…and one of my favorite games of all times.
Back in my school days, I remember trying to tweak my ancient Pentium II machine to get it to run NFS: High Stakes on it.
While I was at college, we’d huddle around at best buddies’ places for one-on-one, all night long tournaments of NFS: Hot Pursuit2 and sneak into computer labs for illegal versions of NFS:SE.
When I finally (saved enough and) got my own laptop a couple of years ago, one of the first things I did was get Underground2.

But after all this, I’m upset that EA disappoints us this time with a game that’s both boring and technically flawed. I haven’t tried it out myself, but every single review I’ve read unanimously agrees that Undercover has serious flaws that let the frame rates get out of whack and cause graphics to jump at you.
Also, the AI is supposed to be so dumb you can win each game the first time round. And after ultra-realistic modeling and physics in Carbon and Pro-street, this game apparently has laughably poor detail and animation.
The game also contains a video-based storyline that features a half-naked woman smoking a cigarette and telling you what to do…which is simply not my idea of a good game play.
All in all, in one sentence the reviews simply read: “Whatever you do, please don’t buy this game”

Hope the guys at EA are listening – and come up with a better and more stable Undercover2 fast. Because at the it’s-not-worth-it-now price of over €60, this is one game I’m not gonna buy in a hurry.

Troubles on a Thursday

Today was one of those days when everything seems to go wrong:

For starters, those new shoes I bought the other day – I just realized they’re one size too small…while I was half way to work. That means I had to sit through the entire day with sore toes before walking (ouch!) home. And having skipped the weather forecast, I didn’t take my umbrella so I had to walk (ouch!) in the rain. Apparently new shoes don’t like rain either.

At work, I nearly lost my head over a dumb argument with a stupid manager who had no idea what I was talking about. Took me over 2hours and ton of Email to get him to see the light.

And at the end of the day, I forgot to leave my backpack in my locker at work, so I had to come straight home carrying a 5pound laptop instead of heading over to the zeil for dinner like I had originally planned to.

Oh and there’s at least another 4 items in my inbox that demand my “immediate action” (whatever the hell that means) as soon as I get in tomorrow morning.

It is exactly at times like these when I think about all those people out there who don’t have a place to come home to; shoes to wear; managers to cuss or a job to crib about.

…and realize life, just can’t get any better than this!

Wedded flabs

Actually I don’t think I’m the first person to write on this; quite a while back ela wrote this post on how people tend to put on the pounds after they get married, but I only got to find out how true this is when I was in Chennai a couple of weeks ago for my best friend’s wedding.

Almost every one of my friends who got married have put on like a ton or something…and the worst part was that no one had the slightest remorse about looking like a hot air balloon!

A friend of mine (who, incidentally, is also a dad now congratulations!) shrugged it off with a, “Dude, I’m married, this stuff is normal after you get married…you’ll see”.

No I do not see.
And I honestly don’t think there is anything ‘normal’ about inflating yourself just because you’re walking the path of bliss, and don’t have to worry about looks anymore.

Although I guess, the “look-good-feel-good” theory probably doesn’t apply here. Most newly-weds are happy with the…you know, and also the good food that comes along; with loving care too, I might add.
But I’m thinking it’s not just the food that’s causing all this. Because in spite of their high-fat, high-meat-content food, most Europeans seem to live healthier lifestyles because they do something about it. I mean, my boss is over 40 and she goes rock climbing. Most of our guys on the other hand, prefer to come home to coffee and hot samosas instead.

All fun things said and done, here’s a serious fact:
Asians (and Africans too, but I’m guessing not too many people from the Dark Continent are reading this) are more susceptible to diabetes than say, the white folks…because for something to do with genetics and stuff.
And I’m not messing you; this is a medical fact for real.

Also, I don’t know about the numbers but more and more people are starting to suffer from heart disease and diabetes than just one generation ago; and this has nothing to do with genetics. Its all to do with what we eat; how much we eat; and what we do about it.

Married or not. :)

Pulling the plug...

...on Chennai's most popular Mall, Spencer Plaza!

Even though the city is now coming up with more hip places to 'hang out', my personal favorite will always be Spencer Plaza; for the shear variety you find...from the ultra high-end speciality audio studios and fashion outlets to the tiny side stores in the aisles where you pick tees for a hundred rupees (not to mention Samosas and chai) and everything in between!

That's why I make it a point to go there every time I'm in Chennai. Other places like CitiCenter and all look really aloof with their extravagant architecture and terribly expensive fashion outlets with prices that rival their European counterparts...and I really wonder who actually shops there.

Which is why I was more than a little annoyed to find out that the government is stupidly cutting power supply to the mall everyday between 6 and 9pm everyday in order to meet demands. EVERYDAY!

Actually something like this has been apparently going on for quite a while now; ever since this summer when record power shortages forced offices to send employees home early, industries to cut back on production and households to forgo electricity for upto 8hrs a day. Of course, such "load shedding" is common in India during the peak summer months, but is usually limited to an hour's supply of domestic power with little or no impact on commercial establishments.

But when you have this trend falling through all the way into winter and having to force major retail chains to close their outlets at malls during the busiest hours on a weekend...you know there is something seriously wrong with the city.

I mean, stopping commercial establishments from doing business at the best time of the day is honestly the stupidest thing I can think of...with or without any power shortage. 

A friend of mine recently wrote this post on India being a developing country; but the way things are now, whatever is the reverse of development is what is going on right now.

I sincerely hope the guys sitting up there in Parliament haven't traded their brains for baloney sandwiches yet; but in case they have, I have news for them:

The rest of us down here are ashamed of you!

Government under-sight may have caused it, but cutting down on progress is not a solution or even a workaround. 

It is plain stupidity.

A wishlist

Here’s a quick question:
What do you get your best friend on his wedding day when you know he already owns a lot of the stuff you can think of and is not interested in most of everything else?

Turns out it’s a lot more difficult to get people gifts…especially for good friends when you want to get them something special and not the same as that dumb watch you got for Bob from finance.
After we realized that three days of international e-brainstorming (on IM from across 3 countries) didn’t help, we had to settle for a gift voucher from a retail outlet.

That’s when I decided to put together this list to make things easier for people (if any) who are willing to get something for me anytime soon. So without further ado, here’s my wishlist:

1. A PSP:
   Yup, I’ve been eyeing one for nearly a year now, and almost bought one on my last trip to Dubai. But somehow this has been evading me since, and I don’t see shore anytime soon.
   
   
2. A cat:
   Or maybe a kitten. With a bell and a little blue ribbon on top. Most people don’t know this, but I absolutely love cats. Wonder if there’s a gift-a-cat store nearby?
   
   
3. LEGO Mindstorms:
   Yes, the big daddy of the LEGO – complete with sensors and programmable controllers. I’m a gadget freak and can spend years with this thing…and I’ll be honest here: I can’t afford it, so I hope someone else can.
   
   
4. The New Macbook:
   (This may be an overkill, but I sure hope it works :D)
   I wrote that I’m in love with it here, and gosh does love hurt. My poor wallet too.
   
   
5. Tissot Touch.
   I really don’t mean to advertise, but it is an awesome watch. A study showed that most men love watches that do more than tell time; and with something that gives you a barometer, altimeter, chonograph and thermometer at a touch, I’m no exception.
   
   
6. A pair of Nike AirMax.
   At over $200, this is one shoe I’m not planning on buying anytime soon. But doesn’t mean anyone else shouldn’t either so just for the record, I wear a size 8.Now that’s really money under your feet.
   
   
7. A Large FatBoy:
   Not only are bean bags a barrel of fun, but they also seem to be the best things to curl on with a book and a steaming cup. Even without a book or coffee, I’d love to snuggle up against one. Too bad they’re too bulky to transport.
   
   
8. Harman/Kardon iPod dock:
   Yeah I know its probably gonna look terrible against my tiny 8GB Nano, but doesn’t cost to dream does it?
   

So there you have it, a list of stuff which I am sure
a) I’m not gonna buy and
b) no one else is gonna get me either
So in all respects, this is the world’s most-impractical-list-of-things-to-buy.

But I guess once in a while we are all entitled to a healthy dose of madness, aren’t we?

Lonely

I recently came to realize that we have another tenant living at our place – a lonely old man who lives in a one-room apartment down in the basement.

Now, being one of only 3people who live here (this is not an apartment, its just one huge house where the owners stay in one portion and sub-let the other two to us and another couple) I was genuinely astounded to find that out – because the guy must at least a good seventy five and lives alone with a bicycle.

Yes, with a bicycle.
And one of the reasons I’ve never seen him before is because he doesn’t get out much and no one comes to see him.

It makes me re-think on all the times I’ve felt alone like when my roomie goes on vacation and stuff and realize, “God, its good to have people – friends and family – who love and care about you!”.

I guess it’s another one of those small things we all take for granted.
There is a lot in life we should be thankful for.

The New Macbook...

...and I'm so in love with it!

A few days back on the 14^th of October, Apple unveiled their latest new product to hit the market – the ‘new’ Macbook.

I’m not sure why I’m paranoid enough to do a post on every single product they come up with, but I guess it has to do with the fact that Apple just keeps doing things in a completely different way…and the macbook is one thing that’s caught my attention for a real long time.

In case you’re wondering what this is all about, I strongly suggest you see the video on it.

It still uses the same (old?) Mac OS-X leopard and runs on Intel Core2Duo, but I guess the most beautiful changes you on it are in the looks and what it’s made of; literally!

The first thing that’s completely different about it from everything else is that it moves away from Apple’s signature white (or black) polycarbonate body to precision machine-cut aluminum.

What really blew my mind is the fact that they decided to manufacture the whole body as a single piece – as opposed to virtually every other notebook on the planet (that I figure uses at least a couple of dozen parts for the main body); and the only way they could do that was to machine the whole thing from a solid block of aluminum!

Yes, every new Macbook out there comes from a separate, single, solid block of aluminum. Wonder what they do with all the little pieces?

The next thing big thing is the all-glass-and-LED screen that extends all the way to the edges. I guess glass and LED are the best things that go with shiny metal, and the new macbook beautifully eliminates the frame around the screen; lending a seamless appearance to the screen.

The new trackpad (also made of glass) eliminates the click-button…and instead the whole thing is clickable anywhere you want – you can even configure a “right-click-zone” anyplace on it in case you need one (remember, macs don’t require a right-click by default).

The trackpad also features the famous multi-touch as used on the iPhones and earlier generation Macbook-Pros.

Other interesting features noteworthy are the tiny row of green LEDs on the side that indicate battery status and the invisible sleep indicator light (that’s made by shaving off the side of the aluminum from the inside and perforating microscopic holes into the surface, so you only see the light when its on)

All said and done at the end of the day however and jumping back to reality, this thing is priced at over €1,500…and that’s WAY off my budget for a long time!

Guess the only place I’m gonna see it is at the nearest Apple store.

Overload!

I originally intended this to be sort of a sequel to my last post on Online living because I later realized there was so much I didn’t do it much justice – and as some people pointed out; maybe there is more to life than the internet.

But brings us to another point: overload of the stuff we love and hold on to everyday.

Apart from my work Email and office phone (which keep me busy nearly the entire day five days a week) I also have 3 other personal Email accounts which demand checking a few times a day. And then there is orkut – the single biggest service I use on the internet next only to google search.
To complicate things, I recently discovered a whole lot of my high-school buddies on facebook and joined in. And then there is Linked-In to keep in touch with old colleagues from work who neither fit in orkut or facebook.

And this does not even take into account the free sign-up offers I turn down everyday from places named Hi5, friendster, WAYN, Shelfari, RupeeMail, Yaari… and this list gets long.

 Add to this is the sweet chaos of blogging and checking out the regular blogs I read, joining in the discussion forum I comment on regularly (which I will not mention here) and a crazy service called My Blog Log – which I have no idea why the devil I signed up for.

Picasa and Flickr where I stash my pix online.

And then there is twitter; which I don’t use all that much either and just signed up because it felt like a good idea at the time (and because the guys from CommonCraft did a great marketing job with Twitter in Plain English!)

 It suddenly dawned on me that I have way too many things to keep track of online. Maybe it is time to switch all things off for a while and stay disconnected from all things electronic.

 

And when that day comes; I’ll do another post on it ;-)

Online Living

A friend of mine recently lamented on how she nearly quit blogging because she thought she “ran out of stuff to say to the world” and I disagree.

I, for one, feel lost without access to the online stuff I love and cherish; which for the most part include Email, chat, blogging, socializing on orkut (and Facebook too, now that I’ve discovered it!), participating on discussion forums, scribbling nonsense on twitter and writing comments on YouTube videos – all of which are stuff you want to say to the people who care to listen.

And in doing so, I guess we sometimes tend to forget how much of our lives is really out there in the unknown, at the whim of anyone who chooses to use it.

Friendly comments and tags aside, I’ve had my share of abuse too. I’ve had spammers trash my blog, received rude comments on everything from blog comments to news articles and video reviews; I even had unknown people question my faith.
And in having all this; we sometimes tend to get emotional over the content we sometimes need to deal with. I once blew my top over a nut who argued over the existence of God and it took me a couple of cups of tea to calm down.

YouTube’s “report abuse” section has some helpful advice though. They say you need to realize there’s life beyond the internet, and move on. And if that doesn’t help, to try staying away from the computer for a while.

In short, realize that your life online is pretty much the same as in real life – from the friends to foes, there’s plenty of people; thoughts and opinions. And yours doesn’t always go with everyone. But that doesn’t mean you have to be mum about it.
Because there really is so much to say.

Trust me.

Lost

This morning a colleague of mine took a wrong short cut thru the woods on his way to work and ended up hopelessly lost on the Autobahn; finally requiring a couple of police officers to pick him up and drop him off at the office with a friendly warning.

While we were joking about it a few hours later, it reminded me of the first time I got lost: in second grade on the busy streets of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.
And now that I think about it, kinda strikes me weird because there really were a million things that could have gone wrong that night and it was nothing short of a miracle that I made it home.

I was just your regular second grade, smart alec, know-it-all kid who one day decided to walk home from school because my dad was held up at a meeting and couldn’t make it on time to pick me up from school like he did everyday.
Needless to say, within no time I was lost, and I knew it.
Now this was way before mobile phones (we didn’t even have a phone at home!) and all I knew was to keep walking.
I guess it was purely in the Plan of The Creator that I accidentally stumbled upon a garage where at that exact time, the guy who ran the restaurant across the street from my house, chose to come to fix his car.

He recognized me as ‘that kid from our street’ and borrowed another car to drive me two blocks to my home; and offered me dinner while we waited for mom and dad (who were of course, freaking out from searching all over town and finally came back home hopeless, to call the police!)
Needless to say, that night I didn’t feel a thing; and so, went to sleep and went back to school the next day.

17 years later, the memories of that night, haunt me to this day.
There is a lot in life we take for granted.

5 reasons why I don’t do Linux

…or FreeBSD or MacX Leopard or Solaris, and stick to plain old windows.

1. Too much effort
True, Windows is not the most straightforward operating system in the world, but at least it’s the most familiar one in the world. Click a file to select. Double click to open. Right-click to modify. How much simpler can it get?
Compare this with everything else. You need to mount drives before you can use them (and dismount them afterwards), manually install applications, change settings for pretty much everything and in short, have an idea of how the whole thing actually works before you can do something on it.

2. Too much geek talk
Normally, you don’t hear too many people talking about modifying binary keys on the Windows Registry…and that’s about as geeky as it gets.
For Linux users, the day routinely involves tweaking the Kernel, swapping drives, compiling programs, or simply doing itsy-bitsy things to make your machine a tad bit leaner and faster.

3. Too many versions
For 7yrs, Windows xp was just one thing. And now you have Vista. And even though they do come in lots of flavors, the basic package is pretty much the same thing; give or take a few additional features. Nothing more, nothing less.

Linux, on the other hand, comes in so many distributions, its easy to get lost in there. You have popular commercial versions such as SUSE and Red Hat, you have ‘community’ versions like Ubuntu and Fedora; and then you have those little versions someone decided to make for themselves…like Arch Linux. To top things, with a little know-how, you can make your own distro…sometimes small enough to fit on a USB stick. Why would anyone wanna do that is beyond me. I prefer to take my entire notebook along, not just the operating system.

4. Apply the Applications
I’m sorry to say this, but when you take the list of applications in the world available for windows, and compare it with everything else; things just don’t add up. Now you can scream all you want on how popular software is always available for Mac and Linux, but its usually more difficult to find unless its in your job to do so.
The rest of us happy-go-lucky computer users prefer to walk into a store and walk out with the DVD, without having to ask too many questions on compatibility and whatever.

5. Getting the job done.
For people like me, at the end of the day it’s all about how much I get done “on” my computer and not “for” my computer.

Tweaking system settings for the hell of it is fun when that’s all you have to do. But when you’re at work and running multiple server-side production environments, an interface monitor and an Email client, the last thing you'd care about is how much processing your workstation is using and how you can tweak the whatever to speed it up. Nor do you care to compile and manually install that tiny little file-zip application.

You need something that’s easy, and doesn’t demand learning the operating core to get your job done. And that’s what windows gives me.

After all, it’s the applications that run on it that I’m interested in.

p.s.
Boy, I know I made some enemies up there…to all the penguin fans reading this; sorry you guys. But I couldn’t help myself :)

New Delhi and the bombs

Shortly after 6:30pm IST, a series of 5 bombs rocked the Indian capital of New Delhi, killing around 2 dozen people and wounding around a hundred others.

On behalf of everyone here, we extend our deepest sympathies and condolences to the families who have lost their loved ones…for no fault of theirs. And at the same time, curse the wrecked freaks who caused this; killing innocent people in their mindless wake.

And it makes me angry thinking about it. This is not the first time this has happened, and probably is not the last. So in between when it happened for the first time and now; what has changed and what hasn’t?

As ever, the President, Prime Minister, Other Ministers, and all the guys up in Parliament, issued their standard statement expressing their “deepest concerns” and “appeal for calm and peace”.

On the face of it, it sounds like a good idea. Keep calm. And let the authorities do their job.

But as history bears witness, this does not really happen. What does happen is a series of routine tasks:

1)       The police ‘investigates’ and makes random arrests around the city of ‘suspects’…as if terrorists just hang around waiting for the police to grab them.

2)       Security gets ‘beefed up’ (whatever the hell that means) around airports, train stations and other ‘strategic locations’…as if terrorists are stupid enough to attack the most obvious places just hours after a major attack.

3)       Barricades are put up, and a major part of the public that had nothing to do with this is agonized by not being able to visit their loved ones in hospital or move away from hot spots.

4)       News channels, magazines and news sites go into overdrive on how to deal with the menace.

5)       The government reiterates its commitment to fighting violent attacks and acts of terror.

6)       The opposition party organizes rallies on how the current administration is doing such a sloppy job.

7)       Two weeks later, everyone forgets the whole thing. And life goes on as usual.

As usual of course, except for those who lost their loved ones in the attack. And then those ‘suspects’ who were rounded up just to make the police look good, and languish in dungeons with no charges laid against them.

Conveniently forget; is sadly what our country seems to do best.