Me - Myself

iPod Touch first-gen WiFi speed

2009-07-11T23:42:00.000-07:00

For a long time the WiFi speed on my (first generation) iPod Touch was abysmally slow. Downloads from the App Store or over-the-air podcast downloads were at about 5 kbps. The wireless router I was using was 802.11g with WEP encryption.

Yesterday I changed my router to a wireless-N router (with WPA-PSK encryption) and the speed has suddenly shot up to the full capacity of my broadband connection. I'm not sure if this is because of the wireless-N connection or the way the iPod Touch handles WEP encryption which was slowing things down.

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

About social networks, social capital, social change and other socially things

2009-01-31T18:55:00.000-08:00

It's early Sunday morning. I'm supposed to deliver a speech about something tomorrow but I can't remember the topic. And then I remembered that someone had written the topic for me on a piece of paper. I fish out the paper and look at it - but I can't make out what the topic is. I see something like "soc cha". I desperately try to make out what the topic is but the paper starts to shimmer and the letters fade away...

And then I woke up.

OK so it was an early morning dream. But as I lay awake in bed thinking about my dream I realized that my subconscious was impregnating me with subliminal messages (yes I know I make it sound a bit like an alien invasion of privacy) about something that is happening all around us - social change.

define:social change

Social change is a general term which refers to:

change in social structure: the nature, the social institutions, the social behaviour or the social relations of a society, community of people, and so on.
When behaviour pattern changes, in large numbers and is visible and sustained it results in a social change. Once there is a deviance from culturally inherited values, it may result in a rebellion against the established system, causing a change in the social order.
any event or action that affects a group of individuals that have shared values or characteristics.
acts of advocacy for the cause of changing society in a normative way (subjective).

(courtesy: Google search and Wikipedia)

This got me thinking and to this blog post.

Let me give a few examples before I tell you what exactly I was thinking about.

LeVar Burton asks Brent Spinner (they both acted in the "Star Trek - The Next Generation" series among other things) after Spinner signs up for Twitter: "@BrentSpinner Feel the Love? Over 5K follows in less than 24 hours!"

A lot of Facebook groups emerged after the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai. These groups organized people from different parts of India (and the world) to come together for peace. So many of the users in these groups had never met each but came together (in the online world and later offline) to offer support and help.

Barack Obama created history becoming the first African American President of the USA and he used Twitter, Facebook and blogs (among other things) to spread his message and gather support.

So what am I driving at? Well, here's what.

I believe we are seeing a trend where more and more individuals (and institutions) moving closer to their constituency.

Gone are the days when celebrities had a "you can't come near me I have a bodyguard who can deliver a big punch" aura about them. They (like LeVar Burton, Brent Spinner and Shahrukh Khan) can now be followed on Twitter and they'll even reply to your silly direct messages.

Gone are the days when an attack would usually mean the victims suffer alone. They now have people from across the world (most of whom they have never met) coming together on Facebook, organizing candle light marches in their local cities and lobbying for change.

And gone are the days when the President of the USA thought a Blackberry was something you could eat.

So what's causing this trend of moving closer to the constituency?

I believe what is causing this trend is that a lot of people are rediscovering the benefits of one thing - social capital.

define: social capital

Social capital is a concept developed in sociology and also used in business, economics, organizational behaviour, political science, public health and natural resources management that refers to connections within and between social networks as well as connections among individuals. Though there are a variety of related definitions, which have been described as "something of a cure-all" for the problems of modern society, they tend to share the core idea "that social networks have value. Just as a screwdriver (physical capital) or a college education (human capital) can increase productivity (both individual and collective), so too social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups".

(courtesy: Google search and Wikipedia)

Social capital is not something new. Man is a "social animal" and social capital has been around ever since the first cavemen banded together to go after that elusive mammoth. However since then society has been moving farther apart.

In a world where financial capital has already run out I believe the next coming will be with social capital. The more people you know, the more successful your venture will be. The more people you help, the more people will help you. The real value is in the connections you make with other people and not in the large amounts of money you can throw at something.

And driving this trend towards gathering more social capital are the various social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook which make it really easy to connect with people from around the world (you are probably reading this blog post because I posted a link to it from my Twitter and Facebook accounts).

So - enough said. My aim is not to preach but to impregnate your mind with sublimal messages that will make you think about social networks, building social capital, building social solidarity through social networks and bringing about social change. Just like I did one early Sunday morning.

Checking out Windows Live Writer

2008-11-26T01:57:00.001-08:00

Testing out Windows Live Writer beta. Let’s see if this works… It does!

The economic crisis is a dress rehearsal to a much bigger one

2008-11-15T02:10:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know. Everyone is talking about it - the global R. So why am I harping on the same topic and rubbing it in some more?

I'm not going to write about the economic crisis. We know how it is shattering the fortunes of companies and individuals worldwide. Iconic brands that we assumed were indestructible are filing for bankruptcy. The nightmares are becoming a reality.

However I believe this economic crisis is a test to see how effectively we can handle a much bigger crisis that is looming around the corner - the environmental one.

Greed - the urge to "make hay while the sun shines" without a thought for long term sustainability - has resulted in this economic crisis. And the urge to exploit the environment and our natural resources with no thought for sustainability is soon going to result in an environmental crisis of unprecedented scale.

We have already seen this happen - global warming, polar ice caps melting, Asian brown clouds, mega-hurricanes lashing coastlines and even oil shortage (which seems to have got a reprieve due to the economic crisis taking center-stage).

As we continue to exploit our natural resources we will reach a point in time when there's an acute shortage of things we take for granted today - like oil, power, water, food...

We have seen "unprecedented action" from governments across the world bailing out companies and banks out of the economic crisis.

What I fear is that it is easier to print money (and bail out of an economic crisis) than it is to replenish precious natural resources that have been exploited for several hundred years.

So is it finally time we started preparing for the next crisis or perhaps even prevent it from happening?

Your thoughts (and action) are welcome.

Vandalur zoo's "night safari"?

2008-05-25T02:29:00.000-07:00

I read this news item today and it set me thinking.

A senior officer said 124 mammals, 124 birds and 42 reptiles, totalling 290, would be exhibited. As per the plan, the authorities would source an adequate number of birds, mammals and reptiles from the zoo, and the rest would be acquired from other zoos in the country under an exchange programme.

The safari area required 20 lakh litres of water every day. For this, the officials proposed to draw seven lakh litres from the ground, and 6.5 lakh litres from the Palar and Veeranam. The rest would be treated water that would be obtained from Perungudi.

The facility needed 5,000 MW of power. The cables for power supply would be laid underground. For viewing the animals, special lightings would be provided, but they would not disturb the animals. To overcome disruption of power supply, a back-up facility would be created with silent generators.

[full news item here]

First we, as a race, set about destroying forests, killing wildlife and generally making a mess of the planet. This results in a situation where mankind cannot see wildlife in any place on this planet except in zoos that are built in the name of wildlife preservation. Then, we go about building night safaris that use over 20 lakh litres of water every day and 5000MW of power - further destroying nature. I'm not an expert on such issues but I'm guessing that 20 lakh litres and 5000MW of power could be put to better use.

Dell and the Art of Computer Maintenance

2008-05-20T11:56:00.000-07:00

First off let me state this -

1. This is not another one of those Dell bashing posts that you see around the Internet. Also most of the situation I describe is probably relevant only to Dell's Indian operations.

2. I am a self-professed gadget junkie who cannot live without the many dozens of gadgets that surround me at all times. So if you're like me you'll understand the pain.

OK with that out of the way let's start at the beginning. About 6 months back I bought a Dell XPS M1330 laptop. The laptop is fairly light, 13" LCD, 2.4ghz processor, 2GB RAM, 6 hours backup (9 cell battery) etc. I was very happy with this laptop and started using it as my primary laptop (office and home).

The trouble started during the last week of April when the display started flickering and showing strange patterns on the screen. Being the adventurous soul that I am I tried fiddling around with the laptop by reinstalling drivers and connecting it to an external display. That worked for a few days after which the display died completely.

OK so the laptop was just 6 months old and well within warranty so I went online to Dell's award winning customer support website and registered an online complaint (or "trouble ticket" as they like to call it - I was wondering if customer support departments worldwide are actually referring to customers as the real trouble tickets?).

I promptly got an automated email from Dell stating that my request had been logged and that someone will get back to me within one business day (and it devoted an entire paragraph to explain in great detail that an issue reported on Sunday night must be assumed to have been reported on Monday morning or something to that effect).

A couple of days went by and no one contacted me. So I went back to the award winning Dell customer service site and submitted a reminder using the tiny "Unresolved issues" link at the bottom of their support home page. I again got back an automated email stating that my unresolved issue will be looked at within one business day.

A few business days went by and nothing happened.

Moral of the story so far - the online support request system is probably manned by one or two support staff who have to sift through thousands of such requests so it will probably take them a few years to get to my complaint.

I then decided to try the phone route.

A word of advise at this juncture. If you are planning to contact the customer support phone number of any company (not just Dell) make sure you either have a speakerphone or a good Bluetooth headset. Calls to customer support departments are full of horribly long hold times and without the said speakerphone or Bluetooth attachment, you are bound to end up being diagnosed with advanced stages of cancer (especially if you use a cell phone) well before a support representative comes on the line to find out what you are calling about.

Being the wise one I recharged my Bluetooth headset and placed the call to Dell's customer support number (it's a toll free number that routes to their Bangalore call center). I was greeted by a cheery automated voice lady who asked me to press a few buttons to indicate what I wanted to do - so I pressed 1 for reporting a problem, 1 for laptop (and then to my consternation realized that cheerful automated lady was not listing the Dell XPS laptop as a choice in the list of laptops), so I pressed 1 any way for the "Latitude series laptops" and then got Kenny G on the line. Kenny G tooted into my ears for the next 15 minutes while I waited for the eager Dell customer support representatives to answer my call. Come to think of it now, 15 minutes was not too long looking back at the times I've spent on hold on various customer support numbers.

A customer support lady finally came on the line and asked me for my laptop's service tag number. I gave her the number and she proclaimed joyously that I had a Dell XPS laptop. I said "yes ofcourse and I have a problem with it". She then asked me to wait while she transferred the call to Dell's Malaysian call center. Malaysia??? The kind lady helpfully explained that Dell XPS laptops were supported by their Malaysian call center and that the Malaysian center was far more busier than the Bangalore one so I should expect to be on hold for a lot longer.

That tip about the hold time proved to be useful because I finally ended up waiting on hold to the Malaysian call center for over 45 minutes.

After about 45 minutes of listening to some music that I no longer recollect - a friendly Chinese support representative came on the line and asked me again for the service tag number. I gave it to him and he then asked me what was wrong. Ok so finally I get someone who wants to know what is the problem.

So I explained to this guy while he patiently listened. He then asked me if I could switch on the laptop and get into Windows - to which (stifling expletives) I explained to him again that the display was kaput and I didn't know whether the laptop was showing windows or doors when I switched it on. "Ahhhh", he said.

He then asked me to be on hold while he filled in a complaint. More music and after about 15 minutes he finally came back on the line and gave me a reference number for the complaint and explained that someone will attend to the problem the next business day. I thanked him (and my stars) and hung up.

The next day morning I promptly received a call from Dell's service partner in Chennai (TVS Electronics) who said that they had received the complaint and that they didn't have the necessary parts (a motherboard) to complete the replacement. The guy explained the motherboard had to be shipped from Singapore and would arrive in about 4 to 5 days time.

4 or 5 days went by and nothing happened. By now I had setup a desktop at office and was using that as my primary PC with whatever data I could salvage from backups made at various undisclosed locations across the globe. So I just let them have a few more days of breathing time.

After about 10 days of waiting (and a total of 3 weeks from originally reporting the issue via Dell's website) I could take it no longer so I decided to check my astrological forecast in the local newspaper and determine if it was the right time to call Dell's customer support hotline again.

My stars seem to have been shining much brighter this time around (last Friday) and within a couple of seconds I got the Bangalore lady on the line who then quickly transferred me to the Malaysian call center, where the Malaysian guy picked up the line within a couple of minutes! This was my lucky day (or perhaps no one ever calls a customer support line on Fridays). The Malaysian guy took my reference number, went through his magic books and proclaimed that the part in question was on its way from Singapore and would reach Chennai by Tuesday. I told him that my laptop was in warranty and it had "next day on-site service" and it was now over ten days since I had registered the complaint - to which he replied that the next day on-site will be in effect as soon as the motherboard reaches Chennai so I should expect my issue to be resolved on Tuesday or Wednesday.

I thanked the Malaysian guy and hung up wondering if Dell was shipping parts by catamaran or other similar human powered means that it takes the motherboard two weeks to reach Chennai from Singapore.

OK so Tuesday arrived - nice and bright. And around 11am this morning I got a call back from the TVS Electronics guy who said he had the part in question and wanted to know what would be a convenient time to come and do the honours. I informed him that my doors were open to him at all times and that he should make haste to arrive in front of said door in the shortest possible time.

So the guy arrived within an hour at my house and proceeded to dissect the laptop to pieces (I am reminded of movies where the protagonist rapidly takes apart and then reassembles a long range rifle). He replaced the faulty motherboard, uttered a few magic words and then closed everything up.

He then proceeded to systematically check each and every aspect of the laptop starting with the RAM, harddisk, keyboard, webcam etc to make sure all of them were working properly. Satisfied with the results he finally proclaimed everything was in proper working order and left with a cheery wave.

So in effect it took nearly a month for the issue to be resolved. I think the XPS laptops are some of the most powerful laptops made (mine actually clocks "5" on the Windows Experience Index while a dual-core 3GHZ HP behemoth desktop I now use at office barely manages a "3") but having to wait for one month to get an issue resolved is not acceptable especially on a laptop that one uses as a primary office machine. Which means I'm probably never going to use a Dell machine as my primary PC or laptop unless their service response time become "next day" as promised in their warranty.

The main issue I had with Dell was that they never responded to my initial complaint submitted via their website and then took two weeks to ship parts from Singapore once I filed another complaint by calling their customer support number.

Dell claims that it's support website is award winning. The guy I called up the second time in Malaysia had to just punch in my reference number and he was able to read off from some sort of consignment status screen on what was happening to the spare part that they had shipped to Chennai. Why can't they put this status page up on Dell's award winning website? That would have allowed me to just enter the reference number and take comfort in the fact that the parts had left the shores of Singapore without having to wait several hours on hold. I'm sure that such an option will also free up Dell's harried customer support representatives who are, for the most part, just reading out aloud from a computer screen. I'm sure Dell's customers are smart enough to punch in a number and read for themselves.

About the two week delay for shipping parts - I am not sure if this is intentional (you reduce 2 weeks from the warranty period in the process!) or part of one of those new fangled "just in time" ideas where the company doesn't purchase any spare parts until it's just the right time for the customer to blow their top. Agreed that Dell's prices are cheaper than other brands of similar configuration - but the last thing they want to penny pinch on is after sales service. Dell would have really wow'ed me if they had shipped that motherboard by overnight courier to Chennai and the TVS Electronics guy had landed up at my doorsteps the next day morning to do his magic. I know that costs more than the catamaran transport they ended up using but an overnight solution would have really made me an advocate of Dell's laptops and I am sure I would have sold atleast a couple of laptops for them just by talking about my experience.

Here's a recap of the vital dates.

April 27th, 2008: Problem with LCD noticed and I filed an online complaint.
May 5th, 2008: Fed up waiting for response to online complaint I ring up Dell customer support and get a reference number for the replacement.
May 20th, 2008: Problem finally resolved.

So in summary here's what I learnt from all this:

1. While the Dell XPS laptops are an excellent buy, don't depend on getting a quick resolution if you run into any hardware problems.

2. After having not used a laptop for almost a month I'm beginning to like desktops again. I got myself a Microsoft cordless keyboard and mouse for my office PC and the HP behemoth desktop PC with its myriad wires and "Uninterruptible Power Supply" unit looks a bit more appealing than it was 3 weeks ago.

3. Backup! I can't stress this hard enough. Whether you use a desktop or laptop or even a typewriter - always backup! The Western Digital Passport Elite 320gb has joined my gadget entourage and using it's WD Sync facility I can sync my desktop and laptop contents into its 320gb harddisk (email, files, bookmarks etc). The WD Sync is pretty nifty - it allows me to read/reply Outlook email using any PC that I connect it to even if that PC doesn't have Outlook installed. You can also install dozens of portable applications from www.portableapps.com on to the Passport Elite and take them with you wherever you go.

4. After having lugged laptops of various dimensions for the past 5 years from office to home and back - I'm beginning to think I should just use a desktop PC at office and leave work where it belongs (at office).

MyMiniCity

2008-03-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

This site seems to be sort of like the Sims of the online world. You create a mini-city and then whenever someone visits the mini-city page your population goes up. Once you get to a critical mass in population you can then start building industries and such. Looks interesting so I created my mini-city and started playing around with it.

You're welcome to visit my mini-city. :)

Silverlight vs Flash

2008-03-12T07:38:00.001-07:00

I was checking out Microsoft's Silverlight technology recently (especially the version 2.0 that is out now in beta). It looks pretty cool and Microsoft has probably taken it further ahead of Flash by giving it the capability to run .NET code.

But I think its unfair on the part of Microsoft to put those boxes around Flash objects and make you click on them before it activates the Flash controls in Internet Explorer. I see no such restriction for Silverlight objects. Is this giving Silverlight an unfair advantage at least in terms of ease of use (I've seen many users complain that Flash controls don't work on a website - since they didn't realize that they need to click on them once activate the control).

Is Apple braindead or am I? - the saga of iPod Touch January update in India

2008-02-07T23:47:00.000-08:00

I got an iPod Touch about 10 days back and was happy as a baby exploring a new toy until I realized that it came with outdated software. The so-called "January update" to iPod Touch that made it much more useful (such as adding a Mail app, etc) was not available even though I had purchased the Touch in the last week of January 2008.

So I promptly went to the Apple website and looked around. I did find a link that promised me the heavens with the January update and a link to buy the update. I thought "Ok so Apple is going to rip me off $20 in the process even if I did get the Touch only in end-January - so what?". So I went ahead and clicked the link to buy the update.

This then opened iTunes which started loading the iTunes Store and then asked me to register for an iTunes Store account but refused to allow me to register since I was in India and Apple did not have the iTunes Store available for India.

I didn't want to buy any music - I just wanted the Touch update. But I couldn't get it without an iTunes Store account which in turn was not available if you were unlucky enough to be in India.

So I called up the Apple support line in Bangalore (luckily they do have a support helpdesk in India). The friendly customer support representative took my Touch serial number and other details and finally proclaimed the obvious - "Sir, you need to go to iTunes Store and download the update via that". I said "Yes I tried that and it didn't allow me to create the account. That is why I'm calling you".

And to this the friendly guy replied, "You'll need to create an account with a USA or Australia credit card and address and then download the update". To this I said "How am I supposed to do that if I don't have a credit card from USA or Australia?". To that he says, "Sorry I can't help you with that".

OK... so why is Apple selling iPod Touch in India if they don't allow you to make full use of the products they are selling? Apple may be great at design - but I think they're braindead when it comes to commonsense (either that or they think they are so high and mighty they can get away with anything).

Why can't they just provide some sort of download area that allows customers in India (and the hundreds of other countries where there is no iTunes Store) to download the update from their site as long as they have a serial number that can be traced back to a retailer in that country. Or even provide the update on a disk to customers without iTunes Store accounts who want to buy it?

Not sure what is going on here. I would appreciate if anyone has any tips on how unfortunate people in India can get the January update for iPod Touch.

Safari for Windows

2007-06-16T20:35:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week Apple let loose the Safari 3 browser beta on its Windows brethren. And the world rejoiced!

Ofcourse, I'm about a week late in rejoicing.

I visited the pcmag.com home page this morning and lo and behold! There was this article on the Apple Safari 3 beta for Windows. I promptly installed it and within a few minutes it has become my default browser.

There's only one word that I have for the Safari browser as of now - awesome! The pages do indeed load much faster. And the interface is absolutely out of this world - press CTRL-D to bookmark a page and a panel "flips" out from top of the browser to ask you where you want to add the bookmark!

And I would say that the inline page find (go ahead, press CTRL-F and then type in some text - see what happens) on its own makes it worth having Safari as your default browser.

Though Apple has not created an "official" extensions architecture for Safari it does have several extensions available (see www.pimpmysafari.com) like Firefox. I'm not sure if these work on the Windows avatar as well, need to check some out soon.

Finally there's one thing I need to ask of Apple (that is, if they read this blog!) - what took you so long? Come on, release Windows versions of the other great Apple software out there. I can't wait to use GarageBand and Pages 2 on Windows.

Or perhaps you just want all of us to buy the Intel Macs after drooling on iTunes and Safari, dreaming about the better life that awaits us...

Error code 0x80040116 in Outlook 2007

2007-05-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

When trying to click 'Settings' on a PST file in Outlook 2007 (File > Data File Management) I kept getting an error code 0x80040116.

I had the problem with both my Archive PST file as well as the main Personal Folders PST file. I was able to resolve the problem with Archive PST by just closing and re-opening the Archive Folders i.e. right click 'Archive Folders' and then select 'Close Archive Folders'. Then go to File > Data File Management and click 'Add' and add the 'Archive.pst' file (or whatever its called on your system) back to Outlook. You can use this method for other PST files too (except for the main Personal Folders outlook.pst file - which you cannot 'close').

For the Personal Folders PST file the procedure is as follows.

1. Click File > Data File Management and then click "Open Folder" to open the folder where Outlook stores the data files. Keep this Explorer window open.

2. Exit from Outlook.

3. On the Explorer window that you opened in the first step you'll see a file called 'outlook.pst' and this is the main Personal Folders PST file (at least all systems I've seen so far always call it 'outlook.pst').

4. Now copy and paste this outlook.pst file to some other folder (lets say you put it on your desktop and rename it to outlook1.pst). And just to be sure you have a backup, copy and paste the outlook.pst again to another folder too! This process may take a while especially if you have a large PST file.

5. Now open Outlook and delete all of the folders you have under 'Personal Folders' (yes go ahead and do it!). You should be able to delete all of them except for the system folders such as Deleted Items, Drafts, Inbox, Junk E-mail, Outbox, RSS feeds, Sent Items and Search Folders.

6. Now empty the deleted items by clicking 'Tools' and then 'Empty Deleted Items folder'.

7. Next open the copy of outlook.pst (i.e. the outlook1.pst file from step 4) by going File > Data File Management and then clicking 'Add'.

8. Outlook will now open one more 'Personal Folders' folder. This would have all of the email etc that you originally had in the main Personal Folders.

9. Now just drag and drop the folders and email back into the main Personal Folders folder (the one at the top). E.g. email in the Inbox of the second Personal Folders folder goes into the Inbox of the Personal Folders at the top, email in the Sent Items of the second Personal Folders goes into the Sent Items of the one at the top, folders in the second Personal Folders go into the first Personal Folders and so on.

10. Once that is over close the second Personal Folders (the outlook1.pst one) by right clicking it and selecting 'Close Personal Folders'.

11. You can now go to File > Data File Management and click 'Settings' on your Personal Folders and see the Settings dialog.

**MANDATORY WARNING** You're playing with your email here, so be extra careful! You don't want to delete hundreds of years of stored messages in one click!

** NOTE ** I am assuming you don't have an MS Exchange connection from your Outlook or any similar fancy stuff. If you do then the above procedure may not work for you. I don't use an Exchange server so I don't know if the procedure works in such cases.

svchost.exe - application error

2007-02-16T01:09:00.000-08:00

If you get this error:

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
svchost.exe - application error
The instruction at "0x745f2780" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The memory could not be "read".
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

And also a error dialog about "Generic Host process for Win32 services", then do this to resolve the problem:

1. Boot into safe mode
2. Disable automatic updates in Windows
3. Reboot system into normal mode
4. Do a manual Windows update
5. Enable automatic updates in Windows
4. Reboot once again

It looks like a recent Windows auto-update messed things up and Windows kept giving the above error on startup. I got this error this morning and was in "safe mode" till I found the above solution.

I actually found "safe mode with networking" much faster and better than the regular "unsafe" mode of Windows. More about that later. :-)

Microsoft strikes back? - Windows Live Messenger, Windows Media Player 11, etc

2006-05-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

I just installed the latest beta of Windows Live Messenger and Windows Media Player 11. Though I haven't played around with WMP11 yet I should say that Live Messenger is looking good. But one downside - it has tons of stuff I will never use but which still clutter the interface.

After some searching on Google I found A-Patch for Windows Live Messenger - a cool program that strips out many (and I mean many!) unwanted interface enhancements from Messenger. Check out the screenshot that shows my Messenger window after I stripped it down with A-Patch.

And for those that upgraded to Yahoo Messenger 7.5 and got a shock when they saw the bottom ads on the contact list window - there's
a registry fix for that.

And finally about Windows Media Player 11 - it looks very retro-modern but I will have to actually start using it to see if it can be any serious competition to iTunes. Watch this space. :-)

A yawn, Hamachi and Stormy Weather

2006-05-03T11:14:00.000-07:00

I awake from deep slumber to post again.. tada! OK I know no one is going to be surprised or even looking forward to this post. Its been a rather whirlwind schedule these past few months and I conveniently shelved my blog during this period. So here's a short post to keep things live.

Hamachi - this is a 'cute' piece of VPN software that is virtually zero configuration required (except to make the necessary firewall settings to allow the Hamachi adapter access). Pretty useful if you want to use the Internet to form a private network (home office use, playing LAN games etc).

Stormy Weather - this is a book by Carl Hiaasen. I just finished listening to it on audible. Its seriouslly comically and the author sure knows how to weave a tale.

Internet Explorer 7 beta preview 2

2006-02-18T01:25:00.000-08:00

So I tried the IE7 beta preview 2. It looked OK but caused problems with software that used the ".URL" file type among other things. E.g. if I clicked on a URL in a Yahoo Messenger chat window it opened the Yahoo folder on my hard disk instead of the URL. And some random crashes. Whatever.

And it looks like Microsoft is becoming more psychedelic in the color schemes it uses for its software. The IE7 setup color scheme looked pretty wierd and non-Microsofty. Not to mention news I read some place that said that Vista will have guitar strains as a part of the Windows sound scheme.

Here's an important link - how to uninstall IE7 beta preview 2. And thats what I just did now.

A funny telemarketing call

2006-01-12T23:22:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick one. I get a call today from one of those telemarketing companies hawking the next big telephone yellow page service. I could tell right away that she was reading from a prepared script. How you ask? Well she goes like this, "We have been getting a lot of calls asking about Internet service providers in Chennai and we have been referring them to ABC Company in Adyar and XYZ Company in Anna Nagar". The least they could do was actually substitute ABC and XYZ with some real names of our competitors. :-) Oh well, we live in a mechanical world after all.

Blogging in two oh oh six

2005-12-31T11:50:00.000-08:00

Welcome! Hope you have a wondeful year that is filled with happiness, fulfilled dreams and other such things. Not to mention more of my blog posts.

Ok so one of my new year's resolutions is going to be blog more. And the other seriously funny one is to be using Skype more often. Towards that end I seem to have somehow mastered the art of getting my Bluetooth headset (Nokia HS4W) working with my laptop (Sony Vaio, as of this writing) using a Belkin Bluetooth USB thingie (which works for up to 100 metres by the way). Its so wonderfully awesome once you get it working (after hours of frustration, cursing and generally draining the laptop battery - unless its plugged in to mains the bluetooth thingie can drain your battery in between blinks). Next up is trying out Skypeheadset which makes it really convenient to use Skype with the bluetooth headset because it supports stuff like call and mute using the headset buttons - just like a regular mobile phone! Ohhhh I love technology!!! :-)

I'm using the Performancing plugin for Firefox to write this blog by the way. Its a neat plugin that provides split screen view so you can use the browser while you type your blog post etc.

I just created a Yahoo 360 account and am trying to figure out what its all about. You can call this my "first signup of the year". But in general I think Blogger is much better when it comes to blogging than Yahoo 360.

Talking of firsts of the year - I already had my first call of the year and first SMS of the year.

For those of you who are wondering - I dumped Opera as my primary browser and am now back to Firefox (version 1.5 is so much more cooler and stabler). The number one reason being - plugins. I think all software should have plugin support. I believe the most important reason why Firefox is so popular is because you can extend its utility using so many plugins. The Firefox plugins (or extensions) I have installed right now are SessionSaver, Tabbrowser Preferences, LiveLines, FlashGot, PDF download, Add Bookmark here, Plain Text Links, Gmail Delete button, Disable XPI Install delay, SearchPluginHacks, Stop-or-Reload Button and ofcourse Performancing.

BTW here's a really cool gadget - its called the Snazio Net DVD Cinema and it allows you to wirelessly stream your digital media collections (mp3, wmv, DVD whatever) from your PC, laptop etc to your regular TV. That sounds exciting to me and I may get one soon.

OK I think that should be enough for the first blog post of the year. More later. Toodle-doo.

Beep

2005-12-24T12:12:00.000-08:00

Testing Performancing for Firefox plugin.

The disposable era

2005-11-26T17:13:00.000-08:00

The other day the DSL router at home conked off and I had to call the phone company to fix it. The repair guy came, replaced the router and took the old one with him. Seeing this my mom asked me, "is he going to bring back the old one after fixing it?". I replied that he won't be fixing it, he just replaced it with a new one. My mom sounded pretty surprised about that and this set me thinking.

Are we now in an age where everything's disposable? If it doesn't work, just dump it and look for something new? Do we no longer want to "fix" it? This could be applicable to just about anything and not just DSL routers. Just a thought.

In search of the multiverse

2005-11-12T22:23:00.000-08:00

Last week I finished listening to Michael Crichton's Timeline. Its an old book but I read (actually listened to it via Audible) only now. The book explores the concept of multiverses - which are parallel universes ("almost similar" to the one we live in) and "travelling" to those universes at different points in time.

This concept of a multiverse sounds very interesting to me. A multiverse contains many other parellel universes which are almost similar (not identical but almost similar) to the one that we live in. So in each of these universes the events that take place are slightly different. E.g. in this universe I'm typing this blog post on a fine Sunday afternoon, and in another I could well be still asleep enjoying a weekend siesta.

Have you ever felt like a situation you were in was something you had experienced before? Its called deja vu but I think its actually an experience that is somehow made its way from another universe into ours - a quirk in the space time continuum or quantum foam gone awry. Do I sound like a quantum physicist? I guess not. :-)

Other books I listened to from Michael Crichton in the past few months are State of Fear, Airframe and Prey. All of them are well researched and make quite a few predictions that I believe will soon be reality - like many of the science fiction fantasies that are now a reality.

PressDisplay

2005-11-03T06:01:00.000-08:00

Check out PressDisplay.com - replicas of newspapers from around the world!

Flock!

2005-11-02T06:25:00.000-08:00

This is absolutely cool (but still pretty unstable) software. Flock allows you to browse the web (I think it uses Mozilla/Firefox as the backend engine) and blog using the same application. I bet it does a lot more stuff but I haven't checked it out fully yet. You can get a beta release (beware: it may still have lots of bugs) from www.flock.com

PS: I'm posting this using Flock.

Cool links etc

2005-11-02T05:42:00.000-08:00

Here are some cool sites I came across today.

Windows Live - this is Microsoft trying to get Windows and Office online. Read the news item here.

Nedwolf - Dozens of free software including desktop, portable and web-based.

Gada.be - brand new metasearch engine. The unique thing about this is that you can search by adding the keywords to the URL itself i.e. http://microsoft-live.gada.be searches for "microsoft live".

Thats it for today. Hope all of you had a great Diwali.

Test using Qumana blog editor

2005-11-02T05:25:00.000-08:00

This is a test post using Qumana blog editor - let me see if it makes any sense using it rather than using the browser to post to my blog. You can check Qumana at www.qumana.com

Technorati Tags : Qumana, blog, editor

Powered By Qumana

The fat lady singeth

2005-10-01T18:07:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks back Opera announced that they were going to give away their browser free (no ads and no licensing fee). Just like Firefox.

I promptly downloaded the latest version of Opera and installed it in my laptop. And I was hooked! I really can't say what it was that made me switch but in a day I had Opera as my default browser, uninstalled AvantBrowser and delegated Firefox to the second browser spot. Earlier I had Firefox as my 'first' browser, AvantBrowser as my 'second' browser and IE as my 'third' browser. Now I have Opera as my first, Firefox as my second and IE as my third browser (simply because I can't safely uninstall it and still expect Windows to work).

This Opera is just starting.

By the way, if you're wondering what I meant by "the fat lady singeth" look at this page.

User Experience

2005-10-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

The other day (no, it was not THAT other day) I was at an ATM. Lets call the ATM of Bank 'I-52' (why does everyone call the unknowns - X and Y?) So there I was pushing buttons, working the thing and waiting for the dough when I started thinking.

Before that a bit of a background. I have also had the good fortune to access more than one bank. Not that I have a lot of moolah to store, but thats besides the point. So I have used the ATM of Bank 'C-87' also in the past. OK now on with the story.

OK so while waiting for the dough I started to think about the differences I noticed in the ATMs of these two banks.

Bank 'C-87' has this nice plushy casing for its ATM with a touchscreen monitor embedded into the wall (or table or whatever they can find at that particular location). You just press the icons on the touchscreen, the thing gives out a few comforting beeps and out comes the moolah. Plus the graphical interface on this ATM is also quite nice - subtle colors, soft corners on buttons, very easy on the eyes etc.

Bank 'I-52' on the other hand has this box-like contraption which encases its ATM machine. There are hard physical buttons (no touchscreen) for you to type your PIN number etc. The menus are operated by another set of buttons which are nowhere near numeric keypad that you used to type in your PIN number. The on-screen graphics uses very harsh colors which are not necessarily easy on the eyes. Especially when you are desperate for the moolah.

And there are no comforting beeps.

OK so what is the moral of this story? Well I 'feel' happy and content (like a baby that has just had its milk) when I use the ATM of Bank 'C-87'. Bank 'C-87' makes me feel good about the experience. Whereas the ATM of Bank 'I-52' makes me 'feel' that life couldn't get any worse.

I get my dough in both situations (and in approximately the same amount of time) but the difference was in the user experience.

The moolah is really in the user experience.

In search of power

2005-10-01T17:12:00.000-07:00

The other day I was on my way to a meeting when my mobile (a Nokia 6255) beeped. I looked at its screen and found the message "Low battery". Accompanying this message was a cute animation of a battery with very little "juice" (power) shaking around all over the screen. This set me thinking - why can't mobile phones be a little more intelligent?

Lets say the phone is nearly out of juice and could shut itself down at any moment. The last thing you would want it to do in such a situation is display a cute animation which uses up even more juice and hastens its end. What I would like the mobile to do in such a situation is to get into a mode that uses as little juice as possible but yet warn me so that I can get it charged again.

Perhaps the phone could have some form of power management (do any mobiles do that already, outside of these 'smartphone PDAs' that is?). Sort of like the power management you find on laptops - with several hundred profiles such as "writing email", "oogling at pics", "trying to get work done in MS Word" etc which adjust the processor's speed etc based on the kind of activity you're currently on. I am sure there must be a dozen activities that the latest and greatest mobile phone does which have absolutely no impact on your life and which could be safely switched off in favor of a bit more juice.

How about if you're on a call and the mobile phone is able to recognize that you are at the receiving end of a boring conversation? The phone could send you a subtle beep which means "Hey this conversation is not worth my juice". You would then have an option to, for example, clear your throat in the next 5 seconds, which the mobile phone would recognize and promptly disconnect the caller. The phone would then send a message to the mobile service provider's server instructing it to automatically issue a 'busy' signal to that caller for the next 12 hours, hence saving some more juice. Hopefully by then they would have also forgotten what they wanted to say, saving some more juice.

More cool stuff

2005-09-18T06:18:00.000-07:00

Here's stuff I found on my travels through the Internet today.

LifeHacker.com - downloads, websites and shortcuts to save time.

LifeHack.org - this is a similar sounding site on productivity and "getting things done".

MinimizeToTray - this Firefox extension allows the Firefox browser to be minimized to tray.

AJAX - this technology has been made popular by Google via its various services such as Google Maps and Google Suggest. Here's a good example of a web-based service developed using AJAX.

OneLook reverse dictionary - describe a concept and get back a word. Simple.

Google Blog Search - Finally Google unveils a specialized search for just the blogs. I searched for my name and found a link to my blog and also this post on another blog.

Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions - Yes Microsoft actually gives away "express" versions of its Visual Studio software (includes free versions of Visual Basic 2005, Visual C# 2005, etc).

Cool stuff for the week

2005-09-04T05:58:00.000-07:00

Here's some stuff that I am trying out currently.

Qurb - this software provides spam protection as well as a "challenge-response" mechanism to keep your inbox clean of unwanted email. It also has a very fast email search facility for Outlook.

Audible - Listen to hundreds of books, magazines and radio shows. I'm addicted. Atleast this way I read/listen to one book every month.

RhymeZone - When you haven't got the time, to make up a rhyme - visit the RhymeZone and get tons of suggestions.

Engineering the environment

2005-09-04T05:27:00.000-07:00

I was listening to Michael Crichton's State of Fear last month (yes, listening and not reading - I finally subscribed to Audible). The book's excellent and well researched like most of Crichton's books. This book and some real life incidents have set me thinking.

In the book, an organization working for environmental protection and against global warming resorts to engineering natural disasters like a tsunami, hurricane and so on in order to prove its point that global warming is leading to disastrous changes in climate.

Over the past month two natural disasters occured that I am aware of - one was the torrential rains that hit Mumbai in the North of India and the other was the Hurricane Katarina that hit the Gulf Coast of USA. Both incidents resulted in unprecedented losses of life and property.

I'm not saying that these incidents are due to global warming. But I am thinking what would happen if real life mirrored fiction and terrorist organizations started engineering natural disasters by manipulating the environment? Would this lead to "eco"-terrorism?

Memories and a lot more

2005-07-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

Beep.

That was me booting up. After being in hibernation for a month if not more. Somehow I can't seem to "find time" to write. Or maybe I'm just plain lazy. Its been so long I wonder if anyone still checks this page for updates.

This past week has been eventful. I got duly food poisoned by some fruit juice I had last Sunday and spent the best part of Monday and Tuesday this week vomiting and rushing to the bathroom - not necessarily in that order.

Morbid as it may sound but this was also probably my first experience in passing out. It was a strange feeling. I was seated in my chair trying to get some rest. At first it felt like a rush of blood to my head. As though my brain suddenly needed more of it. I felt my vision blurring. And then there was nothing. It was like as though someone had just switched me off. After a few seconds (or maybe a few minutes, I don't know) I was switched on again and was in a different place (in front of the wash basin actually - put there by mom who was splashing water on me face). What happened in between I would probably never know. It was a strange feeling.

We take so much for granted. Sight, sound, smell, thought, ... I wonder what someone that didn't have one or more of these senses would do. What if I couldn't see? What if I couldn't speak or hear? When you're alive, you exist - and that feeling of existing is felt both by others and by you. You know you exist. Others (even if they choose to ignore you) know that you exist. What would the person that was in a coma feel? Will their existence be of any meaning to them? Will their existence be solely for the purpose of other people, who hoped that one day they would switch themselves on again?

I'm probably crazy, but such thoughts do make their presense felt in me and I wanted to put them down some place.

I went and had a hair cut today and saw many small kids getting their hair cuts. Their dads were proudly standing behind the chairs directing the barber - "hey not so close, leave it natural". I normally don't go to the saloon on Sundays since it would be too crowded, but today was an exception. The sight brought back memories. Memories of when I was a kid and my dad used to take me to the saloon. It was a big event. The Sunday visit to the saloon. We used to go on my dad's scooter (a 'Lamberta' or something - he had to actually wait 5 years after booking the scooter to get it delivered, such was the demand for scooters those days). The saloon was right next to Kamal Haasan's (the Tamil actor) house and it prided itself in having him among its prestigious clientele. The barber used to be delighted to see me. Maybe he was like that with everyone but he made me feel special to sit there in his chair and get my hair cut. He would go about his business telling interesting stories (and gossip) to all those that cared to listen to him. At the end of his labor of love would be me, spanking clean with a nice hair cut and smelling of talcum powder. Wonderful memories.

The past week also saw some techie announcements that I have been following. First of all, iTunes 4.9 is out and it has podcatching support! Which means I can just click and subscribe to podcasts within iTunes and they sync automatically to my iPod. Cool one. And then there was also the announcement from Microsoft that their (here soon now) Longhorn OS will natively support RSS feeds - which means blogs can stream to your desktop, inter-person communications can take place via RSS feeds, and a lot more. Both these announcements were made at the Gnomedex 5.0 conference organized by Chris Pirillo (did I spell it right?). The power of blogs and podcasts meant that I could follow the conference happening in Seattle right from the comfort of my home. The written word, the photos, the audio, the video - created a picture of all that was happening at the conference. The wonder of technology...

A couple of things about the conference. Adam Curry's keynote speech (which was at the end of the conference) - was totally awesome. He is a great podcaster and I admire the way he timed his speech, inserted the punch lines, raised emotions with Rob Costlow's success story and left the audience cheering and clapping and thinking. The showman extraordinaire! And then there is Dave Winer. He's the guy that came up with the RSS specification that lead to the birth of blogs and podcasts. Together they make a great team and have, along with several other pioneers, launched the next big revolution in media and broadcasting.

The future is being podcast! :-) I think podcasts will be a serious alternative to radio and other media sooner than we think. And just wait till iPods get video capability and then we can see a surge in videocasts as well. And that could lead to maybe professionally produced (short) films downloadable to your iPod. And a whole new industry of "indie" (as they call it) media.

There's one thing I noticed with iTunes 4.9. When podcasts are downloading there is no way (atleast as far as I could see) to pause the download. Sometimes when 3 or 4 podcasts are downloading it eats up all available bandwidth and I can no longer browse any other site (or its extremely slow to be usable). In some cases I may want to actually pause the download and then restart it after I'm done browsing. When I cancel a download it actually now starts downloading from the beginning. This is something that will probably need looking into.

Oh well, I go from one topic to the other without any proper sequence but thats the beauty of blogs.

I watched "Black" - a Hindi movie - on DVD today. It generated a wonderful, touching, emotional experience. Sort of encapsulates some of what I've said above - the feeling of being lonely, the feeling of darkness all around, the feeling of succeeding after years and years of trying. I would give it a ten out of ten not because everyone's raving about it, but because I really felt the emotions the director was trying to convey with the film.

Soon it will be a year since I started blogging and I need to clean this place up and give it a new look. Or maybe you would like me to vacate this space forever? :-) Suggestions are welcome.

[o&o]

2005-06-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

Gadgetopia - my desk at home with the Sony Vaio, Dell Axim x50v, Apple iPod and the Bose SoundDock.

Some thoughts

2005-06-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

Here's something I got in the email today. It set me thinking and its a welcome change from the geeky stuff that I post here. :-)

What would you do if every time you wanted someone they
would never be there?

What would you do if for every moment you were truly happy
there would be 10 moments of sadness?

ipod at last

2005-06-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

After months of waiting I finally have an iPod Photo and a Bose SoundDock. More about this including pics later. My "gizmo wishlist" is now zilch. I seem to have everything that one could ever wish for. Well almost everything.

ipcopy

2005-05-29T05:44:00.000-07:00

A quick post about this software that allows you to transfer files over a LAN using TCP/IP. Its useful when you want to quickly transfer over a network even if you have access to only good old DOS command prompt. Check it out here.

Pocket PC freeware and other such goodies

2005-05-18T10:19:00.000-07:00

Here's some more freeware goodies I discovered for the Pocket PC after wasting several weekends searching.

Agile Messenger - neat piece of free software that allows you to connect to MSN, Yahoo, AOL, and some others I don't remember using the Pocket PC. It also has a nifty Today screen component that tells you how many of your buddies are online and also if you have any email on any of these services.

nPOP - this freeware allows you to check your POP3 email and also send outgoing email using SMTP. Pretty fast and optimized for Pocket PC (I can single tap to select hordes of spam that I receive and then mark them for deletion). It also has an icon next to the taskbar (or whatever they call the place where it shows the wifi and bluetooth status) that allows you to quickly check for new email etc.

sshCE - this is not freeware but I couldn't get PocketPutty to work on my Axim so I had to settle for this. sshCE allows you to connect to remote servers using the SSH protocol. Its useful for mostly for network administrators (or if you would like to show off geeky software on your Pocket PC).

Other than this I'm also exploring Mercora. A sort of a public webcasting network that legally allows you to listen and time-shift music that is not from up and coming artists. They have a small fee monthly if you want unlimited access but the free membership allows you to listen for up to 1 hour a day, so thats probably about 10 songs a day for free.

Some random thoughts

2005-05-01T11:21:00.000-07:00

I'm waiting for one of the servers I admin to go back online. And while I wait I had some thoughts.

First, in about two months time I will be completing one year of blogging. I never thought that I could keep this up for so long, even though I've probably not blogged for a few months at a stretch some times.

Second, today after about a gap of about 10 or 12 years I met a some of my old school mates. It was great fun comparing stories (we had lost touch after we got out of school). And sometimes you wonder... oh well, I am not able to get the 'blog flow'. Will write about this later. After all its 12am in the night and I can't be expected to be productive. :-)

More Firefox stuff

2005-05-01T11:17:00.000-07:00

I'm still in the 'tweak' Firefox mode. So here are some Firefox extensions that I started using recently - SessionSaver, WebmailCompose and Tabbrowser Preferences.

Firefox tip

2005-04-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

Have you seen this Firefox speed-up tip?

Cool software for the week

2005-04-30T08:34:00.000-07:00

Here's some software (and an ebook platform) that I'm currently exploring.

StyleTap - a software for the Windows Mobile Pocket PC that allows you to run applications created for the Palm OS!!! This is very good news indeed - there's hundreds of thousands of free software available for the Palm OS and StyleTap opens the flood gates for me to use them on the Axim. Check out this software at www.styletap.com

EReader - this website and accompanying reader software provides hundreds of ebooks for download. All of them are priced ofcourse, but the selections look good and very current. Check out EReader at www.ereader.com

SkypeHeadset - and here's yet another killer app that makes Skype easier to use. This allows you to use your bluetooth headset with Skype. So you could, for example, use the mute or answer button on your bluetooth headset to control the appropriate function on Skype. Its not clear if this would work with Skype for the Pocket PC that I have loaded on the Axim, lets see how this work out. Check out the software at www.skypeheadset.co.uk

Thats it for this week. See you around. :-)

Editing ID3 tags of downloaded podcasts

2005-04-24T09:34:00.000-07:00

Here's a program I used today to set the genre on all the podcasts (over 30) I downloaded today. I find that each podcast classifies itself differently but its more convenient to view them on my Zen Xtra if I can have them all grouped into the "Podcast" genre. This program called MP3tag seems to do that pretty quickly and easily.

LogMeIn

2005-04-22T23:20:00.000-07:00

I discovered logmein.com today and found it to be pretty good for remote access to my Windows PC. I could even use my Axim to connect remotely to the Windows desktop. All this without having a static IP address assigned at either end. This is sort of like GoToMyPC except that they have a completely free version available that allows remote access. The "Pro" version comes with lots of other goodies such as remote transfer of files, sync'ing between PCs etc. Check it out at www.logmein.com

Skype on the Dell Axim

2005-04-21T10:55:00.000-07:00

It just works.

Heavenly thoughts

2005-04-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

Just a thought - the new Pope looks cute and when I look at him on TV or his photo in the paper it seems to instill a sense of security and calmness. I guess thats why they chose him.

The whole process of choosing the new Pope is very ceremonious and interesting. The Cardinals gathering for a secret meeting, the concept of black smoke / white smoke, the bells ringing, and so forth.

Books, tons of them

2005-04-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

The "Rapid Development" book finally landed in Chennai yesterday along with the Axim (and yes I got the Post-It notes as well). The book looks pretty good (and pretty heavy) based on an initial read. I think its an essential reference for every project manager that works on software development or IT projects.

Other than this I also paid a visit to the friendly neighborhood bookstore (Landmark) and bought these books:

1) Lateral Thinking - Creativity Step by Step (Edward de Bono)
2) Capitalising on Customers (Patricia B Seybold, Mitchel I Kramer, Dr Muhamed Muneer)
3) Business beyond the box (John O'Keeffe)
4) Delegating (Julie-Ann Amos)

All of them look interesting and I'll be reading them during the course of the next century.

Axim at last

2005-04-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

The Axim x50v finally arrived yesterday!!!! The wait is over and I'm into the big bad world of the Pocket PC (as opposed to the Palm that I toted around all these years).

One of the first things I noticed was that unlike the Palm most Pocket PC software is priced. The Palm has tens of thousands of free software available. Preliminary looks reveal only few sites that cater to freeware on the Pocket PC platform. If anyone knows any good download sites for the Pocket PC please send them to me.

That apart, the Axim is awesome! I will write more about it as I continue to explore.

Eye care for dummies (and even those who are not)

2005-04-20T10:47:00.000-07:00

After arriving home from my visit the eye doc I read the pamphlet that he had given me and realized that it was actually sensible advise, especially for those that spend long hours in front of a computer monitor. Computer Vision Syndrome is an "occupational hazard" for knowledge workers and here's how you can minimize or maybe eliminate it altogether.

But first . . .

What is Computer Vision Syndrome? (CVS)

It is a symtpom complex consisting of vision related problems and posture related problems due to prolonged computer usage. Over 75-90% of computer users have this problem.

How do I know whether I have CVS?

Tired eyes, burning, redness
Dry eyes
Headaches
Loss of focus
Double vision
Blurred vision
Light sensitivity
Neck, back and shoulder pains
Contact lens discomfort

What can you do about these problems?

1) Make a conscious effort to blank more often. Put a note on your computer if necessary.

2) Take a break several times per hour. Take a minute to look around at things that are at varying distances from your computer, like a clock on the wall or something outside a window. Or take one big break, about 15 minutes, per hour.

3) Use eye drops, usually lubricants, as advised by your eye doctor.

4) Position your computer so that windows are to the side of the monitor, rather than in front or the back.

5) Adjust the contrast of your computer monitor for comfortable viewing. Monitor should be placed below the level of your eyes.

6) Adjust window blinds so that sunlight is away from your screen and your eyes.

7) Turn off overhead lights that are too bright and if they are too bright switch over to lower wattage bulb or use a desk lamp.

8) Move your desk lamp to a spot where it doesn't reflect on the screen or shine on your eyes.

9) Attach a glare filter to your screen.

10) Mouse and keyboard should be placed below the elbow level preferably on an extension board. The chair should be provided with arm rests which can be used while typing for long hours.

11) Monitor should be turned slightly away and below the level of your eyes, like when you hold a book while reading.

And finally . . . Remember the 2020 rules

For every 20 minutes you work on computers

1) Stop and blink 20 times.

2) Focus on an object more than 20 feet away for 20 seconds.

3) Make sure you have 20/20 vision and wear glasses if required.

[end of sermon]

20/15 vision

2005-04-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

Oh yes it was that time of the year (and in my case that time which comes once in 7 years) and I had to finally schedule an appointment with the eye doc. So I chose yesterday. It was Tuesday, a nice day, a day after Monday.

I was a bit apprehensive about the whole thing. Like I said it has been over 7 years since I went to the eye doc (the last time I went was for getting contact lenses affixed to my eyes, which is a long story that will have to wait for another day) and I was not sure what exactly lie in wait for me. I reached the doc's office well in time for my appointment and was told to wait. I waited for over an hour and in the process realized why people that visited a doc were called patients. We had to be patient and wait our turn. No point complaining about it. I finally got my turn and shuffled nervously into the doc's room. The doc looked cool enough while he reviewed my past reports and I managed a weak smile. He then proceeded to test me with a hundred different lenses one eye at a time. I realized that he no longer uses the alphabet and that I had to instead read out numbers. I guess this has something to do with the fact that with the alphabet he needs to have one set for each of the possible 50 odd languages that exist in India whereas the numbers, well the numbers are more or less universal.

After a long time switching lenses and trying to make me contradict myself, he finally chose a pair that seemed to have a particular liking for me. Relieved that the ordeal was finally over I managed to beam happily at him but that was shortlived. He announced that he would like to dilate my eyes and proceed to ring the bell for his assistant. The assistant came, shoved my head back and proceeded to squirt some liquid into my eyes. I was then told to wait. I then waited for about half an hour, most of which time was spent with my eyes closed (obviously because the liquid squirted into my eyes was hurting a lot) and some of which was spent looking at the world around me with liquid squirted eyes which made everything look pretty interesting.

Finally the doc called for me and proceeded to do something with a piece of equipment which basically was thrust into my face and which looked pretty empty but suddenly projected a three dimensional picture of a house at a distance. It then proceeded to take several photos of my eye which was surprised by the sudden apperance of a house. This was repeated with the other eye. Then the doc proceeded to tap away at his computer for some time while I sat twiddling my thumb.

After a period of contemplation he told me that I will need to change my glasses and that I was a victim of the Computer Vision Syndrome. Aha! I knew I was a victim of something. He then gave me a pamphlet on the syndrome. Well, simply put the "syndrome" was brought about by the fact that I was staring at a computer screen for long hours without blinking. He also advised me to use some eye drops at regular intervals to keep my eyes lubricated.

Thankful to get out of this in one piece, I left the place as jubilant as I could look with eyes that still had blurred vision due to the liquid being squirted into them.

WMP 10

2005-04-17T11:21:00.000-07:00

Maybe its just me, but I'm through with using Windows Media Player 10 to manage my music. The software is so... hare-brained. It leaves files all over the place, it doesn't auto-sync with my Zen Xtra, it messes up tags and moves files to the wrong genres, ... I'm going right back to iTunes and Notmad Explorer to manage my digital music. Oh, I wish I had an iPod.

Zen Xtra fast forward / rewind

2005-04-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

OK I found out how to do this. I need to press and HOLD the fast forward or the rewind button so that it goes forward or back within a track. If I just press and LET IT GO then it would just skip to the next track in the playlist. Talk about user intefaces... BTW I also upgraded to the latest firmware for the Zen Xtra last week. And that was a painful process as well which involved fiddling around with the Zen Xtra's reset button with a pointy edge of a pin.

Almost random thoughts

2005-04-11T09:42:00.000-07:00

Alright its countdown time again. Just over 4 days to go for me to get my hands on a brand new Dell Axim X50v. The PDA comes with a lot of goodies the least of which is a brilliant color screen.

I upgraded to Windows Media Player 10 after a long wait. Looks pretty good and one thing I noticed immediately was that even video files of low resolution (320x320 or around that) I had downloaded earlier looked better even when the player was maximized to full screen. It also seems to have got sync facility with my Zen Xtra (this was one reason why I didn't upgrade earlier, after reading horror stories about how Media Player 10 and the Creative driver messed each other up, but now they seem to have cleaned up their act). But I still can't figure out how to make it auto-sync.

Talking about figuring out stuff, on the Zen Xtra I'm wondering why I can't find a skip option. That is, while its playing I cannot fast forward or rewind to a certain location in the track. This is almost a given on media players. Maybe I'm not looking at the right place...

BTW if anyone has a Yahoo 360 invite to spare please send me one. I can't wait to check it out.

Check out Google Maps - looks like a cool service in the making. Combines Google's "fuzzy search" with a Mapquest-like maps database and a Terraserver-like satellite database to create something that is pretty easy to use and fast. Just like the Google search.

For those that spend endless hours at the PC (or laptop) try WorkRave - I downloaded it now and it looks neat. A free program, it reminds you when to take a micro-break, coffee break and take off for the day.

And finally here's a new theme for Firefox called Phoenity.

Books anyone?

2005-04-06T10:05:00.000-07:00

A friend recommended Rapid Development by Steve Mc Connell. The book looks good judging from the preview I got here.

So what did I do? I went and bought the book on Amazon.com. And that was my first Amazon.com buy. (fanfare) Alright, I'm a disgrace to humanity for not having bought anything from Amazon.com for so long. Well atleast I made a start now. And Amazon.com being what it is promised to give me free shipping to anywhere in the contiguous United States if I bought a Post-It Notes pack. So I went and bought that as well and now the book and a pack of 300 Post-It Notes are on their way to an undisclosed location in the USA from where they'll be sent via underground channels to India. Let me see if thats cheaper than asking Amazon to ship direct to here.

And while I was trying to add the book to my AllConsuming.net list I found that the service was down. Its a pity. I've posted a note there offering to help setup their server again. Lets see what happens.

About ActiveWords

2005-04-05T12:32:00.000-07:00

Just one detail - I uninstalled it. It was too counter-intuitive (maybe I could not remember the 20000 words that an average human being could) and kept swallowing up my keystrokes at random leading to lots of frustration.

Administrivia

2005-04-05T12:23:00.000-07:00

Yes yes, I know. I've taken to blogging once a month. Hopefully I'll remedy that soon but the fact that I'm posting at 1am in the night tells you what is going on with my life. No I am not suffering from insomnia, rather I have too much to do. But I shall never stop blogging - more power etc!

In other news, I pruned my blogroll (what you sent under the "Blogs I read" list on the right side) because my Bloglines list was getting too big (75 blogs at last count). So I went and bought FeedDemon. And I didn't regret it. Its worth every penny. This excellent program provides an Outlook like interface to read blogs in and has built-in support for podcasts! What more could one ask for? So henceforth I'll use FeedDemon for reading blogs and use Bloglines only to provide the blogroll on this site. And if you really want the list of all of the 75 blogs that I read regularly, then post a comment or email me and I'll send you the list.

There was something else that I wanted to post about but I forget.

ActiveWords

2005-02-28T09:47:00.000-08:00

I came across this software called ActiveWords which allows one to setup "active words" that can trigger various things on the computer such as opening a folder, opening a website and so on. This is similar to macro programs like ShortKeys except that ActiveWords seems to have a lot of extensions that have made it very popular and get rave reviews. I've downloaded the 60 day trial and will give it a spin and see how it works.

GSM, SMS, mobiles and other such thoughts

2005-02-28T09:17:00.000-08:00

I'm in the market for a GSM connection - mainly because my CDMA provider (Reliance - which is excellent, by the way, and which I can't live without for its near perfect data service which connects to my Vaio to the world when I'm travelling) refuses to provide email to SMS facilities. This is something that GSM providers seem to have done a long time ago (and which I was using till I shifted to CDMA). Its pretty useful - you can use it to allow people to send you short email (with info, alerts calls for help etc) that will then be forwarded to your mobile as an email. You won't need to be logged in to anything, just carry the phone around and it would beep the email out to you.

So I'm in the market for a GSM connection that provides cheap SMS services - so that I can use email to SMS (which uses incoming SMS that is any way free) and also use Yahoo and MSN Mobile services which allow me to get Yahoo/MSN messenger posts via SMS. I just saw Airtel's "MTV" plan and it says 30p for a local SMS. If anyone has any thoughts on this please let me know.

The other day I managed to get my cousin a Nokia 6230 for Rs 9500. It seemed like a good deal and she's now flashing the mobile around for all world to see. The mobile is pretty cool and has almost everything one could want from a mobile (FM, mp3 player, video camera, applications, bluetooth etc).

I wonder why Nokia calls its phones by numbers and not names. For example, I had to actually Google to find out what was the model of the Nokia phone we bought last week. And 6230 could well be 6630 or 6620 or any of the hundreds of phones from Nokia that have a name starting with "6". To test this I actually randomly typed in "nokia" followed by a random 4 digit number starting with "6" in Google and every time it turned out an actual Nokia model.

Maybe in the case of Nokia they actually ran out of names, considering that they release a new model almost every other second.

But why are even other companies infatuated with numbers? Samsung calls its mobiles "SGH-d415" and "VM-A680". Are we supposed to say "my mobile is a capital S, capital G, capital H, hypen, lowercase D, 4, 1, 5"???

Thats like calling an iPod by its manufacturer's serial number. Is it easier to say "iPod Shuffle 1GB" or would you rather have the "M9725LL/A"? (which is, by the way, the actual model number of the iPod Shuffle 1GB)

Long time no blog

2005-02-28T08:59:00.000-08:00

Yes yes, I know. Its been over a month since I blogged and most of you thought I was finally rid of my blogusiasm (a word coined by dimbu) or that I was living under a rock.

The latter is probably more true. It does feel like I've been living under a rock.

So what did I do after January 17th 2005? Lets see now...

Lots of work, missed deadlines, strained tempers, some moments of peace, some moments of despair, a few speed bumps, the flu, recovering from the flu, meeting with the family, the flu redux, a heartbreak, lots of drugs (the ones prescribed by a doctor ofcourse), recovering from the flu, and so on.

So, lots of stuff has been happening. :-)

Hopefully I'll have more time on my hands now and will be able to blog as much as I used. Thanks to all of you that have been checking my blog (almost daily) in the hope that I would some day actually post something to it.

Hello World

2005-02-28T08:48:00.000-08:00

The rock stirs a bit.

A hand comes out and pushes the rock slowly away revealing something underneath it. One more push and another hand comes out to help the first one. Together they push the rock away completely revealing a gaping hole. A head peeps out of the hole and blinks in the sunlight. The thing hoists itself out of the hole and looks around.

Oh yes, I've been living under a rock alright. Hello world!

Software development mantra?

2005-01-17T09:44:00.000-08:00

Here's something I heard today from a friend:

Software development can be two of the following three - quick, cheap, correct. But never more than two.

"My MSN" goof-up

2005-01-16T10:05:00.000-08:00

The "My MSN" content customization page with placeholder "dummy" text in it.

Kaadhal and some other thoughts

2005-01-16T09:25:00.000-08:00

I was watching the "Kaadhal" movie today evening. Extremely good performances and brilliantly natural direction. Most, if not all, actors and technicians in the movie are on their debut. And this has brought the best out of them. Most Tamil movies these days are crap but I would give this movie a 9 out of 10.

The end of a 3 day holiday is near. Looking back I'm wondering why I slept through most of it, being the insomniac that I am. :-)

I'm wondering why software developers release stuff without even basic testing and usability analysis. I was using Hotmail some time back and decided to click on to the "My MSN" link when I was done reading email.

What greeted me was a new version of the My MSN home page where one could customize the content according to one's interests. I decided to give this a try and clicked the "Change content" link and browsed through the sections on offer.

Clicking through to the "Astrology" section I was surprised to find it filled up with dummy content titled "XXX - No use". Clearly some lazy programmer was responsible for this. I really didn't expect such bad quality output from MSN. See my next blog post for a screenshot.

The rhythm and the blues

2005-01-15T00:20:00.000-08:00

Three days of holidays and I have absolutely no clue how to spend these 3*24 hours (outside of doing some pending office work, that is). It was "Pongal" yesterday here in Tamil Nadu. This festival celebrates the harvest season. Read more here.

I was listening to Jay Sean's "Stolen" yesterday. Looks like a good Asian R&B singer in the making. The song has strains of the over-remixed "Churaliya" song in the background with very bluesy English lyrics.

Does anyone need any cleaning done?

2005-01-08T22:26:00.000-08:00

I'm really excited - I just discovered that the "wonder" spray called "Colin" which was previously used at home to clean glass, mirrors etc can be used just as effectively to clean laptop screens. In fact I am amazed by its effects on my Vaio screen. So this shall be my tip for the day (or the year, considering that I've never posted any handy tips here before).

1) Take some tissue cloth.

2) First (gently) dry wipe the LCD screen of your laptop.

3) Then spray some "Colin" spray (I guess any *mild* glass cleaning liquid would just as well) onto the tissue. Don't spray it on the screen directly!

4) Then wipe about one inch of the screen starting from the left corner and going from top to bottom (gently does it!). Wipe only in one direction.

5) Step back and view the results. If it appears ugly :-) stop immediately. But I am sure it won't so proceed to the next step.

6) Repeat steps 4 to 5 till you reach the right edge of the screen.

7) If required take another go at it and repeat steps 2 to 6 with a fresh pair of tissues.

8) Step back and view the results. Tada!

I am impressed. Its far better (and cheaper) than those "laptop screen clean" solutions available in the market.

I was driven to such a frenzy by its results that I promptly took up the cause of cleaning everything in the house that even remotely resembled a mirror. With spray in one hand and tissues in another I proceeded to prowl the house spraying and cleaning everyone in sight.

In other news - my bean bag has gone to the "factory" for refilling. So I am sitting here at a regular table and a regular chair and typing this in. I like my bean bag and can't wait to get it back.

BTW I bought myself a pair of Altec Lansing headset with mike. See them here. Skype conversations couldn't get better.

Clean, clean, clean. Clean clean. Clean.

The 50-40-10 rule

2005-01-01T02:36:00.000-08:00

Here's something I read today and strongly agree with.

Whatever you earn:

Do your best to live on half, even if it means living simply and not "keeping up with the Jones." Keep your expenses low.

Save 40% for the future: emergencies, education, retirement, etc.

Give 10% away to those less fortunate or causes that help them out.

First things first redux

2004-12-31T21:09:00.000-08:00

The new year is here!
It's the time to cheer!
Life begins a new,
I wish good things for me and you.

Well well, I seem to have a poetic bent (maybe more bent than poetic).

A very happy and successful new year to all of you out there!

My first thoughts in the new year went out to God - thanking him for all the dreams he made come true (and begging to make more of them come true).

Then I sent the first email of the year.

And then I thought about "New Year Resolutions". I made up two - and they will remain a secret till I fulfill those goals.

Then I successfully completed the first tooth scrub of the year.

A new day has come.

First things first

2004-12-31T19:45:00.000-08:00

Hold on a second. I have some work to be completed. BRB.

Gmail invites anyone?

2004-12-28T09:43:00.000-08:00

Is there still anyone left that doesn't have a Gmail account? I have around 10 Gmail invites that are lying unused for quite some time now. If anyone needs one just leave a comment here and don't forget to let me know your email account where I should send the invite. If you are worried about spam-bots picking up your email from the comment, then munge it e.g. santoshAThotmailDOTcom

The Hitch Hiker and other such things

2004-12-28T08:50:00.000-08:00

I'm reading the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This book has gained "cult" status over the years but I am reading it only now - so sue me. Douglas Adams' language has this distinct "British" touch to it. You can always tell a Brit's English from the others. An example from Douglas Adams:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very
ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

To the trained eye, language of such sorts comes across as distinctly British. I don't know how to explain it but I think you'll understand if you read stuff from British authors or listen to British comedy or speak to the many Brits floating around this world.

That apart I watched Night Shyamalan's "The Village" yesterday evening. Nice theme, though Shyamalan's treatment makes it unpalatable for everyone except those that enjoy Mani Ratnam movies (such as myself). The idea of a village far removed from the maddening world sounds nice, atleast to me.

The day after yesterday

2004-12-26T01:07:00.000-08:00

Sunday 26th December 2004, 06:40

I woke up, shaken out of deep slumber. "Where am I?," I thought to myself. I was not thinking clear. Someone was shaking my bed. I looked around, dazed, trying to focus. I jumped off the bed, fists clenched, ready to take on my assailant. But no one was there in my room. I must have been dreaming. I sat on the bed, pulse pounding. Suddenly I felt the bed shaking again. "I shouldn't have stayed awake till 1am watching TV, I am hallucinating," I thought to myself. One more shake. This time around, I knew that it was not a hallucination. The earth was shaking.

I was thinking clear now. I looked around, grabbed my specs and rushed out of my room. I found my mom and dad rushing out of their rooms as well. The clock on the wall was swinging from side to side. We rushed out of the apartment. "Don't use the lift," my mom told us. We started climbing down the stairs.

One floor down, I paused a bit and caught a glimpse inside one of the apartments. The door was wide open, everyone had fled except for the old lady of the house who was in the 'pooja' room praying. Her prayers had not been shaken by the quake. "One more floor to go," I thought to myself.

We reached the ground floor and rush out of the apartment complex. There were people everywhere, it looked like a big carnival except that many were in their pajamas. People were talking excitedly on their mobiles and to each other.

After waiting outside for about 15 minutes we decided that it was time we went back inside.

After coming back home, I switched on the TV and watched reports pour in. The quake originated from Indonesia where it measured over 8.9 on the Richter scale. Places like Andaman & Nicobar, Sri Lanka and parts of the eastern coast of India (Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu) were hit by tidal waves that were triggered as a result of this quake. Over 500 people dead in Sri Lanka, with most of Colombo submerged under water. 108 people dead in Chennai as tidal waves, 50 feet high, washed away those sleeping in makeshift huts in slums that were scattered along the coastline of the city.

"It makes you 'feel small'," said someone who witnessed the huge tidal waves rushing in.

Sometimes, I think, we take life for granted that we never realize how insignificant we, as humans, really are in the grand scheme of things. We build stone walls around ourselves and think we are "secure". But it just takes a second for those walls to be broken to bits.

Podcasts rulez!

2004-12-21T09:11:00.000-08:00

OK so you guessed my drift.

I've been spending the last couple of days download gazillion megabytes of podcasts. This is what I have on my ipodder list as of now.

1) Adam Curry: Daily Source Code
2) The Laporte Report
3) KenRadio (this I have been listening to even before I came across podcasts)
4) Engadget Podcast
5) IT Conversations
6) Web Talk Radio
7) KevinDevin.com
8) RasterWeb! Audio

Podcasts make for interesting listening. However, the podcast receiver software (such as ipodder or doppler) still need lots of work - they are still rough around the edges.

Stay tuned for more.

Broadband to the masses?

2004-12-19T05:30:00.000-08:00

It is interesting to note the flurry of activity happening in Chennai (and probably elsewhere in India) on the broadband front. Several companies (many of them unheard of until a couple of days back) are promising to bring "high speed Internet" to one's doorstep. There are some established players as well jumping in - such as Reliance Infocomm (which has finally decided to offer broadband after laying the foundation for this more than a year back) and BSNL (the babu driven telecom behemoth sponsored by the Indian Government).

This is all very good and commendable. But most of their "packages" seem to have been crafted at a time when Lynx was state of the art - "Rs 200 per month for 100MB of data transfer at an incredible speed of 256kbps!" claims a flyer. I'm wondering how long it would take for one to use up this 100MB of promised utopia...

Give me a minimum of 512kbps (preferably 1mbps or more), no data traffic cap, for Rs 999 per month and then I would buy the mantra of taking broadband to the masses.

By the way, I recently switched (yet again) my broadband provider. I now have Touchtel that provides me a 128kbps line with no bandwidth cap for Rs 999 per month. This is good but not good enough. The advantage with the Touchtel line is that it just works and I have had absolutely no downtime. Perhaps the competition will force Touchtel to upgrade the 128kbps to 512kbps across the board.

Watch this space.

Death of a blog? Nope.

2004-12-19T01:30:00.000-08:00

Yet again, its been over 15 days since I blogged. Does this mean that I am going to stop blogging? Nope.

I'm exploring the exciting world of podcasting and downloading several podcasts to get a feel of this "thing". Sounds interesting. Check out www.ipodder.org to learn more.

In the meanwhile AudioFeast seems to have improved quite a lot. Unfortunately I am not able to subscribe to their audio feeds because their payment page insists that I use a US state for my credit card billing address! So for the moment I am stuck to their free feeds - Wall Street Journal This Morning, Marketplace PM and HitzRadio.

As another year winds to a close - the time to reflect and look forward is here. Looking back there are several things that have happened over this past year that I wouldn't have imagined would happen to me. Some dreams came true, some didn't and then some are perhaps reserved from the year to come. The new year brings with it anticipation and apprehension.

Watch this space.

The G factor

2004-12-01T09:09:00.000-08:00

Perhaps these two weeks have been the longest I've been away from blogging since I started several months back.

I completed reading Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code (interestingly I could never completely read the printed book, but managed to zoom through the e-book). I've now started reading Digital Fortress by the same author (again the e-book and not the printed version). I see some common threads in all of Dan Brown's books - crypto, conspiracies, and in his last two books the religious angle.

The past few weeks have also been witness to several shocking incidents involving revered people that are currently heading institutions that have been over hundreds of years presenting us with a human face to God. There have been both positive and negative reactions - some claim all this is a conspiracy and while some others smugly say "I told you so".

My thoughts on this are that - if the claims made were true - it simply goes to prove that when the world is full of crooks you cannot expect a few institutions to be spared. I am sure there will be those that are shocked.

Perhaps all of this can be summarized in one sentence - while God made mankind, man made religion.

God is with us at every step of the way (in fact He's just sitting near me watching me type this blog). Our very fabric of existence depends on God. However I believe a select few among us may have taken advantage of our weakness to put a human face to God.

I leave you to draw your own conclusions - we follow today principles and practices that were established several thousand years ago BUT that have been subject to interpretation over the years. Like they say, history is always written by the winners (quote courtesy Da Vinci Code). Does it look like I am overly influenced by the Da Vinci Code? :-)

In other news, the last couple of days witnessed several disastrous data losses in my personal as well as professional sphere. Several hard disks crashed mysteriously taking with them data that was not "backed up". Moral of the story - the real saviour is a terabyte portable hard drive. :-)

Ask Google - effects of music on the mind

2004-11-16T09:09:00.000-08:00

With nothing better to do - I decided to ask Google what were the effects of music on the mind.

Here're some links I got back in reply.

http://www.bobjanuary.com/musicmnd.htm

http://cms.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20000901-000029.html

http://www.ufoc.org/michaelballam/intelligence.html

http://www.wshu.org/matinee/2004/sm040314.asp

http://enchantedmind.com/html/science/creative_harmonics.html

http://www.gemstories.com/music_b.html

I also stumbled upon this article that says we need 4 hugs a day for survival, 8 hugs a day for maintenance and 12 hugs a day for growth. Munnabhai MBBS? (visit this link)

Flashback - a blogger is born?

2004-11-10T12:19:00.000-08:00

First off - Happy Deepavali to all those that celebrate it!

I was rummaging through some of my old stuff (as a result of shifting our house, I had tons of old stuff that were now out in the open) when I came across a printout of something I wrote some 6 or 7 years back. It was interesting reading thoughts I had so long back. I'm thinking maybe such writings were the seeds that sprouted (!) several years later into this blog. So here it is and I will let you decide.

===8<===[cut here]=============================

Recently I was reading an issue of the TIME magazine and read an article titled "The Queen of Clean Air". It talked about the chief of US Environmental Protection Agency who was enforcing new laws to prevent pollution, so much so that they may even ban fireworks and barbecues in certain places. The article talked about how she had faced strong protests from different parts of the government, companies, media, etc but still stood firm to enforce the newly introduced law.

Now, from this I am made to believe that elsewhere in this wide world of ours, we have the media actually covering to the acts of good people. The officials who foster environmental issues, animal rights, human rights and so on.

But in India, I find that our illustrious free press decides that it is not a waste of time and trees to cover things about escaped convicts, corrupt politicians, etc. "200 crores swindled in Shoe Scam!" looks more appealing to them (and maybe to a wide majority of readers) than something like "Citizens of xyz district save a forest from being cut down by ABC company". I am sure the pressmen can come up with nice catchy headlines for even mundane things like preserving natural resources.

My observations of media coverage are:

* The good - that is coverage of people doing good, be it honest policemen, politicians, officials, and other such constructive things.
* The bad - that is coverage of riots, bandh, etc.
* The ugly - that is coverage of unethical politics.

Now I would like you to guage how much percentage of coverage each of these categories gets in the media.

Does anyone know what happened to Ramar Pillai? Last time someone checked he was doing brisk business in some little known village supplying herbal petrol that actually works for about half the cost of normal petrol. Our media splashes his photograph on the front pages, and for reasons best known to them they give him a decent burial much before anyone realises what is going on. Let us all rush to that village with empty cans. Atleast even if we don't solve our country's economic situation, we can atleast balance our domestic budget.

So what does media cover well? The escaped convict, the tunnel digging naxalities, the sandalwood smugglers hiding in forests, the corrupt officials and politicians. They do it so well that they even print step by step instructions complete with photographs on how to dig your own tunnel out of Vellore jail. How was it done? Front page news on leading newspapers and magazines. Analysis from experts on how it could have been done better!

Then does media exist to glorify all things illegal and corrupt? Why does it show in big bold headlines things like convicts who escaped life sentences by resorting to some little known loophole in not only Indian law, but also international law. Not only do they educate us on how convicts escape by using law against the lawmakers, but it also pays him a huge royalty to make a movie out of it. Glorification of all things illegal.

I agree that you have to expose the news as it happened. I came to understand that in some countries like Sri Lanka, the media doesn't go into the specifics. They say that ABC was given bail, or tht XYZ escaped while in custody. They don't go into the minute details like why ABC was given bail even though he was charged of murder or how XYZ escaped while in a maximum security prison. They don't give you detailed maps of the prison, the dimensions of holes dug, and so on. That way you don't educate people on how to do illegal things. Agreed that it would not be fair on the part of our free press to give incomplete news, but under the guise of exposing them they are educating the people on how criminals can escape from the law.

So why can't our media too adopt the same strategy? Why do they have to play the part of a manual publisher for the criminals? I am sure all the corrupt politicians in this country would have already reserved AC rooms in prestigious hospitals in anticipation of CBI charges. I am also sure their hearts would suddenly get an attack just 2 hours before the CBI presses charges.

So, media coverage for the good guys ... the honest policeman, the now decreasing group of honest politicians, truthful government officials, the concerned citizen, ... If only media covered this section of people who uphold true values and gave them atleast their rightful 15 seconds of fame -I believe we will have more people turning out to fight for things like environment, human rights, animal rights, etc.

We have to accept it - everyone needs some sort of incentive for doing things. This can be either in the form of money, or atleast recognition for the work they have done.

Now if a vast majority of media is focussed on things like fodder scams and pulling of the chair at the centre - people will naturally not feel it worth their while to fight for the poor animals. Feed the animals inferior food, create a fodder scam and get color cover page photograph! That will be the line of thinking. Ok, even if they don't think of creating yet another scam - lack of media coverage on the good guys will definitely discourage the good guys from doing any good. Unless of course the good guys are of the likes of Mahatma Gandhi.

In any field of activism be it human rights, environment, animal rights, political, ... Give the good guys enough media coverage.

Media like print, TV, films etc are powerful. They can shape an individual's character. Wouldn't it be nice if they could shape individuals in to caring, concerned citizens of tomorrow...

D1 to H8

2004-11-01T08:44:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not trying to make illegal chess moves. I'm referring to the move we (parents and I) made from our old apartment (Flat no. D-1) to a new one (Flat no. H-8) on 27th October. The place is in the same apartment complex but in a different block. All of last week was spent first packing and then later unpacking into the new house. The new place is bigger and is on the second floor (yes I get some much needed exercise climbing up and down the stairs!).

When something new comes into one's life, one tends to view with a certain amount of anticipation and excitement. Whether this be a new house, a new piece of equipment, a new person and so on. You tend to associate new entries into your life with new beginnings - a chance to do things differently. A new entry brings with it renewed hope (one is like "Hey, see this new --- is now in my life. I know things will be ok now.") and enthusiasm ("Hey, I have this new ---. Its so cool I can't stop talking about it.").

I think everyone, once in a while, needs something completely new to remind us to shake off the mundane routine.

When it rains it pours. Chennai has been the focus of the Gods for about a week (or more). Rains going on and off every half hour. Rains, according to me, are a "speed-breaker" to life. Last week while driving to office, I was observing the rains and the people all around me. It was as though the world was moving in slow motion. I watched a bus take a slow turn into the nearby street. I watched a man walk in the rain with a basket hanging on to the hook of his umbrella. I watched a poor guy, both legs paralyzed, crawl along the water filled roads...

That brings me to another thought. What is it in a person that gives them the urge to live, to fight and to survive? I know this has been debated several million times, but I still can't figure out the "real answer". Perhaps you could post your thoughts here or send me an email.

Check mate? :-)

Happy birthday to me

2004-10-23T23:25:00.000-07:00

Ah yes, October 23rd was my birthday. Thanks to all of you who wished me (and to those that didn't - better take note!). Birthdays are nice and awful at the same. Nice because you get to feel "oh so special" and get presents. And awful because its a reminder that you are a year older now and "youth" is slipping away rapidly.

Anyways, my birthday was peaceful and incidentally 23rd was also "Vijayadasami" day. This is part of the "Navratri" celebrations in India. Have a look at this description of the "Navratri" festival.

I am suddenly seized with the notion of becoming more "productive". Maybe its a birthday thing. So I'm scouring the Internet for productivity related software and sites. I'll post some links here soon.

I'm Skyped

2004-10-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

What can I say... Having tried several VoIP services like Net2phone, Dialpad, Yahoo/MSN to Vonage - I rediscovered Skype today (for which I am thankful to Nikolai). The Skype website says "Free Internet Telephony that just works" and it does!

It is absolutely amazing how clear the VoIP conversation was (I spent over 45 minutes talking) on the poor quality Internet bandwidth that we "less fortunate mortals" in India have come to loath and accept - no breaks in audio and no wierd sounds except for when I tried to balance my laptop on one hand and move to another room and ended up accidentally pulling out the mike and generating noise that sounded "like I had my mike near the wheels of a car" (I didn't quite get that expression properly, Nikolai could you please post that comment here, it was hilarious!).

The final verdict - Skype gets a 9 out of 10 from me. I wish they would do a Trillian, so I could use Skype for VoIP as well as to connect to Yahoo/MSN/AIM.

It just works so got get it - Skype

2004-10-04T11:25:00.000-07:00

My new Sony Vaio V505 laptop with the incumbent desktop monitor and the Creative Zen Xtra in the background. My desktop PC should soon be at the disposable of my parents who are looking forward to having a full-time PC on their hands. I guess this photo does not do full justice to the Vaio. Check out www.vaio.net

Blog Search Engine

2004-10-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

Here's a blog search engine that I found today: Blog Search Engine. It is sort of like a Yahoo for blogs.

Random thoughts

2004-09-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

OK, what made me going "hmmmm" today? Well, I read in the papers that Tamilnadu is all out to stop pirating of movies (VCD and DVD piracy). The Government has decided that video piracy (and people watching pirated movies) would be dealt with under an act that is used to deal with hooligans / troublemakers. The news item goes on to say that the producers and directors of the Tamil film industry are cheering the Government's decision and rubbing their hands in glee as they anticipate the crowds that will now rush back to the theatres.

I'm wondering why is it that producers don't wake up and start smelling the coffee (this is j2deep's favorite expression, I think?). Video piracy is rampant not because people want to pay less for watching new movies. Video piracy exists because people are buying into the convenience of watching movies at a time and place of their choice (and getting it cheaper in the process).

Confession - I hardly ever go to the theatres these days. I watch movies on DVD and on TV. My reasoning is that its just too cumbersome (even with Internet booking). Ofcourse a special occassion may warrant the trouble but trying to go to the theatres every weekend (putting up with the traffic, noise, pollution and what not) is just too beyond me.

So what the pirate market does is to really provide a convenient means of watching the latest movies from the comfort of one's home (or wherever you choose to watch it).

Why can't the movie producers do that? Why this fixation with the theatres (and trying to go back to the good old days?). Why can't producers release DVDs of the latest movie as soon as it hits the theatres? With digital delivery here (even for many theatres in India) it should be far easier to do than imagined. Release the digital version via the satellites that beam them direct to the theatres and at the same time release it for the home market via DVDs.

I'm sure that will not only kill video piracy immediately but will also mean that the viewer gets to enjoy the movie in the medium of their choice (and not how the producer wants them to watch it). And one day if we all get 2mbps broadband connections to our homes they may even choose to stream the movie down the Internet to our flat panel 40" LCD displays eliminating the DVD altogether.

In other interesting news - I switched broadband providers this week and got myself a broadband connection from Iqara Broadband. The deal gives me unlimited time and unlimited bandwidth (no cap) access to the Internet - and freedom from using the Sify Broadband connection which bills me by the minute (and forces me to install McAfee ViruScan which now gives me wierd errors such as saying I am no longer entitled to get virus updates). The Iqara connection is pretty fast (9kbps or more on a link that is rated 64kbps) - which is good by Indian standards.

Countdown to Sony Vaio V505 - 1 day.

AudioFeast

2004-09-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

Here's a portable audio download site which is sort of like audible.com

AudioFeast

Guilty as charged

2004-09-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am guilty of not blogging for over ten days now. I guess the mundane world is swallowing me up. What happened to the promised land of long one sentence paragraphs, ramblings and other such things? Well, they took a backseat while I went about putting out one fire after the other (figuratively, not literally).

But I guess I can now afford to look back and say that every problem is a blessing in disguise. Here's something I learnt - if there's a problem looming (not necessarily for you but even for someone else), go right ahead and get into the thick of it and solve it. You'll earn the admiration and respect of all involved. And when the time comes someone will help you out of yours.

I have this crazy feeling I can sense the thoughts and experiences of other people. Just one of those wierd things that I keep thinking about. Sometimes even without anyone telling me anything I seem to "know" how they feel or what they are going through or what they intend to say.

Countdown to Sony V505 (yes I am finally going to get one) - 4 days to go.

The past two weekends I saw "Munnabhai MBBS" and "Lakshya". Both are good. Munnabhai MBBS was pretty hilarious and at the same time thought provoking (especially when it comes to the thought of caring for others).

I watched "Ayutha Ezhuthu" today. I liked it a lot, though that couldn't be said for some others (especially my Dad) who saw the movie with me. Mani Ratnam is the best director around (in my humble opinion) and he is not afraid to experiment with new formats when it comes to presenting a movie. This movie goes back and forth in time while it chronicles the events in the lives of 3 persons (sort of like "Alaipayuthey" - another good movie from Mani Ratnam). I will watch it again, especially to understand the elements that went into making the film (editing, direction, photography, sound, screenplay, etc).

By the way, we host the Ayutha Ezhuthu website (as well as other Mani Ratnam movie websites like Kannathil Muthamittal etc).

Sometimes I feel that seperations are inevitable so why should one be afraid or disappointed by them? Which is why perhaps now seperations are not so hard to handle (regardless of which aspect of my lifeit affects).

I am thinking if I should change the overall layout of my blog. I've had some people (like j2deep - who wants me to help him redesign his blog) tell me they get inspired by my blog layout and elements in this page. So perhaps its time to raise the bar a bit. :)

I stumbled upon this site called StumbleUpon. Check it out - its pretty interesting if you have a lot of time on your hands. :)

More downloadable audio

2004-09-14T13:23:00.000-07:00

I was sitting up late debugging a MovableType installation for a friend (diagnosis: the Berkeley DB which stores the blog data seems corrupted).

In the process I was browsing the links from IT Conversations site (see previous post) and got more downloadable audio sites. Here they are:

BOPRadio
CIO Radio
Dr Dobb's TechNetCast
Massive Change
Technology Bytes
WebTalkGuys

Goodie! :)

IT Conversations - new ideas through your headphones

2004-09-14T10:07:00.000-07:00

This is audio Mecca - IT Conversations. I discovered this site while reading Jon Udell's blog. There is tons of audio content (of a technical nature) that could be streamed or downloaded as MP3. My Zen Xtra will soon be filled up. ;)

Gmail invites galore

2004-09-12T22:44:00.000-07:00

I have 6 more Gmail invites to give away. If anyone needs them please leave a comment here. And please include your email address so that I can send the invite! If required you can munge the email address so that bots can't pick it up (e.g. myname_at_hotmail_dot_com).

Downloadable audio books

2004-09-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

After searching far and wide the only alternative I could find for audible.com was the payperlisten.com website from audiobooks.com. Though it isn't half as comprehensive compared to audible.com, it will have to do for now. I bought a Spanish vocabulary audio book from that site today to help me with my Spanish (which I've been trying hard to learn for some time now, by the way). And if anyone knows of a good downloadable audio service do send me a comment or email.

De nuevo a mi Espanol. :)

Goodies galore!

2004-09-08T12:52:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Ram, I was finally able to lay my hands on the Creative Zen Xtra mp3 player. I admit its not so cool as the iPod but its extremely functional (and I seem to be leaning a bit to the side of function than form, perhaps for the first time). The sound quality is awesome (though I haven't listened to the iPod to do a proper comparison). Plus when coupled with the Creative Travelsound (yes, got this as well) it is completely out of this world. The Travelsound packs a mighty punch in a very small space. I am impressed - I'd give a 8/10 to the Zen Xtra+Travelsound combo.

BTW if you plan on getting any of Creative's mp3 players - junk the Creative MediaSource software that comes with it. Instead do this - update to the latest driver from Creative's website. Then go and get Notmad Explorer. It costs $25 but it is worth every penny, plus it is much better compared to the clunky MediaSource that comes with the player. I'd give this software a 9/10 (and I think that recommendation would get bumped up to 10/10 once I use it some more). I did try using Windows Media Player 10 to sync my audio but it doesn't work with the Zen Xtra (as yet or maybe not permanently?).

I was disappointed to find that audible.com doesn't support the Zen Xtra yet. A reply from Audible tech support indicates that support for the Zen Xtra is in the pipeline but no date has been fixed. If anyone knows a good audio service (like audible.com) please drop me a mail or post a comment to this blog.

And to round off all this I also got a Concord 3040AF digital camera - nothing fancy, but a pretty good deal ($63) with 3 mega pixels, 4x digital zoom, SD/MMC card slot and video recording. I'm going to try and post a photo I took with the 3040AF using HelloBlogger as a preview of my photography skills. :)

There's more in the goodies bag - I plan on getting a new laptop. I'm debating with myself on whether that would be a Sony, Acer, Thinkpad, or Toshiba. Stay tuned.

2004-09-08T12:40:00.000-07:00

My first photoblog - featuring the Zen Xtra and Travelsound. I used the Concord 3040-AF to take this pic.

So near, yet so far?

2004-08-31T04:49:00.000-07:00

Just a very short note - sometimes I think God is being cruel by creating a situation that brings something (could be just about anything that you want/need) so near, but keeping it just out of reach . . .

Slow news week

2004-08-30T09:54:00.000-07:00

Well, its actually been a "too much work" week.

I'm suddenly in the middle of so much "healthcare" stuff. We completed the website redesign for The Heart Institute a couple of days back. We're also currently working on an electronic medical records management system called DGFile which is due for launch in a couple of months time. I was also "researching" (as in - going crazy googling) methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin for one of my relatives.

I'm beginning to understand how delicate and precisely constructed a human body is. Its fascinating - each and every little bone or nerve in one's body has a pre-determined function and if that bone or nerve was just a little bit off the original "specifications" it would lead to the collapse of the body. I must do some background reading on this some day soon.

Over the weekend I wifi-enabled my home. Its cool and cheap - I remember when wifi access points costed over RS 1 lakh (just about 3 years back actually). Now its around Rs 5000 for the access point and USB wifi adapters (ideal for desktops) cost around Rs 2000. Wifi pcmcia cards for laptops cost a little bit more than that. Its not as cheap as it is in the USA or elsewhere but it is getting affordable.

I was watching "Gayab" on DVD this Sunday. An oft-repeated movie concept - guy becoming invisible and then wrecking havoc on the city. I would give it a 3/10 - mostly for the background score and songs. Prawaal Raman (director) did a far better job in "Darna Mana Hai" (a collection of horror short stories).

I'm in the market for a new car, by the way. If you have a suggestion, please feel free to post a comment or send me email. I've been looking at the Hyundai Accent, Tata Indigo, Honda City, ... and many more. My current car (a Santro) has served me well for more than 4 years now and its not even lost its "new car smell" (thats what mom tells me). I guess I have this urge to "preserve and protect" - I still have stuff I got when I was a kid with not a scratch and mostly as good as new.

Gmail invites

2004-08-24T22:18:00.000-07:00

OK I finally get to invite people to Gmail. :) I have 5 invites left, if anyone wants one please email or leave a comment here.

Blog housekeeping, etc

2004-08-23T11:20:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some blog housekeeping today (now you know how addicted I am). I added a reading list, a gizmo wishlist and also updated the list of blogs I read.

The reading list is basically a list of books I'm reading (or would like to read soon). A neat feature of allconsuming.net allows me to display the book covers etc as you can see under the "Reading list" section on the right.

The gizmo wishlist is a list of cool gadgets I'd like to have (hint hint!). The items with a "-vs-" on them mean that I haven't made up my mind which of the two has the better form (the function being more or less the same - again this is debatable). And if you didn't know already - I'm gadget crazy.

BTW I discovered Dave Barry's hilarious column today. You can read it here (you'll have to go through a free registration). Here's a preview of his recent column:

Competitive weightlifting is hugely popular in Greece. This dates back to ancient times, when the Greeks had to be very strong because pretty much all their possessions were made of marble. A single salad fork could weigh 50 pounds. Just to get through a meal you needed biceps like basketballs.

You can also subscribe to his blog - check the "Dave Barry" entry under the "Blogs I read" section on this page. I've recently updated the blogs list with several good blogs (actually there's too much, I must prune them some day) like Dave Barry, Gizmodo, Hobotraveler etc. Have a look, maybe you'll find something that interests you.

Before I forget - don't watch "The Butterfly Effect". The movie gets a 0/10 from me. I watched the DVD on Sunday and the only consolation were the features on the chaos theory and time travel that came as a part of the DVD. The movie basically is about a guy going back in time and trying to set right the wrong decisions he took along the way. The concept is good but the implementation is shoddy.

The name "Butterfly Effect" describes the phenomenon where a small change at one place in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere, e.g. a butterfly flapping its wings might cause a typhoon half way across the world. Google it and you'll find several interesting articles on the topic.

There's this guy in the DVD featurette that talks about the choices we make in life. And about how one's life may change if something were done differently along the way. Interesting thought...

And there's a caption some place on the featurette that says something to effect that while nature intended life to be in chaos, mankind struggles to bring order to it. So I guess its ok to be chaotic. :)

Movie: Phone Booth

2004-08-21T23:34:00.000-07:00

Watched "Phone Booth" on Star Movies yesterday night. Filmed in ten days, no special effects, limited budget, just one location (the phone booth itself) - but none of that stops this movie from being extremely engaging. Colin Farrell does a great job with his acting - his desperation at being corner in the booth and later his confessions makes him big time material. And Keifer Sutherland (the voice on the phone) is deadly even though we get to see him only at the end of the movie for about 30 seconds. There are some loopholes in the story (Google it and you'll find many thoughts on bloopers) but I rate it 9/10.

"Send to a friend"

2004-08-17T10:31:00.000-07:00

*UPDATE:* I stand corrected - amazon.com does have a "Send to a friend" option. But its so far down in the page that you would need to look real hard to find it! Why not put it as an icon next to the book cover, I wonder. Read on for my original post . . .

I was browsing barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com today and found that both these (extremely popular) websites did not have a simple "Send to a friend" option that is found on any self-respecting website that claims to be a resource for anything.

I browse through books, I find something interesting, I want to recommend to a friend - but I can't (or atleast I have to take the long route of copy/pasting the URL into an email and sending it out). This is something which will deter me from doing it often. And I guess I don't not need to emphasize that the best publicity is word of mouth.

Maybe I'm missing something (time to get my eyes checked?) but I seem to have searched through most of the book listings pages and did not find the "Send to friend" option on any of them.

Amazon.com allows me to see the front cover, back cover, flap and excerpts of the "Da Vinci Code" up close and personal (they provide a "zoom" function!) - but they don't seem to provide me a simple "send to friend" icon that I can use to recommend that book to someone else.

Is technology ignoring the simpler (and more valuable) things in life?

BTW go read the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown!

WEBoggle

2004-08-16T11:45:00.000-07:00

Here's an engaging web-based game that I discovered today!

How to Play WEBoggle

Independence day, some thoughts

2004-08-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

Happy Independence Day!

This day, 57 years ago, the subcontinent freed itself from the notions of oppression. It become free from those who were trying to make decisions for it. Today I saw several documentaries on the suffering and pain that our forefathers had to undergo under foreign rule and how finally good triumphed over evil.

If pain, suffering, evil, oppression, ... are all so bad - why do we have so much of it in this world?

I believe - without suffering we will not cherish joy, without evil we will never appreciate the good, without oppression we will never appreciate freedom.

Would the world be a better place if there was peace, happiness, prosperity and plenty all around? If people went around smiling, holding out their hand and saying "Live long and prosper"?

No.

We need to suffer in order to progress. Or atleast thats what I think. And if you disagree - well, let me remind you this is a free world. :-)

Mankind cannot florish unless there is resistance. "Survival of the fittest" said some wise guy. "Evolution" said some other (or maybe the same guy?). Why would we need to evolve if we had not a care in the world, were smiling away to glory and had plenty of everything? We would still be roaming the orchards eating apples.

Even God acknowledges the presense of "evil". I'm sure God would get pretty bored if He didn't have evil to fight against.

Evil balances good. Joy balances suffering. Sadness balances happiness.

But what about world peace? Do I think that world peace is not achievable?

Well, if world peace did come about I am sure we would find alien life with whom to fight against. And then the story would start all over again but this time around, Earth as a whole would be the "good guys" and the aliens would be the "bad guys". Star Trek, any one?

There's so much going on in this world which seems absurd, but it can all be explained away by the fact that we need conflicts. Conflicts could be with another country, with ideologies, with your neighbour, with yourself, ... If conflicts went away, evolution would stop.

I was rummaging through some of the old stuff (and I have plenty of it) in my closet today morning. "Let me clean up this mess", I thought to myself. So out went old magazines, sticky jumbo rubber bands, manuals for equipment I no longer used, ... I must say I am pretty content with my cleaning spree. My closet seems cleaner for the effort.

Most important of all I discovered, in the junk, a cool "noise cancelling" headset with mic which had a USB interface! I never knew I had this gem of a noise cancelling USB headset and was out to buy one for myself ever since I discovered VOIP (voice-over-IP, for the uninitiated, is the ability to place phone calls over the Internet). And this one was good - I tested it out by playing some music out loud while using the mic to record my voice, and the noise cancelling feature worked flawlessly - no music, just my (sweet) voice was recorded.

I realized that even junk could be useful some day. At one point in time that headset had seemed junk to me. But today, its a gem.

Unless we have the need, we wouldn't appreciate something.

"Want to know the value of a milli-second? Ask the athlete that came second", said some interesting email that was forwarded a billion times.

Want to know the value of freedom? Ask the country that spent hundreds of years in oppression and humiliation.

And acknowledge that without oppression freedom is not worth the paper its written on.

BTW some other stuff I discovered in the junk (warning - shameless self-promotion ahead!) is a news clip from the London Sunday Mail written years back about our "email to post" service. Here's an online link to that article. And also a book released by IDRC Canada that features our "E-marketers" project. Have a read if you will. For those wondering what "FOOD India" is, look at our home page. I'm the project coordinator at that organization in addition to doing several other things like write this blog and run websites, not necessarily in that order.

I think Eminem's recent "How Come" is a cool song. He doesn't just rhyme, there's also some rhythm to the rhyme. Perhaps D12 did some good. "My Band" also sounds good.

One last thing before I go - if something is too good to be true, is it?

Business 2.0 - Web Guide

2004-08-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

Tons of links to websites on Business and Technology.

Business 2.0 - Web Guide

Six Technologies That Will Change the World

2004-08-09T10:36:00.000-07:00

I read this article at Business 2.0 on six technologies that will change the world. Makes interesting reading. Who knows - ten or twenty years down the line all this may be part of daily life.

Six Technologies That Will Change the World

(and for those that don't have a Business 2.0 subscription click here for the same article)

Thanks, random thoughts on change

2004-08-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

First off thanks to "dimbu" for helping me find something that I had been searching for quite some time now. :)

I watched "Main Hoon Na" today. Nice Hindi movie directed by Farah Khan (she's a choreographer and this is her first film as director and I hope its the first of many more good films from her). I would give it a 7 out of 10.

While I was watching the movie (on DVD) I realized suddenly that I'm holding 3 different remote controls ("clickers" as the cool guys call it). And I remembered a time when all we had at home was a radio (I must be ancient!). I used to fiddle around with it and even got it to receive some strange morse-code like transmissions from ship-to-shore communications! Then I got a multi-band (or is it universal band, whatever) radio that could receive tranmissions from "far off countries" ranging from the BBC in London to interesting stuff from Australian shores. That was fun! I spent hours with that radio - but try as I might I could not make it receive any alien transmissions from Mars.

Then there was the TV. Our first was a black and white Dyanora TV (ancient, ancient, ancient!). And we had exactly one TV channel to watch. Not satisfied with that, Dad and I used to fiddle around with the antenna and the TV tuner and finally one day managed to "catch" the weak TV signals from Roopavahini (I think thats what it was called) TV channel from Sri Lanka! Wow, that was celebration time!! All we got was a faint ghost image with lot of static and somewhat passable audio. But we were happy with the fruits of a job well done.

Twenty years down the line (see, I may not be so ancient) we have a hundred free channels, dozens of "pay TV" channels, DVD, broadband video on demand (and the lucky guys in the USA and elsewhere have TiVO, interactive TV and many other interesting things to waste time with). And I'm holding three clickers.

Times change - the world changes with it. Which is why perhaps we should always look at the big picture and not get bogged in the past or the small problems (they will be small - ten or even five years down the line) we may have to face today. Looking around me I see testimonies to the undying spirit of mankind - the urge to explore and succeed. Regardless of the fact that we still do not know how we came to be and what the heck we're doing here.

So why I am preaching? Well, I need to do something other than talk technology and business. Have fun and enjoy!

This is my thirteen blog post (and no, its not a Friday).