A funny telemarketing call

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

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

Testing Performancing for Firefox plugin.

The disposable era

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

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

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

Flock!

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.