Another Random Post

I'm still laptopless and lazy, so instead of blogging the longer posts I have been working on, here is another collection of randomness. Hmm maybe I should have written that laptop-less. You know, so the perverts out there don't read it wrong. Yes. I mean YOU.

I'm typing this while listening to Kraftwerk on my iPhone. Yes I have an iPhone. I'm posh spelt P-O-S-H. I drink my tea with my pinky extended and I never come, I always arrive. What I'm trying to say is - listen to Kraftwerk. Back in 1997 my friend from college, Prashanth dug out this old tape and made me listen to Kraftwerk's Man Machine. A very interesting album, techno trance, with a lot of music which seems to have been stolen by later artists.

One of the books I'm really looking forward to reading is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Supposedly one of Sci-fi's best, I'm surprised I never ran across it. I hope it's magnificent; I'm willing to forgive Card his homophobia. And why didn't anyone tell me about Clive Cussler. I kept seeing his books but was never motivated to pick one up. I plan to rectify that immediately.

And now for some internet goodness. Weird Universe give you your daily hit of bizarre. Want to do some quick and dirty photo editing and don't have the tools? Try Picnik. And read superhero parody [this is NSFW] 'The Pro' here.

Dunno

I just ran into one of my favourite books as a child. It's Nikolai Nosov's The Adventures of Dunno and his Friends. It's funny and whimsical and has the most amazing illustrations. Its available for free online here. Definitely

worth a read.

5000 Twisted Hits

The Sound of Settling.

"The Sound Of Settling"
                                    -Death Cab for Cutie

I've got a hunger
Twisting my stomach into knots
That my tongue was tied off

My brain's repeating
"if you've got an impulse let it out"
But they never make it past my mouth.

Baa bah, this is the sound of settling
Baa bah, baa bah
[x2]

Our youth is fleeting
Old age is just around the bend
And i can't wait to go grey

And i'll sit and wonder
Of every love that could've been
If i'd only thought of something charming to say.

Baa bah, this is the sound of settling
Baa bah, baa bah
[x4]

I've got a hunger twisting my stomach into knots.

>Schizophrenic<

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
I'm schizophrenic...
and so am I.

Freaky..

Check this out... funny stuff.

The 27 Most Hilarious Album Covers Of All Time

A Tragic Gap

It's a darke day for us here on the interwebs. My Dell Xps M1710 decided that 2 years of service are quite enough, and with resigned finality, crashed. And that is why, though I have posts waiting for you on my Google Docs, I've been silent for some time. I'm posting this note via the email facility of blogger.


Well, it was not exactly unexpected. I came home one day to find that my hard drive was not recognised by the BIOS. However a quick reset to defaults of the BIOS solved the problem. This of course, made me quite jittery, and the first thind I did was make a backup of my important, irreplaceable files onto my external MyBook.

And it was a good thing I did, as a couple of days back. my laptop restarted and now the hard drive is quite missing. Now, I've not got everything I want off that drive, but I've got enough so that I do not have to commit ritualistic hara-kiri. Of course, I've had hard disks die on me before, the worst being when my 500 Gb external Segate got fried when I connected it to an unprotected power outlet at a friends place in bangalore. A few quick power fluctuations and thats all she wrote.

The stupedest reason for loosing data was way back in undergraduation. Me and a few mates decided to upgrade my Pentium II, 2 gb hdd from Win 95 to 98. So, after copying the stuff I wanted to keep into a folder, we proceeded to wipe everything else and install a pirated copy of 98 which my uncle sent from Singapore. BTW, this kinda activity was the height of excitement for me and my friends those days. And from that you know I live a sad escuse of a life. Anyway, everything was proceeding swimmingly, when the installation hung somewhere towards the end.

A small setback, we figured, and retried the installation with exactly the same results. After several goes, tweaking all possible settings, we had progressed no further. My two friends and I were perplexed and irritated. However this third guy from my class, came forward, and with quiet confidence said that 98 would not install without a full format of the hard disk. We scoffed, but after a few more tries we began to listen to him. He was totally confident and assured us that that was the problem. I really needed the data on my drive, but without an OS it was useless. And in those days of floppy diskettes, no realistic backup solution presented itself.

So, I finally bit the bullet, and typed in format c: . What a sacrifice, but it was the only way to go forward. We ran the installation for the upmteenth time, and lo and behold; it failed in the EXACT same place! At this point the guy quietly removed himself from the proceedings. After some time, my friends left too, admitting defeat. Late in the night however, I came across a setting tucked away in the BIOS which said Enable/Disable Virus Protection. This prevented anything from changing the MBR of the Hard Disk, which windows obviously needed to do. DOH. I disabled it and the installation ran flawlessly.

But I never trusted that guy again.

Lets Test

Testing the email functionality of blogger.

A nudist by the name of Roger Peet
Loved to dance in the snow and the sleet,
But one chilly December
He froze every member,
And retired to a monkish retreat.


There was a young lady named Sharkey
Who had an affair with a darkey.
The result of her sins
Was quadruplets, not twins,
One white, and one black, and two khaki.

That is all.

Dilli Darshan: Connaught Place at night

My life is a Comic - pt 1

When I was really young, I remember reading a lot of Archies. The were more accessible than superhero comics and much more entertaining than the Chacha Chaudharys and suchlike. On occasion, as I would be zipping through a double digest, my dad would take it and start reading aloud. 'Oh Veronica, you look lovely. SMOOCH! SMOOCH!'. My dad would quite enjoy himself, and exert himself to the maximum to get the full range of sound effects involved whenever Archie went near some girl. He would then look at me in mock surprise and say - This comic is FULL of kissing. Is that why you like it?, and grin.    

 

Blushing furiously, I would snatch the offending digest out of his hand and tell him that I was just reading it for Jughead (the inveterate girl hater). And it was true because I was at the age when the opposite sex was the enemy, and all contact was to be avoided. Even though I was strangely attracted, externally I presented a strong front, exhorting my friends to resist their lubricious feminine wiles. Of course, with age comes wisdom, and I soon realised that I was no match for them. But that's another story...

I still read Archies, but only when I go home and can get them from the library. They're light enough that I can eat, surf the net, watch TV and read them at the same time. Of course, there were a few superhero comics available then, with Phantom, Tarzan, Mandrake and Flash Gordon leading the front. Many were the happy hours I spent pretending to study, with a Flash comic hidden in my Social Studies textbook. Unfortunately though, I tended to get lost in that world of fantasy, at which point soft 'PEW PEW PEW' sounds would emanate from my throat, as I battled the hordes of Ming the Merciless. At this point my mom would storm in, confiscate my comic and leave me with  sore ear, which, let me tell you, was worse than any torture Ming could inflict.        

 

 Another comic, or should I say graphic novel, that I was very fond of was the Asterisk and Obelisk series. Goscinny and Uderzo crafted masterpiece after masterpiece with their wry french humour and witty stereotypes. I could read their comics time and time again and still do. Of course Uderzo continued the series after Goscinny died, with mixed success.

And of course, in the same format was Herge's Tintin with it's high adventure and the comedic timing of Haddock and Thomson and Thompson. To be precise. These can often have me laughing out loud, which is my criteria for a good book.       

Over the years, I've encountered many different comics, and being in a place where easy access to good comics was never easy, the ones I have run across are a motley and varied selection. Ranging from the indigenous Tinkle to Bone and The Blue Devil and Swamp Thing, all comics were grist to my mill.

The earliest comics I remember were the Walt Disney ones starring Mickey, Donald, The Beagle Boys and so on. Most of them involved Hewie, Dewie and Louie thwarting some inventive plan of the Beagle Boys to get their hands on Scrooge McDuck's cash.

In Delhi in the fourth grade He-Man mini booklets were the latest craze. They used to come in plastic pouches, four to the sheet, and I collected them avidly. It was an expression of my interest in science fiction and fantasy, and besides, Teela and The Sorceress  interested me strangely. 

  

 To be continued....

XKCD.COM

Witty and poignant. Check out xkcd. A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

 

  

  

Heroes interpreted.

The time has come, to talk of many thing. Of capes, and pandas, and flying bums; of maniacs and kings. And why Darkseid never sleeps; and whether bats have wings.

The post, obviously, has been inspired by watching three superhero movies in quick succession; Kung Fu Panda, Hancock and The Dark Knight. Okay okay, so you say Kung Fu Panda is NOT a superhero as such. Do I even care?

So lets start off with Hancock. A great premise and reasonable acting ruined by a lousy script. Not even Charlize was able to save this. Will plays it too emotional to be really funny, and where oh where are the impressive villains? A gay guy with a hook for a hand? That's the baddie? Please. The movie gets over before it begins. Do not watch it. Not even if guys with hook hands turn you on. Coz' you can find stuff on the internet that'll satisfy THAT fetish. Rule 34, baby.

Kung Fu panda is cool. He can do the Wushi finger hold AND make a mean noodle soup. But that doesn't mean I like being compared with him. The NERVE of some people... Anyhoo, this is another movie which starts before it begins. The Bad Guy is whipped in one round with Po. The hero does not lose the first round only to return for round two, having finally learnt the meaning of 'heart'. And it doesn't really give me a good cartoon babe to fixate on (can anyone say Jasmine?).

But the movie is fun all the same; full of laughs and morals. And in the end, the audience learns that the secret to avoiding paralysing kung fu attacks is in developing an insulating layer of fat. And isn't that what really matters?

And finally, the movie of the year; The Dark Knight. Now I don't want to wax loquacious, but what a flick. They've finally tried to reach what I have visualised as the ultimate Batman film. That's right, in my head I'm an Oscar winning film director. And Batman will be my masterpiece. So starting with the premise that this film is awesome, crap-yo-pants fantastic, lets begin to tear it down. Christian Bale.... nope, Bale is NOT my Batman. He's too small, not brooding enough. Batman is a physical presence. He looms out from shadows. His cape falls over his shoulders to the ground; covering his suit; hiding it's outlines. His mask is not an oversize helmet covering most of his face, but thinner, smoother, showing his jawline. And his voice is not a rough rasp, but smooth and deep and full of hidden menace.

Has Ledger beaten Nicholson in his portrayal of the Joker? Who can say. Nicholson was an impressive joker, and combined with Burton's genius was whimsical, mad and deadly. Ledger's just creepy. Okay; subtract the 'just'. He brings creepy to a whole new level; a psychopathic mass-murdering level. And he's brilliant at it. They've interpreted the madness of the joker wonderfully well in the movie. He's in control of the situation the whole time, playing Gordon and Wayne like marionettes. And like the comics, the interplay between the Batman and Joker is wonderfully scripted. One gets the feel that the Joker defines himself by the existence of the Batman.

Finally, Gotham. Chicago does provide a good substitute, and plays off well against Nolan's storytelling style, but I would expect Gotham to be more... er... Gothic. More dark, more gargoyled and gloomy.

But hey! You can't have everything! A few things they DO get right is the twisted relationship between the bat and the joker, emphasis on the dark knight as a detective, and the deliberate concealment of Chief Gordon's daughter, Barbara. And we all know who SHE is.

Watch out for more heroes, including the eagerly anticipated Watchmen and the second celluloid version of the seminal Mike Mignola's Hellboy.

Sanity revoked

Okay... drop everything. Do yourself a favour. Go to the theatre and watch The Dark Knight. Immediately. Now. Do it.

Visitor Locations

Well, in a very polite mail Clustrmaps informed me that a year has passed since I had installed it on my blog, and they had archived my map and replaced it with a fresh one (on the right). I was quite proud of the old one; it showed hits from almost every country 'cept a few in Africa and round Russia Well, its on to bigger and better thing; and I hope you guys will help me populate the new map even better.

Here's what the old one looked like -

Finally...

How to configure EDGE on the iPhone

Configuration November 5th, 2007

I will show you how to configure iPhone for EDGE on any network - especially on India’s Bharti Airtel and Vodafone GSM networks.

1. Tap on Settings on your iPhone
2. Then General -> Network -> EDGE -> APN
3. For Bharti Airtel Mobile Office EDGE connection -> Type airtelgprs.com as the APN
4. For Vodafone EDGE connection -> Type www as the APN
5. For both Airtel and Vodafone EDGE connections leave the Username and Password empty

Now your Safari and YouTube should be working!

And for more tips of a similar nature, head off to iphonetipz

The Real World.

Whoever told you that a long vacation refreshes, relaxes and get's you ready for work is a dirty stinking liar. After being pampered, fed and generally coddled for two and a half weeks at home, returning to work is like emerging for a warm, cushioned womb into a dismal dystopian reality. Not that its not warm here.. oh no! Delhi's burning heat of June may be over, but the weather here has unleashed a new weapon in it's arsenal - humidity. The air is so sodden, so damp, that goldfish would probably find it salubrious. Any small exertion and you're pouring out streams of sweat and gasping with your mouth; much like afore-mentioned goldfish. Contrast that with my home in Coimbatore where an air conditioner is never required.

Add to this the tedium of office. My cubicle, which was chosen carefully for its solitude and distance from everyone, has been filled to the brim by sincere hard working drones. The person next to me, so awed by his manager, reads out lines of code to himself in a semi-panicked mutter which does much to drive away all my peace of mind.

And of course, in Delhi I am at the whims and fancies of outdoor food. Whereas at home, I am secure in the knowledge that all I have to do is turn up at the dining table at prescribed intervals and be fed; in Delhi every meal takes at least 15 minutes of keen descisions. Do I eat or skip? Do I subject my stomach to the tortures of the cafeteria, or do I venture out in the broiling sun to eat at a resteraunt? Will a bowl of musceli stave the ravening pangs of hunger or should I go whole hog on that cheese burst pizza and pay for my indulgence with guilt ridden sleepless nights? Decisions, decisions...

Psychologists save lives

The Gate

I know; my blog posts have become few and far between. Instead of the words and ideas flowing out smoothly, like slick jellied eels, they emerge grudgingly reluctant onto the espace like an alligator from its mud pit. And from those rotten analogies, you know it must be true.

The reason for this is a pervasive ennui which seems to envelop me and everything I do nowadays. The only thing which I do nowdays is read tech blogs and salivate at the new and shiny bits of metal and plastic that they so love to talk about. Gizmodo is my favourite right now, with Crave, Engadget and Slashdot following close behind. I occasionally tune into Scott Adam's blog, though his output is nowhere as good as before. And when I want to get in touch with my feminine side I head on over to Dooce.

Not that I need to get further in touch with my feminine size. I'm just one Avril Lavigne song away from putting on a dress. Coloured pink. Okay, so I apologise; apparently girls don't just like pink. They like red and white stripes/prints too. Which is not the same as pink. Definitely. Not.

Ever since I've returned to India, I've been doing my very best to visit as many pubs/lounges as possible, and get as comprehensively drunk in them as possible. And no, I will absolutely not let the shame of ordering strawberry daquiris while the girls with me down whiskeys with soda and then adjust their crotch and spit stop me.

Hey, I did tell you about my feminine side, didn't I? According to these girls (they pretend to be my friends), I give off this gay vibe, which is why they take me with them to restaurants and force me to ask the maître d' for a table. Apparently they are quick to comply either from desire or terror.

This weekend involved a drunken semi orgy at home with triple distilled vodka, white rum and Drambuie and Burnout matches on the PS2. We were supposed to catch a play at the Indian Habitat Centre on Sunday evening, but on arriving there learnt that it was sold out. Apparently more people were interested in imbibing culture than we thought. So after hanging around and ineffectually trying to bribe the guards into letting us in, we decided to make our way to Khan Market for dinner.

After strolling around a bit, we decided to have dinner at Big Chillz, which, as usual, made us wait for a half hour for a table, while we stood outside the window and pulled hungry orphan faces. I have to say, patience and girls go together just like apples and Godzilla. First, Miz Kuruvilla accosted the maître d' for letting this couple get in ahead of us. The waited replied politely, 'We would seat you first, Madam, we really would, but we would lose our jobs. The couple we just seated were the owners.'


Big Chillz is a pretty good restaurant serving continental and Italian, but what you should really go there for are the delicious and indulgent desserts with mud pies and cheesecakes crowding the menu.


This time however, we decided to go to India Gate for ice cream. Quite surprisingly, there was a huge crowd at India gate. People were lounging on the grass with picnic baskets and vendors weaved their way through the crowd selling everything from bhel-puri to bubble guns. It sorta reminded me of another famous place - people on the lawns before the Eiffel Tower. Such different places, yet so similar.


The girls of course wanted a bubble gun and a fluorescent helicopter, which miz Dutt promptly proceeded to launch in a wild and erratic manner, causing everyone to take seven steps away for safety.


Of course, the battery of my D60 chose that very moment to quit on me so you'll have to be satisfies with (inferior?) shots from Shazzer's D40.

[Update - I've managed to get just two photos outta Shazzer. Rest will follow shortly]

The Jesus Phone crucified.

Okay, so for those of you who follow my blog, you will recall me posting abt the latest list of gadgets on my have to have list ie http://lifeofviren.blogspot.com/2008/03/gadget-crazy.html. Anyway, two of them have been delivered into my grubby, clutching lil' mitts, namely the MyBook and the Nikon D60. The Nokia N96 however has eluded me by being, most frustratingly, still unreleased.

So what do I go out and do? Well, buy the Jesus Phone obviously. Yes yes, I know the 3G iPhone is imminent, but the CarPhone Warehouse were practically giving them away at £169. Of course, you were supposed to get a 2 year contract with O2, but hey, I'm willing to forego my warranty and get it unlocked.

I've got to hand it to Apple; they really DO do things in style. The phone comes in a sexy little box within with is the phone, a tiny manual, a usb cable, headphones and a jigsawesque power plug, all wrapped in yards of plastic. I was in the last stages of packing (this was the day before I was to leave for India), and my luggage was already approaching critical mass, but I just had to take the box back home. So, out went all my underwear, and in nestled the box between a James Herriot and a fleshlight. Of course, I haven't got around to buying any undies yet, but I'm quite enjoying the freedom.

err.. Anyway, back to the iPhone. After charging it a bit, I installed iTunes on my PC and upgraded the phone's firmware to 1.1.4.

Rant #1- What's it with Apple and their proprietary software? Whatever happened to good ol' drag n' drop? This always pissed me off no end, which is why I bought my self an iRiver d40 all those years ago and not an iPod.

Unlocking the iPhone next was a snap. ZiPhone does a pretty good job, both unlocking and jailbreaking it in a snap; and its ready to use. After playing around with the interface, I was genuinely impressed. Till I tried to make a call.

Rant #2 - WTF, the iPhone does not pick up your contacts off the SIM. Which is just horrible!

So, I had to first sync all my contacts from my Razr onto Outlook, and then sync them back to the iphone. And I saw it. And I used it. And it was good. Especially browsing the net, for which the iPhone is really built. So it's all joy and dreams... as long as you have wifi. Switch off the net however...

Rant #3 - My iPhone does not recognise the ad hoc wifi conn I set up from my laptop. Though this may be more a defect in me than in the iphone.

Rant #4 - Why does the SMS keyboard not appear in widescreen mode? I mean they've done it for the internet entry. How hard is it to put it in for the sms mode?

Rant #5 - Apparently, the bluetooth on the iPhone pairs only with the Apple bluetooth Headset... and NOTHING ELSE. Fun, innit?

Rant #6 - A 2 megapixel camera? Really?

Sigh, and lets not talk about the lack of 3G shall we? And neither of the fact that it will almost surely be outdated in a few weeks when the 3G iPhone arrives.

But for all this, it is a slick piece of gadgetry; an iconic crowd puller. And it's mine. And that's all that counts really. So now all I haveta do is sit back, whip it out (the phone, not anything else you pervert!) and wait for the ladies to come flocking. As I'm sure they will. Won't they?

A New Hope

Those of you who know me know that I'm always in search of the next big thing. From gadgets to galoti kebobs, I scour cyberspace for titbits to titillate both geek and gourmet. My first discovery is for the man of refined taste who's looking for something to tickle his taste bud. http://www.freshkitten.com/ will open up a new world for taste sensations for the purist and hedonist alike.

And having stimulated you physically, I now attempt to jog those grey cells by introducing you to the latest kid on the blogosphere - http://meinbetweenbooks.blogspot.com/. Now I know this blogger personally; we even pretend to be friends on occasion. And I do have to say, she's intelligent, knowledgeable and quite humourous too, especially when she tries to enter stores through their plate glass display windows (no I WON'T forget that). So give it a go.

And to end up, let me say I've changed continents again, and I'm now typing this blog from a place where the thermometer shows 43 degree celcius.