A Brand New Day

The Hag that Is

Is there that owre his French ragout,
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi' perfect sconner,
Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view
On sic a dinner? -- Robert Burns

Fireworks

Men are from Mars... Women are from Crazy.

The man in the moon.

The moon was the closest to the earth in 15 years last weekend. It was 15% bigger and 35% brighter than normal. (http://lifehacker.com/5109010/photograph-the-biggest-full-moon-in-15-years-tonight). Well, so I photographed it.

Ze Poopies!

Haloween Special - The Rhythm

MDTL is proud to present our latest guest blogger - DarkeArun, who brings us a twisted tale of horror and perversion. Without further ado..

The Rhythm:

You did it. Finally. Its all over. Its the kind of feeling you see at the end of a good horror movie. You look around. This is the moment everyone has been fighting for. But they all looked too exhausted. You decide to get some rest. So you say goodnights and go to your room with a new sense - a sense of freedom. You get your beer and play your favorite NiN songs in your computer. Then you lie back on the chair and fall asleep almost instantly. A big mistake.

Few minutes go by. Then you feel it. The same feeling that was haunting everyone for years. Something is waking you up. You knew what would happen if you wake up and turn around; you will see what you never wanna see. You are scared again. But you stay asleep and almost ignore it. After a while it stops. A moment of silence. While you are still trying to make your mind for your next move, it strikes back. This time it almost feels like an electric pulse is passing right through you. From your left to right. You even hear the buzz. You feel the wave. The rhythm. The rhythm that kills. But you stay strong and do not move. Few seconds pass and it stops. Silence. You hold on tight with your eyes still closed. You know its gonna hit back and you know its gonna hit back real bad. You hear screams from the other rooms. You try to remember where you left your transposer. Too late. You are hit again. And this time with a real strong force. It freezes you. You have no control. You scream. And then....you open your eyes. It twists you back and forth real fast in the chair. It feels worse than a roller coaster ride. You try to see, but its all so dark. You just keep screaming. Then almost instantly everything stops. And you just drop on your table. You open your eyes again. You see the progress bar moving from 99% to 100%. Then you see the word that haunts you for the rest of your life - MDTL.

Happy Halloween!

Top 100 Scifi books

http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/lists_books_rank1.html

How many have you read?

Happy Diwali 2008

In support of Raj Thackeray...

A forward I got.

We all should support Raj Thackeray and take his initiative ahead by doing more... 

1.   We should teach our kids that if he is second in class, don't study harder.. just beat up the student coming first and throw him out of the school

2.    Parliament should have only Delhi-ites as it is located in Delhi

3.    Prime-minister, president and all other leaders should only be from Delhi

4.    No Hindi movie should be made in Bombay. Only Marathi.

5.    At every state border, buses, trains, flights should be stopped and staff changed to local men

6.    All Maharashtrians working abroad or in other states should be sent back as they are SNATCHING employment from Locals

7.    Lord Shiv, Ganesha and Parvati should not be worshipped in our state as they belong to north (Himalayas)

8.     Visits to Taj Mahal should be restricted to people from UP only

9.     Relief for farmers in Maharashtra should not come from centre because that is the money collected as Tax from whole of India, so why should it be given to someone in Maharashtra?

10.   Let's support Kashmiri Militants because they are right in killing and injuring innocent people for the benefit of their state and community..

11.   Let's throw all MNCs out of Maharashtra, why should they earn from us? We will open our own Maharashtra Microsoft, MH Pepsi and MH Marutis of the world

12.    Let's stop using cellphones, emails, TV, foreign Movies and dramas. James Bond should speak Marathi

13.    We should be ready to die hungry or buy food at 10 times higher price but should not accept imports from other states

14.    We should not allow any industry to be set-up in Maharashtra because all machinery comes from outside

15.    We should STOP using local trains... Trains are not manufactured by Marathi manoos and Railway Minister is a Bihari

16.    Ensure that all our children are born, grow, live and die without ever stepping out of Maharashtra, then they will become true Marathi's

JAI MAHARASHTRA!

The Russell Peters

Okay. Russell Peters is live at Siri Fort Delhi on the 29th. Book your tickets at ticketpro.in now! For those not in the know Russell is a knee-slappingly, roll in the aisle inducingly, fantastic comedian.

Banned!

You might wan to check this out. A list of the Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books in 2000-2007.

Banned!

You might wan to check this out. A list of the Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books in 2000-2007.

Greetings with a Smile

MDTL is proud to present our very first guest blogger, DarkeRose. Here is her first post -

Say not the struggle nought availeth,
  the labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faint not, nor faileth,
  And as things have been, things remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
  It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
  And, but for you possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
  Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making
  Came, silent flooding in the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
  When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly
  But westward look, the land is bright.
                                   ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

Greeting the morning with a smile.

We used to have a cheap blue alarm clock which we acquired early in our marriage after we realised that our body clocks were just not doing their job after a late night of partying. It served us well through the years. Only now and then would we fail to wake up to its dulcet tones. On those days I and my better half (worse half on those days) would miraculously find ourselves on our feet with staring eyes and hair on end screaming at each other for not hearing the alarm. Then there would be a mad rush for the loo, sometimes in the wrong direction. While doing the job and going through Femina's tips on how to greet the morning with a smile, I would be interrupted by a pounding on the bathroom door and a voice asking frantically where the sugar was for the tea he was making. Grumblingly I'd crack the door sarcastically asking if this was a hotel or what that he didn’t know where things were kept. Then I would give directions that the sugar was in the cupboard whose keys were in the other cupboard whose keys were in the--------. This exercise was a painfully failing attempt on my behalf to curb the pilfering activities of my maid servant, who invariably when I lost them would hand them to me with a smirk. Hence the continuous change of hiding places. Finally after the keys were found, he would make his way to the kitchen, but not before passing snide remarks on senility and Alzheimers. I would go back to what I was doing hastily. No time to peruse through that article now!

Nowadays we wake up to the ring of a brand new alarm clock, which has come all the way from Disney land, Paris and was presented to us by our son. Its ring in the morning is enough to wake up the dead. Its ring is also a cue for me to cower under the bedclothes as I see my sleeping partner flail his arms searching for the clock and bringing crashing down all the doodahs with the vase of flowers I had placed on the headboard following another mags advice on how to spice up your bedroom life. In the ensuing silence I'm asked, ’Where did you say the old blue clock was?' I mumble something about senility and Alzheimer’s and turn over.

Answer

I'm publishing New Scientist's best Sci-Fi short story below . . .

Fredric Brown, "Answer"

Dwan Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.
He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe -- ninety-six billion planets -- into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.
Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn."
"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."
He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?"
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
"Yes, now there is a God."
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.
A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.
--

MDTL Tutorials - iPhone 2.1

Viren Joky's

Guide to Upgrading, Jailbreaking and Unlocking your iPhone 2G

Iphone Pwned

Dude.. I did it! iPhone 2.1 running fine. Jailbroken and unlocked!

MDTL Tutorials - Fedora and XP

Well the Google Docs publishing is shite, so link here for

Viren Joky's

Quick and Dirty guide to dual booting Windows with Fedora 9 (Sulphur)

Blog Publishing from Google Docs

Okay, just below this post, you will see a large unwieldy tutorial on how to use BitTorrent. I had created it on Google Docs for a friend, and thought I'd publish it on my blog. For people not in the know, Google Docs allows you to publish your document directly on your blog. On the Share button on the right, hit 'Publish At Web Page',  change your blog site settings, and hit Post.

However, as you can see below, the formatting is shite. It looks slightly better as a published web page, but my graphics have lost their black backgrounds surprisingly enough, so they dont look as cool.

Update: Yeah, its apparently just IE6 which displays the icons like crap. FF is working just fine

Viren Joky's

BitTorrent for Dummies

 

Okay, you've heard a lot about this torrent thing; supposedly the next great thing in file sharing <read pirating>. But, you have no idea of how to go about accessing it's power. In other words the last word of the title describes you to a T. Hey, if the shoe fits... 

Well here's my simple 5 step guide to getting on the torrent bandwagon and achieving download nirvana. Okay, so it may not be 5 steps. At this point I'm not sure of the number of steps it'll take.

 

How to read this guide -

 Step to be followed  My recommendations  The mechanics behind it (Don't read this if you don't want to)  Links to resources  Warning!  And this one because it just looks cool!

Here we go -

 Download a BitTorent Client

     I personally use BitComet, but that's probably not the best client. uTorrent is supposed to be good, and it's really light on resources (I'm trying it out now), or try Azureus for a full featured download.

      Here's a list of torrent clients

 Install it. No explanations here.

     You might want to allow it to associate with your .torrent (the BitTorrent format) files automatically.

     You may want to configure the upload and download speeds here. Okay, this is gunna be a bit technical. Torrents are based on sharing. That means every time you are downloading a file, your torrent client automatically starts to upload that part of the file you have downloaded. You can change or reduce the upload speed in your preferences. Why not reduce your upload speed to zero, you ask me? Well, besides the fact that its good to contribute to the pool of uploaders, torrent clients are built in such a way that restricts your download speed based on your upload speed. So why not make your upload speed max? Because that will seep your bandwidth! A comfortable middle ground should be reached.

 Now go on-line and search for a good torrent site.

     I like Torrentz.com which index a huge list of sites. Best of all, it doesn't index porn. Okay, so that's a huge negative, but you can use Pornorip or Torrentspy to look for that

     List of popular torrents sites.

 Use the search facility to locate what you want - just type in some keywords.

     For example - this is what you get if you search for 'Year of the dog' on Mininova -

     As you can see, a list of torrents are displayed here. Make sure its what you want before downloading, or Year of the Dog may just turn out to be an extreme bestiality vid. Uh, unless that's what you're looking for. Hey, I'm not here to judge. It's just that you're a filthy pervert. That's all I'm saying. And it's not often I get a change to call somebody else this.

 Okay, so you can see several matching torrents. Which one do you pick? Simple answer - the one with the most seeders (or Seeds, or S, or even health).

     Like I said above, every person downloading a file is also uploading it to some extent. And some people are just uploading it out of the goodness of their hearts. All the people who are uploading the file are called seeders. Anyhoo, the more people uploading, the more likely is it for you to get a faster download, and the less likely it is for your file to stop in between. Usually at 99% which proves Murphy's law and provoke me to extreme violence.

     Also, you may want to choose the link which has the least downloaders or Leechers. Obviously, the less people who are hogging up the bandwidth of the seeders, the more bandwidth is there for you to hog. On the other hand, the more people that leeching the file, the more likely is it to be the genuine article.

 Click on the download torrent link. You will be asked to save/open the file, which will have the ext .torrent. If you've associated your torrent client with this type of file, you can open it directly. Or you can save the torrent onto your hard disk (it's a small file; just a few kb). And then open it with your client of choice.

     Actually the .torrent file is just a link to the tracker, which keeps information of the people who are uploading the file. The client uses this information to connect to them and establish P2P connections to get the files.

 

And that's it. You're done and well on your way to accumulating masses of porn.. er legitimate files. Now may be a good time to buy that external 1 Tb hdd you were thinking about.

-Viren