WWDC06 is approaching, though perhaps not fast enough. Quite frankly, it's the only upcoming event in the foreseeable future that has the potential to disrupt - for the better I hope - the otherwise undulating fabric of my summer life (and that, I say, is a mite depressing). But, in summary, I am dead excited. Then again, Apple has clearly proclaimed over the last couple of years that it shall not put as much effort into these Conferences and Expos as it used to for the previous two decades because the company now wishes to announce products as they are ready rather than meeting an Expo deadline. Now that is all well and good, but (a) it makes the keynote presentations at the said Conferences and Expos into an even more elaborate statistical extravanganza than usual, and (b) releasing products with a little press release or a "special event" is just no fun… at least not for Apple-heads like me who've seen Macworlds for the past few years.

And, as much a fan of statistics as I am, and as much as I would love to sit and applaude at every number Steve Jobs animates on to the screen with a cool Three-Dimensional Inverse Ripple effect, I believe that the last two Macworlds have been relatively boring and have had little to offer in terms of new and exciting "Mac" products. Macworld 2003 was my last favourite Macworld. It was the last Macworld that was truly "exciting". On that occasion, Apple introduced perhaps six new software titles along with two completely new hardware models - the 12" and 17" PowerBook G4s. Also, that was the era when Apple had these really cool promotional videos which, as a Mac-head, I just loved to watch even though I was on a very slow connection at the time and had to wait for hours for the high-quality versions to finish downloading. It's because of Macworld 2003 that I discovered the song "What A Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong… and today, after wondering for three years (well, not continuously) about who sang the remixed version of the same song for the Apple promo, I discovered it by chance on the iTunes Music Store and immediately downloaded it (the iTMS is rather good when it comes to impulse buys). I cropped and uploaded the ending bit of the Apple Promo containing said song to Google Video:


I blame the lack of Mac hardware innovation on the iPod, which seems to be the only thing Apple's really pushing these days. The iMac, MacBook Pro and Mac mini - they all have been transitioned to Intel chips but without an iota of change in their outward appearance, and that is just plain boring as far as my expectations from Apple is concerned. And as far as the case changes on the MacBook are concerned, my non-Apple friends did not notice any change at all in my desktop setup when one day the iBook G4 was quietly replaced by a white MacBook that had been loaned to me. I call for Innovation with a capital 'I'! Or has Apple, like the rest of the PC manufacturers, given up?

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This is funny. I was talking about this with a few of my friends a little while ago and they didn't believe me, but Dells are blowing up all over these days.

As I sit here typing I'm reminded of what happened at roughly 4 p.m. Central Standard time at my office (about an hour ago); especially since my hands still smell like 'fire extinguisher'. While specifying instrumentation tag names on a flow drawing my attention is turned towards the haze building up on the other side of the engineering area. I started hearing some distant prattle about “fire”, “hmmm... what could this possibly be?” I think to myself. Upon further investigation I've come to the conclusion that someone's Dell laptop just freakin blew up and started a cozy little desktop fire!!!

Since I’m not in the mood for S’mores... "Oh, this is priceless" I think to myself; as I turn straight back to my desk where, from within my back-pack, I whip out my 7.2MP digital camera.

One of our IT guys put out the flames (yes, I said flames) and thusly covered the entire area with fire extinguisher ‘material’. The battery burned its way straight through the laptop creating the beautiful hole with which is so beautifully depicted in the picture. The fire department showed up. The police department showed up. The entire lower floor was allowed to leave early and as we stood there in front of the building we simply couldn’t resist... we jokingly called the engineer a terrorist as he was being asked a few questions by the friendly officer.

The most priceless moment of this entire ordeal is something that I, with regret, do not have a picture of. While taking pictures through the haze (after everyone had evacuated the area and before the fire department came to kick us out), the engineer who’s laptop it was had been spotted out of the corner of my eye. Apparently he heard there was a fire and that we all had to go outside. Being the noble engineer that he is, he quickly wanted to grab his laptop!!! HAHAHA The look on his face, as he stretched out his arms in disbelief was priceless!!! Again, I’m sorry I didn’t get a picture of that... I was laughing too damn hard! (I was only able to get a picture of him walking away, as I was intermittently laughing and coughing at the same time)

Here are a few pictures, please enjoy them as much as the Dell representatives and the AWESOME crew over at THG surely will when I send them the link.

Regards,
The Automation Engineer who had to go home early!

And more pictures to prove it…

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Finally, the temperatures are starting to cool down here, with today's highest being 32ºC, which was still hot, mind, but not as hot as yesterday and Sunday. It's pleasant in my room right now, I'm not sweating at all, and in case the weather gets worse, a fan shall be arriving tomorrow. Also, the forecast for tomorrow says that it shall be 28ºC at its hottest, which is pretty good.

Continuing this parade of good news, I also got my bike back from the Campus Bike Shop today. They fixed the brakes and charged me a decent sum for that but at least now I can cease motion at will and the feeling is just plain exhilirating! This also means that I can ride downhill without worrying about getting myself run over by a car, truck or, if the circumstances are somewhat skewed, a train.

In addition to all that, Stanford refunded me a good sum of money (~$500) from the bill I paid for living on-campus during the summer, which just makes me feel so much better than what I would have felt had I paid them a smaller amount initially. That's human psychology for you.

Also, one of my Uncles* in Delhi is buying a MacBook through me, so I might get to use it for a few days on the pretense of installing software, which will be good because I am using a rather slow-ish iBook these days. And it also makes me happy because I'll be spreading the "Mac Love" to one more person. Recently, I've begun to feel nostalgia well up inside me for my five years of living in Mac-dom now and I have felt a great urge to watch Macworld and WWDC keynotes from the past. Thankfully, I was able to rip the Macworld 2006 and WWDC 2005 keynotes from Apple.com using SnapzProX in rather high quality and have luckily found a torrent for the others. I do love the Internet!

Also, went to the Physics Library today in the Varian building. I do like the name "Varian"… although I'd be hard pressed to tell you why. Perhaps because it reminds me of the general Math-Science-Physics thing. Unfortunately, although it is one of the few buildings that remains air conditioned these days (yes, during the heat wave, Stanford has had to turn the air conditioning in most places off supposedly due to the power alert), it had sort-of an unkempt feel to it and was no where even nearly as good looking as the other Techie-type buildings like Hewlett, Packard or Gates. However, I did go up to the library, as I said, and borrowed a book called The Elegant Universe (by Brian Greene) which talks about the Superstring Theory and sounds to me like a book I should have read a long time ago.

* Lightly defined term. Actually means "friend of father's" in the context, though it can refer to any sort of "elderly male chap" in common usage.

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Originally written on April 7, 2006 but not published for some reason. Looked decent, so I thought I'd post it. Title altered from original "Yesterday".

Since I had a 4-hour shift at the library yesterday and forgot to take my IHUM (a very hateful post regarding IHUM is due) course reader, I ended up scouring the Internet for nice, long articles for me to gobble up. Slashdot, as many of you know (98.3% of the knowing ones being males) is the perfect place to find such articles, and I found one there. Of course, you'd have to be a real Apple fanatic to read it because it was extremely long and talked about one of Apple's less known and least popular CEOs - Spindler. Now, it's not that Spindler's life history is of any particular interest to me; rather, Apple's is, and that's why this article was so interesting. For those of us who became Apple fans after the "Second Coming of Jobs", we don't know all that much about the 68K to PowerPC transition or the darkest days of Apple back in 1994 and 1995 when they were running in losses and market share was rapidly dropping. And for some really detailed - perhaps too detailed for the faint of heart - descriptions of the general 'state' of Apple during the '85 to '95 period and its relation to the rest of the industry, this article is a must-read.

It also reminded me of just a few years ago when I valiantly tried to pit an iMac (1.0 GHz G4) against an HCL (Pentium 4 2.4 GHz HT) in a Photoshop showdown and was quite disheartened to see how pitifully the iMac lost to its competitor. The fact that I even attempted the comparison is proof that the reality distortion field never really leaves Mac fanatics, even months after a given Macworld Keynote. However, things are different now. Since the new Macs with Intel processors use exactly the same hardware components as their Windows brethren, people will be forced to concentrate on the software instead of whining about the hardware. This is not to say that hardware is not important (the very idea is ludicrous), but rather, once you've standardized the hardware, one can concentrate on the stuff that the user interacts with the most - the operating system and applications.

In addition to all this goodness, since the introduction of Apple's Boot Camp, anyone can now install Windows and Mac OS X on the same machine and compare the two operating systems head-on on the same machine and see which they prefer. If they prefer to stick with Windows after trying out Mac OS X, they can easily erase the Mac partition completely.

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This being a follow up to the previous entry, it is still extremely hot and I am still sweating like a person who's just run a 10 kilometre marathon except without the fitness benefits that the activity entails. Last night I went to bed at 4.17am, got up at 6 because it was unbearable and I had to splash myself with water before going back to bed and then finally got up at 9.43am sweating and feeling extremely angry. I went straight into a cold shower, got out and waited in my towel (as opposed to my 'tower') for Adam to show up online and once he did I begged him to take me to Wal*Mart so that I could buy a freaking fan. Thankfully, he agreed and we left at around half past eleven. We first went to Dairy Queen and I had a Oreo-flavoured Blizzard, which ought to not make sense to most people in India because I had not heard of Oreos until last September and Blizzards until today. Anyway, it was cold and delicious and it took me about 30 minutes to eat it all up. Subsequently, we went to Wal*Mart and I looked all around for signs of cooling equipment, found none and exited. Then we went to Target, looked all around for signs of cooling equipment, found none, and exited. Apparently, thanks to the heat wave, the entire state of California is now completely sold out of fans and air conditioners. Crap!

Thankfully, Adam's car was air conditioned and the trip to and fro the shopping mall was an extremely pleasant affair. Also, second good thing today was that I am one of those few people who have to work on Sundays, but… the good part is that the Libraries (where I inevitably end up working) are air conditioned and for four hours I had a blast (pun attempted). After that, it became evening and the weather outside at least calmed down a bit. I think it dropped to 28ºC (82ºF - funny inversion) which is somewhat pleasant. However, curious about comparing Delhi and S-t-a-n-f-o-r-d weather as I apparently was, I went to AccuWeather.com to check on forecasts. Apparently, the heat wave here is supposed to last till Wednesday. Great! I'll just burn til' then. But also, I checked out the weather for Delhi. And it said that the High for today was going to be 38ºC (100ºF), which seemed decent, but then they also mentioned that the RealFeel™ was going to be 54ºC (130ºF) and I was like "What the heck?!" But when I checked just now for the purposes of taking a screenshot, they had changed it to 50ºC (122ºF) which is still awfully hot, but at least it's not breaking any world records (which my friend Kim tells me is at 134ºF (57ºC)).
Delhi is hot. True. But at least I have an air conditioner in my room. Stanford is hot. Also true. And I have now ordered a fan from walmart.com and, for the first time in my life, paid for expedited shipping. I hope I won't ever have to do that ever again! It cut me like a knife to pay more than $10 for shipping.

Also, in the middle of the heat wave (and mostly because of it), California has declared a Stage 1 Power Emergency, which means that we either cut down on the power consumption a bit or there will be no power to cut down on. Let's hope that doesn't happen any time soon. What will I do with my expensively shipped fan then? Also, apparently there is a rule that one cannot use an air conditioner in these dorms because of the high electricity usage, and so students are protesting that and are going to meet with the person in-charge tomorrow bright and early in order to find some solution. I could probably survive on the second floor (that's first floor for non-Americans) just fine with a fan, but on the third and fourth floors it gets boiling hot and I can appreciate why people are sleeping in the computer cluster tonight because it's air conditioned. I do not envy the people on the fourth floor at all.

Anyway, I need to take another shower.

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I am sitting in my room wearing only a towel and some water hoping that the evaporation of the water will cause some type of cooling effect because nothing else seems to work and it feels like I am back at Delhi and the power is constantly out due to the fact that there is no fan, no air conditioning and no other cooling mechanism to speak of. The fan… now I've been trying to get one for a few days. My roommate said he was going to buy one yesterday but he ended up not going to Wal-Mart and so, when I came back to my room late at night, I found him asleep and myself fanless. And personally, I don't care what the weather widget says but although the high here is just 33ºC compared to Delhi's more fantastic 43º's sometimes (although right now Delhi has comparable temperatures), if you don't have any means of ventilation, it's going to feel like five degrees warming and seriously, it seems that all I do these days is sweat. I took four cold showers yesterday just to keep myself sane.

I personally would have thought that the heat would be much more bearable here seeing as I come from Delhi which is a place that gets remarkably warm every now and then. However, the houses in Delhi, as far as I know, are made to block sunlight as much as possible, or at least, my house seems to do a pretty good job. Here, even though these guys know they have a kick-ass summer, the buildings are still built as if this place was in freaking Alaska. So stupid.

Also, I hate Scrabble now. Any kind.

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This journal recently recorded its 59059^th hit, and the counter looked something special. So I saved it.

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Well, I'm sure you can go and read the considerably comprehensive write-up yourself, but what I am for? Providing my exceedingly subjective analysis, of course, though I am not going to summarize the arguments that the author of the linked article has mentioned because they are interesting and you should go read them yourself.

First of all, I was impressed. Performing an encyclopaedic study of all the six Harry Potter books is an arduous task and one that I am not going to undertake any time soon. However, reading all the books keeping a single character in perspective is an even more gruelling task that I dare not ever undertake. Yet, I am glad that someone else has.

Now, McGonagall is a character that I - and I suspect many others as well - have simply never thought about. I mean, the question, "What about McGonagall then?" never really came up after reading the books. But, as we all know, it is always these people that we choose to suspect the least - in fact going so far as to not even suspect at all to the limit that we can't even imagine a circumstance in which they would be capable of performing a villanous act - are the people who always turn out to be the wrong-doers in books like Agatha Christie and that Dan-Brown-slash-other-action-mystery-detective novel you just finished (well, actually, as far as the Dan Brown novels go, if you've read one, you've read them all - so it's a surprise only in the first one, and not a surprise at all even then if you just read closely enough). So, is it feasible then?

Yes, it is quite feasible and true, McGonagall does have a lot of screen time - enough to justify such a role… perhaps - but then she only has a fraction of the screen time that Snape and Dumbledore enjoy. It is plausible then, but the real question is: Is it really probable?

Quite the question there. For all we know, Parvati Patil could turn out to be allied with Tom and the Riddles, but who the hell gives a tiny rat's backside about her? because Parvati is just not important enough in the story line. But McGonagall, she is on the borderline. And that is what makes this discussion interesting. You see, the more important Rowling thinks McGonagall is in the story line, the greater the chance that she is a Death Eater (the "she" there - I know, I'm sorry about the ambiguous text but I assume everyone here - except you, Googlebot, no offence to you - can read in context). Now, Snape is very important in the story line, and going by that alone, I can see him turning out as the good guy and not the bad guy (though I do have seven magical reasons to support my theory). But, if McGonagall drops below the critical line of importantness (sic), then she won't be a Death Eater. It would not be that the evidence in the aforementioned write-up isn't convincing, it would just be a matter of her not being important enough. And since we don't know where this line of importantness is drawn, the question remains open for the guessing. What's your take?

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I've made some significant changes to The House of Lords because, after all, all that defines that section of this website is the list of the blogs on it, the names of the elements of that list and lastly, the order of that list. I have made amendments to all three today.

You see, previously the names on the list were something I cooked up for that person specifically such as my title of "High Buffon" for Smita's Blog. I thought I'd drop those now … well, Smita has stopped updating her blog and probably won't be reading this anyway. So, anyway, now they're all just first names of the blogs' authors (well, except Rungta, who is just Rungta).

Also, the order in the list was very convoluted and it was my best attempting at putting "similar" blogs together… let's just say that this deriorated over time and ended up in a fiasco because I just started sticking new blogs either at the end of the list or at random spots. Since I'm a big supporter of the whole "order vs. chaos" thing, now the list is arranged in descending order of the date of the last post the author has made, and I hope to update it everyday. Three pointers about this list: If more than one journal/blog/photoblog is updated on the same day, then, they are sorted alphabetically within that constraint. (I'm sorry but I've just spent a little too much time with databases, SQL and the ORDER BY clause.) Secondly, I do not consider the "time" of the posting, only the date. And thirdly, I understand that there is a minor issue with time zones such that even if K updates her blog after J updates his, on this list, J might appear higher up because J is in Shanghai and K is in Stanford.

The list has also been trimmed a bit, but no major changes regarding that aspect. Impulsive Highlighters will always remain the topmost in the list… it's too dear to me.

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How hard could it be to find a book in a library? I mean, once you know which library the book is in (thanks to an online database), where all the books with similar call numbers are stored and also that the book has not been checked out by anyone else, it's almost a guarantee that you'll be able to locate the said book, isn't it? Apparently not, I say, and I roll my eyes at the freaking Stanford University Libraries, who are also my benevolent employers on two counts. I was looking for this book called iCon which tells a tale of Steve Jobs and was apparently so controversial (within Apple, that is - the sane world wouldn't actually give two hoots) that it was forbidden on Apple Computer's premises. I found the call number for it (QA76.2.J63Y677 2005) and went to Jackson Business Library for the first time where said book was apparently kept. I finally found the place where all the books starting with QA were kept. Luckily there was only one shelf because the Business Library is not all that big. On that shelf, I found the place where all the QA76 books were kept. Any sane person would assume that had I simply continued this divide and conquer search for a couple of more minutes, I would have envitably encountered the book. Hélas that that was not my fate. Apparently, once I found the QA76 books, I was at a complete loss to find any of them with QA76.2 in them. In fact, the numbers were all over the place… next to a QA76, there was a QA276 and then some QA78s. It made no sense to me whatsoever. I finally found a bunch of books having something to do with Apple and Macs, such as a couple of guides to the PowerPC architecture (the question as to what these were doing in a business library in the first place is not one I'm going to delve into right now) and also a book called the Cult of Macintosh, which I'd heard of. I searched in vain for ten minutes; I forgot about the blasted call number and simply went through the title of every single book on the shelf… nothing. Finally, I just said "Gah!" and issued the Cult of Macintosh book instead. And while we're on the topic, a few words about this book I issued: the Cult of Macintosh is a ridiculous book and was a complete let down compared to the same author's writings on a column called "Cult of Macintosh" on Wired.com. I don't recommend bothering to read it… talks about all sorts of fetishes and weird stuff like Mac porn (yes, the G4 girl!), how to make a bong out of a Mac Classic and how Macworld Conferences smelt of marijuana while PC World smelt of alcohol and how the Macintosh engineers were all high while they were making the Mac. Anyway, getting back to the topic of library call numbers, I'm sure they make a lot of sense to the librarians (may peace be upon them) and I'm sure that they can dissect every call number and tell me exactly how the letters and numbers translate into the astrological sign under which a particular book was acquired by the library, but, unless I'm taking a librarian along with me whilst I'm looking for books, that's not much help and there just ought to be a more human-friendly system for going through a few million books. I mean, I'm sure a bunch of robots could come in and help out, or something… I mean they always manage to do some pretty cool stuff in Japan, don't they? Well, yes, I know I'm looking over the extremely important point of what such an army of robots could do if some Evil Librarian™ took over them or their main control center was destroyed and they started reshelving books in the wrong places! I gasp at the thought of World Domination by Library Robots™.

Anyway, you get the idea.

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Right now, I am sitting in an almost-empty computer cluster and getting paid for it. My job is to answer technical queries like "Why is the printer not printing?!", "Where's the bathroom?!" and, occasionally, "How do I stop the printer from printing?!" As you can see, they're all highly technical in nature and they all end in interrobangs. Of course, now that it's summer time, there are hardly any people left to ask such taxing questions of me, and the atmosphere is so relaxed that my boss forgot to make the schedule for this week. I noticed this yesterday night, and given my position in hierarchy of know-it-all geeks, I quickly made a schedule and emailed everyone about it. Now, obviously, when I make a schedule, I at least make sure that I myself am given a fair amount of the shifts because they're fun, not too much work and fairly good cash to boot.

This is the problem with a cushy job - people take it for granted and today it wasn't me who did so. Now, if another employee and I want to work the same hours and we're in the same hierarchical position of know-it-all geeks, then it's natural that we split the hours and be happy. Mais non! This fellow has the audacity to email me and tell me that he would "wish to work all seven hours". Trying to keep it light and humourous, I reply back saying that "haha, but then there wouldn't be any hours left for me." To top it off, I also add a smiley face at the end. The next morning (that being today) when this person clearly does not have a scheduled shift, he shows up for work (citing norm). Of course, this norm that he's citing is basically just all of last week, when, primarily because of this dude, I did not get any shifts in the morning. The annoying thing is that this guy is a good friend of this female who also works the morning hours and the dude, being off-duty and all, just stays there. In fact, he goes and gets a bean bag chair, just sits there and reads comics! Guess the library's the new best place to hang out. All in all, it was a mildly frustrating morning because of all this unnecesary hassle, but I didn't worry much about it because there was always something engaging to do on the computer, which included chatting with at least ten people about the blocking of blogspot.com. Anyway, since these two irritating fellows were graduating seniors anyway, मैंने अपनी shifts इन्हें दान देदीं क्योंकि मुझे इनसे और मुंह लगाने की इच्छा तो थी नहीं। My policy on such trivial matters is one of «be iest lîn».

Also, how irritating is it that Firefox doesn't have any kind of decent Devanagri support either on Mac or on Windows?

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Is this outrageous or is this extremely outrageous? Since when did the Department of Communication start giving out directives to block websites? And since when did India start being stupid like the Chinese and Middle-Eastern governments to start controlling what information people have access to? It's ridiculous, and I hope somebody just goes and pours a bucket of ice-cold water on the guy who got this idea. However, as for now, there are at least two solutions known to me: one is pkblogs.com which is a Pakistani website that allows people to access blogspot blogs; the other is a more comprehensive solution called Tor whose basic functionality is being an anonymizer, i.e., you browse the Internet not with your own IP address but as any random IP address and so you're hard to track down. The practical upshot of this is that you can access the Internet through a computer not being restricted by a directive from the f'ing ministry and you can access any website you like.

And I had taken these for granted:

• to freedom of speech and expression;
• to assemble peaceably and without arms;
• to form associations or unions;
• to move freely throughout the territory of India;
• to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India;
• to practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business.

Anyhow, I hope that directive will be revoked or something soon when sense pops back into whosoever's head who passed it in the first place.

Meanwhile, the weekend was dominated mainly by Disney movies such as Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and Mulan. I enjoyed all three movies. Mulan was probably the funniest followed by Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. I thought I had seen Aladdin before but I didn't recognize most of the dialogue, although most of the scenes rang a bell, which implies that I've probably seen it before… a long time ago… and also probably in Hindi. The other two I had not seen before… like most Disney movies. Disney cartoons have this emphasis on songs that I'm not exactly a fan of simply because I'm jaded with musicals in general thanks to an endless stream of Bollywood movies with song sequences every fifteen minutes… and not necessarily good ones at that. However, I did enjoy the music in some of the songs such as the main Beauty and the Beast title (which was nominated for a famous award or something but I don't care).

Eh, why is Govt. of India being stupid?

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Along with two (occasionally three) other people, for the last four hours, I have been listening to book six of the brilliantly written Harry Potter series. Now, don't start judging us… actually, scratch that - judge me all you like. I know a lot of people (most, actually) would think of us as lunatics for sitting and listening to a book, but then they don't know us… or me… well enough and the joy I undertake in absolutely odd stuff like trains and horns (the blowing sort) and Harry Potter. Anyway, we didn't end up doing a close reading/listening of the book because we constantly broke into discussions about other stuff, but I think it was a fun, quiet night nonetheless. I enjoyed it. While listening to the Half-Blood Prince, we also consumed a bag full of two pounds worth of baby carrots (woo hoo! Vit. A!) and a plate of nacho chips prepared by yours truly. On the topic of nachos, I must say that the defintion in India seems to be slightly different from the one here. In India, if you walk into PVR Saket and ask for Nachos, you get Nachos = Tortilla Chips + Salsa. In California (because saying "In America" just sounds stupid somehow), if you do the same - except not PVR Saket - you'll be handed Nachos = Tortilla Chips in Molten Cheese + (Possibly) Jalapeño Peppers. Just a little observation I thought I'd share...

Also, another little biking trip today… 2.5 miles one-way perhaps. Extremely enjoyable because the sun was setting, it was cool and the up-and-downhill-ness was all quite pleasant. Still don't have brakes; but, that might be soon remedied as I might just give my bike over to the good (but expensive) fellows at the Campus Bike Shop tomorrow. Also, might end up going to see the movie called "A Scanner Darkly" tomorrow. Let's hope that's good because the ticket ain't cheap!

A lot of news surfaced about Intel's Core 2 64-bit processors today and the entire tech world, including myself, is extremely excited. Actually, a more honest description about the tech world would be that it's currently in a state of complete reverence towards Intel and I have heard not a single bad word about the Core 2 chips yet. According to the benchmarks at Anandtech, the highest-end Core 2 Extreme processor has, on average, a 20% performance lead over the highest-end AMD FX. That… is a huge difference in my opinion because the FX-62 is screaming fast. Also, these new Core 2 processors generate less heat and consume less power than both the AMD's and the older Intels. Another good thing is that if you bought a computer with a Pentium D or Core Duo in it, the Core 2 Duo is compatible with those sockets and it makes for an easy upgrade. They're also competitively priced and everyone's pointing to an availability by the end of this month. Let's hope AMD makes a good "Return of the Jedi". Anyway, exciting stuff. Let's see what Apple does with these hot cool new chips. This is hoping for an ossum new PowerBook MacBook Pro by September.

And now, at 4.38am, to bed!

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Back at school, I was a decently fast typist and I could beat most people in a showdown of sheer typing speed. At Stanford, I seem to be the slowest typist on campus because whatever typing I know I have taught myself and sans any kind of precedent (i.e., my parents didn't teach me typing, rather they learnt after I did). Sadly, in going from being one of the fastest typists to one of the slowest, the one thing that has not changed is my typing speed.

Apparently the kind of typing I perform is called "two-finger typing" in which only one or two fingers of each hand are participating in the actual act of typing and the rest of them are just sitting around causing typos. Typing with all ten fingers is incredibly fast and I'm currently practising how to do that but it is, I feel, incredibly difficult to change typing styles. However, all this definitely makes me mad. If there's one thing I can be proud of - because there are precious few other things - it's that I know a decent bit about computers. And I've also been proud of my typing abilities. Alas, no more. They suck. Need to relearn. Back in the day, when I had to look at the keyboard constantly in order to type, I set a goal for myself that I shall learn how to type without looking at the keyboard. And that is a goal I accomplished probably sometime in the year 2000. Now, I'm setting a new goal for myself that I shall teach myself how to type using all ten fingers and on my own… just like the good old days.

Leaving the subject of typing, I did try out Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 for Mac today. Same icon and everything. It's even slower on this iBook/933 than Firefox 1.5 and the speed (or lack thereof) was positively unbearable; so I got rid of it. However, the only new feature I noticed without actually hunting for features was that the text areas on web pages will now have built-in spell checking which I'm sure is very novel considering Safari's had it for the past - I don't know - three years? OK, so Firefox 2.0 might not exactly be an exciting release. We'll all download it of course, but it's going to be boring. That's one of my biggest qualms with Open Source Software - beyond a certain point, most of them don't innovate. Open Source is great at copying stuff and this is clear in OpenOffice and even Firefox, because none of their features are truly novel but have just been incoporated from pre-existing masses. This is not necessarily bad, but does make for less exciting product announcements than, say, Mac OS X "Leopard" for which I'm anxiously waiting. Oh, and if you've been waiting to try out some sort of Linux on your computer, I recommend SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (or SLED 10) - it is beautiful, elegant and really a job well done - the only Linux I can ever imagine actually putting to some use. Right now, in its pre-release form, it's free, but for all their user interface R&D work, Novell will be charging $50 for SLED 10. Yes, SUSE is owned by Novell now. The merits and demerits of Open Source Software requires its own entry some time in the distant future and I shall go no further.

I have made many changes to this website over the course of the past month or so. The Shoutbox disappeared and so did The House of the Commons. The House of Lords is what remains as far as linkage is concerned. As far as additions are concerned, you will notice a jazzy new search bar (thanks to Varenya's encouraging comment) above the White Bird (if you think it's a slightly blue-tinted bird, that's an optical illusion - an entry on that sometime in the near future perhaps). And also, if you have keen eyes, you might notice that I have gotten rid of the old commenting system and am now using Blogger comments. Some ancient readers of this website will notice that I have indeed gone back to Blogger comments. In fact, this is the fourth time I have changed the commenting system and it's not exactly a treat everytime I do it. But, without change, there is stagnation and we don't want that now, do we? No… not at all. Also, the title image was changed. And, lest I forget to mention, if you view the source for any page on this website, you will notice that it is all perfectly indented and human-readable now (took me a while to do it too). I have even added some compelling comments. Of course, that is something that the average visitor might not take notice of but I express my confidence in the more HTML/JS/CSS-savvy readers that they will appreciate the change. There will be more changes, as deemed necessary, as time goes on.

Meanwhile, somebody ought to go and poke the folks at lnexun.com because they haven't added a single sign of acitivity to their website for over two weeks. And it's not like nothing's been happening. Also, Manav (of Kapur fame) has promised an entry within a week. I shall be glad because most of what he writes is an absolute delight to read.

Oh well.

Labels: English

In other news, I fell off my bike again whilst trying to do a very foolish maneuver, that, in retrospect, was incredibly stupid of me even to attempt, considering the fact that my bike is still sans any kind of braking mechanism. The irony with my bike "accidents" is that there have been two of them and no other person been involved in either. It would seem that I have voluntarily thrust myself twice from the seat of my bike on to the ground for some sort of masochistic pleasure. Not so. However, this time the entire process caused me much less physical hurt and injury. In fact, the most major wound inflicted upon me was on my hand and it refused to cause me any pain until I washed it in warm water whence it finally succumbed to instinct and caused me a decent amount of discomfort. Then I applied a Band-Aid on to said wound and remembered how one of my friends had once described my Band-Aids (since they're the Made-in-India sort) as "ghetto" compared to the kind sold in the United States. Hopscotch, I said! All in all, a lot better than the last time when I scraped my knee on the road and it was all bloody and most painful. It also took a whole three weeks to heal, not to mention the fact that it completely disabled me from the act of kneeling which I found was quite inconvenient.

However, my trials with biking were not intended to be the main emphasis of this particular piece. What I meant to convey was that I sold my iMac successfully yesterday to some lucky guy who's going to be hard pressed to have as much or more fun with it than I did because I did have a lot of fun with that computer and it was very dear to me. The good part of the deal is that I recovered a fair amount of money from the deal and that I will have enough cash to get myself a new notebook in September. Here's hoping Apple does something with that "Merom" chip by Intel. I do want to buy a computer that's a laptop and also kicks rears at the same time.

Now, I am left with a 1GB RAM chip to sell. I guess I'll put that up on craigslist as well. Also, an Apple Wireless Keyboard.

Anyway, I have some mildly good news for readers running older Apple notebooks, such as G4s. In the 10.4.7 update, Apple has added a feature which allows all older iBooks and PowerBooks to do two-finger scrolling - even this 2003 iBook which the Libraries have gratiously lent me. Two-finger scrolling, as we all know, is cool and useful. However, in addition to two-finger scrolling paradise, you are also permitted to put-two-fingers-on-the-trackpad -and-click which achieves the same result as clicking Mouse Button 2, otherwise known as the elusive right-click. Brilliant. Now I no longer need to use a hack such as iScroll2.

UPDATE: I was quite wrong in writing the above paragraph. It appears that I mistakenly thought Apple had added the feature because the option to enable two-finger scrolling appeared in the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane. However, when I uninstalled iScroll2 and restarted the computer, I noticed that both the option from the preference pane as well as the two-finger functionality was missing. Sorely disappointed, I reinstalled iScroll2 and am now back to two-finger scrolling glory. Also, I regret calling iScroll2 a 'hack'. The term seems somewhat derogatory…

Meanwhile, I cannot seem to figure out whether it's appropriate to keep a bunch of bananas in the refrigerator or not, considering that the average temperature in this place is currently 25ºC. The mind boggles.

Labels: English

OK, this is absolutely AMAZING! I was thinking of maybe posting a more comprehensive entry tomorrow but I just found this amazing website called "The Song Tapper" and I can't wait for other people to try it out.

First, description: you tap a song to this website using your space bar and it searches a database for your song. You know what's so absolutely unbelievable about all this? It actually finds the song. I really could not believe what I saw. I mean, I'm sure there's some extremely scientific process behind all this and if the guy who got the idea explained it to me, I would be like, "yeah that sounds doable" but as a user of this service, it's absolutely, positively… j-just go check it out yourself first and then come back here: The Song Tapper.

Now that you're back (I hope you are, because I really think you should try this thing out first!), let me tell you a bit more about my incredible experience with this website. First of all, how did I come to find it? An incredible tool called StumbleUpon which is a Firefox extension and can do amazing things when you're bored (though most of the time, it just gives you random interesting sites to browse). I saw their (The Song Tapper's) stupid sample video which is really demented and almost turned me off from trying out their service because there was this obnoxious guy tapping Jingle Bells into the thing, though I confess it does convey the basic usage guidelines. Still, I was in a complete state of disillusionment when this site claimed to find your song by tapping. So, I thought I'd tap a random song and see what happened. I asked iTunes to give me one. It gave me "Wonderwall" by Oasis. I tapped it as best as I could and to my utter, jaw-dropping (this might be the first time (or one of the extremely few times) in my life that my jaw has actually, physically dropped) disbelief, the song was right there on their list, second from the top. I counted it as a fluke and tried "Yesterday" by the Beatles as well as "White Flag" by Dido. Again, right there in front of my eyes. Not a fluke. By then, I was just so excited that I just had to come here and spread the word.

Personally, as of now, I don't care how this service works. Tomorrow perhaps, I'll start caring but for now… it's so good!

Note Added: Just a few days ago, when I went to see the Superman Returns, I was talking to my friends on the way about how there's this program to which you can playback a song from the radio or something and it'll search some database for its name. And I jokingly said, "No, you can't hum to it!" and we all had a laugh. And now this piece of genius comes along… what can I say? (in French)

PS: I would like it if you could post a comment as to how your experience with The Song Tapper went.

Labels: English

But first, a couple of unrelated facts:

1. My brother has got his first degree from the esteemed Columbia University in the City of New York. Bachelor of Science Magna Cum Laude… I am proud. He completed this degree in a mere three years, so he's got one more year to pursue his more liberal academic interests. Yeah, he's a hard working guy… always makes me nervous.
   
   
2. My bike still doesn't have brakes… I don't know when I'm going to get that fixed. I've been going without any kind of braking mechanism except for my sneakers for like three or four months now. Repair would probably cost a lot of money. Besides, I don't know when I can leave my bike with the repair shop for a few days because this is one device that I need constantly. Walking… is not for me.

Now, to the main topic of discussion… I don't think I made the best choice when I bought a desktop computer instead of a notebook. Although I have had extreme amounts of fun using this Core Duo iMac - it's extremely fast, runs games very well, etc. - the one big problem with it is that I cannot take it to class with me or back home for the summer unless I want to be positively mad and lug this thing 7000 miles. I'm thinking of selling it… the very thought makes me sad because I'm rather attached to it now and if it goes away, I shall definitely miss the massiveness of its 20" widescreen display and the fastness of its Core Duo.

The second thing that disheartens me is the fact that there is presently no Apple notebook computer that I wish to purchase. Honestly, I think it was rather uncreative of Apple to introduce a product line with an entirely different name and totally different insides while not changing the exterior design one bit - I'm talking about the MacBook Pro, which is, in any case, too large for me and far too expensive. The MacBook - I love its form factor but I just cannot plunk down something around the vicinity of a $1100-$1500 for something that has Intel Integrated Graphics. Granted all I play is mostly strategy and adventure games. However, unless I stick to StarCraft and Age of Empires II, even the strategy games these days are demanding on graphics.

This is also the major problem a lot of hardcore Windows people have with Macs - they are ultimately confined to what Apple wishes. Mac people will tell you to go buy a MacBook Pro if you tell them you want to do some serious gaming. You say you want the MacBook form factor and they'll tell you that you have to make a compromise and see what's more important to you. I am the f'ing buyer here! Me! In 2006, with computers & tech being all the rage, I should have all the options I want with regard to computers. And… as long as that's not a Mac, I do. But what if I do want a Mac? High-end gaming laptop? Nope, Apple's got nothing that's a notebook and has a high-end graphics chip, let alone the form factor. The complete range of iMacs and MacBook Pros uses the ATI Radeon X1600 which is a midrange graphics card. Shouldn't the 17" MacBook Pro at least come with an X1800 or something? Apple, like Denethor, thinks not.



What about a powerful small laptop? Again, no go. Apple eliminated the 12" PowerBook form factor entirely. The MacBook which replaces it actually scores lower framerates in Unreal Tournament 2004! Also, it's probably worth mentioning here that after the 12" iBook, the 12" PowerBook is the most popular Mac with college students here. It makes sense. It's small - thus portable and good for taking to class. It's powerful - thus good for some decent gaming. And it's sleek. And thanks to all this, it no longer exists. Bravo, Apple, for eliminating your best selling PowerBook model!

And what does Apple say it gained out of all this? A simplified product line that doesn't confuse customers. I feel like shooting someone at the thought of this. I'm quite sure that most people (including Mac users) would rather have more variety in choosing Macs than a "simplified product line". I think that it's better to have something for everyone than two things for almost everyone. The end result of all this is that, even if I do manage to sell off this excellent iMac I'm using right now, I still won't be buying any kind of Apple notebook at least until at the very end, in September, I eventually have to.

Also, a slight note on Apple's hypocrisy regarding Integrated Graphics. Back when Apple was using G4s and G5s, it used to claim with pride that none of the Apple computers used Integrated Graphics and how good that was compared to comparable Intel machines with their sucky Intel GMA chips. Now, with the release of two entire product lines based on those very chipsets (MacBook and Mac mini), it's clear that Apple was just trying to make the best of the situation because it simply didn't have the choice of using Integrated Graphics. As a user, I applauded Apple's usage of dedicated graphics because IGs suck. What makes me mad is that publications like Macworld act like monkeys on Apple's back and they seem to have readily adopted the IGs, which they, just months earlier, wholly despised. Just sick.

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Today, some of my friends and I went to see the fabled Superman Returns. Superman is part of American culture and whether you are a fan or not, it's like Spiderman and Harry Potter - you simply have to go see it! Now, everyone who'd seen the movie before told me that it was somewhere between bad and decent. I heard the same thing about Da Vinci Code. Maybe all the new movie goers are becoming like Kluge (German guy who thought films should break stereotypes and be enlightening) and expect something out of the ordinary from today's films. Me? I don't. I should perhaps clarify and mention that I do hate those films and TV shows in which the predictability factor is so high that it wants to make me cut myself because I can predict every line of dialogue and action, but films like Superman offer a limited amount of certainty - that the good guys will win and the bad guys will lose - without making it boring to watch.

Anyway, first of all… Genre: Action Comedy. Films like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Superman Returns define this exciting new Action Comedy realm which has some cool stunts but is also hilarious the first time you watch au cinéma. I don't think I ever stopped grinning or laughing throughout the movie and perhaps the only slightly disturbing part was when Superman gets fatally stabbed in the back with a sharp shard of Kryptonite. Lex Luther was amazingly played from the beginning to the end - the villain with a sense of humour. I also don't think listening to nay-sayers is a good idea on this one. Even if it did have some shortcomings with respect to the script (I'm not saying this; some of my friends) and even though it might not be something I'll end up watching multiple times like the Lord of the Rings series, it is certainly something you want to watch at least once and something that you should watch at the theatres and not as a screen rip off BitTorrent.

I just got the soundtrack for Superman Returns off the iTunes Music Store, which, by the way, is awesome. There's just nothing better than the instant gratification that you get with iTunes Music Store instead of having to wait an eternity for, like LimeWire or BitTorrent or something, not to mention living in the fear of being caught by the RIAA or MPAA and that P2P connections are usually throttled in any sensible place anyway. Also, if you're smart and know the right people (okay, so not politicians or anything, but just people in touch with Apple), you can get free iTunes Music Store gift cards all the time. I've downloaded tens of songs off iTunes Music Store but have paid for only, like three.

In finale, Superman is a well-made film which entertains and has an excellent soundtrack based upon the original Superman soundtrack. I highly recommend watching it (in cinema).

Labels: English

So good…

This is probably my high for the day - discovering two Universal Binary Mac software called GrimX and ScummVM. GrimX allows you to take your Windows disks of the most wonderful PC games known as "Grim Fandango" and run it on your PowerPC- or Intel-based Mac natively! Basically, it's an OpenSource version of LucasArts' LUA engine. Isn't that just amazing? The second one, ScummVM, which I discovered shortly after finding GrimX does this for like a ton of other most brilliantly contrived games such as Curse of Monkey Island and Full Throttle! It's basically an OpenSource version of the SCUMM engine. Isn't that even more awesomely amazing?! Now, I understand that my extreme excitement here is probably just falling on 99% deaf ears but this just gives me the inner geeky joy that can only be topped by, perhaps, something that'll let me play Age of Empires II natively on Mac OS X at full resolution. OpenSource is beautiful… sigh.

Unfortunately, having not known about these two pieces of software last month, I actually played Grim Fandango and Curse of Monkey Island (those two very games!) last month after a long, long time by rebooting into Windows using Boot Camp and experiencing tons of crashes because these games were designed to run on Windows 95. It makes me so damn angry because I could have avoided all that pain if I had simply known about the existence of ScummVM and GrimX! Maybe I'll play them again sometime… who knows.

On a second, less geeky note, I found out today about FON and ordered a $5 Wireless Router for myself. Now, I don't want to be one of those irritating people who give you a link and expect you to follow it to find out what all the hullabaloo is about. So, let me tell you what I know about FON. FON's motto is "WiFi everywhere". They have financial backing from major corps. like Google and Skype and what they've basically done is subsidized routers to $5 a pop and they sell these on fon.com (+$8 shipping which makes it $13). They sell them to you for $5 instead of $50 because the deal is that you're supposed to hook these up to your internet connection and share it over Wireless for free. In doing so, you get a dirt-cheap router which you can obviously also use for your personal stuff. I ordered mine today… I think it's a brilliant deal. Only catch is that they're presently selling these only in US and Europe.

On a third, even less geeky note, I ordered a brand new set of speakers for my computer. I knew I would eventually get tired of the not-so-loudness of the iMac. These are the Logitech Z-2300 speakers and they damn well be good because I paid a hefty sum for them and CNet gave them a rare 9.0 rating.

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I don't know how else to describe today. First of all, the part of my brain that likes to sleep a lot didn't complain when I woke up at 7am and readily agreed to take a shower and go to work. I felt like I did something mildly productive at work, which is to locate some Dell part numbers by chatting with a friendly Dell dude over the Internet through dell.com/goldchat. I also found out that Roxio Toast Titanium 7.1 for Intel Macs (I have one of these) was released today and to my complete astonishment, and extreme delight, it was already out on the usual torrent circles by 8 o' clock in the morning!

When I resumed work in the afternoon, it was all extremely pleasant. In the afternoons, I work at one of our libraries as a software developer and I'm supposed to be working on PHP. However, my bosses (I have three, all from different departments) thought they might use my talents for one of my specialty areas - Macintosh. So, I've been designing this AppleScript and Automator based Automated Podcasting Tool since Wednesday. What I excessively love about this place is simply the amount of money and resources they have. I said I needed a Mac. The next day they told me I could pick up a shiny new 20" iMac from their computing office. In fact, if they hadn't been busy with some conferences that day, I could have had it the same day! Today, I finished most of the work on the Podcasting Tool and my bosses came around to check it out. I pitched them the idea of a two-computer system working in tandem, and they were like "Cool, this'll be great for a demo. How about we get you a G4 server and a PowerBook?" So cool! I mean, I know it's not the latest technology. That's because so much "stuff" is just lying around in this place. Random iMac G5s, G4 towers and carts full of iBooks. Also, today I heard from the ordering lady that she just placed an order for a hundred of those new iMac Core Duos. Awesome!

Dinner was really awesome today. Something South Indian - साम्भर चावल with वड़ा. Also, a bunch of us spent the rest of the night watching episodes of Family Guy and The Simpsons in the living room. I was amazed by how easy it was to get people together to watch cartoons tonight! Everyone I called was ready and willing to come, sit around and watch TV. Speaking of TVs, we had originally intended to use the TV in Kim's apartment, but when I went down there I found that my computer's screen was actually significantly larger. So, I just moved the iMac into the living room and we watched the fun stuff in my apartment. Converting the computer into a TV was so painless and easy that I just don't have words for it. Apple hardware is just so… elegant. They have me in their nets. I am sold.

On top of all this, after forgetting dear Maanick's birthday for the last four years in a row (and this considering he's one of my best friends!), this year I finally remembered in the nick of time and sent him an iCard! That just gave me a brilliant sense of accomplishment. Gooood day.

The only bad part about the day was probably the lunch which was some horrible slightly-sweet (गुजराती!) दाल चावल and I absolutely hated gobbling it down. Made me want to puke. If there's one thing I absolutely cannot stand in the main course portion of my meal, it's any kind of sweetening substance in it – it makes me sick.

Enough of talk, it is mildly late and I have to be at work at an astonishingly early 1pm!

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