孔子曰 "You think you're on a truly sucky computer until you sell that too and then you're on an even suckier one."

All right, so that wasn't really Confucius… it was me. And also, I'm pretty sure it doesn't apply to most people's lives. Still, the truth is that I got a good offer for my somewhat pepped up Mac mini and I sold it today. Craigslist is fast! The entire procedure, from uploading the description on to Craigslist, to accepting the cash and sending off the merchandise accounted for just under 16 hours. Quite impressive. So now, I'm back on the loaner 933MHz G4 which was considered high-end back in the… 80's?

I went to my first Algorithms lecture and wow, it was so damn boring. I almost fell asleep many times during the 75-minute lecture. I think this might turn out to be the worst CS class I've taken. Still, it's a requirement and needs to be completed eventually, so it might as well be now. It's unlikely that the professor's going to snuff it or go away to another university within the next two years.

Intel has announced four-core processors but I don't know what to do with those. If you put those in today's laptops, battery life will basically come down to 5 minutes. So, I'm just going to be happy with dual-core for now. When is Apple coming out with the Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros? Damn them, I need a new computer right about now.

I also need to sleep.

PS: I am aware that Intel has announced 4-core only for desktops right now.

Labels: English

We had our first day of classes today and I was up at 8am… well, actually 8.21am after politely telling my dream to conclude in an orderly manner. My first class was Physics at 9am and it took place in the Hewlett building which has these enormous stadium-like classrooms. Sadly though the professor is really quite not-so-interesting and I felt a bit drowsy. He kind-of rambles more than he talks. Eh, but it's a requirement class and I've got to take it. I felt sorry for the freshmen who were attending it though because there was a million to one chance that that was their first lecture at Stanford and it sucked - about ten minutes into the lecture he realized he should ask if there were any freshmen in the audience and then he gave them a boring "Welcome".

Chinese was in this room that honestly smelled like Chinese food. Our teacher was very enthusiastic and she said she'd be using only Chinese from tomorrow onwards which makes me feel that a lot of hand gestures are going to be in use. She's also horrible at drawing but in a funny way. We did learn the four tones in Mandarin though and how to write in Pinyin (which is the romanized way of writing Chinese), so that's a start. She also told us to practice the four tones while we were in the shower. Anyway, Chinese is going to be everyday at 10am and there's a quiz on Thursday! Yeesh. It's going to be interesting.

At 11am we had our first CS lecture which has really got me excited for "Programming Paradigms". I hope it isn't a let down; the guy seems interesting. Let's see.

Also, wouldn't it be cool if Google told you when you typed in a search query that no one had ever typed before? Just… you know… saying.

Labels: English

…I'm really not enjoying it any more. I'm mostly fed up of it on Day Four now. I basically cannot stand the main course stuff they have, so it looks like I'm going to be living on pizza (when it's there), salad and fruit. Healthy? Maybe. Deeply satisfying? Not by a long shot. Also, I don't get what our dining hall's problem with orange juice is! They only serve it for breakfast on weekdays and brunch on weekends. For a person who primarily survives on the stuff, this is kind-of unacceptable. So, if you see a guy creeping into the Lag dining hall with an empty jug at breakfast time and heading towards the juice stall, come and say hi.

Sigh… everyone's split up into different dorms now and our dorm is far from most of them. But, still, I for one, am making (and hope to continue) some effort to go visit old friends as often as I can because it's fun to chat and also to not not keep in touch which is surprisingly easy to do. Also, it's fun to visit some of the other dorms. Toyon Hall is pretty awesome. It has incredibly high ceilings and it's really got very good lighting. The corridors and rooms are really, really bright. We also visited Cedro (my old all-frosh dorm) today and marveled at the mural we'd painted at the end of the last school year. Two of the squares are still incomplete but I think that adds to the charm somewhat; "…and this is the mural from 05-06 that was never completed…" (dramatic voice).

Freshmen really do get a lot of special treatment here; I know that now because I'm no longer one. There're only two kinds of people for the university: freshmen and !freshmen (also known as "upperclassmen" of which I am one now). Unlike India where freshmen are greeted with ragging (I hate ragging so much!), here there's a warm welcome at every step for freshman, and it's probably going to be my most memorable year. It was a lot of fun! Sigh…

Anyway, I'm stuck with a Mac mini right now. It's a good computer but I've always been an extremely power-hungry computer user and after a while even my old 2GHz Core Duo iMac had started feeling slow… so it's no surprise that I'm now desperately waiting for Apple to release some really awesome Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros that I can salivate over and then purchase to replace this ageing mini. Tomorrow's a good day. How about it Apple? Also, I managed to sell my speakers for $90 today - the Logitech Z-2300. They were used for only a month and so I thought this was a fair price. Why'd I sell 'em? Well, they were perfect except for (a) the subwoofer was way too big, (b) the entire system weighed 40 pounds (which meant that it was its own entire box when I needed to store it over the summer) and (c) I could never use the 400W of power in a dorm environment. So, an old 2.1 Altec Lansing that my brother'd got for me a couple of years ago was a better option. It sounds good and it's loud enough.

Also, I'm taking Chinese this quarter along with Physics and three Computer Science classes. It's going to be bad - 19 units; 18 if I drop that CS lab I'm taking. Classes start tomorrow at 9am and so I should get some sleep.

Labels: English

Long flights coupled with the fact that they had these really rigorous checks for whether you were carrying any liquids or gels with you made some things slightly irritating. And that's how I've had to buy new shaving foam because they confiscated my old one, that too at IGIA. At Hong Kong, they didn't just X-ray luggage but in fact went through each and every piece of baggage manually, which did slow down boarding procedures quite a bit. However, I do enjoy Cathay Pacific Airlines. A large part of that is because the stopover is Hong Kong International Airport (or HKIA), which is a beautiful place to spend some stopover hours at and has a few kiosks where you can browse the Internet (though admittedly on G3 iMacs from the 1990's running Mac OS 9). Another reason why I prefer Cathay Pacific over China Airlines is because Cathay actually feels like a proper "International" carrier. It's not like China was lacking in the facilities department… it's just that they didn't care about certain somewhat important things like talking to their passengers in a polite manner or making discernable announcements. That irritated me. In my opinion, if you're an international airline, you sort-of have to make proper announcements in, let's see: English (because it's so awesome), the language spoken at the destination city, the language spoken at the city of departure, and the language of the airline's native country. In most cases, these overlap and there should thus be announcements in two or three languages. Also, you've got to make sure that the person making the announcement speaks the language fluently and can say stuff that others can understand. This is something that Cathay gets but China doesn't.

Anyway… I'm kind-of insanely happy to be back here… it feels like Hogwarts (though, again admittedly, that's just an assumption). Memories of last year are fond and I somewhat miss being a freshman. Now that I know how quickly each year passes by, I don't get any comfort out of the fact that I have "three whole years" left. Sigh… well that's just how much I love this place and the people here. In other news, I'm mostly all set up here (which means that I have (a) my comforter and (b) my computer) and since I didn't have a monitor to go with my Mac mini and didn't want to buy one, my boss lent me one. Isn't that awesome? Also, I'm clearly feeling the need for more USB ports on Mac minis. The new ones have one more but seriously, Mac minis need to have like ten USB ports to be even mildly serviceable in this age when practically everything connects using USB. And don't tell me to use a USB hub because, unless I get a powered one, I can't connect a ton of devices using hubs and my external hard drive doesn't work well whe connected using a hub.

Anyway, I'm sleepy, there's more unpacking to be done tomorrow and I need to go shopping for books.

Labels: English

OK, so this Saturday didn't turn out to be as fun as I wanted it to be. I sit at the end of a day that began at 12.15pm with me being awoken because someone had come over and they wanted to meet me. Gah! This was a close friend of ours, so I didn't really mind because he makes himself at home… but my parents have loads of these really irritating acquaintances who just show up! Seriously, and they're not even like casual friends but people you see perhaps twice a year at most and they require the full Guest Treatment. Add to that the fact that they arrive at meal times (oh, how convenient) and you get to invite them to lunch or dinner. Lovely. Thankfully, no such formalities were due in this case because we had planned out our day in advance and we didn't have to cancel our plans due to an unexpected visitor.

We left for Not Just Paranthas (well, they actually spell it Parathas but I think this spelling is better) a decent 20 minutes behind (a spacious) schedule. However, once we're out and about, I'm informed by mother dearest that she doesn't really know the way to GK II, hasn't heard of an M-Block market in GK II anyway and so she'll just go to GK I M-Block market and that I was probably mistaken. Of course, I'm blamed for all the confusion (apparently, I'm supposed to have checked the map and printed directions or something). When we reached GK I (note how GK I is not equivalent to GK II - that's the key to this story), I pointed out the fact that it was not GK II and hence there was no Not Just Paranthas there. My point was quickly turned into realization by the clever process of asking random shopkeepers and bystanders.

At this point, another interesting thing occurred. We had pulled a window down to ask for directions and when we tried to push it back up, it just wouldn't budge. The rotating wheel had become free of its axle. Awesome. Mother dearest was worried that the car would get too warm as the AC would be ineffective against an open window. She didn't realize, until I pointed it out to her, that the more pressing issue was the fact that any potential car thief could now simply open up the car and drive it away once we parked it. She remarked at her own lack of thought and we drove on to GK II. Didn't reach there immediately because we somehow managed to take a wrong turn. We did end up at a car repair shop though and we tried to get the window fixed. After an hour of frustration (the "machine" under the window was apparently in need of replacement), in addition to the fact that I hadn't eaten a thing since yesterday and that our lunch-and-film plan was critically time-sensitive, the idiot trying to fix the window couldn't do zilch and eventually, a jugaad (temporary workaround) was instantiated with the window eventually being propped up using three metal wires and the tiniest branch snapped off a tree. It was quite amusing and my sister and I both said the word "photo" at exactly the same moment.

We were finally off to GK II M-Block market (whose existence my mother finally agreed to) and parked the ageing automobile. Not Just Paranthas is a good place with an immense selection of, well, paranthas to choose from. We ordered four of them in total: the classic Aloo Pyaaz, the Choor Choor Mix, the Besan Missi Mix and the Palak Tamatar. Perhaps it was just me, but the paranthas were just "good" and certainly didn't live up to my memory of "excellent" from the last time I came here. Also, we ordered Paneer Khurchan but it just never arrived! I mean, I asked the guy two times and he said "it was coming"; finally, I cancelled the order because I wanted to start eating my food and definitely couldn't wait for the dish to make its way from Old Delhi or wherever else they make it because they sure as hell weren't making it in their kitchens. Rs. 380-something for three people was, I think, a decent price. Overall, I'd tilt towards recommending the restaurant especially if you're looking for some place that's affordable but is also "different". This restaurant is Purani Dilli-themed and there's a message that says "Using spoons to eat is not permitted. Please use your hands." (of course, the message is in Hindi but I'm translating for the better of… people). To be fair, it would be an exercise in foolishness to try to eat a parantha with a spoon (or any kind of cutlery) anyway.

After lunch at NJP, we went to Gurgaon, where we saw Pyaar Ke Side Effects at the PVR Sahara Mall. We reached there precisely at 4.45pm and the movie was supposed to start at 4.50pm. I wasn't worrying about it because I'd gotten used to theatres elsewhere and had forgotten that the films actually started on time here. We missed an unimportant first five minutes or something… I didn't get the feel that I'd missed anything at all to be honest. It's a funny film with some really good jokes. For a "film with songs" (calling Hindi movies "musicals" just sounds ridiculous), it wrapped up in an admirably short 2 hours and 20 minutes… though I swear it felt like longer, possibly because they were stretching the story a bit too much. In certain love stories like this one, there's always this point of a "happy reunion" and everyone knows it's coming, and since we were all waiting for it to come, my guess is that this was the major factor in making the movie feel longer than it was. It's basically a pass time movie. Not something you'd see over and over again. I enjoyed the style of the movie and, for a light comedy, I'd give it four stars out of five. That's very watchable. But if I judge it against films that I've seen since the beginning of time, I'd have to give it an unworthy two or two-and-a-half. It's not going to win the National Awards any time soon. At the same time, if you're a regular movie-goer (unlike me), you'll want to see this. It's entertainment.

The traffic on the way back home was bad. Driving at night or even just sitting in the car when it's being driven at night is not enjoyable, leastways not in Delhi. I had a headache by the end of the whole day's affair and only now is it slightly ebbing away.

Labels: English

…in Wolken verschwunden?

Well, that's German… from St. Matthew's Passion (which, incidentally, I adore). So, I woke up day before yesterday at something dreadfully early like five wanting a drink of water, and when I was going back to sleep, I heard thunder - lots of it. Thunder has completely astereotypical connotations here in Delhi (at least for me) - instead of fear, it incites excitement and joy. I was like "It's going to rain! Brilliant." and I went back to sleep with the melodious sound of lightning and the sweet pattering of rainfall. Most amazing. And then it happened again the next day. Wow, rain is so good… Right now, Delhi is back to the normal "hot at night, hot during the day" weather. Sunny skies predicted for the rest of… well, a large part of this year and most of the next too.

Oh, and I went to the post office today. I had to send a little package out and I didn't care how it traveled as long as it reached and they were like "Speed Post?". Speed Post usually makes me think of big sums of money and so I said I didn't need it and then they told me that Registered Post was actually going to cost more than Speed Post because the mail is weighed at 25g intervals in Registered Post whilst it's weighed at 100g intervals in Speed Post (remember that!). So, I ended up paying a mere Rs. 68 ($1.48) for a 380g package all the way to Hyderabad and it's going there by air AND is expected to reach tomorrow. That is just cool.

OK, and one thing I found out today? So, as you might not have guessed, my gymming adventures have not yet ceased, and today I thought I'd weigh myself before and after on this lovely digital scale they have with accuracy up to the second digit after the decimal. After doing whatever one does at the gym, I came out to find myself about 500g lighter and I was totally amazed. I had no idea there was such a direct correlation! Of course, since there was more than 500g of eating to be done during the day, actual weight loss is not that quick. However, it was still amazing to me that the effects were this instantaneous. Something must be fishy.

Anyway, I'm going to Not Just Paranthas (yeah, like that's good for weight loss) tomorrow followed by Pyaar Ke Side Effects at, of all places, PVR Gurgaon! Just couldn't get tickets at PVR Saket. I tried to book the tickets three times and their online reservation coughed up errors and, each time I tried, our potential seats had been bumped up one row nearer to the screen, which basically demonstrated the alarming rate at which the seats for this movie (which just opened today) were filling up. I checked twenty minutes later (I was beckoned for lunch in the middle of this) and it was House Full. Well, there was actually one seat in a little corner somewhere left, but yeah…

All this made me discover PVR's revamped reservation system though, in which they let you see the map of the entire theatre and pick exactly which seats you want. I think it's pretty neat. The Premier seats get filled up really quickly because they're Rs. 175 (at S'ket) as compared to Rs. 160 for Normal seats and so not much more expensive.


Also, I'm going to be in Himachal Pradesh for one entire day (Sunday).

Labels: English

Just a few days ago, the HP DeskJet 940c that had been chugging away happily for almost five years started bleeding. The 940c had never been too happy with any kind of photo paper; it just wouldn't acknowledge the fact that paper was in the tray and when I force fed it some a few days ago, the paper got jammed. When I lifted the printer out to extract the stuck paper, I noticed that something black was leaking out on to my pajamas. The entire thing was spurting out something that could either be Orc blood or black printer ink - I'm inclined to think it was the latter. Basically, in my opinion, enough was enough, the printer was five years old and, even though it still printed adequately (even with the leaking), I could afford to get a new one.

So it had to be Nehru Place. It's the place in Delhi if you want to hunt for the best prices in computer stuff. It's also a most disgusting place - physically, that is - and especially so because it's a computer shopping area and computer shops are usually expected to be pristinely neat, clean and shiny. Nehru Place shops (and the area itself) are basically the antithesis of an Apple Store. They're not beautiful, they're not elegant, and they're not necessarily over-the-top expensive. However, you will find some amount of cowdung there, some evidence of the fact that visitors enjoy eating paan and also hawkers who're shouting "Software leylo, Games leylo, CD leylo" as if they were selling fruits. Nehru Place is basically the Sarojini Nagar for computer stuff. There're even these people with little carts on which they line up ink cartridges in a disturbingly similar to the way in which chaatwalas line up potatoes and lemons on theirs.

Anyway, choosing a printer isn't easy. For one thing, all these printer companies don't sell very many models in India. HP is disappointing, so is Epson. So you can't do much review research online before going to Nehru Place as the Indian models are different from the ones sold in America. So, Sir Altitude and I went all over the place asking for printer models, then their prices. Then we would go to the stationers and find out the details about their ink cartridges. When buying a printer, it's extremely important to take the capacity, type and price of the ink cartridges. The DeskJet 690c I had from 1997 to 2001 had 40ml ink cartridges; the DeskJet 940c which started bleeding recently had 25ml ink cartridges and the equivalent printer today comes with 5ml ink cartridges. Printer companies have discovered that the real business is in the printing supplies and not the printers themselves and so they've been making the cartridges smaller and smaller in capacity while keeping the prices high. 5ml cartridges, by the way? Most ridiculous things I've seen. Sure, the printer's only Rs. 2000-3000 but you'll be changing a Rs. 400 cartridge twice a month. So, after much research, we finally found our perfect match - the HP Business Inkjet 1000 which cost me a cool Rs. 5000. However, it's got a couple of big advantages. First, it comes with individual ink cartridges for each colour - Black, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow (your standard CMYK printer). Second, although it ships with a 28ml black cartridge and 14ml colour cartridges (28ml/14ml), it also accepts the 69ml/28ml variety which is what I intend to use with the printer eventually.

Ah… there's nothing better than a well-researched purchase. Another five years hopefully.

Labels: English

Let's go to the Taj Mahal first and then I'll rant about the dump that is Agra.

















So, it's Rs. 20 (about 50¢) to get in to see the Taj Mahal for Indian nationals and $5 for foreign nationals. Cameras are the only electronic items allowed inside the premises. Camcorders are not allowed as such and you have to pay them some horrific amount of money to take one with you, and even then, only upto a point.

So, this is the first time I've been to see the Taj Mahal. The rest of my family's been at least once and a lot of Indians usually ask "When did you last visit?" instead of "Have you seen it?". However, being India's most popular monument, I've seen pictures of the Taj so many times that nothing there was any surprise to me. Of course, the big difference now is that I have my very own pictures of the place. So hah! The Taj Mahal also makes you think how much free time and money some people had about half a millennium ago even if they were emperors. Answer: well, quite enough.

Also, anyone who has ever lifted even a small slab of marble can imagine how freakishly heavy the Taj Mahal must be, with the whole thing being made out of white marble. I mean, honestly, the stuff is really, really heavy. Those 22,000 workmen who built the thing and 1,000 elephants that carried the raw materials from all of Asia? I wouldn't want to be one of them. I like my back the way it is - no more than 33 pieces.

Anyway, we commuted between the Taj Mahal and the Mughal Sheraton (our hotel, which, incidentally, is also made mostly out of marble) on this autorickshaw, but it was different from all the autos I've ever ridden because, even though it looked just like any other run-of-the-mill auto, it was battery-powered and this meant that it made just about as much engine noise as a Mac mini. And, on the ride back, my mother told me everything there is to know about breastfeeding - how it works and how awesome it is. Sometimes she just can't help being a gynaecologist. Anyhow, Agra, on the whole, has this thing with battery-powered stuff because a few years ago, they noticed that acid rain was turning the Taj from white to yellow and everyone panicked and tried to cut down on the pollution bit. But, I don't think they're making a great effort because our hotel, which owned the battery auto, had a grand total of 2 (two) of these vehicles. They'll also take you to the Taj in a horse carriage if you give them Rs. 500 and are nasally prepared for the smell of horse shit.

That said, we visited the Taj again that same night because my parents thought we'd see the "Taj at Night" under the moonlit sky. It was hellishly expensive - Rs. 510 per person as compared to Rs. 20 in the day. But that's not the best part. Here's the best shot of the Taj I got at night:


Oh yeah, and our eyes were doing only slightly better. We only had a faint idea that there was an international celebrity somewhere in the dark. The moon was so dim that a cellphone's display could have given it a run for its money, and the only time we actually saw something was during the fraction of a second when the flash on someone's camera went off. Pathetic waste of money - criminal, if you ask me. Without this whole nighttime viewing programme, we could've left Agra (big dump of a city that it is) yesterday evening by a punctual 8pm Shatabdi Express that takes 2.5 hours to get to Delhi but instead had to take the 6am Intercity Express which had fourteen stops, kept stopping for no apparent reason even where there wasn't a station, was overtaken by possibly every other train on the planet, and took a total of 4.5 hours to get to Delhi - an hour late.

Anyhow, the trip made for some good photos, a very intense realization of the fact that Agra is a city unworthy of having such a beautiful monument smack in the middle of it, and the greatest amount of marble that I've ever seen in one day.

Labels: English

…to Agra, that is. Have a good weekend!

And if anybody is buying an Intel-based Mac anytime soon, I am curious to know what configuration, what price and from where you're getting it in the comments.

Labels: English

So, this is basically a follow-up to yesterday's entry on Wood Elves. Some time after posting that entry, I found out about this "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - The Complete Recordings" (five The's there) and it drove me nuts! I just couldn't not have it. And, at almost $60, this thing was damn expensive and even if I did have the money to buy it, I would have to wait till I got back to college, and that's another two weeks! So, I did what I always do when I want something and can't have it - I searched the torrent sites for it. It came up - 6GB something and with 0 seeders and leechers. So that, even on the off chance that I had the bandwidth to download it, I couldn't. But then, jackpot! Since the DVDs contain mostly the audio files and the 6GB is mostly because of the graphics in the DVD menus, some very intelligent person had ripped the AC3 files from the DVD and put them up for grabs as a 580MB torrent on Demonoid. More importantly? The torrent had three sharing peers!

Gosh, I am so lucky. I started downloading it yesterday night and it was finished by this morning. I know I will buy the DVD eventually (because I'm a freak) but, until the price comes down a little bit (actually… a lot), I really needed to have this song. Have been listening to it all day. Used a freeware Mac app called "a52decX 0.25" to convert the AC3 files to AIFF and then used iTunes to rip the AIFF files to AAC files at 256K VBR. They're mine now, my precious…

Of course, I thought I'd share the joy with y'all. So, instead of the glimpse-of-a-song I offered last entry, I give the full thing today. Of course, since YouTube doesn't take just audio files, I did a little Final Cut Pro-ing and added a placeholder video title for you to watch while you listen.


And here are the lyrics, which are translated not literally but with an aim to preserve the original Sindarin meaning of the words:


Also, I must mention that the pronunciation of the Sindarin in this song is quite flawless, unlike the pronunciation, in, say, the Lord of the Rings computer games or the BBC Radio series. "gaim", is for example, correctly pronounced as "ga-im" and not "game". I have seen Elvish pronunciation incorrectly done in the movies too though - in "Isengard Unleashed", there is a little Quenya sequence in the beginning and the word "caita" is incorrectly pronounced as "kate-aa" instead of "ka-it-aa". Eh, I'm just nitpicking.

But gee does this make my day. :-)

Labels: English

We're all acquainted with my intense love for Lord of the Rings and all things related. Like Tolkien, it's not the actual story that I find to be the most amazing thing about the book (and related literature) but the languages that the stories are made for and around. Of these, Quenya and Sindarin are the most beautiful and it just makes me sad that they're not real languages because they are a pleasure to speak and to listen to.

When I watch the Fellowship (for the umpteenth time), I always watch out for this little song that comes in the beginning of the movie and is only there in the Extended Edition. Since it doesn't have a formal title, I'll title it A Elbereth Gilthoniel. Now, Elbereth is just the Quenya name for the Varda, one of the Valier, but of course you didn't want to know that. You also wouldn't want to know anything that's written in the paragraph that follows:

Varda: she is the Lady of the Stars, and light is her sphere of power and her joy. She created the stars, set the courses of Sun and Moon, and placed the star Eärendil in the sky. She is the most beautiful of all creatures, for the light of Ilúvatar lingers in her face. Her spouse is Manwë; they dwell together upon Oiolossë, the highest tower of Taniquetil, the tallest mountain in Valinor. When Manwë is with her, she can hear more clearly than any other. The Elves hold Varda in the greatest love and reverence of all the Valar, and call her Elbereth (Star-Queen), Elentári (Queen of the Stars), Tintallë (the Kindler), Gilthoniel, Fanuilos, and other names.
Source: Wellinghall

Here's the song I was talking about that I've uploaded onto YouTube:


Oh yes, and the lyrics:

Sindarin
A Bereth thar Ennui Aeair!
Calad ammen i reniar
Mi 'aladhremmin ennorath.
A Elbereth Gilthoniel
I chin a thûl lín míriel...

Common Tongue
O Queen beyond the Western Seas!
O light to us that wander
Amid the tree-woven lands of Middle-earth.
O Elbereth Star-kindler
Your eyes and breath [are] like shining jewels...

If you were fabulously bored by all this, well, I don't care. I love Sindarin and Quenya.

Also, what's so exciting today? Apple released a 24" iMac in addition to its 17" and 20" models and transitioned this product line to the Core 2 Duo. The Mac mini line has also been speedbumped but remains with Core Duos. The iMacs have also gone down in price. The 20" iMac is now a (relative) bargain at $1499. Now Maanick can get a new Mac!

Labels: English

Recently studies have shown that an HSV-2 glycoprotein-D subunit vaccine can prevent 75% of clinically apparent genital infection in seronegative women, but there is insufficient evidence at present to be recommended it for clinical practice.

Bet you didn't know that, didja? Well, you better be grateful 'cause it's going to save your sorry little backside one of these days… and yes, incidentally, I am proofreading my mother's book on obstetrics.

Labels: English

I know it isn't a new movie but I ended up watching it today and there's just one word for it - depressing. The main theme of the movie is racial discrimination. The movie also features a lot of characters who are sort-of closely intertwined, i.e., A meets B at some random place and then B meets C randomly who was closely linked to A (none of them ever find this out - it's only for the audience's pleasure). A harmless but attractive way of avoiding a lot of actors with very minor roles.

Crash is pretty simple - a criticism of racism. It's basically a montage of lots of different scenes involving racial discrimination and shows that white people are not the sole cause of racism in America, although it does not hide the supposed truth that they are a major cause. Honestly, whether they are or aren't, I have been exposed to such a tiny portion of America, that too a place where almost everyone is, in my opinion, simply not stupid enough to be racist, that I just don't know about it. Racism is stupidity.

Anyway, loads of people agree that - whether I have seen it or not - there is a lot of discrimination and mistreatment in America and I just hope I never have to see it. Crash just had a bunch of scenes showing scenes of illtreatment based on race and a bunch of scenes showing people who fight against racism but fail due to some quirk of fate. It also shows a couple of people who reform and "learn to know better" by the end of the movie.

But I don't know what to say about the movie in general. Was it good or bad? I guess I would have to tilt towards the 'good' side because I would not have preferred to not watch it. Was the portrayal of racial discrimination enlightening or pedagogically valuable? Yes.

You know what this movie makes me think about? The Internet. Here's one place that is untainted by anyone's race, age, gender or nationality. This is where minds interact not minds in bodies. I have honestly never ever made any judgment about anyone's mind based on their body. I like myself for that. It makes me proud and it makes me happy that I am above all that. There are a lot of things about me that might make someone shoot me, but if I ever discriminate against anyone based on their body, just shoot me. No, really. Take a gun and/or lethal chemical and murder me. It's true that a lot of character traits are genetic but I'm willing to give anyone a chance. Dumbledore died for this and I would too!

Labels: English

What is this bullshit?


So trace me!

Labels: English

Today, I spent the entire day (or well, a good eight-hour slice of it) getting Mac OS installed on Souvik's computer, for which he had made the trip from Chandigarh with his trusty (ok, honeslty, not-so-trusty), big-and-bulky desktop computer. By the way, I can totally see why Intel was in deep shit until now when it came to its main business - making processors. The Pentium 4's and Pentium D's are these incredibly shitty processors that have no concept of power efficiency. They gobble up watts from your power supply as if they were eating a particularly delicious Tandoori pizza and then are basically as productive as a person in the process of eating a Tandoori pizza, which is to say, not all that much. And this is besides the fact that having that thing in the room probably raised the ambient temperature by about 5ºC. However, the story had a somewhat merry ending due to the fact that Souvik's computer in the end had both Windows XP and Mac OS X installed, albeit the lack of functional audio and accelerated graphics (so a ton of software will refuse to run). Also, managed to get Mac OS X on Varenya's computer which proved a lot less troublesome and even has accelerated graphics, though still no sound. Can't have everything. If you really want to run Apple's OS, get Apple's hardware - it's optimized for it and that's how it's meant to run.

Still, it was raining all day and although it did not considerably bring down the temperatures and further helped to increased the already-high humidity, I do like the sound of rain and thunder; it just makes me glad.

In other unrelated news, geek goes to gym. Is this a result of boredom or a general lack of anything productive to do? Is this a result of incessant nagging? Is this a result of the fact that I wouldn't actually mind being fit? I don't know… but the result is that I am making my first concerted effort to becoming less spherical in shape and… I won't exactly say that I am whole-heartedly jumping into this endeavour, because I'm not, but it's not half-hearted either - I guess it's more like three-fourths-hearted. We'll see. Nothing to fuss about.

And one major thing I had forgotten about Delhi out of lack of experience? Not the weather. The insects! Mosquitoes, yes. Of course, I am a favourite target. But since it's begun raining now, there's this plethora of other bugs that buzz and bite and the main problem with bugs in general is that it itches where they bite (humans seriously need to evolve itch-free skin… in the next five minutes). More things to squish and squash, yes; but… I have to get up from my computer to do that. No deal. Also, I hate these bugs that have hard exteriors and which keep banging into sources of light such as bulbs and tubelights with ferocious frequency. They make such a racket that I can't even "let them be" and just have to get up and murder them with newspapers, which is, come to think of it, the most utility I've been able to extract from newspapers in all my life, apart from their weak water-absorbant properties.

&c:

• Another successful conversion to the Mac platform - one of my Uncles and a MacBook. May they be blessed.
• Oh, and Power Outage Counter is up to 4 now, way lower than I expected after more than 10 days. No power cuts due to the rain yet - so unexpected! (yet is the keyword)
• I have started saying the letter Z as "zee" in my head rather than "zed". Is this a sign? I hope not. I guess the zee is just shorter. One optimizes. If I ever say "zee" though, let me know. It's supposed to be "zed" for me and it better stay that way!
  

Labels: English