Bad bad doggie!

Don't ever do this. Always remember. GoTo is BAD habit.

But fate it seems, does not work without a sense of irony

You have been working your arse off for 3 weeks doing 14 hour days and bending backwards to keep up your personal commitments. One day you decide that you can take the evening off and leave office at 5:30. You decide to leave in 5 minutes with your friend on his bike. In two minutes he gets called to an emergency meeting which drags on and on for two hours. All plans ditched. Life is fucking cruel, just when you thought you saw some light.

Matrix revealed

Hmmm... those were the days.

It used to be extremely fashionable at one time to wonder aloud if the matrix was real; if we were actually living in the matrix; what if the world as we know it was indeed, just a simulation program with a neurological interface. I loved to subscribe to such a view and read a large number of very complicated essays on such topics and hold very involved discussions about it for months, without really understanding what anybody was saying, including myself. That didn't matter. The important thing was, we were all talking about the matrix. It seemed extremely plausible that we may be in a dreamworld.

It was the time when videos like the animatrix and anything with similar themes used to be the ultimate fantasy to indulge in. Screensavers *had* to be matrix themed. Desktop wallpapers *had* to be freeze frames from the matrix, or transcripts of its dialogs, otherwise it was sacrilege.  Non-matrix conversations were soaked in matrix lingo and esoteric references to the movie. Why? To revel smugly in the knowledge that we, who had seen the light, stood apart from the visibly annoyed hoi-polloi who had not.

It was a matter of great seriousness to educate non matrixians of their ignorance and in great hurry, induct them into our world through proper guidance and explanations, more so, if the poor victim was female and looked vulnerable. There must have been a time when our gang of 'matrix evangelists' were feared like jack-the-ripper.

But all said, it was a great time. A time of expanding views, a time when knowledge of esoteric ideas gave confidence and joy. A time when there was such a pressing need to not just stand out from a crowd, but to smirk at it too. It must have been a part of growing up, the great search for identity that seizes every teenager, and turns him inside-out, raw, ugly and malevolent before it finally makes him a man. (Pardon the gender non-neutrality but this is my blog)

And like everything else, after a few months of a caffeine-like buzz and feeling heady about belonging to the intellectual upper class, i lost interest. The matrix messiahs were not so active anymore. Weeks went by when none of us used words like 'the oracle', 'nebuchadnezzar', and 'morpheus'.

In time, we surrendered to the general view that the matrix was just a movie, albeit, one with a very well thought-out plot and stunt sequences that would put even Rajnikanth to shame. Of course, nobody openly proclaimed a change in views or a shift in ideology. Thats what zealotry does to you. It pumps your ego so much that to change your stand becomes impossible, a sort of my-dignity-or-my-death issue. We have seen it in communists and militants, preachers and godmen.

In a few months, all was forgotten and we all went out and got a life, so to speak. That was until matrix revolution. Then it was back to the old times, but a bit more restrained. We had matured enough to say stuff like "Hey I didn't get that bit" or "But that sounds illogical" without drawing furious flak or without having to bury our faces in shame.

After the reloaded was revolution. But this time it was a whole lot different. Many of the hardcore elite even missed the movie. Some were apologetic, some were not. Finally our little gang of matrix messiahs had grown up. They had to after all. And just so i can wind up this piece without losing my life, i sacrifice my dignity to reveal the defection to the opposite party. The final proof of why we are not living in a matrix type of world is that if we were, the agents wouldn't have let such a movie be made. The program that controlled the Wachowski brothers would not have been written thus. That rests my case.

Credit sheesh!

Cell phone rings.

Me@ThisEnd: Hello
Lady@OtherEnd :Sir, Good morning, am I speaking to Me@ThisEnd ?
Me@ThisEnd :Ya
Lady@OtherEnd :Sir, We're calling from SomeBankName . Would you be interested in our new credit card? It's free for life sire, which means you have no annual charges. We offer a credit limit of up to 3 lakhs sir. We have a 60 day replacement policy and....
Me@ThisEnd :Wow, up to 3 lakhs! Ok, I'm interested. Just one little thing though.
Lady@OtherEnd :Yes sir! (her excitement oozing out of the speaker on my phone)
Me@ThisEnd : I have way too many credit cards now and yet, I'm forever in debt. In fact I have no clue how to manage all these cards and i've defaulted payment many monthsOn all my cards my overlimit withdrawal penalty and interests come up to quite a bit. I really could use another card to pay off these, so i can start using all my cards again. What's your procedure now?
Lady@OtherEnd :Errr, ok sir can you suggest some others who would be interested sir?
Me@ThisEnd :Mmmm, none at the moment, but I'll surely call you back with a list of names.
Lady@OtherEnd :Ok, thank you sir.
Click

second attempt at bloging from my phone!

this is from the new gmail app on my phone.

FROM THE MOBILE!!

My first post from my phone. lets see how it turns out.

More on user interfaces

Carrying on from the previous post about how user interfaces have evolved, here's one that's exciting. It could mean a revolution in how we choose to look at files on the computer. I think very soon the computer will become an extension of our analog brains. We will be working with analog representations of digital processes. Starting from force feedback on your dumb joystick right up to whats there on this video; we will not just be typing on keyboards or clicking with mice, we will be working with data using interfaces through which we can touch, feel, sense, smell and taste. Being the pervert that i am, i am just imagining cyber sex five years from now. Good times are ahead.

The next wave in computing

Multi touch interface. Surface computing. Click here to see what it's all about. It's super cool if you ask me, but i'm just surprised that microsoft is behind this and not apple or google. We'll wait and see. This reminds me of the Zion control station in the matrix.

No more fingers in the trash

Brilliant design!



Click Here for more great videos and pictures!

Look ma! Translucent application windows!

Look at my desktop! Watch how the flaming, swirling colors in the Winamp vis window appear through all the other apps I'm running. The visual effect is stunning. It can amaze you, mesmerize you, confuse you and make you want to throw up, all at the same time. It's like living in the 'grass'lands baby. I love it.

I'm using DM2 for this. And it works amazingly well. It's refreshingly light, tolerably robust and ensures that you won't get bored of your desktop for a long time to come. Next, I'm trying to find a visualization plugin for Winamp5 that's easier on the CPU. Suggestions anyone?

Perseverence

This guy is crazy. How I would love to be him.

Zen and the art of attaining nirvana

This is gonna be a long and winding one, so u better sit down nice and comfy, with a cup of coffee near at hand, maybe?



I had given my Zen for service yesterday morning. And all through yesterday and today, till the moment I picked it up, I was feeling a bit jittery. Is it just me or do others also feel a sense of unease, of discomfort when their car is not in their garage or in their sight? Anyway, the dee was forcing me to meet her right after work and postpone picking up the car by a day. She tried every trick in her book. She even assumed I would succumb and be waiting for her when she got out of office. Man, was she disappointed. I'm sorry dee, this is one of the times when I stand guilty as charged, with no defense, but i really can't let it be any other way either. I sometimes wonder if I'll ever understand my crazy obsession. But the sense of relief that overcame me as soon as I saw my sweetheart standing there with the rest of her kind, spotlessly clean, smiling to me a pleasantly satisfied smile made everything worthwhile; ditching a date with the dee, paying 8000 bucks for the service, everything. The seats were not even dry after the shampoo wash. I had to drive sitting on newspaper sheets. As soon as I started her up, the response from the engine was great. Sweet and delicious. Just a contented purr. The engine tune up job seemed pretty good in idling. Put her into first gear, and the lever just slid into the notch with a reassuring click. Call me crazy and old fashioned, but what I like about the Zens of my era (1999-2002) is the degree of feedback the driver gets. From the road, on the pedals, the steering wheel, the gear lever, everything speaks to me. Some language that only I can understand. Telling me how each element is doing, and what's the general level of friendliness or grumpiness that day, so many things. In fact, I can notice the slightest drop in her power, the slightest vibration that wasn't there before, her slightest rattle, her slightest discomfiture of any sort. And i released the clutch. Smooth as silk; it immediately brought a smile on my face. The clutch overhaul (4500 bucks) had worked magic on the feel of the pedal. And when she was in motion, it was poetry. As soon as I was on the road, I noticed, the steering felt a lot smoother, the pickup was a lot higher, the engine was a lot quieter and the brakes were a lot sharper. Motoring Nirvana. She climbed so quickly through the gears. I was doing 35 kph and she hit 5th. I listened for any complaints. None at all. I further dropped the throttle, down to 30 kph, still no complaints. Then i accelerated and she instantly picked right from there, 5th! Awesome. Then I dropped her to 4th at 40 kph, and suddenly she raged forward like a leopard leaping out of the bushes for a perfect ambush. Brilliant. I could almost kiss her motor. I cruised into a quieter street and tested the work on her brakes. Not too noticeable, but the front feels better, the retardation sharper. Good enough. I pulled over to the side and called the dee. Arranged to meet her at 7.15 at the Forum, and u-turned to join the chaotic evening traffic of Bannerghatta road. The Zen was obviously enjoying her little outing after 2 days of cleaning, checkups, tune-ups and upgrades and make-up. She told me so herself. And I was at peace with the world. The traffic didn't bother me. The lane cutting cyclist didn't draw my ire. The painfully slow auto rickshaw didn't irritate me. Suddenly all was perfect. The Zen, the road, her wonderful dream of an engine, that sporty gearshift, me. All in perfect harmony, doing a choreographed sequence, all the cogs and wheels and shafts and cams, to some exotic music that only we could hear.



Life I love you, All is groovy.



PS: I took her out again at 10.15 PM to the NICE road (the stretch between Kanakapura road and Bannerghatta road, 7 km of well asphalted 6 lane highway). I wanted to time a zero-sixty but i didn't have the heart to race her motor just then. I figured she must be sleepy already, so I didn't push her. Anyway, she seemed to be happy just cruising, and she made it a point to mention it again. Very quickly, before I realized, she was sailing at 120 kph. Like knife through butter, her heart humming, the rubber sticking to the new damp tarmac, purring in the confidence of complete control.

Why Vista Sucks

E-043 Vista - Arrogance & Stupidity

"Upgrading to Windows Vista has been banned by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), technology giant Texas Instruments and other corporations and government agencies (V1, V10, V11). These organizations are evaluating their options, but overseas it's turning into a stampede to get out of Microsoft software (V15).

School districts in the U.S. are starting to move entirely to Linux rather suffer the cost of upgrading Windows. Examples are the Windsor Unified School District in Northern California and the Bexley, Ohio high school district. Schools making this move have been surprised how easy it is and how much money is saved. (V6, V8)

Leading computer maker HP is reporting "massive deals for Linux desktops" with corporate clients (V4). Runner-up computer maker and long time faithful Microsoft ally Dell has been overwhelmed by demand and has started developing Linux desktop preloads for their notebook and desktop computers (V9)."

I love as in absolutely love such articles!

That piece above was from an artcle titled Vista - Arrogance & Stupidity

Whither Infinity?

The following paradox is not my own creation. I forget where I stole it from. Nevertheless here's the deal.

What is a line?

A line is a geometric concept consisting of an arrangement of an infinite number of points. There. Infinity!



But wait. If I was to get in a car and travel in a straight line from any point A to any other point B, it would mean that I must be traveling through an infinite number of points. Or, in other words, I would be changing my location through infinite positions. Infinity, by its very nature, must ensure that I do not reach point B. Ever. I can get closer and closer to point B, but never really reach it. Rather strangely, in real life, I eventually do! So, doesn't that mean that the definition of a straight line needs alteration? A straight line is made up of only a finite number of points? No. That's clearly wrong. Because, as you zoom into the line, you will ultimately see that the finite number of points become discontinuous and hence technically do not form a line. In order to make a line that is continuous at all levels of zoom, so to speak, you do need an infinite set of points. So where does that leave us now?



I swear to God I am not on LSD.

And as a side note, when the dee and myself were a-fightin last week like them old times, she started agreeing to everything i said, just to wear down my defenses. Eventually she did and i snapped at her. I told her "Look, stop agreeing to everything I say from this moment on!"
What should she do now?
A. If she says "Ok, i shall stop agreeing", she is still agreeing, and hence actually disobeying my demand.
B. If she says "I shall never do that", it means she is going to disobey my request and continue agreeing with whatever i say, but in a way I won cos she disobeyed me by saying she would never stop agreeing with me.

Both of us took a time-out from the fight to figure out our options. And we are yet to get back to it. I love paradoxes.

MiG 23 finally laid to rest

IAF to retire swing-wing MiG-23 interceptor Tuesday - India

At its peak, the IAF operated two MiG-23 squadrons - 223 and 224. The former converted to the MiG-29 in May 1989.

Considering that back in the 80s, the MiG 23 was one of the first to have BVR (beyond Visual Range) AAMs (Air to Air Missiles), swing wings and was cheap, I quite liked this old warhorse.

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The MiG-23 had the advantage of being quite cheap in the early 1980s. For example, the MiG-23MS was priced between US$3.6 million and US$6.6 million depending on the customer; on the other hand in 1980, the F-16 Fighting Falcon was priced at US$14 million, and the Flogger's closest Western competitor was the Kfir C2 with a price of US$4.5 million.

But it is a little surprising that they only logged about 32581 hours of flight from 1980 till today.

Career survival tips

Posting after a long hiatus. And i'm back with a... a link! Things they never taught me at design school very much applies to every walk of life. And the one important lesson i take away from it is

95 percent of any creative profession is shit work.
Only 5 percent is actually, in some simplistic way, fun.

How fucking true!

When I say no, I feel guilty

I am reading a book called "When I say no, I feel guilty" by Manuel J. Smith. Considering the fact that I hate self help books (I always believed "How to win friends and influence people" type of books were the suck), it really is amazing that I am loving this one. I was browsing around at a books sale when this one book just screamed out to me. I mean, the title was so direct that it summed up exactly what i ended up feeling most times i interacted with people. Only, I didn't know i could put down all my frustration and self-disgust in such a simple sentence. I'm dumb!

I can tell you, it is the best book I have read in a long while. And almost every line in it is so apt and so 'for-me' that this attains the unique status of 'the only unputdownable non-fiction i have ever read'. Go get it.

One interesting conversation followed my reading the book. Mom was on the phone on a very important conversation when the neighbor walked in, uninvited and definitely unannounced. Mom was figuring out a way to handle the neighbor with the least distraction from the phone conversation while not seeming cold or rude to her. She managed with some degree of coolness which is besides my point. Coming back to my point, dad asked me rather sarcastically, "So according to your book, how do you handle this situation assertively? Do you tell her in your frostiest voice that you are busy?" It was then that I saw the flaw that a lot of people have in their understanding of assertiveness. They confuse assertiveness with being rude and impolite and always using vocal muscle power to get your way. Man, that is so wrong. Assertiveness, IMHO, is all about being on top of a situation. Assertiveness means that you dictate how the situation must be depending on how you want it to be. Assertiveness means that you are the director, the controller of what happens to you and how you feel about an interaction or transaction as against letting a situation make you a feel a particular way. Nowhere in assertiveness training does it say that you need to be unpleasant and offensive to people. Notice how subtle the differences are between the many non assertive reactions and the probable assertive reactions.

Non assertive reactions:

1. Tell the guy on the phone that some guest is home and hang up in order to entertain the neighbor.

It's an important call and i feel guilty for hanging up. My friend at the other end thinks I am a prick. I feel like a doormat and hate myself because my neighbor walked in unannounced and screwed up what i wanted to be doing, and I was powerless to stop that.

2. Tell the neighbor with many apologetic gestures that you can't talk right now while not interrupting the phone conversation.

I feel guilty that i cannot entertain the neighbor properly and also I missed some of the important phone conversation in trying to gesture all that to the neighbor.

3. Ignore the neighbor and continue on the phone.

I got what i wanted, but there are still some bruised egos. My neighbor thinks i am a prick.

4. Try to manage both. I entertain my neighbor with appropriate facial expressions and gestures and still pretend to be listening to the guy on the phone.

I feel swamped. I feel like I don't have the freedom to choose what i want to do. The neighbor feels unattended and the friend on the phone thinks i am not interested in what he's saying.

Assertive reactions:

1. If the call is more important to you than the neighbor's visit, politely tell the friend on the phone to hang on for a second. Then tell the neighbor that you are on a rather important call and that you will call on her again later. Fix a time if you must. Get back to the guy on the phone.

2. If the neighbor's visit is more important to you than the call, politely tell the friend on the phone that there is some inconvenience in talking to him now, and that you will call back later. Fix a time if you must. Then entertain the neighbor.

I know this example was entirely too simplistic, and does not deal with the essence of assertiveness training - Handling manipulative people. Still, I felt it was a good enough example to distinguish clearly between letting a situation to get the better of you and controlling the situation the way you want it without being rude and offensive.

AeroIndia 2k7, a review by the lay-man for the lay-man

Aero India 2007 just concluded. I was there on Saturday. The hotties in the fighter category this time around were the MiG35, F-16, FA-18 super hornet(first time the US is participating!) and Saab Gripen, and in the commercial / cargo sector, it was the C17. For the enormous hulk that the C17 is, the climb rate is impressive. Even the C5 looks so slim next to it. This year saw very few attractions on the helicopter front. Apart from the static display of the Chinook, there was nothing else, as probably technology proving with the ALH was not needed anymore. The Sarang display team finished their performance (with 3 copters) just before I entered the airfield. The older favorites were all there too from last time, the Su29, Su30 MK-I, Mirage 2000, MiG27 etc. The jaded Mig21 (I still respect this plane) and the Jaguar were conspicuous by their absence (and thankfully). The BAe Hawk was also on static display, but curiously, outside the Air display area. According to me, the Gripen stole the show with its impressive maneuverability and agility for a plane that small, light, cheap and low on ground support requirements. Truly a winning combination for developing countries with many semi-developed airstrips and lack of proper ground support. I don't know if it is my inherent prejudice for all things American, but for some reason, the F-16 and F-18 failed to impress me beyond 'Such monstrous power!'. In the regional jet / business jet / VIP carrier category there were around 4 or 5 planes on flying display, including the Saras and a Bombardier Canadair CRJ something. I was most impressed by the Saras as I watched it do some technology proving demonstration flights. Saw it take some mean bank angles that were impressive for a non-conventional propeller. I found it to be a bit noisier than the others (I am comparing with other turbo-props like the older ATR32 not present in this show) though this is just an opinion and very relative. Even the noise seemed to be tinny, like a 4 seater biplane. There were a couple of small planes in the GA / Personal aviation category, neither of which I remember now.

The Suryakirans did their usual stuff. While I admire the pilots and their skills, one must admit that if you've seen it once or twice, the third show gets pretty boring. For example, this time's performance was an almost exact replica of last time's show. I could even predict which item was next on the list and what the commentator would be saying over his PA with a fake accent and fake interest in his voice, repeating phrases like 'stunning display of speed' and 'impressive demonstration of its maneuverability' over and over again.

But the best thing on display at Aero India 2007 was not on a tricycle landing gear. It stood on 4 humongous rubber tires. It was part of a stall put up by the AMGeneral (Transports). Yes, the HUMVEE (HMMWV - High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle). It was the first time I saw the beast in the flesh. I must admit, for the kind of image I had carried in my head about the Humvee, it didn't seem all that mean. So i was slightly disappointed there.
We hardly had any time for visiting the stalls. There were 9 stalls (hangars) this time, that's 3 more than last time, I think. And we had no time to even enter 7 of those stalls.
So far, all good experiences. Now let me start the gripes.
In one sentence, crowd management was pathetic. In many points and way too many sentences:

I. We spent 1 hr 15 min in getting from JP Nagar 6th Phase to AFSY (that's AirForce Station, Yelahanka). And 1 hour 45 minutes in parking the car. Traffic congestion was terrible. Long queues, unexplained delays and holdups, Unclear directions and indications. Lack of a clear communication. Specifically the problems were these. Vehicles on the highway coming to the airshow were asked to form a line on the left most lane and to follow that until turning into the correct gate. Now this arrangement had 3 problems.
1. There was no way to identify which cars were coming to the arishow and which were not, so most people ended up joining the queue as there was neither windshield stickers on the air show cars, nor a sign board to say that only airshow vehicles were to take the left lane.
2. There were not enough number of traffic marshals to ensure that communication regarding the parking availability was communicated till the end of the queue. (For eg. we stayed in the queue for 45 minutes before realizing that the gates were closed as our designated parking area was full)
3. The typical Indian mentality caused people to form 3 lines instead of 1, thus causing more mayhem.

II. There was a bus facility to transport visitors from the car park area to the air show. These buses were irregular and no control system existed to ensure that people boarded and alighted from them in an orderly manner. Result: It looked like refugees fighting for bread behind a United Nations truck in Somalia. So we ended up walking that distance from the parking to the airfield.

III. Area given for food stalls was entirely insufficient and this problem was worsened by people who sat right in the middle of all the queues to eat.

IV. I believe the whole crowd management issue could have been lessened if the date of entry was printed on the tickets and the number of tickets available for a given day was limited. This way, the crowd could have been distributed over 5 days. The other advantage of this would be that it would be easy to plan for the number of visitors for each day, depending on the number of tickets sold for that day.

Of course, these are just my ideas, and there maybe no sense or logic in them.

PS: Please leave comments on any factual / other inaccuracies that I may have made in this review. Also do share your opinions, impressions and experiences of the airshow.

Open sesame!

Ophcrack LiveCD. Download it. Burn it on to a CD. Boot off of it. By brute force, break into many many password protected windows user accounts. Though it takes the fun out of social engineering or trying to guess at the passwords by knowing the person's psyche, it gets the job done, provided the password is 14 characters or lesser. Read why here at LifeHacker. It is rather interesting.

When the party is over

As all the hubbub and excitement over the iPhone slowly dies away and people are looking at it more realistically than as a miracle answer to all their mobile telephony phantasies, many uncomfortable questions emerge. TheFirstPost asks them here.

Click here to read the article.