So on Conan yesterday, the musical guests were The New Pornographers performing their fantastic (new?) track Use It. I googled for a video or something and found out that both the video (alternate link) and the audio were available for streaming and download respectively. Fantastic. Well, not quite.

I streamed the video which sounded alright. I decided I was going to the buy this CD. Then I downloaded the mp3 and it sounded like shit! Wait a second. That makes no sense, it's the same music, why does it sound alright on the video and why does the mp3 sound like garbage? Especially in light of the fact that the video probably contained a 64kbps audio stream which should sound worse than the mp3. A second listen confirmed that for some reason the mp3 was sounding really really bad, vocals were distorted, guitar sounded too loud, and drums were just one loud beat.

Maybe they didn't want to give a high quality mp3 for download. But a quick peek at the bitrate revealed that it was a 320kbps mp3, the highest possible bitrate, ergo the best quality mp3 (well not quite since they had used iTunes and not Lame, still it should have been decent quality). So obviously that wasn't the reason the mp3 was sounding so bad. Mysteries, mysteries.

Then I ReplayGained the mp3. The track registered at -9.40 dB! What does that mean? It means that if we take 89dB as normal loudness, this track was designed to be 9.40 dB louder. That almost 8 times as loud as a normal track. No wonder it was sounding distorted. Essentially, whoever mastered it just wanted it to sound loud. As loud as can be. With no concern for quality. (You want a better explanation about this and why a lot of modern CDs sound really bad, read this article about the loudness race.)

Ah well, I'm not going to buy the CD. Maybe I'll go listen to them live, if they play nearby. If any members of The New Pornographers happen to read this, I like your music, but until you can rein in whoever masters your music from going loud and distorted, I'm not buying your CDs.

On a happier note, Best of luck to Conan O'Brien for the Emmys! Hope you win both your nominations!

Back in Madison from Ohio.

So, I'm blogging this using Opera. I was able to register during the Opera Party and get a free registration code for myself.

Here's my impression about it so far.

Stuff I like:

• Very fast startup times
• Now that the ad is gone, the interface is very customizable

Stuff I don't like:

• My Firefox/IE shortcuts don't work as expected. Ctrl-Enter doesn't autocomplete to www.url.com, Shift-Enter doesn't autocomplete to www.url.net and Ctrl-Shift-Enter doesn't autocomplete to www.url.org.
  Update: There isn't a real solution for this! There are a few workarounds, like Tools->Preferences->Advanced->Server Name Completion->Unchecking "Look for local machine" and adding net and org to the suffix types, but if a website is a .net or .org and a bogus .com domain exists then things don't work. Maybe they'll fix this in the next release, although it's been on wishlists forever.
  
• Quite a few website's have reduced functionality, like no Compose tab in Blogger. As I'm typing this I'm back to Blogger's most primitive interface, can't even do a simple thing like automatically insert a URL. Of course this isn't really Opera's fault.
  Update: Actually it is! Opera apparently doesn't have a Rich Edit control.
  
• I miss all my Firefox extensions. Most importantly Adblock.
  Update: And while there are ways of blocking ads in Opera, nothing exists with the convenience of Adblock.
  
• The builtin RSS reader, can't seem to be configured to show all posts at once (ala Sage.)
  Update: No way of fixing this it seems.
  
• I changed the default fixed-width font to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, but I'm still using Courier as I type this. Looks like I'll have to change that preference in a bunch of different places.
  Update: That wasn't hard to do.
  

I'm sure there are workaround's for most of the stuff in the previous list, and once I find it things should be better.

Stuff I really really don't like:

• Double clicking on a word opens a menu!!!!! This is really really bad user interface design. This goes against standard Windows UI guidelines. In every other application, double clicking a word will select it. Only in Opera does a menu open. If anyone knows how to turn this off, please let me know.
  Update: Turned it off, Tools->Preferences->Advanced->Toolbars->Uncheck "Enable hotclick menu"
  
• The apologists in the Opera community. Any time a IE or a Firefox user makes a feature request, there's a huge bunch of users who will try and shut such a person off. Look here for example. These people really really hurt Opera and its popularity.

So my knees are back to normal. And my throat is almost back to normal. And I'm almost back to normal.

Still settling in to the new apartment. Though honestly I don't think I ever will be able to settle in. I'll always find something to complain about.

Thankfully the weather hasn't gone to hell yet. The days are getting shorter though which is never a good sign. After four winters here I'm still going to hate this new one. We should be like birds and migrate.

Thanks to the physical and mental discomfort of the move, I'm back to reading comics with a vengeance. Comics are my comfort food.

At work on a Sunday. But that's all right, I didn't have much to do anyway. I would have probably spent the day parked in front of the TV reading a comic book. Which sounds great, now that I think about it.

Yesterday, I was at State Street, and was infuriated with the number of parents roaming around with their freshmen children. Parents go home. Leave your kids be. State Street looks better that way.

I have to start going to the gym again, but am apprehensive thanks to the whole knee situation. I will go though. Probably start next weekend.

I'm off to lunch now. Please forgive the poor quality of prose in this post (all those damn "thanks to's"). I'm in no mood to fix it.

New apartment. Hectic moving day. Knee problems. Throat problems. Slight fever. Work deadlines. No time to blog :(

Here's the plot. If you could send one message back through time to your younger self, what would it be and would your younger self listen?

A few (two and a half) years ago I would have answered this question quite differently from how I'm going to answer it now.

Here's the resolution. I would ask my younger self to work a lot harder than he (I) will (did) during the first semester at Wisconsin and to switch from signal processing to image processing even earlier. How would I convince my younger self? Put something in the message which he (I) would recognize as something only I (he) know and would never possibly reveal to someone else even under torture.

Here's the twist. How will I answer this question in the future?

Everyone writes (reads) their own novel.

So after not buying the series when it was running, and not buying the hard-back graphic novel when it was released a couple of months ago, I finally picked up the soft-cover last weekend. I am talking of course, of Wanted written by Mark Millar with art by J. G. Jones and Paul Mounts. Instead of the usual rigmarole that I usually insert at this point, I guess I'm just going to quote a little (careful this stuff is rated R):

This is my best friend having sex with my girlfriend over an Ikea table I picked up for a really good price.

This is me meeting him for dinner two days later and pretending not to know about it as we enjoy some really nice Korean food together.

This is the office where I work as an assistant to the associate editor on Hypothyroidism Today, the third-biggest auto-immune periodical on the Eastern seaboard.

This is me taking shit from my African-American boss. As you can see, I'm smiling as she insults me but it's only because I'm embarrassed by the situation and more than a little afraid of the scary fucking bitch.

This is the sesame-crusted salmon over sourdough with mustard greens and wasabi mayonnaise I like to have for lunch just to prove I'm different from the herd.

Most weekdays, these semi-literate cholo fucks meet me off the bus and on the walk behind me hurling insults about my baggies or my old-skool pumas.

Most weeknights, I tell my girlfriend I'm finishing up some work, but spend a couple of hours browsing the net for new stress-related diseases I think I might have.

I'm not a bad person or anything. I'm just an ordinary guy in a bad situation. Doesn't everyone hate neighbors who exhibit a relentless cheery disposition? "Cheer up, Wesley. It might never happen, kiddo."

My name is Wesley Gibson and my dad walked out on my mom when I was eighteen weeks old.

Did he look into my baby-blues and realize that he'd just fathered one of the most insignificant assholes of the 21st century?

From here on things only get much much better. This is closest a comic book has ever come to Kill Bill. In some places this thing is even better.

If we are all going to die anyway, why do we continue to live our lives?

The night’s too quiet
Stretched out alone
I need the whip of thunder
And the winds dark moan
I’m not Abel, I’m just Cain
Open up the heavens
Make it rain

"Make it rain," Real Gone, Tom Waits.

Tom Waits is a bloody genius.

After getting pissed off with what Starbucks (and all the other coffee shops in the US) try to pass off as chai, I decided to make some real chai at work.

How to make chai in a chai-challenged office:
(i.e. with a mug and a microwave)

What:

• Tea-bags (Black tea only, try Brooke Bond Red Label or Brooke Bond Taj Mahal available at your neighborhood Indian store. If you can't get those, try Twinings English Breakfast)
• Sugar
• Water
• Milk (Vitamin D is the best, you can make do with 1% or 2%.)

How:

• Fill half your average coffee mug with water. (Yes, half.)
• Add two teaspoons of sugar (You can add more or less depending upon your nationality.)
• Add the tea-bag (The stapler pin hasn't sparked in my microwave. It could in yours. This is not my problem or responsibility.)
• Microwave on high for 45 seconds. The water will boil. The resultant brew will be very dark and very aromatic.
• Let the tea-bag steep for about 45 - 60 seconds more.
• Add enough milk to fill slightly less than three quarters the mug and stir. (Yes, three quarters. Only barbarians drink a mug full of tea. The only reason I even use a mug is because I don't have a tea-cup at work and mugs are easier to handle with my huge hands.) Update: Slightly less milk than that even. You'll know it's right when the taste of milk does not overpower the tea. I wish I could say what color, but browns are hard to do on the web.
  
• Microwave for 15 more seconds.
• Chai is ready. Be careful, it will be very very hot! (Serves one.)

Things to notice:

• Notice how I haven't added any extra spices to the chai. This is basic chai as served and enjoyed by millions (billions?) of Indians everyday.
• You could try adding some cardamom during brewing. Very little, very very little. What most Indians actually add are the skins of some shelled green cardamom pods. Of course, only wimps do this sort of thing. Real men only drink real chai, not some wimpy brew containing strange spices. You want strange spices, go eat some curry.
• As you drink it, notice how those taste buds wake up from the coma that your daily coffee has put them in. Notice how your nose remembers that it's alive and starts sending signals to your brain again.
• Drinking tea regularly will dramatically improve your sex life. (Why else would India and China, the largest tea consumers, also have the largest populations?)

Book tagged by Saket.

Total number of books I own: About a 100 in the US. Many many more in India.

Last book I bought: The Batman Chronicles - Vol. 1, by Bob Kane, Bill Finger et. al. This basically reprints the 1938 comic strip introducing the Batman. But this was more of a fanboy purchase. The real last purchase has been the three volumes of Animal Man, Animal Man, Origin of the species and Deus Ex Machina, by Grant Morrison, Chas Truog and Brian Bolland.

Last book I read: The Filth, by Grant Morrison and Chris Weston.

Currently reading: Trying to read The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.

Five favorites:

1. Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie: "All children, except one, grow up." How could you not love this book? It had everything, you could fly, you could go to Neverland ("Second to the right, and straight on till morning."), and fight pirates. Hook, Tick tick tick tick!, Tinker Bell, Tiger Lily, the never bird, I could go on.

2. The Sandman Series by Neil Gaiman and various artists: This is actually ten volumes (14 if you count the two newer ones and the two Death volumes) but it's one long story so I count it as one book. This is probably the best long story around, having equal parts fantasy, horror, science fiction and art. It's also the best introduction to graphic novels for beginners to the medium. Recommended without reservations. , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

3. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand: I guess this was my first introduction to capitalism, which you didn't really understand growing up in the '80s in India.

4. Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: Again, this is one long story and counts in my mind as one book. I read these when I was really really young at my father's recommendation. I identified with Tom Sawyer. The faking of illnesses, the importance of your "stuff" (locks with no keys, pieces of film, magnifying glasses etc.), that first crush on Becky Thatcher, I could go on. You should read these, and more importantly have your kids read them too.

5. I guess it's hard to choose a fifth book because there are so many books that I liked enough to put in the this slot. I guess I'm going to put them all. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Batman: Year One by Frank Miller and Dave Mazzuchelli, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, The Complete Far Side by Gary Larson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, Candideby Voltaire, everything by William Shakespeare, I'm sorry but I'm going to stop abruptly because I don't see any end in sight to this list.

Who do I tag? sprechen obviously. And also /<0USIK. And also Jean Valjean (A brand new blogger! Let's all welcome Monsieur Valjean folks!) Damn, I wish more of my friends would blog!!!

And so it is
Just like you said it should be
We'll both forget the breeze
Most of the time

"The Blower's Daughter"
Damien Rice

Clementine: This is it, Joel. It's going to be gone soon.
Joel: I know.
Clementine: What do we do?
Joel: Enjoy it.

Friday night. Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Imsomnia. The Crystal Method. Tweekend. Orkut surfing. halftoneimg. flickr album. Café del Mar. Conan reruns. Sennheiser HD 470. Straight Ahead. Silence when the playlist is over. Nitin Sawhney. foobar2000. Replaygain. Migration.

If I'm lucky, Grant Morrison tomorrow.

Sea spray. I touched, tasted and smelt it over this weekend. Needless to say, I'm gonna be high for a while.

Also met someone who gave up meat voluntarily in seventh grade. Got me thinking. How? How is that possible? How could she decide and then stick with it? When she was what, twelve? I still have trouble waking up when the alarm rings every morning. How can you be that determined?

Also met an old friend. Who's still the same. More or less. Changed as much as I have.

Met old acquaintances. Another old friend sent me a hi. I said hi too.

Did the stupid-ass things that we would do as students. Except that we aren't students anymore. But doing stupid-ass things never goes out of fashion.

Realized that I have finally mastered the art of sleeping on long flights in seats with limited leg room.

Madison is warm as hell and I love it. Dandelion clocks are flying all over the place. Sleep with the windows open. Someone send me a lover.

Sea spray. I touched, tasted and smelt it over this weekend. And saw wild orcas frolicking in the Pacific Ocean. Needless to say, I'm gonna be high for a while.

About two weeks ago, I experienced the literary equivalent of suddenly noticing the rather large African elephant that's part of the bathroom decor. I realized that I had never actually read "V for Vendetta" by Alan Moore.

The book arrived in a few days and like most other Alan Moore books was a gripping but difficult read.

Instead of spoilers I'll just quote.

I don't know who you are. Please believe. There is no way I can convince you that this is not one of their tricks. But I don't care. I am me, and I don't know who you are, but I love you.

I'm sure you'll want to read the rest of Valerie's letter.

Mondays: Designed by mankind to torture all joy and happiness out of me, they work very well. I hate Mondays. I hate Monday mornings (hungover, sleepy etc.), I hate Monday afternoons (sleepy), I hate Monday evenings (the fact that the week has four days left sinks in) and I hate Monday nights (keep thinking about Saturday night).

Tuesdays: Tuesdays are a wee bit better. But mostly I hate them too. My bad mood from Monday hasn't disappeared and all the work procrastinated on Monday has come back to bite my ass. Time to procrastinate some more!

Wednesdays: The first rays of hope in the week come on Wednesdays. Early Wednesday morning, I wake up and I think, "Half the week is over, half the week is over!". Wednesdays keep me alive.

Thursdays: Ironically they are worse then Wednesdays. Every Thursday I come to the sad conclusion that the weekend isn't here yet. But I do feel better as the day progresses.

Fridays: The weekend starts in my mind as soon as I wake up. My mind starts the complex procedure of shutting itself off. A complete system shutdown has happened by the time I have my first coffee. Luckily my body has trained itself to pretend to work so my coworkers don't notice.

Saturdays: Saturdays are holy. The day starts at lunchtime when I wake up. After a visit to the twin Churches (those would be the comicbook shop and the library), my legs go on vacation after parking me in front of the TV. As I watch my mind atrophy, I smile comes to my face.

Sundays: Sundays are spent pretty much the same as Saturdays. Except Sunday nights which are spent blocking out the looming Monday.

Zooey!



Go watch The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy!

Listen to Nick Drake. Listen to Five Leaves Left. Listen to Bryter Layter. Listen to Pink Moon. Listen to Time Of No Reply. Listen to Made To Love Magic. Be careful not to hurt yourself.

From the how-ignore-a-Microsoft-solution-and-diss-them-anyway department.

Boingboing reports how to prevent data loss from a stolen laptop. While they mention moving to a Mac and using a PGPDisk or using FileVault (which is broken), they seem to conveniently forget that Windows 2000 and XP Professional ship with the Encrypting File System, made specifically for this purpose.

Yeah, I'd really love buying a $2000+ Apple laptop and go through the pains of moving all my data to it, to use a feature my current operating system already has.

I also love this quote

2. Seriously, about the Mac thing. Police organizations are far more proficient with Windows.

Yeah, we think security through obscurity is very very bad thing. Unless of course, we can use it as a reason to get people to switch to a Mac.

Round and about, inside the leper's skin,
Do run the warriors, fighting from within.
No questions are asked, no answers are needed,
There is no plan, they fight unheeded.

Someday, somehow, the leper shall wake,
And ask his masters about yonder snake.
They will not answer, they will not reply,
For they know, that to answer is to die.

Falling asleep again, the leper shall dream,
About the snake and the hiss and the scream.
The leper will sleep until he wakes again,
More questions, no answers, no rain.

The story continues, no lessons are learned,
Again the leper and treasure unearned,
The snake and the dream and no replies,
This is the end, the truth sometimes dies.


Reply -Hob Gadling, April 15, 2005

Have you ever pondered Leonardo Da Vinci and how none of us can ever be like him? He was a master painter, anatomist, physiologist, inventor and engineer. He painted the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, he invented a flying machine, he thought up the first robot, the first tank, the first machine guns, and this could go on.

I write programs that teach computers how to see. But I'd like to also be an artist, a musician, a singer, a doctor, a writer and a millionaire. But I there's no damn way I can do that many things professionally. Sure, I could probably buy some papers and ink or a Graphire and draw, or buy some canvas and paint, or just start hammering out my great novel, and maybe even get some multitrack software and write and record some songs. ("Doctor" is not a possibility even when I'm fantasizing) But I don't have the time to do any of this. Regular readers will know I don't even seem to have enough time to update this blog.

A cynical friend of mine introduced me to the cliche "Life is a bitch and then you die." And scrawled on this pillar, by some homeless guy, near where I used to live, at Kala Ghoda, were the words "I know I'm going to Heaven because I've lived my life in Hell." Actually life isn't that bad, but it's stressful enough for me to want to spend most of my free weekends soaking into TV, movies, music and books. I often used to think that I lacked ambition, but now I realize that I'm too ambitious for this era. There are too many things I want to do and the world won't let me. So I don't bother and if this world misses out on my genius, it's not my problem.

If the earth was destroyed to make way for an intergalactic hyperspace bypass and a spaceship whisked you away at the last minute, making you the only human being alive, which songs would you be able to sing to yourself, remembering all the lyrics (no snatched stanzas)?

My list:

• One - U2
• In My Life - The Beatles
• Girl - The Beatles

What's yours?

javascript:document.write("<frameset cols = \"25%, *, 25%\"> <frame frameborder=0 style=\"background-color:#000000\" /> <frame frameborder=0 marginwidth=40 src=\"" + location.href + "\" /> <frame frameborder=0 style=\"background-color:#000000\" /> </frameset>")

Updated code:
javascript:document.write("<frameset cols = \"22%, *, 22%\"> <frame frameborder=0 name=b /> <frame frameborder=0 marginwidth=40 name=a /> <frame frameborder=0 name=c /> </frameset>"); a.location.href=location.href;b.document.write("<body bgcolor=\"black\"> </body>");c.document.write("<body bgcolor=\"black\"> </body>");

That's the code I wrote for a bookmarklet that I call 'Frameit'. You can copy the above code to a bookmark in Firefox, (get rid of the newlines of course). Clicking on it encapsulates the current page in a frame surrounded to the left and right by black frames. The frames are resizable. For a lot of pages, this improves the readability as the number of words per line is reduced and the background is black and uncluttered. It's great for reading books and documentation in kiosk (F11) mode.

Known issues:

• Does not work with Internet Explorer (and I would really want it to because you cannot view HTML Help files in Firefox.) Updated code to make it work on Internet Explorer and Firefox.
  
• Does not work on certain sites like Wikipedia, which seem to explicitly disallow framing.

Any Javascript guru's know how to fix these issues?

In the finest traditions of Douglas Adams and Dave Barry, Mukul Sharma, a Mid-Day columnist presents How would Reader’s Digest present Red Riding Hood as a ‘Drama in real life’?

What do you see when you look around you? Do you see the slow decline of a dying civilization, or do you see a glorious future for me and you and our children? This is not rhetoric. This is a question.

I have no real answers yet. In technological terms we are certainly better off than our fathers and mothers and our children will certainly be better off than us. We are in the midst of watching technology change around us, but the change is so gradual that we take most of it for granted. Looking back, the first computer I used was a BBC Micro, but I took the Internet for granted. My first phone was a stately old rotary phone issued by MTNL, but I took mobile phones for granted. Some things did jolt me a little. Dolly the sheep was cloned and I do remember thinking quite a bit about that. But on the whole it's not so hard to accept. Perhaps it's because I am an engineer, and I do understand science a bit more than the next person. But then again, I know enough non-engineers who also took all these things for granted, so perhaps it's just my generation. We were born into science.

I do worry sometimes that science will not be able to create enough to sustain us. None of us really take the time to accept the fact that we are creating too many children, and this planet may not be able to produce enough food for all of us. Nor will the planet's weather and soil systems be able recover from the pollutants we introduce. Perhaps science will be able to help. Perhaps. Call me when someone can replicate photosynthesis in a tube. When we can produce carbohydrates in a factory economically without using plants, using a energy source other than sunlight.

It is obvious though. Moore's Law is reaching it's limits and the next generation of life changing inventions will probably not involve computers and electronics.

Where civilization scares me a lot, is when we start discussing abstracts. Culture, art, theology, philosophy. Why can't I name a single artist, poet, or philosopher from my generation? What happened to us? Was it the television? Was it the Internet? (Was it [shudder] blogging?) This worries me because there should be something lasting that I should be able to recall when I am old. What will I remember when I am old and senile? The Simpsons? Star Wars? Grant Morrison? Or will my fate be worse and will tunes by Britney Spears and Ashlee Simpson stick in my head, and decide not to leave, hanging in there like some kind of memetic viruses? Why can't I name a single masterpiece painted by someone I can call a peer?

If a evangelist is reading this he (or she) will tell me that I will find the answers in God (or gods). I will, of course, tell him (or her) to go shove it, because my religion and beliefs are personal matter for me and not something I care to discuss with anybody except my intellectual peers. And most of my intellectual peers are jaded and cynical atheists.

Can you feel this void? You may not most of the time. We lead busy lives; there are creature comforts, minor irritations and career paths to worry about. But you will, on those cold nights when you can't sleep, there's nothing on the telly, there's no one to chat with and there's nothing you can do but think. Why am I here? Why are you here? Should we just not bother with answers and enjoy the ride? It sounds like a good plan, but I pray to God I don't have to follow it.

I have no answers. Not yet anyway. I just hope I do have some before my time comes.

Got up. Got out of bed. Dragged a comb across my head. Then, for the first time in months, I opened the windows and walked out in the balcony.

It was warm today. Heavenly warm. Warm enough to give up the TV and the 'net. Warm enough to walk down to State Street. Warm enough to talk to strangers. Warm enough to drink cold beer walking on the frozen lake. It was warm today.

Tomorrow will be cold, so says the weatherman. Rain mixed with snow. Slippery roads and slow driving. But I don't care, it was warm today.

Right about now, people are going to start calling up, telling me that I should probably consider moving out of Madison, WI, to someplace like California, or Florida, or the Congo. Yeah, I probably should, but I'll do that next winter now. Summer is coming to Madison, and it's gorgeous. Summer, beer and bratwurst at the Union, sunsets at 9 pm, occasional rain, karaoke bar, and girls, girls, girls!

All I need to do now is wait. Summer is coming.

(My apologies to Paul and John.)

www.badindiangirl.com (link via Sepia Mutiny)

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! This made my day!

How many Rajus, Payals, Johnnies, Pervert Uncles and Nosy Aunties do you know??

Ok, something's up with Blogger. My posts after October's Crazy Template Problem don't seem to register with Blogger. (Look at my profile.) I'm guessing I broke something on that day. How to fix it? No idea.

Update: It seems to be a known Blogger issue. Hopefully they'll fix it soon.

So a while back (a couple of hours actually), I complained I have nothing to write about. Well, a quick trip over to comicboards seems to have fixed that. Someone on the JLA message board asked for advice on reading material, and everyone knows how much I love giving advice. Of course, for readers here, this is unsolicited advice, but then again, everyone knows how much I love giving unsolicited advice.

(Hillary Swank is so damn hot!!! I'm watching Saturday Night Live as I'm writing this and she is so damn hot!! Is she seeing anyone, I wonder? )

(I'm also beginning to freak out about the sudden downturn in my grammer and punctuation skills. I used to be very good at it, but now... Actually, I used to be good at a lot of things, but now... )

Among the best comics I'm currently reading or have recently finished are:

We3: Written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Frank Quitely, this is the scary, violent, gut and heart wrenching story about a dog, a cat and a rabbit. Make that a dog, a cat and a rabbit fitted with armor designed to kill and maim, as part of an army experiment. Something goes wrong and they have to be "decommisioned". They make a run for it.

This is a three issue mini-series, and the final issue was out a couple of weeks ago. You'll need to enter a real comic shop to get your hands on it. (Sorry, but you'll have to do that, maybe dark glasses and wig if you're nervous.) I'm not sure if DC Vertigo is planning a trade, but I think they need to. Reading this series will make you irresistible to the opposite sex. (Or the same sex if you're gay.)

Supreme Power: Written by Strackinsky and drawn by Gary "the motherf*{[!^g man" Frank. What would happen if a rocket containing an infant Superman really crashed down in Kansas? The government would forcefully take him away from the Kent's, that's what. Then, they would raise him in seclusion to be a model American citizen, use him as a secret weapon to win the Cold War, reveal his existence when necessary and finally try to kill him when they realize that they are beginning to lose their control over him.

The first twelve issues have been collected as trade paperbacks, and are available on Amazon. And new issues are out every month. (Yes, I've blogged about this series before, but I'm happy to report that the quality been consistently good all the time.)

Y - The Last Man: Written by Brian K. Vaughn and drawn by Pia Guerra and Jr. Jose Marzan. One summer day, everything alive carrying a Y-chromosome haemorrhages and dies. Escape artist Yorick Brown and his pet monkey Ampersand are the only males to survive. Sounds like a good thing for Yorick? Not if you consider that in an women-only world, some want to study him and find out why he lived, others want to make him a stud animal to breed and finally a bunch just wants to kill him because he is the final sign alive of a male-dominated society. All Yorick wants to do is to go to Australia and meet his girlfriend. Sounds interesting? It is. And there are four or five trades available on Amazon already. And the story is still on, growing stranger each month.

Miracleman: Written by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, drawn by Gary Leach, Alan Davis, Rick Veitch, Chuck Austen, John Totleben and Mark Buckingham. Astute readers of comics (and this blog perhaps) will quickly realize that I seem to have listed Allah, Brahma, God, Shiva, Vishnu, etc. in the credits. Is this series as good as it should be? It's better.

This is the series which started the whole superhero revisionist movement, a new look at superheroes, not just brawny men (and curvaceous women) in tights, but modern days gods, capable of changing the world, destroying it and creating it. And the men and women around them who worship them (temples and all), hate them, try to kill them and beg for miracles. How would you feel if you met who could fly? Someone who could block out the sun? Someone who was so perfect that you wanted them for yourself but were forced to share with the whole world?

This series is unfinished, and currently caught up a pretty nasty legal battle. Trade paperbacks are not available. If you want to read it, find it on Ebay, or at your local comic shop. Or the Internet. (Actually Wizard magazine says a trade could be out soon. Cross your fingers.)

(This was my first offline post. Flaky net connections suck.)

Found. Some more desi photoblogs.

Chennaiblog
3D Cafe
Tasveer
Phantasmagoria

And what can I say about the loss of words on this blog. Apart from the fact that the last three weeks have been mighty busy, there is also the fact that nothing has happened.

Every day you wake up, go to work and come back home. I wish there was something more interesting I could be doing, but I'm not. (A vacation would be nice.) The worst part of having nothing to write about is that the little you do is terrible. The words don't come easy and they are as terrible to read as they were to write. So I'll stop.

Back home!

Just a quick update in this busy busy week.

Ballad is fantastic horror comic by Deadmouse, available online. Other comics by Deadmouse are also pretty fantastic. (Keep in mind these are horror comics.)

Also online is Hellblazer #141 by Warren Ellis and Phil Jiminez. This issue was never published.

So press that F11 key for fullscreen browsing and enjoy.

As the alt-text says, this means that I am nerdier than 87% of humanity. (High-Nerd. Somehow, I like the sound of that.)

Radio Paradise is finally available as a AACPlus stream. This means that even a dial-up user should (hopefully) be able to listen to high quality (near CD quality!) streaming music. You will need the latest version of Winamp to listen to this stream. Dragging and dropping the URL into the Winamp playlist should be enough to get things going.

Radio paradise is one of the best internet radio stations out there and introduced me to music like Air, Lemon Jelly, Nick Drake and the Thievery Corporation. And many other AACPlus streams are available at Tuner2.

And in honour of my successfully driving home in the snow, without doing something stupid like dying, I shall compose, quite extemporaneously a poem.

Snow, snow, ice, ice.
Snow, snow, ice, ice.

The car skids. Your breath waits.
You push down hard on the antilock brakes.
And pray to the engineers in Toyota who designed them.
And God.

And the car halts. And you drive carefully from there on.

And you don't die. And you don't die. Praise the Lord!

Yeah, that sucked, but who cares! I'm alive, alive I tell you!!

Philly radio DJ abuses an Indian call center worker on air.
(Full transcript via Return of the Reluctant)

Yeah, stuff like this make me realize I'm definitely not in Mumbai anymore.

In case someone wants to see a good (read: not offensively racist and sexist) parody about Indian outsourcing, check out Conan O'Brian's fantastic skit here. (Thanks to turbanhead.)

More desi photoblogs.

Diagonal Yesterdays
If mud is dirt plus water, what is clay?
Jassi's Photo Blog
PixelDreams
www.shootinginthedark.com
Visual Ramblings

Good photography. (Even the wedding blog!)

Fuck Hotmail! Seriously, fuck them!

Didn't sign in to one of my older accounts for a while, and they delete all my old emails (including old ones I had saved 'cause they were important.) Fuck them. World's richest damn company, and still stingy as hell with free email accounts. Fucking assholes. Sneaky bastards changed the sign-on once a month policy to a sign-on every 10 days policy. How the fuck am I supposed to know if I sign on only once a month?

Fuck them.

A couple of things.

I saw Swades by Ashutosh Gowariker. Preachy crap but good shots of inside NASA and halfway decent music. (Is it just me or does anybody else also read the title so that it rhymes with 'spades'?)

I taught three more innocent people the fine art of teen patti.

I realized how hard it is to raise a kid. And yeah, the kid was the best behaved little one year old I had seen in ages.

I got me a nasty sore throat again.

I met a lot of old friends and partied into the new year.

I realized that food is an extremely important driving force in my life.

Happy New Year everyone!

Five indispensable Firefox tips to get the most out of tabbed browsing,

• Go to Tools, Options, Advanced, Tabbed Browsing -> Uncheck "Hide the tab bar when only one website is open"


• Go to Tools, Options, Advanced, Tabbed Browsing -> Uncheck "Select new tabs opened from links"


• Double click on the tab bar -> Open a new blank tab


• Middle click on an open tab -> Close tab


• Middle click on any link -> Open link in new tab in background

Middle click = click on scroll wheel if you have one instead of an middle mouse button.

If you don't have a scroll mouse, I suggest you get one. If you can't, then Ctrl-clicking does the same thing as middle clicking.

These seem like simple tips but they aren't very prominent in the documentation.

Settling in to another cold cold winter. A gray sky means warmth. A bright sunny sky means bone chilling cold. Snow means slippery roads and sun after snow means really slippery roads. Barren trees except for the evergreens, which seem to turn a darker shade.

I'm typing this from the sixth planet of the Hoth system.

I installed GNU Emacs on my laptop the other day and I'm beginning to understand like what adulterers feel like. (This is just a temporary experiment gVim honey, I promise, just for the short duration that I feel like learning Lisp, it'll pass.)

Now initially, I had installed both GNU Emacs and XEmacs but I quickly uninstalled XEmacs. Now why would I do? Especially considering that XEmacs:

• Installed easily and more cleanly on Windows


• Seemed to have a much more polished UI with a functional toolbar and a tab bar for open buffers


• Seemed to have a better menu design etc. etc.

Well, XEmacs took a while to start up, even on my AMD Athlon XP, with 512Mb RAM. That was enough to uninstall it. I mean, the only editor that's allowed to take that long to load up is Microsoft Word. Besides why would I install a polished Open Source product and rid myself of all the pleasure of tweaking around with a crappy one?

Anyway, now I can begin my nice little rant about how crappy GNU Emacs is compared to gVim and how to tweak it to make it better.

Let's begin with how GNU Emacs doesn't seem to understand anything at all about setting up a profile in the correct directory on Windows. (Actually Vim doesn't setup a profile in the correct directory by default too, but at least it will read off a profile in %USERPROFILE%.) Note to all Open Source developers: Windows doesn't ship with a %HOME% variable. Your options are %USERPROFILE% or %APPDATA%. %USERPROFILE% will be a easily accessible path, while %APPDATA% is typically a hidden folder. After running addpm.exe, a user has to manually add a key called HOME with his path in it, inside HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\Emacs.

Let's move on to changing the default font. I tend to use Bitstream Vera Sans Mono as my default monospace font. So it's time to manually create a _emacs file in %USERPROFILE% and add the following lines to it.

;;; Set various font options for Win32

(setq w32-enable-italics t)

(set-default-font "-*-Bitstream Vera Sans 

Mono-normal-r-normal-normal-12-90-96-96-c-*-iso8859-1")

After doing that and restarting Emacs, you realize that Emacs doesn't seem to be using Windows XP ClearType rendering. (ClearType is sub-pixel font rendering for laptops and LCD displays which really improves the clarity of type on screen.) A quick Google reveals that the ClearType rendering mode on Emacs is disabled thanks to political issues with Microsoft i.e. due to unclear documentation from Microsoft. (Does anybody else except me see the irony in this?). gVim seems to have no problems using ClearType.

Now to install some keyboard shortcuts which are familiar to anyone who started on Win32. (Read: Mostly everyone). (These come preinstalled in gVim.) Stuff I needed to change was the familiar C-X, C-C and C-V for cut, copy and paste. C-Tab for next buffer, C-S-Tab for previous buffer and C-f4 for close current buffer. To achieve the clipboard stuff, you need to install the CUA mode for Emacs (http://www.cua.dk). I also needed to set tab length = 4 and turn on syntax highlighting by default. Add the following lines to _emacs to achieve the all of this.

;;; Enable CUA mode

(require 'cua)

(CUA-mode t)



;;; Set some Win32 keybindings

(global-set-key [C-f4] 'kill-this-buffer)

(global-set-key [C-tab] 'bs-cycle-next)

(global-set-key [C-S-tab] 'bs-cycle-previous)



;;; Set tabs to display as 4 characters

(setq default-tab-width 4);



;;; Start global lazy font lock mode

(toggle-global-lazy-font-lock-mode)

We're not out of the woods yet though. I still haven't figured out how to install A-f4 to replace C-X C-C. Or rather I haven't figured out how to have multiple key-bindings for one command in Emacs.

And after 3 days of Emacs, RSI seems like a real threat now. And no, I don't feel like replacing caps-lock with ctrl globally on Windows. I would rather install C-` as a clone for C-X. Also, how do you get Emacs to remember the directory the last buffer was opened from? Anybody know how to do that? (No, I haven't googled for this, yes, I might in the future.)

And yes, my sincerest apologies to anyone who was offended by the sheer geekiness of this post. (Even more apologies for all the trolling, it's cold here and I've been cooped up at home.) To avoid further geeky posts like this, send hot babes to:
<ADDRESS CENSORED>
Madison, WI

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.

More posts to follow. Hopefully.

Two more desi photoblogs courtesy of Photoblogs.org.

Photographs by Pranav

Point and Shoot

(Pranav your website is sort of hard to navigate what with the scroller never settling down under the mouse. Also its constant motion distracts attention from the pictures. I think a simpler layout would help lots)

#include <stdio.h>



int main() {

    while(1) {

        printf("I am still alive 

Ah! Who cares about stupid code type posts made just to infuriate readers who don't like tech type posts. Yeah, I'm still here, still fighting the good fight, still defeating dragons by day and gryphons by night, still creating sublime poetry that enchants cities, still rocking the world in concert, still sweeping the Academy Awards, still trucking, still the glorious defender of truth, justice and comic books, still too bloody sleep deprived surviving on a stiff dose of coffee and adrenalin.

I just read Amit's excellent post on Firefox link customization using userContent.css and decided to hack around a bit more. What I produced was something that I had always wanted Firefox to do:

• Now if I hover over a link which will open a new window, I see a red * before it.


• If I hover over a link which has another URL embedded inside, I see a red ~ before it.


• If I hover over an email link (one which will open your default email program), I see a red @ before it, and


• If I hover over a javascript link, I see a red ! before it.

This is extremely useful, especially to a heavy user of tabbed browsing like me.

Here is the code:

*[target*="_blank"]:hover:before {

  content: "*";

  color: red;

}



*[href*="=http"]:hover:before {

  content: "~"; /*content: "\0021b7";*/

  color: red;

}



*[href^="mailto:"]:hover:before {

  content: "@";	/*content: "\002709";*/

  color: red;

}



*[href^="javascript:"]:hover:before {

  content: "!"; /*content: "\002707";*/

  color: red;

}

Cut and paste this into your userContent.css file and enjoy! Any further suggestions you have are welcome. And thanks again to Amit for an excellent tweak!

Update: Just some code fixes suggested by Amit.

'ello, what's all this then?

Like every other blog in the world that's reporting this ...

The Mozilla Foundation released Firefox 1.0 today.

To those who haven't heard of it before, Firefox is a free alternative to Internet Explorer. It has built-in popup blocking, an integrated search bar for searching with one click, and tabbed browsing which let's you view multiple windows in one browser window. As of today, more than 8 million people have already downloaded it. You should too!

Twelve, count 'em, twelve desi-flavored photoblogs! (From photoblogs.org)

daily catch

{f u g a c i o u s}

Hacking | Photography | Bird-Watching

itsxjustxanotherxday.com

Murali & Nandini's PhotoBlog

Now Roboding...

t.h.e. | p.a.r.a.l.l.a.x.

§ â † ž 's þ ħ ö † ö b ĺ ö ģ

Shruthi Geographic

ShutterBug - Nilesh

Splashes of Color

Thakkar 's Sizzling photo Blog!

Now all I need is a camera and hosting space and I'll make my own! (Please Santa, send me a camera this Christmas...)

A Sunday afternoon trip to Devil's Lake made me realize how winter is almost upon us.

After a lot of painful hunting, I found and fixed a 1-pixel bug which pushed my precious sidebar all the way to the bottom in Internet Explorer. Stupid stupid IE.

Short little Stacy R. is gone! Hallelujah!

Week after week, she would walk around, with no tangible contribution of any kind, a nasty temper and an even nastier tongue and a lot of dumb luck in the boardroom. She finally got what was a long time coming. Especially after she got Pamela kicked off.

Even better, thanks to the team reshuffling, two of my favorite people, Raj and Jennifer are on the same team and they won!

(Yes I know, I've just sort-of-live-blogged the Apprentice and I need to get a life in a hurry.)

I have to write this before the Apprentice starts so I'll hurry.

This is a rant about three products, and how they interact - Mozilla Firefox, Adobe Acrobat Reader and Microsoft Windows XP. The problem occurs occasionally while viewing a PDF file in a tab. The browser locks up and and decides to take Windows along with it. The only recourse is rebooting.

In a situation like this, it's hard to place blame. Should I curse Mozilla Firefox as this problem never happens when Internet Explorer is working with Acrobat Reader?! Should I blame Adobe Acrobat for creating a plugin that unfortunately takes too long to load up, loading something like 26 (Look in the Acrobat plugins folder) different plugins itself?! Or should I blame Microsoft Windows XP which gets completely crippled when any process locks up and occupies 99% or more processor time, allowing the UI to become so sluggish that it takes more than 35 minutes (I timed this) to simply bring up the Task Manager so I can kill the offending task?!

Frankly I'm frustrated. I don't feel like giving up Firefox because I like tabbed browsing and Sage too much. Adobe Acrobat is a necessary evil. And Microsoft Windows has developed such a reputation of crashing and freezing that it seems futile to even begin to rant about how a user should always be able to easily kill a process.

Perhaps Robert or Ben have any suggestions or soothing words.

I'm halfway into the Apprentice now and Andy just came up with the Polaroid photo idea.

Malformed HTML and other booboos

http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/378632/2004-10-15/2004-10-21/0

That is a Bugtraq entry by Michal Zalewski pointing to a tool which creates tiny fragments of malformed HTML (Careful with that link, it may crash your browser). These fragments seem to cause crashes and unresponsiveness in all browsers except Internet Explorer. I tried some examples out with Mozilla Firefox 1.0PR and sure enough there were crashes.

People may say, (typically the Open Source apologist, Slashdot crowd) that it's just crashes and it's not a big deal. It is a big deal. If you know input to make a program crash then it's turned into a denial-of-service attack. It would be interesting to see how many bugs are reported in the Mozilla buglist as a result of this tool, and how quickly they get fixed. My guess (and hope) is that the Mozilla developers will work really hard to fix these bugs quickly to maintain the momentum that Firefox has gained.

This makes for an interesting observation. Apparently IE's HTML rendering engine is much more robust than that of its competitors. Why is IE so maligned for security concerns then? It's because of IE's solid integration with Windows and a poor UI for installing and uninstalling ActiveX controls. Any vulnerability in IE can quickly become a vulnerability in Windows (and most vulnerabilities for IE do try to compromise the users local machine). And most users blindly install ActiveX controls without checking where they come from.

To Microsoft's credit, the ActiveX control UI problem is mostly fixed with WindowsXP Service Pack 2. And Service Pack 2 has also got a built in popup-blocker. All Microsoft needs to do now is to implement a good and highly customizable UI for tabbed browsing and I'll be (maybe) willing to leave Firefox. Keep in mind also however that popup-blocking and ActiveX UI improvements in IE are only available for WindowsXP. If you use Windows 2000 then you are probably better off with Mozilla Firefox 1.0PR.

Hob Gadling's Handy Bollywood Guide

What is Bollywood?
Bollywood is the Bombay film industry. It's the word you get when you mash-up Bombay and Hollywood.

What does "dishoom" mean?
"Dishoom" is sound you hear when a punch lands in a Hindi movie. Kind of like "Pow" or "Biff" but with a little more "Dishoom"!

Who is Amitabh Bachchan?
Amitabh Bachchan is Bollywood's most famous actor. He was the first Bollywood hero to break the sappy romantic loverboy mold that all actor's before him had fallen into. He was the angry young man. Better biographies can be found here and here.

Sholay?
Sholay, starring Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Sanjeev Kumar, Jaya Bhaduri and Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh, opened in India in 1975, and went on to become one of the biggest hits in the Indian film industry, running for five consecutive years at Bombay's Minerva theatre. A pastiche combining comboy Westerns, buddy flicks, revenge dramas, love stories and sheer Indian song-and-dance, it seeped into the collective psyche of India. Every kid in India can glibly quote from it and it's been parodied, copied and analyzed to death by every comic, hack and intellectual worth his salt. You should watch it. But it will lose some flavor in translation.

Got boingboing'ed about the hilarious Bollywood US Presidential election satire! Thanks to RT sending me the Dishoom link via email.

    Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
    We will grieve not, rather find
    Strength in what remains behind;
    In the primal sympathy
    Which having been must ever be;

—Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood, William Wordsworth.



Relevant poetry in the oddest places.

So what does a single guy with a TV do on a cold cold weekend? He watches so much TV that by the time it's Sunday evening his eyes hurt.

And then, when he's sick of the television, he moves to his computer and blogs.

Some thoughts about friends. Some are boring. Some suck. Some are nice and some care. Some you won't hear from for ages, but when you do it's like they never left. Some you won't hear from. Some stop being friends anymore. Some you forget. Some you'd like to forget.

Those pithy messages were brought to you by bored-single-guy productions. To avoid getting assailed by other such messages in the future, please suggest convenient methods to occupy an idle mind.

September has barely ended and we already have temperatures below freezing. Suddenly the idea of spending a life over here seems slightly tedious. California, how I long for thee.

In other news, the car hunt still progresses at a steady pace.

In other news, a shipment of 4 CD's from BMG music seem to have disappeared in the mail. I am extremely depressed by this. I do hope that I get them somehow.

In other news, 3 CD's arrive from Amazon, but among them is a Enhanced CD version of Mirror Conspiracy by Thievery Corporation. It is returned. I would rather have a plain vanilla CD which works on all my CD players and computers rather than some crappy version of copy protection which damages audio quality.

In other news, I have stopped liking serious and critically acclaimed movies. I could not go past 30 minutes with Quiz Show but watched Spawn and Kiss of the Dragon without a break.

In other news, tomorrow is laundry day and take-out-trash day.

In other news, Portabella mushrooms taste great when cubed and sauteed with onions, garlic, tomatoes and chilly powder. Don't forget the salt.

In other news, I should probably really go for a Badgers game, instead of simply having the brats down the street.

In other news, calling cards suck. I wish there was a way to call long distance with a guaranteed quality of service.

In other news, yes, I am a Apprentice junkie. Also, a Conan junkie, but I guess you already knew that.

In other news, the task of making a copy of all the CD's I own is taking too much time. It will be done though. No point in playing the originals. They are better preserved in their cases. Plus, I can apply Wavegain to the copies and not worry about fiddling with the volume knob.

In other news, Ron Garney's art on the JLA is a breath of much needed fresh air. Here's hoping he stays on for a while.

In other news, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely strike again with WE3. 1 know 0.

In other news, Supreme Power seems to be delayed, and quite frankly it's frustrating me to no end. This is the only comic on the market that I can remember the story to without having to re-read. Yes, it's that good. And frankly it's a pity that someone like J. M. Straczynski is wasted on something as confining as Spiderman.

In other news, I first-posted on Slashdot.

In other news, it's still too cold. Blogging does not generate too much heat.

Good night.

Need beer mugs.

Added althouse and pictoria, two excellent photoblogs to the sidebar.

Disclaimer: althouse has strong Republican views.

So, Winamp now supports aacPlus. The aacPlus format (also known as HE-AAC for High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding) makes music compressed at 48kbps sound like an MP3 compressed at 128kbps. The upside of all this is that people with low-bandwidth Internet connections can (finally!) listen to really good quality music online.

Here's what you do:

1. Download and install Winamp 5.05
2. Scoot over to Tuner2
3. Listen! (Click on the shiny "listen now" buttons :))

Highly recommended are SomaFM Groove Salad and Tag's Trance Trip.

(People with high-bandwidth connections do not despair. aacPlus also makes possible 5.1 Surround Sound streaming audio at 160kbps! (Tuner2 has some streams.) All you need is a 5.1 Surround enabled soundcard and speakers and voila! Your gloating rights are back again!)

Firefox 1.0PR was released yesterday. A better web browser than Internet Explorer, it features built-in popup blocking (no annoying popup windows to close), no ActiveX (no spyware hijacking your PC) and tabbed browsing (multiple pages in one window so less clutter).

Now would be a good time to mention that the majority of visitors on this site (67%) use Firefox. It's just a 4.5Mb download, so time for you people to upgrade!

Recommended Music

I own all the albums listed below. I own many others too but these I still listen to.

The Beatles
The idea is, that you buy all their albums. Begin with this one:

Rubber Soul

Pink Floyd
Make sure that you listen to the whole album in one go. No picking and choosing songs. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Dark Side of The Moon

Wish You Were Here

U2
Consistently strong lyrics, Bono's great vocals and Edge's unique guitars on everything except their last album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, which was below par.

Joshua Tree

Rattle And Hum

Achtung Baby

Nirvana
This is one spooky live album. Again, you have to listen to the whole album as one.

MTV Unplugged in New York

Air
Air picked up where Pink Floyd left us. Music to make love by. Moon Safari's an instant masterpiece, Talkie Walkie is a only average.

Moon Safari

Talkie Walkie

Zero 7
The perfect complement to Moon Safari.

Simple Things

Thievery Corporation
More wholesome electronic jazz.

Mirror Conspiracy

Lemon Jelly

lemonjelly.ky

Lost Horizons

Daft Punk

Discovery

Soundtracks / Various artists

Trainspotting

Ah! The perfect slobfest weekend, when you do nothing much but sleep in late, watch crappy (and occasionally nice) movies at home. When lunch consists of French toast and sausages at Mickey's and dinner is takeout from Taco Johns. When you discover good music which you had missed so far (more on that later.) When the guy at the comic shop hasn't one but two JLA issues waiting for you.

When the weather is so nice that you should be out running and jumping and having a barbecue, but you prefer to lounge in your balcony. When an old friend calls you long distance, and then your call is interrupted by another old friend who hasn't been in touch. When you group chat with your buddies at 2:00AM on MSN and all complain about how life has lost its edge. When you have a million chores to do but you don't do any (except laundry 'cause you need fresh underwear!) When you suddenly discover that the touch pad on you laptop has a convenient switch off button, so you don't mistype. When you finally get time to update your damn blog!

Anyway about that music thing. So the band I just discovered is the Velvet Underground (specifically I listened to and immediately ordered The Velvet Underground and Nico.) Anyway, here's a thought, rather that flooding my sidebar with recommendations, I'll just make two separate posts and link to them from the sidebar! My genius has no limits!

I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears

- Venus in Furs, Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground and Nico.

I'm not sure if online petitions work, but I guess something like IMAP access for Gmail is worth a try. Sign it here.

Ah Blogger-toplevel-random-blog-bar, how I love thee!

You have given me a whole new way of wasting precious minutes of my tiny life, reading about other people's tiny lives.

Seriously though, I plan to experiment a bit and see what percent of blogs are political propaganda, what percent are contain the words "ponderings", "musings", "thoughts", "ramblings", "pondermusings" etc. in the description, what percent are Spanish, what percentage suck, what percentage rock, what percentage have so messed up a template that the blog-bar does not show up, what percentage are dead, what percentage are spam blogs and so on until I'm bored and decide to do something else.

Like watch Conan O'Brien on my new TV!

Ah brand-new-24-inch-flat-screen-Toshiba-TV, how I love thee!

You have given me a whole new way of wasting precious minutes of my tiny life, watching other people's tiny lives.

Seriously though, I plan to experiment a bit and see ... Oh. Wait.

A warm summer is all you look forward to here in nowhere-land. And then we have this, record low temperatures for summer.

"I think it's terrible," said Tropics server Nadia Sarkarat, 19, of Waukesha. "This is August. People should be going to the Wisconsin Dells, not walking around in winter coats."

Sarkarat was bundled up in four layers, including a long-sleeved T-shirt and hooded sweat shirt, but she still wished she had brought gloves to fend off the biting winds.

Can somebody up there please send us a few scorchers?

Slick web-app department

Microsoft strikes again with MSN Web Messenger Beta. A full-fledged (almost) version of MSN Messenger using only a browser. No Java and no ActiveX! Yes, you read that right no Java and no ActiveX! It works using Firefox so it's obvious they are using standard W3C technologies. Highly recommended.

<gasps for breath and claws his way towards the land of books>

Finally got new things to read, and began by reading Alias: Book 1 by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos. This is immediately added to my list of must read books. Jessica Jones is an ex-super heroine who has given up super stuff to become a private investigator. Best quote (at least, best quote from what I have read so far):

Lucas will feel guilty about this. He's a decent guy and a buddy and he'll feel bad about this. But that feeling will pass. Because he'll also look back and remember this was the one night that I let him do anything he wanted. And even though he'll know it's wrong he'll smile to himself. He just won't be able to help it.

Then he'll feel bad again. But I can't say that I care, really. I don't care what he feels like. I just want to feel something. It doesn't matter what. Pain. Humility. Anger.

I just want to feel something different.

And while on the topic, I must mention Jeff Smith's Bone. Bone immediately pushed Sandman (by Neil Gaiman and various artists) down to number 2 in my list. (Sorry Neil.) The best way to describe Bone would be Calvin and Hobbes meets The Lord of The Rings but that doesn't really do it enough justice. So, I'll just stick to the word 'magical' and leave the rest to your imagination.

I almost finished reading Bone two weeks ago. 'Almost', because I still haven't read the last graphic novel in the series. However, I hadn't noticed the humongous 1300 page, One Volume Edition on Amazon before. Guess where I'm going to be spending my next paycheck!

Among other things I have with me but haven't read are Cerebus: Volume 1 by Dave Sim and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Reviews will follow soon.

Secunia announced a fairly serious UI spoofing vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla. Essentially an attacker could popup a window with a disabled status bar, menu bar and tool bar and draw his own versions using XUL (XUL is the XML based UI design language that powers Mozilla). Here is a proof of concept, and you have to admit it's pretty scary. Try clicking on the padlock icon in the bottom left corner to see just how scary this is.

Someone on Slashdot posted a quick and dirty fix which is extremely useful. This fix basically ensures that the Menu bar, Status bar and Tool bar are always visible, even on popups. (Frankly, I believe this is good design. I don't see why site designers should be allowed to hide these things. To often some moron site designer decides that I shouldn't be able to close a window, resize a window, or view the status bar. As I user, I should at least have an option to always keep these on if I want to.) Here is the fix:

• Start Firefox and enter about:config in the URL bar


• This should open a special page, the Firefox equivalent of a registry


• In the filter bar on top, type dom.disable and hit enter to filter down to the entries we are interested in modifying


• For the following entries, double click on them one at a time, and change false to true in the ensuing popup:

dom.disable_window_open_feature.close
dom.disable_window_open_feature.directories
dom.disable_window_open_feature.location
dom.disable_window_open_feature.menubar
dom.disable_window_open_feature.minimizable
dom.disable_window_open_feature.personalbar
dom.disable_window_open_feature.resizable
dom.disable_window_open_feature.scrollbars
dom.disable_window_open_feature.titlebar
dom.disable_window_open_feature.toolbar
dom.disable_window_flip
dom.disable_window_move_resize
dom.disable_window_status_change


• The last three entries might already be true if you've visited Tools | Options ... | Web Features | Javascript | Advanced ... and unchecked all but the last check box. (According to me it's a good idea if you do.)
  

After doing this, any attempt to spoof the browser interface will be obvious, and you'll see multiple menubars, multiple statusbars and multiple toolbars.

No fix is available from the Mozilla Foundation yet. However, here is the real bad news. This has been a known bug for 5 years! Yes, that's right 5 years! It was marked as confidential, meaning that the developers knew how bad it was but chose to hide it from everyone anyway. This is the antithesis of Open Source. The reason Open Source software is supposed to be more secure is that all bugs are disclosed to the public. Making a bug confidential is exactly the approach taken by closed source companies. Security through obscurity doesn't work. Right now, there is a scramble to fix it but that's after it was disclosed to the public by an external bughunter. This whole situation has been, at least in my eyes, the first serious blemish on the Mozilla Foundation. Another couple of goof ups like this and I will seriously consider switching back to Internet Explorer after Windows XP Service Pack 2. (And the version of IE shipping in XPSP2 does ensure that the status bar is always visible). And if that's not secure enough, there's always Opera.

And lest any Internet Explorer users reading this are feel the need to gloat or be smug, need I remind you that Internet Explorer has been vulnerable to this for a long time. Here is a simple spoof page, a lot more can obviously be done using DHTML and Javascript. And more common examples are those particular popup ads which pretend to be Windows popups and present "Ok" / "Cancel" buttons.

Update (August 1, 2004): According to this post on MozillaZine, this vulnerability has been fixed in the "nightlies" and a patch or a new release should hopefully be out soon containing the fix. Quoting tojofb's post on MozillaZine:

Using 7/19 nightly the spoof didn't work. I received a warning and also the address bar at the top displayed in yellow background.

So why is it that my generation and my time seems such a let down? Am I just romanticizing achievements of the past too much or is something really wrong with us? Why have the Nineties and Two Thousand And Somethings brought with them such short attention spans that we never follow up on what outraged or excited us a few hours ago? Some say that the reason that this is happening is that our brains simply have too much information to process and not enough time. Is that the reason or are we as a generation getting dumber? Yes, we do process more information than our fathers and mothers used too, but they too processed much more that their parents used too. After all, it was in the Sixties that television and FM radio really took off. Of course we have the Internet and cable TV, and maybe that's what is rotting our brains, or rather flooding them with too much crap. Saturation is the word in charge.

The scary thought that follows from all this how easy it is for us to be manipulated by the owners of the media infrastructure. Our minds face DDOS attacks every time we turn on the television, radio or computer (DDOS attack: (n), Distributed Denial Of Service attack, a way of disrupting the normal operation of a computer system connected to a network by making multiple requests for processed information from multiple locations.) Democracy was always a good deal for the rabble-rousers and now the rabble waits on a sofa with cola and chips.

Everybody agrees that democracy is a better system than fascist dictatorships (Everybody other than fascist dictators of course!), but is it really the best system? It was invented by the Greeks a really long time ago. Why hasn't anyone invented something better than that? Something that will protect the intellectual and the common man from themselves and each other. Something that will perhaps tackle the root of the problems with all systems of politics - man's tendency to not think? Perhaps it's because our rulers need their subjects who tend not to think. After all if they started to think, the rulers could very quickly lose their jobs.

All the news that I have read seems to point to the fact that the IQ of the human race has risen over the years. But perhaps we also need to factor in the fact that the set of problems and potential killer booboos we have to face, has also risen (killer booboo: (n), event which could lead to the mass extinction of the human race, or at least kill an awful bloody lot of us.) So, is there any hope for my generation at all, or are we simply going to be content with rants on blogs with 5 page hits a day and the next channel on the TV? We are a generation of cowardly cynics and are being ruled by a generation of idiotic control freaks. Pointy haired bosses are funny in Dilbert's cubicle but fairly chilling if they are going to run your life the way they seem fit. Forever. What we really need is a way to prevent our rulers from handing over our reins to the next generation of morons (And believe me the next generation is dumber and more controlling), and a way to get hold of them ourselves. I think we're going to be too busy to bother.

Just this morning, the hit count for this blog was 999, now it's 1001! Thank you whoever you were mysterious 1000th visitor. (Look in the bottom right corner if you have no clue.)

(And yes, post count also went to 50 posts with that previous post about spell checkers. This is cause for celebration, I am going to party tonight and would advise all readers of this blog to do the same. Elvis has left the building.)

I just discovered a very very useful extension for Firefox, Spellbound, a spelling checker for anything you type into a web form.

What's shameful is that this is not listed on any of the usual Firefox extension sites, neither Texturizer, Extension Room nor Firefox Update list it. And it's so useful it should probably be a part of the basic browser. One more example of open source's tendency of smashing it's own toes with glee!

(Now you have no excuses for bad spelling)

Finally found a book (a normal book, not a comic book) which I can read without falling asleep and dreaming of comic books - The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, by Douglas Adams. I just wish that Mr. Adams hadn't gone to the Happy Place where dead writers go, so early in life.

Just a little addendum to the previous post.

• "shell:" exploits have been found in MSN Messenger and Microsoft Word. Unlike the Mozilla foundation which patched the same vulnerability in the Mozilla Firefox Browser in 24 hours, no word has yet been received from Microsoft about when these will be patched.
  
• Furthermore 4 new and extremely critical vulnerabilities have been found in Microsoft Internet Explorer. Quoting from the advisory "Issues 1-4 has been confirmed on a fully patched system with Internet Explorer 6 and Microsoft Windows XP SP1." My suggestion (and the one given in the advisory) to anyone using IE is either use a different browser, or at the very least disable Active Scripting in IE.
  

Maybe I should change that sidebar of mine to read, "Save Yourself From A Horrible Fiery Death"...

Any comments and flames are welcome.

This is the longest I time I have spent without writing, and for some reason it's not really bothering me as much as it should. I think this is happening because I am busy enough with work and algorithms and commuting. It's strange but I believe my creativity is simply finding more outlets at work.

I can write about mundane things I suppose such as Spiderman 2 and Fahrenheit 9/11, but I don't really think that will be in the spirit of this blog. So instead I'll just talk about how more and more people I know seem to be shifting to Firefox from IE. It was inevitable I guess. Microsoft last released the last version of IE in 2001 and there haven't been any features added since. Add to that the fact that malcontents on the Internet seem to be eager to find vulnerabilities in IE and exploit them.

I switched browsers when the URL phishing vulnerability for IE was announced. Microsoft took a whole month to fix that. Until they did the recommended workaround in the Microsoft Knowledge Base was to type out the URL for each link that you were planning to click! (If you don't believe me read the third bulleted point in the Knowledge Base Article.) The phishing vulnerability allowed malicious users to fool you into believing you were browsing on a trusted site (like Microsoft.com) when in fact you were getting pages from a malicious site (like some criminal server in Russia intent on getting you to enter you credit information.) Microsoft took a week to fix the Download.Ject vulnerability and even then they did not fix it properly. Download.Ject exploited a IE vulnerability and allowed people get infected by trojan software by simply visiting a malicious website. The Download.Ject trojan software would then find and send sensitive information (bank account numbers, credit card numbers) to the malicious website owners. The Mozilla shell vulnerability, which would allow for the execution of arbitrary EXE files on you computer if you followed a "shell:" link, was patched within 24 hours of it's announcement.

I don't really care if software is open source or not as long as the price is right - Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are both free. I do care that the software I use is secure enough to protect my privacy and my money. Internet Explorer and Microsoft have failed in that respect. I'll go back to them when Firefox and the Mozilla Foundation fail. I don't use a cheap, easily breakable lock on my door, why should I use a cheap, easily breakable browser.

"Who found the tail?"
"I", said Pooh,
"At a quarter to two"
"(Only it was a quarter to eleven really)"
"I found the tail!"

Two things.

First, I have had a relapse and early-wake-up-itis has caught be in a fever grip again. I wake after four hours of sleep on a Saturday, and I'm bright and cheerful, eager to blog. Somebody send a cure.

Second, I like noisy houses. I really do and moving to a noisy neighbourhood after three years of quiet places in Madison brings back all those noisy Mumbai memories. Now if only all states to the east of Wisconsin would sink under the Atlantic, then I could get my beloved ocean with its beaches and sunsets back too.

In other news, something perplexing. I don't understand this mad rush in geekdom to get Gmail accounts? I have one and don't even use it. No point unless Google decides to give an IMAP or POP interface.

In more new, something even more perplexing. I'm talking about the Open Source communities ability to gleefully hammer it's own toes. I am talking about the recent UI "updates" being applied to a plethora of Open Source products.

• Firefox 0.9 changed the default skin to something much less prettier then the old default. The lead developer claimed that the skin author was uncommunicative when asked about skin licensing. Funny how the same author's skin is still being used on Firefox's sister product Thunderbird 0.7. Good leadership involves making tough negotiations to get a better product (and not throwing your hands up in the air helplessly and looking for an inferior alternative).
  
  
• Wikipedia.org, the excellent web-based collaborative encyclopedia recently updated their look too. While the new version of the site looks much more modern, the developers decided to use a sans serif font for main body text. Couple this with wikipedia's tendency to put large amounts of word's per line (something like 20 at my default resolution) and readers are faced with a serious readability problem. Might I suggest changing the stylesheet to bring wordcount per line to something like 10-13 words per line. And giving readers an easy option to change article font to a serif one. And when I say easy option I mean something which does not involve any form of logging on.
  
  
• And I am not even going to comment about the Gnome project's ridiculous blunder of forcing spatial filemanager browsing down their users' throats. Way to go Open Source leadership.
  

I've just spent the better part of my Saturday morning ranting about geek-related issues which nobody cares about. I need a life.

Packed. Moved. Unpacked. Have to do this again in two months. Luckily my new place is within two blocks of Madison's greatest ice-cream shops.

Hmmmm...White chocolate ice-cream with almonds, walnuts and KitKat...(drool...)

(Tomorrow it's going to be boysenberry and cream gelato. Eat your heart out world!)

It's hot and muggy, I sweat all the time, clothes cling and it's too hot to sleep. Life is finally good!

Sleep comes as a drug
In God's country.

In God's country
U2

Ever had a chill run down your spine, as you suddenly realize that the world seems to be overrun with morons, and how most of them seem happier, healthier and sturdier than you. It's like their stupidity immunizes them from the tragedies of life. They run through the courses of their vacant lives, resisting change, being tricked by the next con man out for money or power, breeding, and killing other morons. And you're caught somewhere in the crossfire, all your intelligence nullified by a fool with a gun.

हॉब गॅड्लिन्ग चा नमस्कार.

आज़ सकाळी सहा वास्ता, ऐक ज़ोराचा आवाज़ आला. मी झोपेतून उठ्लो. ऐक मोठ्ठा राक्षस माझ्या बाज़ुला उभा होता. मी त्याला "Good morning." बोलुन परत झोपायला गेलो.

Finally a day when it's cooler when to go in than to go out.

Ah! great. Looks like blogger.com has just gone and dumbed-down its interface. I can't easily preview my old posts while typing a new one. Score one for the morons and the candification they bring about everywhere. However, I can tweak the interface into behaving a lot like the old interface. Score one back for the sane. This post continues into another generic rant about how morons are slowly beginning to rule the world.

Warning bells rang out today as an old friend called and accused me of turning into a boring person. Rest assured Madame, your warning has been acknowledged and an upgrade is being worked on even as I write. A fresh as mint, witty as a cucumber version of me is on his way. This bold new me is taller, darker, more handsome, and comes in three new flavors -- maniac mango, brain seizure banana and my personal favorite, strawberry nutcase. I'll be available in all quality boyfriend stores soon, and also in my new online me store, myTunes. Old customers will get a volume discount, so keep those old receipts handy!

You walk down a grey street on a grey day. And you walk into yourself, walking down a grey street on a grey day. Life curves onto itself. Möbius strip. The hell of the mathematician.