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.)