I just got the BESTEST TAG IN THE WORLD!!!!!! THE BESTEST!!!!!!!!! FOOOOOOOD TAAAAAAG!!!!! Thank you bluegreenfly.....SPLAT!

Well, I've put 10 things in this list, but I'm not done, so I'm gonna get back tomorrow sometime and get this up to 25! Update: Done! But I'm really unhappy 'cause I just realized that my list would probably go on forever. I was planning to find pictures for all of these things and add them here, but it's a lot easier to just google. Maybe I'll add links and pictures if I feel like it.

I tag i-me-moi, Saket, Jean Valjean, Vikster, and Thë Là¢ke¥. Do me proud my fellow foodies.

Also, I wrote this list from 1 to 25, which will explain some inconsistencies in references. My next post is probably going to be about stuff which I've heard a lot about, but never had a chance to eat.

25. Roomali roti (रुमाली रोटी) - Flat bread so thin and delicate, it's a wonder in itself. The best part of eating roomali roti is watching the cook make it. Tossing and swirling that dough until it's ultrathin before toasting it on an upturned wok (I'm sure it's called something else, I just call it an upturned wok.) Best served with mughlai mutton or chicken.

24. Sutarfeni (सुतरफेणी) - I'm not even going to bother with trying to describe what this is. Suffice is to say that the best sutarfeni I've had has been at Parsi Dairy at Charni Road. Don't miss it.

23. Jalebi (जलेबी or जिलेबी as we say in Marathi) - I don't know where to begin with a description. Deep-fried syrup-soaked saffron-colored spiral flour rolls, steeped in sugar syrup? How's that? Served piping hot or really cold.

22. Kokum kadi (कोकम कडी aka सोल कडी) - A tart drink made with coconut milk and kokum. Good quality kokum and coconut milk are both hard to obtain in the US. Still, if you can get by with canned coconut milk and blackmail a friend into carrying a packet of kokum from India, you're set.

21. Paneer tikka (पनीर टिक्का) - Spiced cottage cheese baked in a tandoor. I remember having these as appetizers at Copper Chimney (at Worli) once, and boy, weren't they something. Each tikka was perfectly done, with the paneer firm yet luscious. Put a piece in your mouth and it would melt with an unforgettable explosion of spice and texture. And yet, I like 20 things more than this!

20. Aamras-puri (आम्रस पुरी) - Fried flat bread served with piping hot with chilled mango puree. For best results, seat yourself in the kitchen, so that the puris are really piping hot and puffed up. Again one of those vegetarian dishes that could make me quit meat.

19. Tandoori chicken (तन्दूरी मुर्ग) - Every body seems to know what tandoori chicken is, but I haven't had authentic tandoori anywhere in the US. Most of the time, it's been some kinda spiced baked chicken with too much red food-coloring. Other times, it's been a little better but not a single place in the US has nailed the taste and texture of this delicacy. But for authentic tandoori, I guess you'll have to go to India.

18. Tallelya bhendyanchi bhaji (तळलेल्या भेन्ड्यान्ची भाजी) - Spicy fried okra. I have this at least a couple of times a week, being so easy to make and delicious and all that. (Buy cut okra from supermarket, heat oil in frying pan, add kokum, add washed okra, add chilli powder, add salt, add dhaniya-jeera powder, fry until okra is halfway blackened. Serve with rice or chapati. The "buy cut okra" step is the most important!)

17. Bhanola (भानोळं) - A sort of savory loaf made from chickpea flour. That description really sucked, but I don't really know what I can do to make it better. (Need to call mom. Need to ask her why I didn't have this during my visit.)

16. Tisrya (तिस्र्या) - Clam curry. I love this, but it's a bit of a pain to have to extract the meat from the clams. (And yeah, I have no idea why they are called tisrya.)

15. Undhiu (उँधिऊ) - Gujarati vegetable stew. I feel sorry for any vegetarian person who hasn't had undhiu yet. Back home, my mom used to make undhiu once upon a time, these days she simply gets it from any of the fantastic Gujju places in Girgaum. Over here, I'm forced to buy the ready to eat version from the Indian store. Not quite as good, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

14. Bhakri (भाक्री) - Various types of flat bread made from either sorghum (jowar), millet (bajari) or rice. Bhakri is so much better than nans, kulchas, and parathas, it's not even funny. Best accompanied by number 8 and 9.

13. Vade (वडे) - Fried multi-grain flat bread. No, it's not what you think non-Marathi folk. This is the traditional accompaniment to number 10 - chicken. Say कोम्ब्डी वडे with me children!

12. Alu vadi (अळु वडी) - Fried batter-stuffed rolled leaves of the colocassia plant. That simple description does no justice at all to this fantastic appetizer. Again, this is the sort of thing that you will never really get in the US. (Unless you count the ready-to-eat heat and serve version.)

11. Pancharatna bhaji (aka Rishi chi bhaji) (पंचरत्न भाजी - ॠषी ची भाजी) - A springtime vegetable stew with Indian white corn, and lots and lots of different vegetables. If I ever decide to quit eating meat, this will be one of the things I'll have to learn to cook.

10. Kombdi (कोम्ब्डी) - Curried chicken. The chicken in this has to be free range chicken. (Desi folk will call this गावठी.)

9. Mutton (मटण) - Curried mutton. I guess having this for lunch every Sunday afternoon for most of my life kinda made this really grow on me. I especially love some of the more esoteric stuff that goes in this curry - spleen (तिल्ली), kidney (गुर्दा), fat (मान्द or चर्बी) and of course कपूरा!

8. Kaleji fry (कलेजी फ्राय) - Fried curried goat liver. This is my mom's signature dish when we have guests over. It's also the stuff that gets over fastest. (I kinda cheat and take a really large helping right in the beginning!)

7. Bheja fry (भेजा फ्राय) - Fried goat brains. We would get this before every major exam. My dad would say, bheja khao - bheja chalao!

6. Tallela bangda (तळलेला बान्ग्डा) - Fried mackerel. The tastiest fish around. The only reason it doesn't feature at a better rank on the list is cause I didn't know what to move out.

5. Tallela halva (तळलेला हल्वा) - Fried black pomfret. The meat is succulent yet firm and much tastier than the white pomfret.

4. Chimboryancha kalvan (चिम्बोर्यान्चे काल्वण) - Crab curry. I'm salivating a bit too much to be able to elaborate.

3. Tallelya kolambya (तळलेल्या कोलम्ब्या) - Fried prawns. Heh! Fried prawns. I eat fried prawns in my dreams. I'm not kidding. And the best part of prawns, is that unlike 1. and 2. they are much easier to find in fish-market. If aliens destroyed the earth and I was the only survivor, I would mourn fried prawns. Mom's recipe for frying of course!

2. Shevandyancha kalvan (शेवन्ड्यान्चे काल्वण) - Lobster curry (This is the Indian-style spiny lobster, not the stuff you get in the US, though that's good too.) Lobster meat has to be eaten to be believed. Mom's recipe for currying of course!

1. Talleli gaboli (तळलेली गाबोळी) - Fried roe of the bhing (भिंगं) fish. (Not surmai as I had said earlier.) This is pretty much heaven. I don't care if you're queasy. It just means more for me! Mom's recipe for frying of course!

Yeah, I got really nothing to write home about so I guess it's time to review some comics.



Picked up a copy of All Star Superman last weekend, written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Frank Quitely. Regular readers of my blog should know that that's the dream comic book team according to me. Do they deliver for All Star Superman? Of course!

DC's All Star series is a reimagining to their flagship characters Batman and Superman. All Star Batman is by Frank Miller and illustrated by Jim Lee and that book sucked so badly I asked my comic book guy to stop holding it for me. (To be honest the Jim Lee art was fantastic as usual but Frank Miller seems to have lost all his writing skills after Sin City.) However, the comic did give us the panel that inspired a generation!





Other stuff I'm reading is Desolation Jones by written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by J. H. Williams III. A secret community of ex-spies based in L.A. Hitler porn. And the worst looking protagonist in a recent comic book. This has got to be the best book of 2005.

I'll write some more in the next post, but now, it's time to go and buy some comic books!

Yeah, I'm back in Madison. I've already seen some snow. Somehow, it's not as bad after three and a half weeks in Mumbai. (Having bag loads of desi snacks always helps!)

Right now I'm up so late because I'm recalibrating the battery in my laptop. You basically fully charge the battery, disable all Windows battery alarms and let it shutdown. Then you plug it in and fully charge it. Mine has been stuck at 6% battery for the last half hour! Hopefully this will restore my battery life from 15 minutes to the 2 hours it is rated at.

In other news, I'll be visiting the comic shop again this Saturday after month! This has probably been the longest time I have not been to it. I've missed out on a lot of reading, and hopefully it will translate into a few reviews and rants.

In more laptop news, I also succeeded (after maybe 10 failed attempts) in upgrading the ROM BIOS on my laptop. The trick was to not jump from version 03 to 35 directly, but to flash to an intermediate version first. I also opened up my laptop today, and was disappointed to see that the second (upgradable) memory slot already contained a 256 Mb SODIMM. Now, I'll have to rethink my plans to upgrade it to 1 Gb.

Madison seems to be as boring as ever. I don't seem to have missed anything significant during my vacation. On the other hand, I've surely missed a lot of juicy Mumbai stuff, in the week or so I've been here.

An incredible thing just happened. A drop of sweat just rolled down my forehead and fell on my T-shirt. It's 13°F outside. (That's -10.56°C to you Mumbai readers.) And I'm sweating inside my apartment. Don't you just love heated homes!

It's really late now. The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson just got over. I'm gonna be so sleepy at work tomorrow. I might even have to have a coffee to wake up. Usually I have only a tea. Or better yet orange juice.

You can tell I'm really rambling now can't you? Now would probably be a good time to proof this post, but I'm probably going to do that tomorrow. If at all.

Halfway through my trip to Mumbai, and I'm still having fun. Mumbai is now:

• Mall crazy
• Expensive
• Filled with stray dogs
• Smoggy
• Divine

2 rupees kharasingh rocks!

Just a quick note. I'll be in India from the 2nd to the 26th of November. So if any readers (well, ok, any of you two readers) want to meet up, drop me a line.

My blog is worth $28,227.00.
How much is your blog worth?

Yes, another meaningless post for your pleasure!

List of books to buy when in India:

• Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig (ISBN: 8120323823, Edition: 2)
  
  
• OpenGL Programming Guide: The Official Guide To Learning Open Gl Version 1.4 by OpenGL Architecture Review Board et. al. (ISBN: 8129705486, Edition: 4)
  
  
• Compilers: Principles, Techniques And Tools by Alfred V. Aho, Jeffrey D. Ullman and Ravi Sethi (ISBN: 817808046X)
  

List of books that I wish had special Indian editions:

• Fundamentals of Computer Graphics by Peter Shirley

These list will be constantly updated. Suggestions (fiction and non-fiction) welcome!

Time Magazine has released a list of 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present. Here's what I've read from that list:

• Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
• The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
• Lord of the Flies - William Golding
• The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
• Neuromancer - William Gibson
• 1984 - George Orwell
• Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
• To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
• Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

Tried to read but couldn't finish:

• Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

As you can see, that's about 9 out of a 100. Obviously, I'm a lot less erudite than the Vikster, who's read 44!

Vikster, if you're reading this, I will suggest that you find and read the only graphic novel in the list - The Watchmen. Not because it's the highest reader rated book in that list (that's probably 'cause it's the most accessible to us proles) but simply because it's a great starting point to a brand new medium. If you like it, I would suggest:

• Maus - Art Spiegelman
• Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
• A Contract with God - Will Eisner (actually pretty much anything by Eisner is good.)
• and of course 10 volumes of Sandman - Neil Gaiman and various artists

(Now, I'm heading to the library. Gotta catch up!) (Sprechen, how many have you read?)

Just some random nerdy thoughts today:

This guy just brought to my notice that Firefox lacks a "Make available offline" feature like the one in Internet Explorer. (In IE, apart from the current page, you can also specify a link depth you want to download to, à la wget!) I must say, this is a pretty significant feature that Firefox is missing. Of course, if Firefox is missing a feature, you just look for extensions!

Initially, none of the extensions I found could add this functionality to Firefox. Then I found the updated version of Spiderzilla. (Keep in mind that Spiderzilla doesn't seem to be in development and the version I have linked to, has been repackaged from the original by someone on extensionmirror.)

(At this point, people will say I just should just use wget. Well, yes, I already do, but wget cannot do things like download CSS background images or images loaded by JavaScript. And if would be nice to have a tool integrated into the browser rather than hacking around on the command line each time I want to download a site. I should probably be looking at HTTrack which Spiderzilla embeds. Of course, the real solution would be to use Gekco itself to parse through the page and find all downloadable data.)

Among other things, Hotmail is beta testing a newer interface. (Ajax and all that!) I just hope that they make it cross browser, and compete using quality and not lock-in.

There seems to be a lot of new web-based RSS aggregators out there (My Yahoo, Google Reader and of course BlogLines) but the one I like the most is Start.com by Microsoft. Why? Apart from a very capable interface, it's the only one you can try and use without having to sign in.

Is being addicted to the Internet less harmful than being addicted to the television?

I just finished reading two books.

The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams. I vaguely remember reading this book during undergrad (I'm not sure I really did though, there was just so much Dilbert floating around during undergrad.) Of course, reading a book like this after getting a full-time job is a completely different experience. Geeks can relate.

Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. This chronicles the lives of a couple of geeks working for Microsoft during the early Nineties. A frankly accurate portrayal of geek life, this was probably the first book in ages that I didn't feel like putting down. Geeks can relate.

Both are recommended.

A final word on Opera.

So, after testing the waters, Opera has decided to drop the $40 paid registration and make it free for everyone. Which is great, but I will still use Firefox as my primary browser. Here's why:

• No Adblock in Opera: This is probably the most important reason. And I have no reason to believe that Opera will ever have an Adblock feature.
• No rich text (WYSIWYG) editing: As a blogger, it's pointless to use a browser which doesn't have a WYSIWYG edit control. I'm not going to write HTML code in my blog if I can avoid it. Opera engineers say they are working on a WYSIWYG edit control, so maybe sometime in the future it will be available.
• "Wrong" tabbed browsing behavior: Closing a tab selects the previously selected tab in Opera. There is no way to really fix this (there are workarounds involving gestures etc.) My desired behavior is that the tab to the right of the closed tab should be selected. This is the default behavior in Firefox. Also, if for some reason, you want Opera style behavior in Firefox you can get it using an extension like Tab Mix. This shouldn't be hard for Opera engineers to fix and seeing as how many different people have requested for this, they should try and do it soon.
• Can't move Personal Bar next to the menu: This is just a convenient space saver. In Firefox (and IE) I can move the Personsl Bar (Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox / Links bar in IE) right next to the menu. Thus giving me some more browsing space while retaining quick access to my favorite bookmarklets.
• No Ctrl-Enter/Shift-Enter/Ctrl-Shift-Enter: In Firefox these shortcuts autocomplete an address with www. .com, www. .net and www. .org respectively. There are no equivalent shortcuts in Opera, and the workaround doesn't behave correctly when the site in question has bogus .com, .net or .org versions.
• No Sage: While Opera does have a built in RSS reader, it is nowhere are powerful as the Firefox extension, Sage. Sage has a digest view so you can read all posts on a blog at once instead of just looking at a headline. OPML import/export is the icing on the cake.

There are a few other minor reasons why I prefer Firefox, (minor UI stuff like being able to middle-click on the back and front buttons etc.) but the ones listed above are the most important.

I do like Opera on one of the computers I use. It is an old Pentium III laptop and Opera's fast load times and low memory usage let it run rings around Firefox.

I should however mention two incredible Opera features which no other browser seems to have. If I ever switch to Opera (will only happen if all the stuff mentioned above gets fixed), these two features will be among most important reasons:

• Zoom: Opera's zoom is unlike every other browsers zoom. Everything zooms, not just the text. Even with the Colorzilla extension Firefox cannot do what Opera can. Don't believe me? Try zooming in this blog using Firefox, IE and Opera. Opera just kicks ass.
• Fit to window width: Does what it says. Fits the current page to width. You never have to scroll horizontally again. Haven't found an IE or Firefox extension which will let me do that.

My advice to Opera:

• Make it easier for IE users to switch: Maybe have a special toolbar and keyboard setup which emulates IE installed by default. (Current Opera users should be allowed to keep their customizations of course.) And for God's sake let people import their bookmarks, history, cookies etc. during installation.
• Rich text editing should be a priority: Let's face it. If you want good publicity from bloggers, then their favorite blogging tools (like Blogger) should function as well as they do on Firefox and IE. No excuses.
• Create an extension architecture: Yes, it probably goes against your entire design philosophy etc. etc. Well, so did giving your browser away for free, but guess what! It's an easy way to tap into geeks and it's probably the only way something like Adblock will be a reality on Opera.

Finito.

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?