saving the internet

there is a very interesting debate that is going on these days. it is about the future of the internet. from what little i have read recently, it looks like we (as in we poor unsuspecting users) need to be *afraid*.
came across this amazing article on linuxjournal, by Doc Searls. if you take the time to read just one essay on the internet and the politics surrounding it this year, read this one.

nothing to write home about

finally i finished it, the 5th harry potter book. i positively loathed it. don't know why, but i had made up my mind that i simply just had to finish the book, no matter how bad it was. it was like inflicting some sort of mental torture upon myself ! she could easily have made the book 300 pages smaller without all the riff-raff. till now i don't think i'd ever come across a book that made me skip whole paragraphs because they were so silly and made no sense. ಮೈ ಪರ್ಚ್ಕೊಳುವಹಾಗೆ ಆಗ್ತಿತ್ತು.

there, now that i've got that out of the way, let's get on to other things that matter even less.

i successfully managed to keep myself locked up at home almost all 9 days of the holidays. except for a couple of sober 'parties', i didn't venture out much. it was like the mid-term holidays during school, minus the homework. the office has seen so very little of me the past few weeks, they're almost forgetting i exist.

oh yeah, i started cleaning my room. by now i've managed to move an entire pile of stuff out of the way. now they're collecting dust in a different part of the room while the earlier spot gets a breath of fresh air.

the desktop's back in action now. it's now an opteron. i freaked out dad by shutting it down remotely from the laptop thru vnc. now if only i could figure out how to start it remotely...

if you're thinking of buying a cheap laptop, don't go anywhere near the acer travelmate 4152. it's got an ugly version of linux, 'linpus' (doesn't the name make u think of some greenish yellow slimy-gooey stuff oozing out..) and it doesn't seem to be capable of taking any other version on it. gives up the ghost while trying to recognise the cdrom drive from which it just booted. but if there's anything to it's credit, it must be that pci express and sata... <drool, drool/> it might just become usable by next summer.

some friends are in town, but most others seem to be fleeing to some place in or around u.k.

in a distant corner of the city, rangashankara is happening but i'm not seeing any of the plays :(

and in case anyone's wondering, i still haven't met anyone interesting. yay.

~ನಾಗು.

deskbar applet in gnome 2.14

one of the really cool new apps due to be included in gnome 2.14. don't know how many of the promised features will actually make it into the final release, but very exciting all the same ! it's something that winblows users would sorely miss ;)

the '$NAME needs' meme

search for 'jack needs' on google and the first link that pops up says:"jack needs a girlfriend !" (incidentally, that link is esr's blog)

*what* was I doing searching for jack's needs ? coz google wouldn't give me anything for 'nagu needs'. cool.

and Deppe needs to finish up his survey of Worley’s Cave in Smyth County, VA. :D

head banger at 2 ?

you won't believe what just happened.. i was quietly browsing at home and this 2year old bundle of joy comes to me and says 'ನಾಗು ಮಾಮ ಹಾಡು ಹಾಕಿ' (nagu play some music). ok, i fire up rhythmbox and start playing virgin radio classic rock. 10 seconds into the song, i see this guy actually head banging ! i've *no idea* where he learnt it from, he certainly hasn't seen me doing it, and he doesn't get to listen to much rock outside my house. simply stunning.<

i'll be bloggin it

here's a parody of sting's 'every breath you take' :D

futuristic phone concepts from nokia

i ran into this site showcasing futuristic phone concepts from nokia. amazing stuff.

i particularly liked the 'colores' one, which has all of this : “GPS, GPRS, agenda and events tracker, mp3 player, camera, recording device that transforms speech into text, biometric scanner for fingerprint recognition, Bluetooth, 3G CDMA2000 1xEV-DO, Google Earth, virtual hard drive technology, carbon fiber structure “

google coolness

there are rumours running wild that google is about to come up with some sort of 'online office application suite'. not sure about the veracity of these rumours, but one thing is for sure. take the size of the gmail account, add to it the ability to work on your office documents wherever you are online, and the ability to search through those documents even when offline. and lastly, google's free wireless service, then surely there's something that microsoft might want to be worried about ! interesting times ahead !

i want one of these !

i want one of these !

~ನಾಗು.

esr gets a job offer from microsoft

.ಯಾರೊ ಜೋಕರ್ ಗಳು ಇ.ಎಸ್.ಆರ್ ಅವರಿಗೆ ಮೈಕ್ರೊಸಾಫ್ತ್ ನಲ್ಲಿ ಕೆಲಸ ಕೊಡ್ತೀನೆ ಅಂತ ಈಮೇಲ್ ಕಳಿಸಿದ್ದರಂತೆ. ಅವರ ರಿಪ್ಲೈ ನೋಡಿ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ !

~ನಾಗು.

geocode

got myself a geocode. click here to see who's nearby !

~ನಾಗು

i'm amazed

~ನಾಗು

ಇವತ್ತಿನ ದಿನ ಒಂದು ಮಹತ್ವಪೂರ್ಣವಾದ ದಿನ. ಇಂದು ನಾನು ಕನ್ನಡ ದಲ್ಲಿ ಬ್ಲಾಗ್ ಮಾಡಿರುವುದು, ಅದು ಅಲ್ಲದೆ, ಲಿನಕ್ಸ್ ನಲ್ಲಿ ಇದನ್ನ ಸಾಧಿಸಿರುವುದು ನನಗೆ ತುಂಬ ಖುಷಿ ತಂದಿದೆ. ಜೈ ಹಿಂದ್.‌!!

i think this has got to be one of the high points of the weekend. setting up a true 64 bit operating system to enable blogging in one's local language :-) talk about technology.

ಅಪ್ಪನೆಗೆ ಇದನ್ನ ಹೇಳಬೇಕು. ಇದನ್ನ ನೋಡಿದ ಮೆಲೆ ಆದರು ಅವರು ಲಿನಕ್ಸ್ ಉಪಯೋಗಿಸುವುದಕ್ಕೆ ತೈಯಾರು ಆಗ ಬಹುದು ಅಂಥ ಅಂದುಕೊಂಡಿದಿನಿ, ನೋಡೋಣ !
ನಾಳೆ ಮತ್ತೆ ಅದೇ ರುಟೀನ್ ಶುರು ! ಕೆಲಸದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಯೋಚಿಸುವುದಕ್ಕೂ ಭಯ. ಇದರಲಲ್ಲಿ ವಿಶೇಷ ಯೆನು, ಅಂತೀರ ? ಅದೂ ಸರಿ ಅನ್ನಿ‌!
ಇವತ್ತು ಮಧ್ಯಾನ ಎನ್.ಡಿ.ಟಿ.ವಿ ಅಲ್ಲಿ ಡಾ|ಅಮರ್ತ್ಯ ಸೇನ್ ಅವರ ಇಂಟೆರ್ವ್ಯೂ ಇತ್ತು (ಇಂಟೆರ್ವ್ಯೂ ಪದಕ್ಕೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ದಲ್ಲಿ ಸಮ ಯಾವುದು ?). ಆತ ಒಂದು ಹೊಸ ಪುಸ್ತಕ ವನ್ನು ಬಿಡುಗಡೆ ಮಾಡಿರುವರಂತೆ. ಕ್ರಾಸ್ವರ್ಡ್ ಗೆ ಹೊಗಿ ಇರುವುದಾ ಅಂತ ನೋಡಬೇಕು.

ಮುಂದುವರೆಯುವುದು !

~ನಾಗು

on being a longhair.

thanks to vp black for this link !

"How to fit three bugs in 512 bytes of security code":
http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Boot_Code_of_the_Xbox

For all you Thames people:

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,

As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,

From wandering on a foreign strand!

If such there breathe, go, mark him well;

For him no Minstrel raptures swell;

High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;

Despite those titles, power, and pelf,

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.

- Walter Scott

"Let me tell you one vairy funny story about putting. It was one day
I play at Nijni-Novgorod with the pro. against Lenin and Trotsky,
and Trotsky had a two-inch putt for the hole. But, just as he addresses
the ball, someone in the crowd he tries to assassinate Lenin with a
rewolwer-you know that is our great national sport, trying to assassinate
Lenin with rewolwers-and the bang puts Trotsky off his stroke and he
goes five yards past the hole, and then Lenin, who is rather shaken,
you understand, he misses again himself, and we win the hole and match
and I clean up three hundred and ninety-sex thousand roubles, or fifteen
shillings in your money. Some gameovitch! And now let me tell you one
other vairy funny story----"
The Clicking of Cuthbert (A Short Story) , The Clicking of Cuthbert

tried to do some last minute shopping. this is my last weekend in ipswich ! but i couldn't think of anything to buy.. so ended up buying a rock 'n' roll riot cd. awesome tracklist, all songs by their original artists.. blue suede shoes (carl perkins), good golly miss molly, long tall sally (little richard), roll over beethoven , great balls of fire (jerry lee lewis) and some fats domino tracks i haven't heard before. 15 tracks in all, and the best part is, i got it at the 1 pound shop :)

speaking of CDs, due to some goof up by the postman, i ended up getting somebody else's package. as luck would have it, it contained 2 CDs, one david bowie and the other carly simon (who dat ?). they are not original CDs, looks like they've been ripped (the track list says it's printed on iTunes). after giving it a lot of thought, i've decided to mail them back to the original recipient. hopefully it doesn't come back to me again.

existentialism "A 20th-century movement in philosophy…All existentialists are concerned with ontology, the study of being. The point of departure is human consciousness and mental processes. In contrast to most previous philosophical systems, which maintain that an a priori essence precedes or transcends the individual existence of people or of objects, the existentialists conclude that existence precedes essence. The significance of this for human beings is that the concept that one has an essential self is shown to be an illusion. A man's self is nothing except what he has become; at any given moment, it is the sum of the life he has shaped until then. The 'nothing' he begins with is thus the source of man's freedom, for at each moment it is man's will that can choose how to act or not to act. However, each such decision affects the future doubly: a man is or should be responsible for the consequences of his actions; and each action necessarily excludes the other potential actions for that moment, and their consequences, and thus at least partially limits the potentialities for future actions. "By what standards, then, should a person make decisions? The mind cannot discern any meaning for this existence in the universe; when a person abandons his illusions, he finds himself horrified by the absurdity of the human condition…a person must create a human morality in the absence of any known predetermined absolute values"

Sin City:
if ever there was a comic movie, this is it. forget batman, spiderman and others of the same ilk. those movie versions of comic books are, well, just like regular movies. they don't have the same 'charm' as the comic books.
sin city is a new type of movie making in itself. a new movie genre, if i may call it that. for starters, most parts of the movie are narrated. the lines spoken by the narrator are brief phrases, just like you might see in a comic book.
the action is exactly like you might see in a comic book, where the hero might get punched a gazillion times and still manage to stay alive.
interesting way the movie is made. but i kind of have the feeling it will be the only movie made this way. not many people actually understood the movie making and went out of the theatre disappointed.
bruce willis is good, so is jessica alba ;-)
i absolutely loved the character 'marv', played by mickey rourke.
i could watch this movie a few more times.. sitting in gandhi class, i'm sure i missed out on many things.

had gone to the Lake District for the second time. it was as boring as the first time, but more expensive. for some strange reason, right from the word go, we seemed to be spending more than necessary. the trip started out with just 4 people, down from the initial 7 for whom the hotel booking was done. then, due to some miscommunication, we ended up booking 2 cars. with 50% cancellation charges for the car, even before the trip started, we were in trouble.
then the lucky streak started, at the petrol bunk. some duffer ended up paying for us, and we for him. luckily, he'd filled lesser fuel, so we saved some 10quid there. at the hotel, we were charged 10quid for cancelling the room, so they kind of cancelled each other out.
next, (and this one i'm particularly happy about) i found a 32MB memory stick on the road - an SDMMC, the kind that fits in neatly into my mobile and PDA !
the thing actually works. there was a video of a BMW ad stored in the card, but nothing else to help me trace it. so i kept it.
lost the tickets to the rides at blackpool.. worth 16quid !
we got a parking ticket.. 30quid, if we pay within 14 days, that is.
on the way back home, we filled up the petrol tank, but the fuel indicator is stuck half way.. so we might have to pay something extra, if we don't manage to convince the 'thrifty' guy.
deepak's mobile's LCD display got screwed during the rides..

all in all, lots of losses and wins to handle in a single trip..

bittorrent goes trackerless !! woohoo.

love google.

finally there's a website in this world where you can go and delete your account, and all personal information stored with it.

it's in gmail. go to settings->account settings->delete gmail service.

funny thing is, you can't register your account on gmail, like other sites. you have to be invited.

piracy is good !
http://www.mindjack.com/feature/piracy051305.html

did you know that "misidentifying loose clothes" can be rearranged to read "infosys technologies limited" ?

Grok

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Grok is a verb roughly meaning "to understand completely" or more formally intuitive understanding. The term originated in Robert Heinlein's novel Stranger in a Strange Land, where it is part of the fictional Martian language and introduced to English speakers by a man raised by Martians.

It is primarily used as slang by Science Fiction fans, geeks and some Pagans, particularly those belonging to the Church of All Worlds but is attested more widely.

In the Martian tongue, it literally means "to drink" but is used in a much wider context. A character in the novel (not the primary user) defines it:

"Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man."

got a decent hike ! life has been good to me.

i'm bored

test blog posting by email

does this really work ?
oh, damn cool !