Now listening to podcasts

In keeping with my mission to explore the new world of cutting edge internet technology, I downloaded ipodder. It is a cool tool for listening to podcasts, though I would have preferred it if were somehow integrated with Firefox. Don't know if podcasting will be my cup of tea, but the idea sure is fun.

Is podcasting a disruptive technology ? I don't know, but it sure can drive revenues for the Wireless industry that is currently providing my livelihood. I wonder what all can be done once voice recognition reaches a level where I can search for words in podcasts. Google is planning to expand their search in this direction, but may have a long way to go.

I used to listen to a lot of radio a while back, mostly NPR stations, and hopefully podcasting will bring some of it back, and maybe with more variety. There is a lot of NPR stuff being podcast around. I somehow suspect podcasting will be a politically more liberal medium, as opposed to the traditional Internet.

Isn't it funny how I said "traditional Internet", and it seemed like normal usage. Oh the days of sitting in the lab in India in 1994-5 and looking at that first pr0n. Well, it's been ten years now since my first Hotmail ID. (does anyone use Hotmail anymore ?)

To close, I hope to keep updating this page with some good podcasts.

anatomy of failure

The defeat of the Indian cricket team in the third test against Pakistan at Bangalore is one of the strage occurances in sport and life. What causes a mindset that makes a perfectly capable team capitulate to an ordinary opposition ? Why do stupid decisions get made by brilliant men ? And it was a stupid decision to defend against spin bowling on a 5th day track with six close fielders.

We will never know the answer, and analysis after the event is always easy (or extremely difficult, depending on the honesty of the analyst). Was the team defensive due to confidence in their defensive skills, or lack of confidence in offensive skill ? When the team is offensive, is it due to confidence in offensive skills, or lack of confidence in defensive skill ?

Maybe this defeat was a result of overconfidence ? Hey, we can not lose, we are so good we can do nothing for a whole day. We have mastery of the knife, so we will bring it to the gunfight.

friends and girlfriends

How appropriate is it to tease friends about their friends of the opposite gender. I mean, when Y is meeting X often, but not that often, how do friends of Y determine if they are a couple or not ? My own take is in line with Mohnish Behl in Maine Pyar Kiya,

Ek jawaan laDka aur ek jawaan laDki kabhi sirf dost nahi ho sakte

I suspect this line is true, atleast when friend refers to someone you feel emotionally intimate with.

Refer to platonic, and advice by Carolyn Hax here, and here. This subject of course has been dealt with by experts: no solution has been found yet, and it is safe to say that none will ever be found. Anyway, in the meanwhile it is good fun for those not involved directlym and in a different way for those who are involved ;-)

ps: I remember reading an article about this "just friends" issue written by a guy in a college newspaper. This article became a sort of a cult classic, and got written about in the NYTimes/WaPo, but I can't find it by searching the web now.

Blogging friends

My old buddy AT has started this blog. He claims I was his inspiration, but that would be a case of the lamp inspiring the sun to shine. In any case, as long as they both derive equal satisfaction by shining ...

Black (movie)

A very well made movie, and great performances from Amitabh, the child artist Ayesha, and Rani. What I liked about the movie was that they did not make Rani into some superhuman genius. She was just a smart blind/deaf kid with a good teacher. The whole Anglo american setting seemed a bit overdone to me, but it probably made more sense than her being the beti of some thakur sahib.

1. This is a review that would classify as encomium (GRE word list revisited).
2. The BBC review is an example of a bad review. The first part recaps the movie, pretty much destroying the viewing experience.
3. This review says that the first part of the movie, (which is the better part, by a mile), is copied scene by scene from "The Miracle Worker".
   

back from LA

Got 54.2 miles to the gallon on the way back from LA, the most I have ever got. Tried to keep the average at 65 mph. Udupi (sp?) in Artesia served up some good Sambhar Vada and Utthappam. This restaurant will last a few months if they open a branch in Delhi. And that's a few more months more than most Indian restaurants here (there I go again ....).

Also went to Naaz 8 cinema, and ate samosa in the intermission. Now that's what I call a good desi movie experience.

Off to LA, and Indian food

Making a day trip to LA tomorrow. Lately the Prius has been giving low mileage (42 mpg), hope to get something better on the freeway. Also plan to check out some good lunch place in Artesia. The Indian food in San Diego is sub-par. Sitar, Indian Tandoor (Mira Mesa) and the Sardarji on Activity Road are pretty much the only decent gigs in town. They are all dhaba style. The proper sit down places in town (there are 3-4 of them) can do much better.

My theory about Indian, and for that matter Chinese food, is that if you see many non-desis in a place, the food is probably not that good. Another good metric to apply is this: If this restaurant was in India, would I ever go there ? The answer for most restaurants here is NO. Which begs the question: why am I not in India ?

Okay, enough sentiness for the day. Must be that Mai-Tai I had tonight.

San Diego weather and windshield wipers

Though San Diego is famous for its sunny moderate weather, this season has seen a lot of rain. San Diego Union Tribute weatherman Rob Krier has a nice blog. He has this link to an analysis of Southern California weather.

It rained a fair bit today. An interesting thing during rain is when you shut off the ignition of your car, and the windshield wipers stay stuck at an odd angle. Do you find this annoying ? Maybe I need to buy a cadillac, that surely will not have this craziness.

MultiDesk

Installed Multidesk, a multiple desktop tool for Windows XP. Much better than MSDVM (part of Microsoft Power toys). Download from zdnet.

Firefox

Updated Firefox to version 1.0.1. All extensions I had on 1.0 are working fine. The extension I like are All in one gestures and Scrollbar Anywhere, Adblock, StockTicker, ForecastFox, FocusLastSelectedTab, Sage. Though I would much rather that some of the extensions, such as FocusLastSelectedTab, become part of the main release.

I find Sage to be a very useful extension to Firefox, I can check which one of my favorite websites have updated recently (using RSS feeds). Particularly useful for sites that only update once every few days: dpreview is a good example.

More on the virtues of RSS some other day (see the Wikipedia article for a summary and lots of links).

via erosblog

How to hypnotize a man, via erosblog. This guy is funny.

It works !! (and Da Vinci)

Okay, so now I have a blog. If no one reads it (hey getting insecure already), atleast it will be a good diary. Finished reading Da Vinci Code a few days ago. Since I did not know of the conspiracy theories that are the subject of the book, I found it quite exciting. Take out the magnitude of these theories, and it becomes an ordinary book. My take on the book is that it is pro-church, as in pro the modern church. spoilers ahead

1. The Vatican does not like questionable organizations like Opus Dei
2. Even Opus Dei (a questionable organization) does not like violance
3. The people who the church is supposed to be after, are actually supportive of the church, in that they are upto nothing revolutionary

Come to think of it, Lagaan (bollywood movie, 2001?) is in a sense pro-british. The powerful did follow their rules and they left when they lost their bet, they found fair umpires. As my grandfather used to say, the british did have character.

Dhoom

Saw bollowood movie Dhoom. Very dhinchak timepass movie. This movie is a good example of nepotism in Bollywood. Abhishek, Esha and Uday. One scene where Abhishek tries to act drunk is quite tragic. And you almost wish Esha did not look like the dreamgirl .... but not too harsh, maybe she has talent which some director will bring out sometime ....