bloggeranon

Teasing..

2008-12-08T08:46:31Z

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/magazine/07teasing-t.html?pagewanted=1&em

How do you conquer your worst fear?

2008-12-02T21:51:25Z

..By becoming your worst fear.

.. after 'Life of Pi'

Disappointing

2008-11-16T11:54:23Z

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/disappointing

Conscience

2008-11-12T07:30:14Z

I found the link (http://www.users.muohio.edu/erlichrd/vms_site/afric.htm) after chatting with mssnlayam. Something that I wanted to jot down when I could. I apologize to the people for whom this is the umpteenth repetition/rehashed discussion.

This was the best part of "African Genesis" by Robert Adrey, a book I highly rate for the author's liberal and liberated thought process, even though the book has started to show its age, but its remarkable for a book written at that time.

If anyone had seen the thought process of the early Christian settlers and the atrocities that they committed on the American Indian natives(something well recorded in "People's history of the United States" by Howard Zinn), you'll see what I am trying to capture. The same thing applies to all those who think all muslims in India should be sent to Pakistan, immigrants in the US to X, Biharis in Bombay to Bihar, "outsiders" in Bangalore to X(ahem!), "return to the golden era of our ancestors", .....and other bullshit.

So here goes:

" My third assertion, far less speculative, is that conscience as a guiding force in the human drama is one of such small reliability that it assumes very nearly the role of villain. Conscience has evolved directly from the amity-enmity complex of our primate past. But unlike civilization it has acted as no force to inhibit the predatory instinct. It has instead been the conqueror's chief ally. And if mankind survives the contemporary predicament, it will be in spite of, not because of, the parochial powers of our animal conscience.

The limitation of conscience lies in its territorial nature.... Conscience organizes hatred as it organizes love.

My conscience is totally amoral. I shall delude myself that it directs me to act in the interests of human good, and well it may. But with equal force it will direct me to act in the interests of human evil, if such evil is in the interests of my society.

Society in its ancient wisdom does not appeal to my conscience through reason, for my conscience being of animal inheritance will respond with a minimum of force. And so conscience in human society becomes an essentially anti-rational power. "

- Robert Adrey

This generalization, I think trumps Richard Dawkins highly-immature attempts in his "God-Delusion" series to attribute all evil in the world to religion.

The only "noble savage" out there is the anarchist.

Hear, hear! Joker :D

The ideal..

2008-11-11T09:06:09Z

..physique for Karate is this, apparently:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG1X8Ouu-GU

Great video, albeit a bit older. I wish I could find some on Matsubayashi-Ryu. Goju is for monsters, powerful but a bit too contrived for my liking.

I found this:
http://kata-reference.com/index.php?style=5 reference, but no sequential documentary.

So I thought, at some point I should consolidate these links and then I thought, why not blog? Its been a while anyway. As usual, this entry will have too many divergent links for public consumption, but then again..who cares?

I have been trying to find the BBC series that profiled each martial art, that was aired 3-4 years back. It was covered by a lady. There was also this bald Danish guy, a 5th degree black belt who covered a similar series on National Geographic, but I keep getting confused on which one was in which series. The ones on Kungfu, Kalarippayatu, Okinawan Karate, Capoeira, Muay Thai were stupendous in that order. They also covered Tae-Kwon-do and Iranian wrestling. The Okinawan Karate section had this one Japanese policeman practice shoving on a coconut tree. I would just kill to get my hands on that one. So if someone knows the right links, please point me to it.

The one on Kalarippayatu that I could find http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZZYl2IUKbo is close, but not as good as the one I saw in the TV series. The BBC version had a spectacular chuttuval (metal-foil-sword) fight.

Tae-kwon-do stands out in my memory, since I saw it in action. Back when I was 12, a friend of mine, a green belt demolished this 6-foot rowdy(who always had his way) in YMCA with side kicks when he tried to bully his way in, for a TT game.
I vaguely recollect Tae-kwon-do, in the series, but anyway I was pointed to some excellent videos by Richie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j1w--TjqVY,
which I use as the standard reference for all kicks.

I don't remember if ju-jutsu was covered. The video on Gracie-Ju-jutsu which I passed around to a few friends is the best I have seen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVCKEbiEJNc&feature=related
A must see, just to see the 91 year old GM move. As Django says, I wish I was that fit 'now'.

I saw some good ones on Silat, a Malaysian art recently, but haven't tried looking it up on youtube.

One thing I can tell after seeing all this..
..Don't ever ever pick a fight with anyone. You never know who knows what.

Call me obsessed

2008-07-22T06:29:13Z

but this is "The Man":

http://www.taichiindia.com/in/what-is-taichi2.html

No, I am not learning Tai-Chi.

http://deccanherald.com/Content/Jun252008/WeeklyHoros.asp

2008-06-25T07:59:36Z

CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 20)

You want life to give you a fair share of joys and you will make sure you get it. There is a good chance that you meet a very special person this week. However, the flipside of the coin is also likely to manifest� some personal/ material loss could also be in the offing so exercise due caution with your belongings.
Lucky gem : Blue Sapphire
Lucky colour : Dark blue
Lucky number : 8

I am guessing it must be Sensei Wong :D

The rest of those who have gone before us cannot steady the unrest of those to follow

2008-06-24T10:43:23Z

-William Forrester

Another one of those

2007-12-09T13:01:12Z

sequence of NY times readings with other random stuff:

This article about the surprisingly high(I won't use "statistically significat" :D) occurrence of dyslexia among entrepreneurs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/business/06dyslexia.html?em&ex=1197349200&en=f55a560d5b78d58f&ei=5087%0A
If you have ever noticed stuff like dyslexia increasing with age or "leaders" who are all "big picture" guys you can concoct some interesting pet theories here(with a does of Shamanism of course :D)

The previous article needs to be compared with this piece which appeared a couple of days back:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/health/04mind.html
Perfectionism: Good or Evil??

And this one about "Pushing yourself":
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/health/nutrition/06Best.html?em&ex=1197349200&en=dd6d9a52f9a9b698&ei=5087%0A

And this one, demonstrating why I read this section of NY times. Not because the writing is good or that the analysis is insightful. It is the scientific observation of completely mundane stuff that makes me read it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/health/research/04beha.html?ref=science
and then again by scientific, I don't mean correct/unbiased/neutral. At the very least, an attempt to statistify things are done (much like politics, as some one reading this critically would notice :D)

A play about Darwin(contains spoilers). Not too interesting, unless you see the play.
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/theater/reviews/06trum.html?ref=science

If you got this far, you are lucky to witness me lauding a Tamil movie :D (How about Cauvery, as a hint, for those who don't know why I normally wouldn't do this in public). I saw "Evano Orvan" and liked it. No fluff in the movie, crisp, grim and some good subtle stuff to watch out for.

Finally I saw a post that surprised me. So I have a more general (abstract and nerdy too) question would be "How would you like your life to be: 'An Operating System' (A bunch of trap handlers :D) or an 'automaton'?"
Think about it.

Rock Band

2007-12-03T08:15:39Z

I might be a bit behind the wave, as usual but If you are a music aficionado and haven't played "Rock Band" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Band ; http://www.rockband.com/ ) yet, you are missing something. Of course, if you are already one of the talented ones, and can strum Stairway to Heaven at the drop of a Roy Harper hat, you might not appreciate it. Then there will be these cynical Luddites who go on about how Note A goes in B way and gives you C pleasure which a stupid game wont give. In true rock star fashion say "F*** Off" and play it.

I personally rate the drums above the guitar, since it is almost real. Its got 4 drums and a foot pedal. Turn on paranoid and enjoy the manic beats. So I am off with my band with Insen(Lead Guitar and Band leader) and Stewie(Drums). Being the lead singer, I protect my voice with extra doses of coffee and beer nowadays. Stewie kicks ass on the drums and in true modesty, I am next in line. So smashed fingers and burns are only natural in our line of work(The same old Rock rivalries :D).

Check out some of the songs we found during our tour:

Rolling Stones: "Gimme Shelter" : http://youtube.com/watch?v=Mqg1WVVmgx0&feature=related
Mountain : "Mississipi Queen" : http://youtube.com/watch?v=QQpBwHiULmE

and the song I naturally fit into:
Radio Head: Creep : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxpblnsJEWM

and my top score(97%) till now:
Black Sabbath: Paranoid: http://youtube.com/watch?v=SRwwYWlbP2U

I am itching to play Zeppelin, LMR(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7vs21ZKrKM) and PF but there are only so many songs now.

Just logging

2007-11-29T09:35:22Z

a reminder to read some contemporary sensible stuff too:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/books/review/10-best-2007.html?em&ex=1196485200&en=4e758f9010c87bf6&ei=5087%0A

My customary unchewed entry

2007-11-20T10:57:51Z

about this article in NY Times about "Denial":

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/health/research/20deni.html?ref=science

"The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life" enters my "wanna read" list on facebook.

But then I went on to read 2 more absorbing articles, one of which is faithfully quoted

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/weekinreview/18zernike.html?em&ex=1195707600&en=df5a2bb5d32eae0e&ei=5087%0A

Due to laziness, I avoid sharing my thoughts. It is not just about typing. Anyway as I can feel my brain degenerate, I think I need to
A) start playing bridge again
B) Fantasize over Theory or
C) Start doing this. This is a very veru good idea. Seems to be made for people like me : http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/fashion/18science.html

The only thinking I do nowadays seems to be about foosball. Am I addicted or what?

"The grapes were sour"

2007-11-06T17:06:37Z

read a friends status message, but that's a story that every one knows. Whats new? Hmmm...I'll give you a boring story with interesting thought questions.

I bought a metallic blue car which I happen to appreciate every time I drive to the point of it being a fixation. A friend said the car is too purple for his taste. I however couldn't see myself choose any other color, because the simple reason was that this color defined the car best. However I didn't say that. I said there were 4 choices. The grey was too boring. Who buys white? The red was too in-the-face and not available anyway. So, blue it was and then these profound (:D) words spewed "You live with your choices". He offered some consolatory words to this philosophical resignation.

The truth was a simple "I liked the color". The prevarication was the rationalization. I chose color for the story but that's a head-fake in Randy Pausch terms, just like this link is.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/science/06tier.html?ref=science

A farewell to arms

2007-11-04T11:37:05Z

After reading the book, I hid it in one corner of my room. I did not want to see it again. No, the book isn't bad. It is so disturbing and real that I couldn't take it...It was not like I was in a bad mood either. I had gotten through with this one big chunk of work. I had won some silly drag race and was pretty pleased with myself. I came home and got to experience a not-too-mild earthquake, something that ought to shake you up and put things in perspective, but No! The quake only generated excitement and pleasant after-effects(as all people that I talked with/chatted/received mails from me will testify)...So that night I finished the book that I had been reading for nearly a month now and it kind of jarred me awake. I am back to my usual pleasant stupor now, but it took me a while. So I don't really need to be writing this, but it is unfair to ignore what moves you. Anyway I have here a different section from the book, a section which, when I read, had made a mental note to retain in some flavor...and Yes, the book will go back into hiding the moment I am done with this blog.

"
Lying on the floor of the flat-car with the guns beside me under the canvas I was wet, cold and very hungry. Finally I rolled over and lay flat on my stomach with my head on my arms. My knww was stiff, but it had been very satisfactory. Valentini had done a fine job. I had done half the retreat on foot and swum part of the Tagliamento with his knee. It was his knee all right. The other knee was mine. Doctors did things to you and then it was not your body any more. The head was mine, and the inside of the belly. It was very hungry in there. I could feel it turn over on itself. The head was mine, but not to use, not to think with, only to remember and not too much remember.
I could remember Catherine but I knew I would get crazy if I thought about her when I was not sure yet I would see her, so I would not think about her, only about her a little, only about her with the car going slowly and clickingly, and some light through the canvas and my lying with Cathrine on the floor of the car. Hard as the floor to lie not thinking only feeling, having been away too long, the clothes wet and the floor moving only a little each time and lonesome inside and alone with wet clothing and hard floor for a wife.
You did not love the floor of a flat-cat nor guns with canvas jackets and the smell of vaselined metal or a canvas that rain leaked through, although it is very fine under a canvas and pleasant with guns; but you loved some one else whom now you knew was not even to be pretended there; you seeing now very clearly and coldly-not so much coldly as clearly and emptily. You saw emptily, lying on your stomach, having been present when one army moved back and another came forward. You had lost your cars and your men as a floorwalker loses the stock of his department in a fire. There was, however, no insurance. You were out of it now. You had no more obligation. If they shot floorwalkers after a fire in the department store because they spoke with an accent they had always had, then certainly the floorwalkers would not be expected to return when the store opened again for business. They might seek other employment; if there was any other employment and the police did not get them.
Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation. Although that ceased when the carabiniere put his hands on my collar. I would like to have had the uniform off although I did not care much about the outward forms. I had taken off the stars, but that was for convenience. It was no point of honor. I was not against them. I was through. I wished them all the luck. There were the good ones, and the brave ones, and the calm ones, and the sensible ones, and they deserved it. But it was not my show any more and I wished this bloody train would get to Mestre and I would eat and stop thinking. I would have to stop.
Piani would tell them they had shot me. They went through the pockets and took the papers of the people they shot. They would not have my papers. They might call me drowned. I wondered what they would hear in the States. Dead from wounds and other causes. Good Christ I was hungry. I wondered what had become of the priest at the mess. And Rinaldi. He was probably at Pordenone. If they had not gone further back. Well, I would never see him now. I would never see any of them now. That life was over. I did not think he had syphilis. It was not a serious disease anyway if you took it in time, they said. But he would worry. I would worry too if I had it. Any one would worry.
I was not made to think. I was made to eat. My God, yes. Eat and drink and sleep with Catherine. To-night maybe. No that was impossible. But tomorrow night, and a good meal and sheets and never going away again except together. Probably have to go damned quickly. She would go. I knew she would go. When would we go? That was something to think about. It was getting dark. I lay and thought where we would go. There were many places.
"

So, why the train, really?

Stole this...

2007-09-26T07:11:46Z

from someone's blog: http://idiots.blogspot.com/2007/05/great-vw-r32-ad.html

Seems like more self-glorification but the again this is too "me" to resist...

Its almost like I am back in Bangalore. I miss outmaneuvering the dogs but then again cops take their place :)

Why I read NYTimes

2007-09-19T05:18:26Z

mkrishna80 asked me the other day. I should thank emeritusl for introducing me to it.

The primary reason is it gives me something to do in between builds :) but then again I get to see articles like this:

1) After seeing Sicko, I pretend to be interested in stuff like health care. It helps to carry off images of maturity in old people discussions.."Should I move to SF to get free health care or wait for Hillary Clinton to get elected and NOT do her health care fiasco again?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/us/14health.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/us/politics/18clinton.html?ref=us

Of course I don't care. My company pays for my health care but then I should still be considering my new found layers of flab.

2) Remember Ayn Rand, anyone?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/business/15atlas.html?em&ex=1190260800&en=a452c5a143f0a472&ei=5087%0A

3) The follow-up for 2): Some "intellectual disgust" descriptions on http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/science/18mora.html?ref=science

The article itself drags in the middle though there's some interesting stuff towards the end.

4) Will I get better rates when I refinance for my auto-loan?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/business/18cnd-fed.html?ref=business

Lucid dreams

2007-09-17T07:05:10Z

I read this article http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/fashion/16lucid.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

and was stunned to see that it is a phenomenon. If I have talked to anyone long enuff, I would have told you stories of how I used to dream up strategies in Warcraft. Of course, in the interest of sobriety, I'll leave the "e(ro)soteric" stuff out.

I apologize to all mortals who can't do this. This article reminded me to get back to reading Pathanjali, so I can add "at will" to the previous sentence :D

A passage

2007-09-09T21:07:34Z

that convinced me that I am not an intellectual. People who have read the sequel to Pirsig's all too famous book might recognize this. Don't bother reading it if you don't plan to read the book. Nothing can be more innocuous than a surface reading of this passage...

" In a society that thoroughly distrusts authority of any sort, he had native personal magnetism that singled him out in any group. In a society that exalts moderation and the easiest way, he was turbulent and could act violently upon occasion. In a society that praises a pliant personality that "talks lots"- that is, that chatters in a friendly fashion- he was scornful and aloof. Zuni's only reaction to such personalities is to brand them as witches. He was said to be peering through a window from outside, and this is a sure mark of a witch, At any rate he got drunk one day and boasted that they could not kill him. He was taken before the war priests who hung him by his thumbs from the rafters till he should confess to his witchcraft. This is the usual procedure in a charge of witchcraft. However he dispatched a messenger to the government troops. When they came his shoulders were already crippled for life, and the officer of law was left with no recourse but to imprison the war priests who had been responsible for the enormity. One of the war priests was probably the most respected and important in recent Zuni history and when he returned after imprisonment in the state penitentiary he never resumed his priestly offices. He regarded his power as broken. It was a revenge that is probably unique in Zuni history. It involved, of course, a challenge to the priesthoods, against whom the witch by his act openly aligned himself.

The course of his life in the forty years that followed this defiance was not, however, what we might easily predict. A witch is not barred from his membership in cult groups because he has been condemned, and the way to recognition lay through such activity. He possessed a remarkable verbal memory and a sweet singing voice. He learned unbelievable stores of mythology, of esoteric ritual, of cult songs. Many hundreds of pages of stories and ritual poetry were taken down from his dictation before he died, and he regarded his songs as much more extensive. He became indispensable in ceremonial life and before he died was the governor of Zuni. The congenital bent of his personality threw him into irreconcilable conflict with his society, and he solved his dilemma by turning an incidental talent to account. As we might well expect, he was not a happy man. As governor of Zuni and high in his cult groups, a marked man in his own community, he was obsessed by death. He was a cheated man in the midst of a mildly happy populace.

It is easy to imagine the life he might have lived among the Plains Indians where every institution favoured the traits that were native to him. The personal authority, the turbulence, the scorn, would all have been honoured in the career he could have made his own. The unhappiness that was inseparable from his temperament as a successful priest and governor of Zuni would have no place as a war chief of the Cheyenne; it was not a function of the traits of his native endowment but of the standards of the culture in which he found no outlet for his native responses."

Of all the things that I could post

2007-08-16T04:17:46Z

I post this. I jumped over my various trips, new foosball mates, waveboard adventures, virtual titbits, great lunches, hot gossip and emotional roller-coasters to post this. The best thing since sliced bread. I never really liked sliced bread but u get the point ...:D

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/879

Yeah, one might wonder why all the fanfare about a plugin. I have wandered through the mazes of lynx, elinks and firefox itself for getting over the squeeky bastard. Now it rests on my left, while I rule the world with my split "natural" clickety-clackety-finger-punch-bag and wonder what the next wave will be.

My guess is this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stumpwm but I m not investing more time on this till there is a windows version. Till then I gloat over my newfound control of these pesky creatures.

Decreasing entropy

2007-07-16T07:18:39Z

is an illusion :). See the peace and calm that prevails over the Valley of the Sun, as seen by "Kalia the Crow turned into Happy Mistress of the House" (SS for short), also featuring in this caricature:

Some background:
This is the outcome of Not forgoing the rather comfy couch and Fifa 2006 (if people still remember the ps2 console). I was repeatedly warned that I will end up in a cartoon that SS (remember the abbreviations? pay attention!!) will eventually draw and it did happen. Incidentally there are others in the series, but they would belong to "Big infinity"'s blog (if it ever happens :) )

And seeing how it goes, I expect my next appearance in a Longhorn "football" costume, if I don't get off the couch soon.

"Artificial Ariticial Intelligence"

2007-03-24T23:43:09Z

First off, Thanks to emeritusl (hee hee, I still find your pseudonym funny), I am now hooked to NYTimes. I will no longer complain about the crap that you get when you read news off any news site. I am pretty sure that, NYTimes, like CNN and BBC is biased in its opinion (Yeah, I know. I am biased too). I still get my news off www.deccanherald.com but that is not quite appropriate in the US setting. So why is NY times good? not the news really..I think its the quality of writing. I like the Science and Technology stuff, in particular.

Another bit of old news for most of you, who followed the "Jim Gray search" but the article is still interesting..The idea of using humans to do what computers find hard to do has actually become a service.
See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/business/yourmoney/25Stream.html

This excerpt sounds a lot like speaking to Customer Service executives, but will this be the way to go in future? Will you spend less time searching because someone else will do the search for you? It will be interesting to see if everyone turns to managing in the future and isolate all the grunt work to a set of idle people.

"I was also interested in learning what it was like to be a consumer of crowdsourcing. So at 2:40 p.m. on March 14, I asked ChaCha, “Who was Evelyn Waugh’s commanding officer in the Commandos during World War II?” In an instant-messaging window, CandieSue22087 immediately welcomed me to ChaCha and asked me to be patient.

At 2:44, CandieSue threw up her virtual hands and transferred me to another guide, Tressie57635, who referred me to an academic paper on “suffixal sound symbolism in the novels of Evelyn Waugh.” When I protested, Tressie complained that it was a hard search, and at 2:49 she gave up, typing that I might do better with yet another guide. When I agreed, Tressie accidentally ended the search altogether — but not before serving me a page of 12 search results, not one of which was relevant.

A quick search on Google quickly provided the right answer."

..When you see the accusations being raised at Mechanical Turk, you already start thinking, why didn't I think of this before? All the worlds idle brain power in my control! :D

"THERE have been two common objections to artificial artificial intelligence. The first, confirmed by my own experiences searching on ChaCha, is that the networks are no more intelligent than their smartest members. Katharine Mieszkowski, writing last year on Salon.com, raised the second, more serious criticism. She saw Mechanical Turk as a kind of virtual sweatshop. “There is something a little disturbing about a billionaire like Bezos dreaming up new ways to get ordinary folk to do work for him for pennies,” she wrote."

..Enuff, I have made my excerpts too long..Will try to cut it down in future.

Pompeii and other ramblings

2007-03-24T08:08:34Z

It was well over 6 years ago that I first saw this stunning video with Santhosh on Mtv. I didn't know who this crazy band of shirtless people standing in the midst of some ancient ruins were, but the music was awesome. I had no idea that this song was Echoes and of course. It was somewhere in the middle of the song, and still no pressure from Santhosh to switch to ESPN or CNN World sports, probably due to the intensity of my wonder-struck expression. This variety of music was unheard of, of course and still is. and then as the video swivels, the lettering on the speaker came into view with "Pink Floyd, London" on it and then "oh" went both me and Santhosh. "This is Pink Floyd??" and I had become a fan.
I told this story many times later, all about Floyd and how the drummer's sticks became a whirl at the end of one song (Set the Controls for the heart of the Sun) and in spite of collecting all there is to Floyd in the early days of MP3 and gagaing over them, the videos of Pompeii were still out of reach. Now, in the days of youtube, when collecting music seems no longer required, these are available with no effort..

Live at Pompeii 1 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u70HdOuzPc&mode=related&search=
Live at Pompeii 2 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeaW4ZoXmJY&mode=related&search=
Live at Pompeii 3 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQL0YUA8Np8&mode=related&search=
Live at Pompeii 4 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLjXgRo2WGs&mode=related&search=
Live at Pompeii 5 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uYWjso-cU8&mode=related&search=
Live at Pompeii 6 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljT64SkuPqQ&mode=related&search=
Live at Pompeii 7 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5CVglSzGus&mode=related&search=
Live at Pompeii 8 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nISFHFjERWE&mode=related&search=
Live at Pompeii 9 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq1tK2DWRz4&mode=related&search=
Live at Pompeii 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pke96y0lAfQ&mode=related&search=
Live at Pompeii 11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntV_-JXgmRs&mode=related&search=

but still no high fidelity stuff but I guess its only a matter of time, but the people have given up on good stuff and listen to trash nowadays. Anyway check out Waters screeching, or blowing smoke rings in Part 3, or doing wisecracks. Its brilliant!
More things to see:
Nick Mason on the last shot of part 3
Beginning of Part 4, which contains the riffs that made Raghava wonder what mad inspiration that must have made them do this, but thats true for most of Echoes anyway :)
Waters poohpoohing the death of Rock in Part 5.
Part 6: Watch Mason do at 0-60, lose a stick and still do a 100.
Part 9: Set the controls..

Of course, there is still the problem of continuing songs with multiple links, making a playlist should solve that.

Some other interesting things (I know I am a few years late but so what?):
A whole bunch of floyd covers by Dream Theater:

"Hey you":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIL_KE38q28&mode=related&search=

"Us and them":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsxBzBmSSu0&mode=related&search=
If you see some of the comments on this, you'll see why I agree with Manjesh that Floyd fans are eminently hateable.

"Comfortably numb":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M5rBwZjgBw&mode=related&search=
The version of "Comfortably Numb" by Dream Theatre and Queensryche, settling all questions about the musical lineage of Queensryche :) and Balls to anyone who thinks otherwise, I would have given an arm and a leg to see that solo live. Still Dream Theater does "Won't get fooled again" better. I don't know why people even expect covers to be exactly like the original. Don't miss Petrucci go mad on this one.

No reason

2007-02-11T11:07:55Z

to post an entry but listening to "Shine on you.." makes you want to say something. As I have been accused of writing long, boring, unreadable blogs, I'll do something different but not terribly interesting.

Hee hee high hopes! For those of you who thought I had something to say. I have none. I was in some ultimate state of calmness today and thought I'll put in some stuff and see if I get some good tips.

chayech chechatri and me are planning to make a coast to coast (US of course) drive in May-June times. Of course the plan is dependent on when parents plan to come here etc.

So..If you have tips, ideas, suggestions do put in some stuff. I am looking for picturesque stuff, hikes on the way, Buy a car v/s rent one, Carry warm clothing etc. You don't get a couple of months of free time often. So for once I want to go somewhere in no hurry.

Ideally it would have been a bike ride across India, but that won't happen due to travel/immigration issues.

Anyway ending comment out of infinite optimism as usual will be:
So much text => No response. I considered putting up a photo of Anna Nicole Smith but that raised ethical issues about drooling over people who aren't uknow around..anyway..

HHH

2006-08-06T02:59:49Z

I see my previous entries and think to myself that I blog only when there are "events" happening but maybe that's just me. I guess I wouldn't have been doing that if I were a regular blogger. I still consider it a waste of time. Too many I's in one paragraph. Anyway...Since my large (horribly large, uninteresting and apparently sane ..I know :D )last entry, there have been enough to write about but like the weekend warrior that I am, I'll continue to be the weekend wartime journalist like one of my fav writers but I'll need to start driving better to do that. Of course, just because I don't drive ambulances in tough times and get injured I'll never qualify to join the elite league. Very funny huh but even the best go through trying times. More than a year after eying "Fiesta" and in spite of having so much history behind the book, I had never read it but I finally did read. I am a sucker for novels set in the 20's-30's, with lots of wine and esoteric choices of alcohol and women but why?? Of course I'll change track sometime but while I enjoy my paid vacation(which incidentally is starting to look less like vacation and more like "Hey! Thats why they pay me." ) I see no reason to change. So all you people who claim the supremacy of Jason Bourne or wonder whether angels and demons existed before the 90's or better yet claim that Indian writing in English is what you dig, please continue to do so. Someday I'll get out of this weird high brow inclinations towards (mostly translated) Nobel prize winning works and laugh at all pretentious people like me. In the meanwhile, I'll go around worshipping Hemingway. Hesse is getting too suicidy for my liking. They should have changed places really. All his life Hesse wrote about people having a good time and dying off in the end, while Hemingway went around writing people having an even better time and dying off in the end. In reality Hemingway did have a good time while Hesse went around escaping from monasteries and chasing boyish looking women around colorful brothels. It is rather unfortunate that Hemingway commited suicide. I would always have betted on Hesse to go in first and of course if I was around to roll the dice then Hemingway would have earned an exotic and not so high brow accident involving charging bulls, lots of wine and horrified faces( ( but very beautfiul and well-kept, mind you!!)..Nah Huxley doesn't deserve more than a sentence and I am sure that he would have whipped himself to death shoutinig old English verses. Anyway at the end of the day (hee hee) Fiesta is a very well written feel good and book with a frustratingly impotent viewer but Brett more than makes up for this. It was Hemingway's first big novel and of course he hadn't reached the heights of his brilliance that he managed to to somehow clamber up in "For whom the bell tolls" but still I can't wait to get my hands on another one of his books. In the meanwhile I read a little fairy tale collection written by Mr Hesse and guess what happened at the end of the first story. It starts with a D. Ok Ok I am waiting for the next round of growing up. Some one pleaase throw a good author that I can move on to!!

And just to spoil a perfectly good cryptic title http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_of_consciousness

How Bose got lost in the stream of ...

2006-07-31T10:01:32Z

Anyway, after 5 weeks of very exciting stuff, I decided to take a week off and enjoy since Yosemite was really tiring and reminded me of the general bad shape that I am in which is getting more ungooder due to random and voracious consumption of good food, lots of creamy coffees and ~exercise. Continuing with the story, this weekend was for mundane stuff. So Hari, Shilpa and Saurav(I'll just call them the gang or something) wanted to get drunk. So we went to this Middle-eastern place in SF Kan Zaman(I might have got the spelling wrong). We had to wait for a while but the ambience was nice, with belly dancing and all. We ordered our tequila and mojito rounds with food, when the cramped dance floor filled up with a few ABCDs and the music made an about turn from the desert tunes to Bhangra and did these guys have fun or what? We watched with great amusement as this girl went around kissing everyone she danced with. It was quite a sight and of course the party boys were all relegated to the restrooms to recover from their excesses by the time we started back home. I was thoroughly drunk and we had Floyd for company on the way back from SF. The 360 degree exit before Sunnyvale which Santhosh takes at a good 50+mph on his BMW deserves special mention. The sports package makes such a difference. We all came home and collapsed to wake up sometime in the noon. Santhosh and Saurav were helping a couple of friends to move into our apartment complex. After that the whole lot headed to Komala Vilas to have some nice home cooked food. We went to the Sunnyvale public library and spent an hour ther picking tintins and Hesses and Hemingways. We came home and when Santhosh settled on his books the gang went to play some badminton, where I could entertain people with my sucky badminton. It was fun and I so wanted to get into the pool afterward but by the time we showered and freshend up it was dark and time for dinner. So Santhosh and me went to Madras Cafe for a decent dinner. We ran into Sandhya and her husband, the people who moved in earlier today. We came back and slept early since I had to go to this barbecue which one of my managers had invited a bunch of us to. It was my first real invite to a Non-Indian event. Expectedly when there are people and opportunity to socialize it gets boring as hell. The only distraction was the pool which provided some entertainment. I didn't get into the pool. I knew that the moment I get in, I'll start showing off. I happily sat by the pool and yawned while a few people had fun in the pool. I came home and went to off with the gang to the pool, after a bout of very exciting TT with Saurav. We cleared off the not-so-exciting weekend with a visit to Naaz to see Golmaal. We all loved the silly comedy and slept off late. At the end of the week, I ensured that my status as an anti-social boor remains untarnished and there was yet another Monday which I had to wake upto with lost sleep.

Fast forward work filled week of interesting work and skipped descriptions, there was another weekend with nothing in the pipeline. Thankfully the company that is feeding me also pampers its interns by sending us kids out to stuff like Major league baseball games with lots of company sponsored beer. I was never a fan of baseball and thought it boring but the game was, to my pleasant surprise gripping. Yeah the Giants thrashed the padres 8-2 but each run scored and base stolen is hardly uninteresting and best of all, I ended up seeing some real American culture and liked it. There were some fireworks at the end of the game. The company that sponsored the fireworks seemed to have some sort of underhanded information that the home team would win. The fireworks lasted a good 15+ mins and this stadium is right on the bay (A good homerun should hit the water) and it made for awesome viewing. I was so happy for making up the firework display that I missed on the 4th of July and Swaroop, who was with me, told me this was even better than the one he saw in the same place a couple of fortnights back. We were dropped back to Matilda on the company shuttle and Santhosh dropped us to Frankie Louie..an Italian place where we had a late dinner of huge proportions( I couldn't finish it..So imagine the servings' sizes). It was like 2:00 in the morning when I finally reached home. Hari, Saurav and Shilpa came home a few mins later and surprise surprise there was Bose. He was back from LA. Everyone went off to sleep while Nitin and me chatted through the night about general apparently intellectual and enjoyable bullshit and ended up sleeping at 5:30 in the morning.

So Bose was here and it meant party time. There's a buzz when he's around. So we didn't want to waste a jolly weekend staying at home. We went to Shoreline for kayaking with the gang and Vivek (Santhosh's RV friend, now from Stanford). We took Beena along. The kayaking was good timepass but my mind is now set on sailing. They have these boards which kinda resemble surfing boards with a sail on top. That must be some fun to do. Santhosh and Saurav toppled in their kayak in the shallows and Santhosh lost his specs. I didn't see the "spectacular" event(in Saurav's words :D). We got some beer and headed to the pool after kayaking. We got the volleyball with us and played monkey for so long. We also tried getting coins off the bottom of the pool. I couldn't see a thing the moment I went underwater. I should have got my swimming goggles to the pool but Bose had no problem seeing in the water. It is rather funny because I distinctly remember getting coins at any depth in my swimming days. Now I need goggles to see them. OMG I am growing old!! So after endless playing around with the ball, coin, missed somersaults and mistimed backdives I got into the jacuzzi like the rest of the junta and enjoyed my beer. It was almost dark when we went home and the house was full of people. We got some Congress and some ellu to go with our beer while we waited for our showering turns. The whole gang landed up at Amber for dinner. Our plans for getting drunk again fizzled out after the heavy dinner and we all headed back home. The only talk was about the weather. It was incredibly hot, around 37 degrees and the house was unbearable in the heat. The Bay Area people don't believe in ACs since they don't need them most of the year. There's a running joke that the state tax in California was for the weather. Maybe the government should let us off the hook for the last couple of weeks at least. We had one fan among 6 of us and 5 of us slept in the balcony with the sleeping bag and the fan running.

I woke up at 11:00 and showered and got ready by noon. We were planning to go to this Moto GP in Laguna Seca, which is a 1 1/2 hour drive through the scenic 1 route. Santhosh had some work and didn't come. Saurav had to pick a friend up. So Hari, Shilpa, Vivek and me went. We got caught up in weekend traffic and ended up taking up an hour more than we planned. When we reached the venue we heard that the main race was over and were majorly disappointed. The shuttles to take us to the venue weren't running. So we drove our car up to see a huge line of cars which were headed out and the attendant told us there are 2 more races but it'll be over by the time we reach. We wanted to go anyway since we had come this far and the tickets cost 50 odd bucks each. We drove up, parked and got into the venue. We saw the bikes zipping by and got to know that these were the superbikes in the warmup laps. The 500 cc event was over. The first corner that we landed up in was one of the fastest corners of the race. It is a bit scary to see those bikes take the turn at 120Mph (near 200kmph) and the concrete wall right in front of them. The fastest turns that I had personally done wouldn't be more than 80kmph but the bike scene in India is completely different. I would love to get my hands on one of these beauties. Bikes kept zipping across till we were bored of them. We climbed a bridge and got to another view where there was a wide u turn, right at the end of an incline. This was a slower corner. We watched for a while and met up with Hari's cousins who drove up from LA for this event. We hung around thinking all races were over when they announced that the superbike race was about to begin. A minute later we saw the whole bunch coming down the slow corner. They went round and round and the gap widened to an extent where, instead of seeing a bike every 2 mins or so you see one every minute and then a stream of them and then a break and so on. Jamie Hackin won the race with an easy margin. After the race we went in to the Kawasaki, Yamaha and Ducati showrooms and checked out the bikes. I found the premium bikes rather affordable compared to all those premium cars that we can only dream about..but then again that is considering a dollar salary( in Indian lingo :) ) as Manjesh later pointed out. After we came out of the bike stands, we wanted to go some place to have food since we hadn't eaten the whole day. It was 5:30 or so and when we were about to head back we heard an announcement for another superbike race and we so thanked our stars that we didn't believe the attendant and go back home. The race is way faster than the warm up rounds. After being shocked at the speeds in the warm up laps, itself, the race was a treat. We crossed the bridge and got back to the place we were originally and the bikes were blazing fast at this corner. This race was closer with Jamie making it to number one after being second, halfway through the race. He went round the circuit burning rubber and doing wheelies and he made one right in front of us and Hari managed to get some on his camera. He sent me the links to the photos that he put up online which I lazily copy here.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/smanik/201234677/in/set-72157594216418204/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc17UZL9dws
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X3YJW6ni54
This kinda reminds me of all the snaps, at least some seven different events from which I need to consolidate from multiple people. I sincerely hope that they'll all put the stuff online and post links as comments on my blog someday :D.

Anyway after the race, we did the quiznos-subway routine for food and yes it was the first time I was eating at quiznos too, which only serves to prove that my sheltered living is far from ending. Vivek described the computational biology stuff that he did during his masters. More interestingly he described the course on flying that he had taken up. He flew cessnas around with a fellow student till it hurt his purse but he said the feeling was enjoyable but a bit expensive. Raghava must have done some stuff like that by now. Flying and all are way out of reach for us poor graduate students. So we content ourselves by carrying backpacks and other eeny-weeny stuff. oh yeah! remind me to stop digressing. The drive home was much quicker but I ended up sleeping at 2:30 and had to wake up at 8:30 to start my week off on a sleepy note once again.