chennaied

During the weekend, Chennai happened during the proto.in weekend. Had been hearing all these tales of the narrow-mindedness there, horror stories of acute regionalistic feelings. Wasnt expecting much, but I came out pleasantly surprised of what little I saw of Chennai.

Not many know Hindi; but can manage with English keywords. Autowallahs definitely try to fleece as much as possible; but being a Hyderabadi I know how that works; so yeah not much of a huge difference there; atleast not like Delhi types; sweet words and sheathed swords

The Elliots beach is a mess, literally; so much crap everywhere; its strewn with lots of rubble and rubbish.  Met an autodriver who was actually a B.Com diploma holder! Guess Ill kick myself in the shins forever for not getting know him more. Another autowallah was actually charging much less than in general; and we tipped him (yep, suckers we are!).

One thing i shall regret though; is not travelling the two days in Chennai by bus.  Learnt one to two words of Tamizh too; and some queer way of writing English.

The ‘h’ is read as ‘g’. Jahan is read as ‘Jagan’. And the ‘zh’ as the ‘ll’ (the ‘l’ sound when the tongue touches the top of your mouth). ‘Thamizh’ as ‘Tamil’.

‘Seeghrama Thanni Kondu Waanga’ (Please get me water quickly).

the E=MC2 of procrastination

I have no New Year resolution this year atleast nothing that tells me to wake up at insanely unearthly hours and sweat it out in the cold. This I learnt from the past experiences. Dr. Piers Steel has worked 10 years on the topic of procrastination and has his own theory on the same.

Steel has also come up with the E=MC² of procrastination, a formula he’s dubbed Temporal Motivational Theory, which takes into account factors such as the expectancy a person has of succeeding with a given task (E), the value of completing the task (V), the desirability of the task (Utility), its immediacy or availability (Ã) and the person’s sensitivity to delay (D).

It looks like this and uses the Greek letter Ã: Utility = E x V/ÃD

But do I need to really need a research for 10 years to tell me if the new year resolutions work and procrastination is not exactly a good thing? I dunno, maybe Ill start a research topic sometime soon titled ‘Understanding blogging from the focal point of an inverse relation relation between time spent and productivity’

market truism: proto.in

Products are designed by marketers, not technologists.

… said Mahesh Murthy. He went to explain that a marketer is simply one who understood what the consumer wants/needs, understands how he can create a market/product out of it and build it and sell it. No truer words were spoken that day.

Im in a rush right now; but sure will try as hell to get a review of proto.in. In the meantime you might want to see gokul’s blog. He live blogged proto like none other.

world’s greatest dad

Without doubt the world’s greatest dad is Dick Hoyt. To know what I mean you may want to read the story here.

To know more about the wonderful father-son relation, This is a beautiful story that needs to be read. A truly humbling moment for me personally, just as a proof as how far people can stretch themselves when in love.

Here’s to Team Hoyt. Cheers!

put mallika in jail

• the customers are not at fault; the prostitutes are!
• mr amitabh killed a man in a movie; lets stop him now itself, lest he kill a thousand men!

if we were to go by the logic of this man! if that ridiculous article is not enough, have a look at the first comment following it. thats some logic, if you can dare call that one. these rediff message board i say you, are great fun for bored minds.

iPhone!!!

1984 – Mac. I missed this milestone.

2001 – iPod. There.

2007 – iPhone. There!

Lots of rumors later. Lots of speculations later. We have one single device : iPod + mobile phone + internet connectivity device all in one. Isnt that gorgeous? A thing of beauty.

Apple has this knack of thinking ahead of the masses. And what a way to think. Keypads have been one of my worst technological phobias and thats one of the many reasons why i still own a Nokia 3310. And now with the touchscreen thing, the cumbersome keypad must be history. Only thing that I have been worried about since a long time with a touchscreen is the problem of SCRATCHES. Of course, if iPhone is scratchproof, then …

In the meantime though, hop over to Engadget to read a blow by blow account of the MacWorld Expo and iPhone. Im just going gaga over it and there this one goes into my wishlist… The question is how well it works in India! Will it?

Oh and btw Apple Computers, Inc will henceforth be known as Apple, Inc! Think about that!

Superman meets Apocalypse

Where? What? How? Dont wonder reader & think no far. Its just me!

I am Superman

Superman 100% Hulk 90% Batman 85% Green Lantern 75% Catwoman 70% Robin 65% Iron Man 65% Spider-Man 60% The Flash 55% Supergirl 45% Wonder Woman 15%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

I am Apocalypse

Apocalypse 86% Venom 82% Dark Phoenix 80% Juggernaut 80% Mr. Freeze 71% Magneto 71% Dr. Doom 70% Lex Luthor 68% Mystique 64% The Joker 61% Green Goblin 60% Two-Face 56% Kingpin 54% Riddler 43% Poison Ivy 39% Catwoman 33%

You believe in survival of the fittest and you believe that you are the fittest.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

dancing away to g(l)ory

as a student of pattern recognition and of computer vision, let me disclose first off, that my opinions are limited by my data set; and being a non-party type guy i am, its no way exhaustive, let alone comprehensive. subject to the limited data set, the statementes made here are necessarily sweeping and flawed. but yanyways, with the limited set i have at my disposal, i say these 3 lines only once:

men are lousy dancers. women atleast have grace. there are exceptions to this rule.

i have been a silent spectator to atleast a couple of dancing parties. and as i understand when i comes to dancing, men have a million left feet and they dont understand what it means. they look at dancing as just another exercise, a way to shed of those extra carbs.

‘a made for each other’ couple (thats just a silly formal prefix, dont really get carried away by it) walks in on the dance floor and there you have them dancing. the woman sways, swings, jives to some rhythm the man can never match. his movements is just a set of routines – step by step. i dont know if its a man-woman thing, woman looking everything as continuous process and men as discrete set of events… but yanyways, dont know if the thing is peculiarly indian as many things are, but then not much is to be said of something you dont know.

so you have men jumping, throwing their hands up in air, swaying rigorously, screaming but never dancing. up those strobe lights and there you have those new year resolutions to give solid workouts come into place with immediate effect. so you have men dancing the most for bhangra and turning totally helpless (!pathetic!) for anything less than thumping. the women though go just swaaaying to just a graceful set of movements.

ive seen this same thing when watching any serial which requires the men to dance; awkwardness is men’s inborn instinct to dancing. i proclaim with pride men dont understand dance as an art or craft; its exercise. achieving suboptimal heights and achieving zero grav for those few milli seconds is the man’s meaning of disco dancing. rhythm & grace can take a hike for all they care.

as i said, they are exceptions, and i know atleast 3 friends o mine who really understand what it takes to be a dancer. ladies, sure can try ping me to get in contact with those men; but then im no broker (no one calls me no pimp) and so will not assure ill help you beautiful ladies gracing this blog get in touch with the dudes.

any thoughtful soul can of course add more to this, but then as i disclaimed the opinions are a result of my data set. to change my perception i definitely would need a bigger data set. ergo, tickets to parties

se7en

another calendar year has come to an end. 12 leaves of pages thrown away, now consigned to being covers of books, to be into the make-do parcels for 100 grams of sugar or a handful of nuts and spices. new glossier gods adorn the walls, a new 12 pages rule the roost for the next 365 days. new decisions are made wanting to herald and new you, yet again. a generation of young bloods wasting away their night, swaying to something called music. … another sleepless night for an already sleep deprived generation.

thousands of dollars flowing for a day that  has no significance – nature wise or otherwise. just like celebrating your birthday, just one day and you are already 365 days old in bones. not understanding that moments melt away every moment. as they say, its all in the head.

for all its worth and since its the norm – wishing you happy, joyous, peaceful, wealthy and rollicking 2007. lets hope we bring more warmongers to justice and possibly hang them too (no, im not talking about saddam),  have less of natural disasters playing havoc and hope the bubble doesnt burst anytime soon.