Christmas!

Great christmas at Holly's place! Am too tired to write anything more, but I just have to post some pictures of the food :-)





My radioactive play-dough alien...

Sharon's amazing miniature neighborhood...

Pat and Sharon posing for their canon moment

Going..going...gone

Next week, same time, I'll be sitting at home (hopefully)... watching telly, and eating my mom's awesome food.. This past one and a half years has been the longest I've ever been away from home. I'm dying to go home and have to do nothing for a change.. no deadlines, no exams, absolutely nothing. I can finally catch up on all those hindi movies and songs on MTV, and yes, all those teary soaps that I'll have to sit through coz mom can't do without them. I'm taking my camera along, so I'll be photo blogging the entire trip at http://anil.textamerica.com. (or maybe somewhere else..) Can't wait.

The Brain's Alphabet!

If you have ever wondered how the brain manages to store so much information, here's the answer. Some researcher with a lot of time to fool around found that the brain actually uses English! The entire alphabet can be seen here.

Tonight I'll sleep an enlightened guy.

"How do you know she is a unicorn?" Molly demanded. "And why were you afraid
to let her touch you? I saw you. You were afraid of her."
"I doubt that I will feel like talking for very long," the cat
replied without rancor. "I would not waste time in foolishness if I were
you. As to your first question, no cat out of its first fur can ever be
deceived by appearances. Unlike human beings, who enjoy them. As for your
second question --" Here he faltered, and suddenly became very interested
in washing; nor would he speak until he had licked himself fluffy and then
licked himself smooth again. Even then he would not look at Molly, but
examined his claws.
"If she had touched me," he said very softly, "I would have been
hers and not my own, not ever again."

-- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"

To have felt true love is to have lived life in its entirety.

Okay, I have to mention this.. In a fit of subconscious narcissism, I've put up a photoblog here. That is, till I find a better place to park my pics. The title says that it's been created with a camera phone, but fear not - my phone camera is as bad as yours.. the pictures are all digicam pics (as if you couldn't have guessed). So take a peek.

Baaaadd Santa!

"Bad taste is better than no taste, as style empress Diana Vreeland said, and "Bad Santa" spreads it freely and honestly, like fertilizer. You see, love actually is all around, as long as you know where to look."

Salon has a glowing review of the extremely irreverent movie. The movie revels in its ability to go against every accepted christmas tradition. Just when you think that it couldn't offend more, it surprises you with its effortless and earnest humor that's crude and yes, very offensive. I loved every moment of it. Billy Bob Thornton as the skinny, unshaven Santa who uses the F-word as the requisite verb in every sentence he spouts from his alcohol soaked lips is just too believable, and surprisingly likeable. This ain't no mushy story, and at every turn, it veers away from the possible mushy and 'christmasy' path it could take.
Go watch it folks.. it's much better than the usual Christmas mush you'll get at this time.

On the insanity of the patenting system

There was this particularly 'insightful' post on a slashdot discussion about insane patents about obvious stuff like Amazon's 'search inside the book' feature (Hell, it isn't an innovative idea - no one could manage to convince publishers or have the resources to do it - there are plenty of e-books which are searchable). Here's part of the post:

"Surely anyone who claimed that there is no incentive go grow cotton without "niggers" on the plantation would be considered a barbaric. But if someone claims that there is no incentive to create intellectual and knowledge works without copyrights and patents, then society calls them enlightened. If someone had said that the great wealth of America rested on slavery as a property right and the plantation system, they were a foolish idiot. But if someone says that the great wealth of societies in the information age rests on "Intellectual Property", then they are called wise. Anyone who says that slavery was about property rights and not control, is a liar. However, if they say that copyrights and patents are not about control, but "Intellectual Property" then they are considered trustworthy. How about - if you don't like slavery - don't own slaves, and if you don't like copyrights no one forces you to buy those creations. How about - if you don't believe in slavery, you must be an anarchist, if you don't believe in copyrights and patents you must be communist. How about - you are a thief if you free slaves from the plantation, you are a thief when you copy someones "Intellectual Property"."

Read the entire thingy. And then there's the guy who wondered if he could patent his DNA and then sue his spouse for patent infringement when she gets pregnant! The Onion has a nice satire about this.

Kipling's six honest men..

"I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who."

In an interesting article, Ronan Nugent describes his experiences as a young engineer in an firm trying to achieve ISO 9001 certification. Often frustrated by the practices of his coworkers, Nugent resorted to Kipling's six honest men to approach problems using plain common sense. As he says, ISO 9001 isn't rocket science, and most problems can be approached by asking the simple questions, What, Why, When, How, Where and Who.

Photo time.. yippeeeee!!!!!!!
Got my new digital camera.. the Olympus stylus 400.. the camera sucks big time, and I'm gonna replace it with a Canon Elph or something, but till then, goold ol' photoshop does the trick... esp when u want to add a li'l bit of artistic effects... Here's Rural and Terrace Intersection today afternoon

Finals Week

One course down, one more to go.. Had the project presentation for one course today:

Making money from recycled computers

Ever seen those $50 laptops on classified ad sites.. the ones with 133MHz processors and specs that make you wonder what you, or anyone else could do with them? Wallflower is a company whose business model was built around such laptops. Founders Mitch Kahn and Gordon Clyne started out by buying these cheapo laptops and creating digital picture frames with them. Now that's a cool idea (of course, I dont think it's worth paying $800 for a picture frame) and they were successful enough to graduate to buying proper new components for their products which now feature Wi-Fi networking so that you can drag and drop new pictures to your frames from your desktop. I wonder if I could dismantle a cheapo laptop myself and create my own moving digital picture frame...hmm...now that would be a project.

If you want a digital picture frame for your home, check out Ceiva which sells them for $125 (with a monthly subscription for pictures).

Sex and Scandals maketh a heady blog..

Mu Zi Mei was a sex columnist for the City Pictorial, a Chinese magazine. Mu Zi Mei wasn't particularly famous. Until, she decided to blog.

Her sexually explicit posts detailing her tales of debauchery has gained her a readership of over 10 million a day. And that was before the New York Times (why do all my stories refer to NYT?) wrote about her. Her popularity has caused her to be both admired and despised by the Chinese, but it has also got her into the Chinese edition of Cosmopolitian. Then, of course the Government had to intervene. She voluntary quit her job and shut down her blog. Her blog posts, however are archived all over the Net, and there are groups in Yahoo! devoted to her.I'm sure Google is overloaded with queries to find out her site, which unfortunately (yes, I'm one of those Googlers) is in Chinese.

Danwei has an entire section devoted to the cult of Mu Zi Mei which makes for interesting reading (including a very rough translation of one of her posts, and some of the magazine covers she's been featured in)

Too bad I don't write about sex.