Ran across this absolutely *fabulous* rant about audio speaker ratings. This is a must-read for anyone who ever felt thrilled at the thought of blowing money on a “2500 Watt PMPO” system.

People seem to be less than happy with the Lord of The Rings movie, now that it has been released here in india. Apart from having been trimmed down by some 40++ minutes (that too in a country like India where the average Hindi movie runs 3.5 hours!!!), the ending has left a lot of people feeling cheated. I mean, it’s not like no one knows that there are two more movies coming (in December of 2002 and 2003) – the primary audience of these movies is LOTR fans – there was *no* need for such antics just to ensure that people come for the next movie!

It appears that the people at TVA Help.com have managed to fix my old IBM Thinkpad. As suspected, IBM’s claim that it was a bust motherboard (needing a Rs.113,000 replacement) was just so much hogwash. Total repair bill from TVA Help.com – Rs.2600.

It is tactics like these (plus others, including a failure to adhere to “Truth in Advertising” to even a minimal degree) that has cost them this loyal customer of many years. And I am sure I am not the only one.

Financial yearend is almost upon us. Frantic last minute office purchases in progress.

This weekend, I plan to roll into Reynolds to check out some acoustic nylon-strung guitars. The itch is getting stronger, especially after seeing Paul McCartney performing at the Oscars.

Speaking of the Oscars – it was *really* nice to see Denzyl and Halle smash the glass ceiling for coloured actors by winning the best actor and actress awards. Combined with Sidney Poitier’s award and Whoopie Goldberg’s compering, this was a night to remember!

And yeah, Lagaan didn’t make the final grade. Didn’t really expect it to. One wins by winning, not wishing.

Still haven’t decided where to go for the summer vacations. Shubha would like to go to Ooty, Anjali hates it, and I would like to go home (Germany, to my mom and grandmother) for a few weeks. The latter is largely out for financial reasons – the plot purchase has drained me. Will have to decide soon.

Anjali’s exams are progressing. One over, another one tomorrow. Monday comes the big one – Maths.

Judo The Dog is evidently not happy with his furcoat, given the current heat wave. Maybe I should build a pond for him to lie in during the day. God knows we have the space for it.

Update:It appears that I got a brief mention in the papers today.

Today was a bad day. I do not wish to talk about it.

Update: No, it had nothing to do with Lagaan’s not winning an Oscar.

Ah, Sunday. God created this day to soften the blow of Monday.

The morning passed peacefully, as Sunday mornings should. Then synced up with Gopi and Avinash at the Windsor Manor, where we had excellent iced tea and I had a Chicken Tikka on a bun. Don’t ask me what that is – go there and order one yourself. Good stuff.

Afternoon turned out great – before I could bug Mrinal about a jam session, *he* beeped me and asked! Not only that, he brought Gaurav (from Phenom) along as well! Weee!

We settled down to some serious jamming, very fruitful stuff (hence my decision to call it marmalade, not jam , and in the next four hours covered great stuff. The Eagles, The Carpenters, The Beatles, Eric Clapton, CCR, Pink Floyd (of course!), and lots, lots more! We had a *ball*! Four hours later, I was covered with sweat, my throat was sore, my fingers cramped, complete with a major silly grin of satisfaction on my face. We simply *got* to do this again! Here are some photos.

Note to myself – I need more and longer cables, and more mikes, and a *working* way to record these sessions.

The *bad* news was that Mrinal is moving out of the neighbourhood at an accelerated pace – end of this month! Argh!

Amazing program on National Geographic – one I have been looking forward to – The Search for the Afghan Girl. Totally rivetting. Those eyes…..

Star TV goofed during a promo for this evening’s X-Files episode, announcing “a totally new episode”. Wasn’t, but it gives rise to hope that Star will begin the next season of The X-Files fairly soon.

Tomorrow Anjali starts her first ever exams – let’s all hope for the best.

Went to office this afternoon for the first time since Monday. Meetings with house finance guys, auditors and clients. Groan!

Old Thinkpad went off for repairs today. Let’s see how these guys (TVA Help.COM) handle the job. They got back to me in the evening with a diagnosis that told me that they were on the right track – now to see if they can fix it. More news forthcoming on Saturday.

While reinstalling the machine at home, found an old wallpaper link that fans of Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine on Star Trek Voyager) might like.

While on the subject of reinstalling – everytime I reinstall Windows (necessity, since Anjali’s games require that), I wonder how these jokers ever sat down to design an operating system that doesn’t have a concept of separate partitions for data and programs (note – “My Documents” is a pathetic excuse). I mean, this is almost *criminal*! Worse – applications store data where they are installed! (Shudder!)

Speaking of Windows reminds me of Vinod Unny in Delhi Since we are both Star Trek fans, we watch the same TV programs every day, which results in us getting into deep SMS-based discussions – knowing that the other guy is watching exactly the same thing as you are. Comes in pretty handy at times.

Yesterday we got into an argument – he insisted that yesterday’s episode of Voyager had been shown before. Since the episode guide pretty accurately described yesterday’s episode, I doubted that – until Vinod started telling me accurate details about the next scene – before it happened. OK, so he had seen the episode before, but where?

Honey The Cat (who is currently tagged the “pretty witty city titty kitty” thanks to her … ummm … rather prominent nursing mechanism) comes and goes like a clockwork – except last night, when she showed up at 2 am, wanting to play! Aaaaarrrggghhh!!!! Like it isn’t bad enough that Hairy Mutter (aka Judo the Dog) insists on long distance communication with the dogs in the next neighbourhood – in the middle of the night….

Haven’t been playing any music for several days now. I have this horrible itch to fill a blank spot in my guitar collection – I do not have a functional nylon string guitar. This is bad – I love plucked playing, and plucked steel string isn’t quite the same. Besides, it is far more fun on a nylon string guitar. I guess it is time to start saving up again.

Saving reminds me – 23 days to Roger Waters’ “In The Flesh” Tour Concert here in Bangalore. The publicity is already going on strong – full page ads, radio spots. Apparently there will be no opening band, and the show will be for THREE HOURS (with only a 20 minutes break). I have *never* heard of a rock concert that lasts three hours – this is *bound* to be good stuff.

Ah – there goes my “15 minutes to Voyager” alert on the Palm Vx – time to wind up this ramble.

Out of office experience these past two days.

Quick update – as expected, Fabmart delivered the CD I ordered without any issues – the same CD that Planet M said it couldn’t source (of course only *after* I complained 2 weeks later). Q.E.D.

Interesting thing happened a couple of days ago. I woke up really late. Curious to know what time I went to bed the night before, I booted up the home machine and checked the logs. Showed activity at around 4:30am. So what had I been doing all that time?

Well for one, I apparently destroyed my Mandrake Linux 8.1 installation and installed RedHat Linux 7.2 in its place. I apparently did not make any backups, though this isn’t critical, since all data is backed onto the office servers ASAP anyway.

IAC – it appears that the saying “I can install Linux in my sleep” bears some merit

Short article on Mrinal’s alternate group Cryptic in the Bangalore Times today. No photo, and the article isn’t online either. Basically a straight (and rather dry) description of the band and its plans. Will provide a link when I find one.

Update – here it is.

Finally succumbed and bought a new hard disk for Anjali’s machine – we were spending more time fighting diskspace problems than getting any work done! The new 40 GB disk should fix that issue.

Of course, it now means a lot of reinstallation, but it should be worth the while.

Brother-in-Law Abhijeet Rane finally succumbed to the lure of the lyre – he bought a guitar! It took him just 18 years to make up his mind

Thankfully, he has the basic traits (a sense of tune, a sense of beat and paitience) that any budding guitarist needs, so I look forward to jamming with him in the hear future. Pity that he lives in Seattle instead of Bangalore.

He asked me for some hints to get started, and I pointed him at GuitarNotes.com – definitely a great place to get all sorts of information and instructional material from.

Looks like Mrinal had a smashing time on Sunday. Well, at least he will be able to see the road again.

Today, too, was a day that held all the excitement of a glass of water under the Niagara Falls. If there was something that happened today, it probably escaped my memory.

I am sitting at home typing this. In front of me is a set of RedHat Linux 7.2 CDs. I wonder why. I use Mandrake Linux 8.1 at home…

Bah, washout Sunday. Nothing happened. Got bored out of my skull.

The Exocore gang decided to go for the Lord of the Rings night show. Since I wasn’t interested, I lapped up Mrinal‘s invitation to join him to see a Jazz concert by the Hans Mantel Quartet.

Since that was in the evening, I decided to go home early and catch some Zzzzs, but I spent most of the afternoon jamming at top volume. I have been doing experiments with song pitches that vary during the day, and sure enough my day-pitch is markedly different from my evening pitch. Strange.

Towards late afternoon, hit the sack for a while. Mrinal came in the evening to pick me up (my car was booked by the LOTR-going gang). We jammed for a while, then headed off to town to see the concert.

Reached there to find most of Mrinal’s gang there as well (including Phenom and their talented and lovely singer Noella).

I was surprised – I can understand Mrinal being interested in Jazz, but to find his whole gang there shows that there is still hope that the distortion-pedals will not take over the planet anytime soon .

But on the other hand, they had some over-the-hill ex-collegiate (who didn’t know which world he belongs to) with them. Hmmmm, maybe I have reason to be worried yet…..

The concert was marvellous, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. They played 11 numbers, including some timeless Duke Ellington classics, and the performance was flawless. Hans provided lucid and humour-riddled commentary between numbers, heaping tons of praise on Bangalore and Bangaloreans, which went down rather well. And then they played an own composition called “Bangalore Blues”, and the crowd was theirs.

When they played “Donna Lee”, the crowd went nuts, and rightly so, but for me the highlight was a number called “Terrestres” (sp?). The drummer (Wim Kegel) set a blinding pace with his rimshot drumming, and the other three clearly had a ball.

Wow!

I have never been a major Jazz fan (I listen, but I tend to be more inclined to listen to Louis Armstrong for his lyrics and gravelly voice rather than the fact that it is jazz), but I sure saw the light today.

For the record, here is the set they played (please excuse the names and/or spellings):

1. I hear a Rhapsody
2. Old Folks
3. Donna Lee
4. Gone with the Wind
5. Terrestres
6. Lotus Blossom/Chelsey Bridge (medley)
7. Stellar by Starlight
8. Bangalore Blues
9. Caravan
10. Bye Bye Blackbird (encore)

After the concert, we mingled outside, where I got to see the fabled Durga (the drummer from Cryptic) – sadly not to speak to her.

By then I had realised that having “elderly” me along must have been quite awkward for Mrinal with so many of his friends around – especially when he later found out that some of his friends thought I was his father!

Checked email – found some more “I hate you” mail waiting for me – this time from some GNU-heads who weren’t amused with my article.

As I said on the Goa mailing list yesterday – I am *not* willing to defend this clarification (even if RMS would challenge it), because I have learned over the years that some topics are really futile to discuss. This is one of them – the reason being that it represents a clash between facts and ideology, and the two do *not* make good debate participants.

To end the week on a “jazzy” note (and as a retort to someone :

I hear babies cry, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know
And I think to myself:
What a wonderful world!
Yes, I think to myself:
What a wonderful world!

–What a Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong)

Lord of the Rings opens in Bangalore today, and it appears the entire gang at work is going tomorow. Unfortunately, I have this total aversion to movie theatres, and haven’t gone to one in almost 15 years. The reason is simple – no PAUSE key And that is something I need, or I end up with a violent headache.

Watched the old Linux v/s Gnu/Linux argument develop on one of the lists I am subscribed to. very clearly as a result of RMS’ recent visit to Bangalore/Chennai/Mumbai. Gopi and I recently sat down and discussed this, and did some research, which resulted in my writing this article.

My references to PCQuest yesterday seem to have struck a chord in plenty of places, and raised a few hackles (from fairly obvious quarters). I’ll collect the responses over the next few days and then put them together as an article/FAQ.

Interestingly, it has also started several discussions across the place (I can see one starting here). Obviously, there are people who feel about this as strongly as I do.

I feel a bit burnt out today. Between evaluating house loan proposals, planning projects at work, trying to teach my daughter how the decimal system works and hollering about the pathetic state of the lawn, I am beginning to feel rather old. I even missed StarTrek:Voyager tonight!

The weekend starts tomorrow. I really need to do something non-computer. Maybe a few new (old) songs. Or get some photographs into shape. Or maybe write a few articles.

Hmmm…. how do I do all of the above without using a computer?

Hmmm, more Piscean birthdays – goody! Today it is the turn of J.C.Kiran (I refuse to call him anything else, this being the name he registered as on my long dead BBS CiX (1989-1999, RIP). Happy Birthday, Jace!

As an example how to run an efficient online shop – on the 12th, I went online and ordered a couple of CDs for my mother, whose birthday was yesterday. Since she lives in Germany, I ordered from Amazon Germany. Needless to say, the CDs were delivered without any hassles whatsoever the next day (i.e. on her birthday) – much to her (and my) delight.

Today I got insult added to injury from PlanetM Online. It is very likely that someone read my lament from the day before yesterday, because today, I got a casual apology from them, along with a 10% discount coupon. Bah! They expect that a 10% discount will entice me to go and try my luck there one more time? Not likely!

I just ordered the same item that Planet M Said they couldn’t source – this time from Fabmart. Now let’s see what happens.

Met up with KK (the editor of PCQuest) for dinner. Discussed various things, including the pros and cons of my restarting my column in PCQuest. I am a bit hesitant – here’s why:

To start with, PCQuest is a print magazine with virtually no online presence. What presence they do have is so completely out of sync with what people would expect from a magazine like PCQuest that it is not funny. Here, see for yourselves.

While it can be argued that there is no money in publishing the online world, it does not mean that you don’t make an effort to publish at all! And PCQuest’s current web site definitely falls under the heading “not interested, we don’t care”.

The online version is really PCQuest’s showcase to the world outside India. And what a visitor sees is a badly done site.

What’s wrong with it is is simple – whoever designed that site is more interested in selling advertising than getting content online. Articles appear randomly, the archives are pathetic and past articles just disappear down the bit bucket. The design of the site is highly IE specific, HTML errors and bad site maintenance ensure that even ads don’t appear at times, the search is worse than useless, and so on. I could go on forever.

The other problem I have is that the PCQuest of today is so different from the magazine that we were involved with almost a decade ago. In those days, the magazine was a labour of love by many people, including Kishore Bhargava, Ashish Gulhati, Rishab Iyer Ghosh, Nikhil Datta, Anil Chopra, Vinod Unny, editor Prasanto Kumar Roy and so many others. And of course me. Our individual characters and personalities came across strongly, giving the magazine the flavour that made it famous.

Then Cyber Media (the publishers of PCQuest) decided to “make changes” – and screwed it up completely. And within a few months, everyone was gone. What was left were a few staff writers and occasional guest writers.

In the past, I have time and again tried to get PCQuest to acknowledge its authors and give them more freedom – the way I was acknowledged and free to write when I used to write for them. Tell me, how many PCQuest authors can you identify by name or face today? The answer is almost certainly – none. This is a total shame. Those guys write their hearts out – and you can’t even associated a face with their name.

Cyber Media has difficulty in understanding that their writers need to develop their visibility and personalities as well – to the benefit of the magazine they write for. Their biggest worry appears to be that the writers will become “bigger than their platform”, increasing their market value to such an extent that they eventually leave for greener pastures.

According to me, and many of the people I mentioned above, this is sheer nonsense.

The sad part is – this attitude has been a role model for PCQuest’s competitors as well. CHIP followed it, as did it’s successor DIGIT. Let’s not talk about Computers Today, IT, PC World and others.

No wonder that today’s technology writing in India is as bland as glass of water, and as exciting as a product catalog.

Technology writing isn’t just about technology – it is about humans and individuals and how they interact with technology. By “force-fitting” writers into a standard mold, with no faces to names, not personalities of their own and no “personality cults” (as someone who was trying to be extremely nasty about me once mentioned in a now obscure mailing list), these publications (led by PCQuest) killed the art of technology writing in India.

And I am very hesitant to go back into that bland pool of homogenous, pre-processed, form-fitted, “one mold to bind them all” world of writing.

Heck – do you think I would be allowed to write in any of these publications what I just wrote above (even if it isn’t quite technology)?