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media war a very interesting article in the guardian on how the media is coloring perceptions in the on going war.
t-shirtsthatsuck haha, check out this website, too funny
movable type finally got my movable type to start working. had tried installing it before but it did not allow me to login. there was something missing in the installation instructions, got the clarification from the netfirms support faq. essentially, had to run mt-load.cgi, to create the login, that hadn't been specified in the mt install instructions.
crackle in the dark jungle night by the watering hole where the tigers walk soft measured steps without a crackle, a whisper, in silent thought the floor covered rotting leaves and moss sliver of moonlight sparkles the eyes and glints off the gun stock the air dead, the wind naught stare and startle majestic head raised, questions will fall down dead doubts silenced, or not ears cocked, keen, intense wayward leaf, apostate banished, falls, drawn as if, by the silent rock settles crisply, next to the careful foot time, muscles, fingers, tightened squeeze, now! now! now! no, wait, aim, adjust, crackle, noooo!!! the hunted is lost, gone each with a story, one to narrate, one to boast.
analysis romantic poems is how i spend my graveyards ;). it is a little more arcane than what i generally write. i've, here, hopped from one stone to another, wayward, seemingly without sense, but it is all in the same pond of desperation by which i currently reside. lemme know what you think, if u do, at all. i tried writing an explanation of what i was thinking when i wrote, but that's rather difficult, i can't do it right now, u gotta take from it what u will.
romantic poems rising and rising, slowly upward, simmering in the warmth, stretching like a lazy cat on the sunlit patch whistling in the cold dark blustery nights words of romantic poems letters in the trash eyes staring hard looks averted in time sometimes, sometimes not dreams on soft, down filled beds laid on the floor crushed, trampled, destroyed age in the race breathing hard, far away days of inclement weather dark sad and gray life and death beating together breathing together in one breath one in another, the other always shy, always afraid proud, single, lonely, alone arrogant sonfabitch, wake up wake up as yet, sing a song, murmur, whisper, shout or remain forever without darkness remains, inside, and out what if what if? always the same refrain what if what if indeed, a heart torn apart is better than one shrivelled, indeed! vagrant looks, furtively seek, here now and then there nothing to be found, when, hope itself is dead.
al jazeera la times reports how the nasdaq, in a copy cat move of the nyse, has decided to not allow al jazeera reporters from using its facilities to broadcast reports. the purported reason is the violation of the geneva convention by the network in broadcasting images of american pows. by that reasoning cnn, cbsnews and other american networks deserve similar treatment right? considering images of iraqi soldiers surrendering to us and british forces were so common just a few days ago.
rebuild the've started granting contracts now to rebuild iraq, put out the fires and stuff. nice strategy right, put your people in the administration, they pour hell fire over other soverign states and then pay you to put them out. long live the american ideal!
philosophy a couple of interesting articles, one on the philosophical base of al qaeda, from the ny times, u'll need to sign up to read that one. another one is an article by john le carre, here. it is entitled, "the united states of america has gone mad" pretty strong there eh? i guess it is only the administaration that's gone totally insane ;-). john le carre is a british mystery/spy novelist, his works include the russia house and tinker tailor soldier spy. also, the rather arcane, 'the naive and sentimental lover'.
aspirations when i was a younger, not very many years ago, yet long enough ago that i can reminsce about it, i had aspirations. i have them now too, but that was different, it was more idealistic, less practical, more dreamy and very ambitious. i wanted to go to mit, i wanted to be like einstein, or edison. nowadays i just want a job, i still dream of unlimited riches and a harem of beautiful women, but that with a hopeless wishfullness. i remember being totally in awe of thomas alva edison, having first read about him in a school text. i'd eventually obtained a biography and devoured it, superimposing my projected self in his place and planning path breaking inventions. his quote of genius being mostly perspiration and a little inspiration was a personal favorite (though i remebered it as being success and not genius). at other times i've aspired to be a great writer, like james michener, churning out thousand page novels in my twilight years, or like dickens, prose so powerful, it wrenches mind and soul. i do not remember where i read this but it is pertinent to the present discussion. if, at the end of your life, there came to you someone and said, you'll have to live every moment of your life again, every breath, every second, every victory, defeat, hope and desperation, every knife in the back, felt and used, how would you react? the way you saw that someone, as god's angel or as the devil incarnate, tells you how you've lived. it is a cruel, distressing assessment, but it is a good honest one.
times
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. - charles dickens in a tale of two cities amazing how pertinent those words are in our times.
quote
It's splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your imagination and make them pop like chestnuts. -Gustave Flaubert, novelist (1821-1880)
soros
this started out as a post about an article on american supremacy by george soros. i'd read things about mr.soros before but not anything by him. on reading the article, which struck me as very perceptive, i tried to look up on more info about him. he's written seven books, has, at one time, earned a billion dollars in one night (he risked ten BILLION that the british pound will fall, it did), but faced huge losses in russia in 98, then again when he bet too early that the internet bubble will bust. he's now apparently much more conservative in his approach. another investor who inspires like awe is the much revered warren buffet, the oracle of omaha, in who's company if u'd invested $10,000 in 1965, u would expect returns of $50million today. phew!
salam pax
came across this blog, it is by someone who claims to be in baghdad, iraq. very interesting read.
what if?
with war looming so close, maybe it is time to ask what if iraq does have all those chemical, biological and nuclear weapons that bush insists it does and decides to use them? i honestly don't believe iraq possesses anything, quatitatively or qualitatively, that anyone needs to be afraid of but assuming for a moment that it does, is bush willing to subject american troops to those weapons in the theater of war? for, if saddam hussein has those weapons, won't he try and use them to horrendous effect against the american and british soldiers currently in kuwait? could he not launch spiteful missiles against israel? does the american thrust hope to stun the dictator into inaction? or do they know that he won't really be able to retaliate effectively, are secure in that knowledge, and know their job is to soften the target, march in and take over the country? so many questions, so many hypotheses, so many lies, so many versions of the truth, such few wise men, such few facts, such few answers.
weblogs
i've been wondering, why is it that weblogs seem to be rapidly gaining in popularity? is it because they appeal to an innate voyeuristic nature that we all possess? the thrill of knowing what's going on in someone else's head mind and life? or is it because we as humans try to socialize and what better way for those of us bitten by the webbug than to socialize through this one more mode of expression? or is it that weblogs provide the kind of community that joel professes we need in this article? maybe it is a combination in various degrees of all these factors.
rubaiyat
when i first read the rubaiyat of omar khayyam, i remember not understanding much, but i loved the poetry and the play on words. of course it was only a translation, how fantastic would it be to read it in farsi? robert w. fitzgerald's rendering of the original into english is, in common opinion, the best of all the translations available. read it and reread it, for every time youi read the quatrains, you will see a little more meaning than you did the last time.
war
it could start next week. i think it is pretty much certain it will. and if it does, it won't be much different from the iraqi aggression in kuwait. this is a war nobody wants, and i record here for tomorrow, my own moral indignation at it's prospect. i oppose it heart and soul, and hope to god that the people of iraq not be punished or made to suffer for the faults of their leader and the imbecility of those of other nations.
soul cages
sallu just introduced me to these sting lyrics, i hope i'm not breaking any copyright laws by posting them here, the soul cages The boy child is locked in the fisherman's yard There's a bloodless moon where the ocean died A shoal of nightstars hang fire in the nets And the chaos of cages where the crayfish lie Where is the fisherman, where is the goat? Where is the keeper in his carrion coat? Eclipse on the moon when the dark bird flies Where is the child with his father's eyes? There are the soul cages These are the soul cages He's the king of the ninth world The twisted son of the fog bells toll In each and every lobster cage A tortured human soul These are the souls of broken factories The subject slaves of the broken crown The dead accounting of old guilty promises These are the souls of the broken town These are the soul cages These are the soul cages These are the soul cages These are the soul cages 'I have a wager' the brave child spoke The fisherman laughed, though disturbed at the joke 'You will drink what I drink but you must equal me And if the drink leaves me standing, A soul shall go free' 'I have here a cask of most magical wine A vintage that blessed every ship in the line It's wrung from the blood of the sailor's who died Young white bodies adrift in the tide' 'And what's in it for me my pretty young thing? Why should I whistle, when the caged bird sings? If you lose a wager with the king of the sea You'll spend the rest of forever in the cage with me' These are the soul cages These are the soul cages These are the soul cages These are the soul cages A body lies open in the fisherman's yard Like the side of a ship where the iceberg rips One less soul in the soul cages One last curse on the fisherman's lips These are the soul cages These are the soul cages These are the soul cages These are the soul cages Swim to the light Swim to the light He dreamed of the ship on the sea It would carry his father and he To a place they could never be found To a place far away from this town A Newcastle ship without coals They would sail to the island of souls hmm, deep stuff, there are some websites that offer an analysis and explanation of the lyrics, just google it if it strikes ur fancy.
there is a bug in ur system
remember my post on the fanastic number of results monster gives? well as i was desperately wading through the plethora of results today i came across this posting. in case that links becomes inactive, here's the initial few lines,US-GA-Atlanta North-Web Developer Status: Full Time, Temporary/Contract/Project, Employee Reference Code:CD 33 Superior Technical Resources is looking for 1 Web Technology Specialist (Web Developer) Requirement: 90 Day duration from start - estimate start date on/before 1 December 2002 Note; position could develop into a longer requirement depending on continuing needs and the quality and work performance of the incumbent - but this is not a guarantee! okay, what's funny about this post? well, the results say the post was made on march 14, 2003, and the post wants someone to start on the first of december last year! halloooo? are they recycling old posts or what? apparently some kinda shitty stuff is going on here, sigh...
usability
after reading so many of joel's articles on usability, software development and the like, i've been more observant and critical of the websites i come across in my daily wanderings. one thing that riles me are login screens that do not have the cursor in the login box when the page loads, example is the monstertrak login screen which not only does not have the focus in the login box, but requires you to select the stuff in the box, and then overwrite it. yahoo mail and bofa, both with excellent UIs, don't have that problem, good design there. another very good example is the google website (yeah, i really do like google, even though they rejected my job app, sob  ), which not only loads in the blink of an eye, actually faster, but even does the focus thing right.
how much?
how much of what we experience belongs to us? if we are part of an event, an occurence, we may be authorized to write about it, but if we are not active participants, only onlookers, can we take the liberty to talk about that event? describe it? reporters do that, they report what they see, mostly atleast. what am i talking about? well, it is like this, one of my roommates was renting a car this weekend and normally the car rental comes and picks up the rentor. they almost held him up today, making him wait for almost two hours. i wanted to narrate the incident with the intention of illustrating a case of bad customer service, especially from a company which normally gives excellent service in our past eperience with them. but then, i wondered if i was at liberty to talk about the occurence when it wasn't me experiencing the whole thing but someone else, my status being that of a mere observer. all this probably sounds very abstract, but the point i'm trying to make is, is it in any way unethical to discuss in a public forum someone else's experience without their permission? is it all right if the event is fictionalized? or the names changed? hmm, i wonder...
phonier than thou?
the bush administration's case against iraq keeps looking everyday like a block of cheese in rat paradise. i was going through the illruminations website and came across this link in the washington post which talks about the un weapons inspectors' conclusion that some of the evidence linking iraq to a nuclear weapons program may have been fake.
blast
there was another blast in bombay yesterday, things, instead of improving, keep getting worse. what kind of twisted mind thinks terrorism is the path to justice? it is pitiful indeed i used to travel by the local trains all the time when i was back in mumbai, with the train literally packed with people, there is almost no space to move around. travelling by trains in bombay, especially during the rush hours is almost a punishment but it is an essential part of thousands of commuters everyday. to now step into a train with the possibility of not getting off ever, alive, is horrific. i hope the police start cracking, there was period after the blasts of 93 when everyone was on alert about any kinds of suspicious bags and stuff, i guess that kind of precaution will have to be taken again.
ten years ago
i'd almost forgotten it. rather, i'd actually forgotten ten years ago today, it was a bloody friday, in the middle of ramzan, ayaz uncle came home, a little shaken. that was the day my home town had, in the midst of recovery from the racial riots of december and january, been dealt another blow in the form of those horrific blasts. i'm ashamed the date did not bring back that memory, for what excuse do we have to forget the past? isn't it the past itself that shaped us? ayaz uncle had been on his way to cover some cricket series when, in front of his very eyes the plaza cinema blew up. my father too related later in the day the gathering horror of that afternoon when, between one thirty and three twenty, eleven blasts rocked india's commercial capital. there was a toll of two hundred and fifty seven lives that friday, several hundred more injured and affected in indirect ways. but the city had started limping back within days, they even had trading the next monday, testimonial to the unbeatable spirit of mumbaikars, considering the stock exchange itself had been one of the targets. those were terrible years, the babri masjid demolition of december 6, 1992 still rankles the collective muslim soul of india. it is pitiable what happened in gujrat, i'm sorry for my country and for my people, when will it, will it ever, stop? i'm not even twenty three yet, and i've already seen a couple of major wars happening, innumerable terrorist attacks, racial riots, a huge economic boom, an equally big bust, an incredible technological revolution, i'm wondering what's next? i hope not another war/terror attack/bust, hopefully something nice , please, god pleaaaassssse
language
in my last post i use the phrase "mull over over the next few months" i'd initially posted it as "mull over the next six months", caught the mistake when i read it over. question1: is there a term for the use of the same word with different implications adjacent to each other (eg:like "over over" here and "had had" in other constructs)? question2: is this bad style? though i don't really think there is anything called "bad style", as long as it is correct grammar, it goes, but do the academics frown on such sentence construction? i wonder...
are they serious?
monster.com turns up five thousand results when i search for a job, over three thousand if i search with keywords. around twenty five hundred when i specify that i want results only from today, i'm not buying that. if that many jobs are posted every day how come nobody seems to be getting any jobs? flip dog is another joke, they send me two hundred results every day, hotjobs on the other hand sends a manageable six to ten results per search agent. but i almost never get any replies on these websites. monstertrak, which is affiliated to usc seems to be more genuine, i'm not sure why, is it not freely accessible by non usc students? i'm not sure. fears of war, likelihood of the h1-b visa quota being reduced to a ridiculous 65k per year, heck, why is everything going wrong at the same time? should i just pack my bags and go to apna desh? something to mull over over the next six months or so.
there are some big companies everyone loves and some that everyone tries to deride. came across this fantastic article on the one and only wal-mart chain of superstores, check it out.
am i gonna get a good networking job before this time next year? that is the zillion dollar q fer me now, nothing seems to be happening, and i haven't even graduated yet, i wonder to what degree i'm gonna feel my desperation after the sixteenth of may. hallo any employers out there?
google
i love google, heck everybody loves google, right? apparently not. there is no dearth of weirdos and paranoid nut cases. people have conspiracy theories about everything, from google's page rank technology to its recent acquisition of pyra labs, owner of the blogger. there is fun stuff like googlisms and googlewhacking, dedicated weblogs, the google dance site and then nasty stuff like googlebombs, which started out as a gag. there is a also a recently released book on google hacks from oreilly. weblogs and webloggers are apparently influencing google search results and the relationship is yet to achieve an equilibrium. a case against war i guess i need to add my voice to the crescendo about now. george bush's unilateral crusade against the bad man of the middle east continues unfettered in the face of unprecedented opposition both at home and worldwide. people in all countries, from old allies to coerced friends, have expressed the feeling that this war is not necessary has presented itself in the form of demonstrations, rallies and related efforts including the coming together of poets in one sphere and actors in another. several arguments have been made against the president's insistence on war, some have focussed on the immense economic impact it is likely to have on the feebly recovering economy while others talk about the fact that the war is likely to spawn a whole new breed of terrorists intent on avenging american hegemony through terror attacks on its interests around the world. being on the brink of graduation and desperately seeking employment in this great land, i'm hoping against hope that the us does not go ahead with war because i believe its effects on the economy will be akin to kicking a sick man in the stomach. the us economy is currently very very fragile and i don't think will be able to suffer a war. gas prices in california are around $2/gallon, which is quite expensive. if this is a sign on things to happen in the coming months, the signs are ominous indeed. the congressional budget office puts the estimated cost of war between nine and thirteen billion dollars. besides that, incremental occupation costs are estimated between one to four billion a month. there are other estimates putting the cost at fifty to sixty billion dollars, the bottom line being, it is going to be incredibly expensive. there are other insidious costs, including the cost of buying and coercing allies into supporting the us war effort. in fact, some analysts have placed the cost of war at as much as 1.6 trillion dollars, in a worst case scenario. with the projected deficit here already in the hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years, a war just does not compute! there are expectations that the influx of cheap oil from the iraqi oil fields will offset the expenses incurred in waging the war, however, that argument is rather simplistic and fails to take into account several factors. for one, there is a very distinct possibility that the oil fields will not be allowed to be taken over without saddam trying to render them as useless as he possibly can, also, assuming that the oil will simply start flowing and cure all ills reflects a poor understanding of complex market movements. i'm not claiming to understand them either, but i can assert it is not that simple, the best that so much virtually free oil will do is skew the parameters, cause inflation and such. also, with the kind of opposition this war currently has, will the other countries just stand and watch as the us gobbles up the oil it gets from iraq? there is bound to be bad blood and straining of economic relations if the us tries to leverage its position as the "liberator" of iraq, by being partial to american companies. i've tried and tried to understand the motives behind the war, but ultimately it does not make sense to me, as it does not to most of the thinking people in the world. isn't there a hint of imerialistic notions in the manner american policy has been conducted for the past year? bush and his cowboy buddies are hoping to take over the world by pursuing a policy that has zilch support, both here, as well as around the world. it is time for the president to take a cold shower and reconsider his stand on the iraqi situation.
of totally banal conversations
it's funny how predictable conversations go here. especially with people you know but don't really hang out with. it all goes something like this, hey ubaid! hey man (i never seem to remember names) what's goin on? bas yaar what about you? bas yaar chal raha hai, nothing new, how are ur courses? ah don't talk about them, don't feel like studying man, just wanna get outta here, haha, mera to woh tension nahin, just ek unit aur uske liye bhi kuch kaam nahin kiya ab tak, pata nahin kya karoonga cool man good fer ya so, howz the job search going? bas yaar chal rahi, nothing seems to be happening though, any replies? nope man, what about u? nahin yaar, i don't even get automated responses anymore (hahahaha) hahaha, haan yaar, and what websites are u applying on? wohi, monstertrak, hotjobs, sometimes flipdog haan me2, but monster and flipdog give way too many results, looks fishy, somebody was telling me they even have fake postings, suckers weird yaar, no replies only, how the heck will we get a job if they don't even read the f*ing resumes aur saala aaj kal to yeh war ka bhi tension hai hmm lagta hai fir des lautna padega hmm, i might actualy, i haven't been back, paise nahin hain lekin :( main to soch raha hoon opt mein six months spend karoonga uske baad just go back for good, yeah i'm thinking along the same lines dude, is country mein apne liye kuch hai nahin aisa lagta hai hopefully something will happen, hmm, hopefully, sigh chal then dude, i gotta go, haan me too, take care and all the best yeah, u2. i was working in the computer labs and there was this really attractive girl sitting right across i couldn't help looking at. once more i was in love ;-). my heart is like a vagrant balloon, floating this way and that, without direction or purpose. here's what i came up with, crossing what place is this? where just looking at you is like a sliver of light in a dark room like breeze on a stuffy night like the words of pablo's sonnets but its only here and its only now i cannot hold on to this as it slips away like a whiff of soft, vanishing fragrance as you go to him and i to my loneliness like lines crossing never to meet again
telecasting from your local walmart - elevator
yeah, i have a new story nobody wants to hear. i'd always wondered what it would be like to use the emergency phone in the elevators which have notices saying "do not panic if the elevator doors fail to open or the elevator becomes inoperative. use the alarm button or telephone "if furnished"(their quotes)". well, today i found out what it is like, it is soooooooo boring and, i'm not sure if this is the norm, but highly inefficient. here's what happened, i got into the elevator intending to go to he third level and there was another lady who was headed towards the second. the elevator doors did not open at the second floor so we started pressing all the buttons, which resulted in us ending up at the basement. now the customer elevator is not supposed to go to the basement but then this thing was out of order, too bad i did not realise that. the doors opened at the basement and the other lady got out, i decided to be adventurous and try and get to the top level in the same elevator (!). when the doors closed again, the elevator refused to move at all and the doors remained firmly closed. there it was, the moment i'd so often speculated about, i used the emergency telephone, which fortunately was "furninshed" and spoke to these guys, who, surprisingly asked me where i was. i'd expected there to be a system in place to let them know where i was. anyways, they asked me if i was at the galleria mall, i wasn't sure what the mall was, so i just said yes, another stupid mistake. help was apparently on its way and would take around fifteen to twenty minutes. fifteen to twenty minutes! what place is this? timbuktu?!! talk of instant gratification. this was at 325pm, i hoped to be liberated by 4pm, accounting for everything. evidently i hadn't. after half an hour i called them up again wondering what was happening and discovered that they'd sent help yeah, to some mall in dallas, texas!! so this time i give them the exact location, address and all and sit back for another half an hour of waiting. i had a receipt in my pocket which had the number of the mall on it. my cell phone had reception in one corner of the elevator, but only when the antenna was all the way out. so i called up these people and told them of my predicament, with my head tilted sideways so that the phone may remain horizontal and the antenna stay out. the people at walmart said they would send someone to look into it but nothing really seemed to be happening. for the next hour i called them some three to four times and finally at five i heard this guy outside saying they would get me out in a few minutes, and they did, thankfully. it was just starting to get uncomfortable. they were all apologetic, but did not offer any discounts or anything as i'd been hoping . so there it is, another adventure in america!
just finished a brilliant essay discussing the affair. i have very sketchy recollections of the whole deal and had always been curious to find out what exactly the case was. the article makes a lot of things clear. i'm yet to finish the first chapter in the book but now have a fair indication of what to expect. an observation repeated in the essay about his using the insider/outsider approach is particularly insightful. it also brings to mind my own opinion on v.s naipaul and his writings which tend to be rather scathing and critical of the way the sub-continent conducts itself. i haven't read anything by him yet but except for some excerpts and wasn't impressed. gotta get something he's written soon. that's all fer now.
ellowen deeowen
if u've read the book, u know what i'm talking about. mustafa tells me it is blasphemy reading it, i think i need to know what the big deal is all about. the prose is admittedly pretty good, but that is not a revelation for me, i'd read something else by him before and knew he could write atleast. the satire stings and i'm still some distance away from the rumouredly nasty parts, pity no one around me wants to discuss it
i guess i'm coming to a conclusion here on the role of the two blogs. on this one i plan to tackle with philosophical, creative and political issues and in the other one, with software development, networking and such.
joel's latest article on building communities with software was emailed to the subscriber list today. it talks about the design decisions made for the forum software and why they were made that way. as most of his arguments, this essay too is clear, concise and very very persuasive. it is rather difficult to argue with his reasoning and conclusions. a version of the article is available here. some of the points made in the article come to mind when you compare the blogger and xanga communities. i've found that the xanga site makes it very easy to make regular posts compared to the blogger ui, however, and i've mentioned this before, there seem to be a lot more serious articles and discussions on blogspot. the overall user base for blogger too seems to be more mature and older compared to the xanga community. it is four thirty am and i'm still awake. india is playing pakistan in the world cup and the game's been pretty exciting so far with tendulkar hitting wasim akram all over the place in the last over. it's a pity i cannot watch the game, that would have been real fun. |
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