Discovery Channel updates

I keep getting these updates in my gmail inbox which keep me updated with the 'latest news' around the world. Quite a few of which happen to do with discovery channel.Now I fail to understand who even keeps abreast of this stuff. I have a ton of other crap in my head already without the need for more nonsense to cram into it.

Who does even care about news like "Ancient chariot found in Bulgaria" or "New remains of CroMagnon discovered". I fail to understand even the least amount of importance 'news' like this has to my life. I worry enough about the economy and gas prices and my next set of tickets to India to even get into this crap.

Which brings me to the point that Indiana Jones may be the most dashing archeologist but except for treasure hunting I really doubt am ever going to be interested in digging around old bones and sculptures.How would the Indy movies ever work if he was just shown to be digging around scavenging fossils and finally ending up as an old foggy museum curator.

Yes, yes I know that keeping in touch with the past allows us(mankind) to know ourselves better. Well then keep it out of the news unless something really relevant happens(Maybe they discover an AIDS cure in trillion year old insect DNA preserved in amber). Until something really ground breaking comes along am still going to be bothered about the economy, gas prices and other mundane activites of the day.

I can picture a scene from FRIENDS in context of this where Ross(PhD in Paleontology) goes into the nursing ward with Rachel to see Dr.Green(Rachel's Dad) and introduces himself as Dr.Gellar and Rachel reminds him that they are in a hospital and the prefix 'Dr.' really means something over here.

P.S. Its great to be back :)

Linux'd (again)

Very few people other than active developers are into linux and use it as their main OS. Even those who do use it occasionally do have the dual boot feature with Windows just so that some features are easier to use in Windows than Linux.

This is aversion to linux is also unfortunately something for which the development dept is to blame as well (atleast partially). One of the biggest things being video rendering related s/w. I did a lot of that during Diwali Night at Rolla, making those presentations for the show but haven't seen anything like Adobe Premiere,After Effects on linux (yet). Not to mention the loss of gaming since then too. Very few games are out there which are fully supported by Linux and those that do run do so on WINE(Win Emulator :P).

Dhake and myself were having a discussion yesterday on s-video capture through linux since that was one of the few things for which he still had a Win dual boot on his system. Finally after some poking around I suppose he got through to it and hopefully will now ditch Win totally :). Later when Alok (handy Linux quick ref guy) and myself were chatting about situations like these and he came up with a situation where one day if a couple of linux guys started a company then they would no doubt use Linux for everything. However the kicker is that today most companies (atleast all the application/service provider ones) do NOT use Linux.

This is mainly due to the fact that Linux is restricted to the techy guys rather than to the mainstream eg. Business Analysts, Sales, Marketing, QA, Conversion, Customer Service Rep, App Analyst, so on and so forth. Also until someone can effectively demonstrate that business can be as usual in Linux as in Windows the scenario will still never change. (and Microsoft will continue to reap their millions).

It may take time and patience to wade a bit through various Linux forums to come up with quick answers to even the most basic things but it definitely is worthwhile in the end. Unfortunately both time and patience is something that very very few people have today and the same translates to the corporate environment as well.

Coming Soon

Its been quite a while now since my blog was updated. There is a ton of stuff that has happened between now and then. I hopefully should be able to put down atleast some of the stuff over here. Will be getting back to posting soon.

The Long Weekend

Since the US has so few public holidays (compared to India) most people try to make the most of the few that are around. Public holidays in the US are usually structured in such a manner as to make every holiday count. The Long weekend is a concept that is the most popular. It happens such that the Federal Government schedules a holiday on a Friday or a Monday. Thus with the Saturday, Sunday coming in between it makes for a solid 3 day vacation. Flight prices soar, hotels are booked to capacity and popular tourist destinations are packed.

Planning for these weekends takes quite a bit of patience and enthu as well. The list of places to go and people to visit was always endless. Ultimately it used to come down to cheaper flight tickets.(invariably) I have scoured around on travel sites for just that one exclusive flight deal which could make/break the trip. This process is somewhat akin to the hunting techniques of the Cromagnon dudes of old. You basically look up the deal on several dozen travel sites and initially gauge an estimate of how much it would cost you and then once you have set your upper limit on this then try hunting for something 'better' over the next couple of days. Also planning meant ensuring that you dug up your old contact list and sometimes even renewed friendships with old lost buddies.

There a ton of long weekends coming by end of the year. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's are all available and I have no doubt that people will travel too (thanks to lower gas prices) but I for one have absolutely no plans for these holidays (which is weird because usually I was among the first people to have my travel plans all sorted out.) I am planning for a trip to India soon in the next year and thus thought it best to avoid any outings this year and go for the biggie next year. :)

(It feels great to get back to blogging after a break).

The Borg

Bluetooth technology is something great. I used to own an Ngage (The Classic one and NOT QD) back in India. The Bluetooth feature was one of the most favorite features in it. It was sometimes damn slow but then it was probably one of the easiest ways to transfer data during that time. Primarily I had used it to transfer some pix, ringtones, etc from others.

I got myself a bluetooth headset a couple of days back from Radioshack. I was previousy using one of those cheap handsfree connectors for talking. I finally relented and got myself one of these devices which could be worn on the ear. (Also my handsfree cable got snapped somewhere so it didn't help matters.) I got a pretty pricey headset, the Plantronics Voyager 520.

I had done some decent amount of research into these headsets and also have tons of friends who use them regularly. I was looking for something comfortable and loud and clear. My friends who use them had often complained that comfort was the primary point. Most headsets will have decent enough reception and clarity.

The headset is also sometimes a cool accessory if you want people to think that you are actually talking to someone else while in public, you can jabber endlessly on it and no one would be the wiser. It also brings back very futuristic images of a Cyborg from some Hollywood action movie.

Data Dump

My first thanksgiving shopping experience in the US and I got for myself an external HDD. I didn't even have a laptop at that time but I just couldn't resist a deal like 25$ for a 200gb external drive. (Dhake being the oversmart guy that he is got two of those.) Subsequent thanksgivings never had that sort of a deal.

Now why is storage capacity more important than a laptop you may ask. Well for one, laptops and desktops were available in plenty in the university and almost everyone (except us, new guys) owned one. HDD's were a lot cheaper too than a laptop for a first time purchase. Also this was the time of the infamous Seek42. Seek42 more than anything else was famous for a search tool on the university LAN network. It had a ton of other stuff but as far as we desis were concerned we were just into it for the wealth of data out there. Now it wasn't always possible to get movies, mp3's, games from seek42 too as there were restrictions as well on various HDD's and to avoid a burnout due to a ton of people logging into the same directories and basically just clogging and taking up all the traffic. The amount of movies especially was huge. It was a paradise for a movie aficionado. (A special mention over here goes to Abhinay for being the "imdb of Rolla" for several generations.)

My good old HDD has survived a lot of bashing in Rolla. Since it was a total dump of movies most people borrowed it dozens of times. (Also because the dump was directly from Abhinay's server with top notch stuff) I myself had to hunt for it several times and finally found it in some totally random location than it was at previously.(Several times at Dave's place. :)) Thankfully it is still working fine even though it does make a ton of noise now.

I have never felt a need to get more and more storage capacity. But I think I will have to get myself a new HDD soon sometime as my current one has been abused so much that it may die out on me anytime now. The next thing thus I am targeting for thanksgiving is a 1 TB+ external HDD.

Wholesome food

Its been quite sometime for me in LA now. Initially, Yatin and myself had pretty much frequented almost all the food joints in the vicinity. Then after we finally moved into the apt we started cooking. Its been about a week now since we started on home cooked meals and for a change we went out to a normal American diner yesterday.

Now this place had the best lemonade I have had so far in the US. Seriously its just like the tangy sort that you get in India. (Most other places the lemonade is just not done.) We had been to this joint before and remembered only the lemonade part of the previous meal. Yesterday we ordered almost the same items off the menu. But for some reason neither of us could finish the meal. We both were quite hungry and the food seemed exactly like the previous time but for whatever reason we just couldn't eat beyond a few scraps.

Finally we attributed this to the fact that we were getting so used to home cooked food and thus couldn't get ourselves to feast on normal American fare which now seemed way too bland. We then decided that Chipotle (Mexican), SUBWAY, IHOP, Dominos would probably be the only set of joints we could eat out at and that too in the worst case scenarios. Otherwise it doesn't matter how low our culinary skills stooped to but we would still prefer to eat ghar kaa khana.