mere funde

Year: 2008

  • I am back

    … after a brief hiatus. I have been away for almost a month, mostly due to increased work load. But I am firmly and surely back again. I recount below some of the more interesting things that have happened over the past month.

    1. BarCamp Delhi 4 was attended. It was my first BarCamp and a very nice experience at that. It was held at the Amity Incubator in Noida, and they were excellent hosts with brilliant WiFi and lunch. Met a lot of interesting people. The event was low on tech and more on networking I was slightly disappointed. I personally delivered a talk on “Software and IP” and Akshat one on “Folksonomies”. After the camp clicked a couple of snaps at the India Gate and got caught in hail and rain. Thankfully the lappie and the cam were unaffected. Photos here.

    2. The Quiz at office was won. The Bong (Aditya Chakrobarty) and me – named as “Two Bongs or Not” – defeated three other teams by a huge margin and got ourselves coupouns for Landmark worth a grand each. Luck played a huge part, but I am not complaining.

    3. Gurgaon experienced a week of “Awesome Mausum” – I phrase I can claim to have invented. Rain pounded and the temperatures fell so low that the fans were switched off! In the middle of May – who would have thunk!

    Fell in love with Poets of The Fall – Carnival of Rust. Other than that I have been twittering quite a lot. You can follow me here.

  • Coldplay offers free music

    Following the footsteps of a lot of musicians (Nine Inch Nails), the UK based band has decided to offer a free download of their latest single “Violet Hill” for free download from their website for a week. (Got this from Facebook.)

    We’re very pleased to announce that Coldplay’s new single, Violet Hill, will be available as a free download exclusively from Coldplay.com for one week starting tomorrow, Tuesday April 29th, at 12.15pm UK time. This is a full week ahead of the single’s conventional paid-for digital release, on Tuesday May 6th.

    Way to go guys! Good music – that too for free, legally that is. Awesome! Also, they have announced a couple of free gigs in UK. Ojas, you might be interested.

    Is this another nail in the coffin of the music industry? I don’t know. But this sure is a huge step in that direction.

  • Matt replies..

    .. to Jeff’s post. Finally. I had almost given up hope but Matt is back with a bang! Now wait for Jeff’s reply.

    PS: The post by Matt has apparently been removed 🙁

  • IPL – Will it or Won’t it?

    The Times of India had an article today on how the IPT TV ratings have slipped after an initial bang. Was it unexpected? Not really. The IPL is supposed to be modeled after the league structure in soccer. However, there remain major differences between the two.

    Soccer is a sport where club rivalries have been established over decades, with most major clubs being more than five to six decades old. The international matches are few and far in between, with only one major international tournament every two years (the World Cup and the Euro Cup/Copa America). Therefore the level of interest in the club as well as the international matches remain very high. One the other hand cricket has since its beginning been a sport which has seen inter-country rivalry rather than inter-club rivalry. So the legendary tourneys have been the Ashes and the Indo-Pak series earlier, and the Indo-Australia series nowadays. Other than in England, the league structure is not very widely watched in countries that have high TV audience, i.e, the Asian countries (the Ranji trophy being an example). Further, there is enough international action with almost one large tournament every year (World Cup, Champions Trophy and now the T20 World Cup).

    Next is the fact that the IPL T20 league is an overdose in a sport that already suffers from excesses. Lets take India for example. It played nearly 10 Test and 40-50 ODIs last year, exlcuding the T20s. Which means nearly 100 days of cricket every year. 8 teams in IPL will play close to 60 matches over a period of 7 weeks. Which means you would be watching Indian cricket every 2-3 days, in a year that is (and I haven’t even included the ICL). Compare this with UEFA Champions League where 32 teams from different nations play 122 matches over 8 months. There are saas-bahu soaps that are on TV lesser number of times than cricket for God’s sake!! [There goes the argument that “yeh saa-bahu toh roz hi aata hai“].

    I think these would be major factors in reducing the viewership of cricket in general, and IPL T20 in particular. And I haven’t even started on the atrocious commentary (Arun Lal – Stop talking for Christ’s sake!!) and pathetic production (We are taking a break, no we are not, no we are done for the day!). And did I hear someone say overdose of advertisements?

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  • Happy Brithday God

    Today happens to be the birthday of the God of millions of Indians like me. Happy Birthday Sachin .

    Maybe we should petition for it to be declared a national holiday 🙂