mere funde

Author: Amit Goyal

  • Bike or a Car?

    I would always prefer a bike to a car. I mean I would always prefer an Enfield to any other Indian car or a Harley V-Rod to any other car. Given below is the reason.

    You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

    On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene not just watching it, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.

    For those who know me, this is from some book you can easily guess. Others, go Google it!! The book was given to me by Nawani. Thanks. It is just great.

  • Is ‘blog’ a 4 letter word?

    Unfortunately, a few people (who matter), think so!! I wish they realised the value of blogging.

    I mean people like Jonathan Schwartz (President, SUN), Jeremy Zawodny (mySQL Guru, Yahoo), Robert Scoble (ex-Microsoft, PodTech.net), Matt Cutts (SEO geek, Google), Om Malik (GigaOM), and Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) are most famous because of their blogs. Ok, not Schwartz. But you get the point!! Google, Yahoo and Microsoft use blogs as a PR tool and even use it to communicate with developers and uers of its services. A lot of Indian (I know about Infosys for sure) companies use employee blogs to enhance communication between its employees.

    I hope some people update their views on blogging. And soon. Meanwhile, I leave you with another Gaping Void cartoon.

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    Update: An estimated 8% of Fortune 500 companies have official blogs!! You can check out the list here.

  • Love to Hate!!

    hate.jpg

    This is from Gaping Void – a blog that feature “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”. Though it features excellent cartoons from time to time, this is one I particularly liked for some reason.

    This is to all whose trust I have ever lost. I am sorry.

  • Scintillations – Oasis 2K6

    I have believed that over the years the quality of the Oasis website – a starting point for other colleges – has gone from bad to worse.

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    Though no expert at website design, I do have a few points to make about this year’s website. One important aspect of a good website is that it should be easy on the eyes of the viewer. Sadly, the website this year, falls very short on this standard. The colours used are garish and unpleasant. Black with pink. Yucks!! Seems like a webpage of those days when people experimented with geocities. Flashy and very odd. Light backgrounds and gentle colours are expected nowadays.

    Second. I do not yet get the BITSian fascination for flash and shockwave objects. Any page designed at BITS has to have a dash of embedded flash objects. Could someone please tell me why??

    Third and probably most importantly. Please do not copy and paste text from somewhere. “If you are going to BITS on an assignment, BITS will send you a complimentary car” (from the section on getting here.) I am sorry but I could not believe that this was written by an on-campus BITSian for Oasis website. As Google later revealed, the entire section has been lifted from the BITSAA website, without any attribution whatsoever. When did things become so bad? Could they not find a decent writer within the batches on campus? Come on you guys, before claiming the material as your own with that misused copyright symbol, did you check that BITSAA already has a copyright on it?

    A simple website, probably based on some blogging platform like WordPress, would have been recommended by me. Very professional and neat. But then, I am not at BITS and can only do so much.

    I have a wish to make here though. I wish that someone from EPC/HPC/Junta takes it on himself/herself or collaborates to get a blog going and provide real time posts from the scene as an when it happens.

  • Suzuka spells doom for Schumi

    It was the last F1 race in Suzuka for some time to come. It was definitely the last race of Schumacher here. And everyone was out to see the Red Emperor score a big victory.

    It was a race he was supposed to win with ease. And, till the 36th lap today, nothing happened to the contrary. Schumacher qualified second on the grid, just behind teammate Massa and 3 places ahead of fifth placed Alonso. He passed Massa on the third lap and after that remained comfortably at the top of the group.

    Alonso, however, drove with a lot of passion and quickly overtook Jenson Button and Ralf Schumacher to come up to the third place and drove like there was no tomorrow. At no point of time did he let the two Ferraris out of his sight. He overtook Massa after the first round of pit stops and drove great laps in and out of the pits to exit just ahead of Massa. The difference in their stops being a mere 0.3 seconds.

    Michael was the last of the top 3 to pit and that erased all doubts of a lightly fueled Ferrari for qualifying and the rumors about the tyres not being suited well enough for the circuit. He drove in his usual calm and composed manner, and looked all set to win. Disaster struck, however, on the second Degner Curve on the 37th lap and fumes came out of the red machine. The circuit looked on in stunned disbelief as the Ferrari of Schumacher retired for the first time since Spain 2005 without a crash. Schumacher, however, got out his car calmly, waved at the crowds and shook hands with all he passed, to show that he was the true Champion.

    Alonso then drove a very calm race to take his Renault home, for a first victory since June. Massa came in second and Fisichella third. Button and Raikkonen completed the top 5.

    Only a miracle can now see Schumacher win the championship. What is needed is a victory in Sao Paulo and Alonso finishing out of points. Will that happen? Well, with the fortunes changing as it has this season, I would definitely not bet against it but I agree that it is only a slim chance.

    On another note, I have always been a critic of Alonso, not because of his driving skills, but because he does not have enough grace. That came to light again last week when a frustrated Alonso blamed his own crew and mate Fisichella of letting him down in the last race at Shanghai and even said that there were people in the Renault pits that did not want him to win. I hope Alonso has watched how Schumacher behaved after his blown engine in this race and has picked up a tip or two.