mere funde

Category: Crib

  • 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.

  • Weekend Well Spent

    So what is a perfect weekend like?? Lemme see.

    Saturday – Meet a close friend. Chat, listent to good music, have good food, drink a bit and enjoy. We did aal except the drink bit. We did drink but what we had was the question. A good Goan port wine. This is the good bit. It was followed by the experience of Kaju Feny. Goyal advisory : Don’t have it.

    Slept for most part of the day. Discovered that our cook could also make good puris and had a brilliant lunch. Aloo ki subji and puri!! Heavenly!! Next organised stuff on my 120GB HDD (which is a no mean feat!!). My HDD has bad sectors now and needs to be repaired (it is in warranty period) and so I had ot empty it and burn DVDs for the rest of the stuff. Also ripped the Abida Parveen CDs I had bought last week. Awesome music. Specially Tere Liye Nachaya, Ali Maula, and Dum Mast Qalandar (which is always a good experience.)

    Sunday – Got the 3rd free servicing done on the bike. It is now 6 months old and I have done 4600 kms on it, which is quite a feat considering my office is only 1 km from my place. Got a haircut. I look presentable now. Also read a lot of Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – R. Pirsig. Awesome book. OHT sometimes but enjoyable and profound none the less.

    So here it is. A near perfect weekend. Would have been complete with a nice movie. I wish I had company.

  • Sad News

    1. A friend and a great guy is in hospital due to an accident. While I pray for him, I also swear that I will never make the same mistake. Hope he gets well soon.

    2. R.I.P. Syd Barrett, the man who gave us The Wall, founder of Pink Floyd is no more. He passed away on July 7th. Shine on you crazy diamond. Here is an interesting and touching anecdote from his life (source: Wikipedia).

    Syd Barrett had one noted reunion with Pink Floyd, in 1975 during the recording sessions for Wish You Were Here. Barrett attended the Abbey Road session unannounced and watched the band record Shine On You Crazy Diamond — coincidentally, a song about him. At that time, Syd had gained a lot of weight and had shaved off all of his hair, including his eyebrows, and his ex-bandmates did not at first recognize him (one of the photographs in Nick Mason’s book Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd appears to have been taken that day; it is captioned simply: Syd Barrett, 5th June 1975). Eventually, they realized who he was and Roger Waters was so distressed that he was reduced to tears. A reference to this reunion appears in the film Pink Floyd The Wall (1982), where the character ‘Pink,’ played by Bob Geldof, shaves off his eyebrows after succumbing to the pressures of life and fame.

    In an interview for VH1’s Behind The Music, Rick Wright spoke about the session, saying: “One thing that really stands out in my mind, that I’ll never forget; I was going in to the Shine On sessions. I went in the studio and I saw this guy sitting at the back of the studio, he was only as far away as you are from me. And I didn’t recognize him. I said, ‘Who’s that guy behind you?’ ‘That’s Syd.’ And I just cracked up, I couldn’t believe it… he had shaven all his hair off… I mean, his eyebrows, everything… he was jumping up and down brushing his teeth, it was awful. And, uh, I was in, I mean Roger was in tears, I think I was; we were both in tears. It was very shocking… seven years of no contact and then to walk in while we’re actually doing that particular track. I don’t know – coincidence, karma, fate, who knows? But it was very, very, very powerful.” In another interview, Nick Mason has said: “When I think about it, I can still see his eyes, but… it was everything else that was different.” In yet another interview, Roger Waters has said: “I had no idea who he was for a very long time.”

  • Start saying your prayers!!

    F1 chief Max Mosley has announced that from 2008 onwards, now hold your breath, Microsoft (yeah, you read it right, Microsoft) will be the official supplier of engine control units.

    Now that takes the word “crashing” to a whole new level. Doesn’t it!!

    Also, going by Microsoft’s record the 2008 season may well begin in 2009 if all goes well following the Vista way!!

    And don’t even get me started on BSOD 🙂

  • Review: India vs WI (2nd Test)

    For second time in as many test matches India has faced the situation of being “so near, yet so far.”

    India did dominate the second test right from the word go and if it had not been for the rain gods the series would now have had been 1-0 instead of 0-0. Even so, I would like to point out a few crucial errors that India made during the course of the match.

    First of all, for the umpteenth time now it has been established that Kaif is not a good fielder in close catching positions and yet Dravid would have him field there. He has missed crucial chances there, and that is because of his natural instincts being a cover fielder, which has cost India dearly.

    Second, the Indian field placing was pretty tame on the last day considering that India had nothing to lose and there was no way that India could have lost the match. Also defying logic was the placing of fielders at certain positions they are not suited for. Dravid himself was fielding at second slip, a departure from his usual first slip position for no apparent reason. Even Sehwag, a pretty good slip fielder, was missing from the slip cordon. Dravid grassing a catch (imagine Ganguly in the same position) in the closing stages did not help matters either.

    Third, and most importantly, India failed to think out of the box. As Prem Panicker suggests (here), India could have replaced Laxman (why is he in the team again??) with Suresh Raina and could have thought of more unconventional field placings. Also Yuvraj could have been made to bowl a couple of his ultra slow ones just as a change. But then such things come with experience, and I sure hope Dravid is learning fast.

    The rain, the lbw decisions (first Australia and now here, they do have something against us these damned lbws’) and at times the limited experimentation by Indian think tank have let the Carribeans pull off a Houdini yet again.

    As Gaurav Sabnis puts it (here) in the words of the inimitable Crime Master Gogo “haath ko aaya, moonh na lagaaya.” Lets hope that the next one would be more like another of his famous quips “Aaya hoon, kuch toh leke jaoonga.”