Running

One of the custom-made wallpapers that I keep for my desktop. I like the image, adore the words, and love running. This maybe of value to anyone possessing a similar set of interests.

Pandora Rocks! (Er.. Ghazals!)

Quite a long time back I had talked about a comparison of Rock v/s Ghazals. Obviously, they are NOT the same. Well the point was that Ghazals provide ready-made lyrics for anyone having trouble forming his or her Rock composition. Apart from that, we're talking separate universes, and I know that. Except for thematic connections. I mean, I think Rock's general theme matches those of Ghazals. Okay, so the Ghazaler is not hitting out (or throwing goat blood around) but essentially, he's the same guy, the man against the system. He’s like, the poorer cousin, the one who doesn’t have the guitar and is a rather emotional fellow, so goes out to the neighborhood bar and churns out his frustrations while enjoying a few drinks on the house. he feels the same, and consequently, writes the same.

Now, Pandora.com is a nice site wherein you feed their engine with an artist or song that you like, and they figure out music in their collection that matches the musical qualities of your artist/song. You can give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to songs that can help increasing the engine's precision. If you're the finical fellow, you can get to know exactly why a specific track was played ("We’re playing this track because it features pop rock qualities, repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping, a clear focus on recording studio production and groove based composition."). As you can probably guess from that, it's quite accurate, and much, much, much better than conventional radio. I think it's the single most important conceptual innovation in the field of streaming music.

What I'd probably like is for them to consolidate with the already heavily-researched area of Music's connection with emotions and build unified algorithms to give me an interface that asks me just one question - "How do you want to feel today?"

Or, maybe they can change the question to something that does not remind people of Microsoft, because I figure they wouldn't want to.

It's quite intriguing, however, the effect of music on humans. Probably the day we figure out the exact neurons that are hit by exactly what type of music; maybe then we’d be experimentally able to prove my hypothesis correct. Also, maybe that day we’ll be able to prove exactly why songs such as this exist.

Wink does it well

Wink recently released itself from private beta. It's a cross between web search and social bookmarking. I've been fiddling with it for some time, using some benchmark search phrases I've evolved over a long period of browsing and searching ("monica bellucci"), my personal verdict is - people do make a difference.

Not always, but quite a number of times, yes. Community-based searches, I feel, are particularly useful while making bizarre or recondite searches, typically searches where the search phrase could have a lot of different semantic interpretations. The difference in such cases is between the interpretation(s) people consider important v/s the interpretations a search engine considers important. For a search engine, "importance" is generally the number of inbound links. Hence, a web page with minimal such links yet great content (such as this blog) is bound to be a loser in conventional terms, unless a lot of webmasters wakeup to it and link it on their sites. That, even if it does happen, is a slow process. Now, in the new scenario, a normal web user can help in increasing a page's importance overnight from the engine's point of view, simply by tagging it. And voila! Content is the winner!

Gmail goes mobile!

I've been waiting a long while for this. Gmail now has an interface for mobile devices: http://m.gmail.com

What a shame

Q: Who would want to?
A: I wonder if those superman undies go with my Red-colored pants.
Questioner: For the sake of humanity's opthalmic well being, you need to die.
[ gunshot ]

The guardians of our way of life

This post is dedicated to Bangalore city’s Autowallahs. I have no doubt in saying that had it not been for Bangalore city's Autowallahs, Bangalore would have been a city without Autowallahs.

How is that important for us Bangaloreans, you ask? Well, for one, take the traffic situation. Do you think the half-drunk BMTC drivers, adrenaline injected pre-teens with bikes twice their size and the frequent collisions between these two are enough to ensure the blazing speeds of 5 km per hour or less that one can easily achieve on Bangalore’s major routes? Do you know how much tourism revenue would be lost if Tourists were to reach the airport on time and not miss their flights, and not miss them again, and again, until they realize that they need to be in a 50 meter radius of the Airport to reach on time? Do you understand the consequences of decreased sales of roadside handicrafts, if that were to happen? And, did you notice that the third sentence in this paragraph was 46 words long?

It would be an economical disaster. But do not let freckles of worry appear on your face yet. Fortunately for us, Autowallahs exist. Not only do they ensure smooth blockage of traffic through mid-road cylinder changes or random-lane-bypassing; they have, in no uncertain terms, taken the meaning of safety to another level. Through their skilled maneuvering and timely expletives, they’ve ensured that three out of four people that take an Auto trip get to the destination; and more significantly; two of them reach alive. Now that is a healthy situation, I say. Especially since three out of four people that get into an Auto are evil regicide-plotting, money-minting Software Engineers from far away lands, commissioned by some very evil people to destroy the city’s CULTURE.

Now that is a very serious issue and Bangalore's Autowallahs believe that serious issues require mature, responsible solutions. Hence the Bangalore Autowallahs Association for Solving Serious Issues (BAASSI) has come out with its mature and responsible solution - "Kill the pests."

Apart from protecting the city’s CULTURE and ensuring pedestrian safety (You can’t run people over at 4.8 kmph); Autowallahs serve another often misunderstood purpose – they limit the average Software Engineer’s CULTURE-destroying capacity significantly by charging them the net worth of Greenland for a trip to Koramangala. Going a step further, they restrain movement of CULTURE-destroying elements by randomly disagreeing to go to anyplace other than Thipssandra.

And additionally, they are cute. They steal your heart with their polite commandments for 3.5 X 1010 times the meter reading when it’s too late (After 2 PM) or too early (Before 1 PM) for them to be driving their Autos. And when they explain in mid-journey why they’ll need 40 extra bucks from you as a compensation for the traffic’s speed, you just can’t resist CUDDLING the CUTIE-PIES.

Translation key to English:
CULTURE: *&^@*#^
CUDDLING: @*##&*^
CUITE-PIES: *&@^#%$@ @*&$ #$ $*&#$^#