It's All Geek to Me!

October 15, 2007

Impressions of Virgin America vs JetBlue

I flew Virgin America for a business trip to the San Francisco last week, after probably about a dozen consecutive flights on JetBlue. I have always been a big fan of JetBlue for a number of reasons: the live TV (with Comedy Central, which I don't have at home), the legroom, the friendliness of their crew and of course, the awesome low fares. This year though, the airline has been beset by growing pains. Their carefully optimized model of passenger-assisted cleaning of their aircraft, which allows for quick turnaround times, leaves inadequate wiggle-room in the face of delays. As it is, they don't have a large fleet, and weather-induced delays in one corner of the United States can quickly ripple through the system and create an avalanche of delays.

After several such delay-addled flights on JetBlue, I decided to try Virgin America, Richard Branson's low cost airline whose goal is to make flying fun again. I was fairly excited about flying Virgin America, even days before the actual flight (Karolina can attest!); I can't remember the last time I was bouncing off the walls like that. I was most excited about the in-seat enterainment system, which included TV, chat and games. I was also psyched about the availability of a power plug so I could work on my laptop without it running out of battery.

In the end, the Virgin America experience was overall on part with that of JetBlue.

Where VA was better...

The crew members on VA were a lot friendlier than those on JetBlue--as our takeoff was delayed for 45 minutes in evening rush hour air traffic, the captain offered to make up for it by letting passengers buy movies on his credit card. The shiny black leather seats were also slightly better. The chat feature didn't work on my outbound flight; chat worked on my return flight, but I slept through most of it because it was a redeye.

VA and JetBlue were about the same...

Legroom wasn't substantially different between the two airlines. I should note that I sat in a non-exit row seat. On many VA flights, you may be required to pay $25-50, itemized separately, to get a coveted exit row seat.

Where JetBlue was better...

JetBlue has some free snacks, which are useful if you arrive at the gate at the last minute, and feel gouged paying $8 for a cheese-and-fruit plate on board VA flights. Also, JetBlue has full-on live TV, not packaged 4-hour programming that repeats 1.5X on a cross-country flight.

Although I didn't end up taking advantage of a lot of the nifty features of VA, I'd say it's worth flying them once, just to give them a try. For future flights, it's a tossup whether I'd take JetBlue or VA--it depends on how the rewards points compare. I do know that I'll avoid flying out of JFK around 6:00pm, because of the delays it introduces in any airline's schedule.

Posted by Vishy at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2007

Hail, Yet Another Web Service Is Born...

Man, my regular readers are going to be disappointed with the level of activity on this blog this year, but trust me, it has been for totally legitimate reasons. This time around, I even have something to show for my silence on this blog: WhenGuard.

WhenGuard is a simple Web service I wrote entirely for fun and to keep in touch with my inner programmer. I decided to put it up publicly because it might even be useful for some people.

WhenGuard is a Web service that can keep a secret. If you are a public relations professional, blogger, educator, attorney, musician or anyone who deals in time-sensitive information, you might find WhenGuard useful. Please do check it out and send some feedback my way!

Posted by Vishy at 09:41 AM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2007

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: some semi-coherent ramblings

This post does not contain any spoilers, at least not intentionally. True to the nature of this blog advertised in its subtitle, I am merely going to list some random observations about the book:

• It is VERY action-packed! Not only do Harry, Ron & Hermione encounter the Death Eaters a number of times, there is a major battle scene at Hogwarts which is where practically all named characters in the series who have not appeared in the book already are brought in to fight. The amount of action in the narrative means that it would be GREAT to watch on screen when the movie eventually comes out.
• The stories behind most of the easily caricatured characters, such as Dumbledore and Snape, are revealed. There is a lot more to their character than previous books have let on. I am only disappointed by the pacing of these details. All too often in the previous books, things happen in Harry's favor for no palpable reason. Rowling has held back several crucial details of how the wizarding world works until this last book. Apart from forcing readers to reason retroactively about previous Harry Potter books, this approach ends up stuffing the last book with so much information that it becomes hard for readers to process.
• It is VERY detail-oriented. It is certainly impressive how seemingly insignificant details from earlier books in the series take on huge roles in the development of the plot. Keeping all these details consistent is no small feat. If you want to speculate about the plot before reading the book, the Hints from Rowling section in an earlier revision of the book's Wikipedia article reveals several bits of information directly relevant to the plot (warning: don't try to visit the current Wikipedia article -- it's full of spoilers). Having said that...
• There are a number of what I'd probably call cul-de-sacs in the plot that may have been relevant in earlier revisions but seem a bit out of place in the final version. For instance, towards the end, Ron--along with Hermione--pulls off a very unconvincing feat to procure an object or objects that have no real relevance for the rest of the book (sorry I am being so obtuse--no intentional spoilers here). There are also a number of aspects Rowling glosses over even though they were set up to be important from previous books. For instance, readers looking to learn more about the 'theology' (no better word for it) behind Horcruxes will be disappointed.
• Readers who are also Lord of the Rings fans will notice a number of parallels between the two stories, although this is hardly the first time we've talked about it on this blog. Goblins in the Harry Potter series, who guard the vaults at Gringotts, are a LOT like dwarves, complete with superior metallurgical skills. The battle of Hogwarts is not unlike the battle of Helm's Deep, where a whole bunch of magical creatures are thrust into a huge climactic battle. The Deathly Hallows share a lot of similarities with the One Ring, complete with their potentially corrupting influences, although the book obviously does not make too much of these similarities.
• For all the outrage from religious groups about the godlessness of the series, there are significant parallels to Christian mythology in the last book. Even if we set these parallels aside for a moment, this book, more than any other in the series, emphasizes the importance of active, moral choices.
• For a number of characters that are brought into the main narrative, they are mentioned once or twice, after which they plain disappear! Although there is a somewhat lame epilogue—which reads more like a bit of fan fiction than anything else—there is very little information about how dozens of characters end up later in life.

Now that my curiosity about the story is satisfied, I'll wait until the paperback version comes out to buy a hard copy.

Posted by Vishy at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2007

Harry Potter 7 hoopla

My eyes haven't been very happy with me for the last few days as I've been reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (or a poorly photographed edition thereof) from torrent-land. (Don't beat me down! I am just curious about what happens — I am going to buy a dead-tree copy anyway once the brouhaha has died down a bit). Anyhow, in my random surfing, I came across The World's Worst: A Guide to the Most Disgusting, Hideous, Inept, and Dangerous People, Places, and Things on Earth on Boing Boing and looked around its amazon.com product page. Look what I found:

That just about sums it up for me. All I will say is 'WTF?!'

Posted by Vishy at 06:33 PM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2007

Subway -- not the MTA kind

Some Subway locations are going to start offering pizza. WTH?! Did Jared need official sanction from his corporate patron to gain back some weight? On the other hand, does this mean paneer tikka pizza in India? That's one thing I've always wanted to make.

Posted by Vishy at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2007

What do you call Smirnoff Ice, Skyy Blue and Mike's Hard Lemonade?

Drinks like Smirnoff Ice, Skyy Blue, Mike's Hard Lemonade and Bacardi Silver are called alcopops because they are alcoholic but really taste just like soda/pop. I really don't like the name alcopop though—it just doesn't roll off the tongue. In the vein of the classic bro/manziere debate, I propose we call such a drink a boe. Let me explain.

Most of these drinks describe themselves as 'Flavored Beer', even though they taste nothing like beer. Also, they are known simply as 'girly drinks' or 'chick beer' in common parlance. So, why not call a bottle of say, Smirnoff Ice a boe, as in

Boe, a beer, a female beer
Gray, a splash of Smirnoff Ice

Sound of Music fans: please feel free to contribute the rest of the lyrics in the comments.

Posted by Vishy at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

February 06, 2007

Many Startings (aka State of The Blog #2)

One of the concluding chapters in the Lord of the Rings trilogy is called "Many Partings". In it, the great war with Sauron and his evil posse has just concluded and the characters on the good side are all bidding farewell to each other, with exhausted reserves but renewed alliances. In keeping with this blog's Lord of the Rings connection--limited pretty much to just the domain name--this post is titled "Many Startings" because it marks a few new beginnings:

• A new career. My three years as a software developer in the finance industry were pretty good. I got to tinker with some fun technology, sometimes even on a fairly deep level. I got to be part of influential teams in both large and small companies. Day after day though, I would come home and find that although it paid the bills (and college loan payments and all that), it didn't really push my buttons. So, over the past year, I've been trying to find out what does. Want to guess before I tell you? Let me give you a hint -- you're reading it! I looked deep within myself and found that one of the best parts of my day was when I would blog after I got home from work. Somehow, after a year of blogging, writing English started to feel much more natural than writing C#. A gig where I could write a lot about areas I know, namely technology, would really hit the sweet spot. And so, off I went looking.
  I just started as an industry analyst at The 451 Group, an independent analyst firm that researches and analyzes trends and competition in the tech industry for a senior technology executive audience. The bulk of our clients are venture capitalists, early adopters of IT, financial analysts and the executive management of technology vendors. My official title for now is "Analyst, Software Development and Tools". I'll draw on my personal software development experience with a wide variety of platforms to understand the strategic issues in software development today and comment on them. As time goes on, I may expand my coverage areas depending on my interest and appetite.
  Although The 451 Group is technically in the same business as Gartner, IDC and Forrester, it is different in two very important ways that have me really excited. First, they are independent. They don't accept payment for writing favorable or unfavorable reports about companies. They don't broker technology deals or provide technology recommendations. This mode of functioning provides the highest amount of detachment and objectivity in the increasingly high-stakes business of technology. Second, they grok open source. They have had a research focus specifically on open source and how it is being adopted in enterprise and commercial settings. Open source is and will continue to be huge and I am really excited about building up personal expertise in how it is used in enterprises. Although I will now be writing English rather than code for most of my day, I'll remain a developer-type at heart. I'll probably tinker with personal code projects in my free time that you may hear about on this blog. Writing code for yourself is always fun!
• "Ironically", a new blog. Lately, I've started to notice that a lot of writers use the word ironically when it is really not called for. So, taking inspiration from a parallel effort built around the word literally, I've started 'Ironically, a weblog' to track abuses of the word ironically. It's not brand spanking new -- I started it just after the U.S. midterm elections in November. It will be pretty light on content; its entries will only feature quotes containing the word ironically and then knock the author for using it incorrectly. It's more an eclectic gallery for people who occasionally indulge in sanctimonious pedantry, like myself, rather than a full-featured personal journal. Stop by Ironically sometime, if you feel like it.
• Second year summary and possible changes in focus. This blog is now over two years old. 2006 was a great year for me, for I was named Person Of The Year by Time magazine, along with you. I'll take this opportunity to thank all my readers and commenters (even the viagra, phentermine and vioxx ones!) for stopping by. In the last year, the number of visitors to my blog has grown tenfold. The 'value' of my blog went up fivefold. Vishy's media empire? Far from it, but I wouldn't exactly complain if it grows at this rate every year. My pieces got reddited and stumbled-upon, in addition to being featured in a few online publications and blogs. I got visitors from 144 countries; some of them were even zealous Mac users! According to certain demographic prediction tools, almost two thirds of my visitors are male.
  Because The 451 Group's research is available via subscription, the reports I write obviously won't be freely accessible from this blog. For the same reason, I will also not write posts here about anything I cover in a professional capacity. While I will still write about general-interest technology topics, India and Indian English, my posts will now also feature one of my prime obsessions, food. I don't think of myself as a classic foodie because they just go where their Zagat Guide tells them to go. I prefer to explore restaurants and home cooking ideas on my own journeys and report on my findings.

So far, I've used this blog as basically just an outlet to write about my thoughts and random interesting things I see. It has been much more well received in terms of traffic and readership than I had expected it to be. To give back, I plan to acquire more of the conventional trappings of a blogger, add a blogroll, a set of del.icio.us links and create some outbound traffic. These changes will happen in the coming weeks. So, keep visiting! I am really excited about all these new startings and I hope you will be too.

Posted by Vishy at 12:38 AM | Comments (2)

January 05, 2007

CES graphic leads me down the garden path (but not quite)

Oh no! My usually picky grammatical sense took a drubbing today.

Most of the time I read technology-related writing produced by other techies, who are more loosey-goosey than the average professional writer when using language. We techies are accustomed to enervating neologisms (folksonomy, cluetrain, feewall) and plainly wrong part of speech usages (architect as a verb, ask as a noun). I've been getting less worked up about these minor issues because lately I am becoming more of a linguistic descriptivist rather than a prescriptivist.

Nevertheless, I may have let down my prescriptivist guard just a little too much when I saw this graphic and was led down a garden path interpretation (see the link for some good examples of garden path newspaper headlines).

I interpreted gather above not as a verb but as a noun, a synonym for gathering. In other words, I parsed the sentence at the bottom of the image as "Consumer technology's best gathering is in 5 days... Register Now" rather than "The best (people and companies) in consumer technology gather in 5 days... Register Now".

What's sad about my garden path interpretation is that gather is not a noun. It got nouned (sorry, I know verbing weirds language) in my head because my internal grammatical taboo radar (GTR), having being silent over so many instances of nouning verbs in techie writing, didn't even register my garden path interpretation as bogus.

Sigh. It's with instances like this when I am really unsure whether to be a prescriptivist or a descriptivist.

Posted by Vishy at 12:31 AM | Comments (0)

December 24, 2006

My free knowledge management solution

It was my uncle who made me a news junkie. He used to live in an apartment just down the street from mine when I was growing up. Every time I visited, he would open a folder with a crafty gleam in his eyes. In it, he would have religiously noted down all the interesting tidbits he saw on TV, in a newspaper or a magazine. And from it came countless trivia questions that I could never answer correctly.

I wasn't just determined to pass his test; I had to fight back as well! I got into the habit of reading the newspaper regularly and noting down interesting bits so I too could ask him questions. I never could beat him conclusively; to my exasperation, he would manage to answer my questions easily while still managing to come up with obscure bits of his own. Nevertheless, to this day I remain a news junkie, curating my own mental library of facts.

My brain can only hold so much though, and rather than take the risk of forgetting facts—or worse, muddling them together—I have come up with my own el cheapo (or rather, el freeo) system for managing what I know. My "notebook of wisdom" has recently reincarnated in the twenty-first century as three free programs each for a different purpose:

• Public bookmarking. Any webpage I see that I need to access from everywhere, I put on my del.icio.us page. I also use it to share cool links with the world.
• Private bookmarking. Any webpage I see that I don't need to access from everywhere but want to have accessible for future reference, I put into Evernote. I also use Evernote for stashing away things I don't necessarily want others to see, such as my plans for world domination. Evernote is kind of like Microsoft OneNote, only free, and with some neat searching and tagging features; there is also a premium version with full support for handwritten notes on tablet devices.
• Making sense of it all: mind maps. For quite some time now, I've sketched complex ideas on paper as a set of interconnected nodes. I just didn't know enough people did it that it had a name of its own: mind mapping. I've only recently started making mind maps on the computer, for which I've found Freemind very suitable. Freemind may be a Java desktop application, but it is surprisingly pretty well executed. It may not integrate as well with productivity applications as some of its $229 competitors, but given its lovely price tag of $0, I shouldn't be complaining much. In addition to having some nifty drawing features, it can export maps to HTML and PDF. I've yet to build up a sizeable library of digital mind maps, but I am confident this won't be just a passing fad considering I've been doing them on paper for years.

I don't know if many readers of this blog actually care to organize their knowledge in some way (come on—it's a pretty dorky thing to do, isn't it?), but I'd be curious to know what other people have tried and what has worked well for them.

Posted by Vishy at 11:19 AM | Comments (4)

December 12, 2006

10 treasures you can get to with Start > Run...

Although I spend nearly all of my day in pointy-clicky Windows and OS X, I am a CLI geek at heart. I launch a bunch of programs merely by typing in things into Windows' pathetic excuse for a command line, the Start > Run... box. Here are some of the niftiest things you can access from the Start > Run... box in Windows XP:

A way to start a screensaver instantly

Start > Run... > scrnsave.scr and the screen blanks instantly. Useful for when you need to step away from the computer and don't want prying eyes to see what you had on your screen.

A comprehensive system information tool

Start > Run... > winmsd, for when you get hardware conflicts, driver problems or other low-level issues. This tool gives it all to you in one place, free of sugarcoating.

The trusty Control Panel at your fingertips

Start > Run... > control brings up the Control Panel without having to point and click your way through the Start Menu.

A way to clean your hard disk of junk

Start > Run... > cleanmgr and a disk cleanup assistant appears. Although storage is hardly an issue anymore, it's really surprising how much space you can reclaim by deleting your browsing history, cookies, downloaded program files and other crap you didn't even know you had.

An on-screen keyboard

Start > Run... > osk, for when you need to shut down the computer after suddenly spilling java into your keyboard messing it up beyond repair. You can even hover over the keys to press them!

A way to transfer files to your BlackBerry

Start > Run... > fsquirt, enables you to "squirt" (eww) files from your Bluetooth-enabled computer to another Bluetooth-enabled device, like your BlackBerry.

A one-stop startup configuration utility

Start > Run... > msconfig, for when you are sick and tired of your startup being delayed by the 18 million teeny-weeny programs that crowd the system notification area (not system tray).

A definitive answer to "What version of Windows am I running?"

Start > Run... > winver, et voila!, a dialog box with your operating system version (including any service packs you applied) appears.

A way to design your own Klingon font

Start > Run... > eudcedit, gives you a drawing surface using to fill up your own Unicode Private Use Areas. This way, even fewer of your Klingon-speaking friends will know when you write that their mother has a smooth forehead.

An el cheapo chat program

Start > Run... > winchat brings up a really basic chat program using which you can talk to users of other computers in the same Windows workgroup or domain. It was clearly written by a Microsoft developer who sorely misses talk from Unix.

You knew there was a bonus! Start > Run > %WINDIR%\media opens up a directory with the Windows sound schemes. The MIDI (*.mid) files in there are the half-decent lost works of an unknown composer (Brian Eno?). They're somewhat dated, which makes them sound tacky today. The file called "flourish.mid" vaguely reminds me of the Seinfeld theme for some reason. Start > Run... > clock.avi pops up a movie of a cheesy-looking clock that counts to 12.

I'd like to honorably mention Start > Run... > osuninst. I thought it was going to end my love-hate relationship with Windows, but all it did was pop up a cryptic error message instead.

Posted by Vishy at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2006

HOWTO: Read New York Times Editorial Columnists For Free

Technorati has one of the best blog searches around, which also means they are solid purveyors of the shitstream. Their pages sometimes feature a banner ad though, which goes "55 million blogs... some of them have to be good." Turns out they are right—some of these blogs feature content for which the gray old lady charges a premium.

I was really bummed the day the New York Times editorial columnists, some of the United States' most influential thinkers, were unceremoniously dumped behind the TimesSelect paywall. The New York Times has content policies that may seem strangely anachronistic in today's new media world. Fine, charge me a premium for all your fancy verticals and lifestyle content, but at least leave these national debate-driving thinkers freely accessible!

Fortunately, thanks to Technorati, I can get my weekly fix of Maureen Dowd's articulate Bush-bashing and Paul Krugman's economic theories (I have sort of tired of Tom Friedman's persistent world-is-flat shtick). Some kind blogger always posts the full text of the column I want to read. Take today's column by Paul Krugman, called "Outsourcer in Chief." I hobbled over to Technorati and typed in "Outsourcer in Chief Paul Krugman" and found several full-text renditions in the first 10 results.

This has worked for me pretty well for the last month or so. I doubt there's a lot of other TimesSelect content on Technorati, so don't take this as a guaranteed way of drilling through the paywall. I wouldn't want to pay to access most TimesSelect content, but what content I might pay for, I can get for free. In this case, it looks like Robin Hoods have 'appropriated' the cathedral's jewels for the bazaar's good.

Posted by Vishy at 08:18 PM | Comments (0)

November 26, 2006

Three things South Indian cinema can teach Bollywood

Indian cinema is a lot more diverse than audiences outside India might give it credit for. The Indian movies many outsiders have heard of are primarily Hindi language movies (yeah, those supposedly 'musical' ones). Although the industry that produces these movies is based in Bombay (the B in Bollywood), that city's major spoken language is not Hindi. There are several smaller film industries based in cities all over India that make movies in other languages.

The biggest film industries outside Bollywood are in South India, where Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam are spoken. Movies in the first two languages have a much broader base and appeal than movies in the latter two languages. Nevertheless, there is significant cross-pollination of ideas, actors and movie directors among movies in the South Indian languages, which leads to a reasonable degree of thematic overlap.

Bollywood movies, as popular as they are, tend to be centered around only a handful of sociocultural themes (I'll note though that since the release of Dil Chahta Hai in 2001, a greater number of Bollywood movies have tried to introduce new and provocative themes). Add a few predictable elements and you have a formula that satisfies the world's single largest film market. Many aspects of this formula have been emulated in Indian regional cinema to varying levels of success; indeed, regional actors generally gain in respect if they can also pull off a successful Bollywood movie. South Indian language movies come nowhere close to Bollywood movies in the size of their audience or box office collections. Still, they have their own take on some aspects of moviemaking, which I wish more Bollywood movies would use to reinvent themselves.

• Irony and humor. Blockbuster Hindi movies these days are generally short on irony or anything more than token attempts at humor. Perhaps the director fears that these elements are but peripheral to the main plot of the movie, or worse, that they might undermine his message. Humor and irony might undermine the message of the movie only if it involves the major characters. South Indian movies, especially those in Tamil, manage to present enough humor and irony without detracting from the main message of the movie. They use characters that have nothing whatsoever to do with the main plot of the movie; they exist solely to provide comic relief and temporary distractions from the movie's plot development. Indeed, actors like Senthil and Goundamani have made entire careers playing such roles. Free of any involvement with the plot, their minor roles often succeed in delivering insightful social commentary while being funny. What's in it for the audience? A temporary respite from a concentrated shot of plot development, a few laughs and a chance to relate as human beings to the events on the screen. Contrast this random, and quite frankly bizarre, approach to humor with that of most Bollywood blockbusters (Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna comes to mind), where any comic relief is provided by major or supporting characters and is constrained somewhat by plot elements. Not all movies must have irony or humor to be successful; however, those irony-free movies that deal solely with plot and character issues without commenting on wider social issues take themselves too seriously in enforcing patriarchy, social hierarchy and notions of propriety. Conveniently enough, this brings me to my second point.
• Treatment of human and social issues. Indian cinema has always had somewhat of an escapist streak; it caters to audiences that want to rise above the concerns that constrain them ethically, morally or materially. Starting in the 90s, several movies (especially song sequences) have been shot outside India just to give a taste of foreign lands to the local audience. Influential actors like Shahrukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan have starred in movies that depict unbelievably well-dressed characters living opulent lifestyles inaccessible to the vast majority of the Indian population. Although this escapism provides some distractions from ordinary life in India, which can often be difficult, before long it becomes hard to identify with the troubles of the characters or to see their situation as relevant in any way to the viewer's own condition. South Indian cinema is much more likely to feature relevant human and social issues (the emotional complications of surrogate motherhood, the mysteries of multiple personality disorders, the slow deterioration of someone affected by a terminal disease) in its themes. Most of these movies, notably those from the Malayalam film industry, don't do well at the box office because they are not sufficiently escapist. They receive plenty of critical acclaim as serious cinema because they expand the repertoire of collectivist and widely relevant issues that can be depicted on screen. Contrast this to Bollywood's much narrower idea of pushing the envelope: questioning whether premarital cohabitation or extramarital affairs may be appropriate in some circumstances.
• Musical inventiveness. South Indian cinema has seen immensely talented musical directors like A. R. Rahman or Ilayaraja, who have been highly receptive to experimenting with new styles of musical composition. Ilayaraja had a good bit of training in Western classical music, which he used to great effect in his work. A. R. Rahman's inventive genius has earned him a commission for the musical version of the Lord of the Rings. South Indian music directors are also more likely to give new singers a break, judging from all the fresh talent that keeps getting featured in South Indian movies. In fact, singers like Sadhana Sargam have fared much better singing in South Indian movies even though they aren't native to South India. Bollywood music has historically been largely predictable and features standard-issue love songs and dance beats that have been perennial favorites.

Bollywood is an incredibly successful commercial machine without a doubt. Despite the sheer number of movies it produces though, it is still a major event if an Indian movie is a serious contender for international honors in film. More than anything else, this points to a lack of diversity, arising in turn from a lack of maturity. I have no delusions about movies being high art; moneymaking continues to be their primary goal in every major film industry in the world. Still, if Bollywood could occasionally deviate from tried and tested themes and learn a thing or two from the South Indian movie industry, it will surely result in greater variety and wider appeal.

Posted by Vishy at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2006

Google's shares like Picasso's checks?

Google's stock price recently crossed $500, making it Silicon Valley's second most valuable company after Cisco. Although 500 is just another number, boom times are evidently back. A while back, I had read about how Pablo Picasso used to prefer paying by personal check. Here's why:

Pablo Picasso loved paying for things by check. Why wouldn't he? Many times the recipients of the checks, complete with his famous scrawly autograph, would keep the checks as souvenirs rather than cash them, giving the famous artist pretty good odds that he'd be getting things for free...So prized was Picasso's signature that it is said that when he paid for things by personal check, the odds were that the recipient of the check would save it rather than cash it. Seeing as a simple Picasso autograph can easily fetch $1,000 today, perhaps this wasn't such an irrational decision.

I wonder if Larry Page and Sergey Brin have started paying for their purchases directly with Google shares. I mean, you can get a PS3 or two Wiis with the going rate of one GOOG share. With a round lot of shares, they could buy a Hummer SUV if only they weren't so environmentally conscious.

With the way the stock market is going, and with Google's philosophy of encouraging long term ownership of their stock, whoever was selling them stuff would probably just hold on to their payment-in-stock for future gains.

Posted by Vishy at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2006

Hindu vs. Hindi: a PSA

This is a public service announcement regarding some basic terminology about India's major language and religion.

The word Hindi refers to India's most widely spoken language. Not everyone in India speaks it, but it is the language spoken or understood by the largest percentage of India's population. As with so many things India, the analogy of India to all of Europe comes in handy. Consider how you may be able to get around many places in Europe — especially the touristy places — with basic English (okay, let's ignore for a moment the disdainful looks you might get). It is quite likely that you'll come to a region within a country where English is completely unknown and English speakers may number only in the single digits. Still, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that English is the language that larger percentage of Europe's population understands than any other, including as a second or third language. The situation is similar in India with Hindi.

The word Hindu refers to someone who follows India's largest religion, Hinduism. Although India has the world's largest population of Hindus, they also live in several parts of the world where there is a significant Indian diaspora, such as the Caribbean, Mauritius, Fiji, the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Hindus don't have to be Indian by ethnicity; indeed there are many Caucasian followers of Hinduism in the U.S. A related word, Hindoo, was used in the Western world historically to refer to people of Indian descent, but is now obsolete, if not offensive.

Hindus may speak Hindi but they don't have to. Likewise, not everyone who speaks Hindi is Hindu — they could be Muslim, Sikh, Christian or even Jewish (all these religious groups exist in India or places with Indian diaspora to varying degrees)! But above all remember -- Hindi is a language and Hindu is a person.

I frequently see people (U.S.-ian or otherwise) mistaking Hindu for Hindi or vice versa and thought I'd do my bit to clear the matter up. In fact, I've even made a T-shirt about it, along with a few other India-themed T-shirts. Buy them for yourself or your friends and spread the word!

Posted by Vishy at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

August 31, 2006

What will the culture of the 2000s be remembered for?

I don't delude myself about my ability in cultural commentary, but it recently occurred to me that the present decade will probably not have a characteristic culture associated with it.

Each decade in recent memory has had something by which history will remember it. The 60's had free love and Vietnam, the 70's disco and funky hairdos, the 80's--well, ahem--MTV and the classic Mac, and the 90's, (uh... hmm... let's see...) the dot com boom and Monica Lewinsky. Perhaps this is a good time to read "New Kids on the Block", an exercise in armchair sociology whose conceptual framework I will borrow generously from--although I don't agree one bit with its conclusions--for the rest of this essay (take your time, I will wait). The 'naughty aughties', the name some give to the decade starting in 2001, is well past its halfway mark and the only things it has so far are the 9/11 attacks and various manifestations of the global war on terror--hardly something to give future generations the warm fuzzies.

Maybe I just can't think of something because I am living in this decade and I am too close to it. But even after setting aside every generation's usual neuroses about whether it will be remembered at all, and whether its life is not the most decadent and pointless, I believe there are a few good reasons 00's will not have a distinctive culture associated with them like the preceding decades.

It may seem that I am about to contradict what I just said, but I think more than anything else, the 00's is a decade of two things: irony and nostalgia. The 18-45 age bracket tends to set the de facto cultural tone of any given era because it produces and consumes media the most. This culturally significant bracket is largely occupied today by two generations: Generation X and the so-called millennial generation. Generation Xers like irony and the millennials like nostalgia.

Generation X's preference for irony is rooted in their characteristic pragmatic outlook, shaped to some degree as a reaction to baby boomer idealism. Satirical news shows like The Daily Show enjoy raging popularity, with a remarkably large percentage of the population tuning in to them for its regular news diet. Contrarian and somewhat counter-cultural periodicals like The Onion and Slate make telling statements about our time precisely because they highlight its virtues and follies by depicting their opposites.

The millennial generation, on the other hand is defined by the highly programmed lives its members lead, and their almost unquestioning worship of parents, teachers and other authority figures. This admiration manifests itself as nostalgia for the life and times of their boomer parents. The millennial generation frequents 50's-themed diners, 60's-themed bars and 70's-themed clubs, but has not yet been able to explicate any themes characteristic of its own decade. The millennials are a generation that remembers rather than sets its own tone. And as one cultural pundit pithily put it, you can't be remembered for remembering.

Notice how it got harder for me to come up with something that defined later decades relative to the earlier ones? It's not incidental. There won't be one major culture associated with this decade simply because there isn't one standard culture in the mainstream media anymore. Advances in media technologies have resulted in highly customizable content that has fragmented media consumers into several highly specific cliques. It is a lot more difficult for a few media to set the tone of a decade when dozens of underground subcultures nibble away at their spheres of influence. To use a culturally relevant buzzword, we live in decidedly long tail times, where we can infinitely customize our media experience. Unlike a teenager coming of age in the 1980's, a teenager who would come of age in the 2030's has the luxury of looking back at hip hop culture, Latino culture and Asian culture in addition to the white American culture of the past generation. It is culturally empowering and enriching to have more than one mainstream culture to turn to when finding oneself, but it also makes it harder to pick cultural archetypes for a time.

There's nothing wrong with living in a decade defined by irony, nostalgia and a fragmented media. In fact, it is quite a lot of fun nostalgically recreating the lives of previous generations while, ironically enough, not having to face their challenges. The only problem with irony and nostalgia is that they need something else in terms of which they are defined, such as the living conditions of earlier generations. This dependence on something else renders them quite unsuitable for being the pillars of aughties culture.

I want my generation to be distinctly remembered somehow though, so I hope for my own sake that I am wrong about the above. I hope that the generations of this decade will somehow combine their panache for infinite customization with their wallowing in irony and nostalgia to create a way of being remembered by future generations. After all, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Posted by Vishy at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)

August 25, 2006

HOWTO: Fake out someone about where you live in New York

One of the paradoxes of New York City, and Manhattan in particular, is that despite its size, many of its residents tend to live most of their lives within a 10 block radius of their home and office. When one really thinks about it though, this phenomenon is hardly surprising. Each neighborhood has a distinctive character, except perhaps midtown, where people tend to spend time solely for work reasons. When picking a part of town in which to live or spend an evening, this diversity of character results in a high degree of self-selection, sometimes to the point of self-segregation. In short, people tend to keep their favorite two or three neighborhoods. You can use this simple truth to fake someone out about where you live or work in New York.

You may be trying to fend off a creepy guy at a bar, or you may be a B&T spy chatting up a girl under an assumed identity. Whatever be your reasons for doing so, you can use this handy guide to faking Manhattan addresses and be assured of success simply because a disturbing number of New Yorkers simply don't know better. I hope I don't sound condescending, for I count myself among this band of New Yorkers. Most importantly though, it is the truth! Still, armed with a handy map of New York, NY and enough determination, you can accumulate all this *cough* extremely useful information.

Most of Manhattan is criscrossed by numbered and named east-west streets and north-south avenues (if you didn't know this, I'd be afraid, very afraid in your place). Not all avenues intersect all streets. Here's a list of all the avenues and the streets where they begin and end. Just pick an avenue and a number outside its range and bingo, you have a fake Manhattan address.

Going approximately east to west...

Ave D

Runs from Houston St to E 13th St

Ave C

Runs from Houston St to E 15th St

Aves A and B

Runs from Houston St E 14th St

York Ave

Runs from E 60th St to E 92nd St

1st Ave

Runs from Houston St to E 125th St

2nd Ave

Runs from Houston St to E 128th St

3rd Ave

Runs from E 6th St to E 149th St, in the Bronx!

4th Ave

Runs from E 6th St to E 14th St. This avenue wins the dubious honor of being the shortest.

Broadway

From Battery Pl to Well Outside New York City, all the way to Rockefeller State Park, near Sleepy Hollow, NY (not recommended as a fake out, because it actually hits every numbered street in Manhattan. After all, it was a major Native American trail before the Europeans arrived.)

Park Ave

Runs from E 17th St to E 132nd St

Madison Ave

Runs from E 26th St to E 136th St

5th Ave

Runs from Waverly Pl (~8th St) to E 142nd St

6th Ave

Runs from Canal St to W 59th St

7th Ave

Runs from Clarkson St (just North of Houston St) to W 59th St and then, in a remarkable resurrection, W 110th St to W 145th St

8th Ave

Runs from Bleecker St to W 58th St

9th Ave

Runs from W 14th St to W 57th St; continues as Columbus Ave from W 57th St to W 110th St

10th Ave

Runs from W 14th St to W 57th St; continues as Amsterdam Ave from W 57th St to W 188th St and then back to 10th Ave from Dyckman St to W 218th St

11th Ave

Runs from W 22nd St to W 59th St; continues as West End Ave from W 59th St to W 107th St; continues as Broadway until the end

12th Ave

Runs from W 22nd St to W 57th St

Lenox Ave

Runs from W 110th St to W 145th St

Frederick Douglass Blvd

Runs from W 110th St W to 155th St

Riverside Dr

Runs from W 72nd St to W 181st St

As with everything, use the above with a generous dollop of discretion. If you say you live at Ave A and 72nd St, even the most insulated New Yorker is going to call you on it.
I hope you have enjoyed this instalment of useless knowledge.

Posted by Vishy at 11:20 PM | Comments (1)

August 12, 2006

Funniest. Swag. Evar.

Having witnessed a few cycles of on-campus recruiting from both sides, and having been subject to miscellaneous corporate promotional events, I thought I had seen it all with respect to company swag. I was secure in this notion until I saw this

Source Force

Back at MIT, when morale on a class project was running low, we'd pep ourselves up by conferring on everyone in the team the honorable title of Code Warrior. Now, that veritable institution has been reduced to a mere action figure! My, what is the world coming to?

The FAQ is crafted rather too funnily, especially for Microsoft, whose documents are saddled with too many disclaimers or littered with opaque internal jargon. I do feel like I am the object of faux condescension when I read their FAQ. Contrast similar user-facing documents from Google, which are nice to a fault. I haven't made up my mind about which I prefer.

Posted by Vishy at 12:59 PM | Comments (0)

August 08, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: pass out

pass out. /PAHS·owt/. To graduate successfully from somewhere, especially an educational institution. For example, "I am studying B.Tech Mechanical Engineering at REC Trichy, passing out this year." Although final-year performance usually counts for the most in one's final university grade in India, the sentence above does not refer to any bouts of unconsciousness brought on as a result of the stress. It merely indicates that the speaker is the Indian equivalent of a U.S. college senior.

Passing out usually means moving on to better things. So, I suppose it would be germane to mention in this post that I too just passed out, finally. After years of weighing the question in my mind, I realized that the time is right and I can't hold myself back any longer. I have made the switch.

So, hello blogworld from a gorgeous, sleek black MacBook!

Posted by Vishy at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)

July 02, 2006

HSBC's Personal Internet Banking not!

HSBC, the self-styled 'world's local bank' advertises an online-only savings account that lets them offer a higher than average interest rate in exchange for lower overhead per retail banking customer. The online-only application process is more arduous than most, requiring multiple forms of identification and a three day period to verify the existing bank account from which you wish to fund the online savings account. Miffed yet patient, I jumped through the hoops, watching the high-interest carrot dangle before my eyes (that mixing of metaphors was intentional) and hoping that this treatment would improve once I actually became their customer. Being part of both the wired generation and Generation Debt, I have seen my share of Web services that purport to help me manage my money online. I've rarely encountered an online-only financial service as bad as HSBC's Personal Internet Banking. I continue to be their customer for now because of their inflation-beating interest rate but if the quality of their Web site was the only consideration, then I'd have stopped being their customer before even applying to be one.

HSBC's Personal Internet Banking service is not personal. After your application has been approved, HSBC sends you your online login credentials, customer ID and password, through separate pieces of snail mail. I waited eagerly for mine to arrive, only to find that my customer ID was--wait for this--a 20 digit number. I remember all of my frequently used credit card numbers, each 15 or 16 digits long, but only because I find myself giving them out frequently over the phone or online. This number is longer than all my credit card numbers, a fact made worse only by the fact that I would use it solely for this one Web service. The password is another 8 digit number, which means as much to me as my customer ID--nothing. When picking security keys and so on, the service requires the customer to click keys on an on-screen keyboard, ostensibly to thwart any keylogging spyware installed on the client computer. I imagine this mouse intensive task would be annoying to not-so-dexterous older users as well as keyboard-preferring younger users. I realize the need to protect against authentication and transaction fraud, but this is ridiculous. Far from being personal, these devices make the online banking customer uncomfortable. The message that HSBC sends to the online banking customer is 'This Web service is ours, not yours, and we'll make you jump through all these hoops to manage your own money!'

Despite showing an astonishing level of awareness about modern devices to commit online financial fraud, HSBC's Personal Internet Banking service is not an Internet service by my definition. The service offers only the thinnest layer of online transaction support, falling back on phone based customer service and antiquated snail mail devices at just about any pretext. Take the authentication credentials for instance. I have no opportunity to choose a personally memorable username and password. I am entirely dependent upon those two or three pieces of snail mail that contain the indecipherable and meaningless 28 digits I need to access my account. A online service that ties me thus to two insecure and easily lost pieces of paper is not an Internet service. HSBC's service also does not support instant online verification of my non-HSBC accounts, unlike some other services I have seen. Adding this feature is a simple matter of technical tie-ups with online banking services from other banks, something I have seen one of my other online banking services do already. Having non-HSBC online accounts verified via trial deposits should be a fall-back option and not the default. Forcing its users to wait three days for any non-HSBC account verification, especially if it is the same one they initially verified to fund the account, is hardly what an Internet service, with its implied instant-gratification tag, should do.

Consistent with HSBC's this-is-our-service-not-yours message, its web site also does nothing to protect the customer from phishing, which is becoming an increasingly effective vehicle for fraudsters to launch online bait-and-switch attacks. There appears to be no way for HSBC's site to identify itself to its users. Bank of America's site, on the other hand, lets users choose a personalized picture, called a SiteKey, which is shown to them before they enter their password. It's not foolproof, but it is certainly more than what HSBC does. All the above complaints are exacerbated by the fact that online-only customers have no recourse to a brick-and-mortar HSBC branch for any complaints. Even a minor site usage error means spending 15 minutes on the phone with a customer service representative, who asks you for your account number, which is another 9-digit number distinct from the other numbers mentioned above. One would imagine that the world's local bank, with its intricate knowledge of local customs, would come into the global Internet age, for once and wise up to its competitors' vastly superior online banking offerings.

Come on HSBC -- get with the program!

Posted by Vishy at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2006

Vishy's Useless Factoids of the Day: T9

I've recently come to be a moderately heavy user of text messaging. I am not sending out so many text messages that I should pay for my cellular provider's unlimited text messaging plan, but all the same, I no longer consider sending one anything but utterly ordinary.

For the longest time, I used the ABC mode on my cellular phone's keypad without knowing that a considerably more keypress-efficient alternative was but a menu click away--T9, intelligent textual input using just the nine keys of your cellular phone's keypad. T9 scans each successive key you press to guess the word you intend to type. When I discovered T9, I was loathe to let go of the absolute feeling of control that ABC mode gave me. With ABC mode, I knew exactly why every character had its place on the screen. T9, on the other hand, sometimes spouted wild guesses that were disturbingly far away from my intention, but algorithmically correct. Over time, I got used to letting go of my iron grip over each character and letting T9 lead me with its inexorable guesswork. I also found that my usage of text messages shot up considerably after I switched to T9, something I don't believe is entirely coincidental.

I watched spellbound as T9 got better with its guesses. My relationship with T9 was maturing; it seemed to know with increasing accuracy exactly what was on my mind. As I wrote to various friends, it would even guess their names correctly! I speculated that my contact list was automagically added to the T9 database of potential guesses. Today T9 guessed 'Google' for me and I stopped to think. Google was definitely not an entry on my contact list; was my cellular phone provider getting with the program and updating my phone's T9 database with names of products and services used by yuppies? A Google (who else?) search revealed to me that I could update my T9 database myself; indeed that was how it was learning my style so well. Everytime T9 gets a word wrong, change to ABC mode, correct it and change back to T9 mode. T9 will incorporate that correction into its database from that point onwards. It seems like most cellular phones that offer T9 work this way.

So, happy text messaging! Here's to less sore fingers!

Posted by Vishy at 09:13 PM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2006

Kiss me--I am Indian

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Kiss me--I am Indian (Don't forget to turn your face to the left and ignore the pesky blue wheel in the center.)

Posted by Vishy at 11:14 PM | Comments (0)

March 13, 2006

Perl, according to Larry Wall himself

I started off liking programming because I could usually make the computer do cool things like animate a shape or play a neat tune. However, Perl was the first language in which I had fun writing code for its own sake. I really liked Perl's natural language antecedents and the TMTOWDTI philosophy; I continue to be fascinated by Perl and other languages inspired by Perl, such as Ruby. Perl may have originally stood for Practical Extraction and Reporting Language but it can do so much more. In fact, I am a bit scared by how much critical infrastructure at large companies depends on Perl, especially considering a quip I noticed in the main Perl manual page today, from Larry Wall himself:

Perl actually stands for Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister, but don't tell anyone I said that.

Posted by Vishy at 10:25 PM | Comments (1)

January 31, 2006

A well-targeted AdWords campaign

Google's stock was tumbling in post-market trading today, after its reported earnings missed analyst expectations by a wide margin--about $20bn of market capitalization was lost in less than an hour. As I was watching the price temporarily enter free fall, I couldn't help but notice that an AdWords advertiser had nimbly taken advantage of just this event to cleverly dis Google on their own site. Here's a screenshot of what I saw:

I had marveled to myself at Palo Alto real estate being advertised in response to the GOOG keyword. This sort of targeting though is another level entirely.

Posted by Vishy at 08:37 PM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2006

Blog Zeitgeist

Before I realized it, it has been a full year since I started posting to this blog. I have really enjoyed writing the various posts. My first goal has been and will be to continue putting out posts that will be useful to someone in some way. That, and to be the World's Largest Repository of Useless Knowledge. I am sure I haven't reached the second goal yet, but that doesn't prevent me from calling myself that, does it? I hope my regular and semi-regular readers keep coming to this blog for more of the same and I hope I get some new readers too. The next year will be interesting ride, to say the least, but I hope to keep the posts coming as often as I spot something I think my readers would like.

Well, for what it's worth, here's a few fun facts from my server logs over the last year:

• I got 50,869 hits from approximately 6,650 visitors, approximately 6% of who added my blog to their bookmarks.
• My blog is still worth $2,258.16.
• The top 5 most commonly searched term that led to my blog, i.e. the top few things that my visitors thought I was an authority on are: Numenoreans, French beards, nonveg jokes, prepone (see bottom) and indian aunties.
• I got my first marriage proposal via a blog comment.
• The IP addresses of my visitors came from 80 countries, the top five of which were the United States, India (.in), Australia (.au), the European Union (.eu) and the United Kingdom (.uk)
• Only 40% of my visitors used Internet Explorer! My readers are clearly technically savvy for roundly rejecting a browser that has a real market share upwards of 80%.
• Nearly a third of my requested files are XML/RDF files, meaning that they are from regular readers who use RSS readers.
• With respect to time of day, I got the most visits at midnight EST (say, when my U.S. readers were procrastinating on a late-night assignment) and at 10am EST (procrastination time in India -- 8:30pm). I also have a peak at 9pm EST in bandwidth in hits, which I think comes from comment-spamming bots.
• My top reader has been Punya and linking to his great blog is the least I can do in return.

Well, thanks for a good year. Thank you come again.

Posted by Vishy at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2005

How does Playboy support software development?

I was trying to download Eclipse, the much celebrated IDE for Java and other languages. I went to Eclipse.org and went to the download page, where they ask you to select a mirror close to you. And boy, among the list of mirrors was 'Playboy Enterprises, Inc.'! I am in shock. Imagine this purveyor of countless silicone valleys, lending server space to help developers in Silicon Valley and all over the world! Needless to say, now you know from where I downloaded my IDE ;)

Posted by Vishy at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

December 02, 2005

Don't be evil

A certain major technology company operates by the motto "Don't be evil". They offer several major Web services, though. As the geeks among us know, these millions of Web pages are served up by HTTP daemon processes.

How can a company profess to be not evil and depend on daemons so fundamentally to make money? Perhaps they should call their server processes httpa, for "HTTP angels".

Posted by Vishy at 11:42 PM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2005

How much is this blog worth?

My blog is worth $2,258.16.
How much is your blog worth?

About time I announced how much I could rake in from the purported Web 2.0 boom using my blog. Some dude used Technorati's API to come up with a valuation technique for any blog. Each blog's worth is measured by how many links to it are present in the Technorati corpus. I am not blown away by my blog's supposed value, but I am rather pleased that 10 months of writing this stuff is reportedly worth $225 per month (and change) according to someone. Whoo hoo! For say ($225 / 160 hours per month), that's an hourly rate of $1.40 just for navel gazing! Rock on!

Posted by Vishy at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2005

The Newwwww Jerseyyyyy Guy

This posting is about a phenomenon on my commute up from Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan that I encounter frequently enough to be annoying. I looked around the discussion boards at the Straphanger's Campaign and the New York rants and raves section on Craigslist. Even in such a voluminous corpus of complaints about the subway, I couldn't find any mention of the Newwwww Jerseyyyyy Guy.

The Newwwww Jerseyyyyy Guy, whom I'll refer to as NJG for the rest of this post, is a conductor who works the uptown (west/northbound) 2 subway line in the morning. In older subway cars used by other subway lines, the conductor of the train has to announce the next stop at which the train will stop over the public address system. The 2 trains, on the other hand, have the most modern subway cars in the New York subway system. These cars, also shared by the 4 and 5 lines, have automated announcements regarding the upcoming stop and the transfers available at that stop. The conductor's job in these new trains is reduced to making announcements about transit changes and emergencies. These announcements from real human beings are preceded by a distinctive ding note that passengers have learned to associate (unpleasantly) with upcoming trouble or inconvenience.

NJG, like so many annoying people, loves the sound of his voice. His really annoying offense, however, is that he uses every opportunity to refer to the Oil and Petrochemical Refinery State as "Newwwww Jerseyyyyy". His announcements usually go as follows:

Good morning' Manhattan, good mornin'. The next stop on this train will be 14th St. Transfers are available to the 1, F, L and V trains and the PATH trains to Newwwww Jerseyyyyy. That's right. Transfers are available at the front of the train to the 1, F, L and V trains and the PATH trains to Newwwww Jerseyyyyy. Have a nice Tuesday!

The Newwwww is sing-songed on a long rising note and the Jerseyyyyy on a long falling note. Fearing that his announcements have pissed off the subway gods, he puts on the automated announcers immediately after he has finished his childish prattle just so they can say exactly the same thing. Every so often, he says other useless things like "Pay attention to the red and white subway signs. They tell you about changes to subway service this weekend." It is clear that he comes on air (preceded by the dreaded emergency note, no less) just so that he can say Newwwww Jerseyyyyy. Perhaps NJG has the noble goal of livening up a thousand morning commutes. He fails miserably, though. On numerous occasions that I have ridden the train with NJG, I have made eye contact with a fellow commuter and we have both rolled our eyes together when NJG comes on. After you hear him a few times, you almost feel like he's a cretin who just can't say it without sounding like an eight year old.

MTA, hear my plea! This guy clearly feels trapped in his subway conductor job. With his infectious (-ly annoying) spirit, he could do so much better being the chief DJ of a radio station. In fact, I hope you relieve him so that he can find such a job pronto and cynical, jaded New Yorkers like me can revel in their insipid morning commutes. Have a nice Tuesday!

Posted by Vishy at 02:03 AM | Comments (1)

August 23, 2005

Spot the Fake Smile

How good are you at spotting fake smiles? Try this questionnaire with 20 smile videos. It shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/

Posted by Vishy at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2005

Armchair window shopping with A9 Maps

I have compared a few mapping services earlier in my blog for features, correctness and user experience. Just when you think the mapping problem has been basically solved and further improvements in various services would be mainly in user experience, technology advances and catches you by surprise. Some mapping services continue to blaze a trail of innovation, adding entirely new features that other mapping services simply don't offer.

Just yesterday, A9.com, a search engine subsidiary of Amazon.com, debuted its map services with an interesting new feature, Block View Images. This feature uses geocoded images to let you literally walk up and down a street from the comfort of your armchair, much as Google Earth lets you fly to a destination of your choosing. There is a database of millions of images that puts users in the middle of Times Square or at other famous urban landmarks. Window shop at the retail scene around a new neighborhood. Don't like the shade on your side of the street? Just cross over to the other side and walk as you soak up the sun.

Browse around your favorite city a little and you realize this service is almost too good to be true. What's the catch? Some poor schmuck has to be driving around all the time taking the pictures that make this possible. Well, hey, at least he is working hard, having fun and making history!

Posted by Vishy at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2005

Movie Review: Swades

[I am quite notorious for seeing fairly well known movies long after they come out. I saw the landmark Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge for the first time more than 8 years after it came out. I saw Swades only recently, even though it has been out for at least half a year now. Nonetheless, here's my belated review.]

Swades: We the People is an introspective, whimsical tapestry of vignettes woven around the experiences of Mohan Bhargava (Shahrukh Khan), the story's protagonist, who visits India after spending some time in the United States. Mohan is a project manager at NASA, whose mission is to launch a satellite that measures global precipitation. Standing at his balcony overlooking a stunning view of downtown Washington, D.C. (just how much does he make?), he realizes that he has grown too self-absorbed recently and forgotten his nanny, Kaveri Amma. Just as news of his successful petition for American citizenship comes through on his voicemail in the background, he decides to pay her a two-week visit in Delhi. When he reaches Delhi, he is told that Kaveri now lives in a village more than a hundred miles away. He rents an RV and drives to this village, but not before running into an enigmatic schoolteacher (Gayatri Joshi) in a bookstore. Mohan quickly surmises that behind her pretty face lies an idealistic, opinionated and culturally correct mind that is lightning quick with arithmetic (his calculator use in this scene is an amusing sop to Indian audiences about how arithmetically 'soft' he has become after moving to the United States).

Mohan arrives at Kaveri's village and finds out that the enigmatic schoolteacher from the bookstore was Geeta, his childhood playmate, who lives with Kaveri (how serendipitous!). Kaveri moved from Delhi to the village to raise Geeta, when she lost her parents. Geeta teaches at the local primary school started by her parents. Mohan's affair with the village and with Geeta begins in right earnest. Mohan is simultaneously touched by the simplicity and frankness of the villagers and appalled by the quality of life in the village. Electricity itself is a luxury and the local postman, who appears to be the most educated of the lot, hasn't even heard of the Internet. The village is too riven by caste politics to unite and do something about these inconveniences to their lives. In fact, many of them are used to these disruptions and have learned to carry on just fine. When reminded how dismal their lives are, they cling to India's millennia-old culture and heritage that they will always have no matter how tough the going gets.

Mohan decides he will have to prolong his vacation. Starting a crusade somewhat reminiscent of the President he serves, he sets about fixing the situation using persuasion, tact and several dollops of Shahrukh Charm (tm). Geeta's school is in imminent danger of being downsized if enrolment doesn't rise. He hits the road and lobbies the villagers to send all their children, not just the boys, to school. He deplores how the villagers lead dismal, disunited lives, while clutching at the culture-and-heritage straw at every oppotunity. He boldly states that even with its great and cohesive culture, India is not the greatest nation on earth, but merely has the potential to be so. He also challenges centuries-old prejudices that prevent villagers from different walks of life from coming together to tackle their problems. As the villagers start waking up to their own potential, he initiates a project to build a local hydroelectric power plant and sees it through to completion, backed by his NASA experience in project management. In a very real way, he positively affects the lives of the villagers, who have been swallowing their sense of helplessness and shame for so long. He returns to the United States filled with pride at what he accomplished and remorse at having left behind Geeta and the simple village life.

If the movie had ended here, it would be convincing, short and sweet. It would have noted India's glaring deficits in the material plane and would have illustrated how these could be overcome. However, it is not just for NRIs (referred to once in the movie as Non-Returning Indians) that this movie was made. In a somewhat unabashed act of pandering to the love story-hungry RIs (resident Indians), the unconvincing and weakly played out chemistry between Mohan and Geeta is made a pivotal reason for Mohan's return to the same village a few months later. Through most of the movie, Shahrukh's Mohan seems to be bursting at his seams to apply puppy-eyed, dimple-cheeked Shahrukh Charm (tm) upon Geeta with full force. However, the screenplay and direction keep thwarting his special Shahrukh moves, so that the audience is left wondering, "He left his cushy NASA job and apartment with a stunning view for this"? At one point in the movie, Mohan openly admits that Geeta lives by a totally different set of values and ideals than his. It is fortunate that the future of Mohan's and Geeta's relationship is left unclear beyond Mohan's return to India, because foisting their wedding on the audience would have been too much.

Even with the unconvincing ending, Swades has several sound points to make about the state of India today, and the complex conflicts tearing Non Resident Indians apart when they make their life choices. The musical score is by the multi-talented A.R. Rahman and provides a pleasant counterpoint to the progression of the story. All in all, the movie definitely deserves at least one viewing, if not a few more, for all the subtle references to sink in. Taking a line from the one of the movie's concluding scenes, it is more important to think of what the audience gains by watching this movie rather than what it has to lose.

Posted by Vishy at 11:35 PM | Comments (3)

July 20, 2005

Taking a vacation

I will be taking a couple of weeks off starting today to travel to Singapore. I won't have broadband access and honestly, I will probably have better things to do than write on my blog. I will still miss writing on my blog though, and I'll try and sneak in the occasional entry. Fresh entries on my blog will resume with their usual regularity in early August, upon my return.

Posted by Vishy at 02:01 AM | Comments (0)

June 11, 2005

D: Movie Review

I went and saw D with some of my friends from work last night. When we got to the movie theater there was a long, serpentine line, which, at first glance, seemed to be all for D. This got us excited, because earlier in the evening some of us were abandoned Bunty Aur Babli, another Hindi movie playing at the same theater, for this. Little did we know. If this review dissuades even one person, who originally intended to see the movie, from seeing it, I shall consider my work done.

The movie is billed as a prequel to one of the milestone movies that came out of Bollywood in recent years, Company. Company, despite its fervent disclaimers that any resemblance to characters or events in real life is purely coincidental, is based on the turf wars between the gangs of Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Rajan in Mumbai. Ever notice that the only movies with such disclaimers are movies loosely adapted from true stories? It's almost as if this disclaimer is a signal that makes movies less fantastic and more believable. D has the same disclaimer at its beginning too, but it leaves one wondering at the end if so many clichés could be crammed into real life after all.

D is said to be based on the life story of Dawood Ibrahim. It traces one man's entry into and meteoric ascent within a gang that strongarms customers to buy from Hashim, a businessman, who keeps repeating how he is only interested in his profits. Hashim has two incompetent sons, Shabbir and Muqram, who are nonetheless drunk with a sense of entitlement on the fact that they are blood relatives of the big boss, Hashim. They mostly kill time by engaging in all manner of unhealthy and unislamic activities, such as heavy smoking, heavy drinking, gambling and gamboling with random women. Meanwhile, Deshu, the chief protagonist of the story, who stands for the D in the title, returns from working as a mechanic in Dubai to an unemployed life back in Mumbai. He witnesses a cold blooded murder right outside the doorstep of a friend's house and is forced to deny the killing to the police by Hashim's rival, who initiated the killing. After being interrogated somewhat brutally by the police, he decides that the best way to fight the system would be by joining Hashim's gang, and gaining some money, power and business experience on the side. In the early parts of the movie, the script hints at the fluidity of this man's situation. When undergoing weapon's training with Hashim's gang, he mentions how he has undergone police training before, which leads one to wonder if his lust for power would have been any different if he had joined the police instead.

Hashim lets Deshu take on several new projects to expand their sphere of business and quickly learns to trust him with risks, much to the chagrin of his incompetent sons. Deshu also helps protect a Bollywood starlet from the unwanted advances of an actor. After a brief but forced on-camera courtship, they end up in bed together, also to the chagrin of Hashim's sons. After helping influence the outcome of an election in the area, the rancor between the two factions grows to such an extent that Hashim sends Deshu's faction off to Gujarat to look after business. Deshu continues to outperform the incompetent Hashimlings back in Mumbai and solidifies his control over business in Gujarat. In fact, such is his influence that clients though him no longer speak directly with Hashim, who he nominally works for. Deshu moves in with his girlfriend into her expensive bungalow in Juhu. Meanwhile, Hashim's sons poison his ears with various accounts of how Deshu is expanding his influence so much that there isn't space for both factions in the same gang and ask for permission to eliminate the other faction. Hashim, in spite of himself, washes his hands of the situation. Hashim's sons eliminate Deshu's closest partner in a somewhat gruesome scene and nearly succeed in eliminating Deshu and his girlfriend right in their expensive Juhu bungalow. However, Deshu, wearing nothing more than a wifebeater, sprints away with his girlfriend to safety, evading 20 gun-toting people with really bad aim.

Hashim's business partner brokers a truce between the two warring factions, where they agree to stop baiting each other. Deshu pulls out a gun and kills one of Hashim's sons at the truce meeting in return for their killing his close associate. He walks away, leaving behind a room full of stunned onlookers. Then he kills just about everybody else in Hashimling faction, leaving Shabbir, with his fear-filled, kohl-lined eyes, for the very end. He swings by a bedridden Hashim to take his leave and tells him that he always hated Hashim a lot more than his sons. The End. No really.

The movie is shot in a stark, minimalistic way, reminiscent of Ram Gopal Varma's other mafia-related movies, Satya and Company. The city of Mumbai, with its overpowering grime and squalor, is itself a character in this movie. Technically, the movie has many failings. The camera work is a significant departure from classic Bollywood movies and tries to show the gritty, grimy lives of its characters. Unfortunately, it outdoes itself and moves around so much that the movie feels like a veritable Blair Witch Project. Several dialogues are woefully out of sync with the actors' lips on screen. The dialogue and plot constantly leapfrog each other in a competition of banality. The audience develops no sympathy for any of the characters and remembers them as little more than the products of a series of unfortunate circumstances. The movie promises to show how one man grew to own, corporatize and transform the Mumbai underworld, but falls woefully short. I wish D wouldn't be billed as a prequel to Company because in doing so, it gives Company a bad name. If you have not seen Company before, you may give this movie a D, but if you have, you would certainly give it an F.

D may stand for Deshu. D may stand for Dawood. I say D stands for Don't.

Posted by Vishy at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2005

Grade Inflation at Cornell

I just thought I'd share a hilarious tidbit I came across in The Atlantic Monthly.

Cornell is an Ivy League school. Its charter is to attract passionate and smart young women and men, who like to challenge themselves. It, like any other school, prefers to believe it is succeeding at this task, year after year. So, you would think, if Cornell's toughest courses were advertised as such, more students would rise up to the challenge and take them.

Wrong.

Starting in 1997, Cornell decided to publish the median grade in every offered course at the end of term. The result was that students gravitated to the easier courses (not the harder ones), which led to increased grade inflation.

Is this the Law of Unintended Consequences or simply unbelievable naivete on the part of the Cornell administration?

Posted by Vishy at 11:32 PM | Comments (0)

April 05, 2005

Hund's Rule and Humans

Hund's Rule of Maximum Multiplicity is a simple rule that explains how atomic structure changes as atomic numbers increase. Blockquoth my chemistry textbook:

"Every orbital in a subshell is singly occupied with one electron before any one orbital is doubly occupied, and all electrons in singly occupied orbitals have the same spin"

In simple English, it says that if two electrons have two spots to fill up, then they would rather occupy one spot each rather than pair up in one spot. This reduces electron-electron repulsion, resulting in lower net energy and therefore a more stable atom. As a corollary, when two electrons do occupy nearby spots, they have opposite spins, because unidirectional spins repel each other more.

All this is well at microscopic, atomic scales. Each one of us is made up of way more atoms than there are people in the world. Wouldn't it be strange, yet somewhat unsurprising, if we too followed Hund's Rule at our macroscopic, human scales? In this post I am going to try and convince you that we do.

Scenario I:

When boarding a bus, passengers fill up all the window seats first. Only after all window seats have been paired up do incoming passengers sit next to other people. Presumably, unhappiness levels are increased if one has to *gasp* share a seat with someone when an open window seat is available. Therefore, unhappiness/disgust/contempt at sitting next to a stranger seems to be the macroscopic analogue of net energy level.

What about spin? On my trips between Boston and New York, I keep hoping for an attractive young woman to be the other electron in my orbital. If I am sitting at a window seat by myself, my seatmate usually ends up being a man, but only after he has explored all possibilities of sitting with attractive young women with free spots in their orbitals. Needless to say, in this scenario, no eye contact is made for the entire trip as we silently curse our luck for sitting with each other. If I am looking to sit in a second seat, I try to sit, in order, near a young attractive woman, a young woman and then a woman. Only after these options fail do I go sit next to a guy. My net energy level is heightened and sooner or later, this unstable arrangement is broken when the trip ends. (Sadly, even if I were sitting next to an attractive young woman in an apparently stable arrangement, we do get blown apart when the trip ends.) Without it being too much of a stretch, we can argue that if I were gay, I would be looking for an attractive young man to sit next to. Spin here is probably the analogue of gender. I try and sit next to someone who has an opposite spin (*ahem*) to me.

The exception to this, of course, is when a couple is traveling together. When they board the bus, they are generally seen to sit next to each other rather than at two separate window seats. The communication overhead, which would be higher if they sat apart, leads to greater unhappiness during the trip. The analogy of unhappiness level to energy level still stands. The exception has proven the rule.

Scenario II:

If you and one other person are in an elevator lobby, waiting for elevators, it is preferable for both of you to board two different elevators rather than get into the same elevator. This ensures a shorter average ride time for both of you. Ride time here seems to the macroscopic analogue of energy level. There doesn't seem to be a clear analogue to spin. Once again, if you are having a conversation with someone, it is more likely that you'll get into the same elevator with them so as to avoid the unhappiness caused by an interruption in the conversation.

Scenario III:

At a cafeteria or other common eating area, it is rare to find strangers sharing a table. Diners prefer to leave fellow diners alone even if they are sitting by themselves at a table that can seat four. Arguments similar to Scenario I above can be made for those who share tables, Of course, in crowded cities like New York, it is hard to follow this rule all the time. Some New Yorkers actually take this as an opportunity to meet new people, because eating alone is awful. Perhaps it is because eating food is inherently more social than traveling that this difference from Scenario I occurs.

It is really rather strange that people can be alone in massive metropolises like New York. Thinking about it in terms of Hund's Rule makes it clearer why. As is the characteristic of good rules, they find use in domains far removed from those of their original formulation. Dr. Hund, I hope you approve of my appropriation of your rule to explain urban loneliness.

Posted by Vishy at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2005

What's Vishy listening to?

I have a highly eclectic taste in music. I find it hard to point to one genre of music and say it is my favorite. I'll listen to just about anything except rap and hiphop. I go through several "song possession" attacks, when a song completely takes over my waking moments and plays itself over and over in my head. At these times, I IM most people on my buddy list and send them the song that is possessing me. However, this is a grossly inefficient system because I have to send songs to multiple people. Wouldn't it be great if people could just connect to my computer and listen to what I am currently listening to?

I downloaded and installed a SHOUTcast server instance on my computer. If you have Winamp, you can listen to a random selection of what I am listening to at the moment.

Just do the following:
Right click on Winamp. From the Play menu, choose Location.... In the input field, enter "quantumplate.servemp3.com:8000"

I give absolutely no service level guarantees, but chances are you'll hear something being played if you point Winamp to this location.

Posted by Vishy at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2005

Intense Ilayaraja Inspiration

Ilayaraja, a South Indian composer, has produced some excellent musical works. Some of his musical training was in London and it shows in the way he seamlessly blends the best of Indian and Western classical music. His two instrumental albums, How To Name It and Nothing But Wind belong in every fan's CD collection. The man's raw talent shines forth in these albums.

My favorite few are "Study for Violin" and "...And we had a talk" from HTNI and "Mozart, I love you" from NBW. The first one is an excellent rendition of an already haunting keerthanam from Thyagaraja, "Thulasi Dhala Mulache Santhosha Mukha". The second one is a Carnatic counterpoint to one of Bach's famous violin concertos. The third track is plain ol' Ilayaraja -- excellent music to pop into the CD player after a long day of work.

Right now, both these albums are playing in the background and I am trying to get some work done. There's little that beats the awesomeness of coding to this music. Music to haunt your soul.

By the way, I have MP3s of all the tracks on both the above albums if you want to sample them. Get in touch with me if you want in. If you need to get a hold of these albums, they are available on Amazon.

Oh, and by the way, I recently bought myself this pretty gadget to pop CDs and tapes into. I am truly in audio heaven. It even plays DVDs, which might fit in with some other evil plan of mine. Watch this space for more on that.

Posted by Vishy at 08:02 PM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2005

My personality distilled

News flash: my three top characteristics are Emotional Stability, Intellect and Openmindedness, in that order. I am low on Sensitivity and Paranoia.

Go figure.

The blow by blow appears below.

Posted by Vishy at 10:29 PM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2005

Titles for Kim Jong-Il

Leafing through the February 2005 issue of Harper's Magazine, I found a list of titles that North Korean state television claims are given to Kim Jong-Il, the president and supreme dictator by "prominent leaders from 160 nations around the world."

Normally, I don't copy lists verbatim from publications. I had to make an exception for this one. Curious?

• Supreme Commander at the Forefront of the Struggle Against Imperialism and the United States
• Greatest Saint Who Rules With Extensive Magnanimity
• Lode Star of the Twenty-First Century
• Best Leader Who Realized Human Wisdom
• Leader with Extraordinary Personality (Yeah, just watch Team America: World Police. -- V.)
• Eternal Bosom of Hot Love (Putting the dick in dictator? --V.)
• Master of Literature, Arts and Architecture
• World's Best Leader with Versatile Talents
• Humankind's Greatest Musical Genius (Beethoven's Ninth? Kim Jong-Il's Tenth? --V.)
• Master of the Computer Who Surprised the World (What next? Ilux? --V.)
• Man with Encyclopedic Knowledge
• Guardian Deity of the Planet
• Heaven-Sent Hero (Peace Be Upon Him --V.)
• Power Incarnate With Endless Creativity (Yeah, endlessly creating nucular weapons --V.)
• Greatest Man Who Ever Lived
• Present-day God
• World's Greatest Writer

Posted by Vishy at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2005

Manhattan -> Brooklyn Heights

It used to be the ultimate sin for an Indian -- crossing a body of water. If an Indian, particularly a high-caste Indian, crossed the seas, he instantly lost caste and became a mlechha, a disgusting outsider. The only way you could return to a normal life back in India was if you underwent a symbolic cleansing ceremony at a major temple near the coast. Think of it as an immigration post guarding a port of entry into the spiritual life of India. This ancient prohibition on foreign travel didn't prevent Indians from traveling abroad and doing trade. Those people would do it anyway. It did, however, exert a strong influence on ordinary Indians, especially from the more educated higher castes. Of course, today this prohibition isn't relevant anymore.

I am a member of the highest caste in the Indian caste system -- a fact that has had some influence in my upbringing perhaps, but is anachronistic and entirely irrelevant to my daily life. Technically, I lost caste when I came to the United States, or when I visited my aunt in Navi Mumbai, which is just off the island of Mumbai. Was I ever confronted about it? No.

Still, your ancient heritage has ways of catching up with you...

I moved off the island of Manhattan to Brooklyn Heights. I still live in New York City, but not on the cultural and financial center of the universe, Manhattan. Just one mile away from it.

When I announced to friends and coworkers that I was moving to Brooklyn Heights, I got several surprised and somewhat shocked looks. Why? Why Brooklyn? Why leave Manhattan? An endless litany of questions. It was almost as if I was losing caste by crossing the East River from Manhattan into Brooklyn.

First, I *love* the neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights. It is like me -- quiet and somewhat quaint and old-fashioned. It has a stunning view of Manhattan while not being the theme park that is Manhattan. Second, I found a great deal in Brooklyn Heights, which will enable me to save more money and pay off those pesky student loans faster. Third, the year of living it up in New York that I had promised myself was over. Fourth, adding an additional 5 minutes to my morning commute didn't seem like a big price to pay for living cheap in a good neighborhood.

Of course, I am not saying it is all dandy. Everything takes time to get used to. I miss the ability to take a random walk in Manhattan and find myself in a bar, a restaurant or a coffee shop. I miss the activity and buzzing vitality on the streets. I get enough of it (with a dollop of sleaze added for good measure) around Times Square during the day, but I used to notice it less when I went home to the same sort of thing. I miss my two 24-hour corner delis. I miss the Blockbuster across the street. I miss the zillion restaurants that would deliver food to me at odd hours of the night.

However, I found that with all the conveniences of life in Manhattan, I was not living my life deliberately enough. I would allow myself to experience life in a stream of consciousness. With a greater contrast in my work and living environments now, I would like to change that. I was feeling a bit down in the first couple of days. However, I am already getting more settled into my new apartment. Being able to get online and write a blog entry about it made a big difference! Come spring and summer, I am going to enjoy Brooklyn Heights even more. I can't wait!

Considering I live right at the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge, a symbolic cleansing to get myself readmitted into Manhattan can't be more than a mile away!

Posted by Vishy at 10:20 PM | Comments (1)

January 10, 2005

Reviews of Subway Reading #1: Brave New World

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, is a fantasy about a futuristic, eugenic, class-conscious dystopia, where most norms of today's society are nonexistent. The book was written in 1931, which, in the book, is the start of a new era, the era of Ford. It was the beginning of an era when cars could be mass produced off an assembly line, and the considerably increased efficiency led to new comforts and a feeling of happiness amid all the plentiness.

Why stop at cars, electronics and other consumables though? What if human beings could be mass produced as well? With the right numbers of each kind of human, all perfectly conditioned to love their life and not think of any other possibilities, there would be no unrest. Nobody would sidestep the roles into which they are born and society would be much happier in general. This is the peaceful, plentiful vision of civilization that Brave New World presents to us.

Disclosure: The following paragraphs may contain spoilers and other points crucial to the plot. Read ahead at your own risk. Feel free to skip ahead to the section titled The Review if you are anxious to avoid spoilers.

More on the Dystopia

Brave New World is set in London of approximately 2550 A.D. (approximately A.F. 600) Society is divided into five castes -- the Alphas, the Betas, the Gammas, the Deltas and the Epsilons. Alphas perform all the highly skilled and desirable tasks in society. They are the scientists, doctors, statesmen and sportsmen. Alpha embryos are born of one egg fertilized by one sperm cell. Everyone other than the Alphas performs tasks requiring progressively less mental effort. The lower castes, Deltas and Epsilons, come in groups of identical twins, called Bokanovsky groups. Early in the life of the fertilized egg that eventually gives rise to a Bokanovsky group, it is subjected to hostile conditions, which causes it to multiply over and over. Sometimes, Bokanovsky groups numbering 72 can be manufactured from just one egg. Because individuals from the same Bokanovsky group are overwhelmingly genetically similar, they think in similar ways, which favors people from the same Bokanovsky group performing tasks like working in factories and assembly lines.

People are no longer born to their parents. In fact, the words father and mother are vulgar and generally unmentionable in so-called 'civilized' society. Instead, people are decanted out of bottles, in which they spend their embryonic life. The bottles are lined with the uterine tissue of pigs and have a blood-like surrogate circulating inside them, carrying oxygen and nutrients to the embryos within. Depriving lower-caste embryos of oxygen by reducing this rate of circulation is another way of ensuring that their mental development will not be at par with higher-caste embryos. Once babies are decanted (and in some cases, even before), they are subjected to several rounds of Pavlovian conditioning, which will ensure that they lead their lives just as the Director of Predestination intended for them. Moral and pseudo-factual statements are repeated to young children in their sleep for much of their early lives, in a process known as hypnopaedic learning, so that these statements become instinctive and self-evident to them.

These statements include dictums such as "Everyone is happy now" and "Everyone belongs to everyone". Monogamous relationships are uncommon and are, in fact, discouraged. When somebody wants to have sex with somebody else ("to have them"), all they need to do is go up to them and ask. Men and women are encouraged to be as promiscuous as possible, for after all, everyone belongs to everyone else. What's more, a free exchange of sexual favors doesn't lead to pent up emotions, which could be the cause of unrest in society. If anybody in the civilized society of Brave New World experiences any remotely unpleasant emotion, it is easily cured by popping a gram or two of soma, a mass-produced form of purified cocaine.

Dramatis Personae

It is against the backdrop of this civilized, happy dystopia that the chief characters Bernard Marx, Lenina Crowne and Helmholtz Watson lead their lives. Bernard is an Alpha who has an uncommonly small physical stature, supposedly due to alcohol added to his blood surrogate when he was still in the bottle. Helmholtz is an Alpha who is almost too successful. Lenina, a Beta woman, accompanies Bernard on a trip to a 'savage reservation' in New Mexico in the United States. A savage reservation is a place untouched by the civilized dystopia described above. Its inhabitants lead a squalid, relatively primitive existence, speak dead languages like Spanish and believe in Jesus and other deities. Lenina and Bernard encounter Linda, an emigre from the civilized world brought to the reservation by circumstances, not by choice, who has given birth (*gasp*) to a child, John, in the reservation. John learns the ways of the reservation from his peers, much to the disdain of Linda, who tries to impart as much civilization to him as she can, nonetheless. John is well versed in Shakespeare's works, one of which lends the book its title. Bernard and Lenina manage to procure permission to take Linda and John back with them to London. The rest of the story revolves around John's experiences in the civilized world.

The Review

The novel is a satirical fantasy at its core. As far as alternative reality novels set in London go, one can't help but be reminded of another scary and influential novel, 1984. Brave New World appears at the 5th position in a list of the Twentieth Century's 100 Top Novels compiled by Random House, Inc. 1984 checks in at #13. I, for one, felt that this novel didn't deserve so high a spot in that list, especially a spot much higher than 1984.

The characters of 1984 are very real and readers can easily identify with the ordinary, yet terrifying life of Winston. The sense of horror one experiences as one reads 1984 is very palpable and realistic. This impression is further enhanced by the fact that it is set in a stark, yet credible world. In contrast, the events of Brave New World, grotesque and stark as they stand in comparison to those of today's world, do not evoke the same empathy and character identification in readers. The Brave New World is also far less believable relative to today's circumstances. If characters readers don't identify with well are set in a barely believable set of circumstances, the end result doesn't leave as deep an impression on the readers anymore. The plot of Brave New World seems to be little more than happenstance set in a fantasy world, where the reader gets bombarded continually with new facts about the world along the way. In 1984, the development of the world is much more deliberate and quite complete by the time readers get into the thick of the plot.

However, Brave New World isn't without its flashes of brilliance. The introductory parts of the book, before the main characters are introduced, makes for good reading. The climax, when the Controller for Western Europe explains the rationale for the way things are in the civilized world, is undoubtedly the best part of the book. Despite the iron grip the Controller and his administration hold on the lives of the people, the Controller is shown to be a well-meaning renegade who had to learn to love the system he administered. In well thought out, precise, amoral terms, he explains that the painful history of humankind necessitated a society where happiness was valued over everything else, including passion and achievement. The snippets of Shakespeare that John quotes in the book are poignant and well chosen.

The book leads to interesting discussions and thought experiments on the state of the world and its problems today, and ways in which they could be solved. The book presents one solution that seems to work on the surface. Readers can quickly see the problems with the approach presented in the book. However, the striking amorality with which this fantasy world is presented is commendable. A few strangers on the subway did make passing remarks about how they liked the book. I concur with them. Overall, I would definitely recommend this novel as a great piece to read on the subway or any other public transportation of your choosing.

Overall grade: A-

Posted by Vishy at 10:17 PM | Comments (1)

January 05, 2005

Hello, blogworld!

Hello, blogworld! Welcome to my spout, where you might get a glimpse of what goes on in the mind of the World's Biggest Repository of Useless Information, moi. I'll write about random interesting things I run into during my life as a yuppie in New York. You might read here about a tech nugget I think is cool. You might read my take on a book I am reading right now. You might hear about my opinion about some news item or current event. You might be asked to give your opinion on something I write. Or you might get to see me vent, in a good or bad way, about something going on in my life.

Why a blog?

2004 was the Year of the Blog. I started a blog when I moved to New York in early 2004, but that petered out quickly because it was on a free blogging site and because I was involved in an intensive training program at work. With this blog, it's different. It's attached to my domain, my personal presence on the Web. What's more, I seem to have more time on my hands now than last year. I'll try and blog as often as I can. As some of my friends would agree, I am phenomenally bad at keeping in touch. Blogging is a good way for people that I am not regularly in touch with to still get a flavor of what's going on in my life. I am also trying to improve my writing skills to the level of a decent creative writer. Blogging will hopefully give me enough practice that I can write short stories of my own. I am also phenomenally bad at keeping records of my life. I fear that one day, 40 years from now, I will have absolutely no idea how I spent my 20s. This blog, hopefully, will be a legacy unto my future self.

Posted by Vishy at 01:33 AM | Comments (2)