churchofchai

Why the long silence?

2009-05-23T23:54:00.001-07:00

I've been tumble-blogging over at churchofchai.tumblr.com, and that was actually more fun and less work for a bit. I'll be back here in a little while tho' i think.

An Incredible Story

2008-11-03T07:02:00.001-08:00

Be sure to read this story to the end...it's well worth the read and to forward to all those who you feel deserve the thought.....

AN INCREDIBLE STORY

In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University .

On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully.

He got down on one knee, inspected the elephants foot, and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, Peter was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Peter and his son Cameron were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter could not help wondering if this was the same elephant. Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing, and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.

Probably wasn't the same elephant.

This is for all of my friends who send me those BS heart-warming stories.

Ok, now that I've managed to piss everyone off .. yeah, it's fake and I just had to do it!! :) Now I'm ready to be stoned for my sins :)

Indians "Deeply Love" Bush

2008-09-30T09:02:00.001-07:00

With the signing of the US-India nuclear deal just days away, it is time to demolish all those Gandhi statues disfiguring Indian streets and squares and to adopt a new idol.

Given the Indian population the title is more appropriate for other reasons

Obama and McCain are negative, but the devil's in the details

2008-09-28T17:14:00.001-07:00

I'm pissed that Obama's going negative.

The "media" has recently been given to saying that Obama runs 77% negative ads vs. McCain's 56%. Given that the last few emails I've received from the Obama campaign have been pretty damn idiotic (using Karl Rove as an information source?!) I tended to agree that Obama's been having dinner with Cheney and Co.

Turns out the truth is far more interesting:
Op Ad: Obama More Negative Than McCain?

The really annoying thing here is that it took me 30 minutes of research to figure out whether there's anything real to the 77% number. This US politics thing really is a PITA!!

Ay-rab's are takin over Mayricuh

2008-09-27T11:44:00.003-07:00

I'm not sure if that should come first or this:

MD5's and OSX

2008-09-22T08:12:00.001-07:00

Sucks that I have to keep looking this one up, so here's the one-liner:


$ md5 file-name | grep md5sum

If the checksum is returned in the next line, things are good. Otherwise not so much.

Constructive sentences

2008-09-14T08:09:00.001-07:00

Le Shrub proved that there's no reason to be able to construct a coherent sentence to get the job of ruling the ~~morons~~ ~~free world~~ US.

But Sarah Palin takes the cake. She's able to construct sentences, but it's sentences that are made by the construction company which decided that you can use caulk and duct-tape and nails and a compressor and a few rebars and zipties and a heat gun and a nail-screwer-thingie and a battery operated whizziewhig to build a sky-scraper. It's exactly like building with a diablo or lego set, but just a bit more sturdy.

It's impressive that she remembered words from talks (Abraham Lincoln?!) and managed to string them together in grammatically correct sentences. Too bad they still make no sense.

wiki-fication

2008-05-07T21:54:00.001-07:00

The last 2 corporate (or pseudo-corporate) gigs that I did were SORELY in need of a common documentation interface, and my solution was the wiki. The first involved a slightly uphill battle. Come to think of it I shouln't even call it a battle. It was more like an unexpected upheaval. It started off with SharePoint, and my implementation of MediaWiki turned out to be more popular. The second used Trac. The success of that project is still being weighed. I think it's a failure because I did not do the legwork necessary to make people aware of the benefits and also did not structure it correctly.

I wish I had had the series of lectures from http://ikiw.org/21days before I started, but I completely concur with the suggestions. In any case, every corporate wiki implementer should go through these videos:

world changing

2008-03-16T11:58:00.001-07:00

i'm curious, in the confused and exhausted state that i'm in, what few points i would consider to be necessary to change the world. here's a brief list that i'll be evaluating under more lucid conditions:

* legalize drugs
* legalize sex-work
* remove merit from education (i.e. don't delineate based on test performance)
* make all education free - at all levels
* require all education curricula to include farming
* require a foreign language (and that should exclude english in relevant locations)
* make all education wiki-based - so students can write their own textbooks
* put all political and public information online (wikileaks, sunlight foundation)
* make all religions pay tax (i.e. no tax benefits for contributions to religious charities)

that's my list of 9. i wish there was a 10th.

hope

2008-03-15T12:06:00.001-07:00

the ilugc [indian linux user's group, chennai] have been having perl programming sessions at the workplace. they've been progressively declining in terms of attendence, and progressively evolving in terms of the quality of presentation and focus of the attendees.

today i spent a lot of time describing my visions and aspirations - basically the ashok jhunjhunwala vision - to the attendees. trying to instill the vision and leadership that they need to contribute to society here. i was hoping to not have wasted my breath.

today one of the attendees at the end of the class said he was very glad to hear my insights because he had never thought about his programming career as having opportunities for the local population. he had only thought about programming for programming's sake. this person works for jhunjhunwala's company.

i'm thrilled that he gave me this feedback.
and sad that jhunjhunwala has not instilled the vision into his own employees.

but i have hope (outside of the usual gymkhana club stupidity, which i feel is going to crop up regularly until i leave india).

dreams, fantasies and visions [continued from last post]

2008-03-15T12:00:00.001-07:00

if you have not read the last post, pls read it.

yeah, it has nothing to do with this one, but still, might give you some perspective :)

of india's 1 000 000 000+ people almost 50% are under 30 (i can't remember where i read this, but let's assume it's true for now). this is an astounding figure. over 500 MILLION youngsters. it's either damn scary or damn useful, depending on how you look at it.

there are some downsides to it right off:
* there's a massive imbalance between men and women
* income disparities are huge
* education disparities are excessive

of the three the only real problem, at least as i see it, is the first issue - the gender imbalance is going to either result in war, or some other kind of political unrest unless men have a useful outlet. and that has to be driven by leadership and vision.

this brings me to the the other two points. provided the proper vision (and the corresponding leadership) i believe they are will take care of themselves. people are willing to work for very little - as can be seen by the web 2.0 revolution. they also can accomplish a great deal with their own self-effort given minimal education. see all the dot-com heroes. life in india is cheap enough to allow people to pursue their visions with minimal renumeration, provided they see the long-term potential.

if vision and leadership can be provided to the unwashed multitudes - the youth who have the energy, the drive and the ambition - i believe this nation has the ability to change the world. without vision and the associated leadership we're doomed to repeat the mistakes of previous empires, regimes and institutions.

today i have high hopes that i can contribute to putting the seeds of change into the mindsets of a few of the youth here.

but i fear that my optimism may be short-lived since the simultaneity of opportunity and fascist adherence to the idiocies of a bygone era are too apparent. specifically my previous rant about institutional ignorance such as that found at the "gymkhana club" (and their dress code) vs the recognition by youth here that there are possibilities for them to create magic that meets the needs of the current populance. i don't know if the youthful exuberance and desire to create magic can fight the bureaucracy-adled stupidity of incoherent and irrelevant rules which are going to be instilled on the youth - to make them kow-tow to those who decide how things need to work.

i realize this all sounds vague and distracted. i need to digest my ideas into something more concrete.

70 hrs and counting

2008-03-14T06:01:00.001-07:00

my average work week since jan 1st has been 70 hrs per week. the last time i clocked that kind of hourage was back in the late 90's when i was young and stupid. my body does not appear to be able to deal with this kind of abuse any more.

i've long held that productivity decreases past the 35hr per week mark. i believe i have managed to conclusively verify this in my case, and in the case of people around me. at the very least efficiency drops dramatically after the 35hr mark. i think people can still get things done, but it's at a diminishing rate of return.

i have a chance right now to reflect on what i've accomplished (and not) over the last 2-3 months and here's the short list:

a) accomplishments:
* installed and running openfiler - need to get it ha'ed and clustered for full reliability
* running trac, and have customized it to some degree. need to hack it some more.
* running openHRM, which is just barely acceptable, and needs lots of hacking to make it a usable hr system.
* running subversion, and have the in-house developers using it regularly.
* running rsync to do regular mirrored backups, but this is still a far cry from ha!

b) failures:
* versioning-integrated filesystem. i had high hopes that i could have this implemented, but the lack of a high-capacity data storage system has hindered this extensively. i'm hopefully going to have collabnet help me with this.
* automated ftp synchronization. this is at most a 2-day programming task. that's if i had 2 days of non-distracted development time. which i've not.
* building a better rdf/html comparison tool
* automating the processing of image files to different sizes and resolutions. this is really a *very* simple job given the power of imagemagick

one of the things that i should have (but have not) added to the "accomplishments" side is instilling vision. i realized today that this specific function can never be underestimated. all workers, whether they be programmers, drones, whatever, need to have a vision of something greater that they are striving for. they cannot continue to do the mindless repetitive tasks that we ask of them day-to-day without the golden light at the end of the dismal dank tunnel. in many cases the tunnel ends up being the end itself - and people get dejected and decide that they just can't take it any more and quit.

this is basically the reason i've quit the last 3 jobs i've had. i did not get the sense that the person above me had the vision of doing something great that i could strive for.

i have been working on instilling a vision of what's capable in the current field i'm working in (e-publishing to be sufficiently vague) into some of the employees. i have 2 successes in spite of having spewed my spit at over a dozen. i think this is a high response rate :)

i know that this is of value because one of the guys, saravanan, came to me today and talked to me about the vision he has for automating certain processes which we spend inordinate amounts of time doing right now. and he kept grinning about what he referred to as my "dreams" of what we could accomplish. i'm quite confident that these dreams are well within achievable reality within the next 9 months. then i gave him an inkling into the real "dream", which i currently still consider fantasy, that i was aiming for. that got him very very excited, and i think it lit a spark in him to go create something amazing.

this leads me to my next post ...

catalyst mvc reducks on osx

2008-03-10T11:02:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I'm back at hacking MVC after having blogged abut it over a year back. I tried the Rails and I lorved, but didn't have much of a chance to muck with it. Turns out that Perl, though icky in many respects syntactically, is just more prevalent and the user-base is just that much more active than Ruby. Seemingly.

Anyway, now I need to build a quick and dirty and maintainable (ha, oxymoron in most cases) database app that's web-connected for my current gig. It'll have to be maintained by mostly non-techies. So I'm thinking MVC is a necessity. The few techies who *can* work on maintenance duties are self-taught Perl "programmers". Note the quotes, and keep Chris Farley in mind.

Building Catalyst for OSX (my OS of choice at present, when my Ubuntu host is not available) is turning out to be much more of a nightmare than building a rails app ever was. The standard issue:

perl -MCPAN -e 'install Catalyst;'

bombed with many errors. Then I found out that macports had a lot of this already port'ed, so to speak. Doing some

sudo port install p5-catalyst-*

should have made for a lot of happy-happy-joy-joy (which, incidentally, dates me), but it too fails with silliness like:

Error: Target org.macports.activate returned: Image error: /opt/local/bin/corelist already exists and does not belong to a registered

So, I'm currently debating whether to continue the struggle to make this work, or just give up. Obviously I'm not going to give up, but this really is unfortunate. Why the HELL does it have to be so hard to install something like this? I'm trying to figure out if Apple is to blame, Catalyst is wonky, or my machine is just so mucked up with all the crap I've been installing that things are just totally out of whack.

Now it seems that the fact that I installed some of the modules using CPAN and the rest using macports is actually causing some confusion to one or the other (I guess their databases aren't too intelligent). So I'm having to encounter errors, then continue installation in spite of the snafu's and I'm hoping that this ultimately leads to an actually working install!

In any case, this is what I'm going to be having upleasant dreams about tonight!

catalyst mvc reducks on osx

2008-03-10T10:55:00.001-07:00

perl -MCPAN -e 'install Catalyst;'

bombed with many errors. Then I found out that macports had a lot of this already port'ed, so to speak. Doing some
sudo port install p5-catalyst-*

should have made for a lot of happy-happy-joy-joy (which, incidentally, dates me), but it too fails with silliness like:
Error: Target org.macports.activate returned: Image error: /opt/local/bin/corelist already exists and does not belong to a registered

So, I'm currently debating whether to continue the struggle to make this work, or just give up. Obviously I'm not going to give up, but this really is unfortunate. Why the HELL does it have to be so hard to install something like this? I'm trying to figure out if Apple is to blame, Catalyst is wonky, or my machine is just so mucked up with all the crap I've been installing that things are just totally out of whack.

In any case, this is what I'm going to be having upleasant dreams about tonight!

duct tape - not so universal after all

2008-03-10T10:30:00.001-07:00

ran into a cultural idioma problem 2 days back. there's no such thing as duct-tape in india. that's mainly because there's very little duct-work in india. why do you need duct-tape if you don't have duct-work, right?

obviously those familiar with the universal applicability of aforementioned tape will disagree with that statement. i mean we need duct-tape to build everything - and duct-work is just the least of it!

so anyhoots, there's no duct-tape in india, so what the heck do u use as an allegory when you standard issue "it's like duct-tape" just falls on blank stares? i'm stumped. i thought maybe fevicol or cello-tape, but it's just not the same, now is it?!

btw, just for the record, i'm no longer a fan of the duct-tape. i have joined the legions of hackers who have sworn allegiance to the gorilla vs the duck, and i'm not looking back (even at $8/roll, which is just crippling).

moment of inter-zen

2008-03-07T16:52:00.001-08:00

i've had a vision of what can be done with truly searchable video for a few years now, ever since i heard about the fraunhoffer institute's idea to create mp7 (i believe it was around 2000 or 1999, but can't recall exactly). one example scenario:
imagine being able to create a storyline, in text, and have it dynamically generate different video streams. take, for example, the outline: "children playing; sunset in calcutta; beach hawkers; calcutta street". imagine being able to stipulate this sequence, and have it directly translate to video segments which can be spliced together. take that one step further and imagine that this outline can create hundreds of different video streams - all from different cinematographers.
this is the first in a long list of uber-cool ideas surrounding a project called pad.ma. their about page states that they:

.. see PAD.MA as a way of opening up a set of images, intentions and
effects present in video footage, resources that conventions of video-
making, editing and spectatorship have tended to suppress, or leave
behind. This expanded treatment then points to other, political
potentials for such material, and leads us into lesser-known
territory for video itself... beyond the finite documentary film or
the online video clip.

Dense annotation is the key to making this happen - and this has been an elusive idea in video. it's even more elusive in audio. at least our contextual perception of video and text is similar. audio and text are entirely separate beasts that really need to have more work done to bridge the gap.

pad.ma is developed by 2 german hackers working with the alternative law forum, and a friend of ilya's and lawrence's (sanjay). the moment of zen here for me is that pad.ma is something i've been thinking about for a while, and ilya told me about it and i found out that it was an alf project, and told lawrence how cool it is, and lawrence forwarded by email to sanjay, who is a pal of ilya's and so just as sanjay was asking lawrence how to get in touch with me ilya's sending sanjay my contact information!

should be interesting to see how pad.ma is coded, since it'll all be released under CC/GPL.

Fwd: Sexy for President - quite funny!

2008-02-29T19:35:00.001-08:00

My friend Vidhya wrote this - its totally hilarious!

People of Texas, I beseech you; please bring sexy back on March 4th.

VOTE OBAMA.

Most of you will agree that the last 7 years of the Bush administration have been a constant barrage of UGLY. This is just a sampling of the hideousness that we have all had to endure:

Bush – I had to stop watching the news because of this man. With his beady eyes and forked tongue poking out behind his short teeth – what, about this man's coke binge smile, inspires confidence?

Rumsfeld the crypt keeper – I swear I saw Voldermort materialize from
the back of his head during a press conference.

Laura, the patronizing host of her own 50s Christmas special – does any one else think she couldn't be that bad if they didn't drug her before show time?

Rove and his 40 vibrating chins – the more excited he gets, the faster they go. You could probably play his chins like they do half filled glasses of water. His chins could play "you're a mean one Mr. Grinch" during Laura's Christmas show.

Then there's Cheney – dear grotesque Cheney. I imagine Cheney subsists on hunks of pork fat that he keeps in his panic room.

There ain't a salvageable face in the bunch.

Whether or not you like Bill Clinton, you have to admit that he had sex appeal. No doubt he had a passion for policy and a command over the English language, which no one would ever say about Bush. But what made him truly lovable was the fact that whether he was talking about
genocide or Medicare, he had that beguiling grin of a man who has just been blown. He had presence and confidence and something in his eye, perhaps his interviewer's cleavage, made me want to believe in him. It seems that the majority of the world feels the same way because from
San Paolo to Tokyo, people love bubba. He even has his own tree at the Gandhi memorial. Incidentally Kennedy, our last sexy president before Bill, also has a tree there. Maybe the Indians know something we don't.

Sadly for Hillary, she doesn't have any sex appeal of her own. Hillary has done wonders with a good haircut and wide-leg pants. She is Bill's equal if not superior as a policy wonk. But nothing about her makes you want to drop your pants and listen to her espouse the benefits of
her 453 point universal health care plan. And no stylist can make that stiff smile hide her lack of a discernable personality.

That leaves all of you McCain voters. I ask you to think about this.

Imagine for the next four years you have to stare at his horribly misshapen face with that giant goiter coming of his cheek mimicking everything he says a half second after he says it? It's just creepy.

This brings me to my point. When I get bad news, I always feel better about it when someone sexy is giving it to me. Wouldn't it be much better to have Obama's nice broad smile beaming at you while he tells you that we are in a recession? He is charming and witty and has the
ability to cut through the bullshit to get to the heart of the matter. But if you are still undecided, think about this. Here is a man who looks good in a suit and has nice teeth. He probably smells nice too. I might stop hurling things at the T.V. if it was Obama instead of shrub telling me that we were going to be in Iraq for another 50 years. And as a bonus, we also get Michelle Obama.

My mind was made up when I saw her walk across the stage in that red bell-sleeved outfit.
That girl can work a dress. Again, don't underestimate the importance of style. Would the world have been as mesmerized by Jackie O had she looked like a shriveled up tampon – no offense Nancy Reagan. You can never underestimate the importance of being sexy when you are
trying to win over your enemies. I wonder if Sharon wouldn't have liked Arafat more if he didn't look like he had a colony of mice in his beard. Arafat too might have been more pleasant if Sharon didn't waddle into a room like he had eaten several Palestinians for breakfast. Who knows, we might all live in a different world today if these fools had a stylist.

Our next president is going to be inheriting a dangerous and uncertain future. It is up to us to make sure that s/he is equipped with the one thing that can really make a difference – sex appeal.

Bring Sexy Back this Tuesday. VOTE OBAMA!!!

deep choices

2008-02-02T10:28:00.001-08:00

i've been given the choice to provide education for a kid with a lot of potential. he's currently working a gig which disallows him from pursuing the studies that he is very interested in. he's an amazing worker, has outstanding skills already, a great disposition, and is a self-starter. he'll be virtually impossible to replace. so ... do i give him the education he so richly deserves? or do i allow him to continue working (and possibly learning a lot less, yet earning a hell of a lot more) because i'm afraid of how hard it'll be to replace him?

i'm going to have to think about this one for a while - i thought the answer would be obvious, but it's not. at least not to me!

a better school than most

2008-01-31T07:18:00.001-08:00

I think I just read about the coolest school in the world. Schooling in India was a pathetic, moronic and altogether blighted endeavor. I think I learned almost nothing at most of the schools I attended, except for The School, part of the Theosophical Society, or the Krishnamurthy Foundation of India. The open nature of the education was really what made me realize what a school is supposed to be about: learning. Not proving that you're not as stupid as the teachers think you are. Or beating other students out and getting recognition for knowing the 10 use of dry ice. Or getting better grades so that you can prove that you're sufficiently qualified to join the teeming workforces that consider a job to be more important that seeing different aspects of their own country.

All that aside, I just read about a school that better The School in every way. I just read about it here: Mutiny.in » The School that “Anna” built

Here's just a taste of the purpose of the school. In order to be admitted:

the child has to be a juvenile delinquent with a police record and
relevant papers or some one who has failed more than once in the same
class. The idea is not that children who are excelling should be
enrolled and the institution’s stature elevated but that children whom
society in one way or the other has discarded should be taken in hand
and reformed

My kind of place! I unfortunately don't qualify for any of these requirements, but without a doubt the graduates of this institution are going to change the world. The tried to in their own way, and managed to break "traditions" and "customs" to such a degree that attempts were made to rectify them.
I laud their work, and wish there were more institutions like it to help our society (especially the Indian one) become better.

Dressing in Code

2008-01-26T07:48:00.000-08:00

Dressing in Code

I had the pleasure of visiting the Gymkhana Club of Chennai thanks to a good friend of mine who is a long-time member (who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent), on Jan 25th 2008. They had a very entertaining Republic Day celebration of talented modern dancers in a quite pleasant outdoor setting. Apparently the Gymkhana Club always does their celebrations one day prior to the actual event. So in this case the Republic Day celebration fell on the 25th for the anticipated 26th event. And those of you who know the place know that it's pretty nice. And those of you who don't, you'd better go down your rolodex and find a Gymkhana-member so that you can be their guest and go experience the place. It's a historical Chennai institution.

Unfortunately, as a prefix to said nice event, I managed to cause my host a minor (and he says truly minor) embarrassment by unintentionally infracting one of the club's rules right at the get-go. As we were entering the main building, one of the [presumably] managers accosted us with a "sir we have a dress code". This individual unapologetically stated that they required collars on all guests. I obviously made the assumption that his mis-statement really applied only to those of us blemished with an XY chromosome since the fairer sex generally dresses better in spite of the lack of a collar.

Now I'm a naturally argumentative person. I'm the sort of guy who'll argue with a clerk for telling me that I can't take photographs in a department store or a museum (I was thrown out of both for this infraction). But given that I had been invited by someone for dinner at a pretty swank place I decided to just throw in a cursory question. I asked the aforementioned Gymkhana Club Manager (alleged) if Nehru collars did not count. I guess I should now provide some details on my attire for clarification's sake. I was dressed in standard-issue Bata sandals (damn comfy at Rs. 250), a pair of excellent Just Casuals linen pants, and a white short-sleeved Nehru-collared Khadi shirt from the Khadi Gramodyog Bhavan next to Ritchie Street. This latter accoutrement was, as you must have astutely gathered by now, the offending item.

I've been accused of being an idiot on several occasions (actually pretty much daily), but my questioning whether the Nehru-collar did not qualify as a collar was not because I thought it might. As a collar at least. Rather the question really came up because I thought the manager might see the irony of his statement about their dress-code about a Khadi shirt (and it's a very obvious Khadi shirt since nobody else makes these white shirts except the KGB - hmm, interesting abbreviation that, but we'll ignore it for now) in light of it being worn to their Republic Day celebrations. Republic Day ... transitioning from British Dominion ... freedom from the oppressor, etc. Yeah, I know, you get the picture.

So I asked the question and got the standard issue "we've got a dress code and collars are required", upon which some unfortunate individual was made to run off and find a suitable shirt that would cover my embarrassment. If you've never been in this position, let me give you a taste. The Gymkhana club offers a fine selection of collared golf t-shirts available to wear atop your offending apparel at either a nominal laundry fee (charged, of course, to the member host), or available from their store (or so I've heard - but this is entirely hearsay). It's a wonderful piece of couture that looks like it came out of a used-clothes store. For the record, I'm not bad-mouthing used-clothing stores - I bought the best suit I've ever owned at a used-clothing store. But I was delighted to don a somewhat beaten-up, but duly collared t-shirt over my locally hand-spun and hand-made (or so they claim) nationalistic clothing.

By the way I didn't want to mention the fact that Gaultier is visiting India because of it's amazing indigenous (and arguably collar-free) textiles, but what the heck - I'll throw that bit of tangential mirch into the larger masala.

There's a saying I've heard often that it's a good thing that we kicked the Brits out so that we could govern ourselves and have our own freedoms and decision-making authorities. I used to be very sad about that since the great British institutions of dress and etiquette and food had been lost by my hapless desis. But I'm very glad to know that the really important rules, such as the dress-code which ensure that Western-style clothing is given the credit it deserves when contrasted to Indian clothes, is still maintained dutifully by such venerable institutions as the Gymkhana Club. And obviously I'm entirely humbled that a worn-out t-shirt albeit with neck accoutrement is "plus couture" contrasted against indigenous garb.

(By the way, just in case it's not clear, that's sarcasm.)

There's a reason the British (and the French and Dutch and Portuguese and Spanish and [insert your favourite colonialist here]) colonialists stopped people from wearing their own clothing to places of business, then extended it to other realms of life where people had to go regularly for socializing and networking. It's a simple and yet incredibly effective way of devaluing a national identity. I'm not suggesting that this is still the case, at least not at the Gymkhana. However to continue a tradition that was specifically designed (in my humble opinion) to diminish the value of the indigenous identity is distressing, to say the very least.

As I stated earlier, I'm the sort of guy who'll argue at the drop of a hat. As Bugs Bunny would say (if you're a Looney Toons fan) "This means War!". So I'm on a mission to ensure that my every visit to the Gymkhana Club henceforth is Khadi-shirt'ed (unfortunately my veshti skills are deplorable). But in all probability (and very unfortunately) I'll not have a chance to grace their grounds anytime soon.

In any case I'd be interested in hearing about others' experiences with the Gymkhana's policies, and of course opinions on this one.

perk'age

2008-01-18T02:24:00.001-08:00

every day there's a coffee guy who shows up with a scalding hot cup of saccharine-sweet caffeine in a demi-tasse sized paper cup. he shows up at 10am and 3pm.
initially i hated the coffee - i'm an all black sort: no sugar, no milk. this coffee is about 60% coffee, 20% milk, and 20% sugar.

today i realized that i was actually craving the coffee - i had to step away from my desk for a while and the coffee guy decided not to leave a cup in case it became too cold before i returned (now *that's* care for a product). i fortunately saw him in one of the hallways and before i could say anything he said (in tamil) - "i didn't want to leave your coffee to get cold, so i was trying to find you. if you are going back to your office i'll bring it there.".

btw, when i said this is scalding hot, i'm really not exaggerating - it's hot enough that it'll peel skin. i made the mistake of taking a rather big swig the first time and ended up with cap'n crunch mouth for a couple of days.

anyway, this is just a very nice perk to have, and i guess it's pretty standard in india, but nevertheless i'm thrilled :-)

blogs sex and india

2008-01-13T07:16:00.001-08:00

it's interesting to see that blogging is getting the sort of attention that i did not expect in india. i'm right now watching ndtv "the brave new world of blogs". it's probably a regular talk show, since the host looks very talk-show hosty. i think the name of the show is "we the people". come to think of it the episode might be about whether to regulate blogs in india.

what catches my attention is the fact that there's frank discussion by bloggers, ON TV, about homosexuality, sexuality, and many other topics generally taboo in indian "proper society" (whatever that means). i'm concerned for the bloggers to some degree, but am also very very proud that indian media is representing the borders. one thing to note is that homosexuality is illegal in india, per the constitution. obviously it's not enforced, but it's still interesting to see that people are willing to come forward and talk publicly about this.

an interesting thing that the host asked is whether this whole blogging this is just

an angrezi, chic, gen-next thing to do

strange question, but i've asked the same of many of my guests - whether blogging and free-culture translate beyond the western world. here's the answer!

most of the bloggers being talked to are young - probably late teens or early twenties at the very most. the gay guy, maybe around 20, says his parents know he's gay, but that he talks about a lot of things on his blog that he would not talk to his parents about. i suspect this is true of most bloggers. says something about blogging being cathartic, more than informative.

a question i've had for a while is whether bloggers are only the english speaking masses. the topic just turned to this, and the blogger being talked to has a blog named qarba (or garba maybe) in hindi. i could not find it doing a google search, so maybe i'll have to look again in a bit. the combination of english with hindi and other indian languages for the purpose of blogging is very cool.

the hindi blogger just said that the act of blogging is never personal. since it's in the public domain (and not in a license sense) it's by definition not private. i agree, but it's a dichotomy that needs to dealt with. due to the impersonal nature of the internet (and arguably also because of the one-directionality to some degree, ignoring comments for a sec) i suspect people are going to be more apt to port personal feelings and opinion (i know i do). but simultaneously i wonder if people ever consider just how much of their public posting might come back to bite them in the ass (question for will - have you ever had negative repercussions from blogging, aside from the whole vivo's incident?).

blogging is obviously a means to gain attention. and as the gay guy says:

what's wrong with wanting to be famous?

what indeed :)

good ole hatin of the unix

2008-01-12T10:31:00.001-08:00

i'm reading what's probably the most entertaining vitriolic invective-laden diatribe that has not been leveled against the behemoth in redmond: the unix-haters handbook. it's got such choice sentiments as:

“Two of the most famous products of Berkeley are LSD and Unix. I don’t think that this is a coincidence.”

and

“I liken starting one’s computing career with Unix, say as an under- graduate, to being born in East Africa. It is intolerably hot, your body is covered with lice and flies, you are malnourished and you suffer from numerous curable diseases. But, as far as young East Africans can tell, this is simply the natural condition and they live within it. By the time they find out differently, it is too late. They already think that the writing of shell scripts is a natural act.” — Ken Pier, Xerox PARC

With quotes like that what's NOT to like? This is MUST reading for anyone with any sense. And probably for everyone without, who's still not completely on the unix-hater bandwagon also.

journalistic biases

2007-12-28T05:00:00.001-08:00

i just went to news.google.com. the top story is about benazir bhutto's assassination. of the 5527 articles the first non-US coverage starts at article 60 - sify.net.

i waited 5 minutes and refreshed news.google.com to see how the spread might change. out of 1010 articles related to bhutto reuters india is now at 6, Sify at 11, NDTV at 12, Aljazeera at 13.

So in 5 minutes the world has started looking at the [more] local news outlets for more detail than the international.

this morning's time/cnn article had a picture of bush for the bhutto story (which i had screen-captured that, but alas did not). seemed somewhat indicative of the state of u.s. journalism. but then again, the ny times has a truly excellent piece (and some very good photos) of the event "bhutto is buried as pakistan reels".

america calling desmond tutu

2007-12-27T09:45:00.001-08:00

Mark Kleiman over at The Reality-Based Community: Truth and Reconciliation writes:

If a Democrat gets elected next year, he or she is going to have a
terrible hand to play. The economy is likely to be in a slowdown, with
the bad-housing-debt problem still looming. The foreign policy
situation certainly isn't going to get any better. And worst of all,
the new President will be inheriting an office discredited, and a set
of executive agencies ruined, by GWB and his fellow vandals. (read more)

I've thought about this for a while - it seems entirely ludicrous that any sane individual would wish to take on the US presidency at this time, for the reasons the article outlines. I only hope Kleiman's punchline pans out. I wonder if the US would even be capable of handling anything like the TRC when people are so polarized about the morons in power. It would be like India having a TRC to deal with the excesses of politicians - not bloody likely.