Furry friends forever

In the spirit of equality, this dog - the guide dog of a human guest, gets his own guest tag. The tag reads "Joey Dog"

This is cool

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
- Arthur C. Clarke

The magic for me is "I'm so impressed they thought of that too." I've blogged on this topic before, and I keep hitting it with my sexy unlocked Nokia 6300 I bought on my last trip to India.

The customization on the phone is to be seen to be believed. Then of course, there's the feature that blew me away - the phone has a timed 'silent' mode. So if I'm going to be in a meeting or in a film and I have an estimate on how long I need my phone off, I can time it to that. No more worrying about remembering to turn my phone on or missing phone calls, playing phone tag et al.

Then, I got this in email from a friend replying to an email I sent out:

While I've always been questioning about the Tablet PC, this is cool.

Edit: Fixed typo in Nokia model number. Thanks CAR.

Music wants to be free

Amazon recently launched its online MP3 store. What is notable about this store is that it sells MP3s. Not AACs that the iTunes store sells, not Windows Media Audio, but plain MP3s. What is even more remarkable is that these songs are not under any DRM.

Why is this significant, you ask? For the greater part of the past decade, music sold by the major labels in digital format has been under DRM. This means that after you buy the music, there's a lot of restrictions around how you can play your music. For instance, music I got from the iTunes store (courtesy a gift card last year) cannot play on my phone's music player. Music I got from MSN music won't play on an iPod or on my cool phone which doesn't license Windows Media DRM.

The reasons for this kludge are varied, including Apple's refusal to license its DRM for other music stores or players to use (cue "I hate monopolistic behavior" rant here). But the primary reason is that all four of the major record labels refused to license their music for digital distribution without copy protection.

I hated this restriction and I've avoided buying music online except from emusic which sells MP3s without any restrictions. I've moved this music around on three different desktops and a laptop, burned it to multiple CDs and played it on an iPod and two different phone music players. This kind of flexibility is not possible with DRM-ed music. Of course, the caveat is that this music is mostly from independent labels and not from major artistes.

Now, two of the four major labels allow DRM-free downloads prompting this move by Amazon. Apple's iTunes recently launched DRM-free downloads too, but they are AAC, which means that they may not necessarily play on the music player of my choice. MP3s are the most widely supported, so this new service definitely rocks.

The next step would be sale of lossless audio to be heard in full glory on hi-fi systems. The loss of fidelity in the music we listen to today as part of the iPod generation is a long post for a different day.

Go Kimi!

There's worse ways for the season to end.

Previously:

On the heretical idea of Raikkonen in a Ferrari.

Has his time come? Or is there more waiting to be done?

Happiness is...

- Getting on the highway and driving for fifteen minutes only so that you can continue listening to that cool mixtape you just burned. Then coming back and sitting in the car till one more track finishes.

- Figuring that the rhythm you just learned fits one of your favorite songs of the moment, making it that much more fun to practise

Similar ones in the series - 1, 2

Gratis! Libre!

A long, long time ago, even before the New York Times decided to do its 'Select' experiment where they walled off part of the newspaper behind a paid wall, I thought that ads would be a good way for them and for the Wall Street Journal to monetize their websites. I still think that there's value-addition that they could do and charge for. After all, Bloomberg made billions from that idea.

It's kind of self-evident now, but the proliferation of blogs, search engines and link-astic goodness has led to ad-served free content becoming more lucrative than paid content, especially for mass-market content.

The New York Times has finally seen the light. Their content is free again. Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd and my personal favorite, David Brooks will finally be freely accessible again. The New York Times has the potential to really be among the top news websites in the world with the quality of its reportage and analysis if it embraces the challenge fully. At least a beginning has been made.

Though I'd really appreciate it if they'd do away with the login altogether. Free as in beer is nice, free as in freedom is even better.

This concert season is shaping up to be better than last year. Last year's highlight was watching Indian Ocean live for the first time, but not much else other than Joe Satriani. This season, we had the night of the double-bill and a freebie gala at Pike Place followed by a magical night of smooth jamming at The Gorge with Dave Matthews Band - with good friends along, it was one perfect end to the summer.

Topping off a good concert summer was a seductive performance by Brazilian Bossa Nova singer Bebel Gilberto at the Showbox this Monday.

Bebel Gilberto had all the moves on stage - the thigh-high boots, the sipping of wine in an exaggerated style and her husky voice reminding one of smoke-filled jazz clubs by the waterfront. However, the music and singing was top-notch. It's not for nothing she has such a following the world over, language barriers and all.

Backed by opening band Forro in the Dark on drums, flute, saxophone, multiple guitars and percussion, Bebel had the crowd swaying to the smooth sounds of Bossa Nova. The tunes alternated between jazzy seductive pieces (taking one to aforementioned smoke-filled locations) and cheery, festive tunes transporting one straight to the beaches of Brazil in the midst of summer.

AG and I got lucky, snagging free tickets courtesy a radio station giveaway. I had to scramble to get my pre-purchased tickets sold, but it was well worth it.*

*Well...you can say a free concert is always worth it. But time is of value too. And a bad concert is never worth it.

Viva La Cartoon

As funny as Dilbert is, I find it sad at times. Especially because it seems to resonate so much. Do workplaces really become like that? Even companies that place their engineers (their Dilberts, so to speak) before the PHBs? Heck, the PHBs are all Dilberts who moved up the ranks. 

However, in the geek comic echelons, one comic that still cracks me up unconditionally has to be xkcd. A fine purveyor of geek culture, it yet retains perspective - on geeks having a life outside tech and yet geeking out, on being well-rounded individuals, having a love life (gasp!) et al.

Stand back, I know regular expressions

Stopping Time (isn't that sweet?)

And yes, obligatory Serenity reference: River Tam!

I'd resolved to not make this blog a diary of any sort. It's meant to encapsulate what I'm thinking, what my opinions are, a snapshot of who I am at any point of time - personal references (uncomfortable or otherwise) expunged.

However, there are events that are worth mentioning. Just because I like to show off :)

Pike Place Market celebrated its 100th year anniversary in style. Week-long celebrations culminated in the grand finale with an ensemble of Seattle-area musicians playing Seattle-area music, including the infectious Louie Louie and a rendering of Spoonman with Mr. Spoonman himself accompanying the proceedings. And before I forget, Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard and Mike McCready performed on stage. Mike McCready also performed Jimi Hendrix covering The Star-Spangled Banner.

Did I mention this was free?

---------

AID Seattle had an 'India Quiz' this weekend. After doing a few BCQC  and inquizitive quizzes over lunch with friends, the real deal seemed exciting. K & I were registered as a team.

There was a high level of enthusiasm - attribute this to the lack of quizzing action since leaving college for most people here (I caught the quizzing bug later, I don't count). The elims questions were mostly well-set, with a notable few Malayalam Manorama questions (as Ramanand likes calling them) - including "What is the highest bridge in India called?".

20 questions, six finalists with twelve right answers each who had to be whittled down to five. The elimination asked us to write down the names of all Indian PMs since Independence. Gulzari Lal Nanda saved the day as we made it through smoothly.

The finals questions were similar - a good set of questions mixed in with clunkers like 'Tell me the exact date the Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place'. The AV round was interesting too - it included speeches by Swami Vivekananda and an audio recording of P Gopi Chand winning the All England open. Most annoying to me was my mistaking Shikari Shambhu for the Air India Maharaja.  

K & I won - giving credence to the credo Allah meherbaan to gadhaa pehelwaan. Our team was called 'Professors', an inside joke among us CRY volunteers here. I wanted to name us If you come today, but K refused.

All in all, a good experience - reminded me of the small number of quizzes I did attend while in college.

And I love this because...

My drums instructor invited me this week to a class of blues music to watch some of the music school's advanced students jam together to late '60s blues. This was Clapton before Tears in Heaven, when Cream meant more than just the top off your milk.

There were multiple mic checks and excessive feedback with hissing. The mostly amateur musicians were working hard to get their act together on a weeknight after, in all likelihood, a long day at work.

Yet, it was magical. There was the thump of wood against leather ( a sound no drum machine can match), the throbbing of the bass and the crunching of the lead guitar. The players were all enthusiastic, learning from each other and their instructors, feeding off each other's energy, jamming to a beat all their own. Sunshine of your love bled into Strange Brew as I was transported.

Gigs long back from a time long ago swam before my eyes. Jaws (R.I.P.) at the end of East Street (those burgers...mmmm), those young and raw bands doing their covers of the classics as we sat on stone benches in the crisp night air. Singing along word-by-word to every band (and their dog) covering Summer of '69 or American Pie. The magical pyrotechnics of Parikrama as they added alaaps to Deep Purple and set the night alight with Floyd and Zeppelin. Yelling 'start the f*%&ing music' and band karo ye atyachar when bands didn't measure up. Learning that Cyrus Broacha wasn't just a scripted wise guy as he had an unruly crowd eating out of his hands in two minutes flat.

A blast from the past, completely worthwhile.

Different country, same sentiment

Of all the promises, is this one we could keep?

Of all of our dreams, is this one still out of reach?

                                                       U2 - "The hands that built America"

Happy 60th!

Der aaye, durust aaye.

All that you can't leave behind

Paul Graham writes about how people nowadays have too much stuff.

I agree most with his sentiment when he says :

"I've now stopped accumulating stuff. Except books—but books are different. Books are more like a fluid than individual objects. It's not especially inconvenient to own several thousand books, whereas if you owned several thousand random possessions you'd be a local celebrity. But except for books, I now actively avoid stuff. If I want to spend money on some kind of treat, I'll take services over goods any day."

I just bought another book last week ( Neil Gaiman's new novel Interworld ) and spent the weekend before that traveling (Mile-high city, rocks!) just because I felt it was the right thing to do in the middle of peak airfare season. Services over goods? Absolutely.

My move a few months back to a new apartment was a breeze (less possessions == less time packing and moving) yet I was nostalgic for the day I just filled my rental car with a few suitcases, boxes full of books and moved states to start a new job.

I somehow feel a move will never be so uneventful again.

Aao padhe, kuch paisa banaye

Valuing books is a difficult idea. What value do you place on that beautiful turn of phrase? On the sheer joy words bring you? On the amazing feeling you get when you spend a lazy Saturday afternoon savoring a bracing narrative?

If $9.75 spent on a 3 hour popcorn serving of swashbuckling pirates seems worthwhile, used books (over new)offer a killer value proposition. $8 spent on Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell  yielded hours of intriguing reading, the occasional chuckle and real joy.  Books for me win hands down. I'm very social as a person, so flying solo is probably the only major downside that I see with reading books.

The unfortunate challenge so far - business and investing books are a hard find in used bookstores. It seems like a sad thing to me that so many bibliophiles don't care so much for money or for the mechanics and hurly-burly of trade and commerce.

But maybe there is hope. Maybe I'm reading it wrong. Maybe it means that people of this tribe are loath to let go of good books on investing. Continuously referring to them, we book-lovers re-balance our portfolios, adjust our risk profiles and make sure we make even more money to buy even more books.

Right.

On the 545

The energy meets you not like a tidal wave a la New York subways, but like the bracing surf at a nice beach.

You're over-caffeinated, trying to throw off the cobwebs of late-night web surfing and early morning alarm clocks. Your playlist is playing the electronica rhythm you hope will wake you up. You resolve to wake up half an hour earlier, so that you can get to work early and get more done in the day. Despite knowing that you will be scrambling the next time around too.

Your nose is buried in a book. Yet you raise the corner of your eye at every stop, looking for familiar faces. You're an island with your headphones and book, but the social animal in you still craves for that smile and acknowledgement of an acquaintance.

Others people-watch. Someone plays with his GameBoy, the animated pixels somehow eerily silent as he's turned the sound off. The bus has wi-fi, but not many people are plugged into their laptops. Maybe that's for the best.

Surprisingly, very few people read. You wonder what this world's come to when people can spend forty-five minutes mulling and gazing out of the window and yet not surrender themselves to the simple pleasure of a book.  Not even a magazine or a comic book, I ask?

Commuting by the bus brings many fresh insights. And too many questions.

A tale of two gigs

One, a storied band with fifteen years of solid live reputation behind them. Cult, as it were, yet growing in popularity.

The other, someone who just annihilated his past of lighting up stadiums worldwide with his power playing to go back to the basics: songwriting, an acoustic guitar and a harmonica.

The two juxtaposed uncomfortably (for me, that is). Conflicting schedules, a mad scramble from venue to venue, but mostly good timing. The ending part of the Indian Ocean concert was missed, but such sacrifices have to be made.

Highlights: An amazing new track Bhula Raha played by Indian Ocean. It appears on their new "live in concert" DVD. Plus, as always, amazing renditions of old favorites.

A rockalicious rendition of Guerilla Radio on guitar and harmonica by The Nightwatchman. He was preaching to the choir, sure, but who can resist singing along to:

"It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime,

what better place than here, what better time than now?"

Guess who's back

Indian Ocean is back in Seattle on the 18th of July.

For those Seattle-area vasis who read my blog (yes, all two and three-quarters of you), you already know through other channels. If (surprise, surprise) you didn't know, the nitty-gritties are here.

Fab band, great venue, fun comes.

Other gigs on this leg of their US tour.

Previously: Indian Ocean in Seattle , Indian Ocean - an oasis of hope, More Indian Ocean

Notes on the dismal fall of a franchise aka Third time definitely unlucky

- MJ is back in red (love that, for the record) ! Why did she go to blonde hair in Spidey 2?

- Peter Parker is a nerd. Making him wear kajal, doing up his hair Goth-style, dressing him in black and making him jive doesn't make him any less nerdy. Maybe Tobey Maguire's the problem. Cheesiness abounds as baaaad man Parker is more laughable than cool. 

- Stan Lee makes a cameo in the film.

- I noticed that Peter Parker's landlord's name is Mr. Ditkovitch. Was that a tribute to Steve Ditko? hmm...

- The amnesiac Harry Osborn is a much more likeable character than a dopey Peter Parker. But then, the Goblin's snarling kills any sympathy you ever had for him.

- Did Sam Raimi just get a DVD set of '70s Amitabh blockbusters over Christmas that he decided to rehash? How bad can the ending get?

 If this is what happens to good comic book franchises even with directors unchanged, I hate to think of what the future holds.

The Dark Knight? (It's Christopher Nolan, so maybe there's hope...)

More Superman badness. (Superman Returns was Bryan Singer. Go figure.)

*shudder*  more Fantastic Four?

Lean on me

I remember reading a review of a music album a long time back where the music was described as having 'comfortable corners you could lean into'.

Like a favorite pair of jeans that you've broken in and have been wearing for a couple of years, the best songs are comfortable. When you've grown weary of musical explorations and journeys into the unknown, you return to the solace of the old familiars.

I have a habit of buying more music than I really have time to listen to, and more books than I'm ever going to read. The idea is that this situation is better than the reverse - having a lot of time but no books to read or music to listen to. However, in the interests of sanity, I stopped buying new music a month ago and began to consolidate my CD collection - sorting all the CDs I have, ripping them to my laptop to burn mix CDs and transfer to my phone (which doubles as my portable music player).

It's been a revelation. I stopped flitting from CD to CD, album to album looking for the next new sound to savor or new beat to jive to. I rediscovered old favorites not exactly forgotten, but maybe not paid enough attention to in recent times. With experience, the best songs grow more comfortable, old yet new. An album that definitely scored high in these ratings was U2's second Best of Album which showcased their work from Achtung Baby leading up to All That You Can't Leave Behind.

I'm listening to Beautiful Day for probably the 500th time. Somewhere, One and Electrical Storm strike a chord like they never did before. The Hands that Built America is still as beautiful as it ever was. And yes, Mysterious Ways still rocks my world.

Lifts my days, lights up my nights indeed.

Previously: on U2 .

Much Gaiman this way comes...

While the world has been going ga-ga over Harry Potter's latest, I'm slightly cold to it all. Yes, I love the books, and will eventually get my grubby hands on a copy that someone else pre-ordered (I've read all of the first six, either borrowed or through the library), but what has me really excited right now is the amount of new material Neil Gaiman has in the works.

Neil Gaiman is exceptionally prolific and he has new material being published all the time. I use the term 'material' here loosely, since Gaiman writes novels, short stories, comic books, graphic novels and poems. He has film scripts and even translations in his repertoire - he translated Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke into English.

Even by those standards, this year promises to be a bonanza for interested parties. As this article here states, there's a novel Interworld out on the 26th of June. There's also a collection of child-friendly poems and short fiction M is for Magic releasing on the same day. 

Add to that a film based on Stardust, an absolutely magical fantasy fairy-tale that hits the marquee in August, and the fact that my favorite Gaiman short story (written as a comic book series) Death: the High Cost of Living is being made into a film directed by the man himself, and you can see why I'm all worked up.

There's a production of Coraline in the works and other projects that his name is associated with. Strange fount of fable and myth that the man is, I anticipate much enjoyment.

 (via Slashdot)

You can't take the sky from me...

The inherent mess of contradictions that is human nature gets the full treatment in this rare gem, a truly entertaining and well-written TV series. Firefly, following a bunch of space cowboys in outer space, manages to keep you on edge enough to make this ride worthwhile.

The year is 2517. After a fight between the Alliance and the rebels, a bunch of ragtags called the Browncoats, the Alliance has won and the Browncoats have dispersed. Malcolm 'Mal' Reynolds, a sergeant in the rebel group is now the captain of Serenity, a spaceship that travels the outer fringes of the universe, picking up jobs and cargo to get by. They take on a few passengers on the way who stay on, a young doctor and a priest being among them. However, there's more to these passengers than meets the eye...

What marks Firefly different from other such series on TV is the confusion.

Mal (played with panache by Nathan Fillion) is a walking blob of conflicting emotions. A proud Browncoat who refuses to back down to the Alliance, he is loyal and protective towards his crew. While no illegal job is off-limits if it brings in the money, his sense of right and wrong still prevents him from taking on certain assignments. Jayne is a mercenary gopher, only one big payday away from betraying his crew and captain, yet he seems to put his skin on the line too often for us to pigeonhole him. The other characters are equally nuanced, and everyone has a past that they seem to be trying to escape.

The writing is clever and this fictional universe eschews standard film or television sci-fi stereotypes.  The decor is Wild West meets Star Wars, with a dash of Memoirs of a Geisha thrown in for good measure. In a world where the two remaining superpowers (USA and China) have merged to form the Alliance, the language of choice is English, though the local patois liberally uses Chinese, especially while swearing. The pacing is to die for, with wisecracks and shared light moments suddenly and unpredictably segueing into action set-pieces.  

What is definitely difficult to capture, and therein probably lies the genius of writer - producer Joss Whedon is the sense of camaraderie and esprit de corps the crew share. Mal, Jayne, the ship's engineer Kaylee, the doctor Simon and his mysterious sister River are the pick of a slew of well-etched characters. The chemistry between all these characters is palpable and defines the series.

Via: Rave reviews of Serenity, the official movie spinoff from Firefly that I caught in a rerun at the Egyptian theatre a few months back.

I must add, this was a midnight screening on Saturday night. The theater was almost full. The then year-old movie got a standing ovation.

The movie is enjoyable for the same reasons the show is. The black and white has dulled out to a very agreeable gray, and it's difficult to say that the villains are really so. The Alliance is well-meaning in the way censors are, and Joss Whedon clearly picks sides when in the movie Mal says "I like all seven" (sins, that is).

Special Mention:

The very apt original theme song - written and scored by Joss Whedon. That's where the title of this post comes from.

If this series is even half as good as the fans claim it is, why did it have only 14 episodes and why didn't it go into a second season? And why am I watching it on DVD?

Read this.