Been incredibly busy. Would be back online on saturday sunday.
PS: Publishing through blogger seems like a specially painful experience today. Is anyone else having the same experience?
Busy
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Monthly Archives: June 2002
Indian webloggers
I wanted to take a moment here to thank Anita and Sathish. Anita’s creation of the Indian blogger ring is probably the first and only organized work in this area. Before that I did not even know that there are so many Indian bloggers out there. This morning I was pleasantly surprised to discover a list of Indian bloggers that she has put up. It is a great resource. I wish there was some way of categorizing the weblogs by subject. But no one has as yet figured out how to effectively categorize weblogs. (There was an interesting discussion on Blogroots on this subject sometime back). Most of the cool Indian blogs that I know of, I have discovered through Sathish’s links. This morning it took me to Kishore Balakrishnan’s weblog. It looks quite interesting.
Kitsch
I can’t but think that Noah Bruce makes some valid points about the India-Pakistan conflict (via Popculturejunkmail). But I also felt that Alex Perry’s story on Vajpayee is not really far out (most people from India apparently hated it). So it is possible I need a reality check. But if Advani really starts running the show, all bets are off. He is a lot more of a hardliner than the babalog of New Delhi would like to believe.
Suman Palit has an absolutely hilarious parody of a test review meeting in his weblog. He is obviously having a rather painful time of it!
This old article in Saitirewire is also very funny. What is really unfunny is that corporate corruption is now so generic.
Ode to film photography
I hope I am not the only one out here who is sad about the way films are fast going out of fashion. This month’s PDN has a story about how an increasing number of stock photographers are opting for digital. Apparently, most still shoot slides on location (mainly because of fear of screwing up) and agencies appear to think that their learning curve still have ways to go before the majority start creating acceptable stock on digital. But digital seems to be the way to go. The consumer market is already transformed by digital cameras. For some reason, it turns me slightly cold. I know still photographs shot on slides would still be touched up on photoshop before publication. It bothers me a little. But digital cameras don’t turn me on at all. I like the idea of portability and ease with which I can send images captured on digital cameras to my friends and family. But for personal photography, I still like the feel of a Nikon film camera on my hands. Unless my feelings for digital cameras change, I have a feeling that in five years time I would a member of a dwindling minority who shoots on slides/negatives.
What are we doing in Central Asia?
It is tragic that the only choices that the central Asian and middle eastern countries seem to have, lie either with Islamic fundamentalism or benevolent (or not so benevolent) dictatorships. While the eastern European countries managed to (largely) liberate themselves and are making a painful migration to market economy, the Muslim majority central Asian countries couldn?t escape. They are mostly saddled with recycled communists from the USSR era. These guys are as uncomfortable with Islamic fundamentalism as are the democratic entities. The logic of the war on terrorism dictated that US cozy up to those thugs. Now it seems that India is following suit. Central Asia has fond memories of India from the Indira Gandhi days when India was close to USSR and the only romantic fare undiluted by ideological messages that they were allowed to have was of the Indian variety. Hindi movies were a big export. It seems that we are looking to cement those friendships.
India Today (June 17, 2002) mentioned:
?India gifted two Mi-8 helicopters to Tajikistan and sealed a defense pact with Dushanbe. It also signed a defense MOU on 3rd with Kazakhstan, which makes the Illyush heavy lift military aircraft. Uzbekistan and Kyrghystan have agreed to share information on terrorism in the region. India is also ?helping US remove nuclear debris from the region.?
I suppose its a strategic necessity. But the idea of a closer alliance with these countries makes me vaguely uncomfortable. We seem to have forgotten that we had also befriended the Najibullah regime in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation period and paid a huge price for the next so many years after that regime was overturned. All the Afghan Mujahed factions have been hostile to us.
Most of the Central Asian regimes have no legitimacy. USA can get away with an opportunistic policy simply because they are muscular enough to get away with it. It is hard to prosper in the current economic environment with an antagonistic attitude to USA. Unfortunately, the same is not true for India. Also, the human rights abuses would get worse if no one makes any noise about it.
US foreign policy team is pandering to the massive egos of the current crop of Indian politicians to get them to toe the party line. And India is playing up to it. Consider this.
?There is a great responsibility that comes with being in the Superpower Club. India is about to join the world on that Superpower stage, and I hope she can restraint herself and act very responsibly.?
– Richard Armitage (Deputy. Secretary of state)
Can we get any more ridiculous?
Wildlife photography of Nichols & Klum
Michael Nichols, the National Geographic wildlife photographer, now has a website. It has some incredibly powerful images. This photograph breaks your heart. this also got to me. But most of the photographs in that site are happy photographs. His pungent commentary adds flavour to the site.
I have been browsing through Borneo Rain Forest by Michael Klum. Klum is not as famous as Nichols. His photographs also have a different personality. But the works of both show the same care for nature and wildlife that differentiate great photographers from the rest.
I was shocked to hear that Kuro5hin is broke. If you are one of those who care about k5, have gained from it, you may want to chip in. I rarely go to K5. I get my fix at mefi. But I’ll be very sad to see it go, if at all it comes to that.
On the Capitola beach
Never take your dog to the sea. Its totally unfair. We were hanging around in the Capitola wharf yesterday afternoon, soaking in the sun, watching people fish, loitering on the beach. A rented fishing boat came back carrying three would-be fishermen and one really sorry dog. The poor dog looked scared out of its mind. Its ears were hanging completely down, the tail between its legs. You had to look at it to know what a hangdog expression means. It seemed to get a new life once it got back into solid land. I dont think dogs much enjoy being seafarers.
Useful desktop utilities
I have started writing this long rant. And it has been getting longer and longer. So, now I have given up on posting it on RandomNotes anytime soon. My mind is bursting with stuff that I want to write and share. But articulating any of those thoughts would need concentrated attention and time. I have been very dispersed for the last few days. My work life is now composed of many small transactions that have been eating up all my time. My computer, which is idiosyncratic even in the best of times, is showing major attitude. At least, I have now gotten all the applications reinstalled (Very important!). I didn’t realize how dependent I am on the apps that I use with IE, until I lost them. Here is what I use when surfing:
1. Google tool bar: You probably already have it on your browser. No should have to make do without it.
2. Atomica answer bar: Its a nifty tool to look up the definition of any Anglo Saxon word, term etc.that may cross your path. Since Blogger doesnt have a spell check, it also works as my default spell checker (i.e. when I am doubtful about any spelling)
3. Cuteftp: I am sure there are a lot of ftp applications out there. But over the last few years, I have gotten used to cuteftp. Its really a very neat application
4. Live365: The bestest Internet radio page in the universe.
On a different note, if you are a weblogger, you may want to check out Blogroots (i.e. if you haven’t already). Its a forum for weblogging related discussions. It hasn’t taken off in a big way yet. But I am sure it will.
.Net and free BSD II
Anil says:
“The Common Language Infrastructure component of Microsoft’s .NET framework. (which is what runs .NET code that’s been written) has been written for, and already compiles on, FreeBSD for x86. ….What it means is, Mac developers should be able to download the framework and port it in relatively short order, given OS X’s BSD underpinnings. ”
This kind of segues into what I posted on 7th June about Microsoft thinking about making .Net available on Apple.
My permalinks don’t appear to be working. I just found out when I tried to link to my own post!. This is rather ironic since I was sniggering after reading about Andrew Sullivan’s permalink troubles in Lakefx. Hopefully, I’ll fix it tomorrow.
Accessibility
Now that he has gotten a large number of people in the blogworld to adopt auto RSS discovery links on their weblogs, Mark Pilgrim is doing a series of stories on why we should make websites more accessible. This is a worthwhile cause and he is making his point very effectively. I suspect that my weblog is a long way from being accessible.But over the next few weeks, I would like to make changes bit by bit so that this becomes accessible to people with disabilities.