Books Ahoy !

I am a bookworm – this is not a particular new or startling revelation to anyone who knows me. This particular love affair was fanned by my father who has a fetish for collecting things – books are one of these things Over the years I have read a lot of books… I read comics and novels and magazines and newspapers. I read encyclopedias and almanacs and whole lot of Readers Digest – I love their condensed books. I am the type of guy who will read the backs of cans or the small print in advertisements while waiting in lines

Once I left college and entered the software industry – I became fascinated by the internet and awed  by the amount of information that was available. As my life became more and more nomadic (I was a software consultant) I found it difficult to carry around books (stupid international travel regulations restricting baggage to 30Kgs !) and buying books everywhere I went, while tempting, was way too expensive. Instead the addictive power of Google and broadband connections drew me to the flickering glow of the computer/laptop monitor.

Then suddenly blogging and RSS became mainstream and all of a sudden I was facing information overload. Bombarded by news items, article, opinions, rants, podcasts (I think podcasts a brilliant for certain situations – more here) and video blogging – there weren’t simply weren’t enough hours in the day to keep up!  I started feeling the computer and the broadband connection becoming a leash tethering me the glowing screen. I missed being able to lie on my back and or curling up on a couch with a book.  I bought a laptop and then a PDA (this was back before the iPod and way before smart-phones). Neither were satisfactory solutions – the laptop was too cumbersome, I was scared of dropping it and the battery life sucked. The PDA had more potential but had neither a big enough screen nor satisfactory software.

Last year I moved back home to Trivandrum (Kerala, India) – I looked at all the shelves lined with familiar classics from my childhood and promptly started reading them again (the lack of a reliable broadband internet connection played a part as well I admit). I found some of my colleagues at work shared my love for books and got recommendations, which I blended with my own list of books I wanted to read.   Then I went to the local bookstore and bought some books (actually I bought a whole lot of books)

It feels good to be back reading books – I have broadband but it is not un-limited so I am more picky in what I use it for (software and media downloads mostly). I think I manage to grasp and read more using a book – I think the fact that unlike the computer there are no distractions or options helps one focus more and get deeper into the experience.

The price of books in India is a pleasant surprise compared to international book prices There are few hard-covers and the books aren’t published using high quality paper but I can live with that. The only thing I miss is access to some of the comics/graphic novels I had when I was in America  I have heard of  the Kindle from Amazon and I think it’s brilliant – it is however – still a long way away from replacing a books.

PS: I have signed up for an online bookshelf called Readernaut check it out – you can signup if your are interested

I am on Shelfari as well

Darwin gets a thumbs up from the catholic church

Here is the link – Vatican buries the hatchet with Charles Darwin

It’s over a hundred years too late but then this is the Vatican – it takes them awhile to get around to things   I wonder what parents and school teachers will be telling their kids I can imagine the conversation -

Adult:  Remember that intelligent design stuff we were spouting about – turns out we were wrong after all.  My bad !
Kid: OK… Whatever you say…  Can I go and play now ?

Man, wonder what the die hard intelligent design folks will do – convert or accept the Vatican?
I’m going to grab some popcorn and watch the fireworks

I admit – I know this feeling only too well…

Now I don’t feel like this all the time but I have come to this conclusion more than once while reflecting on my life…

On the one hand I have an account in twitter, facebook, myspace, orkut, friendfeed, linkedin, plaxo, delicous, flickr, blah, blah, blah – on the other hand – at least I haven’t got an avatar on second life, not yet played on WOW or related online games and I have yet to record video or audio of the minutiae of my life  – though this blog is becoming more confessional with each post

To all who had to experience ‘Performance Reviews’

In my career as a software developer – such as it is I have worked in a couple of large IT consulting companies. Of all the drivel that I have put up with in those companies – ‘Performance Reviews’ and the energy expended on them was the one that caused most frustration. As usual Scott Adams expresses my feelings about this with so much more aplomb than I ever could…

Feel free to agree or disagree with me – leave me reply…

Extreme Googlemania – The Church of Google

So here I am minding my own business when I browse to one of my favorite web-sites UserFriendly and the featured link of the day is… Well check it for yourself – The Church of Google.

Now personally, I think this is a one of those ultimate sarcastic jokes – You know the ones, where you create this elaborate scenario and setup and when you deliver it – you realize – there are people that actually believed you and took all that crap seriously !! At this point of realization – different people act in different ways :-

1. Some stop and try to explain that this was actually a joke and was never meant seriously and would everybody just laugh and be done with it and carry on with their lives.
2. Some get on a form of euphoria – as if they found the ultimate sarcasm heroin – fan the flames even higher, all the while laughing hysterically at the number of cooks that fell for it.
3. Some regress and almost as if drugged by the smell of their own farts, they consider themselves messiahs to a new consciousness and start believing the crap they are spewing.

I leave it to you to laugh, or vent about the Googlism, its ideology or its proofs. As far as I am concerned I have seen this particular joke before and its supporting arguments and counter-arguments. I had this discussion once with some friends of mine on alternative religion and they showed me this. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is an obvious parody (and I really love some of the stuff they pull) but it is one designed IMO, to prove certain points about the abstract nature of religion. However, The Church of Google is IMO a parody of attempts to scientifically prove religion exists which is a much more controversial contention, in my mind. I am certainly going to be keeping an eye out for these guys, though I find it interesting that so many people actually search for the term ‘Google’ on Google (all sort of delicious recursive paradoxes come to mind at that phrase)

I admit – I admire Google – the company, their innovation, their approach and their unique ability to leverage their chosen battleground. This has been reflected in the posts that I have done about them. However, I think of them more as a bunch of really smart people with a innovative idea of automating technology at scale.

And that’s all I have to say about The Church of Google If you are interested The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has a gospel, and they celebrate a holiday.

Update:  Now here is an interesting contrast to the Google worship of The Church of Google. Cory Doctorow wrote a short story of what could happen if Google went to the dark side.

Of podcasts…

I have to commute to work – this in itself is not uncommon and is not the point of the post. It is what I discovered to do with my time during my commute that I wanted to share. Initially I tried the various radio stations, and settled on National Public Radio station in Atlanta – 901 FM – WABE. It had the news and some fine western classical and the advertising was limited (or easier to tune out ). Then it began its biannual fund-drive and I realized I needed something else during those week. That brings us to the topic of this post – Podcasts.

I had a heard a lot about podcasts – in fact they have been around so long that predictions of their demise have started coming up. I had downloaded and listened to a couple sometime back and I liked the concept. For awhile – I dallied with the thought doing it myself… Yeah – I know I can barely post enough for a blog and here I am thinking about podcasting – the arrogance of the man . Then video blogs (vlogs) came along and I decided didn’t want really want to compete with svelte and sexy actresses pretending they knew what they were talking about   – but I digress …

So I started looking for some nice podcasts to listen to while on my commute. I have some favorites which I thought I’d put up post on…

• Comedy – I decided to start out with something light and fun. I have a penchant for British humor and gave this one a try and liked it – Sowerby and Luff. Another one which is a very leftist American political comedy is NPR’s – Wait Wait Dont tell Me… – this is very topical and will make sense only if you are aware of the day to day dealings of American politics. Finally for geeky humor try – Ask a Ninja (this is a video podcast – so its not strictly commute friendly unless you are a passenger )
• Philosophy – I have an audiobook of the seminal work of Robert Pirsig – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
• Life in general – Another great podcast I found on NPR is – WNYC – RadioLab
• Internet and life online – This is a category I created for those of us who trawl the internet. We monitor it using blogs and RSS readers. We go to sites like Slashdot and Digg and take the pulse. There are podcasts for people like us – in fact they are video podcasts – but they can just as easily be simply listened to – Diggnation, Geekbrief.tv, and TWIT.tv (This week in technology)
• .NET Technology – DotNETRocks – This is a great podcast for keeping in touch with the happenings in the world of Microsoft (which if you have looked at of late is exploding in size and scope of the developer offerings).

Two – Oh Humor

I saw this great video (I don’t know much about the hosting website so it may be taken down in a few days) -

glumbert.com – Supermarket 2.0

It’s about applying the latest cool Web-Two-O- Ism’s to a Supermarket so we have – Tagging, Ajax, Commenting, Wish lists, RSS Feeds, etc.
My favorites are the parodies on – Pandora style recommendations and Amazon style selling items that other people who bought the same stuff also bought.

The DRM-Free bandwagon

Nowadays in the media industry, it is hip to be DRM Free. Witness the iTunes agreement and the Amazon announcement. What’s not to like – its a very “rising up against the man” thing to do and you get a lot of adoration from the masses to be sure…

Well as a consumer I think this is great but I also don’t think it’s the future and here is why I think that -
Mp3 as a format in my opinion is showing its age. To get lossless quality audio, mp3 files have to get pretty darn big. There are plenty of new and better formats out there both with and without DRM that do a better job compression and have better audio characteristics. Right now, this may matter only to audiophiles but they are still a proportion of the market which typically buy a lot of music. Based on this I believe that physical media is still going to be around for awhile but I also believe they need to undergo a price and quality adjustment.

Content itself is morphing – its no longer just music – its music videos, podcasts, video blogs, games, HD-DVD. All these content formats are typically longer and bigger than 5 – 10 minutes (the average length of a song) . They also have features that are not supported by mp3, so you are going to have to use new formats anyway. Downloading these files directly over the browser is going to suck for everyone except for those that have big broadband connections.

Both the iTunes and the Amazon announcements have talked about making unencumbered music available for sale. They have however not mentioned anything about the fact that this music is going to be bought and then shared over the internet. I might have missed the portion where they talk about using digital watermarking and if I did – someone please correct me. This does not address the fact that with todays technology it is really easy for someone to share a file indiscriminately with anyone and everyone on the internet.

I for one think digital watermarking should be used and advertised if nothing else as a deterrent. A digital watermark may not prevent me from sharing some of the songs I buy with my friend so he can hear a new artist but it would make me think before I shared it over a P2P network to the rest of the world since the file could be traced back to me. Of course the argument could be made that my friend could share it but if everyone knew the risk then they would share it only to friends they trusted not to do that

References :-
Techcrunch http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/16/another-break-in-the-wall-amazoncom-to-sell-drm-free-music/

Download Squad http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/05/16/amazon-announce-drm-free-digital-music-store/

What geeks do – when they wanna have some fun !

The company that I work at bundles advertising and promotional material around media – we have some pretty big names in the media industry as clients. So imagine my surprise and glee when I saw this particular version of one user experience windows :-

This is geek humor in the media industry for you folks !!
PS: If you are still confused – my nickname here is 5 cents (Nikhil -> Nickel -> 5 Cents)

Update: October 2007 – The company and the website are now but fond memories so I have put up an image of what it looked like.

A tribute to the corporate software developer…

You guys know who you are – hint – if any of this makes sense then you are or were one…
Code Monkey
The song is the creation of Jonathan Coulton who has blogged about it here.

PS: If you want a visual image to enjoy with the song (Courtesy of Jawboneradio)-

Update: I wanted to add this awesome Music Video of the song

PPS: If you are interested in the lyrics of the song -
Code Monkey get up get coffee
Code Monkey go to job
Code monkey have boring meeting, boring manager Rob
Rob say Code Monkey very diligent
But his output stink
His code not functional or elegant
What do Code Monkey think
Code Monkey think maybe manager wanna write goddamn login page himself
Code Monkey not say it out loud
Code Monkey not crazy just proud
Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
Big warm fuzzy secret heart
Code Monkey like you
Code Monkey like you
Code Monkey hang around at front desk
Tell you sweater look nice
Code Monkey offer buy you soda
Bring you cup bring you ice
You say no thank you for the soda ’cause
Soda make you fat
Anyway you busy with the telephone
No time for chat
Code Monkey have long walk back to cubicle
He sit down pretend to work
Code Monkey not thinking so straight
Code Monkey not feeling so great
Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
Big warm fuzzy secret heart
Code Monkey like you
Code Monkey like you lots
Code Monkey have every reason
To get out this place
Code Monkey just keep on working
See your soft pretty face
Much rather wake up eat a coffee cake
Take bath, take nap
This job fulfilling in creative way
Such a load of crap
Code Monkey think someday he have everything even pretty girl like you
Code Monkey just waiting for now
Code Monkey say someday, somehow
Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
with big warm fuzzy secret heart
Code Monkey like you
Code Monkey like you

PPPS: If you liked this you might also like -

1. Office Space
2. The Office (UK)
3. The Office (US)
4. User Friendly
5. Dilbert

PPPPS: If you made it till here you are definitely a one of us (geeks) so…. 42 – peace