of cats and dags

Four Gigs of RAM, 160 Gigs of Memory [which isn’t my greatest of priorities anyway], 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo. Oh yes, I have succumbed. I’ve also figured out how to right click.

Off I go now to install Firefox. I also currently have a Toshiba Satellite, so bootcamp can wait.

I have been taking a more than passing interest in the IPL. There’s something in me that wants it to do well, I wonder why. I’ve seen the greed drive soccer down a murky road of agents and obscene player prices, although the English Premier League has showcased quality football for most part. But I’ll keep discussion related to IPL for a later time. I did have a look at the IPL franchisees’ websites. At the time of writing, Mumbai Indians (quite possibly the worst team name, which was a rather unequivocal conclusion even from the press; this is not saying that the other franchises had significantly better names), Chennai Super Kings and Punjab Kings didn’t have websites.

These are the websites of the other teams though:

Rajasthan Royals They have a decent website which is functional at the moment with scope for future expansion into merchandising and tapping the mobile market. A decent website that looks upon Shane Warne as their mascot.

Bangalore Royal Challengers I find Vijay Mallya’s face at the splash screen a little creepy. Why can’t he stay at the background for once? Even the Knightriders don’t have SRK in their splash screen. Again, a decent enough site that looks a little colourful, but I don’t like the Red and Yellow combination.

Kolkata Knight Riders SRK seems to have a good idea of the market pulse. If their website is any judge, he’s got things right and seems very serious about this venture. He will dream big no doubt. (Full disclosure: I’m not a big fan of SRK’s acting) His website has a rather decent theme song too. I however, highly doubt if his heavy flash oriented web site would allow low bandwidth sites to get full value, but props to his tech staff. Great Bong had his take on Kolkata Knight Riders but it looked like he was trying hard to sound funny, which is rather quite unlike GB.

Delhi Daredevils They just have a splash screen with some jarring 5 second electric guitar riff, on loop.

Deccan Chargers An average website, but I don’t get why these IPL teams find the need to seek inspiration from American teams (in this case, the San Diego Chargers). The PHL had better team names. Deccan Chargers also call themselves ‘The Unstoppables’. We’ll see how true that is. Their press releases also include a headline ‘DC unleashes war cry’. Even being owned by an English Daily cannot stop such gems from being published on websites.

It’s a shame that Mumbai doesn’t even have a website. So much for being owned by RIL.

And finally, a word on the official IPL website: it’s a disgrace. So much money and they couldn’t come up with staff who could update the site beyond their latest news which says, IPL auction to be held on 20th of February. Well, to think of it, they have done slightly better than the BCCI, who, to my knowledge don’t even have a website.

Stage6, of the high quality DivX video streaming fame, has shut down. And it’s not even April Fools’ Day. There were feelers sent out by the folks at DivX a few days before but I never really paid heed. This is the worst piece of news I’ve heard in years. Their homepage shows this message:

Stage6.com has been shut down. Thank you for supporting the service.

We created Stage6 with the mission of empowering content creators and viewers to discover a new kind of video experience. Ultimately, the continued operation of Stage6 was a very expensive enterprise that required an enormous amount of attention and resources that we at DivX are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it’s really as simple as that.

Sigh.

Apparently they are looking to drive a new initiative where they provide a platform for streaming internet video to TV’s, thus driving their DivX enabled devices into the market. But when the world is heading towards online video and the like, with even outlets like Netflix launching an on-demand streaming service, surely they could have worked some way out to continue having stage6, or at least struck a deal with A. N. Other software company. After all Stage6 has developed into the best site for high quality video content with a really good online community.

Oh well, my frustration at not being able to have access to high quality (free) TV shows anymore knows no bounds. Twats!

Update: Techcrunch gives a detailed account of situations that eventually killed Stage6. And the sad thing is, it was more a war of egos than anything really technical. After all, what happens if your entire core team quits! So as I said earlier, ‘Twats!’

I don’t mind the election season. As a matter of fact I find it the most intriguing thing on TV at the moment. CNN calls it ‘Ballot Bowl’, and given it is the basket ball season, it really is fun. The news, that is.

But the most curious thing of the past week was the hubris surrounding the Democratic primaries/caucuses of yesterday. In hindsight it’s easier to say this, but did anyone really think Super Tuesday (or was it Do-or-Die Tuesday?) was going to determine the democratic nominee? After all, we already had one Republican candidate who ran all the way despite not having a mathematical chance of overwhelming John McCain — the fact that he didn’t major in mathematics was why laws of arithmetic didn’t apply to him, apparently — so Hillary could do so too.

But back to what I really wanted to say: Have you ever been in a room filled with noise emanating from the drone of a turbine or some huge cooling fan? In places of work that involve such noisy rooms they usually give employees ear plugs. Well, you might say, ‘Why do I need ear plugs? It’s just a noisy fan. I’ll manage.’, which is only fair. But no. The noise gnaws into you, and after a while you start thirsting for those ear plugs and run out of the room, begging for them.

Wolf Blitzer on CNN did the closest impression of said noise-creating agent, when, after breaking the news of John McCain’s Republican nomination, mentioned ‘John McCain’ twenty times in a space of half a minute. You see, I was like the employee not willing to exercise restraint by taking in CNN in moderation. It got to me and it left me with no choice but to switch the television off. And switch-off I did.

Silence.

No up-to-the-minute news on the vote count. No John King playing with his iPhone-ish multi-touch screen that everyone in the newsroom were in awe of; that multi touch screen was sophisticated and revolutionary, they say. No repeated mentions of CNN and ‘The Best(-est) Political Team in the Whole World (and Mars)’ in the same sentence.

Yes, my friends. It was silence like I’ve never experienced before and I was convinced, for a fleeting moment, that I could live without CNN.

PS: I could have switched to Fox News, but I’d have to contend with their ‘Fair and Balanced Views’ on all aspects of life. Also, the Fox network canceled Arrested Development. Something I can never forgive them for.

There comes a point in life when, no matter what you eat or how much you work out, you will gain weight. There also used to be a time, in my life, when, no matter what I ate or how little I ever moved a muscle, my body mass–or, should we say, my girth–increased by a kitten’s whisker.

But, as Oscar Wilde would say–or, rather, as the folks at Uncyclopedia would like to paraphrase the Irish playwright–”Things change.”

Regular readers, the ones still left reading this pseudo-intellectual tripe, would recall that your humble narrator is in the US, at the moment. The discerning reader would even know that said humble narrator was in India for a brief period not so long ago; the December-January period, to be exact.

The story begins at this point, where the humble narrator changes the mode of narration to the first person, seeing as it helps the narrative process, while also exposing his limited command of the English language to narrate this tale otherwise.

It started in India when I went home suffering a year and a half making self-cooked food. Self-cooked food, as one who may have cooked food by self would recognize, is an intensely boring process. It’s not so much in the act of cooking itself that might appear drab but more in the effort needed to get the proverbial arse off the couch/chair/bed and head to the kitchen that takes some doing. As Newton, in his famous Inertia of Rest law, would have it.

Sample this: Man comes home. Man feels hungry. Man goes to kitchen. Man sees there’s no food. Man thinks he has to cook to eat food at home. Inertia of Rest kicks in. Man takes wallet and heads to nearest Subway.

It’s one of the few occasions where I wish I was married. I hope I don’t come across as sounding sexist here.

Moving on, I had fun in India. Ate to my hearts content. Slept. Watched the India-Australia test-series and Navjot Singh Sidhu, post-Sydney, with unbridled emotion–which, by the way, might have been the only time I may have expended my body energy. This is life, I thought. I cooked once, but that was more to show off my culinary skills to my folks back home–after all, I had to show what I learned during my stay in America.

I happened to weigh myself upon reaching India. 63 kilograms was what the weighing machine indicated. I checked my weight the day I was flying back to the US. 69 kilograms, barked my trusty machine this time.

For those who know me in person, you know this is nothing short of phenomenal. And, as a note to self, the increase in weight–6 kilos in about 4 weeks–is unprecedented. And it showed. A cursory glance at my bare torso in the mirror, on one of the days I got out from a bath, made me cringe. Surely, I couldn’t have accumulated so much lard? The mention of lard, of course, is only metaphorical. I am vegetarian.

But then, I knew, like I always usually know–like anyone who has been only slightly better built than an HB pencil would know–that I would get back in shape without breaking much sweat. It was simple, really. I head back to the States, get into a routine of having irregular meals. In between skipping the odd lunch, and occasionally gorging on the ‘healthy’ subs at Subway, my weight would follow a steady downward curve. The fat around my waist would be gone and I could get back to living life as a skinny lowlife.

But I didn’t return to College Station, a place in the heartland of Texas that helped me maintain my lean frame. I instead headed over to Austin, the capital of Texas–generally termed a Blue dot in the Red State. How is that related, you ask? Well, it isn’t related; I was just letting you in on a bit of trivia.

Anyway, to my horror, I found millions of Indian restaurants in Austin; my apartment–a four bedroom one at that, albeit, shared with three other fellow desis–was outstanding in its comfort level and it was fully furnished with nice sofas and proper beds (plus mattress).

And, my room mates loved rice. Breakfast, lunch, dinner–everything involved rice in some form. And that fact that we always had something to have it with made regular meals possible throughout the day.

And so it goes now. My waist line hasn’t shown signs of shrinking. My solitary attempt at skipping a meal for reducing weight resulted in a badly gassy stomach — I think it is acidity because of the number of times I’ve been belching since morning.

So will it be uphill, as far as my weight goes, from here on? Or will I ever recover my lean frame? Bigger questions for me to answer than to watch Barack and Hillary debate on the subtle difference between their healthcare proposals. Because hey, who the hell wants healthy, well-fed people when it can only end in tears?

Back to my Starbucks, Java-flavoured ice-cream. You must try it sometime.

I am not particularly good at waxing lyrical about places and beauty but Austin is a beautiful city.

More on my life soon…

Never have I felt so good, after having gotten something so horribly wrong.

So I will attempt to take my chances once again:

• Ponting is due a big score. He will come good in Adelaide.
• Brad Hogg — who, in the light of Shaun Tait’s inept showing, seems like a much better bowler — will return and do a good job.
• Hayden’s return would ensure a hundred plus opening stand, denting India’s hopes for bowling Australia out cheaply.
• Australia, after having had a long hard look at themselves, will bounce back and thump India to win the series 3-1.
• Bonus Prediction: An irate fan would somehow enter the ESPN-Star studio in Adelaide and give a nice little whack on Gavaskar’s mouth. Seriously, I haven’t seen more shit flow so freely from the mouth of a legend than I have seen from the supposed little master, over the past few weeks. Someone, quick, bite his head off.

Mark my words.

That is all.