Thursday, March 31, 2005

"I should be knighted for this,"

That's Adam Curry's words for you :)
Hey! frankly I don't mind...Sir Adam Curry has a nice ring to it. Anyways the link is to a BBC article on podcasting and making money off it. Quite a good piece ... hop over and read it.

The most interesting part is where you see Adam sitting on a table with his powerbook and other recording stuff. Well Adam had podcasted his visit to the Beeb - a sound seeing trip of the BBC if you will - and it is quite cool to know that you were actually there when this took place.

Still don't get what podcasting and sound seeing is? One of these days I promise I will put up an explanation on one of my sites:)

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Curve Ball

Another Pong like game. The style also reminds me of the holographic game of world domination played by James Bond in Never Say Never Again

Note: really challenging from Level 4 onwards.

Update: My best score was 21660 at level 7. What was your best score?

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Radial Pong Game

I was always a big sucker for the original Pong. Well this here is a flash game which is pong on steroids. It has taken the idea of pond away from the table tennis model. Now we have radial bats and ther are no sides. When you touch the ball it becomes your colour and when the comp touches the ball it becomes another color. This is the only clue regarding who has to play. Really good fun!. A small download too.

SOUP OF THE EVENING...BEAUTIFUL SOUP

Beautiful site for soup-aholics:) Was hearing a podcast (will put the link for the specific podcast when I find it it. The link to the home site ) and it pointed me to this side.

As I was hearinf the podcast one interesting point was the term "sick-bed soup" which is basically chicken broth :) I completely agree. Nothing makes one feel better than good hot cicken soup when you have flu or some such illness!!!

HBS Working Knowledge: The Leadership Workshop: Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload

This is one really useful article on how to work on email overload. More importantly it teaches a few things on how we can make it easier for others to receive and make sense of our emails. One of the questions asked in the article is whether one can justify the amount spend on emails taking into account the value of business hours. This is one question that I have been asking myself for some time and I have reached the conclusion that I cannot (Please note that almost 99% of mails that I get in my working environment are official mails.) The result - I have a folder for mails which are and will remain unread.
I wish the senders would either not cc me or explain why I need to get it. Well! I guess good behaviour starts at home:)

The same logic above does not apply for my personal mails. The main reason is that I do not have to spend too much time thinking when replying to a friend. Sometimes even my infamous 'hmmm...' is enough of a reply:)

Scoble Reviews JVC GZ-MC200u



A review by Scoble for a new JVC camcorder which records onto a 4Gig hard disk. He does not seem too enthused by it. Most importantly because of the cost. According to the review the cost is 1100$s Wow! That surely removes any enthusiasm I would have for it:) Nonetheless I like this mode for a review piece. What say you?

Friday, March 25, 2005

BaSkEtBaLL MvP 20o6

One of the blogs that came up when I used the next blog button (upper right corner of the screen). Subject matter was not too interesting for me. Man! Was it colorful though! If I ever go colorful this will be how my page looks. Worth a quick glance.

P.S: It is a diary like site and quite alright. Funnily the colors did not distract me too much. Could it be because the background is black?

Plustech Walking technology

Guess all of you must have already seen this m$t*#r f%&$er!!!

Star Wars Revelations ... Panic Struck Productions

Ready for the new Star Wars movie. I ain't speaking of the one by Big Man Lucas. No! Here is an independent fan driven one. Seems to be quite a competent production, if it ain't just a joke that is!!!(with April approaching you can never be sure:))
To the question regarding copyright here is their response:
~~~~~~~~~
Answer:
For most people who do not understand fan films we get this question often .To answer, I doubt if Lucas himself has seen "Revelations". However ,Lucas is a large supporter for fan films,and is very kind enough to let other inspiring artists play in his backyard, as long as you don't try and make money from his hard work, and respectfully so.
"Revelations" is a non-profit film and everyone who worked on the film was a volunteer (no one was paid)
The film itself will be availible free to download from TheForce.net and the "Revelations" website to anyone who wishes to watch it.

A great article put out by "Wired" covers some good ground about fan films and here is what Steve Sansweet (Lucasfilm's head of Fan Relations) had to say,

"There is plenty of room for fans to express their own feelings and opinions," Sansweet said. "We believe our core fans are responsible for the continuing popularity of the series, and we want to encourage them. Our intellectual properties are there for you to play with, but we expect you won't try and make a profit or use our characters in a salacious way. Having that wide-open frontier serves as a self-policing mechanism for the fans, who are really appreciative of being included."
"Sansweet added that Lucas believes fan films will grow more sophisticated as the amateur filmmakers gain new skills. "


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Worth a dekko.

UPDATE: I just finished checking out the trailer. Awesome!!!

[Via Mondays]

south by southwest festivals conferences

Like good music ... live music ... fresh music ... for FREE. Venks this is one time you want to have a good broadband connection. The south by southwest festival organisers had released the whole set of 750 + songs as one hyper bit-torrent file. If you want the full songs it is 2.8 gigs. Happy with the 30-second clips? Then you have a sane 345 megs to download.

So why are you wasting time...start your torrent. It should be over by next week. Hey sujith, I think you are going to hate Reliance and unreliability;).

Before I sign off I beg your pardon. This piece of news has actually lost its currency and I should have posted it earlier. The downlaod being a torrent it might have worked better at the peak of the wave.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

The Density around this blog

Got this from the WebTalk Radio Show which aired on 22nd March 2005. In this Rob discussed with Mitch Ratcliffer about his Online Relationship Mapping company called Persuadio. This can be found at MyDensity.com. IOt is an experiment, just begun, with lots of promise. The link here shows the web around this site.

Be forewarned that the site needs to search a lot to get these links. So once you out your site you may need to try a few times before the site will know all about your site. Once your site is available it keeps adding links to and from the site into its cahe so the alter views are quite fast.

Do try it, if not for any other reasin than to see a visualization tool in Java.

Speaking of Java let me also point you to another company making cool Java visualization tools which which will 100% help your productivity and efficiency. This company is founded by close friends of mine. Do visit them at AvizSoft.


Update: I must add the warning that trying out popular sites will just get a big forest of links. For eg. try the MyDensity link to Scripting News. Of course we always knew that Dave Winer was well connected ;)

Groups slam Indian decision on patent law

I am really sad that we had to agre to this to get into the WTO. I appreciate that the WTO membership is real important. However I would have even been ready to buy legal music!!! rather than stop the making of generics. Initally my lack of enthusiasm for this patent was that we really cannot afford costlier medicines. That si just the way it is. If medicines become costlier people in India will just live with their diseases. That is something I do not think that the developed countires seem to understand.

Readying the article I have linked to I noticed that we have also been a major source of generics for impoverished countries in Africa and other poorer countries. These generics were really important part of aid efforts to these countries. Now it is going to be difficult for these organisations to extend the help they are used to.

Add to this the fact that obviously the MNCs are really happy. After all this law basically means an end to any pharmacy start-up in this country. The main reason is that no start-up can afford the R&D that is required for original block buster drugs.

For Indian IT this is a time of opportunity. The only way start-ups can come up in Pharmacy in India is by having a faster R&D cycle. The only way this is possible is by a goof software driven system for the intital research. Like I said another big possibility for the IT industry.

Oh well!!!

Andrew Moroz's Blog: Nice Work If You Can Get It (***)

This was one well written and sane article regarding the job scene in America. Makes a lot of sense to me.

Self replicating C program

Hey dudes, check out the link in this blog by my good buddy. Really geeky and freaky at the same time;)

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Video 22 of 49: Jim Morrison

Pre-Doors recordings of Jim Morrison. I have not yet watched it but would still recommend it. Why? Its Jim speaking...what more do you need?
Florida State University is releasing these recordings.

Update: The said video is a documentary which runs for 1.17 mins. In this we see Jim for aroudn 20 secs tops. Looks like he either made or help make this documentary. Still worth the watch? You bet!!!:)

[via GorillaMask.net, one of the naughtiest sites I visit]

Petrol station mobile risk 'myth'

Very interesting!!! This was one myth I believed. Silly me! Now if only someone will clarify how using my monbile phone during takeoff will crash the plane???

[Via BBC News]

The're made out of meat

There are many things that make a close friendship. One of the things is that you are so close that you do not need to think about your friend. However rude others think it is the friends know that they can get back together at a drop of a hat and just strike it again without any embarrassment. I am lucky to have friends like that. And I was reminded of it today when Sujith sent me this link.

I immediately checked up his blogsite and realised that the fool had not blogged it. So I stole the rights to blog it

About the story itself...I don't know if it is one you would like. Hell! I don't even know if anyone would get it. But I completely grokked it and I felt real happy that Sujith knew I would grok it. And thats what brought up all the melancholy.

Great day:)

Monday, March 21, 2005

Windows Noises

Man - o -man!!! The sweet things some people do when they are learning Flash. Just hope over to this site to have a beautiful experience with simple .wav files.

[via Adam Curry's Blog]

Sami's Net Value - Currently £ 21

Most interesting!!! People want to sell off Sami after his porr run in the past few matches. The funny thing is people are putting their money on it. Am I misinterpreting something here?

[original link sent by Nikhil to a mailing group I belong to]

Which Kill Bill character am I?

hattori
You are Hattori Hanzo! The brains of the operation.
Although your advice is impeccable, you are a
closed book.


Which Kill Bill Character Are you??
brought to you by Quizilla

The cellphone gravestone - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Another beauty at Engadget.com

JamPlug FM turns radios into guitar amps.

This is one article that I just had to put it up here for Venky and Sujith and Ketan Pandya(if he ever read this). This gadget is damn cool...this basically means you can play the guitar in your car(as long as you are not driving of course!!!:))

[ Via Engadget]

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Red Bull Or Old Bull?�-�Editorial from Planet-F1.com

Quotes from the editorial from Planet-F1.com:
"Bigger Than Schumi
In terms of attracting bigger audiences Jordan have had a much better idea than Red Bull. Employ the best-known F1 driver in the world. Yes, that’s right Narain Karthikeyan is arguably the best-known F1 driver in the world because he’s a household name in the greatest democracy, India.

Sachin Tendulkar won’t just be visiting Ferrari next time he turns up at a grand prix."

Would have made sense if everyone in India knew Narain. Sadly I do not think it is true. Maybe if Sachin visits him he will become more well known

Personally I am very happy with his results. Coming in 15th and 11th in the first two races of his F1 career is commendable. He is reputated to be a very disciplined fellow so I can only see things getting better for him.

Congrats and Best Of Luck to Narain from this corner of the net.

Don't touch this with a 10-foot pole:)

This link leads to my first podcast. Just checking out the feasibilty and ease of using Spark!2.0 software from Blogmatrix. I think it is pretty swell. Just to make sure you do not judge it by my voice (I absolutely hate listening to myself;)) I added a small (Hey RIAA it was a very very small) bit of music. If you have absolutley nothing else to do then hop over there. End to end it took me around 4 mins to get this 1 min worth of audio up there.

BTW it is a bit torrent, sorry all you non geeks but you WILL need a bittorrent downloader. For audio and video I use iPodder which is also my podcatching/broadcatching client. Maybe the first audio torrent that you will be downloading legally :D

Folks, be gentle!!!

Update: forgot to mention this earlier. Sparks! 2.0 itself can be used to download the bittorrents. Just add the feed to the Sparks program. In other words Sparks is all-in-one package. It is a blog aggregator, podcatcher and podcaster all in one! Kewl!!!

Saturday, March 19, 2005

"Podcast" word to be patented!!!

Hmmm... I guess the podcasters community were so worried about the monetizing v/s "keep it virgin" argument that nobody saw this coming!!!

[via Scripting News]

learn UNIX in 10 minutes

I have this on-off relation with UNIX. Use it for 3 days and everything comes back and I can use it quite effectively. However get off it for a week and I completely forget most of the instructions. This link is a personal bookmark for the days I need to remember it all:)

Superman Origin Comics!

This is one real freaky re-look into the Superman story. Maybe America will like him better now;)

Some real cool ch...

...oppers!!! Some kewl mods of bikes. Has something to do with American Choppers, which is a show in the US (if I am not wrong, that is!!!)
My fav ones were

The Comanche Bike
The Comanche Bike

The I,Robot Bike
The I,Robot Bike

and

Junior's Dream Bike
Junior's Dream Bike


[via Sandcastle's site]

Google Code

Got this from the Google's own blog. Could this be the start all of us need to be code monleys with Google? :) Me Like Site:D

The CCL Game - CCL Computers

A kewl game which will remind you of the Incredible Machines Game. Maybe I find it kewl only becuase I was a big big fan of The Incredible Machines.

[via Google Blogoscoped again!!!]

Google X Gone

Another one from Google Blogoscoped about Google X. As a lot of you who must have tried my link to Google X would know by now Google has removed the site. However their blog still has the entry for the site!!! Go figure!. As I was doing my own figuring I meandered to the Blogscoped site again and realised that there was one thought they had which did not strike me. Did Apple ask Google to take down the site? Considering the recent actions of Apple this seems to be a very plausible explanation. What do you think?

Apply CSS to Specific Sites

One more way users can change the way they consume info. If you have Firefox it seems you can decide how you want to render the pages you get by modifing the Chrome folder's "userContent.css"

Avery good example of how this was used on GMail can be found here

This alongwith all the hullaboo about Google's AutoLinks really brings to fore the fact that the Web is moving much faster than we ever thought. We are really trying to map our real world ideas about what is right and wrong (and what we do or do not own) and it is just not scaling up.

Earlier I did not write about Autolinks for two reasons:
1. Being in India the toolbar did not show any autolinks so I had not experimental data, and
2. I was honestly quite confused about my thoughts regarding it.

Regarding this css thing - again confusion. I do like the idea but as Phillip has shown you could end up with a Google page which has an AskJeeves image instead of the Google logo. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? No Idea!!!

The web is moving way fast dude, real fast!!!

Friday, March 18, 2005

Tehelka - The People's Paper

Put a blog about Shakti Kapoor on my essays site. The read this and really liked it. So here is an article, written much more clearly than I ever could, by Shoma Chaudhury

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Lappy 486

Real Cool tip for podcaster

Funniest Halo2 video ever!

The title is Scoble's description of a Halo2 video in which one of the players sleep off (presumably while playing on XBOX live). I have to agree it is quite funny:)

Google Blogoscoped

One of the sites which brings in a good feed of info into my aggregator. The "blogmaster" is Philipp Lenssen. Of special interest are some of his latest blogs concerning Google X (worked fine for me in firefox), Amaztype & Yahoo 360

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Bloggers

An interesting fun site making fun of all the 'A-List' Bloggers. After my fan post of Dave Winer I felt that this would give a different view:) Of Course Winer still rocks!!!;)

Dave is at it again!

Most people who reads my blogs knows about Dave Winer. A most colorful and assertive character who is a cool hacker at heart. I really like this fellow. Not only is he partly responsible for XML-RPC, he is the main force behind RSS as we know it , which differs from Netscape's RSS(if I am not wrong). A discussion between Adam Curry and himself resulted in him adding the binary enclosure to the RSS feed thereby giving a new set of podcasts and video blogs to the internet.
Now he is back to try and get the freedom of expression back to the internet. One way to do this is his latest collaborative project - TheTwoWayWeb.Com. Well worth the effort of popping out there. Even if you don't want to be directly involved it does make you think about the direction you would like the web to take.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

The Circuit Detective

Why would you want a mere electrician when you can hire "The Circuit Detective"? This guy is really niche too. I spent some time at his 'About Me' page and was quite impressed with his choices. Most useful is the fact that he has put up a lot of stuff that would be useful for people who may be having some electrical malfucntion at their homes. The detective wants it up there to help people and that is pretty cool.

[via Better Living Through Software - specifically the article Will Blogging help a Realtor, a good post on its own right]

[H]ard|Forum - DOOM 3: Project Mars City Mod

Are you imaginative, hard-working, patient, innovative, passionate enough to mod your computer case based on a DOOM3 scheme. Well this guy is!!! And boy! He rocks. Go here for a cool step by step approach on how he is making one of the sexiest case mods around!!!

Boing Boing: HOWTO build a Bluetooth "sniper rifle"

Yo!!! Guys out there with Bluetooth devices beware. Suji, how about some cool coding so that we can deploy Bluetooth 'chaff'(of the anti-radar variety)

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Podcasting & Video Blogging

A well written reference point to Podcasting and Vidblogging. More a reference for myself but hey, if it helps any of you so much the better:)

Feedback time!

Hey there mateys,

This ship has been chugging away for the last month. During this period a lot of you have visited this vessel for tales of places you can be to and ports you should visit. It has been quite an eccelectic trip with this vessel taking quite a meandering path. I thought this was the right time for me to take a breather and request some feedback for you.

So please feel free to put your thoughts onto the comments page regarding this site. Of course I am always fishing for compliments. However criticisms are very welcome too. This site unlike my other site (...a glitch in the matrix) is more than just a repository of links for my own sake. I would like to know whether this site is helpful to any of you. More importantly I would like to know whether you want me to go more hardcore into any specific field. Rest assured, the links will be eccelectic as it is now. Still if even one of you want me to slant the site towards any one field I am ready to do that.

For those reading this on my site, time to get an aggregator:) Nonetheless thanks for being her and please do comment.
For those on an aggregator, good choice dude!!! However please do pop-up and drop a comment.
For those not reading this...guess you have a life!!!

njoy,
brij.

ItsYourTurn

Though a class Novice I still like to play correspondence chess via the net. I like correspondence chess for the freedom that it gives a person as you only have to devote at most 5 mins a day to it.

The good thing about www.ItsYourTurn.com is that all the rendering is in html. Nothing fancier than that. This means that you can access this site from a bare-bones system from an archaic era and still be able to play. Quite useful at times!!!

In addition to different variants of chess this site has other games like backgammon, draughts,battleship, Othello, Go etc. It also has some unique games like Jamble (somewhat like Scrabble). Check out all the games that they have here.

I will put up similar posts for the other sites I visit for chess.

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Scent of a Robot

One more QuickTime pic. Downright enjoyable.

[Via the post "Quick, like a bunny" ]

Friday, March 11, 2005

Go light a bulb

An article closely linked to Swades (the movie) Found it a real inspiring read! Thanks to Nikhil for that link!!!

Wire Hang Redux

Hi fellas here's one for the boring times in the office. I am a big sucker for carpal syndrome inducing click-a-fest games which are small and do not take too much attention. The best part I like about these games are that they have no specific goal except to get a better score. The grand daddys of this genre has to be Space invaders, arkanoid and the almighty TETRIS. The lesser names have normally been variants of this like DXBall and paranoid. Well here is a new one. Called Wire Hang Redux it is a game where a very cute and agile anime girl has to climb never ending platforms using a grppling hook. Kinda like a Lara Croft on testostrone;)

Well worth the download (421KBs only)

njoy!!!

Thursday, March 10, 2005

405: The Movie

Was checking the Yahoo link from the Ikonnosieur's blog when I espied on the info about the atom films and about this specific one. Just went and watched and like what I saw. For people who are going to watch it just one piece of advice - the lo-res is good enough:)

njoy!!!

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

EPIC 2014

A matrix-isque future of the world. A 'flash'y look relevant in the current discussion of Auto-links. A must-watch.

[phattboi pointed out this link in the comments for the blog article " Guys Don't Link"]

Sunday, March 06, 2005

The Ikonnoisseur's Latest Post

Sorry i am taking a real real lazy path here. However I am on a small avcation and just managed to get my hands on a machine so I thought I would blog. Please do go over to Ikonnoisseur's blog as they have some cool links. the optical links, the ad and the Yahoo introspective as really worth your trip there. So! Whya re you still here?!?!?

Friday, March 04, 2005

NASA World Wind

Heard about this in #102 of the .NET Rocks! Show. Quite an interesting show. However this site is even cooler, insane even. In short it is an open source project that lets one zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. How is it different from Keyhole? It seems that you can input data from a myriad input data sources. This includes satellites feeds, weather feeds, infra red feeds etc. The coding is in C# and managed Direct X. The best part is that it is completely in the Open Source space. The only minus point, the size is slightly forbidding. The program itself is quite small but the datasources are large. Anyways do hop over!!!

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

India Infoline Budget Corner 2005-06

Cool site for the budget news. Gives a different choice when compared to the usual suspects like The Economic Times. The specific urls I accessed were to read the highlights, the summary and the analysis in .pdf format. An interesting and safe budget. Personally I think it will make the salaried class more optimistic.