Bangalore loses IPL matches to bombs

In today's India, a bomb can go off anywhere. What makes IPL think Mumbai is safer than Bangalore. Were the Mumbai not the target of more attacks than any other city in India? Whole of India is a dangerous place to be - case in point Dantewada attacks. Will they move the matches out of India? Will it remain IPL then? This is a bad precedent and a step in the wrong direction. It is shows that we are scared of miscreants.

Perils of Thoughts

What is the link in Google Pages, Blogger, Orkut & Buzz? Apart from they all being Google owned sites; they fight for mindshare of individuals through web presence. They show the evolution of mediums to express one’s thoughts.

In good old days if you needed a web presence you needed a pursuing degree in computer science, to host a webpage on the university server and actually be able to create a webpage itself. Web space was costly and needed efficiency in HTML to create any web site at all. But that changed when free webhosting sites came into existence, e.g. http://www.angelfire.com/. This is where I made my first web site. The web hosting provider would give you certain amount of web space (5-10 MB) to create your web page(s), and you had to bear with the ads they put on your site to compensate for the free web-space. They also allowed direct upload from HTML editors like Microsoft FrontPage. That meant creating a webpage was comparatively easy for people who did not know HTML etc. But then, the whole concept of web hosting meant that the thoughts or ideas are organized, just like a book to make a meaningful website. http://www.googlepages.com/ caters to this market.

Then came blog. In the world of web two point owe – it is a contraction of the term ‘We-bLog’ – an online diary of (mostly) an individual. Later commercial organizations also picked-up the idea. This new concept meant that you do not have to arrange thoughts in any specific manner and let them flow as they came. Somehow they still meant that you mostly blog about a specific subject, and would consist at least a paragraph of text. http://www.blogger.com/ was the first site I think. Google later acquired blogger.

Come ‘on man you don’t expect to paragraphs from text frenzy people, who are in a hurry to go to hell so came http://www.twitter.com/. These days it creates trouble for Indian politicians and cricket administrators alike. While not creating havoc in the Indian Parliament, twitter allows for shorter messages to be published from anywhere you can access the web or by sending a SMS. I think Google is trying to cater to this market with their latest Google Buzz, but it is bit different anyway. For one – it intrudes into your mail box.

While blogs graduated to dumber tweets, social networking space was becoming a rage. There were many others but www.myspace.com was a pioneer in this field, and www.facebook.com bulldozed everything else in the developed countries. www.orkut.com is Google’s answer which was developed as an internal project and became hugely successful in Brazil and India. Now these social networking sites wanted a share of the users mind so they started ‘what’s in your mind?’ and ‘what are you up to?’

Isn’t that I was using twitter for, and before that blogger and before that angel-fire? Now when I come up with an idea that can change the world during my ‘power-nap-in-the-loo’ session, I ought to be confused where to express that. I don’t use websites now since they are passé. But luckily others are linked. When I put a message on my blogger it shows on face-book, orkut and buzz. If I press ‘Like’ on http://www.youtube.com/ while logged-in they show on twitter and face-book. When I comment something on twitter, it shows on www.linkedin.com. Gradually everything is getting linked, and more confusing.

PS: I could not think of a better title for the blog post.

PPS: my twitter handle is Sharma.Goutam, I blog at http://www.gomzyonline.com/ and it has a mirror on http://www.gomzyonline.blogspot.com/

IPL 2009- First Impressions

Telecast: I watch it on TV and Set max is doing a bad job. It had at least 5-7 ad breaks between the opening ceremony, which in any other sport or say in Olympics or FIFA world cup would have got nonstop coverage. Sony rather than showing the cricket is more interested in getting the ad buck, which is unfortunate.

Uncertainty: Both of the last years finalists got drubbing. And the not so good teams from previous season did better this time. This paves way for an exciting IPL season two. Every team has a fresh chance t o do well this time and mend their position as of last season.

Pure Cricket: Dravid while receiving his man of the match trophy for his scintillating 66 for Royal Challengers against the other royals, the Rajasthan Royals from Jaipur indicated that this time the game is tough and the better players like (rightly so) Dravid will have good chance of performing. Unlike the Indian pitches which are batter friendly and give scope for innovative joker play these South African pitches are evenly balanced and the chance to the bowlers to win matches.

Old Guard takes Guard: Today we saw, Sachin, Dravid and Kumble performing. While the first one still playing the other two have retired from the short and both forms respectively. This is a welcome sign where the shortest form of game is giving opportunity to the old world players a chance to show the world who the masters are.

New world: Being in South Africa gives IPL a chance to explore the possibility of looking forward to more international venues. It’s undoubtedly a good idea to showcase the Indian might of Cricketing skill world over and promote the game in new locations. Who knows this game can be played in Brazil next season

Sony DAV-DZ777 My New Home Theater

Long time no see, yes its literally after the first post i guess. Basically, I'm not into blogging (but you will find that I'm not into anything else too...). Any ways let me come to the point, On the last Saturday i.e. 3rd May, 2008 i got myself an Sony DAV-DZ777 home theater system and that costed me a bomb, I would say almost a months salary. But the beauty of it was I got it since i didnt like the sound output from the LG tv that i was watching. My favourite past time is wathcing movies, download them from net and write into a DVD and watch it on the 29'' TV. But I feel that the LG TV has got a very good picture quality but not the audio. Owing to the poor audio quality I had to download subtitiles for the movies and then watch them on TV. It was like looking at the news for "hearing-impaired". So me and my Bro (Gomzy) decided to buy a home theater (I know that was a bad idea but you know what, an idle brain is a devil's workshop and the gadget devil never sleeps) so we went to the near by Sony showroom.

There are always two sides of a coin, in the same way i would say there are always two sides of buying "before buying" and "after buying" and this goes like this: you always make up your mind to buy something and also the budget is made up to buy this thing happens before you got to any shop and then after going there you end up buying something which is very much different than the one which is thought and many a time much more expensive thing (this is common in case of gadgets) so our "before buying product was something not as expensive as the one that i got but it had no "towers" then we saw another one that had only two back towers but no front towers and finally i said lets buy something with towers and we ended up buying this DAV-DZ777.

Let me tell you one thing guys Sony might be expensive but I would say it is every paisa worth buying. The sound is awesome (comparing to the peer products of this range) and i would say who ever listens will fall in love with this thing like me.

We will miss Chotu

Our beloved Chotu is no more. He breath his last on 2nd May 2008 in my dad's hands, hardly 4 years old, too young to miss among us.

He was the funny guy, always upto something and if something goes wrong hiding behind mom.

Following Moni in her rat hunts and sometimes daring to go alone. Loved her, followed her everywhere.

The angry young man of our home, almost bitten everyone who bugged him, except the alfa male of our family... dad. He was undoubtedly dad's favorite amongst us.

We shall cherish his memories always. May his soul rest in peace.