Aquarium Madness - Justified

I recently got back into my love for fish and keeping them in my house, been over three months now. While I have successfully created one tank that is a 19cm cube, the new tank that I am working on is much bigger and is going to take a lot more time to fill out. I have now compiled a list of things you should look out for from a beginners perspective. I hope that you find this blog useful and remember that reading doesn't hurt but reading from one source and being impulsive can kill the hobby for you. Here, in typical Surviving fashion, is my list of thirteen.

1. German technology is nice to look at but leaves you feeling like you have just lost your manhood
2. Goldfish aren't bowl fish. Try spending an entire week in your bathroom without going out and you'll see what I am talking about.
3. Heaters are good because when you are done with them there are other more 'practical' uses for them. I shall leave this to your imagination (as dirty as it is)
4. Not every store you go to will offer the best advice. Brush up by finding articles and forums online. Note: Not every forum user is helpful but doing a check on their posts gives you a sense of what to expect.
5. If your fish start dying don't blame the fish
6. If you start hating the hobby then don't kill the fish give them away
7. Never allow people to tap the glass of your tank. If they do, give their heads a knock with your knuckles and say hello after doing that. People, smart ones, get the correlation pretty quick.
8. Patience is key but that doesn't mean you have to be a monk about your timing
9. If you don't have a green thumb get some driftwood and rocks
10. Don't look at a tank and duplicate it, look at a tank and admire it. Once you are done admiring it start forecasting how you want your tank to look and set a plan for it.
11. Expensive fish are like expensive women, heartbreak and empty bank accounts are soon to follow.
12. Just because everyone is not using a product doesn't necessarily mean its bad. It could also mean that everyone doesn't know to use it.
13. Enjoy whatever you do and if someone tells you differently encourage them to make more fun of you and then push them down the stairs as they leave your house. Brain damage or physical harm generally puts people back on the right track.

Mood while writing this post: Oblivious

Information Nuances

It's February and while I might be late to get my list out for this month, it hasn't been due to lack of trying or even being lazy (how I wish). Sadly, work and life have been getting in my way but I have some time now so here goes.

1. Everyone that complains about lack of privacy on social networking sites probably doesn't understand the meaning of having a social networking site
2. People who flash their iPhones at you are probably happy that they have joined a long line of sheep that have a shepherd. I can't say his name.
3. Tele-marketers hate their job just as much as you love telling them to get lost
4. The music industry is just as bad as prostitution. Some use their mouths for things other than singing.
5. Writing letters is considered old-school but when people get one they jump around like they've just discovered gold
6. Eventually the day Monday will disappear from calendars and then so will the human race
7. Battle LA is a movie on Resistance : Fall of Man
8. Megan Fox should be in the new Transformers movie and I think if they spent another month on CGI it could possibly happen
9. Dogs have a great life but its too short to really enjoy
10. Most people only become patriotic after a calamity strikes their nation
11. Guns are good if you don't want to waste your time
12. If India fixes its power issues then we will take over the world [FACT]
13. Education is a luxury these days and isn't really an imparting of knowledge anymore

Music Listened to while writing this blog post : Dogs barking outside my window

Mood while writing this post : Confused

The Digital Revolution - Making the common man smarter

I fondly remember getting my first internet connection at our home in Abu Dhabi. It was a very slow connection at the time [28.8kps] but what it offered in terms of information usage was quite astounding. We were able to check for information online and for the most part it served its purpose for email and keeping touch. Fast-forward to 1999 and my first day in college. I never knew that the speeds available were so much better and that the information being used and passed around was even bigger than I had imagined. Absorbing so much information in one sitting is impossible and no single person on the planet can claim to know everything there is to know about anything or everything.

With the digital revolution has come many good things - Social Networking sites, search engines, blogs, wikis, etc. but the real question we have to ask ourselves is where is it all really going? Is the common man starting to encroach on avenues where he/she would normally not have gone 10 years ago? Are people developing and propagating tastes to their friends that they never would have and as a result changing the mindset of people who might have not bothered about things such as smart-phones years ago? I find it rather annoying at times when someone comes into a forum and posts a technical specification rather than talk about how the device performs and offers real depth to the conversation rather than copy and pasting. Moreover, the trend now is to just spew out whatever we read and most times we think that industry experts are offering advice on how a topic should be dealt with but we don't really know if someone that is half our age is sitting there offering advice on a device he/she might never have worked on. Does this make the information any less valuable? No. Does this make the information a 100% right? Definitely not. While some sites are offering control mechanisms on how the information is handled, like Wikipedia, there are still skeptics like me who take a step back and ask where the information came from.

As the information age progresses people have also learned to open search engines on their phones and end conversations that would have gone on for days about a topic people could only research with the actual device in their hand. This is what the issue with this information boom has been. Now, everybody has an opinion on a device and they can offer this opinion without any hands-on experience. To add to the technocrat's misery is that these people are not technically sound either and are just consumers of a device trying to show their intellectual prowess in an argument that can be ended by getting into specifics of a device that the common man can't find on a search engine.

I feel that a step in the right direction should be closing off information to the public that is a step above the actual working of the phone and see how many people actually have a say about something that they cannot see or know about. The reverse advertising principle of not showing anything and letting consumers try it out for themselves when they see the product might work but then again you know there is someone out there who feels its his calling in life to post a video and comment on the device. This person might be 10 years old and so his opinion probably really doesn't count to someone looking for more sound technical advice but you get my drift.

I have nothing against providing information to the masses. I just have a problem with the masses thinking they are all experts.

Mood while writing this blog - Fresh

Music listened to while writing this blog - The sound of a crow on my terrace

The importance of being evil

When I was younger, trips to Sunday school [Friday school in the Middle-East] were a common practice. Kids from all over town would gather in rooms that were air-conditioned to listen to people from the church community talk about the importance of being good and a beginners lesson in theology was offered. Of course, adults were also given importance and they too had to attend sessions as well. The natural progression over a period of time was that children who went to these classes would turn into church-going adults with a good sense of what their religion was about and what the church's requirements were for a good life on Earth. Sadly, this is not the case as I have observed. People tend to let their own conveniences override any belief system to get what they want. Is this wrong? Certainly not. Does the church think this wrong? Yes. The question then arises about why we go against the grain when we know that there are eternal repercussions. Is it because we think that what was taught to us at Sunday school is all hogwash? Is it because we have an all forgiving God that lets us get away with most things? Is it because every time we asked a question to a problem that seemed to challenge Church Dogma, we were simply told that it is beyond human understanding? Or is it because we know that a little evil goes a long way to being a better person?

I think that all of us have to be evil at certain stages in our lives to enforce the fact that we are good people. No one can have a perfect record of being a saint on the planet and even the saints according to catholicism also did rather vile acts before they became who they are. I always laugh at people that enforce social structures by stating that God will punish you. The reason I do this is because of the very definition of God. If something all-powerful is sitting somewhere in the Universe and watching us do all these acts of ill-will, shouldn't he/she/it be trying to stop it? By not stopping it, doesn't that make God selfish? I suppose the answer to all those questions would turn any zealot/devout catholic into a rebuttal attack helicopter answering with pre-programmed responses like - Its your faith you are asked to believe or No one knows what God wants for us, ours is only to obey and be good. If that's how the faith system really works then as human beings, we should probably have let slavery continue and the Crusades would have to be chalked down as the most worthless campaign we have ever run because freeing people completely contradicts what our faith is about if there is a super-power guiding us.

I don't really think there is a right answer to what God wants or if there is a God at all but I do know that there is definitely a right answer to the fact that good must exist at the cost of evil and vice-versa. No one knows whether genocide is a wrong act and for some people, this might be the only way for them to attain their freedom or ensure that their race survives. I wonder if people that hear of mass murders or acts of violence between cultures take a minute to analyze what is going through the minds of the people committing these crimes, laughable isn't it, as they talk about how evil the act is.

I could go on about how we should always think logically and never make a rash decision on blind faith but this is a fight fought during our formative years when our brains are incapable of deciphering what a logical decision really is. Are parents to blame for not bringing us up right? I would say yes but then again, what if our parents never had the chance to learn things the logical way and be offered a completely egalitarian view on logic vs faith?

So as an exercise take some time out today and think about what you really want; logic or faith. The first path leads you down a road that will question what is right and wrong from a very conditional perspective while the latter simply asks you to believe that what is written is right and because it comes from a supernatural power that can't be seen or argued with it is definitely right. Feeling sheepish? That's good because thats what a shepherd wants you to feel.

Disclaimer: I do not at any point ask you to change your faith so if you are a religious person and find this offensive please leave a comment and I will consider that as a reason to assume that your faith when questioned turns you into a rabid wolf. I wrote this as a chance to allow my logical side to do some thinking and express my opinions.

Mood while writing this post : Quizzical

Music listened to while writing this post : Sparrows chirping [no, its not a record]

Meat Packets

Every person I know suffers from some kind of internal rage control issue. It may manifest itself physically as someone shouting or hitting an animate object. Nevertheless, it does manifest itself. Lately, I have noticed that more people seem to be taking the fact that I go along with the flow as a reason to indulge in their own little whims and fancies along the way. While this truly doesn't bother me as long as they don't cross their fantasies with my personal well-being, it has begun to bother me. This is certainly not the only thing that has started bothering me about the people in my life but it is probably at the top of a very short list. That said, here is my thirteen for the week.

1. Never share your dreams with anyone. There are chances that you might actually actualize them.
2. Everyone including the Pope is selfish, he just doesn't go to anyone for confession.
3. Opening your mouth is probably just as detrimental as keeping it shut. Therefore, if your already in hot water stay in the state your in, chances are that its not getting any worse.
4. Never challenge someone to be something they are not, you might end up being disappointed and that person might end up staying in that state for the rest of their lives thereby bringing pain to you inadvertently
5. Smoke as many cigarettes as you feel like and even take pictures because apparently there won't be any in 2050. Please read the Surgeon General's warning on the box before you do and if your still okay with it then smoke away.
6. PETA is probably the most in-human organization out there because it thinks that animals are more important than humans. I wish they'd all get together and commit mass suicide in the name of some insane cause so that the rest of us normal humans could get back to staying on top of the food-chain.
7. Bill Gates will outlive Steve Jobs. Sometimes a little unwanted growth goes a long way.
8. Netbooks are good for daily use but I wouldn't recommend them to someone who does a lot of typing and has big fingers.
9. Coke will always taste better than Pepsi
10. The Bangalore Metro will be actualized and then two years later, everyone will go back to using personal transport and we will still have all the traffic issues we are having today. What's the point of having a metro you ask? Read the news in 2013 you might get your answer.
11. Life Expectancy is going up every year. What that means is that one day you'll be sitting around completely incapacitated but hey you'll live for a 100 years plus isn't that great?
12. Liverpool FC has so many issues but the bigger problems are on the pitch and not in the manager's dressing room
13. Almost every person that watches football either support Manchester United, Chelsea or Barcelona. I find that funny because if you ask them about good teams in other leagues they shake their heads in wonder that players in other countries actually play good football.

Song listened to while writing this post - Nothing

Mood while writing this post - Enraged

Have Operating Systems really gone too far

I remember getting my first Pentium based PC a little too well. It was an assembled machine that booted up with what I feel is still the best OS I ever worked on - MS DOS 6.22. However, my curiosity coupled with the advent of Windows 95 led to the installation of this new OS on the computer. We marveled at how the trash bin looked and the fact that a start menu had been added to make the entire look a little more colorful. Skip forward more than a decade and now I am using Windows 7 Starter on my Netbook. What always fascinates me about operating systems is how far we have come and how little we have learned as part of the progress we have made. I have now been using Visual Studio 2008 on my Netbook and for the most part it runs pretty well although what truly puzzles me is that it runs better than my regular notebook which sports a faster processor and a nicer hard-drive too. Over the years people have gotten accustomed to the fact that everything they do with relation to their PCs requires a pretty User Interface. This of course has also led to manufacturers building more complex software that leads people to buy faster and stronger machines. I then wonder what it would be like to have an Operating System that loaded components only when you needed them and didn't really give you all the bells and whistles on first install. Some people will argue that not everyone has the technical expertise to run such an Operating System and my response to that is the same reason that people have adopted things like Windows Starter, Ubuntu and the now approaching Chrome OS from Google.

In all honesty, the average person really doesn't need anything more powerful than a 1.6 Ghz processor to get all their work done. Does your browser really need a dual core CPU to read emails and browse YouTube? No. Does the computer need a graphics card that is capable of displaying more than 16 million colors and houses a 512 MB onboard memory card? No. Is it possible for your PC to get everything you get done today without a pretty interface? Yes. Sadly, the world likes things easy so as users we are accustomed to seeing everything handed to us on a silver platter. While this is good what we don't realize is that all the technological advances we have made might probably have come to us faster and cheaper had we really thought about how we wanted to build software and how we wanted to keep the user educated on what he/she really needed to do in order to get their work done.

I also use Ubuntu Netbook remix and to be honest, it runs faster than my Windows installation. The sad truth however is that most of my paid Microsoft applications provide better utilities for getting my work done which is why I am still using them but I'd like to imagine a world where I buy a cheap laptop that has no frills attached to it so that I can run an MP3 player, browse the internet and get my coding work done. I believe the time is right to infest the market with something that can do all of this without burning a hole in a user's pocket and Netbooks are the beginning. Sadly this won't last very long as even Netbook manufacturers are making strides and putting faster CPUs on devices that weren't meant to do all the things we think they should do. Information is getting larger to digest every day and as a result, the manufacturers have to keep up.

If someone out there in the development world is reading this and has an answer to the problem of making a PC that runs with a 1.5 Ghz processor and still affords the user a wholesome experience, my only advice to that person is to grab it while the iron is hot because there may come a time when we will have moved so far ahead that looking back at a simpler solution will be impossible because everyone using the internet will think its foolish even when its not.

Music listened to while writing this blog - Nothing

Mood while writing this blog - Optimistic