The Lair

A while ago, there was a story bandied about that BitTorrent accounted for 35% of all internet traffic. A couple of days ago, Kottke mentioned how, anecdotally, his circle have now switched over to YouTube and Google Video. So, people like pasting in links to video clips; and at least a few sites now have enough bandwidth to handle video.

But what else do people use the bandwidth for? A couple of days ago, Slashdot was asked if kids still program - and the answer, overwhelmingly seemed to be - not as much as they used to. These are also anecdotal examples, though… there are more people than ever before who have grown up in the era of ubiquitious internet access and around computers in general. From those, maybe 1% may find programming interesting. I know I didn’t. My childhood experiences of computers were confined to playing chess on old skool BBC Micros. Programming didn’t really interest me till much later; ironically, the wider availability of internet access was what helped get me interested.

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Moved hosts yesterday. If some stuff doesn’t show up on your browser, you know why. DNS updates should have propagated around the planet by now, though - so please do let me know if things are intolerably broken. On that note, props to Quasi for noticing my rewrite rules hadn’t been moved over.

Got back from a thoroughly enjoyable London visit on Wednesday. Safe to say that I was a reasonable hit with my nieces, which always does my inferiority complex a world of good… Unfortunately, my overly long locks were the subject of a lot (too much) comment - and the disrespectful tykes (heh heh, not really) resorted to tugging my hair to get my attention. Also discovered that a couple of kids I had last seen 10 years ago had … grown up a bit.

Came back home to remember that my current hosting contract was due to expire in a few days, so had to frantically move an year’s worth of cruft into a new server. In summary, more expensive hosting; but it also allows me a bit more scope in terms of software so it’s probably worth it. A publicly accessible domain and hosting is a bit like a microwave or a USB key purchase, really… you never realize exactly how useful it is till you’ve tried it. Also made a possibly regrettable pair of impulse domain buys which I’ll reveal in a while - I’m now on my way to becoming a domain overlord! yikes. On that note, my personal feedreader project is nearly ready for public consumption. I’ve used it every day I’m at my machine for more than a month now and it serves my needs admirably. The new host allows me to set cron based updates to the feeds, which was really the missing link.

FA Cup semi final between Liverpool and Chelsea today. I’d rather like Liverpool to win this one; but I fear the Blues may have just a bit too much firepower at their disposal. Also, North London derby. By the way, Arseweb looks like someone stepped out of a time machine from the early 90s to do up the site. Gawd.

Anyway, those two momentous sporting events require a visit to the local later on today. Not sure Arsenal deserve to win, but since I’ve been tagged as the Arsenal supporter in the quartet I work with; I should live upto expectations and root for them, eh?. Considering that one of the other people in the quartet support the Spurs, and we have a rabid Man Utd and Wanderers supporter in to finish the foursome, I’d call this a motley crew of Premiership supporters. Here’s hoping Henry comes to the party.

Also, I’ll be in London wrangling with the chumps in the embassy on Tuesday and I’ll also be loitering around a day or so longer than needed. Still haven’t called my sister to let her know I’m crashing her place, so that should be an entertaining telephone conversation. Also debating hacking off the way-past-the-shoulder-length hair during the visit. Always did tell myself that it was an experiment and I was going to cut it off eventually… On a related note, I isolated and snipped off a near 50cm long strand of pure white hair the other day. Woo.

And I need to figure out something nifty to get my two nieces to make up (at least a little bit) for being a boring and self absorbed uncle stuck away in York for the past year. That last task strikes more fear in my craven heart than anything else. Gonna be a fun week.

Sage points me towards the Da Vinci Code movie. After the recent legal tussles were resolved in favour of Dan Brown, the movie was pretty much given the all clear to proceed. Given that the book was such a monumental best seller, it seemed almost inevitable that Hollywood would be all over the movie rights.

I’m going to make a revelation that will surprise/shock/enrage all those determined to drag down Dan Brown as being a mediocre writer. I actually liked Da Vinci Code. Of course, I’m a person who listens to 80s cheesy pop and enjoys some of it and my sense of style can only be called “roadkill chic” tinged with a healthy dose of “I don’t give a flying furball”. But still, I liked Dan Brown.

Oh, so the other books he wrote (and which I devoured within a few days/weeks of reading Da Vinci Code) were pretty much predictable crap. I won’t even go into how bad I felt (having a passing interest in cryptography) after reading Deception Point and Digital Fortress. But still, as a premise and a story, Da Vinci Code worked for me. I wouldn’t have discovered Umberto Eco (Name of the Rose) without reading the much better marketed Da Vinci Code first.

There are only three classes of books for me these days. Books I read, books I read and thoroughly enjoy (and can quote from at will) and books I never bother finishing. The last category is surprisingly infrequent, actually. There is so much choice since I switched to mostly electronic books that I start reading a book or a series after careful selection (and/or a recommendation from someone who’s literary choices interest me). Da Vinci Code was a book I read for pure escapism, a book with an intriguing premise. On that basis, it worked. Is it the equivalent of the utterly fascinating and much better written Pliocene Exile or The Galactic Milieu? Almost certainly not. But it’s better than the venomous thoughts of throwing into the rubbish heap of history, as the more vehement critics would suggest.

Picking up and reading a Dan Brown is like reading a Ludlum or a Cussler. Prepare to suspend disbelief, prepare to snort skeptically while reading some of it, but at the end: you will be entertained. Look beyond the more or less obvious warts and you’ll find escapist literature. Is it going to win a literary prize any time soon? Maybe not. But then, Shakespeare wrote his work for the bawdy houses and the commoners of his day, didn’t he? Ludlum wrote a trilogy of books which struck a chord with me in my early teens; the Bourne series. So the more recent movie editions (Matt Damon variety) weren’t quite what I had in mind… I rather preferred the Richard Chamberlain/Jaclyn Smith TV series better. Da Vinci Code has all of the ingredients to make a decent movie too. Literary classic it may not be - but as a story it worked. And Dan Brown just happened to be the right guy at the right time to make a killing.

Don’t hate if you can’t create. *grin*

I’ve filled in yet another PDF form required by random embassy interviewer for the privilege of visiting their country. That makes it the second form I’ve had to fill - not a big deal, you’d think. Only, I nearly didn’t notice that I needed to fill in this form. Because my age and gender fit a certain criteria, I need to provide an even more detailed accounting of my whereabouts for … the past decade. In a separate form. Because everyone who’s been in a terrorist training camp (as I clearly haven’t) rushes to fill in the empty white boxes on the form with that information.

Hold up a minute. I said the past decade. So, I have a reasonably good memory. Do you remember all your travels, dates of starting jobs and leaving jobs and random crap of that nature for the past 10 years? No, neither do I. So, I started the day stressed. And their rinky dink hi-tech PDF form doesn’t have enough room to fill in all the details they demand either. A separate sheet is required. The blood vessel which burst in my head on making this discovery started leaking into my eyeballs; giving them a weird red tinged hue. Apropos, really: because I’m a hairs breadth from going berserk, red eyes, frothy mouth and all. The repeated agonized tugging of my hair isn’t helping either, but it’s involuntary. Every time some lackwitted form filling fetishist makes his new requirements known, my hands spasmodically ascend hairwards.

And never mind that all interviews are by appointment only and they gave me an appointment date a mere two weeks before my supposed departure and their website has the gall to state that my category of visitor visa may require additional administrative processing and no definitive travel plans should be made. Aargh. Let me put it this way, if their administrative processing goes through as fast as a grease coated banana skin, I will probably be able to collect my passport on the way to the airport to catch my flight. Does this sound like the recipe for disaster to you? It sure as hell does to me. I’m visualizing rubber gloves and vaseline at the other end of the line when I land without a fucking visa. Obviously, the evil airline companies that insist on jacking up ticket prices ever higher on a daily basis aren’t helping much. I had a price quote printed out from yesterday - went to get a written quote today from the same agency and the price had magically gone up by 10 percent. Price gouging asstards.

And wait. There’s more. The goddamn embassy telephone number for scheduling appointments is more fucking expensive than a PHONE SEX line. I kid you not. Calling this embassy for an appointment is more expensive than having some hairy shemale with a husky voice croon sweet nothings in your ear. You’re getting virtually shafted in both cases, only the embassy hotline is of the red hot poker up the nether orifice variety. Assmunching rumprangers.

So, I was fuming and jumping through the visa requirement hoops for a country whose name should end in “-stan”, but doesn’t. And the inevitable thought rose like bile in my throat. Fuck this. Is a conference and a chance to press the flesh with people I’ve emailed for a few months really worth all this? Well, it sorta is - given which conference this is - but I calmed down.

I have now reached that state of zen which can best be described as “don’t give a flying fuck”. Give me a visa on time or not, dimwits. I care not. You may now fuck with my visa all you want, for I am full of zen.

So the timezone changed in Colombo a couple of days ago. Well, I’m a lazy sod who preferred time math in whole hour increments; but otherwise, the changing of the timezones makes little difference to me. Colour me (mostly) indifferent.

In Herge’s last Tintin book, Tintin and the Picaros, our intrepid band of heroes (and Snowy) help General Alcazar regain the presidency of San Theodoros. Among other things, the capital city’s name is changed (once again) from Tapiocapolis to Alcazarpolis. The changing of the government (and the renaming of the capital city) is a recurring and comedic theme in more of the Tintin series. Can anyone be blamed for raising a skeptical eyebrow at the timezone changing high jinks now? A unfortunate comparison, eh? We’ll also not delve too deeply into the naming tug of war which ensued over the airport a few years ago. Well, perhaps this desire for change is a subcontinental thing; what with a number of Indian cities also reverting to the older names (Bangalooru anyone?)

But the bright side… I have a Palm handheld device which predates this timezone change malarkey. My world clock was set using the Dhaka time because there was no entry available for Colombo Standard Time without a messy firmware update. Now that the timezone has reverted, I can set things back to pre-2002 timezones and have the world clock work. Yay for revisionist timezone changes and procrastination in firmware updates.

Also, are there really people who enable NTP time update service on their machine? In Sri Lanka? That’s err.. going to cause some problems till service packs and server settings get sorted out, I’m sure.

I periodically need to adjust the calorific goodies that I shovel down my throat - in other words, I occasionally freak out and make stuff out of the ordinary, just to prove that I can.

A set of adverts running on TV said that you either love or hate Vegemite. Well, Marmite. One of those. Like Pepsi and Coke, I find it difficult to tell the difference. But at any rate, I’m firmly in the Vege/Marmite fan club; and my favourite childhood breakfast was toast with melted butter and slatherings of Marm/Vegemite on top.

Grabbing a bottle of Marmite from the supermarket, I proceeded to revive this easy breakfast tradition. Not a huge challenge, but it still tasted as good as I remembered. I was probably “persuaded” into liking this breakfast because it only involved the toaster and no naked flames. My parents (being good judges of my juvenile pyromaniac tendencies) didn’t allow me to make my own fryups till much later.

Not enough experimentation, clearly.

My next attempt was to make sushi-style vinegar rice balls. As side dishes, cucumber salad (70% herb mayo, 20% cucumber, 10% chillie powder); cubes of cheese mixed with Branston’s pickle, and peppered pickled beetroot slices. Oh, and lest you think it was vegetarian or something silly like that, I also had a vaguely stewish looking sausage and bean curry thing. Shockingly, it’s rather similar to this recipe - a case of real life imitating the TV chefs if I ever saw one. Just with more sausages and less veggies, mmm kay?

That went down quite well too.

And now… to figure out what to do with the whole chicken sat in the freezer.

Valleywag has been running a fake word competition all week. A long time ago, my mother gave me a book with various punning neologisms like sarchasm. I can’t remember the title of the book; but reading the entries submitted for the fake words contest brought many a fond memory back.

In no particular order:

Ringtone rage: Violent behavior exhibited by cubicle dwellers, brought about by hearing their colleagues’ ringtones repeatedly. [S. E. August]

Aspergered: state resulting from pouring a lot of time and energy into an obsessive hobby or project, usually pointless to outsiders. [Arnaud Hubert]

BILF: Blogger i’d like to f***. As hot as MILF, except probably younger, and smart enough to blog. [Dan Tam]

Blogna sandwich: Reading blogs on a lunchbreak. [Jim Frost]

Mutual blogsterbation: When two bloggers blog about how great each other is. [Scott Case]

Blamethrower: The flaming of the guilty when projects go bad, and the accompanying Dragonslayer-esque deflection of blame. [Randy Hollingsworth]

Dot Mom: The woman who has a husband whose money she’s using from his Web 2.0 startup to buy the Escalade and keep the nanny around 24/7, even though she doesn’t work. [Rick Dobbs]

Fooky: Having very poor implementation and/or concept to the point of not being usable. Often recognized by all except the founder. Bill thought his idea was great, but we all knew it was FOOKY and wouldn’t last. [Makinde Adeagbo]

Blemeworthy: Worthy of being propogated via blog. By all accounts, Jude Law and Sienna Miller’s makeup sex was certainly blemeworthy. [Michael Krantz]

Typerventilating: Rapidly sending instant messages. Having a panic attack via AIM. [Exa Grubb]

Blogamy: Having more than one blog at a time. [Bill Green]

IMbush: A coordinating attack using instant messenger to beat the truth out of a third party. I admitted to lying to my boyfriend when he and a friend who knew the truth IMbushed me. [Maureen O’Connor]

Blush: A crush on a blogger — a person you’ve never met but whose blog you read. [Natala Menezes]

It would be less funny if I didn’t relate to most of those concepts personally. Also worth noting that Blurf was coined by someone in the neighbourhood - like two years ago.

In other news, I have performed a periodic stock take of my Winamp playlist and discovered Queen’s Stone Cold Classics cohabiting a playlist with Culture Beat and uh.. James Blunt. This may also explain why I’m not using last fm or other social music services. For one, it’s slightly embarassing to let my Winamp playlist be seen in public. Secondly, I think a recommendation service would go slightly mad at my music choices. Yeah. Now I’m listening to Freedom 90. Beyond reform, that’s me.

And finally, I have discovered yet another Firefox extension which may give Chris Pederick’s Web Dev extension a run for it’s money. Firebug deserves just a single word description. Awesome. And you can even disable the irritating error count display without restarting the browser. I’m sold.

Oh noes. I’ve been tagged.

One year ago:
The final stages of the grand escape from my then-blogging haunt. I was busily burning boats, spreading my soon-to-be-vacated blog URL around to all and sundry - preparing an escape to a slightly less visited haven. An year on, I’d have to say that things turned out exactly as I would have wanted… the domain and hosting does far more for me than provide an address for a blog; it also allows various experiments and installing software that strikes my fancy. I’m not necessarily more productive as a result, but I’m definitely having fun.

Elsewhere, things were quiet - nothing particularly memorable about an year ago.

Five years ago:
Apachecon 2001. I also remember dabbling with Perl golf during this period; mostly influenced by the other golfers at Perlmonks. Things were beginning to blur though - I was burning both ends of the candle at a startup. 16 hour work days were normal, I’d be juggling so many different things that it was a constant struggle to stay ahead of the workload. The suspicion that my place of work was slightly evil (yeah, so I was naive and didn’t read the signals early) was beginning to dawn on me.

I think I’ve grown up a bit as a coder and programmer - the golfing contests still happen; but as a means, not as an end. I look back on the mad days of startup life with a certain degree of trepidation; but it was the right place and the right time to see computing (and stock market) history being made. So, what if it wasn’t exactly the good sort of history? It’s still history, innit? I learnt absolute loads from the experience and the money hasn’t hurt either.

Ten years ago:
Just finished writing a really challenging (my first!) low level project in raw C. It later transpired that being lined up against a wall and shot wasn’t really an option in event of my failing to deliver. I didn’t know that at the time, however - so there was an added element of zestfear to the project. Strangely enough, this was also the beginning of the end for my hardcore C programmer era - there were simply too many things that took too long to write in C. I think this project has also led (in part or in full) to my absolute hatred of writing printer drivers and controlling printers through software.

Oh, and a bit later in the year: I’d start my undergrad degree. I honestly find it hard to believe that it’s been a full decade, but well… that’s how it is.

I’m not going to tag any more unfortunates with the meme - but feel free to pick it up and scribble about your own flashbacks - on this day, week, month or year in (2005, 2001 and 1996).

After a hiatus of nearly 18 months, I broke down and got a SIM card for my cellphone two days ago.

Hardly seems a big deal, getting a cell phone. To some, it is just another signal that you’ve arrived - that yuppiedom, meetings over lattes and a carefree lifestyle is now yours. All unlocked with an insidious hunk of plastic and metal. It’s a status symbol to others; with a comparison of latest features and colours and prices that seems vaguely reminiscient of a pissing contest. It’s di rigeur to joke about people talking loudly on cell phones and irritating ring tones and forgetting to turn off cell phones in cinemas and so on. In fact, cell phones seem to account for more boorish behaviour than almost any electronic device (with the possible exception of a ghettoblaster with a broken volume control). Yet more and more people carry cellphones around like mini life-support devices.

Unfair characterization? Of course. This is an ode of sorts to how much I hate being tethered to something that … rings. If people started carrying around alarm clocks that talked, I’d still be up in the front lines of protestors with the same set of objections, waving a banner about how much it all sucks. I’m overlooking the genuine uses of cellphones, like being able to schedule impromptu meetings with people, stuff like that.

I suppose that to me, being unavailable is also about freedom. Like email as opposed to IM, giving out a landline number as opposed to a cellphone is akin to a conversation on your own terms. I’m not in the house? Well, er. You can’t contact me anymore, can you? Try calling later.

Only, the real world intervenes from time to time. I’ve resisted the allure, the siren call of a cellphone with the Crazy Frog ringtone* for as long as I could. It’s too late to save myself now, save yourselves. Run. Flee while you can. Before it rings and imprisons you.

*The ringtone mentioned is purely for illustrative purposes. I’d probably run headfirst into a brick wall before having a ringtone like the Crazy Frog on any cellphone I possess.

It was threatening rain when I set off for home last night. Rain here is unlike rain in the tropics. It can go on and on, trickling away for hours on end without stopping. If you let it get to you or stop you from going where you want to go or doing what you need to do, you could be stuck in one place for hours.

In this country, ignoring the imminent threat of rain is the only sane choice.

So ignore it I did. Whipping up the hood of my trusty raincoat/weather jacket, I started my meandering way back home.

Lowering black clouds overhead. Halfway through my journey, I could hear drops starting to hiss down; a low steady thrumming on the ground. An inward groan. Ignore the rain all you want, it doesn’t make life any less wet.

And then the sound of drops falling abruptly changed. Hold a hand outside your protective bubble of misery and it was like being pelted with hundreds of tiny skittles. Not rain anymore, but hail!

It was fantastic. A veritable deluge of ball bearing sized ice balls, pelting down as fast as a full blown tropical moonsoon expells raindrops from the clouds. The smarties sized hailstones were actually hard enough to hit the ground and bounce - so for the first few minutes, it was like being trapped in a Lotto Powerball container. Fortunately (or perhaps strangely), the ground was warm - so every step you take in this hailstorm melted a few layers of skittle sized balls of ice. Why fortunate? Because the alternative would have like walking on ball bearings. Don’t try that one at home unless your rear end is well padded, you won’t enjoy the result.

Five minutes, then ten.. the ice balls kept on raining down. The ground became covered with crunchy pieces of ice. Almost like a winter wonderland. In April!

The weather in this country may suck, but at least you don’t get bored paying attention to it.

Slashdot is all about the pink and pretty ponies today. Since around 2002, Slashdot descends into editor supported mayhem on the 1st of April, with almost every story being insane, unbelieveable, improbable and more than a little silly. This year, there is also a pretty (no, I’m kidding) pink design that makes me want to stab my eyes out with a bent paper clip.

As commentors point out every year, the 1st of April is a good day to go out, enjoy the sunshine and generally avoid Slashdot. I’ve done only the last of those things, no Slashdot for me today. Is it my cynicism or have the jokes not been particularly clever this year? The only April Fools I fell for was a person in a certain IRC channel bringing news of a threatened law suit against the local anti-blogger by blog-advocate-in-chief. Bah. Don’t you just feel really silly when you seriously debate the limits of legal action against a person who decides to launch a blog based attack on your er.. activities online; only to find out it was a joke?

Google launches Romance. Yeah, clearly, finding a date is a hard search problem. I’d completely and utterly dismiss it out of hand, except for one thing. Remember Gmail? Yep. Announced on the 1st of April, 2004. So, err.. are they just testing the water to launch a competitor to AmIHotOrNot? Or Match? Naww. Can’t be.