What if life came with a search algorithm that had a recommendation algorithm like a Youtube playlist. Would the recommendations be a perfect match incorporating all my searches in life? Nahh....that cant be.
For one, my YT recommendations are shit. Using the same algo, my life reccos would also be shit. But then YT has been around for the 15years and they dont event represent half my life's search terms. My life algo would have a LARGER sample set with my whole life's data set to work with. And i scope my search terms on YT to videos. My life search would have infinites to domains worth of data.
It COULD be perfect !
Sigh...I would never know, because there would always be this 23 worth of time gap in the inputs. I will never experience it. I am too old.
But....SOME kid out there who was born in the last 15 years could.
That is just an mind boggling thought to think of!
One of the most beautiful songs of the 90s.
The wiki page for this song took me to a line which described Annie Lennox and this song with the following:
"successfully bridged the gap between Nineties pop sophistication and her ritzy hits with Dave Stewart".
Pop.Sophistication!
The 70s would have baulked at those words being used in the same sentence. Fuck broodiness.
The 80s were campy. Fuck bubblegum colors.
The 90s were serious, aware, conscious.Sophisticated.
And above all they were beautiful. Like this song.
I want to watch the original. But then I cringe. It cannot compare to this. Will it destroy my love for this song, forever? Fuck it, its worth a shot. Wish me luck!
Where did the idealism of the 90s go? The bands then wanted to change the world. The bands from then would now want to change the world back to then. Staley, Cornell, Cobain are all dead. So is MTV.
The kind of people whom I hate to share a film theatre with :
1.Mr I-hate-the-movie-and-so-should-everyone-else - typically seen asking for a "nayee pikture ki ticket" at the box office. Doesn't give a fuck what movie he is watching as long as he gets to sit in a movie theatre for 2-3 hours and watch some TnA action. True form of this creature emerges when he realises that instead of a Salman Khan/Rajnikanth/K-Jo flick, he has got a ticket to a Rituparno Ghosh or a Sweeney Todd kinda movie. Proceeds to lament his fate for the "bundle/bogus/bakwaas movie" to all and sundry and in the loudest possible voice. Repeats the phrase every 2-5 mins addressing it to everyone around him looking for approval. Usually finds support from another creature of his species who is sitting 5-6 rows away. They then proceed to have a conversation across their rows with a lot of "madarchod/behenchods" thrown in for effect.
2.Mr How-can-i-put-my-phone-on-vibrate: Thinks that vibrate mode on cell phones is only for desperate ladies. Wants to also find a lay for the night by playing his latest Himesh Reshammiya ring tone. Ergo, has his phone on the loudest possible volume so that even the heroine of the movie can hear it. Typically will get atleast 25 phone calls during the course of the movie. And being the extremely important person that he is, Mr. How-can-i-put-my-phone-on-vibrate will take atleast 60 seconds to pick up a phone call. Upon picking up the phone, will proceed to explain the exact location of the theatre that he is currently in, so as that he can be traced in case Mr George W Bush wants to call on him. Alternately uses this phone call to also explain to his assistant how important his 2 crore consignment is. Can be easily spotted in the crowd sporting atleast one or more of the following:
1. Tight Armani Exchange t-shirt over a big fat paunch
2. White snake skin shoes with pointy toes that are from the nether regions of the Texan Wild West
3. Gold chains around the neck and the wrist ala Bappi-da
4. A fat potbellied aunty wearing a tight kurti which was featured in the latest K-Jo movie.
3.Mr Trivia-freak-from-Hell: Knows anything and everything that has ever been written/blogged/insinuated about the actors/director/producer/make-up man of the movie. Will proceed to inform his companion of the same with extremely irritating alacrity at regular intervals and ensure that everyone around him also knows how well informed he is. Prime candidate to be featured in the next episode MTV's "One Tight Slap".
Ok so I am not quite as dead as this blog might make you thing. Life's just been a lil' hectic of late y'know. Work life has been gnawing into the remnants of my personal life and its not such a pretty picture I tell you. But I am back. Atleast for now.
Anyone following the NBA season would have heard of the big trades. Pau Gasol to LA to perform the perfunctory Robin act next to Kobe's Batman. I predict a championship ring for both next year. Kobe is getting his brains back in place and with his prodigious talent all he needed was a wingman to get him the through. And the 7-foot, free flowing, 18 feet jumper hitting Gasol is what Dirk Nowitzki was 3 years back. A European novice biding his time to prove his mettle. With Kevin Garnett moving to Celtics, these 2 teams have really put their hands up to be counted as contenders for the title.
On the flip side was the entire Jason Kidd to Dallas fiasco. Read a really funny take on it while the deal was going through the not-happening phase here. Pretty funny stuff.
So a quiz at KCircle is being done by me this Saturday. Have not had the most time to set a quiz but nonetheless, fundae would be unleashed. The KQA Music Quiz done by Thejaswi Udupa( which we narrowly came 2nd in, damn that WALTWO) was a super quiz which has set me up in the unleash mode. The question of the quiz( ..and the crack of the quiz by yours truly ;) ) was this funda about how the song got its name. Dont we all love the decadence of 80s hair metal.
Now onto the obligatory video that would go with this post. If you haven't heard KillSwitch Engage then do it NOW!! Their 4th studio album As Daylight Dies is currently ruling my Ipod right now( along with Eagles' Long Road out of Eden) . This is their second video that album which incidentally is for my favourite song of the album titled " Arms of Sorrow".
Ok so software folks are typically not the kinda people who you would really want to meet up for dinner and with and have an engaging conversation with. Most of the folks that i have spent time with, and maybe thats been my misfortune, have been the kinds who haven't really gone beyond pink floyd, "nothing else matters", "so cool yaar", coffee day,nose hair, butter chicken, tight tshirts over paunches, nokia n70s,robin cook, karan johar and template classes. There are a few who I have met, but not that many.
And then there is Mr I. M. Wright. To any Microsoft guy who doesn't know him...get the hell away from my blog. This guy is the funniest guy to ever write about very serious software. Frankly, I am not the kinda guy who would really go out looking for tech blogs unless my job depended on it. But this guy is one guy whose columns I would really search for on our internal newsletters. He was the guy who would compare triage meetings to blood thirsty wars. Who compared his 40 year old life to Microsoft's evolution. Who wrote about important stuff in the way that you could actually read about it and remember.
And now, this guy has his own MSDN blog. Hallelujah! Eric Brechner aka I.M. Wright, welcome to the net.Its about time the outside world read you. Read his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/eric_brechner/ . It has about a microcosm of the stuff that he writes for internal MS consumption, but it is appetising enough.
Now onto the video for today. Well, this one is a special one. Its a song that made me fall in love with Pearl Jam. Watch this video and you will know why. They were so 90s, so raw and so fucking angry with the world. And this song is my favouritest car song ever. It made scribble song lyrics in text books, carve Pearl Jam on the classroom desks. It makes me wanna jump in my cube right now as I listen to it. The energy of this song is just something else. If you ever wanna catch me in a crowded place, you just need to play this song. I cannot not start headbanging!
The search for the arcane is killing quizzing. Some of the recent quizzes that I have been to, have simply been mind numbingly boring. In their bid to set uncrackable questions, QMs are getting questions from the arbitest levels of obscurity. Blame wikipedia for it, if you will, it has made fundaes too readily available for easy consumption. A small piece of advice to wannabe quizmasters. Read BOOKS!! They provide some really good fundaes if you can put in some effort.
Which brings me to the other point of this entry. Some voucher's won in some quizzes funded some really nice reading material. The first was "The Man who knew Infinity" , a biography of the Ramanujan. Excellent reading, a tad too impersonal though. And from an engineer's perspective, would have loved to see more in depth mathematical explanations in it. But nevertheless, this gave me some impetus to get the rust of my brain and search the net for some good reading material on the same. This is what I found. Read it at leisure for it will keep you absorbed for days if you are caught unawares.
The next book that caught my fancy was "Celebrating the best of Urdu Poetry". I have managed to read quite a few vernacular writings, but unfortunately never had a chance to lay my hands on real urdu poetry. Nay, probably my lack of understanding of the Urdu language has been the reason behind this hesitancy to pick up Urdu text. But this book turned out to be a nice surprise. Urdu poetry in Hindi for a change and with English translations. I am sure it hardly reflects the best of Urdu Poetry since 300 odd couplets can hardly do justice to such a genre but what the hell, its good for a start. Zauq,Meer, Ghalib, Iqbal all the doyens are suitably represented here. A nice read through and through.
Which brings us to the video accompanying this post. Some people have questioned the fact that there haven't been any good metal vids put up as yet. So here's the fix. Archenemy- My Apocalypse
