He gets paid to write this crap?

From Paulo Coelho's column in DC:

A lion met a group of cats having a chat. "I'm going to eat them," he thought. But then he began to feel strangely calm. And he decided to sit down among them and pay attention to their conversation.

"Good God," said one of the cats, "we have been praying all afternoon! We beg you to make it rain rats from the sky!" "And up to now nothing has happened," said another. "What if the Lord does not exist?"

The sky remained silent. And the cats lost their faith.

The lion rose and went on his way, thinking, "Funny how things are, I was going to eat all these cats, but God stopped me. Even so, they stopped believing in divine grace. They were so worried about what they were lacking that they did not notice the protection they received."

Reminds me of a story I submitted as a kid to a competition that, in its entirety, went something like this: Ramu was a bad boy, God punished him, Ramu became a good boy. But there were two differences: a) I didn't win the competition b) I was five years old at that time.

Movie Review: Music and Lyrics

Hugh Grant with his understated British humour
Drew Barrymore - oh I wish I could do 'er

The movie was very good, felt my S.O.
While I thought it was only so so

Good in parts, but never rises to great heights
Wish Ms Barrymore had worn tights

Can't hold a candle to Love, Actually
Come to think of it, neither to A Lot Like Love, actually

What's with all the crappy verse, you ask...

(runs out of rhyming lyrics)

thecinema.in

I came across Bruce Eckel's post on Flex yesterday, and this brought to mind my recent e-commerce experience with Satyam Cinema. The site uses Flash and is a good example of how an RIA should be done. It was easily the best online shopping experience I've had in quite a while.

Note to self: Movie review of Music and Lyrics due on Friday

Helmets

From a letter to The Hindu:

Helmets may bring down the number of fatal accidents but they will certainly increase the number of accidents, given the weather in south India, especially during summer. Most of those who advocate compulsory wearing of helmets travel in air-conditioned cars and hardly have any first hand experience of wearing a helmet and riding a two-wheeler.

In any case, what is the need to wear a helmet in cities where the roads are in such a pathetic condition that speeding is impossible?

(Cough. Splutter. Clears nose of morning coffee)

1. Pray tell, what is the connection between summer weather and helmets and accidents? Poor visibility due to sweating?


2. I rode a bike for eight years before changing to a car, and I wore a helmet for all of those eight years.


3. Roads in pathetic conditions lead to the two-wheeler rider falling and hurting his ...

Why do I even bother replying to shoo-ins for the Darwin award?

It had to happen, didn't it?

Bloglines introduces something called The Wall of Images, you click on it and are shown a collage of interesting and not-so-interesting thumbnail images, changing in real time, but wait, after a minute or so you see a preponderance of pictures of breasts, which are from a porn site called Goddess. Sigh.

The Tao of the Cube

Be bent, and you will remain straight.
Be vacant, and you will remain full.
Be worn, and you will remain new.
-- Lao Tzu

I bought myself a Rubik's Cube the other day. I was never very good at solving the darn thing when I was a kid; I could only get one side right however hard I tried, so I wanted to see if I could do better now. It looks like my cube-solving skills as an adult are even worse, but I devised a better way to have fun with the thing: instead of trying to solve it, why not try to unsolve it, i.e. tweak things such that one ends up on the other end of the scale, with maximum entropy? My first goal was to end up with nine unique colours on each side, but a quick calculation indicated that there are only six colours to play with (duh). I have a feeling that this is easier than it sounds, but let's see how it goes. One way to spice it up would be to achieve maximum entropy in the least number of steps.

More Kalam-bashing

Here's yet another inane quote from you-know-who:

Thinking should become your capital asset, no matter whatever ups and downs you come across in your life.

Holy matrimony, Batman!

Regular posting will resume shortly.