Success

It is not necessary that I win every battle in life.
It would be quite sufficient to know that I fought them in the best way I could.

Blogger Help : What is BlogThis! ?

Blogger Help : What is BlogThis! ?: "BlogThis! is an easy way to make a blog post without visiting blogger.com. Once you add the BlogThis! link to your browser's toolbar, blogging will be a snap. Or rather, a click. Clicking BlogThis! creates a mini-interface to Blogger prepopulated with a link to the web page you are visiting, as well as any text you have highlighted on that page. Add additional text if you wish and then publish or post from within BlogThis!

There are two ways to use BlogThis!: if you use Windows and Internet Explorer, you can use BlogThis! straight from the Google Toolbar. If you're on another browser, just drag the link below to your browser's Link bar. Then, whenever the mood strikes, click BlogThis! to post to your blog:

BlogThis! <-- drag this link to your browser's Links bar"

Cool shit, ain't it? Now some dude has come up with GmailThis! :)

Rock-Paper-Scissors

Most of us have fond memories of playing rock-paper-scissors as children. It never occured to me that a World Championship would be held one day (with a prize of $50,000 too!!)

After reading Fortune's Formula (supposedly for its coverage of Shannon, but in reality because it was the most convenient thing lying around on a lazy Saturday evening when my computer broke down yet again), I am in this frame of mind thinking about every action as a probability, adding more and more things to the list of 'random events' and trying to predict or analyse them.

And this morning, guess what was waiting for me in my google reader? A freakonomics post over the weekend, with a link to the authors' posts on the 2006 edition, and viewer's suggestions for rock paper scissors strategies... yes... real strategies meant in the serious sense... like "Open with scissors". People outguessing each other... statistically (scissors is used least...29.6%, so use paper a lot!), psychologically (beginners begin with rock, as they believe it to be solid, so use paper against them), reverse psychology (experienced players expect a rock against them, so start with scissors) and just plain cheating (extending a match into a 'best of 3 contest')

Makes me think how many books have been written in the outguessing game. Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene is one book I remember. There was a whole chapter about Strategies... Eagles and Doves, strategies in the Eagle-Dove game, comparison of pro-active, inactive, reactive and random strategies... if there were jobless people then, it must have been those scientists who programmed strategies for random events just to test them out. Ed Thorpe's books on Blackjack... which I haven't read, but are supposedly much more mathematical and less speculative... John Kelly's Information-Price relationship in a random game (derived from strategies to beat random noise in Claude Shannon's information model). A million books on how to "Beat the Market".... (Ok..just 4082 in Amazon)

I wonder if somehow somewhere deep inside everyone, there is a daemon that tells us that we can outwit everyone else... Is there a psychological term for this phenomenon? If not, I claim the right to name it Foxitis....

A night of shakti

JM gets his payback....

Shakti - Shankar goes berserk!

Speechless!!! Truly gods!

Shakti - the original Masters

Remember Shakti - Ma No Pa

Zakir Hussein:
tabla in Remember Shakti concert.
tabla + drums in Giriraja Sudha Live
tabla + drums + another instrument in Ma No Pa...

No more words... just ecstasy...

Giriraja Sudha

I meant this one....




... but the other one is equally good...

Shakti all day long...

Pandora and Hope

Today I got a mail from Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora. While I was pleasantly surprised to see his name in my mailbox, it lasted only till I got inside.

Pandora was closing down outside the US. Or, more accurately, it was being shut down by an outrageous RIAA ruling, which hikes rates for internet radio stations by around 250% (update: factoring in other new admin fees, it works out to 400-1000%) !!! And so, last.fm among many other stations will be affected.

I am guessing the RIAA, which should stand for Really Idiotic Association of (stuck-up) Assholes, went all the way, bribing a senator or two to get this legislation done extra quick. What with the Government working overtime to produce a result on the Iraqi occupation and the security of the United States, RIAA obviously felt this was more important.

I immediately googled for mroe news, and got to the Pandora blog, where thousands of supporters pledged support and tried what they could, to send letters of petitions to senators and convince Tim to move to Europe, where he wouldn't be hounded by stupidity. But what will the senators think? and What will they implement? Does anyone think a senator is gonna come up on the dais and seek re-election because he opposed an RIAA ruling and saved internet radio in that state? Or will neo-speak about Iraq be more effective wven when he does not take any action?

I hope Pandora will be back again, but pragmatically, I do not see much chance of the government backing up and reversing a decision within days of implementing it. So, I think I will just have to bid Pandora a teary farewell.

(Update: People have been proactive.... If you read this in the US, please go to http://www.savenetradio.org/ to see if you can do your bit. (link to Petition) An 'equality' bill has been introduced in Washington DC today. There is a faint sliver of hope now...)

(Update: it looks like anyone can send a petition from the above link... No personal stuff, except your location is asked for and recognised... so everyone is welcome...)

Tribute to Charlie Kaufman

As an aspiring short story writer, I have come across many personalities that truly show how much imagination the human mind is capable of. Charlie Kauffman is one of those rare, truly gifted individuals, who can be ranked alongside Jules Verne and Arthur Clarke in producing some of the most truly unbelievable ideas for the world to wonder about.

I have seen both Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind before, without truly appreciating how such ideas, commonplace though they might be, can be woven into a tight knit story. And tonight, it was a revelation. Watching BJM for the second time, sparks of genius become truly apparent. There are very few examples outside Kubrick's masterpieces, including the Matrix 1 (2 and 3 degerated into mystic nonsense and graphic stunts), Fight Club, Seven, Pi, AI and Requiem for a Dream. These two masterpieces manage to infuse the same amount of intensity into outworldly ideas.

BJM is a movie that makes you sit up and take notice. John Malkovich (playing himself) is brilliant and versatile, letting the viewer actually see him lose control and assume another personality. John Cusack becomes the puppeteer he plays in a great supporting role and the Maxine woman exudes evil, unlike Connie Nielsen's failed attempt in the Devil's Advocate. But what really clinched it was the cinematography and the direction of Spike Jonze (don't ask me - never heard of him before this), who is apparently Sofia Coppola's ex... In the first movie he has made (and going by his record, probably the only one he will ever make), Jones brings Kauffman's disturbing imaginations to life. The 'from-within' scenes, and the use of some amazingly skilled camera angles, to actually make it look like Cusack or Malkovich were world-class puppeteers were very well done.

Charlie Kauffman and Darren Aronofsky are the kind of writers Indian cinema so desperately needs, in its search for materiel beyond rich-girl-loves-poor-boy stories.