Friday, April 28, 2006
I recently bought a Mac mini (yay! yay!) and it started up and asked me for a name. This got me thinking about how I name computers. My first several computers (A 286, 386, and a 486) remained nameless, but every one of them after that had a nice glorious name.
Almost always female, this name was devised mostly at the spur of the moment, often from books that I’d be reading then. Ione for example, a lean P-166 machine, was named after one of the AIs in Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy (btw, that’s still one of the best non-core Scifi books I’ve read till date).
My bro named my current primary machine (An Athlon 1800). He calls it BLAZE. It’s a name that I’m admittedly not too fond of :-). There was also a machine called Seven (A P3-500) of the Seven of Nine fame. My notebook (A Centrino) is Athena, the Greek Goddess. You get the drift ;-).
What’s up with those machines now? Ione, which currently my mom very sporadically uses, is probably going to be given away soon. Seven, which I’d been using until now as my secondary box is going to be offloaded to her, and Blaze, well, it still has a few years up its sleeve, especially with a stock new 7800GT 7900GT in its innards. My notebook is still the box I do most of my work on, although I’m slowly offloading a lot to my Mac.
Well, what did I name my Mac mini? Ayesha, She who must be obeyed. [2] 
Tags: chaff • reading
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Saturday, April 8, 2006
Statutory Disclaimer: I don’t know anything I’m
talking about, and even if some of these make
sense, it’s definitely local wisdom. Don’t go
applying this all over the world. People differ,
their attitudes differ.
Begin:
I suppose a side-effect of knowing many people
is that you experience lots of different things.
That leads to some of your ideas crystallizing
into definite thoughts, and losing a lot of
misconceptions. These past two months of my life
have been very eventful. Unforgettable. A Learning
Experience. I was asked out (to which I said a
very polite no), two of my closest friends are
going through relationship-hell, I’ve been
talking about this to DP a lot, and one close
friend asked me very seriously in class, “How do
you go about talking to girls?” It is then,
perhaps natural that I’d like to write down
something about relationships.
Of the romantic variety. Or those flavors which
are somewhere in between, in confused, muddled
waters. I can’t state this authoritatively, but
I’m sure a fifth of my college-mates are in a
relationship. Of those, around 95% don’t
survive the real world. The question, of course,
is whether to
take the plunge. While tales of bitter breakups
and broken hearts, and scary stories of first-love
-gone-bad-life-wrecked-people abound, I’ll
definitely say that you should. How do you know
you’ve met the right girl if you haven’t met the
wrong one?
If you like a
girl, do let her know. Rejections are a part of
life. Some girls learn to do it well (as a
corollary, some guys learn to take it well), and
you can remain friends for life. Unless you’re a
full-blown jerk (and sometimes even then) every
girl is flattered when you make her understand
you’re interested in her. Don’t let her convince
you otherwise. And I’ve known guys who have gone
to the ends of the earth to make a ‘No’ ‘Yes’.
Some of them have succeeded. Is doing something
like that worth the effort? Maybe. If you are sure
you can make the ‘No’, something along the lines
of ‘Yes, oh god, Yes!’ 
I’ll advise you to give
it a shot. But no does mean a no. Don’t assume.
Follow through on your proposal. The worst things
to do is lose interest after a while, so be really
sure this is somebody you like. Think of her first,
put yourself second. Do you honestly think she’d be
better off with you? Are you going away somewhere
else after a while leaving her hanging, you jerk?
Unless you’re sure, be her friend, that works out
best in the long-run.
How do you test the waters? How do you find
girls who are interested in you? It is not hard.
There are lots of girls around. Be interesting
yourself. Cultivate humility, good manners, some
measure of talent, and conversational skills. Try
to make her laugh. Be attentive. Be assertive, not
a bully. Don’t listen to everything she says. Have
your principles. And, don’t be desperate for her
to fall for you, that’s probably the biggest turn- off.
What if you just want to have fun? What if you
don’t want anything serious, just a casual fling?
Nothing lasting, just some ephemeral joy. The
first rule perhaps is that there is a cost to
everything. Nothing comes cheap. When people get
to know each other first, that’s perhaps the best
time of the relationship. Both are on their best
behavior, because both want to impress. After a
while, familiarity leads to those self-imposed
rules relaxing. When you get into a relationship
with the intent of having ‘just fun’, those rules
relax much earlier. This, more often than not,
leads to an explosive breakup. But that’s okay
with you, isn’t it? Nothing comes without
emotional baggage. I know friends of both genders
who thought they could handle a casual fling, and
who couldn’t. It’s tough to accept another man
having a go at ‘your’ girl, but wise men do learn
to move on. Oh, but at the same time, I know
people who have three girlfriends at a time
and are insanely happy about it. (Lesson:
people are different, figure out which category
you fall into).
Another oft-quoted dilemma is the Women-are-
from-Venus conundrum. “Who can understand them,
man?” Well, you don’t necessarily need to
understand them to love them. It’s very true that
girls think differently. They have different
priorities (looks, attitude, appearances, ego, are
some which I and many men don’t understand) and
different interests, but find a girl whose core
values (not “We both hate Will & Grace”, but “We
both think money is not so important”) are the
same. That helps, but is not a surefire method for longevity.
One other thing perhaps, is to always be
yourself. Don’t make her think you are somebody
else. (White)Lies like that never
survive. Do believe that you are special and you
deserve someone special. Also have the ability to
make her feel special
(And that is probably enough of Vishnu playing
a censored Dr. Ruth. Hope this’ll help somebody)
Tags: musings
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Monday, April 3, 2006
I’m sorry I haven’t been able to post much this past month. Been extremely busy, but here’s a short bulleted list of the stuff I’ve done:
- Launch a wireless promotion for one of the biggest actors in the Malayalam movie industry.
- Launch a reverse bid campaign for one of the largest retail stores in Asia/Middle East. (And do last-minute crunch-time coding for it.)
- Work with the two best WVAS providers in India to refine our services
- Introduce Web 2.0 to a new technical team of people.
Interesting? Yeah. Tiring? Hell, yeah!
Tags: chaff
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Monday, April 3, 2006
I gave an AJAX talk at Dishaa ‘06 yesterday. It was attended by a few interested people and I managed to sum up and introduce the technology in around 45 minutes. Work on my other projects meant that I had to leave soon, and also not attend the cultural session either yesterday or today. I helped out from afar as much as I could.
People who want my slides from the show are welcome to contact me.
Tags: me outside
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