No Telly [Update]

Ok, so I guess I was a little quick to judge NetFlix's customer service yesterday. I talked to Matt, a longtime NetFlix subscriber, today and he said that there has really never been any reason for him to actually call the customer service. Everything is fully automated and available online. And I also got an answer to my question about real customer service agent getting replaced with an FAQ list. It happened because of the business model that Amazon and NetFlix have brought to the table. They are able to offer such reduced prices and other incentives precisely because they of their streamlined business model - real agents need real salaries.

Also most of the people on that particular thread I mentioned yesterday with the complaints were not really the sharpest tacks in the bunch, which I agree with.

So, with Matt's vehement recommendation and my sister's gentle reminder that a little TV might actually be good for me, I am reconsidering NetFlix.

Of course, a summer with nothing but books also sounds great.

What's a guy to do?

No Telly

I was thinking about getting NetFlix while I am in NY for the summer. I found this interesting blog where people post comments and discuss NetFlix's service. I gotta say, when I read this particular thread, I was bothered and started having second thoughts about signing up.

Actually the real reason I found this blog was because I had to Google for the NetFlix Customer Service 800 number!! "Why Google for it?", you say? "Just go to their website and click on the Contact Us link!" Well, I tried that. They don't have an 800 number on their website. The reason for this eludes me. When did this happen? When did talking to a Customer Service agent get replaced with reading an FAQ list?

Anyway, so let's see what the alternatives are. Blockbuster? I don't think so. Walmart? I am just not sure if they are good enough in this DVD rental business right now. Plus, neither of them has a customer service number on its website.

So, then I thought that since I am going to get broadband out there anyway, why not just get one of those digital cable + internet deals? It would be easier and cheaper.

And then it hit me. I keep complaining that I don't have enough time to read. This is a perfect opportunity to escape the dramatically mediocre programming on television and get some serious reading done.

And so it is decided. There shall be no television for 3.5 months. I know I am going to experience some serious withdrawal but I think my hard-bound friends can help me get over it without any problem.

I Return ... Unencumbered

So, exams are finally over. Semester ends tomorrow and I am going to be free ... for about 3 days and then I head to IBM Research in New York, for what promises to be a grueling 3.5 months, except ... guess what ... no exams :-)

Anyway, I have been unplugged from my blog for about 2 months now (except for a thought here and there) and I felt like the first thing I should do after the exam is over (5 minutes ago) is to feed my bloggy and so here I am.

BTW, just because I have not been writing does not mean that I have not been reading other people's blogs. I regularly read Sammy's (now I can start working on her challenge) and I recently discovered the lair of SuperKate - Adventures in Narcissism. Fantastic stuff and of course, she holds a special place in my heart since she was nice enough to leave a comment on my nostalgic post saying that she loves India as well and all Indophiles are just ... like I said ... special.

Anyway, sorry if this post is a little inane ... just wanted to re-attach the blogging tube. (Someone, somewhere, is using a lame-o-meter on this post and the score is off the chart).

I Miss My India !

It just hits me sometimes - it's usually while listening to awesome Hindi music or when I have not talked to Mamma, Papa and Didi for a while - I really miss India !!

Hey India ... I should have said this a long time ago ... I love you !

How I have missed you !!!

All right, so for the 3 people who read my blog, I am back !! I was Powerbook-less for about 10 days and so completely de-blogged. I just missed it so much. Welcome back, my friend !!

An Older Poem

Was indulging in a bit of ego-massaging by searching for my own name on Yahoo! Search. Found this old poem about pollution that I had written as a sophomore in college. This has always been one of my most favorite pieces, environmental connections notwithstanding. It's a little sophomoric of course ...

The Audacity Of A By-Product

Omnipresent...
Omnivorous...
You made me
I will unmake you all.

Inescapable...
Unstoppable...
You bred me
I will wipe out your brood.

Fastidious...
Impervious...
You fed me
I will devour your souls.

An Ironic Doom...
A Fitting Death...
You let me breathe
I will choke you dead.

The slave shall live...
The masters will die...
You let me loose
Catch me if you can!!!

First triple-pronged post

My usual posts are about one thing and only that thing. I came across something today that actually addresses 3 things that I have always wanted to talk about:

1) Macs Rock : This comes as no surprise to people who actually own macs. There is a perennial belief in the computing universe that:

Macs are good for the "creatively inclined" (the writers, graphic designers and photographers) and the more "technologically challenged" (parents, grandparents et al).

Somehow, over time, that belief begat this belief:

Macs is not for the more serious workers among us - say, for example, scientists, engineers and programmers.

I fall in that category and believe me, the second is complete hogwash. The Mac Rocketh ! It is a Unix machine, only cooler. Read more here. Oh, and if you don't want to take my word, may be you will listen to Paul Graham[1] in his essay Return Of The Mac. No? How about Tim O'Reilly[2] in Watching Alpha Geeks ? No? Now you are just being difficult !!

2) Hackers : You should have noted above in Paul Graham's essay, that he refers to hackers. If not there, you MUST have come across it somewhere or the other. Chances are, that if this "somewhere" is the television or the newspapers, you have come to believe that all hackers are crooks. Even more hogwash ! I beg you to read this ! If you want more, you can even go and get this and this.

3) Computer Science Research : Another issue that Paul Graham nailed right on the head in the Mac essay was the fact that what researchers and hackers (I hope you read (2) above) do today is what usually tends to become the dominant technology of the future. Yes, it might sound like I am tooting my own horn but I am not. You want examples? Here you go :

• Google : 2 PhD Students in Stanford


• Linux : 1 Graduate Student at University of Helsinki, Finland


• BSD Unix : Students at University of California, Berkeley


• Cisco Systems : Computer Operations Staff at Stanford


• Mach-Kernel (the core of Apple's Mac OS X operating system) : Reserachers at Carnegie Mellon


• The World Wide Web (what we call the "Internet" or "The Net" or "Online" today) : A graduate student at CERN. Thank you, Mr. Tim Berners-Lee (It just seemed wrong not to mention his name !)


• Mosaic (the first web browser and precursor of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer) : NCSA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
  

So there. I've said my piece(s). Thanks to Paul Graham for providing the impetus[3].

---

[1] if you are interested in functional programming and LISP would know him from On Lisp and ANSI Common Lisp.

[2] If you do anything with computers, you know O'Reilly Books.

[3] His other essays are equally brilliant.

"As Time Goes By"

I just finished watching the first and second complete season of the BBC show As Time Goes By. A show that would be referred to today as a "brit-com", a term derived from the American neologism "sitcom" ... which is anachronistric, actually, because BBC was making comedies long before the American networks came up with the idea of a "situational comedy".

Anyway, back to the outstanding comedy of As Time Goes By ... that show has something that I think almost all modern day sitcoms and their trans-atlantic counterparts lack. The humor in this show is rooted in wit - actual honest-to-god wit ! It does not have to resort to buffoonery with props, inane gestures and facial expressions or even lewd and suggestive double entendres, all of which seems disguised as humor these days*. I am talking about the sort of wit that I witnessed dripping from the dialogue in Charade (to name one such masterpiece), or coming out of the mouth of the inimitable John Cleese as Basil Fawlty in the hilarious Fawlty Towers. Refreshing to say the least. Dame Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer are absolutely brilliant, and so is the supporting cast.

I first TiVoed this entire series from PBS and fell in love with it. Just recently bought the first 2 complete seasons and I am almost on the verge of shelling out the $100 and buy the rest of the series all at once (all seasons except the last 2 are available). This is the only TV show other than M*A*S*H for which I have felt the desire to own.

*Note: For all those who think, upon reading this post, that I am trying to put down the art of physical comedy, please rest assured. Even a dolt like me would not dare to compare the mediocrity that is today's sitcom with the genius of Chaplin , Laurel & Hardy or The Three Stooges.

Weapon Of Choice

Ok, tell me that you have seen the Fatboy Slim video Weapon of Choice. If you have not, please add it to your "I must see this" list (you do have one, don't you ?). Actually. you know what ... you can cross it off that list now, because you can see it right now, right here.

When I first saw this video, I could not believe that Christopher Walken was the guy in the video. When I picture Chris Walken, I picture scenes from Deer Hunter, Dead Zone and Last Man Standing (to name a fraction of the great stuff he has done). The dance is pretty great, I gotta say !

My image of Chris Walken took a further hit (in a good way) when I saw an old SNL episode with him hosting ! He was hilarious !! I mean it ... fabulously hilarious !

Go watch the video.

IBM it is !

It is final. I will be interning at the IBM T.J.Watson Research Center in Yorktown, NY. I got the final offer today. Have to start looking for housing now. The duration is 14 weeks. As soon as the offer arrived, I emailed the people at Microsoft Research and told them that I was going to accept IBM's offer and thanked them for their interest.

I will be working with the Statistical Text Analytics group down at Watson. I am reading up on a lot of stuff that I will need as background. I am very excited about working in this area. Hopefully I will get a good direction towards what will become my dissertation.

I can't believe I am going to be in NY !! I am still thinking about where to live for those weeks ... NYU has some summer housing available - mmmm ... Living in Manhattan !! But I have heard that the commute is a killer. I guess I could stay in Yorktown and then hang out in the city on the weekends.

Any advice from New Yorkers or former IBM interns will be more than welcome !

"Ending The Feud"

Ok, so I used to write ... a lot ! Poetry and short stories were my favorites. I have not written anything in a while - various reasons (nothing that can't be classified as lame). I wrote something yesterday. At first, I was not sure if this was the right place to post them. But then I thought about it and here is how I convinced myself :

1) It IS a "green idea".
2) This IS my blog.
3) Shameless self-promotion is the way of the world.

Anyway, if I hear comments on the order of "what is this crap?!" and "for shame !", I will rethink the move. Until then, enjoy:

Ending The Feud

Must we fight?
I know I have paid little attention to you, old friends,
in the years gone by,
for reasons that, now, matter to little or no ends.

Tumultuous times ... those years were,
recovery from a broken heart arrived slow.
Rose-colored glasses came off,
and a good helping of life came in tow.

Although refuge I did seek,
among your brothers, born of fathers and mothers nobler than I.
Faithful companions they proved to be,
more animate than untrustworthy humans, a worthy ally.

Pens and papers, they were to be feared,
fear of pain and solitude, that accompanied you in those dark days.
I learned to live ... no, exist
without the craft, without the art - carry on in a dull haze.

Today I feel the void,
it has grown big and black.
Today I discern the need,
I must have my craft back !

And so I genuflect and ask for forgiveness,
please end this crippling blight.
I must have you in my corner,
because, to live ... I must write !

Firefox has a commercial (finally) !

Just read on the fabulous Ad blog - AdJab (I discovered them because they were doing live online coverage of all the superbowl commercials and so I did not have to sit in front of the TV all that time) that an enterprising student at the Savannah College of Art & Design has made a slick firefox commercial. Very nicely done.

I am glad to see that Firefox has had its first step in direct media advertising, no matter how small.

Instant Text Collages [Update]

There is now a better way to "spell" your favorite words using pictures. This is better because:

a) It uses Flickr

b) It gives you the HTML source for the "spelling", so that you don't have to do the screenshot hack that I had to do in my earlier post.

Of course, there is an invariant here ... it remains cool-but-useless.

The Lion In Winter

I am watching the new The Lion in Winter - the one with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close - and it is pretty good. Well done, well acted, well presented, but you know, I sincerely don't understand the reason for (re)making this movie. Is there a single mortal soul out there in the world, who thinks that there was something wrong with the first one or that someone could do it better ?!! I mean ... how could you possibly play Henry and Eleanor better than Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn ? Isn't that ... well ... impossible ?

No, seriously ... I am asking.

Instant Text Collages

I promised myself when I started this blog that I would not post links to cool-but-useless stuff that I find here and there while traipsing on the internet. Well, I guess there comes a time to break every promise.


This is very cool-but-useless !! It allowed me to turn this :


Nitin Rules !

into this :




[Note: The above image is a screenshot. The website actually gives you a separate image for each letter. I was just too lazy to copy each one separately and put them together.]