So he decided that this was perhaps not such a wise move. There is a video presentation explaining why. The summary is that the representative he is fighting against is pretty strong, and for a first hand politician, the margin of defeat is going to be enormous. And “losing big” is not the best way to start such a campaign.
Nice quote I read today which summarizes the frustrations of newbies in the FOSS world - I would RTFM if there was an FM to FR.
Resurrection of lug-delhi planet. I intend to put in different planets based on my interests. I am calling it a planetary system :-P Hopefully others would find it successful.
In other news, I have been trying out Twitter for the past few days. It is turning out to be quite addictive. Aren’t we often stuck at times, with nothing to do for hours, with just your mobile to give you company? Instead of fiddling with it, or taking lame pictures, vent yourself out on Twitter. Just keep it under 140 chars please. ;) Updating through gtalk sounds interesting till you find out that there is no way that pidgin would keep a count of characters for you and your last update has just been br0ken into two parts. About time there is a pidgin plugin which keeps track of your word count.
Flickr’s camera stats is an enormously humbling resource for me. It would be the most powerful message for newbie photography enthusiasts - creativity rules technology any day, so stop thinking too much about your camera. The kind of amazing photos taken using basic point-and-shoot cameras by talented photographers from around the world, keeps me firmly rooted to the ground while I lug my bulky Rebel Xti wherever I go.
I just saw the update on Lessig’s blog - he is actually considering running for Congress this year! You can find more at http://lessig08.org/.
Lessig’s announcement last year of the shift of his efforts over the next decade had significantly changed the way I look at myself. I had been involved in LUGs and FOSS advocacy for almost eight years by then. But I suddenly realized (and perhaps there are quite a few people out there who always felt that way about me) that I am nothing more than an armchair activist. Emailing about software freedom, harping about the evils of software patents from the comforts of my home, giving gyaan to people on FOSS lists mean nothing, or almost next to nothing.
Dummyhead recording
I was recently introduced to the world of binaural recordings, and was blown away with the dramatic experience.
What is special about binaural sound is that you are totally immersed into the sound. No, the sound isn’t around you like in 5.1 channel surround sound. Rather, the sound is almost within your head, as if your ears were there, and the sound is moving all around you … so realistic that every one I introduced to this magic, spent the first few minutes in disbelief. In “the sounds of the barber shop” (link given below), the telephone rings so naturally that I almost jumped up the first time to see whose phone is ringing near me.
This has got to be the funniest stuff I have read. I have seen some bad translations, but this confidently beats everything I have seen.
Wasp attacking the roach
This is probably one of the the most chilling of wildlife stories I have ever read. And the video in the article was as scary.
The wasp, which lives in tropical regions of Africa, India and the Pacific Islands, relies on cockroaches for its grisly life cycle. But unlike many venomous predators, which paralyse their victims before eating them or dragging them back to their lair, the wasp’s sting leaves the cockroach able to walk, but unable to initiate its own movement.
Really nice quote in an article of the current issue of Time. I had never looked at the differences in this way before. The actual comparison here is done between Islamic societies and the west, but you can mostly replace “Islamic” with “Eastern” over here.
“That’s the big difference between us,” he shrugged. “You Westerners make love in public and pray in private. We Muslims do exactly the reverse.”
The author raises a very important question in this article:
At the nub of debates over Muslim integration in Europe lies the question: what’s decent to do in public? Display your sexuality, or your faith? The French have no problem with bare breasts on billboards and TV, but big problems with hijab-covered heads in public schools and government offices. Many Muslims feel just the opposite.
Very embarrassingly, after a spate of reinstalls, crashes, backup of wrong copies and my policy of destroying old backups in the house, I discovered that I have lost the secret keys of my GPG keypair(I had not used them for a while). The revocation certificate, printed on a scrap of paper, was lost during my relocation to Bangalore.I was always procrastinating its re-generation, and I seem to have paid for this now.
So, for all you folks who had signed my key ID 0xA1290FF3, that key is lost. Of course, the fact that it is lost can only be confirmed when I meet each of your personally and tell you. As much is possible, I will meet up and do that.
The only major issue that I have felt in my use of Ubuntu till date(and to be fair, this is not ubuntu specific) is the problems I keep having with wireless setup. I can live with any of it’s other flaws.
In earlier releases, the problem had been WPA support. The default install didn’t have wpa_supplicant, and to install wpa_supplicant, you needed to have network first, dammit! So I had to run around looking for a network cable, sit next to my AP, patiently download the package, figure out the unnecessarily verbose documentation and finally set up the stuff(in two terminals, one keeping an eye on the messages of wpa_cli).