Hari's Corner

Here's my next edition of Geeky and Meeky. It's entitled "The Ultimate Transformation." Hope you like this!

Negativity: there's so much of it going around in the world that it's hard to stay positive. I don't know what promotes negativity, but one thing I'm certain of is that a lot of people work really hard to propagate it. Through the media, through newspapers, through the internet and even through personal contact, bad news travels faster than the speed of light. The front page of newspapers inevitably covers some sensationalized story which spoils our morning breakfast. When you turn on a television news channel, the chances of seeing a report on some violence in some part of the world is quite high. Then again, many people we meet in our daily lives seem to thrive on some kind of gloom and seem keen on sharing that with others. It's hard to stay positive in such a set up.

One thing I've learned is that negativity is such an easy trap to fall into. Pick any topic for discussion and it's possible to reinforce wrong notions and destroy goodwill very easily. And most likely, people pick up that bit very easily. Hard work which produces excellent results seldom make the headlines. But one small failure amidst all that success attracts the maximum attention. The successful launch of a space rocket takes up less space while a technical failure or a hitch is highlighted. It's not just the media either. It's also about some people who seem to take pleasure in highlighting the flaws of others in order to hide and cover their own insecurities. Maybe they feel better as a result of that. Maybe they want to ruin other people's joy and happiness when they themselves are so wrapped in misery so as to derive a sadistic pleasure out of doing so. No matter what, they spend all their lives at it, achieving very little else. It just takes a few drops of poison to ruin a whole pot of rice. Removing or extracting that poison from the food is probably a hundred times more difficult and time-consuming than putting it in in the first place. It's wiser to discard the poisoned food and cook afresh.

The only solution to kill negativity is to avoid it and remain positive. I have to emphasize that part. You have to avoid it. Combating negativity with positive energy can be time consuming and wasteful particularly in issues which really don't make any difference in one's life. It's much easier just to block one's mind from such issues and focus on what is really useful. For that reason I've tried hard to keep this blog positive in tone and content. I've found that being negative kills creativity to a large extent. On many occasions, I've been sorely tempted to criticize and condemn other people, but I've refrained from doing so because it can be an extremely addictive but worthless pastime. On so many occasions, I've been outraged by something I read either in the newspapers or on the internet, but I've refrained from commentary and put that out of my mind as quickly as possible. Maybe I can even get additional traffic by promoting controversy here. But in the long run, such content will only ruin the tone of my writings. It will ruin my creativity, it will kill my sense of humour and diminish the joy of writing. More importantly it will ruin my mood and plunge me into needless flame wars with random unpleasant strangers who are better avoided.

I've said it before in other ways, but for those who've always been wondering why I've never spoken out on sensitive issues on this blog, this is the answer. Negativity has that ability to suck up precious energy that can be better spent in productive ways.

I didn't think I would do this again so soon, but I want to continue sharing the more interesting articles I read around the internet and particularly blogs. When I say interesting, I mean things which interest me primarily even if I might not agree with the article author's perspective on some issues. Nevertheless, read and judge for yourselves if you have the time.

Corey Thompson writes about his experiences with ATI video cards on Linux in his article ATI Cards on Ubuntu (or any other Linux). ATI have always lagged behind NVIDIA in driver support, but recent developments suggest that the reverse might become true in the not-too-distant future. I still remember how I struggled to get 3D acceleration to work with my Radeon 9600Pro the first time I used Linux. Things have improved a great deal since then and the news continues to be encouraging on the Linux hardware support front.

Sudipta's article on Losers Inc. is a very vehement and sardonic commentary on the state of teachers in India. He has a point here, but I wish the article wasn't so forceful. The point is well made though a few commenters missed the sarcasm and interpreted it literally. Personally I don't have such strong opinions on that subject so I couldn't make up my mind whether I agreed with his anger or not, but there is no doubt that the article raises some pertinent questions.

Snoskred's post on her fear of dogs rings very true. My Fears Come Back to Me As A Surprise is a well written account of her fear of dogs and a couple of traumatic incidents involving savage dog attacks. Too many dog owners fail to understand how this fear of dogs can affect people and think that everybody should be friendly with dogs. I don't think all dogs fall into the 'savage' category and some can be extremely friendly too, but after reading about such experiences, I know I would be nervous approaching any dog, big or small when the owner isn't at hand to control it.

Plus Ultra is a blog that I am subscribed to for a long time. The author Raj has a natural sense of humour and entertains his readers with satiric comedy. In between, he also writes on serious issues and this post is one of them. The power of commodity is an article which illustrates how big corporates control natural resources which provide the raw materials for their line of business around the world and how they manipulate prices to make huge profits. It is scary to think of how much power the likes of Coca Cola wields over the public, particularly in emerging economies.

Finally Ray also broke his long silence and posted a couple of articles after I nagged him on chat. The Film is Not Yet Rated is an interesting post on the documentary with the same name and he shares some thoughts about the way censors and film boards operate in the US and the UK. Interestingly, it seems that the UK is far more open about its standards to determine a movie's rating than the US.

We were dining out last evening at one of my favourite restaurants and it struck me that it was the kind of restaurants we usually frequent as a family. I don't know whether they can be described as anything other than "middle class family restaurants" and I think certain aspects are unique to India and particularly South India.

To explain better, I have to mention that there are several kinds of restaurants to suit every budget and every taste where I live. At the lowest end you have the roadside eateries which usually attract large crowds of people all through the day and particularly lower income groups and working men looking for a quick bite to still the pangs of hunger. They vary a lot but are generally characterized by a lack of ambience and a beehive-like activity at most times of the day which means that you generally share tables with total strangers almost at any time you eat at these places. Service is usually lightning quick and you focus most of your attention on eating the food placed before you and leaving to make room for the next customer.

At the highest end of course you have the fancy, high class restaurants which are usually attached to Five Star hotels. Most of them charge the moon, are generally multi-cuisine, attract a select clientele including foriegners and usually serve continental food and alcoholic beverages. Even breathing the air of such restaurants feels expensive.

In between you have everything from speciality restaurants to multi-cuisine restaurants, ethnic restaurants to fast-food joints of every description. But I don't think the kind of eating place I like fits into any of the above categories.

The middle class family restaurants I am talking about are usually stand-alone (not attached to any hotel), generally do not specialize in any particular kind of cuisine, but usually avoid non-vegetarian food and alcoholic drinks. There is a fairly wide range of food available at reasonable prices in these places and are generally not too crowded so you get tables without having to make advance reservations. You get a familiar, comforting choice of food unlike speciality cuisine or ethnic restaurants where even reading the menu can be a challenge. Then again, unlike roadside eateries, they do have a quiet ambience without being opulent and the hygiene usually stands up to close scrutiny. The service is ponderously efficient without being spectacular and you usually get good value for money as far as quality of food is concerned. They are not too noisy because they don't attract the young college-going set (who usually haunt the glitzier fast food joints and shopping malls). The best part is that you can walk into these places without feeling self-conscious about your clothes or general appearance. There is no air of high-class snobbery around these places and the people who come to eat in these kinds of restaurants are typically quiet, shy and retiring middle-class folk. They are perfect for a quiet Saturday or Sunday night dinner for a family looking for a budget treat. I like eating occasionally in five-star luxury no doubt, but we always come back to this type of place because it suits us in every possible way.

Indeed, such restaurants have been the mainstay of middle class India for a long time, but I get the feeling that the mushrooming of hep and modern fast-food joints and rising income levels have led a section of the middle class to abandon these places. People who can afford it usually walk into the higher range and more glamourous restaurants or prefer speciality restaurants. Younger folk tend to go to the fast-food joints or pizzerias for a quick bite. Greater global awareness has also led to an increase in the number of speciality and authentic ethnic restaurants. And of course, roadside eateries continue to do brisk every-day business in spite of everything because of their low prices and quick service. So these middle-of-the-road options are getting crunched on all sides by increasing competition. Already I've seen a few of these places, which were famous institutions in the 80s and early 90s gradually go downhill and fade into obscurity.

Are such eat-outs a dying breed? I certainly hope not.

This is something new I'm going to give a try. Whenever I find any interesting articles written by other bloggers that I come across from time to time, either through random searches or through other links, I'm going to link them here. I'll call it blog perambulations, even though the article I link to need not necessarily be on a blog. So without any further ado, here is the first batch of links. Hope you enjoy reading these articles as much as I did

I'll begin with an article written by my good friend RT at Untwisted Vortex. RT asks Are You A Serious Blogger? This article does touch upon what you need to do to be taken seriously by other bloggers and how you can attract their attention. Most of what RT writes makes sense to me and I cannot disagree with a lot of what he says. He also has an engaging style of writing which draws you into his ideas quite effortlessly.

UbuntuCat writes about waiters who tip themselves and wonders if it is a new trend, in his article New trend: self-undertipping. Undertipping or not, I know I would be extremely annoyed if that happened to me. I don't know the practices in different cultures, but to me, tipping is about rewarding good service and the waiter/waitress certainly has no business deciding that for themselves.

Max, who's been away for a while is now back with a bang! His new article The Big SMB Problem: Dropping Microsoft Office on why small and medium business prefer Linux as a solution and why there is resistance from employees is quite enlightening. I enjoyed reading it and I hope he continues posting some meaty Linux articles regularly now.

My brother, Teknomancer, doesn't often update his blog and when he does write, he writes very technical programming articles. His latest article on Allocating physically contiguous memory in Solaris is quite a challenging read even if you're a programmer. This belongs to the higher realms of OS and systems programming, so if you find your head reeling after reading it, don't blame me Nevertheless he shares some pretty interesting (and sometimes undocumented) Operating System internals which you cannot find anywhere else.

Shrinidhi Hande writes about How Google can make Orkut a better place. I happened to disagree with his idea on this occasion because it just seems a bit much for what is supposed to be a fun, social networking website, but I know where he is getting at. The question of anonymity and privacy versus authenticity is always an issue on the internet. But I cannot see any major social networking site introducing such a system of physical identity verification ever. It would involve *HUGE* costs and would be practically impossible to conduct in a reasonable time-frame with a world-wide userbase of millions.

Hope those keep you busy for a while. If I do this regularly, I'll try to include more articles in the future. Feedback, as always is appreciated.

Here's my next Geeky and Meeky issue. It's titled "A Freezing Problem." It's been a while, so I hope you enjoy it.