Hari's Corner

It's time for another "Archives" highlight post. As I mentioned before, it's fun to do this from time to time just to look at what I've written in the past and share it with readers here. It's not entirely just about linking to the old articles. I'll also be commenting on them from a new perspective. So here are some selected posts from September 2005.

Indians tend to make great bloggers - I'm not very happy with this article reading it now. Even at that time I was aware that I was making a huge generalization, but it's always interesting to discuss cultural differences and I couldn't avoid the temptation. However, I know from experience now that it's downright impossible to classify bloggers into distinct groups based on ethnicity. In fact, as I see it now, the best definition of blogging is content organized in a website in a reverse chronological order. At least that's the most common feature to be found among blogs.

Sensible dressing - My rant against Western dressing in a hot, humid climate. I still think that ties and suits are ridiculous in temperatures around 30-40 degrees Celcius. And it's a fact that a lot of companies still insist on that ridiculously formal dress code. I would never work in such a company.

Isn't Sourav ashamed of his performance? - Yes, I know, a cricket article. It was written at a time when Sourav Ganguly was still India's captain (my, my... how time flies!) and he was experiencing his worst slump in form as a batsman. That makes his current comeback into the Indian side all the more remarkable and commendable. I think being dropped was actually the best thing that ever happened in his career because I doubt whether his career would have been resurrected the way it has been now.

Of natural disasters and the "sympathy" factor - Hmm... no comment, except all I can say is that I don't write like that any more. I have given up trying to analyze things that are beyond my own sphere of knowledge.

That's all for now. Hope you enjoy reading those snippets from the past.

I'm planning to create a new Linux distribution (since the world is just begging for more). So the first thing I'm going to do is pick a name like everybody else does. Unlike some people, I'm not going to register on a dozen Linux forums just to start a topic like "Name suggestions for starting a new distribution." I've already decided what it's going to be.

Wait for it. Now... (roll of drums)

EkalaBukala TinkuBinku JagadaThugada Komanabuntu.

Notice carefully that it ends in "buntu." Yes, it's based on that King of Distributions, that Leader of All Linux Operating Systems, the one and only Ubuntu!!! (OOOOOOOOOOObuntu!! Yay! Yay! How unique!) The USP of this distribution is that it's going to be an easy-to-use desktop Linux for the newbie (something nobody has thought of before)...

Here's the logo:

Advanced stuff you can do with this new distribution:

• Write letters and stuff (using the new WordProcessor which has a hairbrush office assistant instead of a paper clip)
• Browse the web and read e-mail (using a brand new web browser called CarbonPoo)
• Listen to music (using an innovative new MP3 player called ZMMMMMMMMMMMMMS which can be "skinned")

Now that's what a desktop Linux is supposed to do!

Oh, by the way, If you think the name is too short, then sucks to you, it's my distribution and I will do what I want with it, so there. Now to register a new domain name for this lovely earth-shattering, mind-blowing Linux distribution which will completely wipe out Microsoft from the face of this planet. I'm getting edgy about it already... get it? Edgy, edgy hahaha...

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Ever noticed the tendency of shopkeepers never to take anything at your word? Recently the power adapter of my laptop failed and since it was still in warranty, I called the owner of the shop from where I purchased it and asked him whether it would be replaced. We had checked the piece carefully and found that the problem was with the AC-to-DC converter rather than the plug and told him so. He asked us to bring the unit to his shop. I thought he was going to replace it, so we took it there.

He checked the adapter unit by connecting it to the laptop and switching the power on (a very technologically advanced procedure, don't you think?). It didn't work (surprise, surprise!) and he asked us to take it to the HP service center. Wow! Really? At that moment I wanted to fall at his feet because he'd made the most earth-shattering revelation which had eluded our dull minds for such a long time!! Mate... we loved visiting your shop just to see your angelic face. Telling us over the phone to take it to HP directly and saving us an extra trip lugging the laptop around would have been so cruel of you and denied us the pleasure of wasting a Sunday morning just to pay you a social call.

Seriously, I don't know why shopkeepers always assume that customers are idiots or don't know what's wrong with the products they buy. We didn't exactly need you to verify our warranty claim. The people at the HP service center do that themselves.

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Running apt-get dist-upgrade (actually I use Synaptic package manager) on Debian is one of the most morally elevating experiences you can ever have in your life -- trust me. It is the solution to life's problems, International terrorism, poverty, war, crime, hatred and everything else that's bad under the sun.

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I enjoy doing these random ramblings. Do you like them? (answer choices: (a) yes, (b) absolutely, (c) I like them) I'd love your feedback (cue: praise me now).

P.S. Papa Hari certifies that this post wasn't composed under the influence of any "substances." No, really

Papa Hari has read your innermost thoughts and will grant you the knowledge you require in order to be a tough guy online. Most geeks/nerds want to promote a "tough guy" image on the internet, but the majority don't have a clue as to how to do it. Here Papa Hari will share his innermost secrets to help you attain that which you seek!

Get rid of that blog

Yes, you got that right first time. Internet tough guys don't "blog" or embrace any "social" technology. You need to remember that to be a really effective tough guy online, you need to project that 80s era look and feel. Blogs don't fit it in with that image. If you must "blog" then call it an electronic diary (and don't forget to turn off commenting), which brings me to my second point...

Chuck out your buzzword vocabulary

Internet tough guys don't use jargon and buzzwords like blog, social networking, online community or anything remotely connected with the 21st century. The only context in which you should use these words are when you want to pour your scorn on the new generation of internet users (you know, the kind who create Orkut/MySpace/Facebook profiles, who put their cute little holiday photos on Flickr or Picasa and embrace YouTube and other assorted Web 2.0 nonsense).

Disdain technology (especially Web 2.0)

Your website should be absolutely primitive and use plain, simple HTML coding. Don't use any fancy graphics or colours. They're not in keeping with your image. Just use plain, bare HTML with no colourful graphics or design elements. If you must use graphics, then just put up an old, blurred black-and-white mugshot in your "About Me" page. Do anything to avoid Microsoft technology or if you are forced to, just avoid mentioning it in any of your writings.

If you don't know what vi is (and no, that's not vim), you don't qualify to be an internet tough guy. Disdain every technology except the omnipresent, macho text mode editor. It's not enough if you just use this editor, you also need to proclaim this fact on your website so that all your readers know the stuff you're made of.

Use plenty of expletives

Using a choice range of expletives gives the impression that you're a serious badass. Use derogatory and politically incorrect terminology as well. Also don't forget to abuse everybody and everything in the universe: there are just no sacred cows! Just don't overdo it and spoil the whole effect. Be grammatical and spell right. Tough guys don't use slang either. Call your readers "losers" and "idiots" at least twice in every article you write (update: suggested alternatives: dumbass, moron, retard). Assume that most people have an IQ of -50. In your front page, remember to warn all readers that they enter your website at their own risk.

Be cynical, arrogant and anti-social

Cynicism fits in well with your tough-guy image. Being cheerful or optimistic about anything is a no-no. If you have to be humourous, be sardonic as well. Adopt an omniscient attitude and remember: what you write is just not your opinion - it's fact. Anybody who doesn't get it is a loser.

Arrogance is another quality of the internet tough guy. Humility or modesty are qualities to be avoided at all costs. After all, geniuses don't need to be humble. Being anti-social is an additional advantage.

Write at least one "famous" article

Become famous (or notorious) and write at least one article which propels you to Internet celebrity status. This particular article should be a little milder and slightly less obnoxious, but more controversial than your other writings. Don't forget: this article is just the taste of things to come for the curious idiots who start exploring other sections of your website.

You're a hacker - not a geek

Publishing semi-useless and obscure Perl or Python scripts will fit well into the scheme of things. Even if you cannot go beyond a simple "Hello World" make it look pretty sophisticated and exotic. Writing unusual scripts will show them that you're not one to be messed around with. In general, you are a computer expert (subject to the condition that all technology invented after 1990 is taboo). Publish your GPG public key as well just to let people know how much of a geek you are (if you don't know what GPG is, you don't qualify, sorry!)

In general, try to show the world how useful you are to the cause of Computer Science and hackerdom.

List of things you should hate

Here's a list of things you must compulsorily hate (and express that hate in a suitably contemptuous manner) in order to be an Internet tough guy.

• Anything new and trendy - especially in technology
• Colourful and graphically intense web design
• Buzzwords, especially new ones
• Mobile phones which allow anything more than dialling numbers and receiving calls
• Harry Potter
• Any popular literature
• Microsoft, Sun, Apple, Intel and Sony
• Religion and religious leaders
• Political correctness
• Politics and politicians
• Leftists/communists
• Java (the programming language) and Visual Basic and anything .NET
• Instant messaging and chat
• MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Google and other popular web services
• IM Speak/AOLSpeak/Text Message Speak
• Online communities (except good old mailing lists)
• Walmart (or any other popular retailing giant)
• Popular news media like BBC, CNN, Fox News, Sky News and so on
• Sitcoms and popular television series
• Anything remotely perceived as "girlish" or "soft"
• Children
• Old people
• Fanboys
• All celebrities (except yourself) and celebrity culture
• People (in general)
• All emotions (except cynicism)
• iPods, iPhones and anything else starting with i or e
• Anything else that you can think of...

Publish your hate mail

And comment on them rudely and sarcastically. Don't forget, if you don't get hate-mail, you're a nobody in this business. So just invent some if you have to. Tip: Be inconsistent with your responses, otherwise people will get suspicious. Don't forget to remind readers from time to time that you derive a lot of wicked pleasure in revealing the stupidity of people who mail you.

That's all for now, folks. Now go be that tough guy you always wanted to become, but were afraid to ask. We'll hand out the diplomas once we start seeing results!

I have nothing new to say about cricket so I decided to get rid of my (near) dead blog, Back Foot Drive which I had started a few months ago (url now invalid). Even at the time of starting it, I was quite tentative and knew that I might discontinue it at some point. Maintaining a niche blog is quite a difficult task, particularly if one lacks intense and long-term passion about the subject. I neither had the expertise nor the motivation to compete with other niche blogs in the field and so I thought "what's the point in keeping a dead blog clinically alive?"

The last update was end of April (April 2 and I hadn't really felt too keen on continuing to write about cricket (as I mentioned just recently). It takes a lot of effort to find an audience for niche topics, particularly when an independent, unaffiliated individual is in direct competition with an array of established websites with paid columnists writing about the same subjects. I was neither an expert analyst nor a blindly passionate fan of Indian cricket to continue writing about day-to-day events in the cricketing calendar. The politics of cricket also gets a bit stale over a period of time and I knew I wasn't really writing anything a whole lot different from hundreds of other newspaper columnists and online journalists.

It was an interesting experiment while it lasted and I got a good look at a blogging tool which I'm not really familiar with (blogger.com). It was also an easy way to set up an experimental blog without too much effort. So all that effort wasn't in vain and I at least found out that niche blogging is not for me, at any rate!

Anybody else incredibly annoyed with the frenzied Pottermania that has gripped the world? It's become very hard to ignore this phenomenon. I can understand why hardcore HP fans and kids dress up like their favourite characters and line up in droves outside bookstores for hours to get hold of a copy of Deathly Hallows (even if I cannot appreciate it), but when serious literary analysts and University professors debate whether it's better if Harry was killed off or not and respectable newspapers cover Harry Potter trivia instead of national news in the front page, I'm getting a bit scared. Wake up! We're talking about a fictional entity here, folks. And even If you do have to discuss HP, why can't it be at a more intellectual level? What about JKR's literary merits? Is the main selling point of Harry Potter the part where characters die or get killed? Is all that hype and marketing necessary to sell a good, wholesome story which everybody can read and enjoy? I myself have read and even reviewed Harry Potter books in the past, but never did I feel the urge to re-read any of them as I do with so many other authors' works. Beyond a thin layer of suspense and thrill, I find that there's nothing really original or uniquely compelling about JKR's writing.

In case you haven't got it: I'm not jumping up and down to find out if a figment of somebody's imagination in a work of fiction dies or not.

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Where have all my blogging friends gone? Many of the blogs that I've subscribed to seem to have slowly faded away with fewer and fewer posts in recent months. I know that real life has its own pressures, but I would appreciate an occasional update from people who have just disappeared off the internet without any explanation.

I'm not talking only about the blogs in my blogroll. It seems to be a general trend that web logs start losing steam over a period of time. Maybe the novelty of this technology is slowly fading away and people are starting to realize that it's much harder to stay motivated to keep updating if they really don't like to write. Fortunately, I love writing for its own sake as well. That's what has kept me going over a period of over two years.

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I'm doing a bit of guest writing over at Untwisted Vortex. RT recently invited readers to contribute to his blog while offering to do the same for other bloggers and I must say that it's an experiment I felt compelled to participate in. In case you're interested in reading my articles over there, I've linked to them in my articles page (which will be regularly updated). For my part, all I can say is that guest blogging has opened new avenues of thought which I can use to my benefit. Sometimes, writing about the same thing to the same audience can start getting stale. I derive immense satisfaction when I manage to keep my readers interested over a period of time.

India's tour of England started recently, but I no longer have the urge to tune into my television set to catch the action live. In fact, I no longer even feel the need to read the newspaper to catch the scores. Somehow my interest in cricket has died a natural death. I guess it's something that has happened over a period of time and has been accelerated by certain factors.

One of the factors is, of course, India's dismal World Cup 2007 performance which is still fresh in memory. It acted as a catalyst in the process to be sure, but my disillusionment started way before that; in fact, quite some years ago. A lot of it can be attributed to the blatant commercialization of the game, compounded by India's pathetic performances in major tournaments over a decade and a half now.

The most disgusting development recently has been ESPN-Star's cynical, opportunistic move of starting a new "Star Cricket" channel, dedicated to 24x7 cricket coverage (hmm... does that sound familiar?) and the way they have effectively exploited the interest generated by India's England tour to charge viewers extra to watch India play overseas. People like me who have shelled out money to subscribe to ESPN and Star Sports (by their promise of Live cricket coverage) feel cheated and betrayed by the one Sports Network that offered professional coverage with a clear focus on the game, rather than hype and glamour. ESPN's move to fragment their audience in order to generate easy revenue is just a sad commentary on the current state of affairs where a genuine cricket fan needs to be subscribed to 6 or 7 Sports networks just to catch Indian cricket action in different parts of the world. For a long time ESPN-Star had the reputation of being a respectable and committed sports channel - standing apart from the blatantly opportunistic fly-by-night operators, but with this move they have completely ruined any goodwill or brand equity they might have generated over the years.

But take a look at what has been happening to Indian cricket in general over the years. When the advertisers started ruling the airwaves and channels felt the need to cut out parts of the cricket action to squeeze in more ads, when the BCCI started playing ugly battles with the television networks over telecast rights and the courts had to intervene on behalf of the hapless viewers, when insignificant television networks started winning the TV rights war and decided to go "pay" overnight in order to rob genuine cricket fans of live cricket and make money as quickly as possible, when cricketers started spending more time in ad studios rather than on the cricket field and when match-fixing scandals started getting quietly swept under the carpet in order to protect vested interests, I cannot say that this latest move by ESPN star comes as a surprise. In fact, it's in keeping with the order of things.

I am not really annoyed or distressed at this state of affairs as I used to be some time ago. It's more like a gradual, growing indifference rather than real anger. It is this kind of indifference among cricket fans that will really be dangerous to the game of cricket in the forseeable future. There will always be dedicated fans, of course, but I think that over a period of time, most Indians will see cricket merely as a shamelessly commercialized, excessively hyped professional sport and not elevate it to the level of a religion.