Blogs

I'm going to try and keep a record of all the books I read starting from those I remember reading this year. I was hoping to add a simple review or a rating.. but as per usual, I'm going to blame it on the lack of time..

In no particular order:

• Cliff Stoll
• The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage [Non-Fiction]
• Neal Stephenson [Sci-Fi]
  • Snow Crash [Reread]
• George R.R. Martin [Fantasy]
  • A Feast Of Crows
• Robert Jordan [Fantasy]
  • Wheel Of Time - Book 11 - Knife Of Dreams
• Robert A. Heinlein [Sci-Fi]
  • Citizen of The Galaxy
• Lois McMaster Bujold [Sci-Fi]
  Vorkosigan Saga

Both oldies but goodies which have been re-doing the rounds in the last coupla days:

X-mas lights [WMV]: The song is "Wizards in Winter" by Trans-Siberian Orchestra - a rather odd Christian rock/metal band that features Al Pitrelli - ex-Megadeth, Savatage etc. - on guitars..

Despair Linux: Really amusing if you're a Linux head.. Seems to have been rekindled by this blog by Jon Lech Johansen..

It is very sad cruel killing of innocent Maniappan KUtty. Even though Taleban gave 48 hours time, what our government was doing? They have asked us to stop the work. They should have stopped the work and should have made contact with taleban representative. Instead our officials/ministers were just washing their hands.

If the same thing happens to Manmohan Singh or Sonia Or Advani or Vajpayee, whether these people will be keeping quiet.

What happened during Mufti Mohamed Sayed period as Home Minister? Please remember.

I am ashamed of our politicians.

Only God will bless Maniappan Kutty's family members. My deepest condolences to their family members.

Added in a few updates to the site a couple of days ago:

• Added the global broadband comparison table.. *phew* this was a lot of work..
• Updated Hathway pages with the plans from their plan pages. Also amended my review to put them in a little more positive light as speeds have been much better off late.
• Removed Net4India from the broadband page and move it to the Other ISPs page. The responsiveness of their customer service divisions is just positively .. bovine :/

Sequence of events:

• September 2005: I suffer from a congenital (sic) dislike (hate is probably an appropriate word as well) of mobile phones, and as such don't encourage people ringing me - email/IM me I always tell them. But, nevertheless I got myself a new Airtel cell on one of their cheap as chips plans. This phone is primarily a phone that I keep only for dialling out, and therefore its number is a closely guarded secret :P
• Just before my connection is activated, this "dude" comes home on the pretext of verifying my address (which I suppose is understandable). I tell him "Yeah, this is me, and this is where I live - thank you. You can approve my connection now. Good bye".
  

Just learned from their mailing list that Parikrama, India's lone flame in the land of rock, are apparently going to be writing and performing a song for Microsoft to help launch 3 new products - Visual Studio 2005, MSSQL server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006. And there apparently might be a video made as well..

oh and apparently Gill Bates is going to be there with bells on for the show :P

-K

This was Disc 4 of his 4 CD "Prince Of Darkness" release, that has now been released as a separate album.

An album full of covers - keep away if you value your ears.

ugh.

Finally got to read George R. R. Martin's latest book - A Feast Of Crows - Book 4 of the A Song Of Ice And Fire cycle - over the last couple of days. And what a pleasurable read it was!

This book has pretty much taken 5 (looooooooong) years to write, and considering how immensely satisfactory the previous three releases were, I was waiting for this with .. extreme anticipation and a high degree of expectation. And boy, I wasn't let down :)

This is apparently quite old, but nevertheless hilarious - Bikini Calculus..

hehehe, the things that some people come up with..
Din.

This really cracked me up..

ah, got to love hotlinking eh?

Din.
P.S Yes I thought loooooooong and haaard on the title - can't you tell?