Random Musings

and one more frenzy is born. It’s a mad mad world. The cities are under siege. The villages are dark and silent. What about the small little people? We sit and type into little boxes on our computer, while outside all is quite quiet.

There is less rhyme or reason these days. No more is there a feeling of order and rightness.

Ah well, minds wiser than mine dwell on these pressing issues. What can I add to the wisdom of the teeming crowds?

News travels fast these days, doesn’t it? No sooner does it happen anywhere in the world, the rest of the world knows it. But still, news is not always information. And forming an opinion based on insufficient information, is that a good thing? It would seem not, but every day, it happens.

Complete information is also an impossibility. And if you wait forever and a day for that, the moment passes. So, you do the best you can. Everyone has their own standard for what constitutes enough information. I have mine, and you have yours.

Enough of this. I am following a train of thought, but I’m only writing every third sentence, so naturally it comes across as rather silly stuff. It’s quite late now. Goodnight.

Here I am, sittng in Cal. And it’s lovely weather.. I arrived yesterday morning, and since then, it’s been lovely. Raining in bits, and with a nice cool breeze to keep everyone cool.

I’m here because my grand-uncle passed away. He was one of the coolest people I knew. What with his baritone, and his clearing his throat to indicate his displeasure, and the lovely letters/emails that he used to write! It was rather bittersweet, but there were moments of fleeting happiness during the ceremony. Like when I went upstairs to his apartment, and there were photos of his younger days setup, all cool-cat types.. And the football and the laptop computer on the table, shades of his younger and older days.

He was a total geek at heart. He came to computers late, but boy did he jump in with a vengance! He’d mastered the intricacies of DNS and IP addresses, and latency was a simple thing to explain the slow speeds of “broadband” at his Cal residence. Small wonder then, that the internet guy was there at the puja, crying.. He’s really going to miss Mama Dadu.

I’m going to miss him too. He really was a fantastic person to hang around with. He’d tell me stuff about his younger days, and he’d ask me questions about computers and the internet. I really liked and respected him.

Oh well, what can one say. Here’s to fast connctions and lots of RAM on whatever computer you are using now, Mama Dadu.. My Skype and Gtalk lists will just not be the same without you logging in.

Yes, coming off the back of my previous post about the joys of the actual written word, this may seem contradictory, but what the heck!

I’ve been using computers since 1992. That’s fifteen years, for those of you who are counting. The early years did not consist of much typing, but what little there was was done on those old style mechanical keyboards. You know, the ones that weighed a ton, and made an almighty racket, but were lovely to type on..

Later on, when we bought our own computer, we started using the rubber-dome keyboards. These are the most commonly available keyboards, and while they work fine, and are cheap, they are rubbery, and squishy, and just do NOT feel nice. I used these keyboards from 1997 to 2003, when I bought another computer.. This time, I made sure I picked up a TVS Gold Keyboard. While it’s not as heavy as the old style ones (you could KILL someone with those), it’s reassuringly hefty, and the keys were works of art.

I use the past tense, because, after using this keyboard for four years, I managed to kill it while bringing it back from college. Moans, groans, and lamentations. Doom and GLOOM. Especially since the only backup keyboard I had was a P-O-Shit Samsung that my dog had peed on a while back!! Ewwww you say, and EWWW!! said I! Still, what was there to do, except grit my teeth, disinfect the keyboard, and use it. So I did, for the past three weeks.. till today!

Yes, kids, I have a TVS Gold again! And this time, it’s in black The keys caress my fingertips, whispering promises of “forever”.. I feel like writing the great Indian novel, figuring out the Theory of Everything, coming up with a scathing attack on organized religion, writing love letters and poems to the great unknown woman in my life..

With a shrug and a smile, I look at what I’ve written so far, say “The hell with it!”, and click on the publish button.

So your average 5th year law student comes home after a gruelling semester all exhausted. Arrives at 1:30 AM. What does he do? Set up his computer with dual-monitors of course!!

heh heh heh

Avid readers of my blog (laugh not, there are a few…well, alright, I’m talking about me) will be aware that I bought a widescreen LCD monitor a while back. A nice big 20.1 incher. I still kept my 21″ CRT though, but left it at home while I took the LCD to college. I’ve been itching to try them together for a long while, and yesterday I finally managed.  I used dual monitors ages back, when I actually had to use one AGP and one PCI card, and the monitors were 14″ CRT’s.. ah, those were fun days.

The best part of dual-monitors is the multi-tasking. If, like me, you have a lot of windows open that don’t need your concerted attention, but just a glance every now and then, dual-monitors are better than a large screen (of course, if both of ‘em are 20 inchers… heh). And of course, the geek factor is nice too. People walk into my room, and their jaws literally drop. Nerdvana!

So, as you can tell, I’m home, I’m happy and I’m geeky. Good food beckons, so I leave you now.

Apple has released software that allows easy dual-booting on Intel Imacs.. here’s what I think about this.
1. Games, games games. There are many people who would like to use Mac’s, especially college students, but don’t, because there aren’t all that many games ported to the Mac. Even thought the Mac has the requisite hardware, (well, almost.. Radeon X1600 ain’t that hot,but it’s ok.), gaming on the mac has traditionally been less fun than on a WinXP PC. The BootCamp software will immediately open up some segments of the market that have always been closed to Apple.

2. Business users will like this because this allows them to run various critical Windows only apps on the Mac. The problem here lies with the reboot into Windows approach. That’s a pain, and in the middle of a busy business day, having to reboot your computer five times doesn’t make that much sense. Till the Mac gets true virtualization, allowing you to run WinXP and OSX simultaneously, without a performance penalty, business users aren’t going to get all that excited. The next line of Intel processors, with Hypervisor support, and the next version of OS X are rumoured to have this, and it makes sense. When (if?) that happens, suddenly a whole bunch of SME’s might start considering the Mac as a viable business platform. Here’s an article about a Japanese bank switching to Mac..
3. For software developers, the situation is a bit more complicated, especially for the smaller development houses. Since Mac’s can now run Windows, will the porting of Windows apps to the Mac stop? Will smaller houses feel that it’s not worth the time, money, and effort porting their latest app to Mac, since “If the user wants to use App X, he can install Windows anyway”. This is a little simplistic and not necessarily true, but there’s bound to be some uncertanity amongst the smaller developers.

My personal opinion is that BootCamp is a fantastic thing for Apple. The biggest beneficiaries will be self-employed professionals, small businesses and home users. And the most interesting aspect of this is that Windows on Apple is just as prone to viruses, spyware and all the crap that kills Windows. Once people realize that their brand-spanking new windows installation died within twenty minutes of hooking it up to the internet, while OS X just keeps on humming, there’s bound to be some more appreciation of Apple’s particular brand of hassle-free computing.

Dual booting makes getting a mac for the first time practically risk free for a windows user. Getting a mac isn’t some huge commitment to OS X. This is an important thing. I know this for a fact, because when I was debating whether to buy a Powerbook or a Thinkpad, one important consideration was the vast Windows software library. And I’m relatively computer savvy. A standard user would simply not consider a Mac, because of their fear that all their hard earned computer knowledge would be wasted. And many IT departments who used to use this as a bludgeon to veto Mac purchases won’t have a leg to stand on.