Kosmix

Exciting things are happening in the world of search, Do check out Kosmix, a search engine developed by a couple of Indians Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan, who apparently were friends with Sergey Brin at Stanford. (More details here) They're not really taking on Google in the sense that Kosmix is not a Google substitute, but it permits more topical specialised searching, and it clusters its search results in a useful manner, it has rolled out an Alpha version of a travel search which should be interesting. Do check it out and spread the word.

Reminds me vaguely of 1999 when people in law school had just started using Google which was in a Beta stage then (and remained so for an eternity), while most others were using Yahoo search, AltaVista and AskJeeves. Google seemed so spare and so puny, with nothing but the logo and the search bar, it just didn't look like something that would eventually take over the world. Kosmix looks Google-ish, but nothing that happens to it will be surprising. Whether it succeeds or fails, most people will think they thought it would happen!!

Thanks JPJ for the tip-off

Top ten songs

The following were my favourite songs (or what I claimed were my favourite songs) sometime in the latter part of the year 1999. Six-plus years on, I think I'll analyse this list a bit:

• Simon & Garfunkel-Bridge Over Troubled Water (was in love with S&G, although I preferred other songs, I probably thought this one should be their best, and it was soppy as hell, like I was at that time)
  
• Iron Maiden- Fear of the Dark (was just discovering metal, particularly Iron Maiden, had heard this track more than any of their others, although it is a good track)
  
• Simon & Garfunkel-Sounds of Silence (more S&G, this was definitely one of my favourites then, and probably among my favourites even now)
  
• Pink Floyd-WIsh You Were Here (I had just started college, and you HAVE to like Pink Floyd when you are starting college, and what better top-ten overplayed song than WYWH, plus I hadn't heard too many others, so had to maintain my street-cred by citing the token Floyd song)
  
• The Beatles-I Will(White Album) (Lovely song, still love it, the 'white album' in brackets was surely an attempt to look like a connoisseur of less popular Beatles albums, fact remaining that at that time the White Album was the only Beatles album I had heard as an album)
  
• Radiohead-Creep (The ultimate wallow in self-pity ironic late adolescent song with noisy guitars...woohoo)
  
• Sting - Fields of Gold (great song, overplayed, still love it though)
  
• The Byrds-Turn, Turn, Turn (absolutely totally loved this song then, then I heard it too many times, and I saw Forrest Gump too many times, but it's Biblical and stuff, so maybe I once had a spiritual side)
  
• G'n'R-Sweet Child of Mine (*bloody embarassing*, well it was 'cool' and slash was cool, and axl rose was cool, and the guitar bits are actually quite.....erm......cool)
  
• Joe Satriani - Rubina's Blue Sky Happiness (fabulous song, and satriani was also 'cool', and some years later Standard Chartered used this tune in an ad campaign and that made me very happy, still one of my favourites)

Won't attempt a similar list now, might have to brutally analyse it some six years on....and feel sheepish.

Happy Ballantine's Day

Wishing you the best of health on this day in celebration of what is considered to be among the finest scotch whiskeys in the world. It does bother me that none of the other famous scotch whiskeys have a holiday of their own...their marketing guys must have been sleeping. Anyway enjoy and drink lots of whiskey, or if you are boring like me, drink orange juice.

Bachelor Party

Today I am supposed to go for a bachelor party for a friend who's getting married. The standing instruction being circulated along with the invite is 'bring a stripper,' a gloriously optimistic attempt to use the law of averages to ensure the presence of a stripper at this bachelor party. The belief is that if everyone makes a sincere effort to bring a stripper, then if not a profusion of strippers, there will at least be one or two. This premise has two basic flaws:

a) nobody knows a stripper (yes i agree everyone should have, along with their chemist, pizza guy, mechanic, electrician and plumber, a stripper in their address book, but somehow this concept hasn't taken off)
b) everybody will assume that somebody else will get a stripper, and therefore like a pot-luck party where everyone brings salad thinking somebody else will get better food, there will be no stripper.

So basically this bachelor party will be a bunch of guys with no stripper, and some alcohol (if someobody bothers to bring it).....at least if we dispense with the bachelor party title, we can invite some women!

(Thanks to SC for the deep philosophical discussion on strippers and stripper availability, which formed the foundation for this post)

Lotus Notes

To destroy the slightest possibility of a notion that this blog might someday achieve a unifying theme, here goes:

To all those people who have used Lotus Notes as an enterprise mail client, and/or the unfortunate ones who use Outlook, there's a very interesting debate that is brewing, which has been triggered by what appears to be a journalistically irresponsible piece in the Guardian, a paper I respect a lot. Please check out the Lotus Notes User Group website where the debate is being monitored, and hopefully will continue to be monitored. I am sincerely hoping this will turn out to be a full-blown war (of words, not the George Bush type)!

The A of C speaks on the Cartoon Crisis

The following quote by the Archbishop of Canterbury (who is, technically, the spiritual leader of one half of me) i think puts the whole cartoon debate in perspective....the excerpt is from the Guardian, the whole piece (though not really worth reading) can be found here.

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in a speech at Mansion House in London last night called for Christians and Muslims to show each other mutual respect, vital to a healthy society. "The western world likes to think it is inviting other cultures into a peaceful and enlightened atmosphere of civility. But the strangers ... may well be dismayed to discover that this peacefulness and enlightenment seems to include licence to express some very unpeaceful and unenlightened attitudes to minorities. Just what kind of civility is this? 'Can't you take a joke?' is the immemorial alibi of bullies."

Arsenal Extends Lead in Premiership

Arsenal has extended it's lead in the English Premier League. Read all about it here . And yes, when I was speaking at the beginning of the season, of Arsenal winning the Premier League, it was the womens' team I was talking about....mens football? who watches that anyways??

Ladakh

To all you millions of people who have in the short span of a week, started reading this blog....wanna come to Ladakh in May? The base camp, so to speak, will be in Delhi (Gurgaon to be precise). As of now there are four members to this expedition. One of them is going to come all the way from Cochin (the trip is his idea by the way). It will be a Sunday to Sunday deal (tentatively May 7 to May 13).....Apparently there will be trekking, lots of mountains, yaks, monks and whatever else is there in Ladakh....

This will also depend on the leave availability of various members of the expedition, and so it's still a vague plan at best....but come off.....fun will be had....suggest alternative destinations / dates / professions / ways to save the planet if you wish.....but join up....

Scorpions

I concede there are some people who would have been clamouring for Miles Davis when they were in Playschool, but for the rest of us I think the Scorpions have held appeal at some time or the other. Strong melodies, catchy riffs, lovely (if formulaic) song structures. But one area they definitely didn't score any points was their lyrical ability. It was much after I heard, loved, and tired of their classic track 'Winds of Change' that I realised that they never intended to pluralise the 'wind' part of it. So the song is actually 'Wind of Change.' Stunning difference eh?

Vitriol for the day

It's been said before, and I'll say it again, Gurgaon-ites can't drive. Now I could get into a whole list of things that they can't do, but that would just seem petty, so I'll stick to driving. Not only do they not have any brains, evidenced by the fact that everyday I see at least three vehicles going down the wrong side of a dual carriageway with their hazard lights blinking and their horn blaring, but also they have absolutely no consideration for their fellow motorist. While these things can be attributed to a monumental genetic tragedy which unfolded over many generations, for which they are not directly to blame, what I don't understand is how they don't even have a basic instinct for self-preservation. Bicycles and cycle rickshaws cross roads merrily in speeding traffic, with the guy riding them usually wearing a moronic expression of indifference to the traffic heading straight at him at high speeds. Then of course it's everybody else's responsibility to make sure they don't kill him and punish him for his congenital mental defects. And then you wonder whether you feel angry with him or feel sorry for his condition. They really are like cows...come to think of it...maybe that's why......naaah forget it, why offend religious sentiments and all that!