How / Why did Rakhi trend – A case study

I know I'd be asking a bit too much out of you, but
please head over to the wordpress post . Cross-posting is quite a pain.


P.S: I still like you, blogger.com  [ atleast until wordpress opens up it's html access ]

Honey, I shrunk the Url…

For numerous reasons, I don't like bit.ly so much. Some of them being -

• They don't have a middle layer which acts as a NSFW [ stands for Get Kicked Out of Office if you open This here] warning. There's the append '+' at the end of the link hack. But seriously, who does that usually? You barely have enough time to click on links these days, save reading their contents as well.
• They've a "This page has been reported to serve malware in generous doses" middle layer, but since it's Mr.Twitter who's one of their major link sources, this has to be more 'realtime'. Depends on what realtime means, yes. But everyone's using that word nowadays, so what the heck.
• They've a twitter monopoly. You've got to hate the leader. It's a rule.

So, Should I plan to start my own Url Shortening service, it wouldn't have all these issues. And just to humor myself, I shall call it id.ly

And since there's no Country Top-Level domain with .da, I'll have no competitors like va.da . Humour monopoly, FTW...

Pre-(Post-Script):

Is there a Mai Ka Laal, who can gift Mr. Veerappa with a moi.ly domain... He'd be the cool-kid on the block, instead of the peddler-like grumpy face that he flaunts usually.

You know, as genuinely awesome as the chap to the right, who's currently booked under the Limca records, for the fastest fast in India. [ No, I'm kidding. Maybe]

Obligatory Show-off Post-script section :

Whate pity. Honourable Son of the Soil can't get the prized gow.da. He'll have to settle for de.ve , I guess.

Today's Special - à la carte

Bonjour!
"Tout ce que dit en français, des sons de classe" - 'Anything said in French, sounds classy' - Monsieur. Abhishek, Circa 2009.
      Well, enough of dillydallying.Yesterday, Akshay and I, had been to the Fête de la Musique, at the Alliance Française de bangalore. A cozy place, and a Cultural hangout for the French, in Bangalore. We had no clue of the lineup, and I, had almost thought that it was the 'Galeej Gurus' who'd be performing. 
I saw the calendar, and it said "Today's Special". And that, was the name of the band. Band names[ and songs] mostly come out as as the aftereffects of drunken revelry. [ Considering that this band cites whiskey and beer to be some of their driving influences, my guess isn't that far-fetched :-P ]. 

      And needless to say, it's a decent pun as well. I suppose they get stuff like, " And Ladies and Gentlemen, Today's special performance is by well, Today's Special", all the time. Much like when there was this bunch [including Frank Noon], who called themselves "The Next Band". [ And the Next band is ......] , or even better, this group that performed at Decibels at Saarang 2009. It was simply called "The Previous Band". Man, the confusions.
      'Today's Special' was listed in the lineup for Saarang as well. I couldn't see the entire Decibels event, hence must have missed them there.
      Anyway, about yesterday's performance. Absolutely loved it. Primarily funk based music, and the fact that they can dabble in with a bit of metal as well, makes them extra special.

Now, that's some branding. Bound to impress.

Here's what the band has to say about themselves.
"We are a Bangalore based blues rock band, mostly into classic blues, blues rock and retro hard rock, with an added flavour of funk.We cover songs of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Phish and the likes, and also compose originals that fall in the same taste."
Some would call it confusing and disoriented that they have so many influences, but the fact that they switch easily between these at will in their tracks, makes them versatile, I feel.

The Band's line up [ I picked this from the website, I'm sure about at least the vocals and the bassist], and my opinions about them:

Aditya : Vocals - Roaring, High voice at times, which suits the retro style very much. Could do a semi-growl if need be, I guess. The lyrics are very much set to the swing style [ Elvis -like ], and this chap sings fast-paced as the style demands.
Dhruv : Guitars -Very Naice, Sir. Nice techniques, the sweep Picking was awesome, and the riffs were very distinct.
Sathwick : Drums - Brings the song into picture right from the start. The bass and the drums combination is probably the signature of this band, from what I could make out from most of their numbers.
Shalini : Bass - Let's get out the most obvious fact first. A Female bassist? Yes, that's something really rare. Unique enough to feature an independent wiki.
Ok, once the whole hullaballoo and temporary jaw-dropping was done, we were actually in awe of her performance. One hell of a bassist. And as I said just two lines before [ were you noticing?? ], the bass+ drum intros defined the course of the song.

Yesterday's performance featured originals like "Aloo Tikki" and covers like "Hush - Deep Purple", and "Woman - WolfMother". The wolfmother cover was nearly identical, and the highlight of the gig, for me.

One minor complaint is that once I tried to some post-concert searching for this band, its tracks and lyrics, I was thoroughly pissed off.
It's a pain googling for them. Try some innocent search term like "Aloo Tikki Today's Special", and a hajar Tarla Dalal like cooking sites pop up.Aargh. With a little Search engine kungfu I could manage to find their myspace page, and some two tracks. Seriously guys, A Blog comes for free these days.
Kindly to be setting one up soonly. Thank you.

Akshay pointed out yesterday that Rock n Metal music seems to have dried up in Bangalore for the past few months, what with absolutely no gigs of interest happening.
Genetically mutated concert organizers, Please take note.

Be there or Be Squared?

In a desperate attempt to bridge the gap between WolfRam Alpha and itself, Google released something known as Google Squared. [ The service ] [ The official Post].
My conspiracy theory is that this is a majorly quadratic statement by Google in the light of the Tiananmen Square Incident Anniversary, which happens to be on June 4th[ i.e, Today ].

To all those crazy lunatics over there, let me fuel it further by saying that June is the 6th Month, and 4 is the date.  Oh . Holy Moly, that's 6 and 4.  => 64? Get it? That's a perfect square... 

Go ahead, I've made your day. Send all those crazy forwards, and troll in all possible forums out there, because deep within your stupid hearts, you know it to be true.

With all due respects to Google, Wolfram Alpha still continues to totally arouse Geeky researchers ( and trivia hunters), with the same feeling that people used to [ and still get ], when randomly bouncing off wikipedia pages.

And in keeping up with my holy tradition of keeping the kernel of the post in the very end, and most often than not, missing it entirely, here's them goodies...

[ Open the image in a different tab, if you wish ]
Well, there has been no editing absolutely. There in lies my integrity [ as well as differentiability, from other arbit meme creators out there ]. Don't believe me, check it out.


http://www.google.com/squared/table/ageTYAeHzVe5UFezJFN2MFtg

Now, let me expertly dissect this information, as a certain annoying Arnab ComeSwami would.

Some Salient Features:

• Vajpayee proves why he's still the best out there. He's a DLF maximum, and a citi moment of success all rolled into one smooth package.
• Karat's priced at 2 Dollars. he he. Take that you pseudo-communisty bleddy red-chaddis. No Marx for you this time. For all that dirty Lenin that you washed in public, serves you right.
  
• Advani's priced slightly higher than Mr.Singh. That's just the added value of viral marketing, and internet flash ads. And him being the Iron Man of India, to boot. 
• Lalu foxes even Google. Even the mighty know-it-all search engine cannot figure out how much stash the Bihari-Bond is hiding.
• Sonia Gandhi -  well, I refrain from commenting, in accordance with previously maintained policies. Respect mam, or as they say in fluent Italian, 'KThnxBai'.
  

In other search engine news : Microsofty released their new polished search service, which they call Bing.
which apparently stands for " But It's Not Google".
Several scapegoats have confirmed this fact to be true, and have unanimously bleated out that a search engine so lousy, cannot definitely be a clone of Google.
But, do not shoo off this Bingy thingy so soon. If history has taught us anything, [ other than about one crazy dude pillaging through other another crazy dude's city, and general voyeuristic/hedonistic activities of folks with lots of cash ] , it is this.
"Services/Movements/ Tools/ Softwares with recursive names might not be successful commercially, but will definitely end up being a major pain-in-the-ass of the opposite party concerned. "
off the cuff examples being, GNU, LAME, WiNe.
So, watch out. Microsoft hopes for some Bing Bling soon...


Oh, and by the way. This happens to be my 50th post.[ Hurrah, yippee yay. Saavdhaan, Vishraam.]
Muchas Gracias to all of you for all this nice readership thing that's happening so far.
Keep up the good work :-)
If there was an award for the highest blogging throughput, an award for the most prolific and active blogger out there, you know, the person with all the witty regular posts, and amazing rapport with the readers.....

I wouldn't have got it.

N-Blox Reloaded...

Not exactly a post. [ Ergo, something better.]

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[Btw,  My hiatus is surprisingly, not due to a writer's block. This is your chance. Enjoy while it lasts...For be warned, Soon, I'll be back. With my regular doses of  textual - harassment. Phew, I can't be booked for that]
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My love for tetris has been documented pretty well over here. So I'll not kutch further.
I discovered N-Blox some days ago, when chappar , wanting to get some cheap highs, was looking at psychedelic visuals on this site. And sent it to me.
Turns out Paul Neave is a brilliant Flash designer, with a passion for Retro games. Kewl. And I found Tetris. Blissh.
The gameplay is superb[ Considering that there's not much scope for innovation]. But as it turns out, Neave is a bit of a N*gger [ Southpark fundaes]. With the sole intent of pissing off fans, he sets out and puts a score_reset which is called at the stroke of midnight. I could think of only a few possible excuses that he could have.

• Probably to save on diskspace of the scores.txt file. [Wtf]
• To give every newbie a chance to figure on the highscore board. Turns out they already do. Through  simple,stupid, "Injection" techniques. [Come on, Man you...]
• "It's my game."  " Respect Mah Authoritah"...[ Awesome ]

Well, the third reason seemed the most logical, and we laud his spunk n all that, but we didn't like it in principle. He could have at least given people the source code and allow us to tinker with it. But that's his choice and we respect that.

But, we did want the game.

So, The php whiz from college, and myself,  tweaked around the flash file for a while to send the scores to a different location. And the php to receive, process the scores at this remote location, and send back the results back to the flash file. No edits to the gameplay/graphics. Honest.

Did someone miss a beat? Never mind, Let me beat you again. 

Me n php? Ha ha...

Well, truth be told, he did both of those.  Great work dude, and btw, the Inci site rocks, as usual.

And me, with my stupendous Html skills, set up an oldschool website, which is approximately Web 0.2.

So, enjoy Nblox on the site shown below ( while it lasts), and u get to post ur highscore as well. 

So, without much ado, here's N-Blox Reloaded peoples...

Disclaimer : I could post the flash here,on this blog, but that ain't right.

Phree Publicity: Check out http://byethost.com/  Free, and Hassle-free webhosting, with php support, and nice technical support as well.