My Wish list…

Christmas is here. The new year is coming. Here is my wish list. If I don’t get all of this within 30 days, the world will come to an end. Save the world! Get me these stuff:

• Barnes & Noble Nook
• Nexus One (yet to come, you can just give me the cash for it)
• A planet to my name, preferably far from this solar system.
• Dell Adamo XPS, its blooooody thin!
• BuckyBalls, who wouldn’t like a pile of magnetic metal balls?
• This gold coated PS3 from here.
• A pet T-Rex
• A year long supply of rasmalai and daal khichdi
• God of War 3: Ultimate edition: i need a second copy
• Velocity Micro Gamer’s Edge DualX desktop: this machine rapes benchmarks.
• 10 licenses of Unreal 3 Engine
• A publisher for my book: The Zombie’s guide to get a girl
• A white PSP Go
• Razer Mamba
• A set of shurikens and a shiny long katana
• Anything good you can think of

The future is in your hands, errr.. wallet. Save your future. Your kids will thank you for it.

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A day without the internet

On a normal saturday night, I had an abnormal idea. Spending a day without internet access. At first the thought horrified me, but it sounded kinda fun. So I sent a SMS to deactivate the data connection on my phone and turned off my wireless router. Theoretically, I am now cut off from the internet.

8:16 am: Just got up and was shocked to see only two sms on my phone’s notification bar. No emails, no IMs, no new wave conversations. Going back to sleep.

10:34 am: NewsRob (my google reader client) doesn’t have any new feeds. Missing the luxury of reading news feeds while brushing my teeth.

10:39 am: Switched on my desktop. There are a couple of programs screaming about internet access already.

10:43 am: Started UT3 and realized my biggest loss here: no online play. Will play against the AI.
Update: The AI is dumb. Except at godlike. The bots go hunting for you like you have a million dollar bounty over your head.

11:25 am: My girlfriend called me. She was wondering if I was invisible on gTalk. I told her my story. She thinks I am trying to avoid her. Nuts. Why are girls so weird?

12:20 pm: I’m hungry! Tried a voice search for a local pizza joint. No results. Turns out Android uses the internet for almost everything. This is kinda bad.

1:03 pm: Facebook and Twitter still send sms updates to my phone. Looks like one can never be totally off the internet.

1:36 pm: Had awesome lunch with a serving of ice-cream to finish it off. Want to tweet about it. Or maybe a status update on Facebook. Oh I miss the internet so much!

1:58 pm: Playing Tekken Dark Resurrection on the PSP. Missing online play again.

2:45 pm: Wikipedia! It is such an indispensible tool. I miss the convenience of anytime access to Wikipedia. Reminder to self: donate to Wikipedia when i go online again.

4:10 pm: Movie time: Again, i miss the convenience of checking movie ratings and booking tickets thru my phone. And my girl is boring me to death. Wish I could escape to Mars. Do they have internet there?

8:20 pm: My iPod is also complaining about no internet access. So is my girl. She wants to check some stupid site.

9:26 pm: Just noticed that no internet means really good battery life for my phone. Almost 80% juice left. Otherwise it would have been screaming for charge by now.

10:10 pm: Will turn on the internet in about an hour. Why am i feeling so excited?

11:23 pm: Turned back the data connection on my phone and switched the router on. Feels so good!

11:28 pm: Information overload! Shitload of emails, IMs and other stuff. Over 200 news feeds. Phew.

12:02 am: Confession: It felt like the longest day of my life. I am sort of over dependent on the internet. Going to sleep now. Will post this later.

This is Tuesday. I forgot to post it. Shitloads of work. Posting now.

Posted from my iPod

I miss my CRT monitors!

Ok, so I upgraded my bulky old monitor to a shiny new super sexy LCD, but I end up missing quite a few things. You see, now that I have upgraded my CRTs, I don’t know what to do with all the extra space. The main problem I have is now that there is too much open airspace either in front of or behind my new monitors. When I used my 17” CRT monitor, I knew I needed to have a reasonable amount of space on the desk to accommodate the devices. But the majority of computer desks were designed keeping in mind the right face-to-monitor distance ratios so that where exactly at the right distance to view them comfortably.

But now these fancy new LCD monitors don’t take up any space. I sometimes find that the monitor is too far away, because it closer to the back of the desk. And if I push the monitor back, what am I going to do with all the empty space in front of the monitor? I can’t really put anything there because it’s going to block the view. And if I move the monitor closer, I have all the empty space behind the monitor – space that has no real value for shelves or anything else.

What have I gained?

Sure, LCD monitors are sexy to look at, but where am I going to put my cap? At least with CRT monitor, you could keep your unreal tournament figures on the top. But there is no space on the top of a LCD monitor, they are so bloody thin! Now my desktop is a vast sea of unproductive open space, and unless I cut my desk into half, I’m stuck with this awkward setup.

Seriously, what were the engineers thinking when they designed the LCD monitors? Obviously not the end user. And what am I going to do when I will get myself a 48” LCD TV? Yes, I would be able to mount it on the wall, but where the hell will I place my beloved game posters?

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Your computer has a sense of humor!

Ok, so you thought that your computer was just a dumb electronic box. Well, you may be wrong (if you are a linux or unix user). Here are a few outputs that your unix or linux machine will give if you input the following commands:

The C shell

% rm meese-ethics

rm: meese-ethics nonexistent

% ar m God

ar: God does not exist

% “How would you rate Reagan’s incompetence?

Unmatched .”

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?

Missing ].

% ^How did the sex change^ operation go?

Modifier failed.

% If I had a ( for every $ Reagan spent, what would I have?

Too many (’s.

% make love

Make: Don’t know how to make love. Stop.

% sleep with me

bad character

% got a light?

No match.

% man: why did you get a divorce?

man: : Too many arguments.

% ^What is saccharine?

Bad substitute.

% man woman

No manual entry for woman.

% %blow

%blow: No such job.

% (-

(-: Command not found.

% sh

$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense

no sense in pretending!

The Bash shell

$ drink <bottle; opener bottle:

cannot open opener: not found

$ mkdir matter; cat >matter

matter: cannot create

Do you still believe that your computer is and idiot box? (Windows users: your computers are dumb, just because of windows, accept it).

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