Look Ma, no sound!

Ever since I upgraded Dapper to Edgy, I have this weird issue of no sound in Vista (yeah, I know it sounds kinda unrelated but this is what I've zeroed in on). The problem is if I boot into Vista after a previous session in Edgy, there's no sound in Vista at all and the only way to restore the sound back is to reboot the system, looks like Edgy updates certain register values of the sound card which Vista is not able to understand. I don't know whether the bug is with Vista or Edgy; but given how fast MS folks are at fixing the "bugs" due to incompatibility with other OS, I'll most probs submit a bug with Ubuntu folks. Edit: Submitted the bug on Launchpad, here is the bug link; in case you're interested: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-lib/+bug/121674

In other news, Vista also doesn't recognize my Pan-digital photo-frame; and I don't see any drivers for Vista on their site either.

June 18th, 5:30 PM

Sitting at the airport, about to board the flight to Delhi; listening to "Nights In White Satin" by Moody Blues and thinking about the last 3 years; it's been nearly 3 years since we met last; did I then think that it for next 3 years we won't even meet once? I don't know, maybe I did…today, are things according to my plans? Well, no…that's why I have stopped planning, things never go according to the plans, so the best is not to plan, at least that way you can blame yourself for not planning anything! Sometimes, I wonder is this a quarter-life crisis (I am not (maybe) old enough to have a mid life crisis, yet)? At times, I really am not sure where I want to head, what I want to do and I have no motivation to find out what is that I need at this point of time…at times, I feel I just letting my life drift away, and have this urgency to sort out things within myself and then at times, I feel life's gonna take me where it has to go, so there is no point in fighting it, let's just go with the flow. I guess too much thinking has really cluttered my mind, too much thinking about things that don't matter any longer to the ones who matter to me. Anyway, got to board in next 15 minutes; am I leaving nothing behind or am I leaving everything that defines me, behind?

A Sort Of Homecoming

Finally, I wound up everything and in another 6 hours will be catching a one-way flight back to India. It's been more than 2 years since I came to this country, hoping for the best; but expecting the worst and I can say now, that expectations always win over hope. Almost everyone has told me that it's a "bold/strong" decision or that I've lost my mind and other blahs but I don't really care: what's a rhyme or a reason; to a fool or a dreamer? I still haven't really figured out what I want to do once I go back, since I am going to be "jobless" and have no inclination as of now to find a new job in India, I know I need to think about something soon, you just can't sit at home and do nothing, when you are not sitting pretty on 1 million dollars in your bank account. Anyway, I remember somebody telling that I should save 5 grands and I made sure that in these two years I do save that much...money, never interested me anyway; perhaps, it has something to do with having Neptune in the second house in my birth chart! Lot of people also asked me, how do I feel about it? Honestly, I don't feel anything, maybe; the feeling is yet to sink in or maybe; I have spent so much of feelings/energies in the past; that I have run out of them. Will I ever return back? I will return no more; I will take my heart and let it fly....but then, if "somebody" needs me; I am with her, for her, always....

flickr & Popfly

I played a little with popfly to create a carousel stack of my images based on tag(s) from flickr, and well, had quite a few issues...firstly, the built in flickr block doesn't allow returning user images based on tag, so I ripped the flickr block and created mine. Had some issues with the block not allowing me to enter the flickr key for this block, so I hard-coded the key in the js file itself! The other thing is you can't pass querystrings to your mashup; so there is no way you can customize the mashup at runtime (well, in a way you can by using the user-input block; but that doesn't solve my problem). Anyway, creating the mashup was really straight-forward and given that popfly is in early alpha stages, I guess it will only get better.

Update 6/12: Played around with popfly a bit more and learnt quite a few things, which you might want to know:

• There is no way to pass querystring parameters to a mashup currently, this means that the mashup cannot be dynamic w.o. requiring user input: this will be implemented in next release.


• Some blocks like Carousel and Photo Sphere have rendering issues in fx and don't display at all on that browser: again something which will be fixed in next release


• You cannot really "rip" a block which requires a developer key and extend it, or more generically, you cannot create a block which requires a developer key unless you are willing to hard-code your key in the javascript itself.

Here's the link to the mashup.

Weather update

Since past 3 years; I'd been thinking that one day I will write a post titled above, it's just that this post is going to be very different than what I'd hoped for then. Well, so the weather update is that I quit my job today; I had already decided and given hints on that couple of weeks back and this morning; I officially resigned. Now, that means I am going to be jobless as I don't have any other job opportunity; in fact I wasn't even looking for a new job. I have been feeling so burned out and run over that I think this break is something that I really need. These 3 years have left me emotionally and mentally drained off; where now; I don't have any motivation to achieve anything with my life. So, where I am headed? I wish I had the answer to such questions; there are few things that I always wished I could do; but responsibilities and living on the "materialistic" plane made sure that I was always skeptical to try them out. Now that I have nothing (left) to lose, I should very well give them a full go. Firstly, I have to write the book I promised Chhavi that I'll write, long time back: the book on us and our relationship. I don't know how many people will be interested in reading such a book; well; I don't even know whether she'll be interested in reading it now but I am still going to write it for whatever it's worth. Secondly, we always wanted to open a charitable organization for homeless children; I need to figure out the logistics for opening one: I know it's not easy to do fund-raising and sustaining such a organization but at least I can give it my best.
When I look back at the last 3 years that I've spent of my life; I have no regrets that I tried so much; that I spent all my energy on just one person; in having her back in my life; she deserved every little thing that I did for her if not more. Ever since I was a kid, I always dreamed about having that one person in my life; who understood what it means to be me; for whom I didn't have to change myself, in front of whom; I was equally comfortable laughing and crying. One person, in whom I saw a part of me: a part of me that was always missing in my life, a part which made me complete. I don't care who was right or wrong, in a relationship it doesn't matter who was right; it's just whether you're together or not; whether you get to share your dreams and pains with each other or not. I know all through my life, she will be the missing bit in me; a part which will again make me whole but then somethings are not meant to be...

Lightbox and google maps

I've been very infrequent in updating my Google Maps prototype; had been thinking of improving the image transitions that I use on the slideshow for a long time, but lack of motivation ensured that I only updated it last weekend. Rather than writing something on my own, I updated the Phatfusion's version of slimbox to play well with my code. Next set of "upgrade" includes, adding a location search box and restoring the randomness of flickr images. In case you are interested with how the prototype was implemented, most of the grunt work is done in two js files: functions.js and images.js; & I guess they are easy enough to follow; the only server side code is for MapPoint and wrappers around flickr and fotolia to avoid xss issues.

Y! Mail

In my last post, I mentioned how spam is ending up in my Y! Inbox and though; no matter how much it sucks; I prefer that over false positives (where legit mails end up in your bulk folder). Well, just couple of days back; I had a legit mail delivered to my Bulk Folder and today, somebody told me that he didn't reply back to my mail earlier because it was delivered to his bulk folder! Now, this is something which is completely unacceptable (yes, I know I get what I pay for but remember, free email is a very competitive area with gmail, aol, live mail and yahoo! fighting it out); it's unacceptable because it creates doubt in the mind of sender; I don't know for sure whether the mail that I just sent will be delivered to the recipient where he has a chance to read it. Remember, mails delivered to bulk folder don't bounce back to the sender; so there is no way for sender to know what happened to his mail once he hits the "send" button; and I am not going to call every person whom I mailed asking for an ACK (well, that very much defeats the purpose of emails anyway). Maybe, I am tech-savvy enough not to rely on Yahoo! Spam filters and check my bulk folder regularly; but how many of my recipients check their bulk folders? So, one thing's for sure, every time I send an email, I would always wonder; did it get to the recipient? A not so pleasant situation to be in! Yahoo, please get your act together, you've been my primary email provider for last 12 years and I don't want to change that!

Liar! Liar!

Disclaimer: This post is another one about life and the way we live it and there is tons of unstrung thoughts of asymptotic nature. If you're not interested in reading philosophical musings of a 29 year old, you might want to stop reading now.

There are so many times when we lie about something, either we lie to somebody or unfortunately, we lie to ourselves. The lies could be as small as lying to our parents about how the toy was broken when we were kids or as profound as lying to make someone else's day; and then there are lies; which we tell ourselves; so that we can convince ourselves that the decision that we don't want to make but have to make; is what makes sense. We come up with so many "practical reasons" just to convince ourselves, even though those "practical reasons" don't actually mean anything to us; we try to validate our new found "practical reasoning" abilities by throwing our reasons at different people; where all the while we are only interested in finding one listener, who tells us that no your "reasons" don't make any sense; then we can do what we really wanted to do, deep inside. Sometimes, we lie to others about why we took a particular decision, we again come up with those "practical reasons" which don't mean anything to us; so that people cannot find "flaws" with our decisions cause we know that they can't understand what it means to be us.

Y! Mail Spam

I am just about done with the amount of spams that is slipping through the Y! Mail Spam System. I get around 5-6 spams in my Inbox every day (given that I only get about 10 mails in a day, the signal to noise ratio is really poor), I do agree that this is a lot better than what used to happen with Y! Mail earlier; when even legit emails would end up in Bulk folder but still Yahoo! needs to get its act together. I don't want to win Million Dollar lotteries every day!

Smoking kills...

Whenever someone asks me why don't I quit smoking, I just tell them:

Once upon a time; I had a reason to smoke,
today; I don't have a reason to quit.

Past perfect, future tense

Almost everyone knows how much I love The Moody Blues; and when someone told me that they will be touring in July; they expected it's one show that I won't miss. The fact is; Moody Blues is a band, I won't even mind traveling miles; just to see them live. But then I said no; I've come to realize that in life it's not the activity that matters but the person who you can share it with; that matters. Once upon a time, I would just be at home and talk on phone for hours and still find that life is so beautiful and now even doing things that I "love" doesn't get me involved. Sometimes, I wonder can people really forget their past; a past that they only created, a past that was so beautiful; if they can; then why can't I? If no, then why do they pretend that there is no one they left behind? Someone; who you would like to share all the beautiful moments of your life with, wasn't it the same "someone"; who made the life beautiful at first place? Perhaps, I'm too old to search for answers to such jigsaw puzzles of life...and yes, I will never see Moody Blues live ever.

Some hard to find 80s numbers

I recently stumbled upon "Shadows In The Night" by Kay Franzes; a song which I have quite vivid memories of: it was aired on a show called "Eurotops - Musikladen", a show that I would religiously watch when I was a kid. Listening to this song reminded me of those other ones that I would love to have:

* Never Ending Love by Cartoon (I do have this in a very crappy recording)
* Hold You by Zig Zag (crappy recording)
* Helen In Your Headphones by The Dots (I want this song badly!)
* Walking On Ice by Lisa Nemzo (I actually traded quite a few emails with her for this song; but somehow it didn't work out).
* Rock Me Baby by Johnny Nash(?)
* Time To Fly (sing my song) by Kenny Masters (again in very crappy recording)
* Say you will, say you will be mine (no not the one by Foreigner: this one is actually not from Eurotops: I had it in one of the recorded cassettes that my brother's friend gifted to him).


Does anyone have any pointers to any of these songs? online streams, mp3s, iTunes, Zune Marketplace anything would do!

Strand

Today, I lost something which was perhaps my most prized possession: something that I had savored for last 3 years; something which though small meant a world to me, it's just the small things in life that make the big difference.

Ignorance is bliss

Couple of years back, I was oblivious to what was happening in "outside" world; I was just completely happy with being in my private universe, in my own beautiful world. Things changed, the private universe disappeared and I was left with spending all my time reading "news" from the outside world. There are quite a few feeds on my BlogLines and I would read most of them everyday but then I got tired; life was so enriching even without having to read what was happening around, and off-late I've decided that I'll only read Bloglines every alternate day and not to read it altogether when I am at home: spending so much time online hasn't been very kind on my back and hasn't helped me in making my life any better anyway. Sometimes, I feel ignorance is indeed bliss! Isn't that what we do in our lives every time? We turn our backs to our past as if there's nothing that we left behind; as if the dreams that we dreamed then; don't mean anything any longer to us...as if we didn't leave any one behind alone, whom we wanted to be with; all through our lives.

My Yahoo: Review

I have been using the new My Yahoo since few days now, and as I said in my last post I'm quite impressed by the overall redesign effort. There are few things that I wish were implemented though:

1. The Mail widget is a nice way of getting previews of your latest mails but surprisingly lacks a "Compose" link (even more surprising cause Yahoo! does have a shortcut for that), that way I don't have to click on "Mail Preview" to first go to my mail inbox and then click on Compose.
2. The individual mail previews within the widget should also have a delete icon: given that these days I get more spam in my inbox than legit emails (which by the way is better than getting all legit mails delivered to the Junk folder: the issue that I earlier had with my Y! Mail).
3. Perhaps mail previews should also have some kinda "Quick Reply" which pops up a div with a text area from where I can send a quick & short reply (honestly I haven't sent anyone a long reply since ages).
4. The individual widgets need to have a refresh link so that I can just refresh one feed rather than having to refresh the entire My Y!
5. Provide a keyboard shortcut for adding a RSS by URL and make it more prominent, right now it's buried deep inside some Advanced Settings: it took me a while finding that one.

Faces in Picasso's notebook

Most of the people who know me, know that I love photography. Once upon a time I had a use-n-throw camera, then a Pentax roll camera and now a Canon A95. Everyone asks me that if I love photography so much, why don't I get myself a DSLR and I always have one answer: I don't have a subject worthy enough a DSLR (...and when I had one, I coudn't afford the camera).

Time traveller

4 years back on this day, being in a train on a 36 hour long journey to meet someone for the first time after 13 years, so many thoughts pass through your mind: what if it doesn't work out right; what if we don't even know what to talk about. Then the moment finally arrives; and you are standing in front of each other, seeing the other person in flesh, someone to whom you've talked over the phone for about a month before this day and you finally let the feeling sink in and realize it''s kind of different, different in a good way. You talk, you laugh together, you share things you'd been doing over the last 13 years and try to hold on to the moment before they slip away from you again....4 years later....only two words: Happy Birthday!

My Yahoo! makeover

It's been more than 5 years since I've been using My! Yahoo as my home page; so it is nice to know that they finally did some makeover. So what did I do? well, I played around with it for sometime and it sure is way better than its previous incarnation. The mail preview is there ala Google Home page, the RSS posts can be read in-place (I still prefer something like bloglines over Google/Yahoo/Live Home Page as in case of start pages, you have to click on individual posts to read their summary/text; unlike the real RSS aggregators where you can read all the posts in one go without having to click many times). The interface is slick, fast, with tooltip previews to get quick summary about a post and integration with Yahoo! Reader.

All in all, quite impressed with the end (beta) product, and in case you're wondering how it is different from Google Home page or Live.com, well; it's not different from either of them though eye candy wise I'd rate: My Yahoo!, then live.com and then Google Home page.

PS: The screen clippings were taken using Office One Note (even though Vista has a built in Screen Clipper), something that I'm really impressed with.

Yes Virginia, there is a Chesapeake

sometimes...

I just feel like writing something; so this post is not going to make any sense...just like all other posts on this blog...

Sometimes we find it so hard to convince ourselves that we're done, we're done trying, done hanging on, done waiting for things to happen; no, the things we've been waiting for; still mean a world to us, it's just that we accept that we can't do anything to change the way life is...life is just one manifestation out of the infinite possibilities; and most of the times it's not us who choose the outcome. That also reminds me about us and our free will, yes; we absolutely have free will: it's akin to: "you can choose any color (manifestation) as long as it is black (outcome)."