Random tangent (blog)
Ameel Khan's personal blog. This is a blog about life, technology, photography, typography, the internet, science, feminism, books, film, music, and whatever other random stuff I come across or happen to be interested in today.
The 'I Think She Knows Interlude' part (i.e. the second half) of Justin Timberlake's song Lovestoned / I Think She Knows Interlude is really quite awesome.
I've heard the song a few times before, but mostly on the radio. Today, however, I heard it on my earphones (thanks to Got Radio) and I am very impressed. Others think so too. In fact, John Mayer did a really cool electric guitar cover of it:
Cool, no?
[Via All Things Go]
In case you missed the first episode of Salam Cafe -- the new, very Aussie, very funny comedy panel and sketch show that debuted on SBS on Wednesday -- you can now watch it on the SBS website. I'm guessing all future episodes will be published there as well.
The show is about the funny side of being a Muslim in Australia -- which means there's plenty of Muslim and Aussie humour -- but is also about being a Muslim, particularly a young Muslim, in this day and age. Here's what The Age had to say about it.
So, set your reminders for 10pm on Wednesdays on SBS and have a good laugh.
Great article on the SciAm website about sleep debt, which is the difference between how much you slept and how much you should have slept.
The trick is that you can't make up for your lack of sleep during weeknights just by sleeping late on weekends, though that's very important too. For proper recovery sleep you need to be sleeping a little extra every day for a period of time till your natural sleep cycle is restored (i.e. your debt has been repaid).
Being a sleep aficionado myself, I can safely say that I already knew that. And having worked in startups for most of my life -- i.e. being someone who swings from periods of no work to periods of intense work which, as you would expect, messes with your sleep cycle -- there are a few other bits of sleep pattern wisdom that I could add. But I'll save those for another blog post since there's lots to say.
I watched Iron Man yesterday and it rocks! I particularly liked that the writers took their time in developing Stark's character and back story -- like the Yinsen story arc -- before jumping into the action, which was also nicely done. In fact, what made the movie special was that it was much more of an action-drama (the birth of a superhero) than just a pure action movie (a superhero goes around kicking ass). The dialogue, acting, and smatterings of humour were all really good too.
Of course it was interesting to hear Raza, one of the main bad buys, speaking Urdu. The last time we had a cool but seriously evil bald bad guy that spoke a language from this region was when Amrish Puri played Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom -- though, of course, he spoke Hindi and not Urdu.
Faran Tahir (who is of Pakistani origin, by the way) also played Raza a little less one-dimensionally than I was expecting, which was nice. That said, Raza was very much a mix between Puri's Mola Ram and Crispin Glover's Creepy Thin Man from the Charlie's Angels franchise: "menacing" to the point of being almost funny, but still reasonably believable (like the bad guys from xXx, for example). [See update below]
Oh, and all US patriotism aside -- this is an American superhero movie about a military weapons manufacturer, after all -- it was interesting how they made the main bunch of over-the-top bad guys a reasonably international group of weapons traders who spoke Urdu, Arabic, Russian, Hungarian, and a whole bunch of other languages. All the cool terrorists are either Middle Eastern, Central European, or Scandinavian these days. Gone are the days of the evil Japanese, Vietnamese, Germans, and Russians...though the ultimate bad guy is still, of course, British.
Also, to keep up with the times, they moved the entire Iron Man story from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Even Yinsen (originally Ho Yinsen) had his back-story moved from "communist Vietnam" to "terrorist Afghanistan". I guess that means the Bond franchise now has dibs on European bad guys; the Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman franchises have dibs on American bad guys; the Transformers and Superman franchises have dibs on outer-space bad guys; and the Bourne franchise has dibs on the CIA and other intelligence agencies as bad guys. Have I missed any?
Anyway, I don't have much more to say about the movie itself -- a lot of others have already said pretty much everything I wanted to say (and have probably said it better) -- so I'll just link to some good reviews, instead:
All in all, it's an excellent movie that I would highly recommend.
UPDATE: Trekker alerted me to this excellent PULSE News article on Faran Tahir and his role in Iron Man. In it, Tahir is quoted as saying:
"The thing I loved about playing Raza was the approach. It's so easy in today’s reality, when you have a movie set somewhere in the Middle East or Afghanistan, to have everything become about the current terrorism in those nations. However, it wasn't about that. It was about a different ideology. My group of people, my minions and I, are the real soldiers of fortune. We use whatever we can to get the power. It wasn't about religion, but we'd use religion, corporate espionage -- whatever we needed to get ahead. We have no alliance to anyone. We have our own ideology: profit, power, prestige -- it brings everything to an honest level. People do a lot of things under the guise of ideologies, but it's all about power in the end."
Awesome. Now I'm really looking forward to seeing Tahir in the upcoming Star Trek movie.
I have three primary e-mail accounts: Melbourne Business School, Yahoo! Mail Plus, and insanityWORKS.org. I also have three secondary ones: The University of Melbourne, Gmail, and Hotmail. I forward UniMelb to MBS, Gmail to Yahoo!, and I check Hotmail via a browser periodically. I POP mail from my primary accounts to my laptop and I use Mozilla Thunderbird as my e-mail client. That is:
When I'm away from my laptop, however, I usually only check my primary accounts. To do that, I use the MBS webmail interface, Yahoo!'s excellent webmail interface, and I POP my insanityWORKS mail into Yahoo!. That is:
This system has worked well for the last seven years because I've always had one primary computer to work on (which, for the last four years, has been my laptop). Now things are starting to change and I'm tempted to (a) move all my e-mail online and (b) move to one primary e-mail account (Gmail) and five secondary ones (all the rest). That is:
Here's why...
Three Major Changes
First, I've become a lot more mobile and I increasingly want access to all my old e-mails (and some of my data) regardless of where I am and which computer I'm working on. This wouldn't be a problem if I was to carry my laptop (and, therefore, all my e-mail and data) with me everywhere I went, but that's not something I want to do all the time. Also, in the future I want to use my phone to access my e-mail and I simply can't do that with my current setup.
Second, cloud computing has come a long way over the last couple of years and Yahoo!, which is by far my preferred e-mail provider, lacks a number of cloud computing features that I really want. For example, Google Reader is much better than Yahoo!'s RSS reader and Microsoft's SkyDrive is much better than Yahoo! Briefcase. I also prefer Google's Calendar to Yahoo!'s, I really like Gmail's labelling mechanism, and Microsoft's Live Mesh sounds very exciting as well. In other words, I want to start using cloud computing-like services and Yahoo! alone isn't giving them to me.
Third, we live in an increasingly connected world. My current system of downloading all my e-mail to my laptop works well because it assumes that I'll be doing a lot of e-mailing (and, in general, computing) offline and from one computer. Increasingly, that is not the case. Instead, I now use communication tools like Facebook and Twitter for which you need to be constantly online, I don't limit my e-mail usage to just my laptop, and I even access the 'net and my e-mail through my mobile phone (though I don't do much of that right now because it's really expensive on my current phone plan!).
Two Implications
This means two things. First, I am seriously considering moving all my e-mail to the 'cloud'. I want this for seamless and synchronized e-mail access across multiple computers and devices. And since I am frequently online (or at least in mobile phone signal range) not being able to access my e-mail because I don't have an Internet (or mobile phone) connection is no longer an issue.
For this to work, though, I will need an IMAP-based e-mail solution and not a POP-based one. IMAP will not only let me sync my e-mail across multiple computers and devices, it will let me work offline (before re-syncing) as well.
Second, because of that IMAP requirement, I am seriously considering making Gmail my sole primary e-mail account. In fact, I'll start to POP e-mail from all my other accounts into this one as well (see diagram above).
Why? Not only is Gmail the only one that offers IMAP (which is why it should be my only e-mail interface), it's free and it gives me tonnes of storage, great calendar integration, and excellent e-mail search capabilities. It is also reliable, universally accessible, and, once I switch, I won't have to take regular backups of my e-mail folders any more.
I could, of course, use other (paid) IMAP services, but I think I'd be better off using Gmail for all the additional benefits I get from it.
One Decision
So I have a big decision to make. Do I move all 2.1GB of e-mail archives off my laptop, out of my direct control, and into the cloud? Some people have done that and are happy with it. Others didn't have such a great time. Until I try it myself, I don't know how things will turn out for me. What might be useful, though, is if I was to do a bit of e-mail housekeeping before uploading everything to Gmail. Doing that would be a pain up-front, but it would make life a lot easier going forward.
Actually, maybe the bigger issue is this: should I commit myself to using only Gmail (via IMAP) from this point on? I guess another way to think of this is to ask myself whether this is better than the status quo. That is: should I commit myself to using only my laptop (with occasional backups) to store all my e-mail? Or, to get the best of both worlds, does it make more sense to store my e-mail both on Gmail and to maintain a local copy of all that e-mail in Thunderbird as well? The answer, in theory, is pretty obvious. Naturally, it's much harder to go ahead and actually implement the solution.
I think I'll start off with a baby step: I'll activate IMAP on my Gmail account and will start using that with Thunderbird. I'll even try uploading copies of some of my old e-mails into Gmail to see how it goes. If that goes well, I'll spend the next few weeks moving all my folders over one-by-one. Before I know it, I'll be good to go. Let's just hope things go as smoothly as I've just made them sound!
Want a deeper and most awesome analysis of the recent WGA strike? Read Matt Prager's essay on Lawrence Lessig's blog.
Or is it a debacle only when, say, Microsoft does it but a minor PR issue when Apple does it? Whatever.
I've been meaning to write about this for a while now, but haven't gotten around to it (the last week of my MBA starts today! Yaay!). Meanwhile, Paul Thurrott's gone and said pretty much what I wanted to say in his article: Apple lofts middle finger at PC users, PC users thank Apple for acknowledging them. Of course, he says it much better than I ever could (and with a lot more authority, being a tech journalist and all) but that's okay.
I watched The Spiderwick Chronicles today. And while the movie was pretty good, I was most impressed by actor Freddie Highmore who played the twins Jared and Simon. (Sarah Bolger, who played their sister Mallory was also pretty good).
Highmore's done a lot of other cool stuff as well. For example, he played Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and was the voice of Pantalaimon in The Golden Compass. He'll also be doing the voice for Astro Boy (slated for a 2009 release).
Chalk up one more young actor whose career I am looking forward to following (the other one being Dakota Fanning). Hmmm...I must now watch August Rush.
Crave has a great article on the Anatomy of an IKEA Product. Fascinating stuff.
Almost missed this: Nadia's Token Human rant was featured in Heartless Bitches :) Awesome.
I've been listening to a lot of Peter Gabriel recently so, while surfing through PG-related stuff on the 'net, I came across Brigitte Jellinek's Comments on Peter Gabriel Songs site. The title pretty much sums-up what the site is about and, if you're a big PG fan, it's definitely worth a visit.
PC Magazine has finally gotten around to reviewing the Toshiba M700 tablet PC. Cisco Cheng gives is a 4 out of 5 and says:
Bottom Line: This convertible tablet has the processing capability and an optical drive to maintain productivity at a high level.
Pros: Excellent performance scores. Built-in optical drive. Beefed-up hinges. Wacom and touch capabilities. Superb "green" attributes. Comfortable keyboard.
Cons: Needs 3G support. Plain and bulky-looking.
Awesome.
[Via GBM]
OMFG! Adobe Media Player has MacGyver, Twilight Zone, and Star Trek TOS episodes! And it's not GeoIP locked!
I used to be a huge shortwave radio buff in my teens [1] but that was before cable TV and the Internet came to Pakistan and became affordable to the general public. I never really got into Internet radio, though. I was never in a situation where I could. At home cable TV ruled because we got our first satellite dish antenna a good ten years before broadband and at work I never got the time or the bandwidth.
The one time I did get into 'net radio was when I was working for InterActive Communications and I would listen to Radio Free Virgin quite a lot. Even then, I'd only tune in when I was working late because during the day I was office DJ -- playing music from our pooled CD and MP3 collection via large speakers connected to my workstation -- and, besides, there was rarely enough bandwidth to get a good, high quality stream going before 6pm.
So it's only recently -- thanks to having broadband Internet but no cable TV at home and full days on my laptop at work or university -- that I've really started to get into Internet radio...and there's a lot of catching up to do. So far I've used both Windows Media Player and Real Player to explore radio stations and that's been a lot of fun. I've also checked out Australian stations, NPR, VOA, and, of course, the BBC (with its really nifty iPlayer). They've all been good too.
I'm still in 'net radio investigation mode, though, and I'll share my thoughts on it as I learn more. For now let me just recommend to you Got Radio which has a really good selection of music channels, all of which are on-demand (i.e. if you don't like a song you can press next and move on to the next track in the playlist). The quality of the stream isn't all that great for an audiophile like me (though it sounds alright on my Altec Lansing laptop speakers) but the music selection is really good. And if you sign up (US$4.95/month or $26.95/year) you get a high quality, ad-free stream instead. I don't think I'm quite ready to do that yet, but it's something I might consider for the future.
For more on Internet radio in the future, stay tuned to this blog.
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[1] Ooh, now that's an idea for another blog post: my days as a shortwave radio buff. I should write about how I got introduced to the BBC back in the late '80s (my father used to listen to their MW service every morning and evening) soon after which I became a real radio geek, building SW antennas and keeping a logbook and all.
Ah, the good old days...listening to the latest news, talk, and music from the BBC, VOA, Radio Australia, Radio Moscow, and everything in between. Of course I had a lot more free time in those days. Time enough to sit for hours on the balcony listening to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, live coverage of the '92 Olympics, and music from all over the world.
I recently downloaded Paul Melia's Tennis in the Rain from We7 and I love it! It's a free (but ad-supported) download so make sure you take a listen. That's now another album I'm looking forward to getting.
[FYI: Paul Melia on MySpace]
"Cool bananas" -- I've been hearing that phrase on and off since coming to Australia and I'd always wondered where it had come from but I'd never gotten around to investigating its origins. Then I heard it again yesterday and, after tormenting Nadia with it all afternoon, I finally looked it up.
Initially I presumed that it was from something like a children's TV show like Bananas in Pyjamas but, as it turns out, it's originally a Kiwi phrase from the 70s -- or at least that's what the Wikipedia consensus on it seems to be. How the Kiwis came up with it, no one seems to know. The Urban Dictionary, for example, defines it but doesn't indicate its origins.
The most comprehensive discussion on it, however, is on an ABC message board in which...well, in which all they manage to conclude is that a bunch of them have been hearing it in various parts of Australia for over 30 years. I guess that's about as close as we're going to get to its proper etymology. (Darn, and here I thought the Internet knew everything!). Oh well. At least I got to blog about it so that's, er, cool bananas! :)
One of my favourite place on the 'net is the lolcat site I Can Has Cheezburger. In case you don't already know, these fine folk also have three other equally funny sites:
They also maintain Speak LOLspeak, which is the "The Definitive Lolcats Glossary" and an invaluable resource.
And then there are three other funny, but more specialized lol-related sites:
There are, of course, many, many more of these sites but those three are, in my opinion, the funniest of the lot.
Good stuff!
This is personal website of Nadia Niaz and Ameel Zia Khan. Here we document our lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia