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We trust you, Ponting! December 15, 2010

Posted by Nav in Cricket.
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For all you Ricky Ponting fans who came looking for something positive about the beleaguered Aussie skipper – sorry! I was being sarcastic!

So, he wants to take the word of fielders when it comes to contentious catches? Of course, what a great idea! Grown men, don’t lie, do they? Bollocks! A batsman nicks one to the keeper and stands his ground, poker face et al. How can you now trust him if he claims a catch when his team fields? If you could trust a cricketer at all times, I’d say do away with on-field umpires. Let fielders claim catches. Let batsman say whether or not they nicked it. Let bowlers decide whether a ball pitched in line. Why do you need umpires?

Going back to claiming catches. Let me paint you a picture. World Cup final. Ponting’s last game as captain. A couple runs to win for the opposition. Last man nicks one low into the slip cordon. Ponting goes for the catch and takes it a whisker off the ground. It’s all over. Australia win their fourth consecutive World Cup! But wait. The ball kissed the ground before he could get his fingers completely underneath it. But is he going to say that he didn’t take it? Of course not.

What does he have to lose? A fine is not going to make a difference. Neither is a suspension. It’s his last game. All that matters is he skippered Australia to another World Cup victory. Even if it weren’t the fielder’s last game, a suspension of a year or two is nothing compared to helping the country to the World Cup. The fielder is going to be a hero at home.

And what if Australia were the team that needed a run to win and the opposition claimed a low catch? Would Ponting still take the fielder’s word for it? Of course not, he would raise a hue and cry. Men are flawed, Ponting. Accept it. If you don’t believe me, hold a mirror to your past.

A Little Thing Called Love December 5, 2010

Posted by Nav in Uncategorized.
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Three months of writing nothing but computer programs and my creative side’s gone into hiding. That is until Savannah (@StarofSavannah) told me about her project. You can read more about it here: The LOVE project: A Collaboration. So I decided to take a break from all the work of graduate school and put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard, to be honest). It took me forever to get the juices flowing, and come up with a decent effort. Many drafts later, and having approached the subject from many different angles, here’s what I have come up with. Not great, but hopefully passable.

Many a line has been written,
A countless words been said,
It seems to make the world go round
This little thing called love

Poets, writers spend their lives,
Exploring this feeling divine
And from their pens magic flows, about
This little thing called love

Years ago, for a woman’s heart
A thousand ships set sail,
To win her back, for that’s the might of
This little thing called love

Then there’s the tale, of lovers two
Whose bond was torn asunder
And in grief they took their very lives, for
This little thing called love

And though a plenty has been said,
Written, sung, and much else
There’s nothing more mysterious, than
This little thing called love

At the knees, it makes men weak
Yet inspires deeds of valour
And truth be told, no one can fathom
This little thing called love

You never know, when you might fall
Head over heels in love
For wiser men have rightly said, it is blind
This little thing called love

The Art Of Faking It February 26, 2009

Posted by Nav in Life.
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My dictionary describes art as ‘the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.’and gives music, dance, theatre, painting and sculpture as examples. But I think we are forgetting an all too common yet subtle art. The art of faking it. You may be shocked, you may think it funny that I call it an art, or you may be scandalized, but I am sorry, folks, I refuse to change my viewpoint. It’s an art alright. Let’s dissect the definition and see if faking, conning fits into the category of an art. But before that let me also point out that my dictionary gives an alternate meaning of art as ‘trickery; cunning’.

Deviation: If art means trickery and faking it is also trickery, what does that make my title? The Trickery of Trickery? Isn’t that a tautology?

So, what is faking it? It ranges from mere lying to the scams of con artists (there we go, they are called con ‘artists’). Some of these scams are so beautifully and meticulously planned, so intricate in detail, and so wonderfully executed that as long as you are not the victim, you can’t but help admiring the conmen. You agree so far? It’s beautiful and it is definitely more than ordinary significance, isn’t it? Fits in perfectly with the definition? Now that I have justified my title, lets get a move on.

Right from the time we are children, we start practising this art (I’m no saying everyone does, but you know….). Just like a painter-in-the-making starts scribbling on the walls when he is two, or the 4 year old musician whose first instruments are the pots and pans in the kitchen, the con artist probably starts at a pretty young age too. And just like some of these young artists who grow out of it as they get older, some of these young conmen grow out of it in time. But then there are those who just can’t give up their true calling. They practise and practise till they become masters of their art. They grow from I-didn’t-break-the-vase to forging checks to multi-billion dollar scams.Catch Me If You Can

Have you watched the movie ‘Catch Me If You Can’? It tells the story of Frank Abagnale Jnr. , played by Leonardo di Caprio. Frank started mastering his art at an early age. He had forged checks by the time he was 18, impersonated a Pan Am pilot and flew over a million miles at the airline’s expense. He had pretended to be a doctor, an attorney and a teaching assistant. One of his famous methods of raking in money was adding his account number to fake deposit slips and adding them to the real stack, so that the deposits on these slips ended up in his account rather than that of the legitimate customers.

Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower

How would you feel if you paid a fortune for the Eiffel tower only to discover that it was not for sale and that you were just conned? It’s not as far-fetched as you think it is. It has been sold, not once, but at least twice as far as I know. It probably might have been sold many more times, but the victims could have been too embarrassed to report it. And it’s not just the Eiffel tower that has been sold. The Statue of Liberty, the London Bridge, even land on the moon has been sold to unsuspecting customers. How could anyone be so naive to buy such world famous landmarks you ask. Well, it’s an art. The planning was brilliant, the execution perfect. If memory serves me right, a steel merchant was approached by the conman who pretended to be a government official. He said that the Eiffel tower was costing the French government a lot to maintain and to cut losses, the government was planning to dismantle the tower and sell the scrap steel. But it had to be kept a secret till the deal was done to prevent a public out-cry for selling France’s most famous landmark. The cash was paid, the documents were transferred, but no Eiffel tower and no steel. And no government official either.
And I am sure that everyone reading this has got at least one email from someone claiming to be the son of a deposed African head-of-state/ businessman/ tribal chief. He has large hidden sums of money which the new government is after, but is rightfully his, and he wants your help to cash the cheques in some foreign bank. As part of your troubles, you will be given 10% of the money as commission. As it turns out, there is no money, no deposed African leader but a ton of trouble and debt for you.

Fake Rolex

Another class of faking artists are forgers. Not just the cheque forgers, but art forgeries are quite well known. Some paintings are forged so well that there have been instances when the original painter was himself unable to spot the forgery. So, little can be said for the rest of us being conned into buying ‘original’ paintings. And it’s not just painitngs. Rampant today are pirated software, books, and what have you. Ten dollar rolexes, cheap Adidas footwear, Louis Vuittons at a tenth of the original price, the list goes on. You name it, and they’ll fake it.

A word before I part. I want to thank my university for giving me inspiration for this blog post. When up for a rating from an accredition commitee, we managed to transform a small staff room into a library, our labs got new names, internet became freely available…you get the drift. Anything to impress. Even faking it goes.

Goodbye Kuwait January 4, 2009

Posted by Nav in Uncategorized.
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Two weeks of doing nothing. Two weeks of waking up when I want, going to bed when I want, eating what I want, whenever I want. Ah, what a good life! Now, it’s time to go back to a land with no luxuries, no good food, and slow slow internet. Let’s see if I manage to keep posting. Adios till then.

Open the Window! January 3, 2009

Posted by Nav in Technology.
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No, don’t. It’s not good for you. Nor for your computer either. It’s one headache after another. System crashes for no apparent reason, constant threat of spyware and other forms of malware, unreliable preformance, and most improtantly, high cost. Yes, I am talking about Microsoft’s Windows OS. Why would anyone want to pay so much for something so messy? Especially, when you have something as robust and free as Linux.

I used to be an ignorant Windows user till a few months back. Always worried about anti-virus software, updating it, scanning pen drives, but still getting infected and having to format. Well, the third time that happened, I gave up. It’s time to give Linux a try, I thought. And I have no regrets since. It’s different, I agree. It might take a while getting used to it after using Windows for so long. But it’s worth the tiny effort of learning to use something new. Since then, it’s been goodbye to everything that bothered me before.

fedora geeko ubuntu-logo

Continuing in the same vein, I remember the time when everyone used Internet Explorer. No one, except the tech geeks, could name any other browser. My friend introduced me to Firefox, and I have been hooked since (thanks a ton, Dave). Long gone is the time when I used to double-click on a blue E to explore the wonderful web. Like another friend put it, I’ve been bitten by the fox.

Once I realised the advantages of Firefox, I couldn’t keep it a secret and let other people suffer in silence (or so it seemed to me). I told them about Firefox, and believe me, I was surprised by the response.

“Why do I need to download another browser, when I have something that does what I want it to?”

“I just want to check my email, and browse a little. I’m happy with IE.”

And that was when IE didn’t have tabbed browsing, a decent download manager( I don’t know if it has one now) or add-ons.firefox_thumb23 People were just scared of using something new, or just plain lazy to download it. And they refused to even give it a try. They called me crazy, they called me a geek. But I refused to give up. Slowly, I managed to get people to try Firefox, and now I am proud to say that most of my friends are Firefox users. Now it’s just a matter of converting the rest of the world.

Part 2:  Same story, different characters. A penguin bit me this time.

There are still people who don’t know about any OS besides Windows. Then there are people who have heard about Linux, but think it’s not user friendly, or worse, it has no GUI. Yet another class of computer users know how good Linux is, but refuse to try it out because they are too lazy to try something new. There are still people who mock me for trying to get others to use Linux, saying it will never happen.

I’ve been there once with Firefox, and I’ve come out successful.  I intend to do the same with Linux. I can’t let the ignorant suffer. It’s going to be harder because it’s more than a browser. It’s a whole different operating system, with different software and different methods of doing things. And so people are mlinux-penguin-big_origpreviewore reluctant. But times will change, as more people get to know the wonderful world of Linux.

So I say to you, open the windows, open your minds to Linux.

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