i have been thinking about this since last couple a days. actually i haven't. But I have seen so many blog post start this way and always thought it kinda makes you sound more genuine about the post and shows that you have put in serious time and effort, even though what is going to follow is a post of how twitter is next big thing or how some new service is the twitter killer (latest wanna be killer being http://identi.ca/).
anyhoo. so this is what happened the last weekend, my friends in san jose wanted me to join them for the weekend. there were two cars going back to san jose, so i had no reason to take my own. fair enough. But somewhere deep down I had a feeling this was not a good idea. I was feeling uncomfortable. After I got my car, I had never been to any place without my car. I always had my car. This was so huge for me that my friend suggested that such a "big event" in my life deserves a blog post. Why I am so attached to my car. Well for one, I really like my car, so lets get that out of the way. But more importantly, its that if I have my car with me, I feel like I am in control or to put it differently makes me less dependent on anybody else. Which is big for me. Its like one of those things you really need to have with you when you are out of your house. With these things with you, you know you will be able to handle worst of the days. Same is for my wallet and my phone. I need to have my wallet and I need to my phone. With these two with me I feel I can overcome any extraordinary situations that may arise in the day. I just feels like I am in control of what can happen to me (ya..right..). And so true, the whole of my weekend, I kept feeling nervous uneasiness. As if something is missing, as if I was not guarded, as if i was vulnerable to sudden driving related emergencies. May be its just me and may be not. I like to think that there are people out there equally eccentric as me on this. May be, just may be.
anyhoo. so this is what happened the last weekend, my friends in san jose wanted me to join them for the weekend. there were two cars going back to san jose, so i had no reason to take my own. fair enough. But somewhere deep down I had a feeling this was not a good idea. I was feeling uncomfortable. After I got my car, I had never been to any place without my car. I always had my car. This was so huge for me that my friend suggested that such a "big event" in my life deserves a blog post. Why I am so attached to my car. Well for one, I really like my car, so lets get that out of the way. But more importantly, its that if I have my car with me, I feel like I am in control or to put it differently makes me less dependent on anybody else. Which is big for me. Its like one of those things you really need to have with you when you are out of your house. With these things with you, you know you will be able to handle worst of the days. Same is for my wallet and my phone. I need to have my wallet and I need to my phone. With these two with me I feel I can overcome any extraordinary situations that may arise in the day. I just feels like I am in control of what can happen to me (ya..right..). And so true, the whole of my weekend, I kept feeling nervous uneasiness. As if something is missing, as if I was not guarded, as if i was vulnerable to sudden driving related emergencies. May be its just me and may be not. I like to think that there are people out there equally eccentric as me on this. May be, just may be.
Image via Wikipedia
So lets think about how we do our groceries. I buy my groceries every sunday for the coming week. Say, I spend some 100 bucks on it. Now, lets assume the cost of general food products sky rocket on monday because....well...now every farmer is after corn and other "fuel-friendly" crops. anyway i digress. I panic. My cost of groceries is going to go high too. I start looking for a night job. "will code for food" u guys. But on thursday of that week i read the papers and the story reads, the food crisis is now over as scientist have found a way to cultivate in Alaska. and that too in a organic way. oh my.
so humble readers of my blog can you tell what was my actual cost of groceries for the week of this mayhem. I am no math wiz but my answer came to 100 bucks. and I tried it out on a calculator. now adding some economic (?) analysis to it, I come to a conclusion that if I buy something in advance and that this is going to last me for X number of days, no matter how the much the prices fluctuate during this X days, my cost of the the item is not going to change. It will increase when I buy it the next time but can never mathematically and accountingly( i like coining new words, someday somebody may use it) increase for the stuff I have already paid for.
Standing on the fact that my above theory stands true, what I dont understand is why does the price at the gas station next to my house changes on daily basis in proportion to the price per barrel for that day. Its more real time than the nasdaq ticker at times square. I am sure there are so many intermediary companies in between this gas station and the OPEC people. I am also sure, of these companies almost all of them should be importing oil in advance and in bulk. Doesn't that mean that any changes in the prices up there should at least take some reasonable amount of time (weeks ?) to affect prices at my local gas station. right? Either I am terrible at math, accounting, economics and how the world around me works or there is something terribly wrong with the system (I like using phrases like "wrong with the system"). can someone smart help me explain whats going on here?
its bad. substandard. stuck in 19, i dont know, 20's.
Well i was on a lookout for a good website for getting my daily dose of india's news. I figured I should checkout the website of the major indian news papers. I use google reader to follow all my feeds. The places I looked were Times of India, Indian Express, Hindu, Rediff. This is what I found, none of these sites provide full content feeds. The news feeds just contains a line or two and then you have to jump to there crappy, ever slowing, GIF ridden website to read the full story. The Hindu is even worse, its feed just contains the title of the story. Just the title !!
The way this site support news feeds is as if they are trying to discourage the users from using it. Furthermore, the "summary" content is not even a summary of the full story. At times its just the first line of the story from the actual article truncate abruptly. This doesn't help. If the reason this sites do not provide full content in the feed is to drive traffic to there website than at least they should provide enough information in the summary to make me interested so that I follow thru on the actual article. With almost no useful information, it completely defeats the purpose of subscribing to feed.
The problem is even worse for the people who are used to reading there news on there mobile devices (like me). As, for any news story you want to read, you will have to go to the actual site on your cell phone. and THAT IS A FAIL. These sites are loaded with images and other moving things. GIFs, Flash animations, popups. Anything and everything which will distract you from reading the actual story. I mean what's the point of all this. Are this newspaper companies so much in need for ad money that they are have to resort to this kind of things? I am not against ads on web pages. I am not. I cannot be coz everybody knows that is the only way people know to make money on the internet (oh no i dint). But there are definitely better ways to do this. Please, there are people who specialize in such things. People, please, bring down the bling level on your website. We are there to look at the news and not the pretty graphics.
end note: have a look at all the news site listed above, they look SO much similar. That is not a good sign.
Well i was on a lookout for a good website for getting my daily dose of india's news. I figured I should checkout the website of the major indian news papers. I use google reader to follow all my feeds. The places I looked were Times of India, Indian Express, Hindu, Rediff. This is what I found, none of these sites provide full content feeds. The news feeds just contains a line or two and then you have to jump to there crappy, ever slowing, GIF ridden website to read the full story. The Hindu is even worse, its feed just contains the title of the story. Just the title !!
The way this site support news feeds is as if they are trying to discourage the users from using it. Furthermore, the "summary" content is not even a summary of the full story. At times its just the first line of the story from the actual article truncate abruptly. This doesn't help. If the reason this sites do not provide full content in the feed is to drive traffic to there website than at least they should provide enough information in the summary to make me interested so that I follow thru on the actual article. With almost no useful information, it completely defeats the purpose of subscribing to feed.
The problem is even worse for the people who are used to reading there news on there mobile devices (like me). As, for any news story you want to read, you will have to go to the actual site on your cell phone. and THAT IS A FAIL. These sites are loaded with images and other moving things. GIFs, Flash animations, popups. Anything and everything which will distract you from reading the actual story. I mean what's the point of all this. Are this newspaper companies so much in need for ad money that they are have to resort to this kind of things? I am not against ads on web pages. I am not. I cannot be coz everybody knows that is the only way people know to make money on the internet (oh no i dint). But there are definitely better ways to do this. Please, there are people who specialize in such things. People, please, bring down the bling level on your website. We are there to look at the news and not the pretty graphics.
end note: have a look at all the news site listed above, they look SO much similar. That is not a good sign.
