Stills from a moving train

Bangalore (not Bengalooroo) is a cool city, but like all places that aren’t Goa, it isn’t Goa. Nice environment, good weather, limited english and hindi spoken, and expensive to travel around. I prefer Bombay.

Some idiot said something

I love travelling by train. I hate the bus (haven’t travelled in 10 years now), and don’t particularly enjoy the flight, though I don’t hate it. I love the train, probably because I don’t do much travelling. So when I travel, I want to feel like I’ve travelled. Sounds pretentiously cheap, but if you give me a no strings attached flight ticket versus a train ticket, I’ll take the train. Not just that. I’ll take the second class sleeper — my favourite.

There’s no logical explanation as to why this is. It’s not the cleanest of environments. There are huge delays. It’s noisy. It probably makes me feel like a foreigner ‘discovering India’ in a very poetic way. Though probably not.

Sometimes I don’t even know why I carry this camera with me. It’s free, I guess.

Nothing special about this scene. Wanted to describe the scenes through which we passed (trees and grassland), but none of my shots were turned out noteworthy. The scenery is a big part of my trip, since I’m always found sitting at the door, listening to music.
A stop at a station gives a perfect contrast between the AC section and non-AC. Here, everyone’s out and about. I probably should have gotten a shot of the other side as well; I realise this now.
People have fun in the second class. I’ve never seen this kind of frolicking in the AC sections; always whispering and reading their books. My best guess is that it’s the noise created by the uninsultated environment that lowers your inhibitions. I, of course, sit alone, though at one point there did occur an iPad demonstration.

Skynet is already here

I have a theory. It might be a little disturbing, but one might also find it utterly ridiculous. I’ve written this starter before even putting down my thoughts into words, so even I don’t know how it’ll turn out.

It’s a riot!

I have a moderately sized music collection that I’ve accumulated over the years. About 4 thousand songs, all neatly tagged, with album art, and mostly rated (I’m huge on ratings) in iTunes. I regularly prune the library of one starrers, and marvel at the playcounts of many of my favourite songs. Every now and then though, I get the feeling like I’m listening to the same shit over and over again. “Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just reboot my library”, is a thought that occured to me the other day. I know I’m physically capable of doing it — would take not more than 10 seconds — but is my mind ready?

“Yes of course I could do it. After all, I’m hardly attached to all of this. I could in fact wipe my entire hard drive and still not worry about a thing.”

But did I do it? No. It would be stupid to do so, right? Of course it would.

When you watch movies like the Terminator, where machines turn against Man, it’s always a measurable war between the two. In that world, the humans want the machines to die — to stop functioning, or gain control, rather. But what if that’s not the way we lose control over our existence?

I despise dogs. I hate them to the core. That’s not part of this argument, but I had to mention it. Dogs are dependent on humans for almost everything. Without humans, I doubt dogs would survive. Most of them have long since lost their natural instincts to hunt for food, and survival in nature is out of the question. Even street dogs are fed and sheltered by civilization. Dogs wouldn’t wish humans to go, because they’ve grown comfortable with our existence, and have evolved to be dependent on us. They’ve evolved to be dependent, because life with humans is easier than life in the wild. A dog is mostly always assured of food (unless I’m in charge), but the trade off is that without us, they don’t.

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I reach out for is my iPad. I check my email while walking around, look at what Twitter is up to, check some sites, RSS maybe, fill up a glass of water and drink it while still peeking at my iPad screen with one eye. For god’s sake I can’t make number two without a healthy reading list in my instapaper queue. Through all facets of my life, technology and the internet play a huge role in maintaining my happiness, my high. Even during my long biking trip to South India, I had my iPhone with me, guiding me with its maps, keeping me entertained with music, and in touch with everyone. I think of train journeys in terms of what videos I’ll watch on my iPad. I think of runs on the beach as which playlist I’ll load on my shuffle. And I’m not even calling out the things that are not directly related to technology in hand. These are of course good things, and our quality of life has vastly improved because of such amenities.

The thought of living without any information technology seems like a possibility, sure. Even though most of my work depends on using technology, I know I could tune out entirely and find something else to do. Something that’s less involved with computers and the internet. I could do farming. I could hang out with people who have no interest in information technology, and talk about sports. But it would be uncomfortable, and I’ve grown comfortable with technology. I have real friends on Twitter. Leaving this would be the human equivalent of a dog hunting for food in the jungle, when there is a meaty bone being offered right where it sits.

The terminator of the real world isn’t going to kill you. It’s going to keep you alive, it’s going to keep you happy, but you won’t be able to live without it. Skynet is already here; it’s called the internet.

Sleep Lessons from an Insomniac

Cutting yourself off when you’re most productive, and then lying in the same position for 8 hours at a stretch, waking up more tired than went you went into deep slumber; could there be a bigger waste of time?

Some idiot said something

I have trouble sleeping. Well, not the act of sleeping but shutting off my activities and going to bed. I think I’ve mentioned this before, on this blog’s previous incarnation (even asked the cat for some advice). Every day I delay my sleeping time, leading to a loop that ends up a few weeks later me sleeping at 8 in the morning. And then I reverse my cycle over a painful period of 3-4 days.

But I think I’ve figured out sleep. After so much of first hand experience with the sleep monster, I think I know pretty well what causes problems, and a few solutions. There’s a saying I could have used here but I just can’t put my finger on it.

All of this is knowledge based on my own experiences, and wherever I say you, I mean me.

Insomnia comes over if you stay up more than an hour after you first feel sleepy. It’s your mind forcing itself into a second wake cycle, but your body still wants its sleep. Essentially your body is too tired to work any longer, and your mind is actively thinking up new shit.

My first bit of advice is to go the fuck to sleep when you feel sleepy. Nothing better than doing that. I sometimes practice regular sleep timings, and for a week or two I manage a strict 12 a.m sleeping schedule. Those days I wake up fresh.

If you’ve lost your way for a few days and want to get back on track, it’s a little difficult sleeping before your new usual time. Drink lots of alcohol, or smoke up. Bound to knock you out at any given time. Be sure not to knock out more than 4 hours before your usual sleep time, because this will trigger a nap, leaving you wide awake a few hours out. That state is so twisted even I’m yet to figure it out.

If you do enter into a state of insomnia, get up, eat a lot of food. Don’t eat carbohydrates or things that will turn into sugar. Meat, eggs, milk are the good stuff; basically heavy foods. Eating cookies is the worst thing you could do at this point, tempting as they might be. Don’t do this every day though, as it’s bound to muck up your digestive system.

Your thoughts also need to be conditioned. Think of vague things. Don’t think of the thing you’ve just been working on. Those are the things that will keep your mind engaged and ruin your sleep. Think of improbable things that you could only dream about (see what I did there?). It’s time to bring up those unholy fantasies (though careful not to take them too far or someone else will wake up).

Never listen to music or read something while on the bed. This is one sure fire way to stay awake. Unless you’re really sleepy, and you’re sleeping at your regular time, music and reading will trick your body into staying awake in that position (unless it’s some vague dreamy music—though I still tend to pay attention). Reading is especially bad—Instapaper being the main culprit here—because when you’re done reading, your mind can’t just switch off. I know this, and have since done my reading while sitting with the lights on, or even standing, and only going to bed when I really mean it.

I regularly can’t fall asleep. I often can’t fall asleep even when I feel tired. Once asleep, I generally sleep through the night just fine. It’s nearly impossible for me to wake up early in the morning. Pulling an all-nighter is surprisingly easy for me. I generally direct my lifestyle to avoid morning commitments.

— Jason Freedman

Lighting. Apparently there’s some warm light cold light shit going on. I read this article by Jason Freedman, which talks about bad light. Apparently, evolution has tuned our body to waking up with bright cold light, and falling asleep to warm dull light. And we need to model our environment accordingly. The first thing I do when I wake up, is walk the fuck outside. I get my sunlight units no matter what time of the day it is. This first of all flushes all the sleep out of me, and second, resets my bio clock to mark this point as the day’s beginning. Now what do we do about night? I’ve switched my cold flourescent tube with one that glows warm. I also use f.lux, which automatically warms my Mac’s display temperature; although I had been using it more because it’s soothing to the eyes. I don’t know whether this works, because I’m too darned stupid to follow a schedule, but it does make a lot of sense.

But the most important thing, is you can’t keep your phone or notebook, or iPad next to you. The motherfucker will ring in a new email, your cunt of a brain will want to check Twitter, and its back to square one. Being woken up just as you’re drifting asleep is the worst thing that could happen, and you’ll inevitably land up with another hour of tossing and turning. The best thing you can do at this point is wake up, do some work, and then reset your mind into going back to bed.

Even with all this knowledge, my sleep problems still remain, as I write this at 7 in the morning. God help me. Oh wait, I forgot, he doesn’t exist. But that’s a topic for a different story.

On why I’m leaving Facebook

I left my fans friends on facebook a little something to think about after deciding to quit the blue poison. The open letter in its entirety. God I’m going to miss those birthday wishes.

It’s a riot!

Dear Facebookers,

I hope you’ve been having fun on the world’s most popular social network. I must admit, after learning to ignore useless apps and hiding unwanted nitwits from clouding my news feed, I’ve been enjoying myself as well. But this is not about how lame facebook is, or how awesome twitter is. Those are two cold truths you will never realise, and I’m okay with that.

This is about Facebook, and how it’s treating your privacy. More importantly, why you should give a fuck.

Most people are narcissistic attention seeking gargoyles, who’s sole goal is to get their activities seen by as many people as possible. Myself included. And Facebook seems to be the best place to do that. Had a wild party last night? Upload that album to Facebook and get a hundred likes and comments. You will of course complain about the number of notifications you had to deal with the next day, but deep down you’re smiling. Smiling wide.

Facebook wants to help you attain your goal, but trust me (rather, don’t trust them) they don’t really have the same intentions in mind. If Google wants to control you from the outside in, facebook has been going from the inside out. Here’s a chart that illustrates facebook’s privacy settings.

Those are some serious changes in privacy. The chart is best seen in its full CSS glory on Matt McKeon’s beautiful page though.

But it’s a win-win situation, right? After all, Facebook is showing more of you, to the whole world. That’s a good thing. Fulfills that narcissistic ideal I pictured above. Wrong. Facebook wants to sell your privacy to advertisers. This is not traditional advertising, where the ad is brought to the user. It’s the other way round, and in its creepiest form. Imagine a company knowing where you’ve been, what you’re planning on doing, what you like, your location, your phone number, your relationship status. Facebook isn’t concerned with your life getting fucked. They’re worried about posting good quarterly results and they’re using your data to get to that.

You’re on some blog. It was just a meaningless gif of a cat jumping about. It has Facebook’s new ‘Like’ button. Little do you know, the website owner has been given the right to publish posts directly to your News Feed. There’s talk that if you like an ad on Facebook, the advertiser gets more than just access to your News Feed. A car company knows that you (the individual you) likes that particular car, and know your lifestyle, relationship status, and phone number, and could keep their call centres busy ringing your phone. This is right now, and without your permission; they aren’t going to hesitate in giving out more info in the future.

Let’s not forget about collateral.

You say something about your work. Your boss isn’t in your friends list. But he’s in your friend’s friends list. Taking into account Facebook’s new default privacy settings, he see’s your status. You’re fired.

Some guy is stalking you. He sends you a friend request. You ignore that. He befriends a friend of yours, and inadvertently gets access to all those pictures you’ve uploaded to facebook. Fuck that. With the default privacy setting for new users, a stalker doesn’t even have to sign up on facebook to see those pictures.

When it comes to Facebook, you have an illusion of privacy, while all your information is really shared across the web. When you say something, you think you’re saying it to your closest friends. When you upload something, you don’t realise the whole internet can see it. And you have a right to believe so. It was like that when you signed up two years ago. Just that Facebook got greedy, and decided to pull down the curtains without asking anyone.

Facebook of course offers you a way out. You can customise the hell out of your privacy settings—there’s so many of them. And that’s the problem. There’s so many of them! Take a look at Facebook’s privacy settings. There are over 50 settings spread across 6 categories. Compare that with Twitter—public or private (and no sheepish fucking around thereon). You might argue that this gives you more control. Bullshit. It’s meant to confuse and tire the user into succumbing to their corporate plan—the sellout of your privacy. Moreover, there are things that are beyond your control. Like how all those Like buttons are popping up on various websites, without your explicit permission.

You might say I’m a lunatic proclaiming an apocalypse because a light bulb went bust. Truth is, even Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks so. “A small fraction of our 400-million-plus active user base.”, says Zuckerberg. Yes, he’s not concerned about what I’ve just said. He’s just concerned that a small fraction of his userbase is aware of it. The tech community of course doesn’t let things slip by. The last time when Facebook wanted to legally own all your data, they fought back, and Facebook returned ownership rights. Now I, along with many others, am quitting facebook. I doubt it’s going to have an impact on Facebook’s hold over the internet, but it’s the least I can do.

Part of quitting is understanding the nature of the problem, and there have been a number of recent articles and posts that do a much better job than us at articulating what’s wrong with Facebook. We encourage you to read them and form your own opinions. Moving on will be easier to do when you have made a clear and conscious choice about why you’d prefer your online life to be Facebook-free. — Quit Facebook Day

Now I’m sure you won’t leave facebook no matter what. All I ask of you, is to be aware. Do consider going through your privacy settings thoroughly. Don’t allow permissions to suspicious applications. Consider the implications of your actions. Be smart. Trust your friends, but keep an eye out for when they might not really be your friends. And if you have to Like something, like this ‘note’. That’s safe (for now).

This is going to be my last post on facebook. I might return some day. Probably not. I really am going to miss all those Likes and comments. :-*

iPad Diary

It’s the gadget of the century, and I must have it. No, I must. I will.

It’s a riot!

January 27th: Steve announces the iPad. My mind is hooked.

March 12th: The pre-orders start. I, of course, am in India and can’t do anything about it.

April 3rd: I wrote about it. Possibly the worst day of my life. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as when I crashed the car and had to deal with a bitch and a half, but it was pretty fucked up. I couldn’t stand it. I closed twitter.

Ankur had offered to get me an iPad at the beginning of May. I took this as my only opportunity. I said yes.

April 5th: I meet Preshit on chat. We both need to get one. “Who’s gonna send it?”. The search begins. I hit up a bunch of contacts from the US. All of them agree. Internet friends FTW! (Just so we’re clear, I would have done the same). This one guy though—I won’t mention his name though—was so cool about it, I was surprised, really. I can’t describe the exact transaction, but it can only be described as angelic.

We were getting two iPads. 16GB. Wifi only.

Two hours later: The money was sent, and the iPads were ordered for.

Days go by: We watched, as the parcel travelled from China to the US, marveling at how nicely it adds to the carbon footprint. Fuck the carbon footprint, I want my iPad! Within 3 days, the iPad was at this guy’s place in—let’s not get into specifics here. Within one hour, it was in the hands of a FedEx employee, and so the tracking began. Paris. Paris, how happy I was to see thy name in the tracking page! Another two days, and it was in Bombay.

Bombay: Why did I choose Bombay? Goa is a terrible place for business. People are lazy, shit never gets done, and I was pretty sure the package just lie there in the postage office—unless of course FedEx imports their staff from some place else, which I doubt. I regret this error in judgment.

That morning, I dial a number.

“Hello”.

“Hi”

“Tell me something.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Come on. Fucker. Give me the news.”

“You know the feeling, where you’re placed in a big room”. I didn’t really know what he was talking about, but I acknowledged it with an “Uhuh”.

“Well that’s exactly what I’m feeling like right now.”

I knew he was going to get the iPad before me. I knew I’d have to wait another few days before I got mine. But going through this, just like the iPad, is totally different from what your mind imagines. I hated the prick.

That evening, I get on chat. I’ve assumed that the magical device has already been posted and had been jerking off to some iPad porn. You know, photoshopping busty babes into an iPad frame.

“I couldn’t send it. Apparently, the courier companies do not accept packages containing electronics if it’s between two individuals. A company has to initiate it.”

Suddenly it became how whorish those busty babes looked. Fuck this, fuck the Indian postal system, and fuck the goat. Another day wasted. I waited till the next day—didn’t sleep lest I should miss out on the opportunity—and arranged for a courier to pick it up from his place. Fuck the goat and hammer it with a rubber duck because the pick up never happened and my iPad was still in the hands of a slippery serpant. I mean, this was just plain torture.

I’m thinking of my options. At one point I almost jumped into an overnight bus to Bombay, but decided against it. I haven’t travelled by bus in almost 10 years now. I’m sweating (although mostly because it’s very hot in Goa). I try calling up random people who’re in Bombay. “Are you coming to Goa for the weekend?”. On any given weekday I’d have gladly taken a shit at their doorstep, at night, but today they were the best of friends.

I consult with my father, who’s the resident expert on all things. He suggested Preshit should dump it into a bus heading for Goa, and I pick it up here. It’s actually a little more professional than that, but that’s essentially the action. I could have caught a train the next day, but decided against it, since I wanted to go back again on the 23rd of this mont—

“What the fuck is wrong with you, you fucking ingrate?!”, says mother. Well, those aren’t exactly here words, but if I had to convey such emotion, those are the words I’d have used. She doesn’t swear, ever. Good for her.

“If you’re going on the 23rd anyway, why not wait till then? What’s so important?”, she continues.

“Imagine the time you unleashed your first kid onto this earth. Well, imagine yourself back then; I’m sure you regret him now. Back then, what if the nurse said you couldn’t see him for 8-9 days?”, I asked. She tried to contradict, but I was firm. You can’t fuck with a fanboy and his iPad.

A few hours later, and I had scrapped the send it by bus plan, and had booked my ticket to Bombay. It all happened so fast.

I tried to sleep, but couldn’t sleep. I tried watching a film. I don’t even remember which one it was; I was so distracted. Coldplay sounded like a bunch of village idiots banging on church bells—how garish those songs are. I hardly ate any food; mostly because it’s hot and I’m not really a food enthusiast. I don’t know why I’m filling you with unrelated jabber, but I think it added to the discomfort I was going through.

For instance, one evening, for two hours, I was caught waving the mosquito bat around. You know the electric tennis racket, which zaps the motherfuckers. It’s fun, I must admit, and for a few moments I was lost in the zapping. It didn’t last long though. The mosquitos didn’t last long either.

April 17th: I board the train. The super fast Shatabdi Express, and even though A/C, it only had chair cars. I write this. I sleep. Try to, at least. The train is fast.

2 a.m., April 18th, 2010: iPad.