Archive for the ‘Opinion’ Category

Social Networks taking the life out of living

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

On one hand, they’re a beautiful medium, of instant communication, keeping up with old friends, and passing along free advice. Facebook, Twitter, and the good ol’ blog are three little social things I currently work with on the internet, and with increasing frequency I find them meddling with the usual flow of life that I expect to live.

Twitter

Let’s take twitter to start with, since it’s the social network I’m most involved in. I started using twitter in Jan ’08. We started Smoking Apples in Aug ’08. But the minute I tweet something a Mac developer or internet celebrity does not like, the whole blame goes to SA and I get a powerful shout from Avner or Preshit about behaving myself on the web. Okay it’s not as much a shouting as an ironical musing, but I know what they’re trying to communicate.

Take for instance this tweet, which was totally in zest. It was definitely a stupid tweet in hindsight, but it’s my twitter feed and I can say whatever I want to. I didn’t mean any malice; in fact I’ve followed MinimalMac since the day it started.

Here’s hoping [MinimalMac] @patrickrhone’s Mac freezes at the boot screen. That’s minimalism right there.

Here’s one of the responses that Rhone got from one of his followers:

@patrickrhone well, that is one of MANY MANY MANY reasons (see twitter stream of @goobimama for more) to stop subscribing to @SmokingApples.

I explained the matter to Rhone who was most understanding. Still, the damage is done. I would have been totally fine with being called an idiot or douchebag (I have been on more than one occasion) but such strong association with something I’m merely a partner at is not something I appreciate1. I remember when I first described Twitter on sh.it, I mentioned how I emailed a developer professionally, while a few seconds later talked beer with him on twitter. Twitter is personal. Professionalism is what email is for. To curb spontaneity with PR-speak is reducing Twitter to a a structured organisation, totally deviating from the free-form thought sharing.

The blog

Every time my favourite cousin Anoushka visits from Canada, I have nothing new to tell her. “I read it on your blog”. This doesn’t just happen in case of my cousin. There’s a whole lot of people who visit this piece of internet real estate to follow in the life of Milind Alvares, apparently. Whatever happened to meeting up after several years, finding out what’s changed, sharing pictographs over time, and being surprised about a change in appearance. “My god you’ve grown tall and handsome” has now become “Hey. So what’s new?”.

Facebook

Don’t even get me started on this. First of all it’s a bad social network, and second, it’s a bad social network. It hasn’t fucked with me like the other two, but it’s the one thing I dread managing. You know that food joint or club you have to visit every so often only because all your friends hang out there? Facebook is like that.This image accurately describes what I see every day when I visit facebook.

The problem of facebook however is even bigger than just the annoying ’cause invitations’. I realised the mess only when I saw it from a grown up’s perspective. As I was explaining twitter and its merits to a middle aged woman, she mentioned her experience with facebook. “All of a sudden I was ‘connected’ with my classmates from 25 years ago, which I had otherwise forgotten about”. It didn’t occur to me because all of my college friends are still fresh in my mind. So all those ‘friends’ whom I’m otherwise supposed to forget as I wade through life, are clinging on to a steady stream of updates from me. Kind of brings us back to the “What’s new?” syndrome doesn’t it?

Here’s my plan of action.

Twitter. I’m leaning heavily to starting a new twitter account under the name “langur” , “Pataka_puri” or something along those lines, with a different house address and might even substitute a dog for a cat. You know, fake identity. I don’t see how else I can say things freely without having a bunch of word-pussies harassing me from behind. For now I’ve removed any association between my account and SA, and will keep my tweet content as SA-free as possible. Hopefully that will keep the attacks on me and only me.

Blog. I only write about vague stuff. Some personal incidents, but mostly thoughts floating around in my head. I definitely won’t be hosting pictures of my new bike, or how long my toenails have grown. Call it the end of the soggy blog, and the beginning of a boring lecture in philosophy. I’ll try to keep it interesting.

Facebook. I’m going on a deleting spree. All those who don’t need to know, don’t need to know. It’s nothing personal. It’s not like I don’t like my ‘friends’ on facebook, it’s just that I don’t want them knowing details of my daily life. I want to live my life the way it was meant to be lived. Fifteen years down the line, I want to see someone on the streets and for a few minutes not be sure whether or not it is my best friend from college.

Tumblr. Some of you might not be knowing, but I’ve started posting to Tumblr, which is a great service for blogging. It’s definitely the next step in personal and community blogging, and I’d highly suggest you give it a try. I’m at goobimama.tumblr.com.

Hopefully that will keep the everything under control and the mind at rest. What I’d really like to hear though is a agreeing or conflicting opinion.

1. I understand that a person’s views in public are naturally associated with their product or brand, just as Steve Jobs’ statement would affect Apple. But twitter is personal, way more than any other ‘public statement’ has ever been. I guess that’s why Steve Jobs doesn’t have a twitter feed.

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A distaste for error messages…

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

I hate error messages. It’s what drove me nuts on Windows, and keeps bugging the crap out of me all over the place. The very sound of a ‘ting’ or a annoying little pop up right when I’m working, makes me realise that there is something wrong with the way things are at the moment, and they need to change.

mail-error

The iPhone has got the worst notification system on the planet. Think about it. You’re working on something, and the pop up shows up requiring you to take action. Until and unless you tap the OK button, you can’t do anything. This is worsened by the fact that some apps like to throw you several of them at a time. Take the built in Mail app itself. If there’s no internet connection present, it will throw up at least three error messages that you have to get rid of.

By comparison, if you look at the Palm Pre or the Google Android phones, the notification tray system is much more efficient and unobtrusive. I only hope Apple isn’t stubborn enough to keep their crappy pop ups for the rest of the iPhone’s life. This is after all only going to get worse once the push notification service makes its way into third party apps. The horror.

ichat-errors

Moving to the Mac, while we don’t have the system tray pop up mess like in Windows, there are certain apps that insist on throwing pop ups. iChat is one of the most annoying apps on the Mac. Every time it disconnects or has some issue, it not only throws you multiple error messages, it also continually bounces the Dock icon. EventBox is another application that won’t get rid of a connection error message even after things are fine. These are just two apps among the many that continually spit out error messages like I was some kind of message boy.

growl-error

Growl on the other hand, is a great system for error reports. It’s silent, can be customized to just how obvious you want it to be, and fades away the moment it notifies you. I also like the way some apps like Transmission notify you by ringing a dock badge when a download is complete, instead of just popping up a system tray message like uTorrent on Windows.

dreamweaver-error

Dreamweaver looking smug with its non-error

Error messages by their very nature are unnatural. You don’t see an error message in nature do you? In my honest opinion, and I pray that the gods are listening in, error messages have plagued us for long enough. The ultimate solution to this problem is yet to be found (it’s not Growl, no). My basic philosophy behind a perfect error free world would be the user goes to the error message instead of it forcing itself upon the user. “Why the fuck isn’t this app working? Let me check if there are any error messages” should be the standard outlook in designing these things. As for notifications, you could growl them if you want or just turn em off for good.

Of course, my five minute solution shouldn’t be considered as an ultimate method, no. All I’m asking is that someone ‘up there’ think about a better way to keep these apps from bugging the crap out of me.

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Our Constitution is the joke of the century

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

I’m dead serious with that title. If there is anything written in that document, know that it doesn’t exist. Not one clause, amendment, section makes any sense for what it’s worth. Here’s a little story, if you don’t believe me. I’m not sure about the specifics, but this is more or less how it plays out.

Hotel Cidade de Goa, owned by some jackasses with a lot of money and political influence, had an entire wing built on illegal grounds. Not only that, they had also blocked the only real access to a beach. This effectively made it a private beach so that business assholes could have their privacy while they carved this world a little more amongst themselves.

As usual, Claude (pappi!) has a problem with all things illegal, so in the name of the Goa Foundation he has been fighting the case for quite a while now. Again, I don’t know the specifics but I assume this has been going on for quite a few years now (as our judicial system is so slow). The case was won in the High Court of Goa (well, the Bombay Court-Goa bench), but the jackasses took the case up to the Supreme Court to get a better judgement. Finally, the Supreme Court of India, the highest authority, the final word, passed the judgement that that entire section be demolished, as well as the path to the beach be opened up.

But of course, to those rich assholes, the law doesn’t mean anything. Apparently they have the entire constitution, wrapped up into a roll and hung next to the toilet. There’s also a police constable appointed to sit right beside that toilet to clean up after they’re done. These assholes, actually got the Government of Goa, to pass a new law, that allows them to keep their building as it is. Rumour has it that they’ve also painted a smiley face on one of the walls to show the Supreme Court that they’re laughing at their judgement. This of course is an unconfirmed rumour.

This blatant usurping of power is proof that every year, on the 26th of January, instead of hoisting our national flag, we should instead tie our patron’s dirty laundry and salute it. I now realise, that on the 15th of August 1947, instead of we getting our independence (as we were lied to in school) there was a new ‘power’ that took over. Independence was nothing but a change of hands.

Now instead of just complaining about politicians and moving along, I hope you’re up to taking action. I urge you to at least send a letter (the actual touchy feely kind) to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, demanding an explanation. I hope you just don’t think of this as a bad story, but actually go out and send that letter. I’ve already sent mine. The address is below.

Chief Justice
Supreme Court of India
Tilak Marg, New Delhi-110 001

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A guide to having an awesome urrack trek

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

Many of you must be knowing by now that I’m the urrack expert. Some have even gone on to bestow respect upon me with salutations like drunkard, bewda, and the like. It so happens that I’m also awesome at urrack treks. Urrack treks are like regular treks the same way small cat is like a regular cat; it’s not. An urrack trek is the ultimate respect you can give to this amazing drink, and must be done at least once in your life.

You start with a bunch of friends. Awesome ones. Sometimes a sore loser will try to stick his head in, but you should faithfully reject any such freetards. “5 PM my place” should do just fine. You will end up leaving at around 6:30, which is perfect. No later than that though, as you won’t find bars open later on in the night.

Hit the first bar you see. In our case, we went to Eric Clapton’s bar. He serves the best of urrack. It is important to know where the urrack is from. Eric said the urrack was from Siolim. It was good. After a glass of mixed urrack down your stomach, you are ready to start walking. Fill up a 2 ltr. bottle of Limca with one bottle of Urrack. You will learn how to do this amazing feat.

Destination: Are you going on a urrack trek? There is no destination, only the journey. Visualise a path where you know there are bars on every turn. If you don’t, you will find yourself sober, and suddenly the aching in your legs will be very real. As for walking itself, while you don’t have a destination, you have to be determined enough to continue walking. If you rest too much, the urrack will hit your head and you’ll feel sick and drowsy. Keep walking and you will be surprised at your capacity.

Somewhere along the way we lost our shirts

Do not carry expensive gadgets along. It’s very likely something will happen, like you throwing it inside a pond or something. Urrack sets your mind free. If you like to generally wrap it around worldly objects, I highly suggest leaving that iPhone at home. You can carry along a Nokia crap-phone for making emergency calls.

Stay away from dangerous areas like cliffs, steep climbs, or deep rivers. The last time, we tried to shake down this little wooden construction at the side of the river, and I ended up falling 8 feet into a river. Apparently the sight was very ‘matrix like’. I wouldn’t know as I only realised I fell after I hit the water. Luckily I’m light enough to have escaped out alive. The sharp rocks were just a few inches deeper. As I walked to the shore I ended up cutting up my feet badly. I later came to know my back also got a good scrub against those rocks. Trust me and the cuts on my back, stay away from dangerous areas.

Carry a sufficient amount of money. If you carry less, you will curse yourself for find yourself sober in the middle of your awesome trek. You could also be very hungry with nothing ‘cheap’ to eat. But don’t carry too much money. Know that any amount of cash you carry, will get over.

Make sure you have transportation back to your place of rest. Even if you plan to sleep the night on the beach or camp out in the forest, the next day you are in no position to walk back. Make sure you drop your brother to the airport when he asks, for you never know how useful he will be.

That’s it for that. Don’t overdo the treks. Once a year is good enough. Have fun.

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