Ubuntu hangups

Ubuntu has been awesome to me. It's stable, never crashes and lightning fast.
But yesterday I found myself booting to windows.

• Linux needs Photoshop. Or atleast GIMP needs to be far better. Right now, it's a ugly piece of software that runs too many windows and everything just gets in the way. Photoshop is by far one of the best softwares I've used(under any category).
  
• Great iPod support. Rhythmbox is nonsense. Last time I opened Rhythmbox when my iPod was connected, I lost all my album art. Songbird is by far the best song player software I've used. BUT, it doesn't have album art support for the iPod. Sad!
• Chrome. Firefox is good. But sometimes, for some quick browsing, Chrome is just fast and gets the job done. Opera tends to be buggy on Linux. I just don't like seeing my page size shoot up on Linux.
• More "slicker"! Jaunty is amazing. But sometimes, the fonts don't feel as slick. I always have this weird feeling that everything in Ubuntu is oversized. But Jaunty is miles ahead of the previous distros. I like the dark gray themes.

Admittedly, software options on Linux aren't as much as that on Windows/Mac. But considering it's free as in speech and beer(libre and gratis), you can't beat it.
If only I had a fast processor and truck loads of RAM to use VirtualBox + Photoshop...

Burnt by the Gods

I came across this.

"14-year-old hit by 30,000 mph space meteorite "

What the!

Gerrit Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he saw "ball of light" heading straight towards him from the sky.

A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground.

The teenager survived the strike, the chances of which are just 1 in a million - but with a nasty three-inch long scar on his hand.

That is just insane.

The bright side is, he has a super cool scar. There isn't an image of it, but I can almost imagine Harry Potter fans aligning their foreheads for this one!

This one is totally incredible:

The only other known example of a human being surviving a meteor strike happened in Alabama, USA, in November 1954 when a grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a house, bounced off furniture and landed on a sleeping woman.

What the! If painful scars aren't your thing, then the above is just the right meteorite delivery system.

The only meteorites I'll ever get to see are shooting stars. It's nice that I've seen three in NITK. I used to think it was impossible to see them and you have to be totally jobless to see them. But I've caught all three when I was randomly staring at the sky.

However, I still haven't managed to see the Milky Way. Some people say you can see it, especially the Star Gazing Club nuts. But I can't see a thing. It all looks like black background and white dots. No white band anywhere.

Maybe you need to go to a dark place to see it like this

What's happened to Dosas and Idlis?

Has anyone noticed that when someone talks about Indian food - they're usually referring to North Indian food.

Typical scenario: You're with a bunch of friends and you want to go eat some place. So, there's Italian(pizza), Fast food(Burgers), Chinese, Thai, Continental aanndddd Indian. Usually, when everyone ends up in an Indian restaurant, it's the Naans, Kulchas and PBM(Paneer Butter Masala for those hapless souls). It's so rare for someone to go eat South Indian food. It's not that people don't. South Indian food is more of an Indian "fast food" in the Darshinis. North Indian food is reserved for "occasions".

The situation is worse for people abroad. They talk about Indian food and no one seems to talk about Dosas and Idlis. It's always the biriyanis and tikkas. Have we reached a point where North Indian food has become the flag holder for Indian food?

I think so. Perhaps it's because South Indian people eat that food all the time at home. So they'd like a change when they go out. Atleast, that's the case with me.

But don't the North Indian people eat South Indian food? Hmm maybe not. Perhaps South Indian food isn't suited for their climate(the dosa batter doesn't ferment?). Perhaps, North Indians just don't like our food? I really don't know.

East and west on pollution and related

First, check out Gulatis post about how people in the West are wasteful and that people should not point fingers when somebody is polluting the planet.

I find it ironic that he talks about how "India's duty is to her 800 million poor people" and while talking about the "efficient waste management system - the local rag-picker" so that he can slam a "fancy machine[s] at the supermarket" that "segregate the waste".

It's either a fancy machine or poverty. No one will ever pay a rag picker as much as anybody. If there are laws in place that means everyone should be paid a minimum amount of money, then there won't be a rag picker. Which, by the way, is what has happened in the west!

I'm not saying the developed world doesn't pollute. I think they overdo everything which leads to lots of pollution. Lots of cleanliness, lots of sanitisers, lots of plastic, lots of waste.

The amount of "standard of living" you get for every resource spent is a diminishing return. To be a little more comfortable, when you're already very comfortable, you need to spend a LOT more. This is pretty much what has happened in the western countries. Considering the population boom plus the standard of living boom, there is no way natural resources can keep up with human consumption.

But this is not what the post is about. It's about the "pointing fingers" Gulati is talking about. There are several points I need to talk about.

1. Nobody (not in a literal sense) is blaming India for pollution or global warming. It IS the the USA and other developed countries. It's a fact. If people don't know that, then they are ignorant. So it's the peoples fault, not a scientific one.
2. If normal people don't know that, there is a good reason why. Pollution in the west is NOT obvious. There is NO smoke. Ever. I have not seen smoke in the US at all. No dust. Nothing that looks like pollution. It's easy to think the place is very clean. It is! But pollution is a different thing. It hasn't got much to do with pollution, in the global warming sense. AND, companies nowadays have gotten a LOT cleaner. And are going to get hundreds of times cleaner in the coming decade.
   
3. When people from abroad criticise India about pollution, it's not the actual pollution they are blaming. They are blaming the "don't care" mentality. It's true that Americans are polluting a lot more. But, they care. And now that they've learnt about it, they want to do something about it. The problem with Indians, not just with this pollution debate, is that they don't care. They don't take the responsibility. We've always been like that. That's the mentality that is so strikingly different. The common person is part of the debate.
   

It's good that India doesn't pollute. But think about the costs involved. How many maids do we have and how many "kelsa gaaru" do we have? On the other hand, look at the costs involved in keeping everyone at a high standard of living. I think both places are the extremes and both need to moderate their behaviours.

Edit: And what I find even worse is that most of the young people are strongly trying to emulate western culture. Infact, most of what we learn in school and college today is western knowledge. Except for "0". Don't say that they haven't given us anything.

And I wish people would stop talking about their own respective countries. Everywhere. The time we are in is beyond that. What happens in one part of the world affects everyone else. Think about Google, melting glaciers, Afghanistan, outsourcing and kickass research in CERN. We're all in it together. It sucks that age old traditions like patriotism still exists. I suppose cave men created the concept so that they stay together and not get eaten by bears. But that's not the case anymore.

Thinking about luck

Well, what is all this 'luck' business about?

I think luck more has to do with "being at the right place at the right time". It's just a way of abstracting the results of encounters with the unknown. It's just like any other encounter with other person, but the result will not be known, simply because, the encounter is with the unknown. The overall "angle" of your results simply tells whether you have good or bad luck. The distribution of luck, ofcourse, depends on the distribution of good and bad stuff relative to the distribution of unknown stuff people are exposed. What may be a factor of luck for some people, may not be for others. Example: Game shows. Wooo.

The Elder Scrolls RPG has a factor called Luck. So if you have a greater "luck", the more gold and rare items you find on bodies, crates, etc.

It's fascinating that luck can play such a major role in our lives. Often the effect seems exaggerated because luck, by it's very nature, catches us by surprise. I guess that's why it seems to play such a large role, although statistically, it may not!