Lame April Fools!
Today is April Fools day (like you didn’t already know!). In the recent years this day of the year is usually when a lot of lame April Fools pranks are played out across the Internet and blogs. This is getting so old and lame that its irritating, let alone humorous.
This sentiment is shared by others who are tired of the crap being passed off as April Fools day pranks. We need something really good and funny. Not the same prank rehashed year after year. Come on. It’s the Internet which has so many talented funny people creating loads of good stuff. Let them get more coverage than those listed above!
Update: Another one from Gmail
All Hail
OMFG, it’s raining hailstones in a Bangalore. After such a LONG time.
Wow. And the weather is lovely. I don’t even remember last when there was a hailstorm in Bangalore.
Yeah :)
Update: Tried to get a few pics of the hailstones but was unable to. Got some pics of the heavy rain though. The haze is the heavy rain. The photos do not do justice to the actual scene though.
Duncan Riley – You should take a break
and maybe grow a thicker skin at that..
It all started over the weekend – a bitching match going on at Techmeme started apparently by Louis Gray who replied to Duncan Riley’s post on Techcrunch. The comment by Louis Gray
TechCrunch’s Duncan Riley checked in with a quasi-analytic comment this morning
prompted a response from Duncan Riley where he calls Loius Gray a cunt and a wanker. Duncan Riley also says in his post
Notice the put down with “quasi-analytic,” lets not fight on ideas, lets denigrate the messenger.
And on his response, Duncan Riley does exactly that. He describes Louis Gray as
I say A-List somewhat lightly, because the guy who’s come after me is someone who’s called Louis Gray. I’ve been blogging a bloody long time and for a lot of that time I’ve been reporting on the movers and shakers in blogging, and until a couple of months ago I’d never heard of this guy. His about page is as useful as tits on a bull: he does PR for a Silicon Valley technology company and found blogging in 2006. He’s talked about now at the same level as Calacanis, Scoble and Arrington, and yet he’s reached the lofty heights of 735 subscribers in Feedburner; probably more than this humble blog but this isn’t my main outlet.
Which is the opening of his post linked to above.
I found this quite ridiculous and hypocritical of him and said so through a comment on his post (Ah, Duncan was kind enough to delete the comment but I happen to have a copy of it reproduced below)
You say that Louis Gray attacked the messenger? What have you done?
With this idiotic post you have done exactly that.Practice what you preach hypocrite
To this, Duncan responds in a classic teenage fashion (after deleting the comment). He emailed me with this:
Seriously, fuck off.
Well, that is the background so far.
What are you Duncan? An A-lister? You think you are so great that you can try and thrash anyone and if someone calls you out, you go down to teenage expletives. Grow up dude.
If you cannot take comments and disagreement, then get off the blogosphere. You are being a jerk and behaving like a child.
And Duncan, don’t denigrate the messenger, discuss the idea. Oh, you already do not follow what you yourself write. Mea culpa
A very good analysis if also provided by Matthew Ingram.
2.5 Decades
Decades.. Long time. Another year gone past. Don’t feel wiser, older, mature or accomplished.
Heck I don’t feel too very different. Ah well, here’s to me ;)
Ps. Thoughts in another post
Twitter and its role
I’ve started to use Twitter increasingly and find it to be a great tool. I joined Twitter when it was quite young, a couple of months after it launched but never used it much (my tweetstats graph) but have started using it more often in the past couple of months.
The main point of Twitter is the conversations it fosters as well as meeting new people. The advantages of Twitter over other forms of communication? Short 140 character messages and the ability to follow someone’s “tweets” without them having to follow you, which in my opinion is a good system.
But it is also flawed. As I stated, Twitter is the new medium for quick conversation outside of email, IM etc. Now the web-interface of Twitter is designed such that if someone posts a tweet to you, it comes in your replies tab but not in your message timeline. For those who have many followers, friends on Twitter, they will get a lot of @replies so can easily miss this.
And this has been a frustration. Many times I have tweeted someone but received no reply. No I guess it because they missed my tweet (and assume that they are not ignoring me ;) ) . I think is fundamentally due to the design of twitter. There should be a way for the recipient to know that someone tried to contact him/her. Not necessarily in their normal timeline but somehow, distinguish that someone who is not on their friends list said something to them. In this manner, twhirl/snitter etc are much better because they show all @replies to the twitterer.
Anyway, I have also come to decide that I will only start following me those who follow me. (with a few exceptions of course 
) If I follow someone and it is not reciprocated in a few days (a week or two maybe) I will un-follow. I think it is just a matter of courtesy if s/he feels that we can, at some point share a good conversation.
My twitter profile is here. Add me if you want to follow me there :)
Book Review: Crecent Garden
Crescent Garden is written by Christopher Love and is the first book published by Evermore Books. As the tag line says, “A novel of New Orleans, the book is set entirely in New Orleans. Love creates a very tightly written book with the story taking place over 3 days just before Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
The story has is focussed on supernatural “powers” gained by the main characters of the book, Malcolm Stance and Ridley Trumball as a result of an accident during their childhood. Malcolm finds out that Ridley is about to be murdered and sets out on a mission to save Ridley from a gruesome death. In trying this, he must first locate Ridley who he thinks resides or at least works in the French Quarter of New Orleans. During Malcolm’s search, he comes across a variety of characters, experiences New Orleans as the city prepares for the big Mardi Gras weekend.
And during all this, Malcolm must try and forget his ex-girlfriend who cheated on him but now wants to get back with him, bringing back a lot of pain and angst within him.
The story is very well written and the city is described beautifully. But what I liked most was the development of the characters, the pain Malcolm feels whenever he talks to his ex-girlfriend, when he longs for her but knows he does not want her back in her life. The dislike for Ridley when he spurns Malcolm’s help because he fears the power they both share.
The best part is in the end, the climax of the book. It pretty much blew me away. Now I’ve read a good number of thrillers, mystery novels and am fairly good in predicting either the “perpetrator”, the next move of the lead character or the ending of the story but in this, I was taken by a surprise. And really nice twist in the end.
On the whole, the book is a pretty good read and Evermore Books have chosen a very good launch for both the writer and their publishing house.
Thus speaketh