Federer - Nadal / Michelangelo - ?

The 2009 Australian Open final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal made me restless. Not the duel - that was entertaining. But I couldn't think of a suitable analogy to compare these two artists and my reactions to them. Until the morning after.

Nadal is all power and fury, brute aggression, grimaces, grunts, mad dashes across the court. But one can't deny that he has the shots, he finds impossible angles and he can play the delicate drop shot as effectively as any. Federer is grace, artistry, elegance, magic - understated power and effortlessness.

Federer never looks like he's trying like mad, even when he is. Nadal always looks like he's trying like mad, even when he doesn't need to.

Nadal shares a name with a sublime artist - Raphael or Raffaello. Raphael was Michelangelo's contemporary and competitor, though he was eight years younger. The comparison is tempting, given the five year age gap between Federer and Nadal. Federer is undoubtedly Michelangelo, but Nadal is no Raphael.

Nadal is Jackson Pollock - insane energy, controlled chaos, relentless, pumped-up, tireless - "action painting". Federer is Michelangelo - sublime wizardry, poetry, adriotness, legerdemain, finesse - "beauty for the ages".

Jackson Pollock's "No. 5, 1948" became the world's most expensive painting in 2006, when it was sold privately to an undisclosed buyer for the sum of $140,000,000.

Michelangelo's frescos in the Sistine Chapel are a priceless gift to humanity.

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Facebookness

After several days of steeping myself in Facebook-ness (for which Suzy is mostly to blame :)), I have come to the conclusion that being on FB is like living in a commune. Privacy dissolves into transparency. The Wall is really a glass window. Or a mirror.

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Loose? Please lose!

I've about had it up to here with misuse of "loose" when the stupid idiot means "lose". I just received a spam SMS (don't get me started!) on how to "loose body weight". This seems to the most popular malapropism out there, ranking at the top of the charts with "your/you're" and I've seen this in the newspapers (almost daily some team or the other manages to loose the match), on the Net (particularly in comments by obvious loosers) and now on my phone. Enough already. Go back to school.

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Posterous | Re: Blogging technology hiccups

So, now I can link either of my duplicate blogs into FB or I can link Posterous into FB, but I can't post directly to Posterous via Flock's internal blogging editor, but if I post to Posterous that can autopost to my FB.

I need kopi.

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Blogging technology hiccups

A post just to check if this Posterous thingie is working. The last post updated one blog but not the other. As an aside, this is how we complicate our lives. I had a blog called Return of the Son of Blog at blogusinterruptus.blogspot.com but that was linked to an email id that I don't normally use. I couldn't transfer that to my regular email id, so I duplicated the blog at returnofthesonofblog.blogspot.com (which was suprisingly easy).

If I want to link the blog into Flock, I need to use the second version which matches the GMail id I'm normally logged into on Flock. But I like the URL of the first blog better, so I want to keep that alive.

Enter Posterous, which allows me to post to multiple blogs with a single email. (But maybe that means using Flock's integrated blog poster needs to be tweaked - next to-do). I goofed on the blog id on the last post so it only posted to the old blog not the new one.

Hence, this post, which should post to both. Let's see.

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Privacy on Web 2.0

I've been fooling around with Flock and the way it integrates a variety of services around the Web. I've been a reluctant user of much that is Web 2.0 and have taken more than a while to get the point of Facebook.

Well, I ain't got it yet, but I spent the better part of last morning chatting online with an old and very dear friend, something that wouldn't have happened if we both hadn't been on Facebook. So I'm willing to give FB a second look and more time. (It's all your fault, Suzy.)

The one thing that strikes me is the approach to privacy that use of these services entails. More so because privacy advocates have been decrying much of what is happening in the world of the Web. Essentially, when you use Facebook or Delicious or Picasa or Shelfari or any of the myriad other such services, you're putting much of your personal life out there for the world to peer at and pore over.

Of course, if you blog (as I do occasionally, more for the fun of it than as serious commentary, or as a way to experiment with online tools - as this post is with Posterous), then you are making a conscious choice to go public with your thoughts. And when you update your status on FB you're doing pretty much the same. So how is FB different?

I think the difference lies in the, well, for want of a better word, the spontaneity of the way in which one yields up one's privacy. In a blog, you think about what you want to write and you can revise it and republish it and so on. On FB, you twitter (and that's another service I haven't cottoned onto yet) on about what appears to be inconsequential stuff but a lot more people are privy to it and a lot more of you is revealed than you might realise.

Which may not be an unmixed blessing. Food for a weightier philosophical discussion here.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Blogging via Flock - Flogging?

Testing how the post to blog via the Flock browser works. If it does, it will go some way towards consolidating my Web 2.0 existence.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

PWC

PWC are the auditors of Satyam, the "Truth" software company that falsified accounts and earnings for "several years".

Price Waterhouse Coopers.

Perhaps We Couldn't
Pricey Watered-down Certifiers
Purblind Weak Consorts
Pusillanimous Wasted Cretins

Am I too harsh?

Shelfari

Interesting book library management online software. Good links to book info, covers and recommendations. Cool interface. Free.

www.shelfari.com

Beats most desktop solutions on aesthetic grounds, but the one to beat on features is Book Collector from collectorz.com

Sliderocket

Phenomenal!

Great online presentation software. Snappy effects, superb interface. Free account (more goodies with paid accounts). Rivals Powerpoint and Keynote. Create presentations to embed in your site.

www.sliderocket.com

Satyam. Not really.

Satyam means Truth in Sanskrit. Ironic.

If generations survive, they will look back at the closing years of the opening decade of the 21st century and mark a cusp, a tide in the affairs of men. And women.

In the interest of completeness, not that anyone gives a...

I shall upload the test posts I made to posterous earlier today.

Apropos this blogging thing

And it does! Typos and all!

A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Arthur C. Clarke approximately)

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Apropos this blogging thing

Prodded on by my posterous experiments, I re-checked my old blog and discovered, to my amazement, that has been two years since I last blogged. 2006 was the last one.

Except for the prolific Chiffonesque, it has been similarly long since the other bloggers I was following have blogged.

Which begs the question, what happened in 2007 to turn all of us off blogging?

Will 2009 revive the blog?

Will this auto-post from posterous to blogger work?

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Take that, grass-eaters!

'I, serving a meat' is an anagram of vegetarianism. Go figure.

What's pest-ering me

There's this huge hoo-hah about MNC demons Coke and Pepsi busily poisoning us with excessive levels of pesticide in their drinks. Some states have banned sales of their products, other have even banned their manufacture.

The companies themselves have issued the usual half-page advertisements protesting their innocence and adherence to worldwide standards.

What nobody's explained to me is where this alleged pesticide is coming from. Surely no one is suggesting that the Colas add in DDT to make up the volume and cut costs. And I doubt that they are that paranoid about pest control as to over-fumigate their factory premises so that pesticides get into the bottles. And I doubt that pesticide constitutes one of the famous secret ingredients.

That leaves only one place: the water.

Yep, the pesticides have probably leached from the over-dosed soil into the ground water and most of our wells and lakes are probably chock-full of the salubrious stuff.

So if the pesticides are in the water to start with, we are drinking the damn things anyway. How come nobody's bothered to test the tap water?

No convenient scapegoat around, is that it?

Who can I sue?

And why do mosquitoes continue to feed off me?

Tech wizards, forsooth!

Now I know our vaunted technological prowess is just a bunch of crumbly stale bread.

My blog is still blocked via one ISP (Tata - you listening, Ratan dikra?) but is accessible via another, Sify.

I'd suspected this because friends in other cities could access blogspot while I couldn't.

Today, in office I switched my router from one ISP to the other and voila!

This means:
- Tata is technically incompetent because they've blocked blogspot when they shouldn't
- Sify is technically incompetent because they haven't blocked blogspot when they should
- Neither gives a rodent's sexual congress for the customer
- All of the above

Premature ejaculation...

... is what my previous blog entry was.

We ain't back. Shortly after I posted that, blogspot dropped off my network again and the only way I can get to it now is via a proxy.

This sucks.

At least China has better roads even if they don't have an uncensored Net. What's our claim to fame?

We're back!

Yippee and zippee and doodle and all that. Blogspot is back. Democracy wins. Or whatever.

One more thing, Franz

Oh, I forgot - the reason I can continue to write my blog, is because the idiots have blocked blogspot.com which is where the blog resides, but not blogger.com which is where the authoring of the blog takes place.

I am tempted to break my own rule and display expletives on my blog.