Tuesday, February 23, 2010

iPod meh

I was talking to this friend today, and we got into a conversation on music. He wanted me to get an idea of his tastes, and I wanted... nothing specific, I was just having a chat... anyway, this is how the conversation goes:

Friend: So, do you want to take my iPod home and listen to it?
Me: You don't wanna listen to it?
Friend: No, I have my phone if I really need some music, just take it home

I didn't really want to take it initially, then I thought of something I wanted to try out, which was basically check out how well RockBox works on an iPod

Me: Ok, am I allowed to experiment with it?
Friend: Experiment? What do you want to do with it

He looked skeptical at this point, and was positively scared for his device

Me: nothing much, I just want to install an open source firmware for the device
Friend: What are you saying, what is Firmware

At this point I wondered how to explain the concept of "firmware" to someone who does not know much about technology

Me: It's like an operating system, it replaces whatever... ummm.... software is there on the device.
Friend: I am not understanding you, this is a bit too complex for me
Me: don't worry about it, nothing will happen to your device, it will just run a different interface and player
Friend: what are the advantages of this?
Me: well there are loads, you can use your device as a USB drive for starters... no DRM protection
Friend: Will I get infinite storage space on the USB drive?
Me: know, (wtf???) only as much as the device has. How much storage is there?
Friend: * Gb
Me: so you will get 8GB minus what the firmware takes up I guess
Friend: huh?
Me: there are other advantages as well,
Friend: how will you install it?
Me: what iPod do you have? mini, nano...

Friend looks really really bewildered at this point
Me:... or classic?
Friend: It's a Philips Go Gear

I just look at him like I will kill him with my eyeballs

Friend: It's my pod dude, like.... my multimedia pod...

I guess everyone just wants to call their PMP a pod. What shit. FFFUUUU apple.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Dead bird


What was really sad was that cats, dogs, crows and rats were not eating it at all.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Scorpion

some card... and a coin... loads of time... or rather, slow-mo-time




btw, felt like a lot of effort

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

A book lost in time

5000 BC Cave art begins to appear  

3000 BC Man dreams of symbols for things, does not know what to put it down on. Uses mud, scratches on trees, etches in stone etc

2000 BC Alphabets evolve 

1000 BC Writing is widespread, on papyrus, leaves, silk, bamboo, clay... 

500 BC Copying a book helped everyone, including the author.      

100 BC The first bibliophiles emerge, along with the first libraries  

100 The Chinese invent paper  

300 The keeper of the Library of Alexandria receives strange books from many parts of the world. Most of them are copied out onto parchment, and the original volumes are either returned or kept in a smaller tome. A time traveler just passing through all the wonders of the ancient world brings him a package, to give to the librarian. The keeper of the Library looks at the future of books. After the time traveler leaves, he burns the Library down. 

700 The Arabs bind together the first books, and become the first to sell them in markets. 

900 Anything worth writing down was worth fighting over. 

1100 Around the world, people start printing using blocks of wood or other similar material.

1436 Gutenberg bridges the divide between creating intricately crafted blocks of metal, and a thousand words on a single page.

1886 The Berne Convention introduces the world to the concept of Copyright

2007 Amazon debuts the Kindle

xxxx A time traveler picks up a kindle on his backwards trip through history, to donate to a library that dedicatedly collected every book in existence.