(i)Phony ? may be...but treos like it

Jobs & Co. are having a mighty strong fit over a new free utility that allows smartphone owners to skin their phones with the famous iPhone user interface. Appropriately, the utility is called iPhony...for all the wannabe iPhone owners who won't be buying it anytime soon (due to the 600 giga-watts price sticker on Steve's new gadget), there's only one word that describes iPhony: Brilliant!!

Of course, Stevie stepped in with his lawyers and had iPhony removed from the distribution site before back-benchers like me could rush to download it.

A screeching fan of renewable energy

Picture this: a small windmill on top of every house, making all of us power genertors (at least when the fair wind blows) and saving the earth from the oven. What could possibly be wrong with that ?

I will tell you what: the bloody fan on top of my roof screeches like a crazed madman when the wind is too high ! Spent the whole of last night awake and thinking about all the CO2 being saved.

Black Diamond

Cascade mountain, sunny weekend, all greens, all blues and one black. Effortless.

Liveblog

So it's a happening Friday night, and as I flip through the channels what do I see but the NBA Celebrity All Star Game. I have got to liveblog this.

East lineup includes Michael Clarke Duncan, Nelly and some other random people. West lineup has Jamie Foxx, some random dudes ( some flo from Access Hollywood ) and Bow Wow! When did he drop the Lil? And speaking of Bow Wow, caught a bit of Be like Mike the other day... actually, forget i said that.

did I mention there's a WNBA player here? Will be very embarrassing if she doesn't dominate this game...

- no points yet. Two missed free throws and a few missed shots.

- the wnba babe hasn't scored yet.

- wow there are two wnba players.. one of them just scored!

- Michael Clarke Duncan labors up & down the court.

- Hmm, seemed like a good idea a few minutes back.

you know what, i can't take this anymore.... I give up. Seinfeld where are you ?!

UPDATE: Didn't finish seeing this game, but by the end of the first quarter the score was 8-3 West leading, with Bow Wow having scored all the baskets. Two Wnba players combined points - 2. Just feel like you guys need to know these things. Oh, and they would break away during the game occasionally to show some random clip from one of the celebrities' shows. So much for the purity of the game ....

To Wiki or not to Wiki

A recent story about citing Wikipedia as a legitimate reference appeared in Daily Illini. I enjoyed this article partly because it echoes my sentiments on the subject, but primarily because it upholds the standards of careful and through research. While writing papers, we have the choice of including a variety of references, perhaps all acceptable to make the point, but not all are equally acclaimed.

What we cite as the source of our information is often indicative of the extent of reliability that can be placed on our arguments. It's in this sense that Wiki does a disservice to the researcher: the very fact that the source of information is an editable web site dampens the impact of the argument and the conclusions thereof.

Fri - Day

Before a long weekend. Bond market will close at 1, and exit times look to be around 6 pm. Plus I'm late for office now and still typing a pointless blog post on insufficient sleep instead of hitting the shower. Why?

Actually, no reason. I'm off.

The battle

Our morale was low. We were outnumbered. We had difficulty holding our line. The enemy was stubborn, they came in droves, hour after hour for the last two days. So we watched and waited. There was little else we could do. Since today morning everything suddenly had gone silent. Maybe this was the lull before the storm. We could bear it no more. Now in the fading light, we were trying to break through. For every two inches we advanced, we had to fall back one, regroup, rally and try for two more. Tired, numb and cold, never had we felt so hopeless.

Then the cavalry arrived. Decked in yellow armor, it was a sight to behold. The enemy was no match and was beaten down in matter of minutes. A wide path now lay in front of us. We returned the borrowed shovels, saluted the driver of the snow plough and finally managed to get our car out of the parking lot.

All over town we heard similar stories. Never in history of Champaign-Urbana has so much been owed by so many to so few.

Re: Perfect Day

Glad to know atlas' perfect day includes tax forms & bills on the couch. Meanwhile here it still refuses to snow. Today evening there were some nasty wet sleet/flurry showers. Got my long coat all wet. Regardless, rain, shine or snow, everyday from Monday to Friday is the same, apart from a few minutes walking to and from the subway.

A Perfect Day !

C-U has been hit by a snow storm today which has now dumped about 6 in. of snow and will continue to do so until the sunset. All classes have been canceled, offices are closed. The Bevande coffee shop did not open for business this morning. Meetings got canceled as well...in short, life in C-U has been disrupted, even if temporarily.

What a great break from a hectic weekend! A perfect day to get cozy on the couch with a warm cup of hot chocolate and catch up on correspondence, bills, tax forms and reading...or just flip channels on the telly and watch a De Niro movie...
But, I am in the office...working on proposals, papers and research. Life of a grad student is full of such ironies.

Frozen & Frostbitten 4evah

Blizzard warning and winds upto 45 mph..

This the type of weather that makes our pretty boy pollux run around creating snow castles and having snow fights, while us ordinary souls are busting our backsides trying to clear the 4 by 7 foot rented parking spot with a borrowed shovel for more than an hour...

This is the type of weather which would prevent the caterpillar from turning into a butterfly and flying away to the balmy coasts :(

bury the bulb !

Continuing the posts on the global energy situation ...

With so many hard choices global warming + end of oil that are going to force on humanity, it seems the incredible that there is actually an avenue where the correct choice and the course of action is obvious, but people remain oblivious. I am talking about the simple idea of replacing the traditional light bulb (the one with the incandescent filament) with the new energy-efficient bulbs.

Unlike many other energy-saving projects, this one easily and amply pays for itself even at current power prices. and it is not a big expensive switch to make (like e.g. home insulation), but a simple matter of looking out for the right thing at supermarkets. and the power saved can be substantial when counted over the year in a single home.

It is definitely time to bid a proper goodbye to this device, which has changed history but remained essentially unchanged since its inception over a 100 years ago.

Why Steve's got it.

HP announced its iPaq smart phone yesterday and joined the long, uninspiring catalog of Windows Mobile-based smart phones.,The Motos unveiled it, the Nokias reproduced it and now so have LG and Samsung (notice the similarity between Moto Q, HP iPaq and Cingluar's Blackjack, for example). These phones come with the run-of-the-mill designs and look like each other's clones.

Th only exceptions are RIM's Blackberry phones and Palm's Treo series phones. They have their own OS, can cross-connect and exchange data easily without crashing every time you try to read a document, listen to a song and open a new mail simultaneously.

But, Apple's new iPhone will take the smart phone technology to a whole new level. With Apple's legendary sleek hardware, reliable OS and brilliant touch screen features, the iPhone will raise the expectations of the cellphone owners to new heights. They will look for similar features in their Motos, Nokias, HPs and LGs.

And that's why iPaq will fail to capture attention of a market that's already been spoiled by the next generation devices promised and delivered by Steve Jobs.

Post live blog

Like whatever dude. Football is a retarded game with too many commercial breaks anyway.

Liveblog

This game is starting to look depressing, will only post when something good happens.

Liveblog

A truly disgusting ad.

Liveblog

This is already a very up and down game. Bears make a stand on defense, and Benson promptly fumbles...

Liveblog

ok, it's getting hard to manage so many media at the same time. But the Bears break off a big run, and then the Sex Cannon completes a clutch clutch third and goal for a TD.

Liveblog

Two consecutive turnovers!

Liveblog

What you will see in this game. The Bears defense typically gives up chunks of yardage but few big plays, and they stiffen up when....

...damn, so much for that prediction!!

Superbowl Liveblog

Damn, I come in 10 minutes into the game and the Bears've already scored on the game's opening kickoff! And I'm typing this just as Peyton Manning throws an interception on 3rd and 12.....

3rd and 4, and Grossman aims a laser at f**ing Saturn. Bears offense starting true to form.


Rain's coming down.... people think this will hurt the Colts' speed offense, which may be true. But it will also hurt the Bears' speed defense.

posted from comments

pollux said...
I think people overreact to the impending shortage in oil. There is lots of oil to be found, e.g. in the tar sands of Canada, or the icy waters south of New Zealand for example. This oil is however more expensive to recover. The sole motive of big oil companies or any corporation for that matter, is to maximize profit. They will refrain from the huge capital expenditure usually required to explore and drill for expensive oil unless the price of the oil is high enough. So more oil will be found as and when required.

The easiest substitute for oil (not gasoline) is nuclear power. Countries like China and India are increasingly turning towards nuclear power. Notice the increase in the price of uranium over the last couple of years. Ofcourse there are safety issues, but they can be improved. If oil reaches $200 a barrel, nuclear power will seem a mighty good option.

I would like to know how much of the energy usage that is currently met oil based can be switched to nuclear power. One that cannot be done as of now is the gasoline requirement of automobile engines and hence I guess the NYT article.

As far as combustion engines go, the race to find substitute for gasoline is on. Ethanol seems like a good subsitute. But as the Motley Fool writes - "ever since President Bush mentioned ethanol in his 2005 State of the Union speech, corn prices have been on a meteoric rise. A 56-pound bushel of corn has risen 115% from $1.86 at the end of 2005 to $4 a bushel today. The president's call for a fourfold increase in the use of alternative fuels has the markets in a frenzy over prices, but it's more than just ethanol; pork and poultry producers are also fighting for corn to feed their livestock." So there you go, setting aside more corn for ethanol affects a lot of other prices. For example, if corn prices keep rising, why would a farmer want to grow wheat? Hence wheat prices will rise. So as oil prices rise and no alternative cheap engine fuels can be found, people will stop driving 30 miles for dinner, more cities will build mass transit systems, even city design and layout might change so as to make them more friendly to mass transit systems.

It is all about prices, how much you are willing to pay.