Windows Live Mesh

This post is pretty unique in a way. This is the first time I am posting via email. Yeah blogger gives you the facility. Looks pretty convenient.

To enable this service all you have to do is create a secret email id in blogger. You absolutely must keep it a secret otherwise hackers like Deepank Gupta, (who has always had malafide intentions towards one and all :P) will be able to ruin your blog.

Now coming back to the topic, I have recently started using windows live mesh and I have a feeling in about 2 years from now it will become an essential part of our lives. I have been a Windows skydrive user for about 8 months now. The skydrive was basically a storage space on the net on which one could keep a back up of their essential files. Hence if I ever had to, say, back up my future best selling novel, I would first log into my skydrive account and then go to the relevant folder and then copy(read upload) my file in that folder.

With windows live mesh, a copy of your file is added to the server as soon as it is created. This is how it happens:

1) Go to mesh.com and click on add a device.

2) Download and install the live mesh software from https://www.mesh.com/install/win32/LiveMesh.exe

3) Once the software is installed, all you have to do is, right click on any folder of your computer and click “add folder to live mesh”

4) That’s it. You’re done. Now everytime your folder changes in any way, live mesh will update its server version automatically.

Pretty cool eh? Wonder what Google is upto to counter this.

Hasn't sunk in yet that Jackson is dead

I was not surprised when I heard the news from my father that Michael Jackson was dead. I was expecting it to happen considering what all shit he had been subjecting his body to for such a long time. That was day before yesterday. And it still hasn't sunk in that he's indeed dead. Like many others, I am a very big fan of MJ. He was the first international artist whose name I had heard even when I did not have cable TV.

It was in 1995 when I bought the audio cassettes of History. The moment I heard the first track, Billie Jean, I was mesmerized. That album was the only one that played in my house and my car for continuously 4-5 years (till I became Enigma fan). It was the time when the cable TV was a new thing in India and MTV made most of its money playing Michael Jackson song. (Ironically on the day of his death, these people showed no respect and kept on playing Punjabi tracks. What a shame!!!)While MJ mania was on the decline overall, India was going crazy about him. I remember a boy in my school who had obtained special permission from the Principal to keep long hair and hat ala MJ. (I am talking about Madhur Mittal from Slumdog Millionaire.)As far as I was concerned, there were 2 kinds of international artists: There was MJ and there were the others.

Not only were,nay, are MJ's songs brilliant as far as melody is concerned, some of them have the power to inspire you, so great, you could not be not affected. Be it Heal the World, or Man in the mirror (which at the time i heard, thought was a song about some ghost :P), the songs are legendary and it was not uncommon for me to hear many songs inspired at least partially by MJ's works. And then there was his dancing. The whole choreography industry owes a lot to Jackson thanks to his distinct dancing styles and moves.

There are those who see him as a weirdo child molester who turned from a black person to a white person because he was ashamed of being a black man. If you are one of them, then one day you might accuse me of purposely changing my skin color to white since I suffer from the same disorder called Vitiligo . And he was no child molester. The first time he was accused he settled it out of court which made people think perhaps he was guilty. Well if I had been a rich man, and knew I was innocent, I would have done the same thing. The second time he was completely acquitted. Sure he had his problems, but which human being does not?

You may say Elvis was the greatest or perhaps the Beatles were. But I have not seen Elvis mania or Beatle mania in my living memory. As far as I am concerned, Michael Jackson was the greatest entertainer ever to set foot on earth.

Dot in your gmail id...

Is meaningless.

I don't know whether you knew it or not but I came to know about this thing only today.
When I create a gmail id, then I can put a dot anywhere in it and it will still be my id.
So if my id is

sidgoyal1, then automatically

sid.goyal1 becomes mine
sid.Goyal1 becomes mine too.

Did i mention you can capitalize any letter too and it still wont matter? And that you can put any number of dots?

Hail Web 2.0

Those who know me well, know what a big fan I am of this movie called "The Beach". I have seen it many times and I simply love its soundtracks and since it is a Danny Boyle movie, I don't even need to comment on the cinematography.

However before I had seen the film and when it was about to release in India, its promo used to come on the TV. That promo had a haunting soundtrack in the background and had an unforgettable african tune (I believe it was african though I may be wrong).

When I saw the film for the first time, surprisingly that tune never came in any of the scenes. (The trailer usually contains the soundtrack from the movie only). I decided to find out the name of the song as the song had to be from the movie album. I googled and found the entire song list from the album. I downloaded each and every song but curiously none contained the tune which had captivated me some 8-9 years back. I started doubting whether a tune like that even existed or whether it was just something I heard in my dreams (and believe me I hear a lot of new tunes in my dreams).

Finally today it just struck me today. Just a bolt out of the blue. I decided to see the trailer of the Beach on youtube. And well, as it turns out, the tune was not my imagination. The sound of an African wailing fellow was very much there.
Needless to say, I wanted to know the name of the song and the artist. The comments on the video. The user comments on the video satiated my curiosity once again. So ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of NASurfer may I present to you, "touched" by VAST



Now think about the title of the post :)

8.333 minute long random monologue

The Highway Ghost

I was watching the IPL with my dad and during the strategic time out, started switching channels. A Hollywood movie was coming on AXN and although I cannot remember its name, in the scene 2 characters were having a conversation on the following lines.
"Believe me. He's not human."
"Ok Dave. I think we should really take you to Dr Page."
"I am not being paranoid..."
...
After switching the channel back to MAX to enjoy Delhi's batting once again, I made an assertion to my dad.
"Ok this isn't right. Why are people in general so dismissive about phenomena that cannot be explained by Science? I mean there is so much we have not seen in our lives so why should we keep our minds closed? Isn't this attitude wrong?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" was my dad's reaction. Apparently he had missed the dialogues in the movie and so I explained to him exactly what the hell I was talking about. This was his response to my assertion:
"Well if I am so bloody sure of something I believe in, why would I believe? If someone tomorrow tells me that he can show me a place where the sun rises in the west, would I believe him and go?"

"Hey come on it's not the same. I mean what you're refering to is a universal phenomenon. We are talking about the supernatural here."

"See unless you experience something yourself, it will be difficult for you to believe in such a thing. But even then, if your mind is sufficiently closed, which in this case might be a good thing, you may ultimately find a good explanation for the phenomenon you might experience. In my case, although I am yet to find a suitable explanation for what happened 5 years back, I still don't believe that there was anything supernatural about it. In fact I believe the explanation I give myself is not that bad either."

"Ummmm?? What incident are you alluding to now?"

"Didn't I ever tell you about it? I m sure I must have."

"Go on."

"I had gone to attend a wedding of a friend's daughter. It was about 3 am in the night when I was driving back home. A man asked me for a lift and I obliged. Since my friend was sitting with me in front, the man sat on the rear seat. After about half an hour, I had dropped both men to their respective places. I was now on the highway and was driving at around 110-120 km an hour. Suddenly I heard someone knocking on the door. It was not the thud of a pebble. But more like a "tuck tuck tuck" on the window. At 120 per hour, there was absolutely nothing which could explain this phenomenon. I was literally sweating even though it was not so hot outside."

For about a minute, I could not say a word. And then my dad smiled and continued.

"Now for about 5 minutes, my mind played tricks with me. I was almost convinced there was a supernatural presence in the car. But because all these years I had refused to believe in the inexplicable phenomenon, I decided to investigate the cause. I stopped the car. I looked at the window on the door opposite to mine. I then looked at the window on the door behind that door. The window of the rear seat I mean. The man I had given lift to had rolled it down. I then concluded that the "tuck tuck tuck" could have been the seat belt buckle knocking on my window by the sheer force of air coming from behind. At 120 km an hour, the air had perhaps really moved the buckle. And I was immediately relieved. There were no ghosts. I closed the window of the rear seat and as expected there was no more knocking on the window."

"But that's just your conjecture isn't it? I mean you drove with the rolled down window and at that speed for how long?"

"I believe for about half an hour."

"And this knocking happened just once during that period?"

"Well there can be no other explanation. Let's end this discussion now."

Now the explanation my dad gives may well be true, but honestly, there can certainly be more to it. I leave it up to you to draw your conclusions

When chimps took over

Normally I keep an account of my dreams in my dream journal, which gets updated only once in a while, not in the least because i do not dream so often, but because i dont feel like updating it.

The other night I saw something scary. Chimps had taken over the planet and the humans were being enslaved one after the other. I was a part of the rebel group which simply refused to bow. We were killing chimps and the human beings who had joined them. We had a base. There was an under construction building whose one floor we had occupied. There were chimps shooting humans and humans shooting chimps. I killed some friends of mine who had shifted their loyalties. And that is all I can remember.

One wonders about the mysterious ways in which our sub conscience works and how it can exaggerate the reality to such ridiculous proportions.
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This picture of meditating langur is not my work of art but a genuine snap taken by me at Mt Abu, an incident witnessed not just by me but several others. Can you imagine the path from the conscience to the subconscience and thought process that must have taken place to go from this picture to the dream that I had?