Growing old

Jamie, buddy ol pal... you are not the only one with a failing memory! And its very well, i know others far worse than you and me. But yes, the brain cells do fail us when we require to retain some information. I forgot when Mosha's brithday was, but i did make an entry in BirthdayAlarms.com. But of course i entered the wrong date, since i remembered it wrong! And so for two days... :) iwished him a happy birthday.. being wrong on both counts! Finally the third day (y'day) and told me... ok, this is it! It was kinda embarassing. Anyway, some of us met up last night... had some mild celebrations. And a smoking cake! How come there are never candles when you need them... Maybe this was better....


Smokin Cake!

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MIT Survey of Weblogs

...and we are the all dancing all singing crap of this earth. [Tyler Durden]

I feel bad, i donno any lawyer, labor union manager, cook, accountant, scientist, police officer, secretary, farmer, truck driver, bus driver, postman that i know from online or offline ... and can stop on the street and have a conversation with! :(

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Jadookor

Today we spent a lot of noisy time. Its called Brainstorming in the real world. Where more than one heads get together to show off their brain power. Its almost like girl power but less appeal.

We wanted to create the perfect code generator. With a lot of marketing buzzword, high goals and utopian dreams floating about in the office, this is where we ended up. In the conference room, three of us ...and our brains. Which if you consider the 'seeing is believing' philosophy, will dispell the whole notion. Anyways, there is also a saying "An idea can change your life"... so we fought hard... the storm was a raging bull, and each of us a ... a guy in spain ... i mean.. a ... wat do you call them... a mmmmm... its at the tip of my tongue. [I remember now.... A MATADOR! yesssss]

Anwyays, later after the hurly burly was over... I sat down and had a great idea! Gooooogle! some of us are so slowwwww! Anyways, it opened my eyes to a whole new world! And also some worlds which i had forgotten about (Like Velocity and MiddleGen).

Links:
http://boss.bekk.no/boss/middlegen/
http://www.codegeneration.net/generators-by-language.php?language=4
http://jag.sourceforge.net/tutorial.html#anchor3

And of course, the blog that lend me a start:
http://www.dotcat.org/?id=lazy-coding

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Rules

A lot of people take pleasure and pride in the "Rules are meant to be broken" mantra. It was almost a credo in the O and A level days. Recently, I have been looking around me and finding some rules that still make me mad!

- You can book a practice pad, the minimum is 4 hours. A 'practice pad' just means that place where a musical band can get together to practice or 'jam'. These places have a drum set and the neccessary heavy electronics like amplifiers and a mixer. But 4 hours! There are often cases where two bands get together to share these sessions, where 2 hours are just enough for some of us! Even one hour time spans would be good to have some fooling around sometimes! I miss the pads back in Malaysia, where half-an-hour was the minimum.

- Go Far OR No Go. The taxis, no matter how many wheels they have have some weird rules they abide by. If you are not going somewhere really far, so that their meters run to an amount of takas 50 or more... they are most likely not to take you!
Say from Kakoli Bonani to somewhere in Gulshan 2, their meter would probably not run at all, thus making the fare Taka 12 (three-wheelers) or Taka 15 (black cabs). Even though they would not take a customer that close, they will gladly run that distance without fare looking for the big catch!

This is now becoming quite a problem since Rickshaws are being banned from certain places more and more.

- Rain! No Go!. What happens when it rains! I have my feet wet, my jeans are soggy at my feet, there is dirt and mud there, I am gradually reaching the point of being drenched, and all taxi walas and rickshawalas are denying me their services. Or hiking up prices to tremendous heights. Usually, they do not want to go! What is it about rain that so turns them off!

- Dress Codes. The food shop Coopers have recently put on signs saying no 'Lungis' (some may be more familiar with the word "Sarong"). Others have signs saying "The Authority Reserves the Right Of Entry" ..which basically means if they dont think you are upto par with their set of standards, they will not let you in. Some social clubs also have these kind of rules. Chittagong Club does not allow anyone in without collars, shoes and trousers from evening. Ali Zaker once wrote an article in the Star's Weekend Magazine about another club that would not allow him in since he was wearing paijama punjabi!!!!

[DISCLAIMER: This whole post is inspired by this post.]

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What are you reading?!?!?!??!

I do not mean books here!

Y'day, one of my colleagues had a lil' problem while coding and so he called me up... Two heads are better than one! bollocks! U really need to consider which heads you are putting together.

He described his problem to me - "I am creating a Date object, then printing it... shows 01 26 2005. Then when i apply the specific timezone it should become 06 06 2005 but its not! Its printing Jan again!!!!" Thats all he needed to tell me to make me see what he saw... a mistake. Later he called me to tell me that someone else had helped him out... and he had the widest grin on his face! I knew that meant that we deserve to be 'offed' with our heads for stupidity. The date was printed as Jan 26 before... and Jun 26 later. But we all read the first and the third letter of the month's abbreviated form and totally ignored the vowel in between! Ugh.

This is kinda like the lil' forward that went around a couple of months back... with a whole para of words with jumbled up letters in between the proper first and last letter (E.g. - nevremore) which everyone was still able to correctly decipher!

And then theres my cousin ishti... who just does not feel the need to read a complete word. Nope.. no time for that! He reads the first letter, probably sees the size of the word, and guesses a word. Its funny ...the sentences he comes up with sometimes! Or when he is reading from a billboard!

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Great Site!

Answers.com.

Actually, when you 'google' something, the results page usually show a link that says 'definition' near the top right corner of the page. This is a link to Answers.com's definitions of the words you have searched with.

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SMS Email from GSM number!

First try from a mobile device! If it works... Thanks to dr. Frank!

PS! It puts my phone number on the main page!!! i don want that!

--

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The Monsoons

Seems as if the monsoons this year are sleeping on the job. Woke up this morning tho! at a bad time!


Had to use that ridiculous red-white HSBC umbrella today. 

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Blog -aholic -aholism

As i was telling my friend Ling Ling a few days ago... i am now a "blogaholic"!
Even when i am away from PCs and network cables or modems, I identify a moment that has just passed as one being "Bloggable"... The words are arranged in my mind. Even with the curse of a bad memory I am able to regurgitate those arrangements on the keyboard to send to blogger.com (78% of the time).

I am compelled to think whether there is something wrong with me. All i can tell myself in my defence is that, I would have done the same if I was keeping a journal in any other format. But does the fact that its all online, that i have some people going through it make it more exciting, or fun?. I believe it does!

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24 Hours.

Coming up. 24 hours without any obligations to the office!

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Rockstrata

I always heard how important this band was such an important part of the history of the Rock scene here in bangladesh. Today was the first day that i actually listened to their album. Some of the songs were familiar since I heard them before, like 'Janalar Biare' and 'Ei Din Ar Shei Din'. And today was also the first day that I appreciated them. Back in the days when I first stumbled into the world of rock music and more... I was mildly allergic to anything slow, e.g Scorpions' Holiday, which I later learnt to appreciate. I just sort of developed the brain to understand the actual flow of emotions that is possible with slow, transparent music. I aslo developed a sense of liking for music that shows potential, or that which tends to show or give me an idea of actually what the artist was trying to do. For example the track Breach did in 'Prothom Chitkar' (one of the worst produced/mixed compilations to ever hit the market, thanks to "Tone and Tune").

Today while listening to Rockstrata's historic album that is exactly what I did. I appreciated it for what it could be, or what it promises. The album's mixing is horrible and the vocals leave a lot to be desired. But overall, considering the time and place of the birth of this album... its kicks butt, even of a lot of the rock bands that exist today. I absolutely enjoyed this album (except for the membrane tearing, neurone wracking screams of their guest vocal Sunjoy {Warfaze}).

I remember as a kid how difficult it was to come across music, literature related to music. But still some people probably took immense pain to venture into ways of changing that. What immediately comes to mind is the magazine Rock and Rhythm! I wonder if the newly produced tv show is related to it. Also there was Rainbow, Records (Chittagong) - the source for music for the musically starved. Rainbow also had a music magazine for sometime. No internet! Somewhere along the way, somewhere between MTv And Zee tv, things changed a lot.

By the way, there is a concert this saturday with a list of bands that is truly worth it....

CnG
Baahsz'nought!
Obhishap
Delude
Soothsayer
Kral
Fulbanu's Revenge
Breach (Comeback)
Nemesis (Comeback)
The Watson Brothers (Comeback)
Stentorian
Cryptic Fate (Comeback)
ARTCELL

Its been named "Underground Recharge"! :)

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2 Meme or not to Meme

Well, been tagged. I can't explain all that now so check these links out:
Meme@Wildflower
Meme@Tallullah

The Number Of Books I Own
Close to 6 (I think... I am scratching my head)!

Last Book Bought
Bangladesh - A Legacy of Blood, by Anthony Mascarenhas

Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me
Bangladesh - A Legacy of Blood, by Anthony Mascarenhas. The disturbing things of the present politics of Bangladesh were brought to light with this book. It answered a lot of questions I had about our country's journey to its current plight.
Nillohit'er Ayna. A philosophical, introspective account of things from the writer, very wittingly put. I enjoyed this book thoroughly, and lost track of it after having lent it to a teacher at school to read.
The God of Small Things. This was a comeback book, at university when i had given up reading.
The Bourne Identity. I am a political thriller buff... and this was the best to me.
The Golden Treasury. This was a collection of poetry that the school introduced to us... and since then it has been one that i frequently run through.

Link

I tag: Jamie,
Scribbles, Sameen, Ashik Bhai, Rezwan Bhai.


PS. Meme@Wikipedia

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Kids these days... Fascinating

Follow these links to see what i mean:

Dr. Frank/Someguy
http://bdlife.blogsome.com
http://testareax.blogspot.com

Scribbles
http://oddments.blogspot.com
http://lostinrhyme.blogspot.com

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Dont worry be happy

listening to that song after so loooong!

"In your life you have some trouble... when you worry you make it double"

remember that! :p

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Legal Guide for Bloggers

Get a good lawyer :)

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Aus Vs Ban: Bottoms Up

yaaaaaaaaaaaahoooooooooooooo
yeeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
woooooooooooohoooooooooooooo

well, what can i say... this is still so unbelievable! Australia who's at the top of the league, and our team whos at the bottom of it... with y'day's game, the bottom was up!!!

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Faltu Situation!

The office air conditioner is again out of order! To make things worse
there is this smell in the room that is making me really... pukey.
argh.

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The Auto-Rickshaw Man

1 

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The Auto-Rickshaw Man

2 

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3 

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The heat and the rain

Either way.. there is the possibility of getting wet! either in the grosssss sweaty uncomfortable way... or the other way where water is poured on you from the skies. I used to like the rain and getting wet in it when i was younger. I still like it ..but from far! :) from safety of my balcony or bed. After a very uncomfortable night of sleep because of the tremendous heat... on the way to work i was met with dark skies. I opted not to take the bus for this reason. But come to think of it, my decision to take the cng three-wheelers was not so wise either! All along the journey i was half enjoying the rain... the clean & shiny look it gave the city, and half loathed it at the prospect of getting splashed by a passing vehicle! Anyways, Check below for some of the photos i took while getting to work...

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What i am most anxious about when traveling in CNGs in the rain is getting splashed... each passing wheel brought on the possibility... 

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The wet inside of the CNG. I positioned myself in the middle to avoid getting wet. 

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Wet Roads of rainy morning. 

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Rains almost endin, and the wet roads are reflecting the trees and the skies. 

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Hotel Radisson looks skewed after being photographed on the run! 

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BD Blogs and the day...

Since seeing the post of AG y'day about 'How/What foreigners feel/say about Bangladesh' (something like that), I started going through the blogs listed on
ReZwan bhai's blog of the foreigners living in Bangladesh. I knew this list existed but never really thought of going through them! So far read some of this Tara person's blog, who works in an NGO here.
Also I got to fiddling around with my profile, and noticed that they have the parts of my location as links: Uttora, Dhaka, and Bangladesh!

So just clicking on these will take you to a list of all the blogs from these locales! Other parts of a profile are aslo shown as links so you may just search for blogs ..say with matching interests and so on. Apparently, I am the only blogger from Uttora! But there are some blogger people from Uttara! These spellings are the stuff of another post... forget it.

Meanwhile the day goes on going through java and javascript. woohoo....

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The hardest Button to Button.

Woe is me. Caught between the love of two hot women... not quite... I just got accepted in to the Masters in IT program for the major: Art and Technology. It seems like an interesting, exciting program from here. Where I am now, i have a comfortable job, on the verge of releasing a single, and... well, just in a lifestyle i have gotten used to in a while. Aabto aadatsi hay mujhko eisey jinemey. Maybe thats what also scares me. The move to Sweden is also kinda scary since the program is unconventional, and probably not usable if i come back to Bangladesh afterwards. Sweden is also an expensive place to live in, so even though the university charges no tuition, the expenses still reach $700 approx. per month!

I had a chat with the bosses today about this. I think they know now that i am confused. I love ..ok not love. . but like this job... where i can dress as I like and listen to music while i work... and blog :) ... but the life outside the office is just lifeless, uneventful, boring. And too many hours of work at the end of the day just makes me a zombie in front of the tv. "The blues aint nothing but a good man feeling bad". I heard this in the movie The Crossroads, and had it on my msn messenger beside my name. My bosses made me take it away, but thats besides the point... i think all my confusion and latent dissatisfaction with life has rekindled my affinity for the Blues.

I had a chat about this with Imran... who said the same! So i guess whether life is in Canada or Bangladesh, you can never escape the blues. hahahhahahah. I am laughing at the face of misery cause i can play the blues. Or maybe i am just loco. The History Channel has started a program by the name of "History Rocks" , and i caught their episode on Eric Clapton the other day. Seems like this is one person who very fittingly entered the world of Blues! His life had repeated bouts of misery! The worst is probably the death of his son, who by accident fell from a high rise apartment!

Generally, my taste in music has been really shifting towards the roots of rock. Blues and Rock and Roll! Since my amp has baimani-fied with me, i had almost stopped playing guitar. But now i have borrowed another from a friend, and resumed practice. The roots of rock is all that is coming out now.

My band and I have also decided to give recording a shot with our track "Ei Prothom". Its also similar to rock and roll.... but with a touch of grunge. We have been jamming with this guy named Raziq for quite a while. He is a chubby guy, so i thot he would have a powerful voice (Think: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan... think The Blues Travelers). But not so.... he has decent idea of scales and all... but his voice is quite thin. He does justice to "Ei Prothom" however. And we have made him realize that he does not sing from the stomach! so Lets see.. we have to keep jamming. I spent almost 4/5 hours reprogramming the drums to the song to incorporate the ending we have come up with during our jams. Its so ... boring. I hate working on software. Magic happens at the jams, but in front of the PC... i am not enjoyin it. Thats why i had the tv on while i was working last night.

I think i'll spare the world from the rest of the banter.


[The Hardest Button to Button is a song by The White Stripes. They are an example of what happens when Rock N' Roll and Punk is your influence in this day and age. I would suggest everyone out there to listen to their song: Seven Nation Army]

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Teachers: The real celebrities

Being away from office for two days (pronounced: s-i-c-k l-e-a-v-e.) gave me the oppurtunity to enjoy daytime television. Sadly its just repeats of last night's entertainment, mostly. Anyway, i saw an episode of Oprah, or O as she is known by her smitten fanz. The topic for the episode was 'School Teachers'. Started with one guy who has recently written a book about it, which lays out the 55 laws he abides by to get the job done. He believes in them and follows them strictly. Website

Then there was the English teacher who made Shakespeare fun... this seemed like a cliche to me after watching too much of 'Boston Public'. We didn't really have revolutionary teachers but i still found Shakespeare fun.

Then there was the science teacher. Not just an ordinary science teacher. He taught at a school for the deaf and blind. He told his students to teach him how to see without his eyes. His methods focused on using the students' better senses to get the concepts of science through!

Another teacher was a graduate of Yale. He had an idea and it took the form of Donors Choose. This is an organization that helps bridge able and eager donors and needy schools. The teachers can on this site get a lacking for facilities listed, and in turn the donors can browse through these lists and decide to help them. The donors get a receipt of the purchase that Donors Choose handles for the school chosen. The donor also receives a thank you letter from the teacher who made the plea, and a thank you note from each of the students of the class which benefitted from the help!
So it helps to create a real sense of acheivement on the donor! I thought this was a brilliant idea, and of course it made me want to do something similar. I hope I, or anyone else can rise to these levels. Website

Everytime these success stories, or extra-ordinary individuals' stories were told, the audience would break into a cheer, this kind of cheer is made every time Oprah even bats her eye, but this time... it really felt different. To me, this cheer and applause was going to someone well deserving. The teachers. Usually we applaud celebrities, actors and musicians, and paris hilton types. But this time, to someone who really makes a difference, and is probably not appreciated most of the time!

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New Music out!

Two albums were released y'day:
Agontuk 3 (a compilation of 15 bands, and thus 15 songs), and
X Factor, an instrumental album by Jewel of Miles.

AFter hearing both, my heart and mind really goes out to X Factor. The AG 3 album is boring quite frankly. Black sang a song in English, which the peeps in Amadergaan are really praising, which i found really bogus. I mean... the words just don't gel with the rest of it. The music is ok. Pretty much what happened is that the aniticipation build up from the moment i heard of this album's coming to its release has really created an overrated excitement over it. So it all came crashing down, since the album didn't really present the artists in any new way. so far the good stuff to me is Zefyr, Cryptic Fate, Icons, Aashor, & Echoes.

X Factor is Jewel bhai's attempt at a solo album. The designs on the cover and insides are well done. It features Manam Ahmed on keys, Sumon bhai on bass, and Shaju (Artcell) on drums. Its heavy use of software is well documented too. Since i am in the office in a room with no rock enthusiasts, i heard it at low volume, but it still seemed promising.

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