Down To A Simmer

What happened to the electrifying and energizing speeches that Obama used to put out in the primaries up until the day after the nomination. Now he just seems barely more enthusiastic with his material than someone announcing a resignation. Clearly there's no point in holding your breath for that elusive "I have a dream" moment in this campaign. There seems to be a moratorium on delivering anything from the Deomcratic candidate that might raise your heart rate. With that has died the fire that kindled the fact that this was really a history in the making. Now all we hear is a boring annual report speech at your local town hall. Sure everything is precisely orchestrated and every possible angle analyzsed to death before even a single sentence is said. Leave the stoic act to the professors and let's revive that fire. There's enough to be said that empowers everyone without having to polarize.

Live From The ACL

Live From The ACL

First thing I took for granted was an internet wireless connection. Atleast that's what the 'Austin' in Austin City Limits Music Festival seemed to guarantee. However I realised that was way too much to expect. I'm writing this as me and Shashi sit here in front of the Austin Ventures stage and wait for Nine Black Alps band to set their gear up.

Fifteen minutes into the park and we are roasted by the heat sending us crawling in search of some shade. Damn this heat is really giving me second thoughts. Shold we have showed up for evening concerts? I have no clue about most of the bands in any case. The forecasts around hurricane Rita seem to have taken a complete U turn. Not a drop of rain and not a single menacing cloud in the sky. The category 2 hurricane loaded with 20 inches of rain has turned in to a dehydrating 100 degree sunny Austin afternoon.

But the crowds are being true to the spirit of ACL. Rain or shine the show will go on. People are sprawled out in front of every stage. Not to mention the longest lines are in front of the water tents comprising of very naked people trying to cool off.

Ok these guys just started playing and as we are sitting right in front of the speakers which is giving out enough base to knock out the lunch I just ate. In any case Nine Black Alps is not working out for me. Rock not being on top of my listening list could have something to do with it.

More Blogging Power

More Blogging Power

This is without a doubt the mark of a true lazy geek. After just posting a single tiny blog I started thinking about how I could make my posting easier amonth the things I desired were:

The ability to post even when I'm offline or have no internet access

The ability to publish a bunch of articles that say I might have cumulatively written over the weekend

Very importantly post images into the blog without having to jump through some hoops to upload a file (OLE)

And of course more control over formatting without seeing unhuman HTML tags in the articles

This differs from what all of you blog-from-anywhere proponents really want. In my case I'm assuming that to write anything - I need my little laptop. Otherwise I'm really not writing anything significant. Somebody recently suggested the use of pan and pepper! That's just foolish. How can a pan and some pepper help me here. Or was it pen and paper . . . I wonder what it all means.

Coming back to the point - I looked around for 5 minutes and thanks to the open source fraternity I landed this Windows blogging client from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pwrblog/ called, not surprisingly, PowerBlog 2.4. Ahh those beautiful numbers. The major and minor version numbers can only mean someone's been hard at work to iron out the issues.

Let's blog this and find out. If you don't see anything further in this blog, IT WORKED!

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Weeell, it's pacifier time. Nothing's perfect right? Very impressive but a few issues here:

Everything was double spaced

The title to the article didn't get published (didn't set the 'significance' if it had to do anything with the title)

I later found that you'll have to edit the by pre-formatting template clicking on the 'Drops' tab But this should be unnecessary if you want the default blog site's formatting.

US Open & Extreme Religious Makeover

US Open & Extreme Religious Makeover

Over the years Sania indeed has emerged as a glamorous young woman and a fine tennis player. Some say she may not be the most attractive but why the heck are we concerned about this pedantic aspect when her brilliant work at the court is all that really counts.

Now this glamour really happens to hit home with the clerics and imams of Hyderabad who are keeping an eye on her hemline more closely than her entire fan base. Here are some clerical moments of zen:

"The dress she wears on the tennis courts leaves nothing to the imagination," Haseeb-ul-hasan Siddiqui told The Hindustan Times. "She will undoubtedly be a corrupting influence.".

He said she should follow the example of Iranian women who wore long tunics and headscarves to play in the Asian Badminton Championships. Similar views were shared by Syed Yousaf Bin, the chief patron of the Ulema Board, in Hyderabad.

"Sania Mirza is a Muslim and she stands half-naked on the tennis court while playing, which is against Islam," Siddikulla Chowdhury, secretary of the Jamiat-Ulama-Hind Islamic movement in Kolkata, said.

Later in a joint committee of bearded men a new line of tennis accessories were proposed for Sania Mirza to make her glamorous appearances in.

EXTREME ULEMA MAKEOVER

EXTREME ULEMA MAKEOVER