Spent some quality time struggling with Java’s I/O routines over the weekend (I know, I have no life…) Any Java/Linux guru reading this — help/comment would be very appreciated. My problem’s about this servlet that does fine on Win2k, but takes ages to execute on Linux, but only when the client is another Java app. Any ideas?
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Walk around Mylapore these days and you’ll see a thread like mark in a lot of roads — that’s where Bharti (?) has been laying fiber as part of their broadband push. So far the two buildings in CIT Colony which have the fiber going into them have been a private residence (lucky so-and-so’s, which I was rich enough, etc :-)) and the NDTV office. We‘re still on old-fashioned leased lines :'-(
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I am not fond of using — or writers using — ’she’ in place of a pronoun that is inclusive of both genders. (English doesn’t have one, ‘he’ serves the purpose pretty well.) Call me old-fashioned, but this is tokenism. Where does it stop? Since ‘women’ is obviously derivative of ‘men’, should we now change it to womyn? Oh, wait…. But now, either the NYTimes‘ style guide or the Pope has caught on, and is busily turning the (don’t you wish it was so) asexual Catholic Church into something rather more feminine, along the lines of Mother Nature, probably.
“If you love Jesus, love the church,” the Pope said during a homily at an outdoor Mass here this morning that was attended by hundreds of thousands of Catholics, many of them teenagers. “Do not be discouraged by the sins and failings of some of her members.
Typo? Sure hope so. I mean, I would hate to find out that there was a secret worldwide conspiracy by language-tool software vendors to reinvent the English language in hugger-mugger.
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Btw, for those who asked if I have turned into a penguinista: nope. I still am using Windows 2000, Office XP, and Visual Studio.NET. But, as always, I still have PuTTY and a trusty SSH prompt by my side 
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Ok, so I’m finally giving back — albeit a teeny bit — to the community. Nice feeling.
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After the sweltering heat of the past month, some rain today. Walked to the office in a very light drizzle. Felt good :-).
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Spent some time at Shoppers’ Stop’s Music Store yesterday. One of the more unusual items on sale there was a smallish clutch of `MP3 Audio CDs’ from T-Series. Now I don’t listen to the stuff T-Series produces, but they do well in the Hindi/Devotional music space, and this is a good move if done right. The CDs were priced at Rs 150 which is about right; but they all seemed to have around only 20 numbers each — which seems too few for the compression levels Layer 3 encoding can achieve: for Rs 150 I’d expect at least 50 to 75 numbers at a high bitrate — 256 kbit or better. Has anyone out there actually bought these things? After this and Indiatimes’ music download service and I’d be really, really curious to see if any other Indian vendors are taking the digital music plunge.
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I am disappearing off the face of the earth ^[7bd$ taking the weekend off (for a change! :-)). Only now I find I’ve to send about 8 `urgent’ emails off before I leave. Why does this have to happen on a Friday evening? 
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Was it love, or was it the idea of being in love?
Or was it the hand of fate
That seemed to fit just like a glove?
The moment slipped by
And soon the seeds were sown
The year grew late and neither one
Wanted to remain alone.
I’m listening to too much Floyd these days, I guess. Although some might say there’s nothing like too much Floyd :-).
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