Cult o' SAoS

After finding myself restricted to sleeping and/or being delusional, I have decided to put up some stuff by the more interesting people out there.

The Trouble With India - A very long, but informative and thorough read that highlights how India has begun on the wrong foot and how the rot is setting in.

9 Lessons for Would-be Bloggers - A bit of blogging wisdom for the starters shared during the SxSW over at Texas in the mid of March

Five Principles to Design By - This partially covers my rant on the need for good design - remind you, not art - for a more sane world.

"Nature is cruel", they say. Being sarcastic, I guess.

UPDATE: After finding it difficult to integrate the SpikedHumor media player on this page, I've put up a YouTube version of the same clip.
Originally, I saw clip here. Strangely enough, it was posted earlier on YouTube but escaped attention.

The complete version of a rare short film from our side, "Flight of Imagination" just went live on iFilm. It was quite tiresome translating the Hindi narration into English and then adding subtitles to the whole clip, but I hope it would be worth it. Anything for a wider reach.
If you don't know about the short film, read my earlier post. Or visit the link on iFilm.

DIRECT LINK HERE
Here is a teaser for our first mobile short film titled "Flight of Imagination". Finding youtube crowded as well as too blue, I've put it up on iFilm.
The short film is about imagination and how they work alongside our dreams. It was created for Nokia's Indian edition of Short Film Awards, and the results for that will take quite some time.

Shooting on a mobile camera, that too one made ages before the whole "mobile short film" revolution, was a big difficulty. The size, the frame rate, the video quality, the ergonomics...I could go on.
More info and/or teasers to be put up regularly. Or do you think that would just be littering the interweb?

Update: The content is apparently reviewed by iFilm before being put up. If the above video does not lead you anywhere, please be a bit patient. You can open new tabs in the meanwhile.

(Above: The Evil Calf, considered a "predator of artistic freedom" by Time Magazine)

Reporters Without Borders has compiled a list of the "Enemies of the Internet" (BBC). This definitve roster led to a day of worldwide protest, when some protests were carried on to streets in NY and Paris, and over 25,000 of the netizens polled for either of the countries as being the "Black Holes of the Internet" from the comfort of their homes.
It was tough finding any text supporting their list at the first glance, and I would not dig further. The whole act seems superfluous.

Most of the featured "Evil" countries are also

• (quite small)/backward/communist.


• Asian countries or a close neighbour.


• Criticized for their Human Rights violations.


• Feature regularly on fark for absurd news stories.


• Unidentifiable on the map by 98% of the population (thankfully the website locates them on the map, so in addition to following the fad, some might actually learn a fact)

China is an exception. It beats other countries' collective size hands-down. Same goes with its GDP and exports. It becomes difficult to comprehend an alternate form of governance doing this well, no matter how much you bash it for various reasons.

BBC is experimenting with releasing content over the web in the form of podcasts (recorded conversations; the name deriving more from iPod, the gadget that started the sudden incline for such content) http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/downloadtrial/ is where to go for a small but intersting collection of past bbc radio shows. Alternatively, you can use a media player like Apple iTunes to sync with the feed, and put them same onto your iPods. Video Podcasts are also up for grabs, so have a nice time.
For now, I've started with the "BBC Documentary Archive" audio podcast feed.

A compelling advertising campaign for Amnesty International by Walker Werbeagentur. Link.

The NRA's Kooky Kidz Korner.

Rape stats courtesy the bitch on CNN. No, not Christian "Warslut" Amanpour but CNN's Nancy Grace. Link.

The Stupid Page.

Jerry Springers 1980 electoral campaign video.

» Read More

Gallery 1988 just relaunched with a new look.

Ah, Amanda Visell how I love you.

Idle minds know no bounds or so I'd like to think.
Spending the better part of the last week reading mathematical formulae
I decided to take a time out by going on an Radio archive filpping spree.
War is all the rage these days.

Came across an intresting dispatch.The Battle for Carpiquet.
Made on July 5th, 1944 by Matthew Halton. Apparently as Halton described it
"the most enormous concentration of fire ever put down on a small object".

This might be an old discussion, but i have always been amused by the number of .tk links floating around. Most lead to garbage static websites, but the rise of .tk is interesting enough to require investigation. The bewilderment surfaced yet again yesterday, and I decided to put it to rest for good.

Though a quick visit to Wikipedia would've done the work, I started off with IANA's TLD page (quite informative and exciting). Here is some whois information for the .tk domain - it belongs to Tokelau, a non-self-governing colonial territory of New Zealand.

Tokelau comprises of 3 very small atolls (ringlike coral islands) in the Pacific Ocean: Atafu, Nukunonu, Fakaofo. The land area is a measly 10 sq km and with a total population of about 1450, the statistics become quite easy. According to this page, it is inaccessible by air, and the journey by ship is an awkward experience, where "tourists are only taken if there happens to be space left over".

Sometime ago, The brains behind the Tokelau Internet Project decided to offer .tk domain names with for free - trying to make a mark by the online route. Registrations are done through dot.tk.Even though they expire when you do not get enough hits in a month, the expired domains are released back after a period of time. This stunt did gather the expected attention and soon .tk spread like wildfire, mostly among the young netizens who were too excited on the prospects of having their own domain name.

As always, no article is complete without the ritual wikipedia link. It provides plenty of information. This website is a more friendly and infromative verion on Tokelau and its Internet Project.