How / Why did Rakhi trend – A case study
August 3, 2009 at 11:55 pm | In Internet, Technical, Visions, arbit, criticism, fakereviews, humour, spam, twitter | 10 CommentsTags: average tweets per second, beer summit, bob saget, cash for clunkers, elesh parujanwala, geekiness, gul panag, indian reality show, indiavotes09, mass hysteria, ndtv imagine, pritish nandy, rakhi ka swayamvar, rakhi sawant, review, shark week, snowball, statistics, trending topic, twitscoop, twittebrity, twitter, twitter trends, whatthetrend
I assume that most of you are still recovering from last night’s events. Totally surreal stuff, I must say. Triple Baaraats, 3 grooms , 2 idiot MC’s and of course the multiplee talented Rakhi Sawant. A by-product of this whole ruckus was that India witnessed yet another trending topic [after #indiavotes09 etc ]
This was a pretty interesting experience to watch, as well as to participate in, as one could clearly see the effect of opinion snowballing, and mass-hysteria eventually taking over.
This is all I can say about ‘why’ did Rakhi trend. Well you see, ‘ The human mind is a complex system, and…”.
Oh, ditch that. It’s the ‘how’ that’s explainable.
So, how did Rakhi Madamji muster so much mojo?
Well, the obvious answer has to got to be – “due to a lot of tweets in a short timeframe”.
For the uninitiated, I’ll provide the same background that I wrote on http://whatthetrend.com/trend/Rakhi [ which incidentally, is a wonderful site to know why a topic is trending on twitter. So the next time you see something like "Cash for Clunkers" or " Bob Saget's gone bonkers" trending on twitter, you know where to look for answers ]
[ I'd throw in an image but for the fact that I couldn't find a single decent picture, and even among the bhajan variety, there were none with a Creative commons license. Perverts, please search here ]
So, with this much info, lets dive into some statistics.
[ Note: ATPS - Average Tweets Per Second ]
The show started at around 9.00 p.m [ I.S.T], and for the initial 10 minutes the tweet flow was quite slow, at around 5 ATPS ]
Soon, some celebrities [or twittebrities, if that floats your boat ], joined in the action, and all hell broke loose. Some samples.
[ Ah, the marvels of good liquor ]
[ Sums up the nation's opinion with this tweet ]
Soon enough, the twitter universe was flooded with retweets, ” what the eff ” ’s, <brain explodes>, ‘shoot me. shoot me now‘ ’s , on one end.
Not to be perturbed by this, the positive Rakhi Chee forces retaliated with tweets like ” Go Elesh“, ” I’d marry Elesh, He’s cho cute“, ” OMG, Rakhi Sawant looks so hot ya“.
But it was mostly the apathetic crowd that both cheered and jeered [ I know that doesn't make sense on many levels, but work with me on this ], that was the peach of the tweetset. Sample these.
[ Witty that one ]
['Main is Desh ka damaad Hoon', but in a canadian accent. Sounds vaguely familiar]
By this time [ around 9.30 p.m], the term was buzzing on Twittscoop at around 10 ATPS. The next best term was “Shark week” at 30 ATPS, which had already started to trend. So, on an a normal day with not much news happening [ no plane crashes, no celebrity deaths, no white police / afro-american professor drinking chilled beers with the U.S president ], we can make a decent speculation that there has to be atleast 30 ATPS for a topic to trend.
This by itself is no mean feat, so Kudos to Rakhi for keeping us glued to the telly. Assume that the average twitterer, even in the heights of their frenzy tweets about 1 tweet per 10 minutes.
[ The power twitterer does about 1 tweet in 2 minutes say, and the other twitterer who's just an innocent bystander,just pops in to say " Oh, why's this topic trending". say 1 tweet per 30 minutes].
In some universe with a favourable averaging scheme, the number 1 tweet in 10 minutes figures, and I’ll use that.
To achieve a critical state of 30 ATPS, for say about an hour, for the trend to be noticed, we’d need,
1 person can tweet 1 tweet in 10 minutes = 1 / 600 ATPS
x people need to tweet 30 tweets in 1 second. 30 ATPS
So, assuming an equal distribution of tweeting in the timeframe, we needed about 18000 people to start the trend, which is quite reasonable and achievable, since there around 25 million twitter users globally out of which around 2% are Indian, [1] [2], which makes it a potential 500,000 Indian users.
This was the tweet density for yesterday. This is what a one-time-wonder trend looks like.
So, as you can notice, ‘rakhi’ was in the limelight for around 2 hours[ mentally visualize chopping off the curve where the height reaches 30 ]
[ graph courtesy: Twittscoop ]
There were some obvious side-effects of this inane exercise. People not used to seeing their twitter stream getting littered like this, got extremely pissed off, and started issuing death threats in all possible directions. Sample.
[ My my, such strong emotions. Now you know how provocative Rakhi's aura can be ]
So, in conclusion. Bah, easy peasy work. We can make anything trend, given enough determination, teamwork and resolute joblessness.
Hum honge #kaamyaab ek din. [ Loosely translates to " May the #manForce be with you" ]
P.S: Respect to all the twitterers featured in this post. I come in peace. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Honey, I shrunk the Url…
July 26, 2009 at 10:30 pm | In arbit, criticism, humour, twitter | 6 CommentsTags: bit.ly, bitly, deve gowda, idlyvada, karunanidhi, limca book of records, review, spamming, tinyurl, tooboredtotwitter, toolongtotwitter, twitter, veerappa moily
For numerous reasons, I don’t like bit.ly so much. Some of them being -
- They don’t have a middle layer which acts as a NSFW [ stands for Get Kicked Out of Office if you open This here] warning. There’s the append ‘+’ at the end of the link hack. But seriously, who does that usually? You barely have enough time to click on links these days, save reading their contents as well.
- They’ve a “This page has been reported to serve malware in generous doses” middle layer, but since it’s Mr.Twitter who’s one of their major link sources, this has to be more ‘realtime’. Depends on what realtime means, yes. But everyone’s using that word nowadays, so what the heck.
- They’ve a twitter monopoly. You’ve got to hate the leader. It’s a rule.
So, Should I plan to start my own Url Shortening service, it wouldn’t have all these issues. And just to humor myself, I shall call it id.ly
And since there’s no Country Top-Level domain with .da, I’ll have no competitors like va.da . Humour monopoly, FTW…
Pre-(Post-Script):
Is there a Mai Ka Laal, who can gift Mr. Veerappa with a moi.ly domain… He’d be the cool-kid on the block, instead of the peddler-like grumpy face that he flaunts usually.
You know, as genuinely awesome as the chap to the right, who’s currently booked under the Limca records, for the fastest fast in India. [ No, I'm kidding. Maybe]

Obligatory Show-off Post-script section :
Whate pity. Honourable Son of the Soil can’t get the prized gow.da. He’ll have to settle for de.ve , I guess.
Be there, or Be Squared?
June 4, 2009 at 11:51 pm | In Internet, Linux, Microsoft, Politics, Technical, arbit, criticism, fakereviews, humour, narcissism, sarcasm | 6 CommentsTags: arnab goswami, bing, conspiracy theory, deve gowda, geekiness, google, google squared, kthnxbai, Linux, manmohan singh, notareview, prakash karat, tiananmen square, wolfram, wolfram alpha
In a desperate attempt to bridge the gap between WolfRam Alpha and itself, Google released something known as Google Squared. [ The service ] [ The official Post].
My conspiracy theory is that this is a majorly quadratic statement by Google in the light of the Tiananmen Square Incident Anniversary, which happens to be on June 4th[ i.e, Today ].
To all those crazy lunatics over there, let me fuel it further by saying that June is the 6th Month, and 4 is the date. Oh . Holy Moly, that’s 6 and 4. => 64? Get it? That’s a perfect square…
Go ahead, I’ve made your day. Send all those crazy forwards, and troll in all possible forums out there, because deep within your stupid hearts, you know it to be true.
With all due respects to Google, Wolfram Alpha still continues to totally arouse Geeky researchers ( and trivia hunters), with the same feeling that people used to [ and still get ], when randomly bouncing off wikipedia pages.
And in keeping up with my holy tradition of keeping the kernel of the post in the very end, and most often than not, missing it entirely, here’s them goodies…
[ Open the image in a different tab, if you wish ]
Well, there has been no editing absolutely. There in lies my integrity [ as well as differentiability, from other arbit meme creators out there ]. Don’t believe me, check it out.
http://www.google.com/squared/table/ageTYAeHzVe5UFezJFN2MFtg
Now, let me expertly dissect this information, as a certain annoying Arnab ComeSwami would.
Some Salient Features:
- Vajpayee proves why he’s still the best out there. He’s a DLF maximum, and a citi moment of success all rolled into one smooth package.
- Karat’s priced at 2 Dollars. he he. Take that you pseudo-communisty bleddy red-chaddis. No Marx for you this time. For all that dirty Lenin that you washed in public, serves you right.
- Advani’s priced slightly higher than Mr.Singh. That’s just the added value of viral marketing, and internet flash ads. And him being the Iron Man of India, to boot.
- Lalu foxes even Google. Even the mighty know-it-all search engine cannot figure out how much stash the Bihari-Bond is hiding.
- Sonia Gandhi - well, I refrain from commenting, in accordance with previously maintained policies. Respect mam, or as they say in fluent Italian, ‘KThnxBai‘.
In other search engine news : Microsofty released their new polished search service, which they call Bing.
which apparently stands for ” But It’s Not Google”.
Several scapegoats have confirmed this fact to be true, and have unanimously bleated out that a search engine so lousy, cannot definitely be a clone of Google.
But, do not shoo off this Bingy thingy so soon. If history has taught us anything, [ other than about one crazy dude pillaging through other another crazy dude's city, and general voyeuristic/hedonistic activities of folks with lots of cash ] , it is this.
“Services/Movements/ Tools/ Softwares with recursive names might not be successful commercially, but will definitely end up being a major pain-in-the-ass of the opposite party concerned. “
off the cuff examples being, GNU, LAME, WiNe.
So, watch out. Microsoft hopes for some Bing Bling soon…
Oh, and by the way. This happens to be my 50th post.[ Hurrah, yippee yay. Saavdhaan, Vishraam.]
Muchas Gracias to all of you for all this nice readership thing that’s happening so far.
Keep up the good work ![]()
If there was an award for the highest blogging throughput, an award for the most prolific and active blogger out there, you know, the person with all the witty regular posts, and amazing rapport with the readers…..
I wouldn’t have got it.
N-Blox Reloaded…
January 20, 2009 at 12:29 am | In Ethics, Internet, Visions, arbit, chappar, criticism, nitk, protocol | Leave a CommentTags: byethehost, flash games, geekiness, incident, nblox, paul neave, php, psychedelia, retro games, Sakkut, southpark, tetris
Not exactly a post. [ Ergo, something better.]
/***************************************************************************************************/
[Btw, My hiatus is surprisingly, not due to a writer's block. This is your chance. Enjoy while it lasts...For be warned, Soon, I'll be back. With my regular doses of textual - harassment. Phew, I can't be booked for that] /************************************************************************************************/
My love for tetris has been documented pretty well over here. So I’ll not kutch further.
I discovered N-Blox some days ago, when chappar , wanting to get some cheap highs, was looking at psychedelic visuals on this site. And sent it to me.
Turns out Paul Neave is a brilliant Flash designer, with a passion for Retro games. Kewl. And I found Tetris. Blissh.
The gameplay is superb[ Considering that there's not much scope for innovation]. But as it turns out, Neave is a bit of a N*gger [ Southpark fundaes]. With the sole intent of pissing off fans, he sets out and puts a score_reset which is called at the stroke of midnight.
I could think of only a few possible excuses that he could have.
- Probably to save on diskspace of the scores.txt file. [Wtf]
- To give every newbie a chance to figure on the highscore board. Turns out they already do. Through simple,stupid, “Injection” techniques. [Come on, Man you...]
- “It’s my game.” ”Respect Mah Authoritah“…[ Awesome ]
Well, the third reason seemed the most logical, and we laud his spunk n all that, but we didn’t like it in principle. He could have at least given people the source code and allow us to tinker with it. But that’s his choice and we respect that.
But, we did want the game.
So, The php whiz from college, and myself, tweaked around the flash file for a while to send the scores to a different location. And the php to receive, process the scores at this remote location, and send back the results back to the flash file. No edits to the gameplay/graphics. Honest.
Did someone miss a beat? Never mind, Let me beat you again.
Me n php? Ha ha…
Well, truth be told, he did both of those. Great work dude, and btw, the Inci site rocks, as usual.
And me, with my stupendous Html skills, set up an oldschool website, which is approximately Web 0.2. So, enjoy Nblox on the site shown below ( while it lasts), and u get to post ur highscore as well.
So, without much ado, here’s N-Blox Reloaded peoples…
Phree Publicity: Check out http://byethost.com/ Free, and Hassle-free webhosting, with php support, and nice technical support as well.
Should have guessed…
November 17, 2008 at 12:20 am | In Technical, arbit, chappar, humour, nitk, sarcasm | 10 CommentsTags: chappar, creepy tech, gender analyzer, google translate, hinglish, machine learning, text classification, uclassify
While riding on the internets, and surfing the tubes, I came across this nifty site called Gender Analyzer. Using free text classifier algorithms from a site called Uclassify, this site aims to judge whether a blog/website is written by a woman or a man. A very active research topic.
I tried out using some known standard cases, and here’s the goldmine.
Gosh, I didn’t know that Machine Learning had become so accurate these days. Be paranoid, very.
Incidentally, Chappar, when you were on wordpress, your manliness rating was 83%. Did anything special happen during the transition phase?
A thousand apologies, plus one extra, just in case.
And to those who might think of an oh-so-brilliant, “Look who’s talking !!!”,line. I’m at 71%. Muha ha ha.
P.S: Incidentally again, this is the 2nd in the chappar series of posts, the first one having been written nearly 2 years ago.[hyper-link to click in case you're bored]
Update: Google Hindi translation of this post is too funny.
excerpt: जबकि internets पर, घुड़सवारी और ट्यूबों सर्फिंग, मैं इस गंधा साइट भर में आया जेंडर विश्लेषक कहते हैं
lol [link]
Vista – On the Rocks. Azure in the Clouds…
October 28, 2008 at 11:24 pm | In Technical, Visions, arbit, criticism, humour, sarcasm | Leave a CommentTags: azure, beijing olympics, blue screen of death, bsod, cloud computing, etymology, fakereviews, Microsoft, notareview, windows
Seeing this brilliant piece of satire by America’s Finest news Source – The Onion News, made me think.
With Vista having chosen the Red Screen of Death , as its official time-please message , the devout and loyal fans of a much peaceful colour were very disappointed. Having to see the altogether familiar shade just on special occasions like the Beijing Olympics, did take its toll on an XP zealot.
BSOD was ZOMG level in funnity. It was the zen in awesomeness. It unleashed previously unseen waves of creativity amongst the developers [ to use that time on a different OS, I must confess].
Anyways, here is the kinda froody things that you could do with them blue screens. [ Statutory Warning : Not safe for Work, especially if you're at Microsoft]
All Brevity.No Wit
October 28, 2008 at 8:31 am | In Visions, arbit, humour, nitk, travel | 1 CommentTags: asim thottumkal, beatles, birthday, chandrayaan, hillary clinton, peter griffin, raveena tandon, seth mcfarlane, vishy anand
It has been a phenomenal week.
We bludgeoned the aussies… Vishy is in a freakingly awesome form, having tricked kramnik through a queen pawn opening move that he rarely uses, and perfecting its nuances through various stages. ISRO made us proud by kickstarting the 2 year chandrayaan programme. This even got a prominent mention in one of obama’s campaign speeches. Which was lapped up by mr.nair, even though it was kinda meant to be in a derogatory context.
Sure, there are homegrown idiots who deny the importance of such an achievement.
Commies don’t want us racing with china. Most crankpots question the need to spend crores on what they feel is a non-practical space mission. See,this is just a scientific mission right? , is their argument.
STFU, is my counter argument.
I rest my case.
- Maharaja of Kashmir acceding to join India.
- Beatles were knighted.
- A kid got a heart transplant from a baboon.
- I can’t believe that the Ghajini female, Asin Thottumkal is exactly one year older.
- small pox officially chucked out of the world..
- I don’t have an entry in wiki yet, so can’t quote it…some time soon..
- Seth Mcfarlane – The creator of Family guy [A long chain of stringed WTF's ] came into existence. This chap’s only valid work of art is probably modelling peter griffin to look like royan…lol
- chandrayaan didn’t launch on my b’day…sob sob.. Still, it’ll reach some prominent orbit location, and I’ll take solace with that.
- i’m typing this post on my cell phone hence can’t research more.
But i assure you, its been a friendly day in history. And as an ardent smoker of the peace-pipe, i welcome that.
Times of India – Bangalore Festival
October 20, 2008 at 1:25 pm | In Bengaluru, Carnatic, Ethics, humour, music | 2 CommentsTags: Bangalore Festival, Bengaluru, concert, fusion, mandolin shrinivas, Palace Grounds, sivamani, steven, times of india, world music
I have been appreciative of The Times of India with respect to two aspects so far.
•Newspaper in Education (N.I.E)
•Providing hosting space for R.K.Laxman’s awesome offline cartoon strips.
I add one more to that illustrious list today. The TOI Bengaluru Festival.
The PR guys at TOI have been spot on, while conceptualizing an event of this scale. They have gained lots of public goodwill for sure.
Sunday evening featured a fusion concert by U.Shrinivas on the Mandolin, Steven on the Keyboard, and Sivamani on anything that could be remotely called as a percussion instrument.
This was my first visit to Palace grounds ( surprising, yet true ). I realised its ginormity first hand, by landing on the opposite end and doing a complete circumferential tour.
The only means of entry were the generous free passes given at TOI venues, which unfortunately I didn’t have. I was waiting for a friend who apparently got enticed by the Bangalore traffic, and would turn up late.
Seeing me wait at the gates, a kind Police Maama let me in. I assure you, this was not a security lapse. It must have been my very innocent looking face.
The free pass system only exists, to keep a certain degree of vandals out of the venue ( The ones who are really lazy not to get passes ). True audiophiles ( such as yu-know-whu) should be let in without such formalities.
The host, a Ms. Rachana Bharadwaj,was greeted in typical boorish fashion, as is now synonymous with beautiful emcees. A cultural evening, did you say?
Shrinivas took centrestage, Sivamani to his right, and Steven to his left. The spotlight however was to change directions in a while.
Shrinivas began with a smooth Jazz piece, with each passing note creating a delightful sensation. Mandolin is a classy instrument, and He, having reached the pinnacle of perfection, can do such fascinating gamakas on it.
The second piece was even better. He was forced,however, to make it an interlude, as Nature decided to improvise.
Intensely ironic, the rain did fall in torrents.
I, being, of the vertically challenged variety, wasn’t even able to see the artists before. The rain proved to be quite useful. Many Pseduo-interested people, and not-so-enthusiastic Old Uncle-Aunty pairs decided to flee. And I chose to use this opportunity to go to the very front.
The artists, being wary of their instruments, stopped playing. Finally paying heed to the crowd chanting “Shivu, Shivu”, Mani decided to show us a tiny subspace of his vast repertoire of Percussion knowledge.
He began with a huge Suitcase, and the audience went crazy. This was to be the defining moment of the concert, with audience demanding an encore at various times, just by shouting ” Suitcase, Suitcase “.
Deciding not to tease the audience further, he went back to the drums. This time, aided by a DJ playing Kannada songs in the background.
Songs, like ” Baanallu Neene,Buviyallu Neene”, etc. The crowd went insane when he started ” Huttidare Kannada Naadalli Huttabeku”, and rightly so. And by the crowd, I mean myself as well.
Some idiot deciding to be a supreme-idiot, hurled some obscenities about Dr.Rajkumar. The police took good care of him. Surprisingly, the chap was a Kannadiga. Troubled times, these.
We were absolutely drenched in the rain, and yet we were dancing to the tunes of Humma Humma. Such was the magic in Sivamani’s beats.
Many of my friends are majorly repenting for not having attended this concert. Poor Souls.
Eventually, it stopped raining. The artists started a three layered piece, with the artists trying to blend into each other by the end of each cycle. Shrinivas was wickedly quick, and it became kinda tough to follow, yet melodious to listen.
Steven’s keyboard was making majestic soaring sounds, that seem to balance the tempo created by Siva’s beats.
The last piece of the concert was an improvised version of Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram, with mandolin being the ruling instrument.
Rachana seemed to have forgotten that there were artists other than Sivamani on the stage, but she seemed too excited to care.
Siva announced Shrinivas’s name eventually, and the crowd cheered in unison. He also thanked the audience in kannada, speaking about ” Raagi Mudde” etc, and we were naturally pleased.
Siva continued, this time with bottles, watercans, the Daayan of a Tabla, some pots, and everything else he could lay his hands on. It was just ama-jing. In the coming few days, if you find me percussioning random objects, don’t be surprised.
Too bad, I can’t make it to Shivkumar Sharma’s Santoor concert. Do visit it, if you have the chance.
The pass may be free, but the event shall be priceless.
Thanks again, to the Times of India, The Bangalore Police ( for letting me in, and for controlling the unruly crowd), and most importantly to the artists, for having given Bangalore a dreamy rainy evening to remember. ( and to Rachana, for being so pretty ).
Cheerio,
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The Full Monty Problem…
October 6, 2008 at 10:27 pm | In Technical, arbit, humour, literary, sarcasm, spam, travel | 11 CommentsTags: bobby da dhaba, bournvita quiz contest, chintu candy, dasgupta, derek o'brien, full monty, himesh reshammiya, i respect sardars, iit coaching, jim morrison, karan johar, karzz, koffee with karan, monty hall problem, nigeria, phishing scams, probability, sardar jokes are funny, tata mcgraw hill
Monty Singh was a wise man. The brightest in the land.
On that eventful Thursday, he received an email. This was a mail like.no.other.
It was from a Nigerian King.
A real friggin rich Nigger Raja. [P.C version - Niger. But different country]
Monty Singh was a pyoor Veggie. He didn’t like spam.
But this mail had to be genuine. His IIT alumnian brain could sense it. It was authentic. Right down to the black fonted signature in Wingdings.
He glanced through the contents. He couldn’t believe it. He read it again, this time slowly, and only then did the weight of the matter dawn on him.
He was chosen to participate in a Game show. A quiz of sorts.
Monty smirked. He was an ace quizzer. How he missed those days.
Flashback : Brought to you by Chintu Candy.
It was in seventh standard. He had had his morning’s cuppa’ Horlicks.
Then he went to BQC, thrashed Derek O’Brien mostly left, and occasionally right as well. Pinky Singh was a proud mother that day.
Monty came back from his reverie. He had to think this through.
Monty loved Probability. He simulated a random bit generator. Lady Luck was with him. “Go to Nigeria, you worthless bastard!”, she bellowed.
The queue for the Visa was shorter than he had expected. There was just one local brown model visiting the country for a Fair and Lovely – Limited Nigerian Edition ad-shoot. He grinned as he saw the neighbouring ‘US of A’ Visa line, mostly consisting of bespectacled grad wannabees.
He was received in Nigeria, amidst a royal fanfare. He was led to the only 7 star hotel in the country - Bobby Da Dhaba. Monty felt right at home.
He woke up that morning, and got himself a beer.
Oops. Wrong post!!!
Monty was up and soon spiffily dressed himself. His father’s pink tie would go well with his lemon yellow shirt.
Karan Johar, the host, looked surprisingly hetero that morning. Must be all that Koffee, thought Monty. “Never mind his temporary non-gayness”. “Concentrate”, he said to himself, as he walked to the stage, which was lit by a thousand colour-colour LED’s. A sight to behold.
Monty raced through the questions like Usain Bolt on steroids. They didn’t call him “Monty Mastermind” just like that.
The final question. This was a toughie. Monty kept his cool. He worked it out. Ruddy Brilliant. He was dingchakkingly good.
“And now Mr.Monty. How bout a bonus round”, shrieked Johar.
“ A flirty car, or you lose it all…..”
No, wait. No one had told him about a bloody bonus round.
As if reading his concerns, Johar replied, “ Don’t worry, Its just a tiny game of probability”.
Gosh. Monty almost had a tiny orgasm.
“ Very similar to the Monty Hall scenario, I take it that you know about it”, asked Johar.
“Pfft. Know about it? Why do you think my dad named me Monty?”
“Oh. I thought that was because you like to….. Never mind…”
“Ok. All the doors are hidden behind this wall. Just for kicks”. “And…”
“Oh. Will you start already”. “I choose door no.2”. “Which car is it btw?”
“Premier Padmini’s hot friend, Diablo Lamborghini….” “ Whate joke . Whate joke. Ha . Ha.. I know . I can be a pain in the bottoms sometimes”, quipped Karan Johar.
“Ok. Mr.Monty. I’ll open door no.1 and… WTF…”.
“Damn you, Nigerians, stop touching my goat”.
Monty’s brain started working faster than a computer. All those nuggets from Dasgupta, and T.M.H, heck even some from Krishna’s came back to him in a rush. He evoked Bayes, and his conditional Probabilistic models. And in a jiffy, the answer was gambolling right in front of his eyes.
“So, Mr. Monty, what’s your call? Will you flip your choice, or keep it?”
“ Duh. Flip my choice. Obs”.
“Ok. Have it your way.” ……. “ “Hurrah, You win….”
…..
…..
…..
…..
“ the goat”.
“There were only two doors. Retard”….
All rise for the Nigerian Anthem.
P.S : Monty Singh was a wise man. The brightest in the land.
Update – 7-10-2008
Atul asked me whether this was a Himesh Reshammiya belting post? Actually, I am currently cursing myself for not noticing that Himesh is playing Monty’s role in Karzzzzzzz ( Did I miss a ‘z’? ).
Quoting Himesh – “ Rishi Kapoor is the best-looking Monty, I’m the worst” – We agree.
That, friends, is a different Full-Monty-Problem altogether.
BAD, Very BAD…
September 14, 2008 at 2:20 pm | In Politics, Technical, criticism, protocol | 1 CommentTags: blackberry, delhi bomb blasts, India fights back, narendra modi, national security, shivraj patil, terror emails
A standard procedure when the comment to a post grows longer than the post and is mostly disconnected to it, is to write a new one. Hence drawing from this, I continue.
The Monty analogy fits the situation perfectly. Resilience at its stupid best.
And now there is this new thread that Narendra Modi had pre-warned the PM, and M.K.Narayanan – the N.S.A , regarding a clear threat to Delhi. Several people might wonder why Modi didn’t bring this out to the public.
The idea of any intelligence/security related pre-warnings is that the government/authority is to be made aware of it before a public disclosure. Standard protocol.
As an analogy it is something followed even by white-hat hackers/ exploit researchers as well. The 30-90 day disclosure rule. So that the vendor [ in this case , the Government of India ] can act on it much in advance, without tipping off the adversaries.
So, this brings an interesting situation. Why, even in the face of an imminent threat, was there no clear cut action taken? Why are bombs defused only after some go off?.. and so on.
I would completely understand if this is just the Home ministry going lax, on what is just a tiny issue of National Security. But if this is childish cross-party obstinate behaviour, something that we are all to used to by now, it raises some serious concerns.
Especially since the PM wants to create a Federal Agency to tackle terror. A federal agency is built on the premise of state-centre co-operation pertaining to every aspect regarding the security of the nation. Now, if this isn’t a major example of a BAD game of Chinese Whispers, I’m not sure what else to call it.
Now, to the newly cropped up development of hacking Wi-Fi Networks, and then using that to send terror emails to media organizations.
Wi-Fi networks are not safe. Lets face it. For chrissakes, there have even been comic strips about it.
For a government that is so obsessed with getting a backdoor entry into the 256-AES encryption algorithms used by RIM-Blackberry , isn’t this a bigger and more feasible a threat to ignore?
I mean, an absconding tech-trained terrorist would find it a piece-of-nilgiri-cake work to hack into some fat-american’s un-protected wifi network, than strut around with a neat Blackberry sending Indian Mujahiddeen mails on the fly.
Then, there is the issue of security pepped up all around the major cities as soon as an attack is done. Previously, there used to be a large time-frame between two attacks. So, it was almost passable that the security didn’t know it was coming.
Now, that attacks are happening just weeks apart, one wonders, what exactly this pepping up is all about.
For an honourable minister of India ( Kapil Sibal @ War of Words to Arun Jaitley ) to tell that these attacks are a result of the BJP’s antics in Gujarat 2002, is nothing short of a lame excuse. These do nothing other than incite a political flame-war, doing more harm than good. What any party at the centre needs to realize is that the situation has changed drastically since 2002.
For the major worry, in the recent set of attacks, is the choice of soft-targets. Be it local trains, or busy markets; hospitals, or bus stops. As one Mr.Das of the TOI puts it, prior to POTA being removed, most attacks were by so-called Pakistani para-troopers, militants born, brought-up, and trained in Pakistan. Post-POTA has seen an influx of home-grown terrorism.
I’m not stupid to believe that Correlation implies Causation . That is the job for conspiracy theorists. All I say, is that current mechanisms are not adequate. If the POTA was a draconian law, improve upon it. We don’t need something as uncivilised as the U.S. Patriot act, but we sure need something effective and soon.
India has seen different methods of attack over its resplendent history. It has survived through each of them, and in most cases, has emerged out stronger.Unfortunately, that opinion is being shattered in the wake of these recent developments.
In dark and troubled times such as these, the country should stay united and focussed, sense should prevail, and actions be taken at the earliest, lest these insane acts crumble the beautiful ethos of the nation, that is India.
——————————————
As of writing this post, there have been two major updates:- (September 22, 2008)
Update 1: Indian Government successfully installs Deep Packet Inspection. This means better sniffing of all your emails in realtime. Yay. Read here.
Update 2: IB has successfully cracked the BlackBerry Code. Without help from RIM of course. Yay Yay.
Read here.
Both of these developments happened after yours truly wrote this post.
But as I said before, I am not implying that “correlation implies causation”.
The Life and Works of Sir Takal…
August 24, 2008 at 2:08 pm | In Bengaluru, Ethics, Politics, Technical, Visions, arbit, chappar, criticism, fakereviews, humour, literary, news wagon, nitk, poetry, sarcasm, travel | Leave a CommentTags: afro-american, cheap humour, chetan Bhagat, communist china, figures of speech, free tibet, grammar nazis, nitk, noam chomsky, notareview, shashi tharoor, women's liberation
Drawing on this extensive article; the sole biography of Sir Takal in existence, I choose to limit myself, and write only about his magnificent works, with particular emphasis on some of his recent views about everything of consequence to the neo-modern chinese cult-societies in Bangalore.
Takal doesn’t read my blog, so I presume I am safe. [ Sincere apologies in advance ].
Inspirations: [ with the equivalent deft delicateness of Anu Malik ]
- Appar’s exhilarating review of his best friend’s literary masterpiece.
- A superb book review of “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats, and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India” – the most scholarly book ever written in this field.
There are two kinds of literary critics in this world, one who totally adore Sir Takal’s succinct analogies, and metaphorical embellishments at times, and the others who haven’t read him yet. I proudly say that I belong to the first variety.
You see, when you read Takal ( a metonymic reference to something written by him ), you not only get the perception that the author is trying to convey an issue of importance, but also the subtle realization of the deeper meaning that this exalted mind offers.
Through innumerous surreal examples, chiefly drawn from the author’s experience with life, and his in-depth knowledge of the Bengalurean city-life, as well as his profound insights on global politics[ with a categorical expertise centered around topics related to the Chinese and Tibetan domain ], Takal clearly convinces of a dark and shady conspiracy that the system[ The Indian Government ], is running in the background of a hazy “India Shining” campaign.
Some Excerpts, and a Detailed as well as a Figurative analysis :-
- “I don’t know why I wrote this post. It is bad. Or may be not . I am not sure. “ Never since The Tale of Two Cities, has a enantiosis, the figure of contraries, of this nature ever been displayed in English Literature. Walking on both lines of the paradoxical line, he gently prepares the reader for a tumultuous article ahead. He continues….
- “ It was Friday. It was when I went to piss at 4 o’clock that day, that I saw that it was a haze of grey outside . Well, with only work in my mind, I went back and hardly gave a thought to the heavy rain. ” – Metaphors be damned. This is God himself writing. When was the last time you had such a phantasmagoric visual treat lined up for you[ In the most literary, straightest sense possible ].
- “Well, when I came back home, another shitty thing happened. Power went off.” - A powerful, yet hidden message to the Yeddy government.
- “ And it is the engineer’s duty to do everything at the last moment. So, thinking I had all the time in the world, I disregarded the increasingly heavy rain, and started to play candle-lit carrom with Kela.” – Inspirational substance, and a brief hint at an on-going romance.
- “I went and saw to my horror that there were only girlie umbrellas available. But, when I searched properly I did find some black umbrellas. So, I decided to buy it. But wait, I saw the label, and here it was for 667 rupees only. Well, with no time, and having more than a goat’s brain, I decided to adjust with a girlie umbrella for a day( which was available for 220 rupees), I got the umbrella.” - Sir Takal is a champion of the woman’s liberation movement, and he breaks all stereotypes, and urges the reader to do the same. Notice how he assigns a higher price to the “Black Umbrella”. Yes, you guessed it. Sir Takal loves the Afro-American Community as well. He is a maestro in the field of Zulu Dancing, though he is very coy about it.
- “Thus, it should be clear that a torturer is a torturer, whatever language he speaks, and whatever country he belongs to. The driver was talking to people in singular whatever, I don’t remember the word. It was as if he thought he was the lord. It was as if he was enjoying the overcrowding of the bus. I realized what sadists felt like. He was feeling comfortable in his chair looking at the crowded bus. I felt what a concentration camp felt like, and I for the first time sympathized with the Jews, Borat notwithstanding.” – Just two words :- Drawing parallels between a BMTC ride and the Holocaust, Sir Takal takes the reader to an epochal period and drops him there. Also of importance are the tyrannical analogies of the bus-driver, who here is being compared to Adolf Hitler himself. Did I say two words?.. Sorry. Couldn’t resist.
And this is just one of his works. Imagine the greatness of a man who has managed to put so many critical issues in such an eloquent manner.
I could go on an on, but I do not wish that the reader misses out on exploring Sir Takal all on their own. A chance that everyone must take.
Takal is a genre in itself. Kafkaesque creations seem pale in front of this divine force of literary grandeur.
Some blurbs from some more reputed sources:
- “This is the 98956’th Indian Origin author that I have been asked to review. Please give me a break. God Damn it.” – Shashi Tharoor.
- “To reduce such a richly diverse book to a couple of main themes is a disservice, for there is much here to reward the careful reader (notably two startlingly educative essays on the ancient roots of relations between India and China). Particularly pleasurable is Sir Takal’s masterly reclaiming of Rabindranath Tagore’s reputation from the unjust misjudgment of him in the West as a mediocre mystic poet rather than the rationalist and humanist genius and polymath Takal convincingly depicts. But — disservice aside — two principal arguments emerge from this collection: an affirmation of India’s political and cultural heterogeneity, and of the ‘reach of reason’ in India’s intellectual traditions.” – Shashi Tharoor on cannabis.
- “I think of the glorious Tiananmen square days, when I read Sir Takal’s works.” – Long Dong, The Times of China. he continues, “Actually, I always think of those days.” ,he clarifies.
- “I so adore Takal because he posts his articles mostly at the break of dawn. I love to wake up and read Takal, with the cup of coffee in my hand. WoW, Sir Takal. You’re totally on my favorites list. ” – Chetan Bhagat.
- “Pardon me for this infantile indulgence, but pray allow me to savour the poetic mastery of Sir Takal. I fear that if I don’t quantify it into my already vast intellectual cache, I shall miss out on something very special, the stuff that mortals are faintly aware of.” – Noam Chomsky, not on cannabis.
- “TB rules. TB is my hero. TB is GoD .” – Hashish, The Arizona Daily Star .
- “Ashish to Ashes, Dust to Dust” – Sir Takal, The Davangere Daily.
Normally I don’t recommend authors, but in his case, I doubly do so.
Venture into the unknown,
for there is where true beauty lies,
Do not miss this literary Oasis, O’ pensive traveller,
Not a shadow of doubt, I premise.
Dinga Product Launch. Audio-Phish a.k.a De-Reshammiya Filter
August 2, 2008 at 4:34 pm | In Technical, arbit, criticism, humour, music, narcissism, sarcasm | 7 CommentsTags: audio processing, audiophish, bosey, davangere, dinga, himesh reshammiya, hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, nitk, sonu nigam, spoof
[written with absolute permission from Dha, and Moral Insurance from Takal (just in case) ]
It was a festive atmosphere in the Dinga Electronics ™ campus on Thursday. A small gathering witnessed the launch of a revolutionary product in the field of consumer electronics.
Shri. Muthappa Rai, renowned reporter of the world-famous newspaper “Karavali Ale”, was in Udupi to cover a murder scheduled later that evening. After a pressing request by Logik, that this report would fetch him the PULL-it-Saar prize, he reluctantly came to cover the event.
Chief Dingologist P.S.L.V. Babu, and Senior Dingineer Sadagopan Ramesh, described their motivation to create the Audio-Phish™.
” It was just unbearable. We couldn’t tolerate it any more. People like Himesh Reshammiya were inflicting aural torture the likes of which, we have never heard before”. ” And then there were these countless reality shows as well. Mindless retards. Horrible Horrible. ” – Mr.Babu said reflecting his profound thoughts to our now, hapless reporter.
“We felt we owed it bigtime, to the society, and to the future generation. We realized the need for a product that would obviate these crass voices once and for all. ” said Sadagopan Ramesh, looking obviously pleased, with this new found attention.
Ramesh continued. ” We hit a roadblock mapping Reshammiya’s voice to current noise models. Even Gaussian seemed melodious compared to him. Which is when we took the aids of Dha, a man so well known in audio processing circles.
” Of course. What were you thinking? Gaussian it seems.Pfft. The Himeshian model is so so complex. It is not just-white-noise. ” remarked Dha, in between games of Minesweeper, slyly gaining some Google-juice in the process.
After months of hard-work, The Dinga team has proudly launched the Audio Phish [ codenamed De Reshammiya Filter].

” This is still a prototype. We have just managed to make him sound like Sonu Nigam as of now. It will take us at least months, if not years, to get some decent sounds.” quipped Ramesh. ” Questions from anyone in the media? “, he said, obviously pointing to the one and only Muthappa.
” Now, what if Himesh comes to know of this, and sticks it down his . umm. throat? Wouldn’t that limit your sales to just one piece, and achieve similar results.?” asked Mr.Rai, beaming at having come up with such a brilliant doubt.
” Actually, make that two. One for each naris/nostril. Yes. That is a valid point. Which is why we are not seeking much publicity. We are just planning to put all this info up on a third-rate blog. And now, your paper as well. ” Mr.Babu replied, delicately avoiding any references to the atrocious piece of trash, that is Karavali Ale.
” Any copyright suits expected?”
” Probably just one. For flicking that pic from HHGTTG“.
” That’s it gentlemen. This is a joyous moment for us, for we know, that in our own humble way, we have saved millions from an imminent brain-freeze.”
Mr. Muthappa Rai looked exuberant as this pathetic show came to an end, and he bouncily jumped in joy.

The dingologist, and the dingineer rejoiced in their unique way.
“Hey, isn’t that the Bingo guys?. Are you planning on a merger?” asked the ever-inquisitive Rai.
” Listen, dude. Question time is over.” “Damn. The news shouldn’t have come out so soon. Yes , we’re planning on a new food-products division. We are yet to decide on a name though. “
” Bingo-Dinga, and Dingo-Binga both sound like African cuss-words”. mentioned Logik, haughtily considering himself so important that he had to do a self-reference.
Regular readers might be aware of the deal. Takal obviously irritated with the lack of publicity for Davangere Food Products, took on Dha in a verbal duel.
Dha says – ” You know what. You’d anyway be killed in that weird incident, by Sads, who would be taking over Davangere Semi Conductors. And if he doesn’t, I’ll certainly sh00t you, and take over Davangere Food Products”. , fondly reliving his glorious days on Dc++.
Takal says- ” Ha Ha. D.F.P’s output would just be self-sufficient for its CEO then.” taking a violent jab there, and making a below-the-belly joke.
Dha replied- ” Don’t ejaculate with joy there, Yoga-Boy. I know all about your deeds. “
Looking exasperated after this vicious remark, Takal left the scene, vowing to avenge this defeat.
While the day drew to a close, the absence of famous Wildlife Photographer, and avid Hornithologist S.U.Saravanakumar, was deeply regretted. Despite an official invite from Logik, it is said that he went off to Manipal, to watch the cheer-babes at the newly formed Udupi Premier League Kabaddi matches.
Dha, obviously gleaming with joy, at having directed such a great project, went on to address the gathering.
” This, in my not-so-humble opinion, should be the IEEE standard for Indian Humour blogposts”.
He also shouted ” All Hail the Son of Bosey“, for no apparent reason, before he was whisked off for security reasons, still maintaining the ambiguity in the minds of the readers, whether this was a tribute or a parody.
Cheerio.
Choti Si Baat…
July 20, 2008 at 1:30 am | In Bengaluru, Carnatic, arbit, criticism, humour, nitk, travel | 4 CommentsTags: amol palekar, Bengaluru, Carnatic, cartoons, coffee, hotels, mandolin shrinivas, richmond road, upma sucks, woodlands
Disclaimer:- This post is not a review of this Amol Palekar movie. Which happens to be one of my favourites, btw. It however deals with a similar aspect of life.
Claimer:- Too much fundae_putting for a very small issue. Excusus Maadimus.
Location: A semi-posh hotel in the heart of Bengaluru. Woodlands a.k.a Woody’s it is called.
So here I was, happily staying at this hotel [ albeit at company’s expense, but don’t ruin the moment ], which is supposedly famous in B’ lore for its breakfast. Not many star hotels can boast about that.
Aha, if that’s not enough, there is one more USP to this place. At all the dining venues, this mallu-run hotel plays Carnatic Music to give that xtra aambience effects. Yes. Good-ol’ Classy stuff that sits well with most of the senior Tam folk who seem to form a majority of the customers here [ and with me as well - if you still didn’t get the point ].
I think this must be an corollary/extension of that experimental research that, cows gave more milk when exposed to western classical music.
In the mornings, they play Mandolin Shrinivas. The same CD every day. I still liked it.
At dinner, for some weird reason, they play death-note Shehnai/saxophone. Morose funeral-ish stuff. I didn’t quite get the funda, but since the food was quite good, I didn’t bother much.
Well, enough of bitti publicity. Back to core issues. Or the lack of it.
So, one day at the breakfast, the hotel features the Southie menu filled with awesomeness, the Idlis, the Vadas, dosas…. and also some mandatory nuisances like the Upma [ a.k.a Uppittu. as if an alias changes the hideousness ]. And being a devout member of the caffeine cultus, I order a coffee as well. Wait, let me rephrase.
A true-to-Bengaluru-tradition Cothasian fresh, piping hot, delicious cuppa coffee, with a frothy layer as a visual bonus.
Ya, it was something like that. I’m a bit restrained with appraisals.
It was of course sugar-free, to suit the oldies. So, I take the semi-crystalline, semi-powdery sugar sachet, and pour it down. It made a small hole into that layer, sinking in slowly. Maybe I was already high in anticipation of the coffee, or maybe bengaluru’s early-morning cold had excited my mind, in either case, this sight brought a smile to my face. I assume the classy people around me thought I was some downmarket crazy oaf. That is, if they hadn’t already thought of that, while I came to have the breakfast in my pair of jazzy bermudae.
To me, however, it reminded of old cartoon characters. When they used to fall out of planes, or space, or anywhere else… Dropping through columns of white clouds, making appropriate look-alike cut-out holes in the process.
Maybe I’m imagining a bit too much. “Much ado about nothing”- ing about a petty issue.
Signing off with a recent chat with Akella. [ Expletives included ]
Me : Hey, I found a house in Wilson Garden. Pretty neat. And near as well..
Akella : So, when are you shifting to a proper house?
Me : Wtf, this house is closeby, has a maid, and a TV as well. You can’t get properer than that.
Akella : No, I meant why are you staying in a Garden?
Me : You Whore.
Some people never change…
And that is good…
And that is all…
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