Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category.
13th February 2008, 08:11 pm
Walking back from work today and seeing an ambulance screeching past I was reminded of two recent incidents which still totally baffle me.
Incident 1:
It’s broad daylight and I’m walking down the high street. I hear the sirens of an ambulance in the distance and I can see the flashing lights (oh about a quarter of a mile away). I “instinctively” decide not to cross the road but keep walking on this side of the street and wait for the ambulance to pass before crossing over. So about 30 seconds later the ambulance is just about to pass me but to my horror I see two teenage girls dart across the road right in front of the ambulance. Well, the ambulance had to take avoidance action so there wasn’t an accident. C’mon, what were those girls thinking? I have NO IDEA!
Incident 2:
Again, it’s broad daylight and I’m walking down the high street. I hear the sirens of a police car in the distance and see the flashing blue lights (about a quarter of a mile away). I had already crossed the road by this point so am just strolling home. To my horror (and disbelief!) I see this old man just ahead of me (perhaps in his late 60s or early 70s) start to cross the road right in front of this high-speed police car with its siren at full blast and lights blazing. I don’t know how the driver avoided hitting that old man! What gives with that old man?!!
My thoughts:
I don’t have many thoughts on this yet as I haven’t reached a conclusion. Two incidents a few days apart. One with two teenage girls, and another with an old man. Both nearly ended in disaster. What motivates someone to decided that they need to cross the road with an emergency vehicle screaming past? What did they think would happen?
My admiration goes out to the drivers of these emergency vehicles. No matter how many audio-visual cues and advance warning they give they always need to be on the lookout for idiots crossing the road. I’m baffled. I really am.
Copyright © 2008 Kulvinder Singh Matharu - All Rights Reserved
10th February 2008, 08:39 pm
9th February 2008, 10:37 pm
8th February 2008, 11:03 pm
2nd February 2008, 11:45 pm
Following my article Great music, Zune and iPod…I finally decided to buy the 80GB Zune 2 rather than an iPod. I think that the main thing that decided it for me was that there was a built-in FM radio in the Zune 2 and also because the display is bigger making watching videos far easier. Mind you, it was a close call between the iPod and the Zune 2.
The Zune 2 arrived a few days ago and I’ve synchronized all my music, a lot of photos and a few videos. The unit looks pretty cool in its blackness, the sound quality is very good and the headphones are pretty decent too. I appreciate the built-in FM radio, and of course WiFi synchronization. I haven’t met anyone else with a Zune so I’m not sure about the “Social” yet!
One thing that I am waiting for is Amazon’s global MP3 download service. That will release everyone from the shackles of DRM infected files and from iTunes and the like…in essence this will allow us all to move between Zune, iPod or any other MP3 player. Come on Amazon, give us some launch dates!
Copyright © 2008 Kulvinder Singh Matharu - All Rights Reserved
2nd February 2008, 05:33 pm
Thanks to the heads-up from Pharyngula’s “Should I go or should I stay?” article, it is now clear that MySpace are systematically banning all groups related to atheism. Skeptico also has an article on this subject. Go check them out!
There is something profoundly immoral about the way MySpace is run. In some ways this seems to be in much the same vein as the Extremists ban popular children’s books article. However, with MySpace it is far more insidious…they’ve been described as bigots but I would go further and call them religious fanatics and extremists. This world doesn’t need them. Murdoch and his evil empire are things that I’ve normally ignored until now. But their actions have now attracted my attention and this is something that I’m now keen to see unfold.
My advice is to steer clear of MySpace.
Copyright © 2008 Kulvinder Singh Matharu - All Rights Reserved
27th January 2008, 04:43 pm
A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine mentioned that they wanted to go to Borneo, and I was quite interested in going to Mongolia (which I have been for what seems like ages now!). Anyway, another friend of mine just came back from the Galapagos and we had a chat last week about places to go and after making the necessary arrangements I’m now going to Borneo in March 2008.
The Borneo trip is on the Malaysian side and is actually in support of the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. There are a number of activities planned and I plan to do every single one of those including cycling, jungle treks, rafting, canopy walking, etc
There’s a lot that has gone wrong and is going wrong in Borneo. From the forest fires, palm oil plantations, logging, etc. Some of these are illegal activities but some are not such as the disastrous initiative when farmers were encouraged into the area by the Indonesian government. The forests and their biodiversity are being devastated. I fully understand the economic pressures faced by the locals. It’s not going to be something that will be easy to fix.
I decided that I wanted to help as well as satisfy my need to travel. So the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre got my vote with the Borneo Orangutan Adventure Appeal. I hope to raise some awareness with my friends and colleagues and perhaps reach out to a larger audience through the Internet. As you may know I am a keen hobbyist photographer (see my Antarctica photos from last month) and I intend to produce photos that highlight the richness of Borneo but also, at the same time, bring to people’s attention the situation regarding the plight of the orangutans and the forests.
I just hope my other friend doesn’t get upset that I’m off to Borneo! It’s something that just happened and I couldn’t pass it up. I’m still planning to do Mongolia later on this year…the year is still young so still lots to do!
People. Let’s be careful out there. The planet needs us.
Copyright © 2008 Kulvinder Singh Matharu - All Rights Reserved
27th January 2008, 12:23 pm
There’s a lot of really good music being given airtime by a number of UK-based radio stations such as London’s “Capital Radio”. I do also listen to a lot of classical music, blues and some jazz through Internet-based radio stations but I did want to say something about some songs that I particularly liked at the moment. And why not!
OK, here we go.
- Relax (Take IT Easy) - by Mika
- Chasing Pavements - by Adele
- Superstar - by Lupe Fiasco
- Rockstar - by Nickelback
- Valerie - by Mark Ronson with Amy Winehouse (I like anything with Amy Winehouse!)
- Run - by Amy MacDonald
- Sun Goes Down - by David Jordan - fun
- Ride It - by Jay Sean
- Homecoming - by Kanye West
- Carry You Home - by James Blunt (also “1973″ is still being played!)
Check them out!
Next problem. My dilemma is regarding the purchase of my next MP3 player to replace my Sony MP3 player which has hit maximum capacity on its 20GB drive. I was thinking of getting an iPod but the lack of a built-in radio receiver put me off. The new Zune MP3 players from Microsoft do have FM radios built in and the units do seem to have some very good reviews. They look kinda cool too. Unfortunately the Zunes are not officially available in the UK and if I need to use the Zune Marketplace then I need to be a bit creative with my Internet set up to access the Zune Marketplace from the UK. Also, the iPods have a huge array of accessories available. Dilemmas! I think that I’d also lose any option of getting the Zune customised with those graphics on the back of the units. The word on the street is that the Zunes will be launched in the UK in Christmas 2008! I don’t think that I can wait that long even if we do get new and improved Zunes by that time! I’ll try and get myself an 80GB Zune. Unless anyone has a strong objection!
Copyright © 2008 Kulvinder Singh Matharu - All Rights Reserved
26th January 2008, 10:34 pm
Whoa! NinjaTrek.com is up and running. At the moment I’m using it to test for ways of making a more interactive website using commonly available tools. It does mean, though, that more system resources will be utilised.
I’ve uploaded photos from MetalVortex.com to NinjaTrek.com. I’ve got a number of plans for NinjaTrek.com. Not sure which way it will go.
Copyright © 2008 Kulvinder Singh Matharu - All Rights Reserved
26th January 2008, 07:56 pm
I read a recent IEBlog entry and was quite interested in the problems that the IE team were facing with regards to the various rendering modes and standards compatibility with different IE engines and in particular the one being developed for IE8. Their greatest concern was to define a method of ensuring that IE8 users wouldn’t suddenly see “broken” websites due to that websites use of particular html/CSS/JavaScript hacks used to work around the various non-standard rendering modes of previous IE browsers (prior to IE8).
I also read the A List Apart article and this basically discussed the problem-solving decisions and recommendations made by the joint-working teams of The Web Standards Project and Microsoft. All very interesting stuff. But then something strange happened. A number of articles began appearing at various websites which were highly critical of the proposed use of meta tags for switching standards modes. But these articles were not persuasive in their arguments. No, these arguments were not arguments. They were vitriolic statements and without real logic or support. The fanaticism against the proposed meta tags for standards switching in IE8 was just amazing. The fanatics even went after the well respected CSS expert Eric Meyer regarding his article where he provided his perspective on the use of the proposed meta tags. It was quite sad actually. Eric Meyer has written follow-up articles on his website regarding the way he was treated.
I really have no idea why people behave this way but I’m sure someone has studied the parallels with religious fanatics! I think the proposed meta tags are a good idea and I’ll adjust my code accordingly. It must be emphasised that we do not live in a perfect world and people need to remember this. My own code is mostly xhtml 1.1 compatible but there are a few non-standard tags employed by my automated navigation html authoring software and it’s so useful that I decided to keep them, and I’m also aware that I’m not serving the pages as proper application/xhtml+xml and have used the default text/html MIME type (yes, it’s tag-soup!). In fact I’m not sure that I would do so even if all the code did validate.
The thing is…IE and Firefox all render the pages correctly (I don’t care much about Opera these days as they’re not particularly unique/useful these days, and I don’t have access to “proper” Safari yet). And this is important to me. I know that practically everyone out there will see the pages more or less the way I want them to see them. I’m not being lazy. There is a lot to do out there. When IE7 was in beta I used it to test my modified code so that correct rendering was achieved in IE6, IE7 and Firefox. And so I was prepared when IE7 was released formally into the wild. But just think of all that “legacy” code out there especially at the larger sites. It WILL take a long time to update code to take advantage of IE8 but, in the mean time, most rational people are aware of the critical need not to disrupt the user experience or cause loss of business to commercial websites. I think meta tags are the way to go. I’m no expert, but brains bigger than mine have looked at this and there does seem to be consensus forming that we need to go forward and that the use of meta tags is possibly the one with the least pain.
Copyright © 2008 Kulvinder Singh Matharu - All Rights Reserved
