Random Tangent

ABC is re-making the 1983 miniseries V, which is referred to as V: The Original Miniseries because it was followed by a sequel miniseries called V: The Final Battle.

The remake television show, called V: The Series, starts the same place the original story did, features some of the same characters, and follows the same basic premise: “Alien visitors show up claiming to be our friends, but have a hidden agenda that has grave consequences for mankind”. Let’s see where they take it from there.

The show’s pilot stars Elizabeth Mitchell, Scott Wolf, Morena Baccarin, Alan Tudyk, Morris Chestnut, and Joel Gretsch and you can read a review of it, written by “M. Bison”, on the Ain’t it Cool News website. It’s scheduled to start this autumn in the US.

I watched this show while growing up and loved it. They’d better not mess the remake up!

Also, while researching the show I discovered that Kenneth Johnson (the show’s creator) wrote a follow-up book to the series called V: The Second Generation that was released in February 2008. Sounds interesting.

Tags: Television by Ameel
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Long-time readers of this blog will know that, just over a year ago, I moved all of my e-mail to Gmail. I wrote about this in some detail in these three blog posts:

• Switch to Gmail and IMAP?
• Creating a New E-mail Taxonomy
• All E-mail Successfully Moved to Gmail!

I absolutely love Gmail and making this shift is one of the best technology, usability, and productivity decisions I’ve made so far.

However, switching to Gmail wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to do – particularly since most of my e-mail was stored locally on my laptop (in Thunderbird) and the rest was distributed across various e-mail accounts. (You can read more about this in the blog posts listed above.)

Things have changed since then and, as announced today on the Gmail Blog, importing contacts and e-mails from other online e-mail accounts into Gmail has just become a lot easier because the whole process has been automated. This won’t help you if all your e-mails are stored locally in Outlook or Thunderbird, of course, but it will make it easier to switch from services like Yahoo! and Window Live Mail.

If you’re still using one of those services, I suggest you try Gmail for a while to see how you like it. Indeed, one of the new import features is that you can have your e-mails forwarded to Gmail from your other accounts for 30 days while you try Gmail out. I’m confident that many of you will like it so much that you will want to switch over permanently.

Tags: Internet, Life, Technology by Ameel
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This morning I finished watching episode 12 of Joss Whedon’s latest TV show Dollhouse. I can’t begin to describe just how much win there is in the latter episodes of this series (starting from episode 6, ‘Man on the Street’).

All I can say to anyone out there who got disappointed and stopped watching the show early on is: start watching it again. It’s seriously worth at very many levels. (Though I have to admit that some of my love for Firefly has been transferred to this show as well. You’ll know what I mean when you see it.)

For more on how awesome Dollhouse is, read Charlie Jane Anders article on io9 called ‘Why Dollhouse Really is Joss Whedon’s Greatest Work’. The title might be a bit of an exaggeration but Anders makes a number of good points, some of which appeal particularly to serious fans of the science fiction genre (like me). The numerous comments at the end of the article are…er, varied and interesting, too.

Meanwhile, I fear I must wait patiently till the Season 1 DVD is released because the latest news is that the show’s 13th episode, which was filmed but not aired, will go straight to DVD. And we might get to see earlier versions of the re-done pilot in the DVD extras as well.

Fox had better not cancel the show.

Tags: Television by Ameel
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I’ve finally found a good use for my Flickr account: I’m going to use it to post photos that I probably won’t be adding to one of my albums on Picasa.

 
Waiting for a train at a lonely railway station in Melbourne

A Little Background

I have a Flickr account and a Picasa account. I publish my photographs online to Picasa because my free Flickr account has an upload limit (100 MB per month) and a limit to the number of sets I can create (3). Picasa doesn’t have such limits. However the photos that I do upload to Picasa all belong to specific albums, even if that’s the broadly defined ‘Life in Melbourne’ album that I update every now and again.

What happens then to the photos that I like but either don’t belong to a specific album or are good, but not good enough to be included in any album? Well, nothing really. They just sit around on my hard drive…

 
Waiting at a tram stop on Lygon Street

…until now.

Flickr to the Rescue

The plan, then, is to use Flickr to publish non-album, non-event, or simply good-but-not-great photos that I have taken and would like to share. I won’t be doing this with any regularity, though, so don’t hold your breath.

Path running through Princes Park in Melbourne, connecting the Princes Hill and Parkville suburbs

Doing this should be fun, though. It might even encourage me to take more random photographs.

Tags: Australia, Life, Photography by Ameel
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There are two things (so far) that I wish my mother had been alive to see, read or experience: the last few Harry Potter books and the following performance of ‘Love and Justice’ which was composed by Kavisha Mazzella and sung by over 400 women of Victoria late last year:

I get a shiver down my spine every time I listen to it.

The anthem was commissioned by the Victorian Women’s Trust to celebrate the centenary of women’s suffrage in Australia and was performed at the BMW Edge auditorium at Federation Square in Melbourne. For more on the anthem, check out the ABC News’ coverage of it.

Also check out Mazzella’s MySpace page which features more of her awesome music.

Tags: Life, Music by Ameel
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In early 1999, while I was a senior at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), we were planning for the annual student variety show called ‘So?’. Now the ‘So?’ is organized jointly by the all the student clubs who want to participate and, being president of Alpha Hour, I was a part of that year’s organizing committee. [I also co-wrote ‘Zahoor: A Musical’ – Dr. Zahoor being our Associate Dean at the time – that some of my classmate and I performed there but that’s another story.]

A lot of the performances at the ‘So?’ were musical ones. Indeed, we started the show with a song from Jahanzeb and Adil Sherwani, had lots of Ali Hamza in the middle, and even ended the night with the hugely popular cover of The Strings’ ‘Sar Kiye Ye Pahar’ as performed by Saad Ansari, Sameer Anees, Jahanzeb Sherwani, and Adil Sherwani.

It was around this time that we all realized that LUMS needed an official music society and so we encouraged the musicians who had performed at the ‘So?’ to start one. That’s what Saad, Jahanzeb, and Ali Hamza did and thus the LUMS Music Society was born.

Fast-Forward to the Present

The Music Society has come a long way since then: They now have their own fully-equipped recording studio (as opposed to the single room next to the gym that we started out with) and they organize all sorts of musical events, some of which you can check out on their YouTube Channel. Also visit their Facebook Group page for event listings, photographs, and discussions.

This year they’re celebrating their ten-year anniversary with a music conference on 9 May and a big concert featuring the likes of Noori, eP, Laal, and Aunty Disco Project on the 10th. They’ll also be launching their official website at that time.

My Association with the Music Society

I owe a lot to the LUMS Music Society because it was through them that I learnt how to play the drums and it was at their launch concert (called ‘The Jig’) in early 2000 that I first performed in front of an audience as a drummer. I even have a recording of the very first song I played at that concert (‘Zombie’ by The Cranberries) with Mehreen on vocals, Vex on bass, and Saad on lead. Yes, it’s terrible of me but I’ve forgotten who was on rhythm guitar.

Even though the actual performance of that song is mostly a blur, I remember that I started out too fast and was mimed to slow down by Jahanzeb who was sitting in the audience. I also made one major error – a hand-spaz miss-hit on the snare drum – that, not only did no one there notice, you can’t even hear it on the audio recording so it obviously wasn’t as big a mistake as I thought it was. I performed in two more songs during that show – Pink Floyd and Alanis Morissette covers, no less – the latter of which was on the bongos which were also new to me at the time.

A few months later, I performed at their first proper, on-stage concert (called ‘It’) in the central courtyard. This time I was on the drums (‘Dosti’ by Nazia and Zoheb), tambourine (‘Smooth’ by Santana and Rob Thomas), and bongos (‘Those Were the Days’ by Mary Hopkin). Later in the year I travelled from Islamabad to Lahore to specifically attend their first big concert (called ‘The Show’) which featured a professional sound system and hired musical instruments. They could afford all this now that they were officially sponsored by LUMS. I last checked-in on them in 2003 when I went to guest lecture at LUMS and they’d already grown quite a bit. Now, of course, they’re the largest club at the University.

In spite of all that, my strongest memory of the Music Society is still that of me, Ali Hamza and Saad packed into a hot, stuffy jam room as we rehearsed a rock version of Nazia and Zoheb’s ‘Dosti’. I used to have a recording of that performance as well but I seem to have lost it along the way, which is sad. That was the first time I came up with my own drum beat to a song (yes, we really changed it around from the original) and I remember being proud of myself for that because I’d grown quite a bit as a musician over those few months.

To Conclude

It’s been ten years since I graduated from LUMS and ten years since the Music Society was formed. Unfortunately, I’ll be missing both my reunion and the 10th anniversary concert because I’m going to be in Australia during both events. That sucks, I know, but I will be there in spirit. And, at the very least, I do get to blog about it and encourage other people to be there on my behalf. Here’s hoping some of you manage to do so.

Tags: LUMS, Music, Pakistan by Ameel
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I haven’t watched the new Star Trek film yet (I’ll be watching it at the IMAX next week) but here’s a review from the Onion News Network:

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As ‘Fun, Watchable’

:)

Tags: Film by Ameel
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So a couple of days ago I installed the latest version of the Ubuntu operating system (v9.04, called Jaunty Jackalope) on my desktop computer. I did this via Wubi, which lets you install Linux from within Windows without your having to re-partition your hard drive or do any other advanced Linux, Windows, or hardware configuration. The installer basically creates a folder in your C drive (called ‘ubuntu’, in my case) and everything to do with your Linux installation goes in there.

What Wubi does do is make your computer a dual-boot system which means that, from now on, whenever you start your computer you will be given the option of booting into (in my case) Vista or Ubuntu. Vista does remain the default boot option which means that, if you don’t choose otherwise within ten seconds, your computer will automatically boot into Vista. You can, of course, make Ubuntu the default boot option if you want.

Later, if you decide you don’t want Ubuntu you can always uninstall it from within Windows as well. This is as simple as going to Add/Remove Programs and uninstalling Wubi from there.

Why Did I Do This?

So why did I install Ubuntu? The simple answer is: because I wanted to. The more comprehensive answer is: Ubuntu is fast, Linux is fun, I love open source software (and support the FOSS movement), and am a little nostalgic. Oh, and I am a geek.

Let me unpack my comprehensive answer a little bit.

Ubuntu is fast. On my current desktop, from the time I press the power button to the time I can type a URL into Firefox and start browsing, it takes me less than one minute. Doing the same thing on the same computer in Vista – though with Chrome as the browser instead of Firefox – takes me just over three minutes (and the PC still hasn’t finished booting-up by then because complete boot-up takes about five minutes).

Now I’m not saying this to complain about Vista or to say that my computer is slow. In fact, I really like Vista and the way that everything is set up on my computer. Unfortunately, the downside of having everything set up on your computer just the way you want it is that it’ll be a little slow to start up. And by ‘everything’ I mean things like Google desktop and sidebar; Twhirl and Skype; Zone Alarm, KeePass, and Cobian Backup; and all my Windows settings – all of which get loaded at boot time. My Ubuntu install, meanwhile, is plain vanilla. I don’t even have any major Firefox plugins installed.

So my point is: if I need to use the computer in a hurry – to, say, send a quick e-mail or check on weather conditions later in the day – it’s much quicker to boot into Ubuntu than it is to boot into Vista. And that’s why I like it.

Linux is fun. There’s so much that you can do on Linux that is slower, more complicated, costs money, and is less geeky on Windows. For example, there’s nothing quite like shell scripting using Bash. I also love a lot of the software that is Linux-only; and often that software is both more powerful and much more configurable – though sometimes less pretty – than its equivalents on Windows or Leopard.

I love, support, and keep up with the FOSS movement. The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement is important and I’ve spent a lot of time and effort supporting, promoting, and being a part of it. Ubuntu is a huge part of FOSS – particularly for the non-tech community – and, till a couple of days ago, I hadn’t actually messed around with it all that much. The release of Jaunty Jackalope finally prompted me to jump in and see for myself what Ubuntu was all about.

I have a lot of nostalgia associated with Linux in particular and UNIX in general. I’ve been using various flavours of UNIX – such as AIX, FreeBSD, and (Debian and RedHat) Linux – since 1996. I’ve also done a lot of programming, server and daemon configuration, and shell scripting in Linux. Indeed, the first time I became sysadmin was for a RedHat Linux server – the only student-run server at my undergraduate university, in fact – back in 1998.

Good Tech Ethic

Actually, it more than just those reasons. As someone who is technologically inclined – and also a geek – I want to try every technology or gadget that I can get my hands on. And I do this not just because I enjoy it immensely but also because it makes good sense to learn all you can about every kind of technology that’s out there.

This is why, for example, I have Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari all installed on my computer. This is why I use all the online services offered by Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, and so on. And this is why I have the latest versions of Java, Flash, AIR, Silverlight, .NET, QuickTime, Real media, Windows media, DivX, etc. on my computer as well. Not to mention at least nine media players, four word processors, four text editors, five graphics applications, six audio applications, four video applications, and crap loads of media and system utilities. (I could go on…)

Using all kinds of technology is good tech ethic for someone who is tech savvy and is a fan of technology, a technology analyst, a technology teacher/trainer, and a technology evangelist. Oh, and is someone who frequently gives tech support to friends and family and is a geek :)

Tags: Technology by Ameel
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I recently downloaded Stellarium, which is free and open source planetarium software for your computer. It’s awesome.

For example, according to Stellarium, here is what I’d see if I was to look due west at the sky in Melbourne, Australia just before midnight on 4 May, 2009:

That’s gorgeous, isn’t it? Now let’s add some labels (planets, nebulae, and constellations) and some lines (constellations):

But that’s not all – zoom into a bit of the sky and add a grid to see so much more (and you can zoom in much farther than that):

But if that’s too much information, you can instead stick to the star lore section with its associated constellation art (which you can turn on and off, of course):

And if you don’t want Western constellation star lore, you can always switch to Chinese, Egyptian, Inuit, Korean, Lakota, Maori, Navajo, Norse, Polynesian, or Tupi-Guarani (though not all of them have constellation art associated with them).

All in all, this is a fabulous bit of software that I highly recommend.

Tags: Science, Technology by Ameel
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