Moby, Live in Melbourne

So earlier this month I was fortunate enough to see one of my favourite musicians, Moby, live in concert (with opening acts Kelli Scarr and Tim & Jean) at the Palace Theatre in Melbourne.

This was probably the best concert I have ever attended. Yes, it was even better than watching The Police live at the MCG on Australia Day a couple of years ago. I guess it helps that I own almost every Moby album and that I knew all of the songs he played :)

Instead of writing much about it, I’m just going to share some of the photos and video snippets that I took.

Photos

Opening number:

Opening number

Joy Malcolm and Moby:

Joy Malcom and Moby

Kelli Scarr and Moby:

Kelli Scarr and Moby

The whole band at the end of a song:

The whole band at the end of a song

Joy Malcom and crowd participation:

Joy Malcom and crown partcipation

Videos

‘Bodyrock’

 

‘Porcelain’

 

‘Disco Lies’

 

‘Feeling so Real’ and concert end

 

It was awesome.

Tags: Australia, Music by Ameel
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Data Backup Plan: Phase I Complete

I’m done with the first phase of my comprehensive data backup plan.

In this phase I backed-up all of my data (about 180GB of it) and all of Nadia’s data (about 60GB) to our network attached storage drive. That got completed last night.

For those of you who missed it a few blog posts ago, I bought the awesome 1TB My Book World Edition hard drive from Western Digital to do our our local backing-up. The best part of this solution is that it comes with Memeo’s WD Anywhere Backup software which automates backing-up over the network. Not only is this software really easy to use, you get five licenses for it so it’s a great solution for networked, multiple computer households (it works on both PCs and Macs).

The next phase will be to organize online backups for both me and Nadia using Carbonite. I’ll probably start that over the coming weekend. I won’t backup all my media online, of course, so hopefully it won’t take more than 2-3 months to get done. (It’ll take this long because my Internet upload speeds isn’t all that great and, besides, I don’t want to use more than, say, half my monthly bandwidth cap on this initial backup.)

The final phase — which will kick off once I get a tablet PC — will be to use Live Mesh to sync my tablet PC to my desktop PC. That way I won’t need to install any backup software on my tablet PC since all its data will always be replicated on the desktop and, thanks to Phase I and II, all that desktop data will be automatically backed-up both locally and online.

I feel safer already, but there’s still more to do. On to Phase II…

Tags: Internet, Life, Technology by Ameel
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Rest in Peace, Asim Butt

I heard just now that Asim Butt (1978-2010), my friend and classmate from LUMS, committed suicide on Friday. (I’ve been offline for the last couple of days.)

I didn’t know Asim as well as I would have liked to but…well, I had always assumed I’d meet up with him some time in the future. My most recent contact with him was last year, in the months after I blogged about him, but I did try to keep up with everything he was up to.

I don’t know what led to his decision. Indeed, we may never know. It’s just incredibly sad that it had to come to this.

That’s about all I can say right now.

Other have said more:

Tags: Life, Pakistan by Ameel
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Danger of a Single Story: TED Talks, Africa & Stories from Pakistan

My favourite TED talk used to be ‘Benjamin Zander on Music and Passion’ (a.k.a. classical music with shining eyes).

It is now Chimamanda Adichie taking about ‘The Danger of a Single Story’:

You can find out more about Adichie on her Wikipedia page.

How Not To Write About Africa

Speaking of the “single story of Africa”, you must also watch Binyavanga Wainaina’s ‘How Not to Write About Africa’:

 

If you have the time, do watch Wainaina’s follow-up video (which is rather long, unfortunately) in which he explains why he wrote ‘How Not to Write About Africa’: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

You can find out more about Wainaina on his Wikipedia page.

A Message for Peace From Pakistan

Continuing with the single-story theme, check out Asher Hasan’s short TED talk called ‘A Message of Peace from Pakistan’:

You can find out more about Asher Hasan on his LinkedIn profile. Also check out his non-profit, Naya Jeevan.

More Pakistani Stories

This is why blogs such as these – which are written about Pakistan or by Pakistanis – are so important because they tell you much more about this country and its people than what you would normally hear, see, or read via global media outlets:

For many more Pakistan-related blogs, take a look at these lists:

Tags: Blogging, Life, Pakistan by Ameel
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TV.com’s 15 Most Influential Shows of the Decade

TV.com’s Stefanie Lee recently published an article called ‘The 15 Most Influential Shows of the Decade’.

It’s a good list – and the following shows are on it – but I recommend you read the article to see exactly why they’ve been selected (including where they came from and what specifically they influenced):

  • Desperate Housewives (2004-present, ABC)
  • The West Wing (1999-2006, NBC)
  • Lost (2004-present, ABC)
  • Chappelle’s Show (2003-2006, Comedy Central)
  • Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009, Syfy)
  • Sex and the City (1998-2004, HBO)
  • The Daily Show (1996-present, Comedy Central)
  • The Shield (2002-2008, FX)
  • Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006, FOX) and The Office (2005-present, NBC)
  • The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986-present, CBS)
  • The OC (2003-2007, FOX)
  • The O’Reilly Factor (1996-present, FOX News)
  • Survivor (2000-present, CBS)
  • The Sopranos (1999-2007, HBO) and The Wire (2002-2008, HBO)
  • American Idol (2002-present, FOX)

Tags: Television by Ameel
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