staying.cool

why would apple expect the iphone 3G with its unsurpassably (crappy) features:

Surprisingly, some of the niggling features that were missing in the iPhone 1.0 continue to be overlooked. There’s still no copy-paste functionality, no MMS sending, no Flash capabilities, no A2DP (stereo Bluetooth)… Yes, at Rs.31,000 and thereabouts, the iPhone dangles a hefty price tag…if you take your eyes off its $199 pricing in the US and judge the iPhone purely on the heft of what you’re acquiring in terms of a gizmo, perhaps the picture won’t look so disappointing after all. After all, when has Apple ever sold sundar, tikaoo maal that was sasta — especially in India? Woefully however, the carrier lock-in story for the handset continues… You won’t be able to swap Vodafone to Airtel to Idea willy-nilly –– or when you are travelling abroad, to Matrix to SingTel. You will have to stick to that very Voda/Airtel SIM you’ve plugged into iPhone even in your wanderlust. That, for a 31K phone, is a mite distressing.

to be so wanted in india ? the country where the N96 is to be launched early. seriously. you might as well ship them all back to the US and keep selling them to people who have close to no idea just how convergent a device a phone can be.

some of the more telling passages to me from a brilliant article about Liu Xiang, china’s great hope at Beijing 2008:

At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, China finished third in gold medals with 28, its most ever. But within this success, officials also saw a telling disparity: 21 of those medals came in table tennis, diving, badminton, weight lifting and gymnastics. China struggled in other sports, especially in swimming; other water sports like rowing; and track and field. At the time, these events offered 119 potential gold medals, yet China won only 1 in Sydney. Thus was born Project 119: a government program that has poured money into these sports in pursuit of a larger share of those medals (the total is now 122). New training centers were built. Foreign coaches were hired for water polo, synchronized swimming, canoeing and rowing, as well as for other events like field hockey, fencing, basketball and cycling. The program bore fruit in Athens, where China won 32 gold medals, second only to the United States.

..and even more interesting is the way they implemented ‘project 119′:

Doctors and coaches examined and tested his bone structure, concluding he would not grow tall enough to be an elite high jumper. This selection process, so Orwellian to Western sensibilities, is not unusual in Chinese sports schools. A system so intensely focused on producing Olympic champions regards X-rays and bone tests as practical tools to help project which kid among thousands might one day become a medalist.

we ? we have athletes who have to fund themselves for the olympics. who have to make do with substandard training and substandard coaches, coz the government will not provide enough for them to actually focus on something that they actually want to do.

who are all moved to goddamn cricket coz thats the only place where the money is. even if we do suck at that too.

Thanks, Rahul!

after a long time, a very long time… i’m writing enough to be thinking about it all the time.

bar some randomly creative moments that don’t happen too often nowadays, my writing has gone for a slide. sure, i write here, but real creative writing - where you force yourself to think, to flesh out ideas, to write them out and see how good they can be - has gone for a toss in my life.

something i’m not happy about, but not something i was able to do too much about. even creativity requires discipline, which i have a hard enough time applying to in work.

come nanowrimo, and i see the point. just the experience of writing close to 2000 words everyday; trying to be creative, non-repetitive, maintain a coherent line of thought, flesh out ideas… is making me think creatively all the time. after a very, very, very long time.

something i’ve missed, something i wish i could do more often.

the novel is taking vague shape in my own mind now, just the push to write it is enough for now. eventually, i may or may not hit the golden 50,000 - though i’m definitely not giving it up without a fight. it’s not completely impossible.

and i can only hope i manage to give shape to ideas.

excerpts are updated on my nanowrimo every other day accompanying a word-count update. eventually, the actual novel - after editing, rewriting and so much more - will be put up here. you’ve all been warned.
but that’s for december.

right now i need to get cracking on the next 1700.

..the ODI is dead.

given the response to twenty20, not least because the subcontinent made it to the final, and a team of 1 billion won it, i say the ODI will die its natural death in roughly two years. coming on the heels of an india/pak match-up prediction, i can be justifiably confident of making such predictions methinks

tests can never die, in my view, simply because they are the “classic” form of the game. and the ordeal of a test match is very different from the game in any shorter form. skills and abilities have to be stretched to very different limits. when one compares an 8 hour running time for ODIs and a 3 hour running time for T20 games, the choice becomes obvious -whether from a viewer perespective, or an economic (read advertisement) perspective. more games, more possible viewership for a quicker game, and a radically different format from the classic version of the game.

ergo, ODIs will eventually be taken out of the equation.

current styles of playing ODIs are pretty much to slam the ball around the park as far as possible, for as long as possible. and even during any mania i have had for the game, i’ve never managed to sustain myself for more than 10 overs at a time. overs 15-40 normally signify a drop in viewership during any such game. the natural successor to ODIs currently seems to be T20. however, it is possible that T20 is modified to have smaller teams, and the options of a couple of substitutions between innings. the choices would seem to make it more unpredictable.

the question is whether tests can ever be killed off as well. i would hope not, but i accept that following tests over 5 days is an ordeal. i have no clue about viewership, but i do know that tests have a different level of cricket that i wouldn’t want to lose. some of the most significant performances have happened in this form of the game.

for now, we celebrate. until team india breaks down given their schedule for the next 6 months: nearly 23 ODIs, two T20 matches and 10 Tests.

T20 poses some interesting questions for the team. will T20 players ever see a bigger stage with the big 3 hanging around ? will the BCCI manage to realise that different teams for different forms of the game need to nurtured ? and the biggest question is: how many of those 35 matches will be without a coach ?

on a personal note, it makes me want to go back to barely following the game at all. mismanagement, frustration, and bad attitudes can only be tolerated for so long.

and still we win.

funny that the team that crashed out the world cup a few months ago, has had a captain resign mid-season, no coach since the world cup debacle, and barely make it through an english summer of cricket is at the top of a points table. funnier that the other points table has a team under very similar circumstances.

now for the laurels, until the next time they screw up.

until then, india vs pakistan. here we come.

2 planes. 2 skyscrapers. collapse. ruin. destruction.

the true horror of the incident was indelibly re-etched. i’ve seen how the plane was hijacked all due to the carelessness of america. they were lax, and they paid. but the price paid, was far beyond any cost. the sheer terror of 2 planes destroying an american icon, the panic, the fear, the chaos, the destruction - these are things that were horrifying. at the same time, the number of conspiracy theories that have made the rounds have diluted that memory.

watching the crash again, watching the terror that it inspired, watching the bravery of people just wanting toe help inspite of their world literally falling to pieces around them.. such is something that reminds you there is more to everything than just what we tend to focus on. and the fact that those 2 men survived that day is testament to why terror can never truly have any real result.

sadly, america didn’t learn. repaying terror with terror has only led to a near second vietnam.

After watching ‘World Trade Center.’