Today I managed to post to my Typepad weblog via

• mail
• mobile phone

Ain't that grand?!! :-)

Go here to check my blog

A pause...

This is to announce a temporary suspension of blogging on this weblog

For the next few days, I'll be located at a new place on the web, carrying out my blogging activities as usual. This is the result of my being one of the beta testers for TypePad. So, while this blog remains static until further notice, I shall be actively blogging on the brand new TypePad blogging system.

My new temporary address is http://optimystic.typepad.com

So please head over there to catch me blogging and continue to leave your valuable comments and opinions!

Harry Potter house up for sale

The house that played host to the loathsome Dursleys and their magical nephew in the Harry Potter movies is on the market, newspapers reported on Tuesday.

With fans gripped by the fifth book in J.K. Rowling's series, the owner of No 4 Privet Drive -- in reality No 12 Picket Post Close -- is putting the house up for auction with a price guide of 250,000 pounds.

Go on! Bid on it!! If you are able to buy it, then you'll have to excuse the occasional appearance of Dobby, the house elf or the swarm of owls that descend on the house every once in a while!! ;-) :-P

Reaching Through the Net to Touch

Researchers at the University at Buffalo, New York, announced last week they have developed a system that lets one person experience the sense of touch felt by another. They said they could transmit the sensation across the Internet.

In about five years, people may use the system to feel the force and pressure Tiger Woods experiences every time he wallops a golf ball. It could be used in e-commerce, enabling buyers to feel fabrics before they buy...

Hmmm... and not just that. Maybe a gentle touch by that special someone too!

What's more, the sensory data can be saved, allowing one sensation to be accessed indefinitely.

So that you can feel that special first touch years later when you are relaxing in your easy-chair with your dentures in a glass of water on the table nearby!! *Heh*

But then... you wouldn't want to use this technology if you are a regular in adult chatrooms!! :-P

Whoa! The cowboy shooteth from the hips.

'There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on,' Bush said. 'We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.'

What does that remind you of? It reminds me of what Dirty Harry says in Sudden Impact... "Go ahead, make my day!" :-P

Sex at 60 mph is OK in Germany

Having sex while driving at 100 kph (60 mph) down a motorway is not an offence in Germany. But if you hit something make sure you don't run off.
...
"The man was convicted of hit-and-run and sentenced to a fine of 600 euros," court spokesman Juergen Mannebeck said on Tuesday. "It's hard to believe but in fact no law was broken with the intercourse on the motorway. It's a situation lawmakers never thought about."

Ahem Ahem!! LOL!!

The courts worldwide, are an endless source of mirth!!

Giving Sharers Ears Without Faces

In response to recent threats to file traders, peer-to-peer developers say they're seeing an upsurge of interest in tools that purport to hide identities.

You'll recall that RIAA had recently threatened to track online file-sharers and sue them. If you don't recall, read my post about it.

This was bound to happen! Is RIAA so naive?!!

Behold the pentaquark

Physicists have discovered a new class of subatomic particle that will provide unexpected insights into the fundamental building blocks of matter.
...

The new particle is the so-called pentaquark - five quarks in formation. Until now, physicists had only seen quarks packed into two- or three-quark combinations
...

The discovery of the pentaquark, also known as a new exotic baryon state, should have far-reaching consequences for our theory of particle interactions that attempt to explain the structure of matter.

[link via Metafilter]

Bloggers Gain Libel Protection This is a victory for free speech advocates and also for bloggers... well, at least in the US!

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last Tuesday that Web loggers, website operators and e-mail list editors can't be held responsible for libel for information they republish, extending crucial First Amendment protections to do-it-yourself online publishers.

Online free speech advocates praised the decision as a victory. The ruling effectively differentiates conventional news media, which can be sued relatively easily for libel, from certain forms of online communication such as moderated e-mail lists. One implication is that DIY publishers like bloggers cannot be sued as easily.

Now you see it, now you don't!

That's how the template of this blog (hosted on Blog*Spot and obviously powered by Blogger) has been behaving in the past few days.

It all started when Blogger took that momentous step towards moving all its users over to Dano. I was surprised to see the Dano interface on my non-Dano blog and took me a few moments to realize that Blogger had started the migration.

All seemed good. I tried to post an entry on Friday morning. Thats when I realized something was amiss because I just could not publish my blog. So, I tried to find the error details and saw that my template had disappeared completely. The template box was empty... nice and clean!

There have been times in the past when the template has looked funny. But that has been when the folks at Blogger were probably doing some routine maintenance work. But this time the template had disappeared completely. Even so, I waited half a day for it to re-appear as magically as it had vanished! But being a Muggle, magic was obviously out of the question!

So I went to Control and lodged a complaint quoting the error I was getting while publishing the blog and explaining that my template had vanished into thin air of the cyberspace. But it has been more than 72 hours since I entered my complaint and the status of the complaint still shows "Unreviewed" which is just a euphemism for "nobody has given a shit's worth of attention to the complaint".

So today, I built up my blog's template from an old backup that I had kept. (foresightedness at its shining best!). But only a few minutes after that, my template disappeared again! If this is what the new Dano experience is all about... spare me folks! I'll move over to Movable Type (which I'm going to do in about a month's time, anyways!).

I advise all you Blogger users to take backups of your templates immediately and keep taking backups when you make any changes to the template. I believe even Anita had a scary experience, a couple of weeks back, when her template vanished. So... chant the backup mantra to be safe!

So it was template rebuilding time for me today. And while I was at it, I made a few changes to the template...

I added a dotted line between posts to act as a divider since it was often confusing to differentiate between posts on my blog.

I changed the "New Post" indicator which indicates that a blog has nad a new entry posted to it (duh!). The new indicator is tinier and not-so-distracting as the last one I was using.

And the most important update I made was the addition of the Sideblog. You can see it just below on the zonkboard on the right hand column. Sideblog is a tiny blog just like the one they have on... ummm... Metafilter for example. I'll be using the Sideblog to make announcements and/or to post some special links or... errr.... well, ok! I haven't thought of a use for it yet. But it's a nice tool and I'll put it to good use! :-)

Well, that's about it for the moment!

The Box Office Oracle is supposed to be your "one-stop film prognosticator". You can just put in the info of a Hollywood film you've always dreamt of making, i.e. the title, the actors, the director, the budget, etc. and the BOO (Box Office Oracle) will tell you exactly how much money your film will make or whether your film stands a chance at the Oscars. It also predicts which critics will gush over your film and which ones will skewer it!

Sounds like cool fun! :-)

I tried my hand at it and this is what I got...

A Greater Threat (PG-13)
(Courtroom Drama/Mystery/Thriller)
Starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer
Also Featuring Willem Dafoe, Joaquin Phoenix, Kathy Bates, and Emily Watson
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Screenplay by M. Night Shyamalan and Frances Walsh

Projected Budget Range: $30-39 Million
Planned Release Date: June

Projected Box Office Receipts:
$12.34 million (Opening Weekend)
$73.36 million (Total Domestic Gross)

Chance of getting Oscar Nomination: 13%
Chance of winning at least one Oscar: 4%

Critic Most Likely to Praise: Chris Gore, Film Threat
Critic Most Likely to Skewer: Desson Howe, Washington Post

[link via Metafilter]

RIAA Prepares To Sue Hundreds Of File Sharers

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) have today (June 26th) begun gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits against individual computer users who are illegally offering to "share" substantial amounts of copyrighted music over peer-to-peer networks.

To gather evidence against P2P users who make illegal downloading possible, the RIAA will be using software that scans the public directories available to any user of a peer-to-peer network. These directories, which allow users to find the material they are looking for, list all the files that other users of the network are currently offering to distribute. When the software finds a user who is offering to distribute copyrighted music files, it downloads some of the infringing files, along with the date and time it accessed the files.

Draconian, I say!!

The Ministry of Magic is spreading its tentacles!!! It must be stopped!!

Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinh says that the India-China pact signed in Beijing is a win-win for India as well as China.

Sinha said the border agreement has "recognised" the Nathu la Pass in Sikkim as a "border pass" between the two countries.

For the full-text of the agreement, click here.

So you've just received a junk email encouraging you to visit a website for some irresistible pornography or to consolidate your debts! Well, it's time to oblige the people who fill your mailbox with spam. Let FriedSPAM visit their sites for you -- about a million times! After all, you are only doing what the spammers are asking you to do.
[link via Metafilter]

Indiatimes is Connecting people...

One of my colleagues wants to buy a new cell-phone. He's bored with his Siemens C35. So, yesterday he decided to check out a few new models and their prices. So he hopped over to the Indiatimes Auctions site since he was not averse to buying a second-hand piece.

He was looking for a Nokia model. I suggested Nokia 3650, just because of its unconventional looks and colour display. He liked it but he kept on searching some more.

That is when he landed up on an auction for the stunning Nokia 6800. It was going for Rs. 36000. My colleague had never seen this particular model before so he read through all the impressive features that 6800 boasted. At the end of the features-list was the customary link to the picture of the piece being auctioned. It said, 'see picture'. Click on it to see this strange Nokia 'model'.

Boy!... if I get one of those, I sure don't know which are the right buttons to push!

One more post about Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. You might feel I'm going overboard (and crazy) about the bespectacled wizard (with the lightening shaped scar on his forehead, if I may add!)). But then, isn't everyone?!

Barnes & Noble, the largest US bookseller said on Sunday that the weekend sales figures of HP5 were on course to top 1 million copies (??!!!). They had anticipated a sale of 1 million copies by the end of the first week. But the rate of 80 copies per second ensured that the 1 million mark would be achieved in the first 48 hours alone!

Tesco Supermarket in the UK is supposed to be the biggest single outlet for HP5. It had sold more than 300,000 copies in the 24 hours after the launch. Tesco had sold about 42,000 copies of HP4 in the first week after its launch. So... compare for yourself!

Ok, get those sales figures out of your heads and check this review of the book. [link via Instapundit] It claims that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has Libertarian overtones to it!

I'm on page 550 of Book Five, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It's an excellent read, and the only reason I'm putting the book down to blog is because I can barely contain my enthusiasm about this -- I can't believe the overwhelming libertarian overtones in this book!

Before you read the review, I must warn you that though there are no spoilers mentioned, there are still some plot details included in the review.

But like all the reviews that I've read so far, the review ends with...

I finally finished the book, and I highly recommend it. Amazingly, and despite my previous assumptions, the series is getting better and better as it continues.

Oh well! Now I HAVE to start the book ASAP!!