So I want a mobile device that can do multiple things at once. I was lazing on my bed, reading a book right now and I had to get up to walk to my table a metre and a half away to pick up the remote for my air conditioner to increase the temperature since it was getting quite chilly.

If my mobile could also double up as an air conditioner remote, I wouldn’t have to sit at my laptop to write this down. Come to think of it, I wish my mobile would also double up as a TV remote, a DVD player remote, a car radio remote and also serve as the remote controller for multiple devices.

I remember a time when I wasn’t able to watch TV for a while at my house in Bangalore because the remote control wasn’t working properly. I later realized that it was due to a loose connection in the batteries, but until then, all the repeated beatings that poor remote took could’ve been saved had the WishMobile been invented.

I am too lazy and technically incompetent to work on coming up with this device. Plus I have a huge educational loan that hangs on my head like Damocles’ sword. But if someone chances upon this idea to come up with an integrated device that can serve multiple purposes as described above, you have my eternal admiration and respect.

However, considering I am strongly gravitating towards the minimalist lifestyle thanks to my being congenitally parsimonious, I don’t even know if I will have enough remotes around me in the first place to warrant getting a WishMobile!

In a couple of special electives I have taken in my last term on campus here, I have come across a whole bunch of interesting online resources to help accomplish various tasks.

It is brilliantly surprising as to what one can perform simply by being aware of the right sets of tools for the right kinds of tasks. Some of them might be old and heard of, but should you read this and chance upon something similar and interesting, please do leave a comment.

1. Bill Monk – http://www.billmonk.com is a website that allows for you and your friends to spend all the money you want respectively on collective purchases. It keeps track of who spent how much so that people are then able to pay the actual amount at the end of the month, rather than sit and calculate how much each person owes the other.
   Sure, a cleverly written excel sheet should help do the trick, but when this feature is offered on the go and someone else is able to do it for you without you having to write VB macros to program it, it is the shiite!
2. Gliffy – http://www.gliffy.com is an online diagram software that will help jazz up your presentations beyond your wildest dreams. I learnt the hard way in B-school that in some cases, good content is not the only thing that will do the trick for you to make a sound impact on the audience and that anyone who is sitting through a presentation also needs to be aesthetically catered to, even if that need of theirs is merely subconscious.
   As a result, evolution towards the corporate ho life led to the quest for newer graphs and better diagrams and more jazzed up looking stuff that was brilliant to see even if it was utter garbage, used only to confound rather than clarify. Gliffy is the answer to all your prayers and then some!
3. Aardvark – http://www.vark.com – most of  you that keep yourself up to date in the social media space would’ve heard of Aardvark to some extent. I don’t have enough patience to sit give a detailed explanation about what this site does, and so I’ll just provide you with an illustrative example.
   I am moving to Gurgaon in April this year to begin working there, and I have been scouting for convenient and affordable accommodation options there. Google searches, searching for blogs with relevant content and other such queries led to more advertisement than content.
   However, Aardvark let me sign up for an account and let me post my question regarding “good accommodation options for a person wishing to stay alone in Gurgaon”. Of course, once I’ve got a preliminary set of answers to my query on this website, I can further distill it down to more specific details such as proximity to my new work place, proximity to shopping centers and to the metro station, availability of car parking, rent range, furnishing and so on.
   I am hoping that my questions get answered and that I get a good place to stay in a short span of time, especially considering the fact that summer will begin in full force and the NCR is not the most hospitable of locations to be in during peak summer time.
   This isn’t too different from Yahoo answers in theory, but the interactivity, response time and the ease of use and convenience afforded by Aardvark beats Yahoo answers hands down.

Youtube is growing to be among one of my favourite websites of all time, thanks to the endless amount of content on it. Whenever I’ve wanted to see a random music video of some vague song that I had heard when I was in my teens, youtube helps me find the video, without fail. I’m no longer bothered about missing the latest videos on VH1 and one of the only reasons I watch TV is because my laptop is now suffering from frequent breakdowns due to old-age and overheating of the motherboard.

When I do invest in a super stud laptop, I think I might as well kiss my TV viewing goodbye for the most part, since all viewable content is generally being uploaded on youtube simultaneously. There are many situations wherein a lot of content put up is being taken down on the insistence of production houses and such, but then again, most production houses are also putting up their own official and verified youtube channels for public viewing.

Over the past week or so, after the end of term 7, I’ve had to stay back on campus to partake in the job hunt and it is during this break that I’ve managed to admire and respect youtube even more. When I was much younger, our family used to view or at least talk about some of the more popular regional language movies in Kannada, Tamil and Telugu and we’d also made visits to the cinema theater to watch a few of these movies.

As the years have gone by, most of my movie viewing has gravitated strongly towards English movies and to a small extent, to Hindi movies and other foreign language movies ranging from Iranian cinema to Korean and Japanese flicks, to those made in Eastern Europe.

However, thanks to youtube, my interest in south Indian cinema has now been rekindled. The features on the website, combined with some kind soul’s generosity has led to playlists being created that can now stream entire movies. Our internet speeds on campus are like a dream come true and as a result, movie viewing has been taken to a new level altogether.

In the past four days, I’ve seen movies like Billa, Kadhalan, Boys, Chennai 28, Alaipayuthey, The Angrez, Sivaji the Boss completely over youtube. Some of these movies have been seen previously and some others were viewed for the first time. But its nice to not have to run to the video library looking for older movies, since youtube, in all probability has them all. I wasn’t able to locate a complete movie playlist for Thiruda Thiruda however.

The kind souls that have uploaded said movies have also been generous enough to include subtitles in the movies to make life easier for those that don’t know the language completely. My extremely limited knowledge of Tamil and Telugu have been somewhat supplemented marginally over the past week due to these movie watching binges.

Not only that, I’ve also been reintroduced to all the A R Rahman tracks that I’d been crazy about when I was a kid and had then abandoned later on for other music that took over mindspace. The more I listen to ARR’s stuff, the more I think that his older work was more melodious and representative of his musical genius and that the rest of the world in general that has gone bonkers over his work in Slumdog Millionaire would have tears of joy in their eyes if only they’d listen to his entire discography.

I can’t really pick a favourite, but the music from the movie Thiruda Thiruda would definitely rank highly among the works of ARR.

I strongly admire people who’ve mastered multiple languages and I wish I could’ve done so myself too, though with 4 + 2 (partial knowledge) languages that I know, and a few words here and there in the others, I’m way behind where I’d like me to be.

If youtube were around when I were a kid and I’d been allowed movie binges like the ones I’m enjoying currently, I’d have probably been a true blue polyglot! What’s gone is in the past, and in the present, I have the second half of Alaipayuthey to watch before I go to sleep. So until next time, here’s hoping you are able to unleash the power of youtube to make life more fun.

PS – I swear google didn’t pay me for writing this post, although any gifts in cash or kind would be most welcome. I’m game for accumulating some good Karma as well, seeing as how much it might help in the afterlife.

2007 – Iron Maiden
2008 – Megadeth and Machine Head
2009 – Iron Maiden, De Profundis, Cyanide Serenity, Kryptos, Synaps and so on
2010 – Backstreet Boys and Richard Marx

If the 2010 line up has you going WTF, trust me, you’re not the only one. Even the Backstreet Boys and Richard Marx fanboys and fanwomen are going absolutely ballistic about the whole hoopla surrounding ‘Rock in India’ this year. But obviously, they’re not spewing the kind of vitriol that a dedicated metal fan has been venting out against the organizers for their supposedly horrendous set of choices.

Some very generous vandal has now disfigured the site Rock in India to show the following stuff:

I am not yet certain if DNA Networks is pulling a huge one on the fans and actually planning to bring in some stud level band on the actual days of the concert. However, a quick look at the Backstreet Boys website does indicate that their hallowed unmistakable presence will be there for all to behold on the day of the show.

I shudder to think of what I’d have to do if I were compelled to review the show and write a three pager on it for the magazine.

If this is purely a viral campaign, the guy who thought of it is an absolute genius. However, if this is true, the kamikaze need to learn a few lessons from the organizers on how best to turn a possibly reputed name in the international rock and metal scene into complete mud in a short span of time.

We could’ve had our own metal version of Woodstock, but maybe, just maybe, we’re not yet ready for one yet.

Such is life.

At least if this thing is to be believed. Looks like my constant chant of Legodeth’s Embrace me now, Sweet Mother Death was finally heard.

I know of very few people out there that share my name and a random ego-surfing trip resulted in this being thrown up.

In other news, Saarang 2010 was super good fun, interviewing Hammerfall further showcases the difference between seasoned pro-bands and the newer bands, mostly due to interview practice that the former has had vis-a-vis their n00b counterparts.

Now that’s a school I’d like to visit for a guided tour!

Picture sanitized to protect identity of said person, and to prevent me from being sued for defamation or whatever else can be thrown at me! Spelling FAIL.