brianistheman.com

moved.

2008-06-12T14:02:00.001-04:00

It'll come back to this domain again soon, but in the meantime, blog updates can be found in their safehome at: http://brianistheman.wordpress.com

test

2008-06-11T23:31:00.001-04:00

test again

Zemanta

2008-06-05T14:17:00.003-04:00

Image via Wikipediatrying to broaden my blogging appeal, i'm switching onto to Zemanta to pirate some copyrighted images from the web and spice up the old blog. But first, I'm going to write about Infosys Bangalore, and it's going to hopefully suggest some new photos of the campus. Especially the washing machine building. Here it goes baby

blog migration hell

2008-06-05T14:04:00.003-04:00

help me! trying to hassle with website stuff is such a nightmare. Especially when an ocean separates me from my server. FTP timeouts, import problems. Grrr. This is why I'm no longer a hands-on techie.

migration

2008-06-05T13:37:00.001-04:00

while it will soon reoccupy www.brianistheman.com, for now future India blogging will be on brianistheman.wordpress.com

India

2008-06-02T21:22:00.002-04:00

So here's the promotional video of the program I'm on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN9rfrbuPLw Thus far it has been extremely mellow. The campus they've built here is like a large university campus, though certainly more sterile. They have 45+ buildings, immaculate lawns, health clubs, artificial ponds, meandering landscapes, a half dozen subsidized cafeterias (dinner=$0.50). From the

Simcity Bangalore?

2008-05-31T10:25:00.002-04:00

I just got back from the four-hour honking pollution fest that is a taxi ride into the city. If all the trips are like that, I can easily imagine not wanting to leave my little work / hotel compound. Tailpipe fumes making me sick. Bleh.

South Asia

2008-05-30T04:13:00.002-04:00

Yay - my first blog post from India. Just arrived today and have high-speed internet in my room. (Travel + Internet) = (the good life). A few notable things before I collapse into jet-lagged napping: 1) The moustache is alive and well in India. Everyone's got one. Perhaps I need one? 2) Large trucks have written on their bumber "sound horn", as if drivers need any more encouragement.

North Korean inspiration

2008-05-27T21:59:00.001-04:00

I finally scanned some of my contraband and posted it here. Yay! http://drop.io/northkorea

Haiku

2008-05-26T11:10:00.001-04:00

One modern form of poetry that really doesn't get enough credit is the spam subject line. Trying to say "Cheap penis pills" without actually using those words (because of spam filters) is now a well honed art form. "Make a mountain in your pants" or "She'll never leave your bed" is so much more descriptive and evocative than just "Buy my fake Viagra". Along a similar line, I think the

Trust != Privacy

2008-05-24T11:56:00.002-04:00

My theory on the coming decade's erosion of individual privacy is as follows: Privacy and trust are inversely related. For instance, I don't really want anyone to know that six months ago I paid my cell phone bill late. But because that information and three hundred other data tidbits just like it are on my credit report, I can submit that credit report to a bank and convince a total stranger

M$FT

2008-05-23T15:21:00.001-04:00

My conspiratorial theory on Microsoft is that they have to continually invent bad business development ideas like buying Yahoo! because if they don't come up with silly ways to waste their excess cash, it'll become obvious to regulators how preposterously, wildly profitable is their business in Office and XP. If those undiluted fat margins suddenly showed

NYC schools

2008-05-14T00:14:00.000-04:00

To subjugate their colonies, one useful psychological tactic the British employed in Egypt was constructing towering and imposing government buildings. Everything had 20 steps leading up to oversized doorways with imperial columns, and it all said 'you are tiny and insignificant'. Public school buildings are like that in New York. For some reason, every elementary school has a door three

Horse Race

2008-05-11T14:49:00.003-04:00

For the forseeable future, there can no longer be any blow-away elections. At least not at the national level. This is because, in a media environment where huge money is made on prolonged attention to the political horserace, the media will always support the underdog at the expense of the leader. A no-contest race is uninteresting, and the media has newspapers to sell. So anyone who pulls

Yankees

2008-04-29T23:14:00.001-04:00

I just returned from the hypothermia-fest that is a nosebleed seat at Yankee stadium in April. Apparently the key is pre-drinking so you don't notice the cold, and alternating hot chocolate with miller light. Yankees lost, and took my hopes and dreams with them. I'll never cheer again.

Today

2008-04-28T12:10:00.000-04:00

�Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity� William Butler Yeats

Warm weather

2008-04-21T23:16:00.001-04:00

With the blessings of the scantily clad, the warm weather also brings out the homeless. I don't know where they hibernate in winter, but come April, they arise in all their drunken rambling glory and converge upon the 1 and 9 trains with a ferocity. All of a sudden it's hard to pick a non smelly subway car or turn the headphones up loud enough.

Kids

2008-04-18T18:48:00.001-04:00

Hmm . . . The older I get, the louder teenagers become.

Urban Zoo

2008-04-17T23:42:00.001-04:00

Most New Yorkers hate rats except in the subway. You're bored, you're waiting for a train, and there's an entertaining rat rambling around on the tracks down there. Since it can't jump up to the platform, and we're not going to jump down to the tracks, the two of us creatures can check each other out, with no action implied. Actually a rat or two (or even five) is a great thing when you're

Ponzi

2008-04-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty sure that the stock market is just a giant ponzi scheme. Ever see a graph of stock market appreciation in the last 30 years, laid over the GDP growth in the same period? It's trouble. I'm mean really, who's going to buy all these stocks once the baby boomers retire and want to cash out?

Info fragmentation

2008-04-15T09:42:00.001-04:00

Manufacturing has a concept of Economic Order Quantity, where the cost of holding inventory is weighed against the downtime cost of switching a machine from one task to another. Essentially, the lower the switching costs are, the more economical it becomes to process work in small batches rather than large (which is good because you can have more variety / responsiveness). As email and instant

You heard it here first

2008-04-13T23:25:00.001-04:00

Websites look too geeky.� They look computer-ish and digital and unnatural.� I predict that in five years, better imaging software will allow site designers to make websites look more organic and commonplace.� Like they were crafted from leather, or cut from stone, or carved into wood.� Text areas will look and feel like they were written on paper.� There

Google killed blogger

2008-04-13T17:52:00.001-04:00

While I appreciate Google for the supreme awesomeness of its search engine, I'm mad at the company. They bought Pyra Labs, the original Blogger.com, years ago, and haven't done a thing with it since. It's languishing and stale and forgotten, and it's a cruel fate for the brand that pioneered it all. Now I'm contemplating switching off blogger onto moveable type or wordpress or some other such

ESP

2008-04-12T18:28:00.001-04:00

Back in the 60's, all the science fiction writers presumed that people in the future would have full mastery of human extrasensory perception, and that we'd read one another's minds, and predict the future and be able to move things around by just thinking about it.� Futurists don't really talk about psychics anymore, which is a shame because I think it's

test

2008-03-28T11:56:00.001-04:00

test