Question of Sanity in Cyber Era

To find the content that is offensive is very easy over the Internet (I'm sure you already have plenty of stuff relating to this in your mind). In fact, they usually take viral form and spread across very quickly after their release. You don't have to go and search for them - they will literally come and find you. What's missing in the translation of such content is the complete picture, which if you knew earlier you wouldn't have fallen for those to start with. Their nature would be to tap the viewers' emotion and provoke hate and anger towards certain topic it is referring to instead of positively uplifting it. By watching those our very sense will become defenseless and will begin to enjoy what others consider as a form of Entertainment and might even end up spreading them. My implication isn't that watching them is a wrongful deed and each and everyone who produce such content should be condemned. I'm fairly certain that they will continue to be there forever. The only thing I'm concerned about is the message those type of contents deliver to the people exposed to it, including minors who have as much accessibility as adults these days. All I'm trying to suggest is being a viewer you'll have use your best judgment and read between the lines. Mankind is referred to as the most intelligent being there ever lived and will ever be in this world because of the fact that we have a capacity to think. But if we don't think enough - the very reason that makes us superior will be proven as false. And worst outcome is possible if we actually begin to believe in all those messages promoting hate-culture. Till now we've only seen the political geographic boundary as the only thing coming between how people interact in general. But this new medium has got potential, if remain unchecked, not only to reinforce all the negativity that are already present, but also to create new ones which will be much tougher to beat once people start believing in it.

As a test simply visit any of the mass media content delivery sites such as Youtube and try to view the popular content (having at least 10,000 hits) which you personally think is false (I know that some of us will find more things on the Internet that contradict our belief and some will find less). After you've finished watching it try to go through the comment section. You'll be amazed at how many people support the message it is trying to deliver. I don't mean that there won't be anyone like you who doubt its authenticity, but you'll find plenty of people who will outnumber your type (including ones who just started believing in it after watching it). Of course there is a content rating system that lets you flag the inappropriate contents, but I honestly doubt its effectiveness especially if it appears to be friendly but is actually hostile underneath that has a power to disrupt even what seems like the unshakable foundation of our faith system.

So in this era marked by abundance of information, it's up to us to be an all rounded aware person who has got values and principles that genuinely support others' well being. We can view this opportunity of free flow of information as new found democracy which could be shaped into something significant by keeping a positive outlook. Or we can become arrogant and hard-headed who continues to support such disruptive behaviors that undermine others personally and interpersonally and blow away the opportunity we once had.

It is truly up to us to retain our sanity.

Food for thought: With great power comes great responsibility. (Spider Man)

A Must Hear Original Song by an Unsigned Artist

In one of my previous posts a song was featured from a classical music student turned alternative artist, Terra Naomi, who has a great talent. Things weren't ticking before her virtual tour on youtube. After her appearance in this phenomenal community driven mass media so called youtube, her fame skyrocketed in an unprecedented rate. Well she didn't exactly end up getting triple platinum hits or anything like that on the basis of records sold, but she sure became the queen in virtual world as her fan base from all over the world grew amazingly leding her to become #1 most subscribed artist in musician category last year. This definitely moved her ahead in her musical career.

Last night I came across a video from another unsigned artist from UK, zzzzzzzzap, who has about 21 videos on his inventory right now - mostly original (only 6 were cover version performed in his own style). I enjoyed listening to his music which primarily has a laid-back ballad sensation and acoustical in nature. I'm sure he has a very bright future ahead of him.

For now enjoy one of his songs that got hit on the front page (featured section) of youtube.



Here's the comment along with lyrics for this song (unedited) which the artist himself posted on youtube.

"I know I'd told myself I was having a YT break but this song has been slowly writing itself and willing me to post it up.
It's a tad throwaway but I sometimes like that in music - it's not good to take yourself too seriously. I may add to it at a later date..
This goes out to all those lovely people who subscribed to my channel and, in their comments, remarked that my vocals should be pushed up (*cough*, bobsaguitarist..) Hope I didn't disappoint

:|

_________________________
The Ballad of The Existentialist

There's a world outside that window
Would you step into the sun?
Chasing shadows can't be in you
When the battle has been won

Try so hard to verbalise it
Understand it for yourself
Just find your feet and stand beside me
Don't put yourself back on the shelf

Just know that I'll be by my side, you..
The world is sinking deep inside..

Paint a picture, tell a story
Leave a trace behind to see
In years to come you'll call me boring
In your reflection you'll see me

Just know that I'll be by your side, you..
The world is sinking deep inside..

__________________
Peace"

How We Lost Simplicity

“Bring forth what is true
Write it so it’s true
Defend it to your last breathe”
- A famous mathematician

As a child, I was raised to grow up with the idea of 'truth' being finite. I was told that everything could be explained in simpler terms. And that every question has got a simple and effective answer.

But later as I grew older and got in a position to think for myself, I found out that all of those childhood concepts happened to be just a shielding shell that’ll make us want to live our life without entangling ourselves in the web of consistent uncertainty that we don’t see coming at us. And so called 'truth' was rather flexible and definitely was infinite. It was flexible to an extent that all the false statements could be proven as if they were true. Only thing required was the majority, which could be attained in many ways. One of the ways is through shrewd politics, and the other one is through the realization that we often term as ethics. I mentioned politics first because it is a tool often misused by people whenever they’ve to declare something as truth - even if it was in-fact true. The politics add drama to the otherwise boring situation that might cause any fun loving-easygoing person to lose his/her interest in it faster than a lightening vanishing into a thin air.
Again we are programmed to give attention to the odd and irregularly dramatic news because those are the ones getting hit on the front page of every news. (How else do you all think Hollywood is able to keep its entertainment business alive by focusing on rather simple concept and extending it into an hour and a half movie which you HAVE to complete because you don't know how it is going to end?)

All we can do is helplessly hope for the 'real truth' to be discovered such that the unreal ones won't mutate our thoughts with their logical trapbox. I've referred them as logical because if you notice carefully you'll find most the unreal ones have logical appearance to them which is very deceiving and are quite hard to prove their falsehood. Especially if you believe in logic rather than open-ended thinking (for the sake of simplicity), it's bound to trap you and make you its victim who doesn't know how to think outside of the box. But the ones who actually think outside of the box won’t believe into something stupid like these right away. They’ll insist on gathering more proof behind the truthfulness of such statements, which might actually take longer than anyone is aware of. This might trigger the person coming up with simple answer to redecorate it by attaching sufficient bells and whistles so as to convince those who oppose their thoughts. And by the time they've finished decorating with all the flares and creating never before heard or seen footage, the concept will be so complicated that even the 'real truth' will seem as if they're absolutely fickle.

By that time we'd have lost the significance of simplicity in the quest of finding it.

Check The "Internet People" Out

If you've been watching the popular videos on the net over the time, especially on youtube, then you might know all the people that this video is talking about. Creator of this animated video has portrayed each and every one of them distinctly such that you won't miss to identify even with their brief on screen appearance. And best part is backing original soundtrack which is absolutely hilarious.

September 11, 2001 Tribute

(Photo courtesy: *Micky*)

Firefox Tweak - Speed it Up

We all know that Firefox is a great browser which beats its only competitor, Microsoft Internet Explorer, in many ways. Its primary features are bullet proof security, extensibility, and usability in general since it complies 100% with W3C standard - all of which seems to be seriously missing from its rival.

But lately I've been having difficulty using Firefox. The main reason being the browser taking unreasonably longer time to load even the simplest site - like vanilla Google.com (not even iGoogle). I guess most of you are facing the similar problem in the newer releases of Firefox (esp above v1.5). In case you are experiencing this I'd like to assure you that you're not alone. At first glance the problem seemed like it has to do either with the network outage, memory overload, or one of the gazillion unknown potential reasons that could be causing the faithful Firefox to become slow and pathetic. But luckily, after bit of an analysis, it is evident that it has got nothing to do with any of the above mentioned causes. And the good news is that it could easily be fixed by tweaking the configuration of the browser and overriding its one of the not so useful built-in restriction.

Note that the effect of the following method could only be witnessed by the users having broadband connection.

STEPS:
1) On your browser address bar type about:config which will take you to the configuration page of the browser displaying various parameter that browser loads during application startup.
2) There you have to find three different entries and change each of their values as indicated.

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true" by double clicking it
Set ""network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true" by double clicking it
Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 25 by double clicking the entry and entering number in the inputbox. This means it will make 25 requests at once. (This doesn't work in dial-up since such network has the limitation of handling only one request at a given time)

3) Create a new entry named ""nglayout.initialpaint.delay" by Rt. clicking anywhere on the body of browser and selecting New > Integer from the pop-up menu. Then set its value to "0". This is the amount of time browser waits before taking any action on received information.

4) Close the browser and restart it in order for the changes to take effect.

That's about it. Now your browser should be loading pages at a faster pace than before.

Happy Surfing!!!

Note: To those using IE, its highly recommended that you switch to Firefox. You can download this free application by following the link provided in the right column of this site in the section "Download Cool Tools"

Cincinnati Labor Day Fireworks 2006

This is a partial video footage which my friend and I managed to capture last year during this time of the year (Sep 3, 2006 to be specific). We watched the show from riverside of Newport, KY. Even though this video is incomplete it includes the ending fireworks sequence, which is a must see for anyone who haven't seen it before.



Following is the you tube user 5chw4r7z's video taken from a height that captured the beautiful waterfall type firework display which both of us missed in our shot.

Voki - Get The Interactive Avatar For Your Website

Hey its me once again coming to you with the finer things Web 2.0 have to offer. Today I've come up with a tool to make your social experience interactive. The site is called Voki.com which lets you create your avatar, aka 'Voki', that interacts with the visitors of your site by delivering your message to them. You can also send the personalized voki to your friends via e-mail.

The site lets you create your voki, which could be an anime figure (like mine), a classic figure resembling real life people, a cartoon, an animal, or simply a random character out of fiction. It even lets you tweak small details such as the color of its hair, its vitality and so on.

Another feature that I particularly liked about the site is that it lets you record the message, you intend to deliver through voki, in number of ways. You can either create your message by uploading your existing audio track stored on your computer, or recording the message in real time through your microphone attached to the computer, use the integrated Text to Speech utility, or even let the voki audio center call you (automated) and get your message recorded through your phone (which would be more convenient to some if they are creating voki for the person who is currently one the road...I guess). Jokes aside - recording via the phone feature is in fact an awesome idea that could have many potential applications especially by other net based companies.

There's more than one way to use voki. Already people have found out innovative usage for it. One RJ, Gary Craig, have used voki in his website to imitate Bill Clinton and deliver message in a hilarious way. There could be millions of use for this type of cool tool. Its your job to figure out.

Well, this is all I have for you right now. Be sure to tune in next time to get more insight on undiscovered tools, tips 'n tricks, and information on other interesting stuff that I come across while exploring the web.

Jamstudio : Create Your "Garage Band" Without The Band

Jamstudio is your destination on the Internet to create your own music, even if you don't have any knowledge on how to play musical instrument. The free version of this flash based application hosted on the site lets you experiment around with the various loops produced by basic instruments such as Drums, Acoustical Guitar, Electric Guitar, Bass Guitar, Piano and Electronic Synthesizer in order to create your composition. But the more interesting loops are available through the sound add-on, that is free for a time being, and is planned to be charged on a subscription basis in near future.


When you visit the site you'll be provided with the Help which will walk you through the entire application in 7 simple steps. Then you'll be set to create your masterpiece. The App lets you save your songs after you've registered (for Free) and gives you the option to share with your friends through e-mail.

...So Rock On!!!

You can download the songs I created with Jamstudio by clicking on the following links. Just to clear the confusion - The site doesn't give you the option of exporting your creation in MP3. I used the application that came with my soundcard to capture the music that was being played back from the Jamstudio and saved it as MP3 manually.

Zombie Clone
Sweetest Melody

Labor Day 2007 Fireworks in Cincinnati

Here are the pictures I shot during the 31st Anniversary of WEBN fireworks that was held yesterday in Cincinnati on the banks of Ohio River. I've been attending this event for past 3 years. Each year to get different perspective, I've been going to the different location from where you can view this spectacular half an hour display organized by WEBN, the Rock Station of Cincinnati. This year I went to Eden Park, located on the top of the hill from where you can get a real nice view of Newport, KY, and Downtown Cincinnati separated by Ohio River. I admit that it can't beat the sensation one gets from watching the fireworks from the river bank itself (which I did last year), but there's no way I could've captured the entire firework as it happened if I was so close to the scene. And the best part is that I didn't have to waste any time on traffic after the show was over. Last year it took about 2 hours just to get home directly from the place of event (via driving route of 15 minutes in normal condition). Besides, I also avoided getting temporarily deaf due to the loud sound produced by the explosion.

So taking consideration of all these things I'd say yesterday's location is definitely worth visiting again.



External Links:

The Kentucky Post: Word of mouth (and fireworks) launched Riverfest
The Enquirer: Cincinnati fireworks going global
WEBN Rock Station
Cincinnati Bell