Arbit Scratchpad

The Sound Demon (not daemon) on Linux I was playing a bengali song on my PC - the rich silky voice of Lopamudra Mitra on XMMS ... I had built and installed MPlayer some days back. I thought of just starting a video simultaneously. As soon I did the following : mplayer /win1/movies/The\ Matrix/Part1.DAT Once or twice the video screen came up and then disappeared failing on some count or the other All the codecs are in place and mplayer install was successful and yet it does not work. Then the screen came up and remained blank - it neither played video nor audio. But the XMMS output changed to a strange voice of some man (remember it was playing a female voice a few minutes back) Then I stopped mplayer and again started and the audio output became even more morphed like the voice of some ghost. I closed and restarted XMMS but the audio remains like an old ghost/demon - thus came the audio ghost into my system. CAN YOU DECIPHER THE FOLLOWING OUTPUT OF MPlayer : Most ...

WHO AM I - WHERE ARE WE ? There are a few things that hinder the progress of an individual, a relation, a group, a community, a religion and even a nation. Ego - The all powerful yet tremendously deceptive 'I' ... USA for the collective 'I' and its blatant racism and human atrocities Arrogance - The BJP's fall this hustings is one great example. Selfishness/Isolation - The frog in a well attitude - as I realize everyday of my monotonous, routine life ... Languor - getting lazy to take on something head on - postponing things indefinitely. Attitude - Very difficult to keep up the right attitude all the time - the wrong attiude can trigger a downfall. Jealousy/Narrowmindedness - Can harm your interaction with people and always make you crave for more. And as usual the other aspects of Anger, Desire ... are the catalysts on the path to doom. The areas are greying out becoming all very mixed up - people care only for money. Those who have it can crea...

U-TURN PUTS MANMOHAN IN HOT-SEAT. Manmohan Singh, the erudite Oxford-educated economist who started the liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991 is the prime minister designate. Great news for the country as a whole. Sonia's gesture to opt out of PM's post is appreciable at best. Though rumours are Kalam may have had adviced or inquired about her dual nationality status though the prez office is denying it. Also the fear of assassinations etc. Shows the lady is no less shrewd (may have been advised well by her aides) - she has prepared Congress for the next polls and also tried to settle some old wounds - remember Operation Bluestar - and the slaughter of Sikhs by the congress party after Indira Gandhi's assassination. Anyway Sushma Swaraj's gimmicks were in bad taste. Vajpayee has decided to opt out of Leader of opposition post - he is the cornerstone of BJP's popularity - will his move push the party into oblivion ? Where does this leave the BJP ?...

THE GREAT INDIAN SHAME The election results have been ominous for the nation and the kind of coalition that is expected to come in is as someone put it 'a bunch of contradictions' - the left parties and congress coming together just to share power - power corrupts - absolute power corrupts absolutely. Imagine the kind of powers we are investing into the hands of a foreigner who refused to become an Indian for the first 17 years of her stay in India prefering to instead stay an italian. The following excerpts are from S Gurumurthy's article that appeared in Times of India : �"What is wrong if she is the Prime Minister," is an argument that comes not from the ordinary people of India, but from the educated Indian. This comes from the Chidambarams and from the Rajdeeep Sardesais of this country; this comes from editorial writers sitting in cities. So let us analyse this issue with all its implications for a country like India, which has an unbroken civilis...

iTunes I have been trying iTunes 4.2 for the past week or so - its going to replace Winamp on my dektop no doubts; the music quality is great and also the slick and enhanced looks, features - Winamp looks too flashy/artificial and is a definite memory hog in front of iTunes - iTunes 4.5 was released by Apple yesterday ... Go check out the new features for yourself !