kiran’s pensieve

So many things to occupy time, so little time for them to occupy.

I was reminded recently by *someone* that I barely post here at all. Now, since, it seems, more people are visiting, I guess I need to shape up and post something regularly. And since Battlestar Galactica is on the dreaded pre-finale 6-9 month hiatus, I’ll have to find other things to waste the precious few hours of leisure at my disposal any given week.

Here’s an interesting interview I came across with author Salman Rushdie

For the other geeks among us, you might find PC World’s list of the Top 50 Tech Visionaries inspiring.

Here, you can listen to an audio version of a Q&A between Stephen Colbert, Steve Carrell and Ann Hathaway (listen to the audio online by clicking on the link in the middle there).

Lastly, but definitely not leastly, here’s a tribute to the funniest guy who ever lived who died this past weekend, George Carlin. The world was funnier with ya, George, we’ll miss your sick, twisted, brilliant brain. Here he is, in his own words…

Journalist Mark Glaser has an article up on the pbs.org MediaShift blog about the changing face of media in the 21st century. He talks about how both traditional media and new media must learn from each other, and merge the best practices. I like the point he makes about the techno-genie… once it’s out of the bottle, no one can put it back in. We’ve seen the same phenomena with all technological breakthroughs: TV, radio, Film, Nuclear weapons, cell phones, you name it.

No longer do people rely on TV Guide to program their lives around their favorite TV shows. Now they can use a digital video recorder or watch shows on-demand online and fit their TV watching into their lives. The people are taking control and watching, and listening to what they want when they want — and on the devices they want. And that goes for TV as well as radio and audio, with podcasts allowing people to listen on their own time and fast-forward or rewind shows at will.

What do we gain? We get more control of our lives and our media experience and we are no longer slaves to programmers. But what do we lose? We are losing shared experiences, where we all watch the same shows at the same time, or watch the same sporting events together. And our “water cooler” talk has a new etiquette, where we must tell people not to ruin our favorite shows because we’re taping it to watch later!

The Colbert Report has certainly made its influence. Like all intelligent beings, the Internet can also laugh at itself…. check these out:

“Go Outside. Membership is Free.” - www.getafirstlife.com

“Aren’t you tired of all of those people out there trying to grab all of these fake friends online? It’s all about how many people can I pretend to be friends with to make myself feel better. Welcome to a better way…” - snubster.com

“Helping you find where other people aren’t.” - www.isolatr.com

“There comes a time when a student must look beyond the face of things.” - www.assbook.com

“Poking fun at web 2.0 named websites.” - rdiculous.com

“Sites organized in diabolical order.” - yankovic.org

Thanks to Jake Coyle (AP).

This is hilarious!

What I don’t understand about all these news stories that talk so mysteriously about these websites that have highly suspicious videos from wankers of all sorts, is how these people are so untraceable. Any geeque worth her RAM knows how easily websites and emails can be tracked down to ISP, and, most of the time, to the very host computer that is originating the materials. Then how come all these websites with all this highly volatile stuff are evading all those pimply hackers hired by the planet’s revered intelligentsia?