I want to be ambidextrous

Why not? I have two hands, barely use one of them. The instances where I use both hands are ones I can count on my fingers (which, incidentally, is one of those instances): holding a plate/tray, tying my shoelaces (which a friend here insists I am doing all wrong), typing, riding my bike, flipping open an eppendorf tube in lab while pipetting stuff in or out.

My poor little left hand must surely be resentful of all the work the right hand gets to do. After all, it has the same muscles and is fully capable of the same sort of work the rightie does. The idea is to start slow and gentle - brushing teeth, opening doors, turning knobs - before graduating to attempt writing with the left. Practice, of course, is the key.

Google+ and much ado about nothing

Google recently unveiled its own version of facebook, called Google plus. News organizations, always on the lookout for something sensational, touted this as the new facebook with better privacy options. As with all of its previous products, Google made this one invite-only. In any case, I have no interest whatsoever in ever using this newfangled contraption. Maintaining one social network is hard enough for me; I have no appetite or patience for another. In fact, I am seriously considering completely deleting everything on my facebook and leaving it for good. Even though I don't even use it that much, it is a huge distraction and a time sink. Maybe returning to email and phone will be good.

Google's new product raises a few questions, however. Why this irrepressible urge to one-up the other guy? Why are these tech companies in perpetual race against one other? I understand that innovation is key to growth (and ultimately profits), but sometimes you have to recognize a lost cause and concede. Apple has got the personal music player market pretty well covered, and Microsoft had to learn it the hard way. Google has so perfected the art of online search that it is foolish to spend money in R&D to come up with newer engines (I'm looking at you Bing). Similarly, facebook has a virtual monopoly on social networking in the cloud (600 million users and counting). Any new product designed to rival it has a very high chance of failing spectacularly.

But but isn't facebook the new myspace? Didn't myspace suffer a similar sad demise? Well, yes and no. Myspace arrived at a time when net users were still confused about their needs. It failed to offer complete protection against fake profiles and predatory behavior. It is not like facebook is much better in that regard, but facebook arrived with a sense of purpose. Its exclusivity (remember when you needed to have a college email address AND have someone from inside the network approve you to join? If you can't, you are too young) was a big part of its appeal. People trust it enough to post pictures of their lives and spend time searching for high school classmates, birth mothers and old flames. Just like youtube will never be dislodged from its perch, facebook is here to stay. Whether we like it or not.

Google plus, like its confused predecessor Google Wave, will be a minor player in netdom. Like the old bard said, much ado about nothing. More like google minus.

On the road - 10: I rode in a car on the road for a road trip

Jack Kerouac's On the road is one of my favorite books of all time. The basic premise of the novel is that a thinly fictionalized version of Kerouac and his merry band of lovable misfits romp around the continental United States, soaking in the American-ness of everything on their long drives. More than anything, the book is about the atmosphere and manic energy of these youthful people for whom the world is endless and possibilities infinite.

Many a times, I too have fantasized about going on a super long road trip with friends. The chief motivation behind such a project is not necessarily the places we could visit, but more about the act of driving itself. There is something about the idea of driving 8-9 hours in a stretch with a few friends - the music you play and sing along to, the inside jokes that are relevant only for the duration of the drive, the vistas that zoom by at enormous speeds and so on.

So when an old high school friend of mine from Minnesota (let's call him GW) said he was going to be in Cupertino for a couple days, I grabbed the opportunity with all four limbs. I recruited another friend (let's call him BS) for the project.

We came up with a pretty simple three-day plan: leave LA Saturday morning, see GW in San Jose that afternoon and spend the night at my aunt's house. For Sunday, we wanted to spend a couple quality hours taking pictures of the scenery in San Francisco, before heading off to Sacramento for the night. That way we would leave Sactown on Monday morning and be back in LA at a reasonable hour.

All in all, this ended up being a very entertaining and thoroughly satisfying 1290 miles.

We left LA at 7 in the morning after loading up our friendly bratmobile:

The bratmobile resting on the 5 freeway[pic by me]

The trainwreck ends

Hoo boy. The thing that captivated us so mightily for much of last week is finally and mercifully coming to an end. Hopefully. Alexandra Wallace, youtube uploader extraordinaire has issued a very contrite sounding comprehensive statement declaring that she will no longer be attending the university, UCLA's student newspaper Daily Bruin reports.

The exit is to the left of the stage, my friend. Interestingly, she calls the disastrous video a humorous attempt. A humorous attempt at what, exactly? If that was funny, I guess I spent 21 years of my life completely in the dark about the meaning of that good word. Though let me add (as emphatically I can) that the fact she got death threats is distinctly not cool. At all. People who did this are morons. And they need help.

Great to know the tireless truthseekers and muckrakers at the Bruin are spending their finals time covering this hot topic.

That will be all. Too much has been made of this issue (I am guilty of this as well - after all, it does garner a ton of hits for my blog), but it's time to focus on more meaningful things in life. Like college hoops. Or spring break.

And let us also do all that we can to help the victims in Japan. Donate!

The antithesis of music

According to facebook, a total of 1,900,411 people have shared it. The event based on it has 291,277 confirmed attending guests. Its youtube view count is a staggering 9,568,832. And this is the official version alone. There are countless other clones cluttering up youtube.

People have reported its strangely addicting qualities. Its effects, although not fully understood now (science may have to advance another hundred years before we can examine this question), are may very well rip a giant hole in the space-time continuum. 



"It" is a dungpile masquerading as a bona fide song. Say Hello (or more accurately, Boooo) to Rebecca Black's "Friday".

My roommate (and my fellow comic strip artist over at On Bogosity,our webcomic) is a gentle soul and tried to rationalize her journey into the abyss of horror as a smart parody of Justin Bieber and other teen singers. Quit it dude. Even you have the full license to unleash your anger at this travesty of everything that is pleasant on this good earth.

Her work is such a monumental atrocity to our hearing faculties that I wouldn't be surprised if, a decade from now, the toddlers of today decide to become ENT doctors just so they can fix the incurable damage caused by it.


Plug your ears with cotton and be ready to take the plunge:


"Where is your music video, eh ace? After all, you are so eager to bash her", one might say. But you see mi amiga/o, that's the point. I am prudent enough to realize my limitations. I wish well for my fellow human beings, sojourners on this bewildering journey we call life. Which is why the world will never hear me record anything of any kind. So long.

And thus descended the trolls

In his farewell speech, President Eisenhower spoke of a military-industrial complex, a shapeless entity that he thought would come to dominate the political field in coming years. I am going to talk about a controversy complex, a vibrant, often creative side industry that merrily springs up around a major controversy, and disappears almost immediately afterwords - like an ephemeral moment of joy.

Like vultures feasting on a carcass, trolls, hackers, and general internet lowlifes have gleefully descended on the facebook page of our dear chancellor. Taking full advantage of the anarchy and reigning chaos, these greedy opportunists have swamped the wall with senseless rants, (hopefully) intentional bad grammar, and quasi-existential non sequiturs.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold the finest specimen, the sultan of trolldom:

At least he is honest about his, ahem, movie choices

In such a perfidious and noxious environment, can the Emperor Palpatine stay behind?

Come to the dark side

And very recently, some fellow called Charles Edward Shumar IV (and nowwwwww presenting, his royal highness) has been posting this verbose message on every single post: ( I suspect he is using a bot)

Oh for the days when I went to UCLA and cell phones were just a tech-geek's fevered dream. Now, is there any chance at all Ms. Wallace knew what she was doing and is angling to get a reality show? Or an invite from Charlie Sheen to be one of his new "goddesses" over at Sober Valley Lodge?

Well played, "entrepreneurs" of this dubious side industry.

My winter break project: start a facebook meme

So apparently I am the last person in the whole universe (or the multitude of universes, if Stephen Hawking's theory of multiverses is to be believed) to find out that facebookers are changing their profile pictures to cartoon characters to relieve childhood memories and support the fight against child violence.

Now don't get me wrong. I am wholly against child violence (I mean we all are, right?). But how the hell does copying and pasting this status (and changing your profile picture) help fight against child violence?

Is facebook donating a dollar every time a user changes his/her profile picture to a charity? Are the users joining volunteer shelters? No and no. So the posting of new profile pictures is nothing but a clever meme (not unlike the cryptic breast cancer awareness status updates that crowded facebook a few months ago).

Again, I have nothing against synchronized changes in profile pictures. I actually kinda like looking at some of these cartoon characters because they do indeed remind me of my childhood. But associating it with a cause of some sorts is a cheap shot. It trivializes the cause it is supposedly fighting for.

Take the profile picture change as what it is : a clever meme. Don't try to dilute serious causes by coupling them with superficial events.

Facebook friendship pages do more good than harm

Unless you have been living in a cave or have been hibernating, you know by know that uber-network Facebook introduced a new feature called friendship page. Since it is possible that you may have been living in a cave, I will grudgingly describe what this feature is.

It allows users to track their friendship back in time by collecting all wall posts, comments, pictures they shared with their friends in one convenient spot. For example, say I want to explore how Citizen Lafayette and I got started. I would go to his profile page, and click on "Citizen and you". This will take me to a page with a picture of both of us (facebook chooses this picture) that supposedly symbolizes our friendship. On this page, I can see all our wall-to-wall, pictures we are tagged in together, events we have attended together, and status comments we have made on each others' profiles.

Pretty nifty, right? I think so. I like it especially because I met a lot of my close friends in my freshman year. So it is very exciting (and a bit cringe-inducing, to be honest) to go back in time and see some of the very initial posts we made to get to know each other better.

Of course, this can also make facebook stalking a lot lot easier (and perhaps also give it official approval) because now you can track the friendships of other people. Curious how Sally ended up with a guy like Bill? Click away and you will know how klutzy Bill wooed Sally!

But I am a pretty utilitarian guy, and facebook friendship clearly adds more good to the society than bad. And for that, I am proud to affix the OFFICIAL UG SEAL OF APPROVAL on facebook friendship pages. From now on, we will sporadically approve products/concepts we clearly like.