Don’t buy Dell laptops, really

This comes from someone who bought a Dell laptop (Inspiron 14R N4010) about two years ago. I totally regret buying Dell laptop right now. The hardware starts sucking once you pass the first year mark. The battery got spoilt more than a year ago and recently, the laptop started overheating once I start using the laptop for more than 10 minutes.

The only part that I am relatively satisfactory about Dell is that most components work out of the box with Ubuntu. Initially, I had problems with WiFi drivers in 10.04 and 10.10, but luckily those were sorted once in 11.04 onwards.

However, I still have not gotten my Bluetooth working. Actually, I don’t even remember being able to use Bluetooth in Ubuntu. I am not sure whether it is Dell hardware to be blamed or the Linux kernels but I’ll blame both of them just to be safe.

Anyway, I have developed an immense dislike towards Dell hardware. Add to the fact that I broke my laptop screen last year and it took more than three weeks to get it replaced thanks to the awesome customer support at Dell. And one other thing: One of my friends b0rked his laptop because it ended up overheating to such an extent that BIOS did not even let the computer boot up and I totally don’t want to end up like him.

I know Linux kernels in Ubuntu took a drastic hit in power management since 10.10 onwards, but it still doesn’t mean the batteries can get spoilt to such an extent that it can barely hold power for more than 5 minutes or so. Because of this, my laptop has been effectively reduced to being a mere portable desktop, having to plug in to a power socket if I ever intend to do anything useful or productive.

And, as if the spoilt battery is not enough, now the cooling fans are blazing at full speed for most part of the time. It barely slows down and has been very annoying and worrying at the same time. I even got myself an laptop cooling pad but it doesn’t really help the case. And, don’t tell me it was Unity’s fault for this overheating. The same happens when I am using Unity, GNOME or even Unity-2D. Lubuntu has been somewhat gentler compared to the rest but I don’t like the bluish feel of Lubuntu. KDE has been somewhat of a compromise between looks and hardware constraints and I have been using it for quite some time now. Though I don’t really like the looks of Qt apps in KDE and I would really like the looks of Gtk apps in GNOME or Unity.

What were we talking about again? Ah, yes. Dell hardware is pathetic. I am looking forward to getting myself a new laptop as soon as possible. Looking at the alternatives, it looks like I’ll get myself a Thinkpad.

That win by Manchester City

Warning: Football nonsense by a relative newbie (much less a soccer geek). If you don’t like Football or don’t want to involve yourself in some anti fanboyism, then this post is not for you.

Occasionally, I get an urge to vent my emotions. Regarding a vast range of topics from soccer, academics, open source software, politics to religion, technology, scientific discoveries, etc. But, more often that not, I end up not conveying what I feel. Not this time.

Just some context: this is mainly focused around the EPL match between Manchester City and QPR.

When Zaboleta scored the first goal, you could feel the animosity in the entire stadium.

When Lescott made an error with his header that led to QPR’s first goal, you could see the horror in his face.

When QPR scored the second goal, you could see the tears running down the cheeks of numerous fans.

When time was fast ticking down, you could see several fans praying for a miracle.

When Dzeko headed in the stoppage time equalizer, the fans were still unconvinced they could win the game and the title. But, that goal did instill a slight hope in the hearts of many.

But, when Aguero scored the winner, the whole stadium erupted in joy. Joe Hart was running circles. Mancini was jumping in joy. Aguero himself was running wild. They couldn’t hide the emotions that was in them. They somehow managed to clinch victory from the jaws of defeat. It almost felt impossible to have had happened. “How did that even happen?!”, I wondered.

The crowd at Etihad stadium showed what it meant to them, what the title win for Man City was to them. They could not hide their passion for the club.

Mind you, I am only a Manchester City follower and not an ardent fan of the club. Not much of a reason to like it. Just silly reasons like the anti depressing colour of their shirts and the fact that Tevez joined Manchester City from Man United a couple of years ago. I was saddened when Tevez lost his mind and went on an exile. He was such a wonderful player and it didn’t feel right that he committed such stupid acts.

I don’t know why some of the Man Utd fans are brushing off this title loss. Yes, it was won merely just on goal difference, but Man City did win both the games against Man Utd, with a pretty awesome aggregate of 7-1.

Barely a month ago, Man Utd were comfortably placed with a lead of 8 points at the top of the table. It was clearly Man Utd’s title to lose and no one would know whether they choked or became too cocky. In any case, this title loss, regardless of whether it was on goal difference or not, will serve as a much needed reality check to Man Utd.

This is not one of those senseless posts by a crazy football fan. I, for once, think sports should not be compared to a battle of sorts and it hurts me when people start using abusive language when things go out of hand. Regardless of how passionate you are towards your favourite club, I don’t think it helps your case when you go out and trash talk other clubs.

And, that brings me to one other point. Yes, Man City spent over a billion pounds for a period of four years to win this title. So what? Most of you were mocking when it didn’t win the title even after spending so much of money and now that it did win, you have just changed your stance. Choose one and try to stick with it.

Just to finish off, I am very much happy that Man City won the EPL. Almost all of us will agree that a new champion is only good for the league and hopefully, this competition carries onto the future leagues as well.

Say ‘No’ to black money

I know it has been a while since I last updated my blog. I have been pretty busy lately and it doesn’t look like it is going to get any better anytime soon.But, anyway, I have some good news to share. I am proud to tell you that I have become a part of an ongoing battle against corruption in India. My overall contribution to the entire issue may be minuscule at this point but I doubt it is going to be short of being significant in the near future.Currently, I have been made an admin of this Facebook group, which is working towards bringing back all of the black money suspected to be secretly stashed in Swiss banks by several corrupted Indian politicians and other big shots. Swiss banks are notoriously known for being highly secure and confidential about its beneficiaries and it has been suspected that at least a trillion dollars worth of black money is deposited in these banks. So, the main motive of the above-mentioned Facebook group is to bring back black money back to India to benefit the poor and the needy Indian citizens. To achieve that, the group needs a lot more support than what it currently does and apparently, every movement  grows one person at a time and it shall hopefully start with you now.

If you would like to lend your support to the issue in hand, you can do so by ‘liking’ this Facebook page.
Alternatively, for people who are more into interaction and such, you can join the Facebook group and continue to show your support and encouragement. I assure you the community is largely amiable and very well mannered. For your relief, the group is well policed and strictly maintained to ensure safety and security for the larger audience, which includes but not limited to children below the age of 18.

Hope you will enjoy your time as part of the thriving community.

Knocking out,
Joker-Dino!

Username – explained!

Joker-Dino
As you all know by now, my username is Joker-Dino. And many of you would have wondered what is the significance of the username or how is it related to me. So, I thought why not I should try to explain that significance with my readers. This is particularly not common about the general blogger community, who either (usually) not have any relevance to their username or tend not to explain that relevance. Hence, I decided I should try to do something different and will happily share with you the story (or whatever you want to call it as). This is luckily not very long but rather simple to comprehend and hopefully you will be able to relate it well. You could split my username to two parts, namely Joker and Dino. Here goes the explanation:

Joker is related to Barney Stinson – a fictional character played by Neil Patrick Harris in the famous sitcom How I met your mother, which apparently has just managed to drag themselves into a pitiful case of boredom and immense lack of creativity through the production of many more seasons, which just didn’t suit well with their partisans of initial couple of seasons. As many of you would have been familiar, Barney Stinson is a comedian of all sorts and predictably, I chose to represent him through the ‘joker’.

Dino, on the other hand, is about Barney the purple dinosaur, apparently is one of the children’s favourite cartoon character (though I have no idea why).If you already didn’t know about this, my name (you can check out my profile!) sounds strikingly similar to Barney. Unsurprisingly, I decided to honour (!) those great fictional characters and I thought my username would be the best possible way to achieve that. Hence my username!

This might not be the best post I ever wrote, but this could fill up the void piling up in my blog. Until then!

Knocking out,
Joker-Dino!

Under a red moon

Under a jet stream of cold-air rather. I am so tired of sitting directly under an air-conditioner (stylishly shortened as air-con in the part of the world where I currently live). Lately, the air-con is totally stretching my patience and decreases my ability to last long spells of such cold-blooded torture. I am starting to hate the whole idea of having an air-con in the rooms. This might sound ironic to people who believe that the air-con helps to keep the temperature low in rooms, which are usually hot.To be frank, I never hated the air-con and actually thought it to be a noble idea and a boon to people living in the equatorial areas. Until recently. Day after day, I am getting more vulnerable to normal and silly issues like common cold and running noses. Confirming my fears, the direct contact with the cold breeze from the air-con seem to have a skin-thwarting and nerve-wrecking effect on my body. A quick Google search regarding the case leads me to numerous scientific articles stating that extended exposure to cold and dry air from air-con does indeed reduce immunity to microbes, justifying my hatred towards air-cons.What would work fine with me is to keep the air-con temperature slightly lower than the outside temperature. This is more reasonable than to lower the air-con temperature to the extreme low temperature possible. It is, after all, healthier and energy-efficient, helping to conserve energy and indirectly, help in keeping our mother Earth’s atmosphere greener.

Knocking out,
Joker-Dino!

Ambiguity

Vagueness. Lack of clarity in the work that the reader is unable to understand the intended message of that particular work. One should not confuse vagueness with ambiguity because ambiguity simply means there are more than one way of understanding the idea, which cannot be said of vagueness.Actually, ambiguity opens a whole world of ways to interpret literary works. It lets the writer of that literature work to escape through the slightest of ways if in case his literary work is in the midst of controversies. This,unfortunately, has been the case in the recent times and hence, it becomes necessary to realize the actual potential and need to use this well-known and rather, well-utilized weapon of the writers.It may not be the best way to present someone’s idea as there is a strong possibility of misinterpretation of the actual core idea. Usually, a writer would not indulge in ambiguity if he wants to strongly convince his readers. In such circumstances, the writer would generally spend time to remove or clarify all of his/her ambiguous thoughts and ideas. But, if the writer wants the readers to think creatively and out of the box or to fall out of the normal customs and traditions, ambiguity would easily qualify as the top choice as it is the easiest and the most effective literary feature to be executed to achieve the above-mentioned purpose.So, if you don’t want to convey your meaning openly or are concerned about the reaction it might possibly result in, you can decorate your message with a  bit of ambiguity and hopefully, you can escape the feared trap.

It is open to your creativity and imagination on why on earth am I talking about ambiguity but I have my own explanations to support my stance. Many a times than not, when I am criticizing someone (usually a higher authority), I tend to use my rather ambiguous arguments (they aren’t really pre-determined) to good effect and luckily, escape from the grave danger of rather fearsome consequences for challenging the authority. One should understand the circumstances and should decide whether they should have to be ambiguous or not, because in this world, ambiguity is no longer frowned upon!

And, by the way, it is up to you to decide whether this post is vague or ambiguous!

Knocking-out,
Joker-Dino!

That one term – Procrastination

Procrastination. One thing no one would like to have. Or at least wish not to have. It is something more than just slacking around and wasting your time doing nothing. I believe it is way deeper than that and all we know so far is just simply superficial. This is because, on a closer examination, no one would ever want to intentionally waste his time with less or no productivity at all. It might be the circumstances, or the distractions you might think. Using peculiar terms dealing with personality, the person’s sociology and psychology has a good deal in determining his chance of not using his time productively. Through productive usage of time, I try to focus on performing activities which supposedly occupy the highest priority of that person.On an ever-shrinking world, where time efficiency is highly guarded and hailed in all parts of the world, understanding human nature becomes an important necessity to great commercial successes of various firms. One need not have to do extensive research to understand that part! So, I suggest a great way to deal with procrastination (or whatever word you want to refer to it, if you are uncomfortable calling it that way as you realize it morally pricks you for letting yourself down real bad), is to understand your own ambitions, interests and try to spend some precious little time with your inner self. If you can’t work yourself out, I doubt no one ever will be able to. For, there is no other way to compete with the outside world, if you can’t compete with yourself.

Knocking out,

Joker-Dino!