Nimish Batra, The Life and Times of

For the past few days, I’ve been going all-out ballistic on song repeat (with mild nodding and humming in the office) to Sing by Travis from the album The Invisible Band (2001). Nigel Godrich was involved.

Everyone on twitter listening to me, or pretending to, is annoyed by ’sing, sing, sing’ – kids, if you don’t like it, unfollow. I read everything you tweet (and I complain only when people go potty mouthed – and I unfollow when I’m tired.)

I want to write a very long essay about how the song Sing is the bestest rockest song ever in forever and is so beautiful and moving that I think it would have solved all of the world’s problems if only we had heard it on song repeat and would cure all the evil present in the world by simple repitition, but… I’m tired, and I’m not in 2001 anymore. And… and… er… AND!!

Sing, sing, sing…

10:19 pm September 11th, 2009 | Category: Music, Rant | Comments (2)

In order to write Professionally, I suggest you choose carefully a word processor, a font and a certain size that pleases your eye. 

Wordpad, Tahoma, Size 10 does very nicely on a vanilla Windows installation.

Some people suggest that you should always start from the middle, slowly developing the start and the end.

I, however, prefer the traditional approach – start from the beginning.

Therefore, now write a capital P. 

Sit back and admire what you have just created – the juxtaposition of a black mark on a white background – such powerful symbolism as you had never seen before – the majesty of this P…

Once you’re done with admiring your own creation, you can move on to r. Since it follows the beginning, it is vital that you maintain your flow. Whoever is going to read this piece must not be led to believe that some strange amateur had typed it all out in a furious session of all-arms-all-legs flying on the keyboard, but instead, a thoughtful person had calmly stroked it out – well planned and well executed.

Quickly move on to the o, lest you lose the moment. But not too quickly. “Haste makes waste,” and all that jazz.

And then, it’s time to strike the f key. Now you will be feeling yourself in the zone. And it’ll be coming easily to you. That’s good.

Because now you will hit e. The commonest alphabet in the English language comes at almost the one-third of the distance of our journey.

It is a good time to take a small break and bask in the glory of your work. Look at the crisp, elegant styling to each letter of the font you chose. Appreciate the boldness of each letter that stands on the page – only these five stand between an empty page devoid of meaning and a page that has a purpose in life!

Also, you must realise that you have done fantastically well! Amazingly, exceedingly well! You have successfully avoided the most common of the mistakes people have made since time immemorial while writing Professionally, and that is to add two fs to the word! 

Look at your handiwork. 

The f is followed by an e, and not another f – well done.

9:52 am September 1st, 2009 | Category: Nimish, annoying, creative | Comments (3)

Assume I posted something here. Just to keep going.

I’ll assume someone commented.

We’ll both assume that a constructive dialogue occured and we added value to the world.

How nice.

9:50 pm July 26th, 2009 | Category: Life, Rant, this should've been a webcomic, tired | Comments (5)

One of my colleagues had invited me to his wedding – an event, which through unfortunate circumstances (and mostly my extreme stupidity) I did not attend.

So, I am, a bit awkwardly, hoping that he’ll forgive this transgression of mine after reading this story.

I’m submitting the hand written draft to him as a sort of shaky apology (and cheap) cost-effective) apology…

I’m sure you wanted to know the real story of the The Tinman from “The Wizard Of Oz”…

11:50pm; 21-June-2009

Epic Slander

(or “Ow my hand hurts from writing on paper after almost a year”)

“Let me tell you a real story!” said drunk Stan. The drunkest man in all of Perth – never short of a fantastic tale – all in hope of some good ale – came round to our table (again uninvited) upon hearing stories from our grad school days getting louder as we got drunker.

Maybe it’s just my memory. But old Stan seemed more lost than usual.

He opened another bottle and began telling us about “The Tinman” from “The Wizard Of Oz.” He said that in that story, only two characters mattered – Dorothy and the Tinman.

“D, you see,” began the old abbreviator, “was a homely girl come to study on a student exchange program. That’s how she met TM.”

We were all quiet and attentive. Vodka does that to archaeologists.

“Now our TM here had a heard made of Tin and Neodymium-magnetic crap and and all – since age of two. The bugger always had a constant heartbeat and was easily the stand-out athlete – at leastin his class – but he always complained that he never could truly feel emotions.”

‘Here we go,’ we rolled our eyes. Another story of unrequited love was to come upon us. As if we hadn’t had enough of those today.

He continued, “The minute he laid eyes on her, he thought, ‘She’s the one – she can complete me.’ ” He spat, “Nasty guy. Their courtship was swift in its progression – they had that spark, that chemistry.”

A tear appeared on his cheek. “One day, she told him she wanted nothing more in life, that she had given him her heart. That night, an ambulance came to their apartment on campus – when they reached the hospital, she was on life support. No one knows quite why, but the doctor said something about body chemistry.

“After a few days, her parents took her off life support. They asked that as a heart-donor, her last wishes be carried out. We felt on campus it was fitting that old Tinman was the recipient. It was quite a shock a few days later that he was arrested for murdering the poor girl. His diary revealed his sick plot.”

Tears were flowing into the bottle he was now draining. “I guess he never understood the irony of a ‘D’ tattoo he got at age 10 on his chest,” he said, crying and he fell down.

The paramedics said that he died of a cardiac arrest. The fellows say he died of a broken heart.
I think that the green ‘D’ on his chest says that the Tinman finally felt something…

4:29 pm July 16th, 2009 | Category: Life, Rant, Sci Fi, Story, original | Comments (1)

I just read my last post… It’s completely incoherent.

Sorry about that.

To make up for it, here’s something everyone should go through. Hugh MacLeod’s GapingVoid - extracts from his book.

Enjoy.

“If you can’t write something good, link to something good.”

9:29 am July 12th, 2009 | Category: Life, creativity | Leave a comment

I’m sitting on a mattress on the floor in a rather small room with fluorescent orange walls, where minutes ago the 600decibel buzzer of my flatmate’s semi-auto washing machine (which I henceforth refuse to use, having not used it earlier and having now experienced the buzzer) has caused me to wonder whether it’s worth it or not.

I’ve had a project the likes of which I didn’t think I’d see. My skill level didn’t exactly jump to where I’d hoped it would be, and the technology domain (while interesting and very useful) isn’t the one I looked at with any kind of interest, ever. So much grunt work was needed that there was little time to explore. Only now do I have the luxury to look around.

I slept after writing this and resumed approximately 24 hours later…

I have a quote for you. Imagine Popeye wakes up one day to find that Bluto moved to Metropolis to assist Lex Luthor. What would Popeye say to that?

I just don’t know what to anchor my life around…

It’s been that kind of a time last couple of weeks. Sardonically making the worst possible jokes (absolute cringeworthy mayhem – my friends plan to have me deported to France soon) and trying to clear up my personal tasks list – insanely long queue that.

I’d almost stopped reading books, quizzing, footballing, (obviously) blogging, and even tweeting for a while. Now I need to restart everything in that department as well.

I think I need a vacation away from everything I have built up… a small one, but a no pressure week (or month) away from most things I do?

Fingers crossed and so on and so forth.

12:28 am July 5th, 2009 | Category: Life, Nimish, Rant | Comments (1)

1. Procrastination will kill you.
   1. It may be due to a fear of the unknown
   2. Or maybe because of a fear of failure/demotivation
   3. Laziness/lack of positive motivation
2. Indecisiveness is a friend of procrastination
3. Making hasty decisions will kill you
   1. in Soviet Russia, you lay haste to waste.

Anywhu. Lessons from house search.

1. Brokers are avoidable middlemen.
2. Everyone in the process has money on their mind.
3. Never take people on their word, unless you’ve had chance to test them before.
4. A good roommate in a crummy room is better than a crummy roommate in a good room. But a good roommate in a good room is best.
   1. Corollary: A random roommate in a good room is a more selling USP than a good roommate in a crummy room.
5. If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.
6. If at first you don’t succeed, you should learn to pack things both faster and more compactly.
7. Make sure all shiftings are planned about a week in advance and you have a playbook. It helps.
8. Two people during moving > one person.
9. Always have decent transport arranged for at least an hour before departure.
10. A good night’s sleep is both necessary and missing until everything is done.
11. Everything is done only after everything is done.

That’s that then… see you later with more gory details…

12:07 am June 4th, 2009 | Category: Life, Nimish, Rant, bangalore, news | Comments (3)

Sorry for all this delay in posting another installment of my latest meanderings into deep but charted waters of life…

But there has been some turmoil, including but not limited to

• Unforeseen issues in the project
• My roommate quitting the company to pursue an MBA
• As a consequence I’m leaving this current apartment on Sunday after the month’s notice expires… without having a house to move into.
• I’ve transferred both domains to Namecheap (coupon: SWITCH2NC) and it looks very good, my host is still eWG.
• Started a football website which immediately stalled (see #1 above)
• Scaled back quizzing (surprisingly for the same reason as 2007) and blogging (which you must have noticed; see #1) activities.
• Stopped (see #1), but restarted playing football – now the intra-company(Bangalore offices)-inter-business-unit competition is again starting, and unlike last year, I’m in the squad of 11 (7 on the field + 4 subs – last year I was #14 or so). I’m substitute keeper/forward. I’ve never kept goal before in a ‘proper’ setting, so this’ll be fun.
• Everybody says I’m losing weight. Am I really? Or was I always thin and people forgot that part? Who can tell… who can tell…
• I went into a Beatles discovery phase during tough times (see #1)
• The future is making me apprehensive again (See #1 and #3 mainly)
• My reading habit is down but not out
• But my browsing habit is almost dead, so I don’t know what’s been up with the world in the last few weeks
• I installed Windows 7 (this blogpost is from a Windows 7 Ultimate Evaluation Copy).

But here’s the thing. I think I’ll be okay as long as

1. I believe that Everything Will Work Out Fine
2. I can become calmer and delay any reflex action to any stimuli long enough so that I can see more of the picture, but not so long that an opportunity is missed
3. I can see more of the bigger picture and hence feel safer in knowledge
4. I get less of a chance to pour old whine into new bottles

I love the rain, and the rainy season has just about begun.

11:50 pm May 29th, 2009 | Category: Football, Life, Nimish, Rant, news | Comments (2)

See I have this very domain (nb42.com) expiring next month, which will auto-renew in 8 days’ time. It’s attached to a hosting plan. I have another domain (nimishbatra.com) which is essentially useless because of eWebGuru (my registrar+host) having a one-domain-per-hosting-account rule.

What I want to do is shift to a new registrar and host.

My requirements are simple.

nimishbatra.com should be the blog and nothing else, while nb42.com/blog should redirect to it. nb42.com I want to keep as a testing ground for apps.

Currently eWG has “parked domains” (but no facility for “addon domains”) where I can redirect nimishbatra.com to nb42.com/blog, but it’s not a transparent redirect. So nimishbatra.com/about turns into nb42.com/blog/about – which is quite thoroughly useless and waste of a domain if you ask me. I believe this missing thing is called “domain forwarding” and I shouldn’t be looking at paying extra for it.

What I’ve been thinking of doing is
1. Get a free account at x10hosting and register domains from an independent registrar and use here.
or
2. Find an ultra reliable reg+host, get the full package from them (i.e. 2 domains transferred and the ability to host both from a single package).
or
3. Use this for my blog and go to 1/2 for hosting the apps etc.

So what should I go for?

Domain registrars I’ve been looking at.
1. Back to eWebGuru.
2. NetLynx is ICANN accredited.
3. GoDaddy is famous.
4. Saw this cheap thing on a Google ad.
5. I came across this… I remember having heard of them – good or bad, can’t say.
6. Someone once said IndiaLinks is good?
7. There is eNom or Moniker – apparently highly rated, but I can’t see their rates anywhere.
8. Another famous brand would be NameCheap.

… help?

2:44 pm March 13th, 2009 | Category: domain, help, website | Comments (11)