floccinaucinihilipilification

An Act of Estimating Something as Worthless.

Monday, September 27, 2004

On my new home networking rig!

Fixed up my new comp table and set up the router today, so I'm now live on my webcam between 8PM SGT and 12AM SGT every night (except weekends). Email me for my Yahoo/MSN Messenger ID's.

In related news, my Nerd Levels are increasing by the day; hopefully by next Monday, I should have a personal accounting package (The Kubera Sutra) and/or an Indic language transliteration software ("Zubaan-e-Mulk") up and running, if only in beta. Stay tuned.

Link of the day.

Friday, September 24, 2004

What I'm doing on a Friday night.

Reading up on nine centuries' worth of onthological arguments. Does God really exist?

I'm not a geek, only a person with quaint interests. Admittedly, certain developments have indeed made me more philosophical about life, but that is a different matter altogether.

My New System!

Posting from an Athlon XP 2600+ with ATI Radeon 9200 SE, NVidia SoundStorm, Creative wireless keyboard/mouse, 5.1 surround sound speakers, 12X dual layer DVD+/-R, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB harddisk!

No, don't renew my geek card as yet; it's been lying in boxes for the past one week unopened. The gym was more attractive than the comp, serious. :-|

On Durians.

(We'll resume our long-winded posts, including replying to comments, after this set of build processes. )
Durians are nice, but heavy. Especially if the guy next to you starts burping.

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

FAQ's.

(wherein we answer common questions asked about our blog through IM messages and emails. In short, everything you wanted to ask about the blog and me but haven't)

a) What is Flocci-whatever? Is it a real word? What does it mean? Why did you name your blog as 'flocci-'?

Like all cool things in life, the word "Floccinaucinihilipilification" has its roots in a school joke. Except that it later took a rather serious tone, and now finds itself in the OED.

For the other two sub-questions, scroll up and re-read the blog's adline.

b) So are you "MetaMutator" or The Cydonian (I saw a few other places calling you that) or "DesiTroll"?

All the above. But in general, I'm in the MetaMutator avatar these days on online fora, and will be for the forseeable future. Indeed, it now appears that I've thoroughly google-bombed the moniker, in that all Google hits for "metamutator" point towards my outpourings.

That, unfortunately, is not true for The Cydonian.

c) Are you really that jobless? I mean, I see stupid posts in obscure corners of the net!

It's called "final year project" and it is often done under the cover of the night. Mine finished last year.

d) So your real name is Regu..?

Yes.

e) That sounds... strange? What are you anyway?

Who are you, you mean. Ethnically, a Telugu-speaking Indian. Telugu tradition has it that you take your surname from the name of the village where your family "originally" hailed from, so my surname refers to a (now-extinct) village somewhere on the eastern coast of India. I've been told, and agree to the assertion, that it is lexically similar to the British surname 'Berryhill', since that's what it essentially means, a hill of berry trees.

Friends have called me Aks, ak-47, Mr X, aaku tokka ('leaf from a plant'; it's a stupid Telugu pun), and now... M&M. I find it all amusing and am open to ideas.

f) Thanks, that was informative. Now, about your promised posts? :-)

Yes, I have been updating my Telugu blog dididhdhiminakapootaraju less frequently than planned. I blame it on my company's sysad; dude refused to install Windows XP on my work terminal. I, therefore, can't post there during work hours.

The situation has, however, improved due to a very interesting development over the last weekend, the details of which will be posted shortly.

g) No, not about your gult-blog; wait, what the heck is with that... you write in boxes?

Oh that... you need to install Unicode on your comp. Will post a detailed how-to on that pretty soon. Meanwhile, you can always google for unicode telugu and pretend to know it all.

h) Never mind on that; I can hardly read Telugu, let alone install it. I'm talk ing your other posts.

Five words: the death of my laptop. Sniff. :'-(

i) No, I think you're just being lazy.

That too, of course. While we are at it, might as well admit it; I generally post between builds, which is why I often try to be terse and choosy with words. In reality, I love to be verbose, as those of you who have emailed me/met me in meatspace would readily agree.

As I've said earlier, there has been an interesting development over the last weekend which can possibly change the situation completely.

j) Ah, developments over the weekend... now we're talking. :-) So what did the girl do to you to merit this change of heart? ;-) And why the f--- do you refuse details to mere mortals? And, how did Alamandrax get those secretive survillience photos?

First of all, important to realise what Alamandrax's earlier nick was. It was "Shimbleshanks". Yes, that's right; Shimbleshanks as in the Railway Cat. Also note that he has links to Megatokyo and Spamletters on his blog. Now ask yourself: what sort of a person calls (or used to) himself Skimbleshanks and links to Megatokyo and Spamletters on his univ blog?

Second, read answers (h, i) to understand why I haven't posted in detail.

k) That is just stupid. I mean, if you could post a one-liner at 1:15PM SGT on a Sunday, surely you could have posted more?

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the million dollar question. :-) And since I can't answer, only guess, I'd have to end this in true Vikram-Betal-ian style.

Sunday, September 19, 2004

*sigh*

What an evening, ladies and gentlemen, what an evening.

Still haven't gotten over it.

Saturday, September 18, 2004

Happy Vinayaka Chaviti!

The God of Good Things is back for his birthday!

Was amazing to go to Serangoon Road yesterday night; the entire stretch had a very "real" festive atmosphere to it; while it just doesn't compare to the mood in, say, Khairatabad or Ameerpet, it still is something.. I mean, they were at least selling clay Vinayakas!

Yup, just finished the Siddhi Vinayaka Vratam, and yup, Ganesh will stay at our place for the next few days.

Friday, September 17, 2004

Truth Shalt Prevail.

But who's, yours or mine?

Thursday, September 16, 2004

Wooooot!

She said [censored] yes! We're meeting for [censored] food (not expensive, but decent; Tandoor an option?) on [censored] a festive date!

Yeeeee[censored]eeeeeeehoooooooo[censored]ooooooo!

[sometime Friday] This post has been retroactively acted upon by the Obsfucation Team, MM Inc. All writes preserved.

[Saturday morning] This post has been further acted upon by the Cutesy Team, MM Inc. Make peace, not read saucy stuff. Or even if you do, don't satirize it on blogs.

On Hiding Things.

What you hide is inconsequential. What you think you hide is insipid. What is hidden from you is, indeed, what makes the entire difference.

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

The Hardest Lines To Come With,

are the ones that matter the least. And yet, we spend more time on them than on the ones that really matter.

Diurnal Observation.

(where the MetaMutator posts a one-liner, save for an explanatory meta-observation)


Parallel processing is all bunkum. You can't blog, work and dream at the same time.

The New Month.

New moon last night, so it means a) a new Chinese month, b) a new Indian (more precisely, a new Amanta lunisolar) month, and c) a new month at the new company!

Folks out here did put some joss sticks all around buildings, particularly on edges of grass lawns. Guess it must be some sort of Mid-Autumn Festival thingie; gotta ask my project lead about it. Oh, the things you miss out living in dorms....

Gotta finish some heavy-duty stuff up today at work, while avoiding spending too much time here. Let's see how it goes.

And this morning's one-liner:

Go on, get out! One-liners are for fools who have nothing to say. (Points to whoever points out the original quote)

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Observation.

All my posts here seem to be following a clustering algorithm of sorts; observe the timestamps and occurence of posts.

In any case, here's statement #2 of the hour:

Ultimately, you'll have to face up with a certain Nash equilibrium. Whether in life, or work, or simply in studying it.

Think about it.

Thought of the Day.

The only geniuses worth being awed at are those mathematical.

Corollary 1: Computer geniuses don't count.

Corollary 2: Neither do grammar pedants (so give it up already).

Friday, September 10, 2004

Exclusive Scoop: Dakhni Rock!

Coming up, live and direct from somewhere in Kothi I presume, Hyderabad's very own rock theme song!

Okay, that was a mouthful, but Dil Pe Math Lo, Hath Pe Le Lo (Don't take it to your heart, take it to your hand) is the song you want to listen to

Additional notes: All Trickbaby songs are good, all Fuzon songs suck, and all the rest are passable. Except Dil Pe Math Lo, of course, that's frigging AWESOME!

What I'm working on.

This.

Sorry, couldn't resist.