Vivek’s Blog

No, I haven’t found the perfect theme yet, but I have a couple installed right now that would be good compromises in case I don’t find anything better.  Both themes should be relatively easy to modify to my liking although they look good right out-of-the-box.  If the wait for a new theme has been killing you, by all means check out the two new themes called Soloss and Curved.  Any feedback will be disregarded.  Just kidding.  Post feedback here in the comments.  Also, I deleted Fluidity3c.  If you were in love with that theme, sorry guy.  I might take out another one of my old themes since I don’t quite like them anymore, to be honest.

Things have been a lot more “happening” in my summer research.  I’ve been given crash courses in operating an SEM, the excimer laser system, and an AFM.  Using the AFM is the most boring thing ever.  It takes ages to take images and while they certainly look cool, the effort you have to put in to take several different pictures is not fun.  The learning will continue as I familiarize myself with all the equipment available before starting my experiment.  I think EBSD is up next on Monday.  If you’re lost in a sea of acronyms, Google is your friend.

So while I was looking a for a video to post here, I found a great 14-minute interview with Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, right before PT’s first ever show in Australia.  Click here to see it or just watch the filler video of the day below:

WARNING:  The video is loud and Michael Stipe is fucking crazy.  Enjoy.

So, just recently, I was saying that I hadn’t heard much about the mid/high-end 9M chips from Nvidia.  Today, at Computex 2008, Nvidia came out and announced a whole bunch of them.  While they strangely left out important specifications like core and memory clock speeds, it is nice to see the cards going official.  The top-of-the-line card for now seems to be the 9600M GT, although I saw the 9650M GT being mentioned somewhere as well.  Of course, they’ll bust out the real high end 9800/9900 cards down the line but those are intended for beasts like the Dell XPS M1730.

I’m hoping that a 512MB 9600M GT finds its way into the XPS M1530.  I might go for it even if Centrino 2 will be delayed - I was more concerned about the graphics anyway.  The T9400 will bring no power savings over the T9300.  Sure, it will feature a 1.06GHz FSB, but I’m not entirely convinced that it will bring in a large performance boost.  I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong though.

Among other things, EMI allowed iTunes to sell the entire Radiohead (who are no longer with EMI) backcatalog and I’m still theme-hunting.  I have a couple that I will try out soon but no promises on when a new theme will actually go live!

I started summer research today.  I didn’t do any hands-on work yet - I didn’t even take a look at any of the experimental equipment yet.  My job today was to finish reading eight research papers.  It was enthralling.  I also sat in on a group meeting and a presentation by a group member who will be presenting at an international research conference.  I guess this will be a regular feature - not daily of course!  Only when interesting things happen and/or when I have nothing else to talk about.

By the way, Computex 2008 starts in Taiwan today!  We should see some cool new gadgets coming out of there this week.

When the IPL franchises were first announced, I faced a dilemma - which team should I support?  My initial loyalties lay with the Mumbai Indians since I’ve spent about 13 years in Mumbai and I love Sachin Tendulkar.  However, there was the little matter of my “home” team, i.e., the Rajasthan Royals.  Both my parents come from Rajasthan so it happens to be my native state.  Which one would I pick?

After I looked at both teams, I had little confidence in either.  Other franchises had put together better teams, at least on paper.  In my opinion, Mumbai were the better team but after their horrendous start, my enthusiasm for them dwindled.  The Royals on the other hand, were doing exceptionally well.  Still, I stuck with both teams till the end of the league stage when Mumbai were eliminated.  From then on, I was supporting Rajasthan 100%.  They thoroughly deserved the win since they were the most consistent team in the tournament, even if the match went right down to the wire.

Shane Warne was never given the Australian captaincy for his off-the-field antics and he had a point to prove.  The franchise spent the least amount of cash on players but Warne & Co. built a team of winners from relatively unknown players.  He instilled a sense of belief and captained with his vast experience to lead RR to victory.  It was fitting that he was there when the winning runs were hit - nobody will forget his scintillating assault in the last over against the Deccan Chargers when he hammered Symonds to take RR home with a ball to spare.

I thought that the final was a fitting end to the tournament.  While I think the tournament needs to be shortened, it provided plenty of entertainment to cricket fans.  And so was the case with the final - RR getting home on the very last ball ensured an edge-of-your-seat end to the chase.  Unfortunately for Dhoni, he couldn’t conjure another great escape a la the T20 World Cup.  The tournament has thrown a lot of previously unheralded youngsters into the spotlight and hopefully, these guys will be the (bright) future of Indian cricket.

For now, I’m going to savor the sweet taste of victory and wake up early to start research at 9:30am.  See you folks tomorrow.