Independence Day

That's today. While the prime minister's off making (false?) promises and talking about the nation's progress at the Red Fort, I was busy updating the College life blog with a post on some ridiculous things that happened, thanks to my birthday, at the hostel. Apparently, it's a crime to celebrate one's birthday. More at College Life.

I can't rant about a slow internet connection anymore (have I ever done that?). I've got broadband! Now I can actually perform illegal activities like downloading copyrighted movies and entire music albums. Yay. A toast to broadband, it really brings out the criminal in you.

A year old, today. Explanations, anyone?

Yep, today's the first anniversary of this blog. Browsing through the archives, I noticed that I don't have an introductory post. The first post of most blogs usually involve a brief introduction of the blogger and some explanations as to why the blogger is blogging, blah, blah, blah. I never did that.

And so, I've decided that I'm gonna do some explaining. No, I'm not going to talk about myself or explain why I started this blog. I'm about to answer a question several people have been pestering me with. The ultimate question, the answer of which isn't 42.

Why the pseudonym "The Ranting Human"?

Sheep in the Big City. Ever watch that cartoon? Quite hilarious. There's this character who comes at the end of every episode. He rants a lot. The Ranting Swede, that's what he's called. That's how I came up with "The Ranting Human".

Why not "The Ranting Indian"? (The ultimate question eventually leads to more questions, you know)

I dunno. Probably cuz it wouldn't suit a global audience? Hell, I never thought about an audience when I set up this blog, so it can't be that.

But you hardly rant! Shouldn't you be called "The (A)Musing Human" or something?

Don't you know when to shut up?

It's my birthday.

So down to your knees! And shout "Hail the Ranting Human!". Or do a good deed. Or get a life. Why are you even here? Get a nice haircut for a change. Or if you have played Monkey Island, try living like Guybrush Threepwood. Yeah. And, if you still have nothing to do, read the archives. It takes a lot of time, believe me.

And those are the things you can do for free. Now, if you're the benevolent kind and have some spare change in your pocket, you can go to hell. I've heard it costs a lot to go there.

The following is udder crap.

If you're thinking "cow dung", think again. No, it's not milk either, though technically that's what it ought to be. It's "bull shit", you moron!

Here I am, blogging, 16 hours before another set of internal tests starts. Strange... Many of my posts are on the eve of some kind of exam. I wonder what that means...

So why is this post "udder crap"? Well, statistics show that 2 outta 3 people like to read posts which claim to be udder crap (I could find only 3 people who were willing to cooperate) in a hope to find some vague instance of humor to cheer up their awfully boring lives. The third can try bungee jumping from any tall, sturdy object without the bungee, or beg for mercy. Not that begging for mercy would help...

If you've come this far, maybe you're not a moron. But I'm not calling you a genius, either. I'm not telling you why.

My birthday is coming up in a couple of days. How does that figure in a post which is supposed to be udder crap? Make a wild guess.

(I was actually applauding my intellect for coming up with the phrase "udder crap" before I googled it. 496 websites beat me to it. Damn Google.)

The game that ruined my life.

Hacking. Some lunatic is hacking at another man's throat with a hatchet. Strangely, the victim doesn't make a sound. There's only one sound - chopping. Chop, chop, chop. A neanderthal chopping sound. They are deep inside what looks like a jungle. No jungle noises, though. No crickets, no wolves, no cracking of twigs, not even the sound of the raining blood. Another chop. It was then that I finally agreed I had watched Sin City too many times and woke up from my slumber.

But the chopping didn't stop. I realized it wasn't chopping. The sound was coming from the computer. It was from the game that ruined my life. My mother was playing it. "Squarez" by Eric Burgess. Ever since it was installed, my holidays (Yeah, holidays... Haven't you been reading College Life?) haven't been too much fun. All you have to do in the game is identify square patterns in a two dimensional array of balls of assorted colours. For reasons I don't understand, my mom finds this game addictive. My daily mission is this: To beat my mother to the computer. If I fail in this mission, I have to suffer for hours without my computer, for my mom's exceptionally good at the game. The pain...

To allay my pain, I started to fiddle around with my semi-destroyed keyboard, trying to make music of some kind. A friend of mine, who is quite an extraordinary guitarist/singer/harmonica player (known as Entropy, Max in the blogosphere) once played this song called "House of the Rising Sun". I'd never heard the song before, but I found that I liked it almost immediately. The original song was by The Animals, which I still haven't heard. Coming to the point, the weird noises I was making with my keyboard started sounding less weird and more like the song aforementioned.

Of course, since I've never heard the original, I didn't know how the whole song went. I remembered only the initial part of what he played. Also, he had excellent strumming skills, which I, being no guitarist (or musician, for that matter) had no chance of recreating. So I kinda modified the half-song here and there, replaced the vocals with my keyboard and recorded the cacophony. For your listening pleasure (Displeasure might be more appropriate), here's a low quality version of the song. I didn't have the patience to upload the high quality(but still horrible sounding) version.

To stream(i.e, play the song without downloading the entire file in advance)the song, click here. (Note: Winamp required, Windows Media Player doesn't seem to work)

To download the song, click here. (If clicking doesn't work, right-click and select "Save Link As"/"Save Target As". Any mp3 playing software will do. File Size:570 KB)

To Pass Time.

Someone just came up with a new idea for Wikipedia. And someone implemented it. Check out WikiTrivia by Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped. It's a quiz game which works by pulling articles from Wikipedia. Pretty tough.

I discovered the true potential of the radio in Yahoo! Messenger this week. I have now configured my station to play only Jethro Tull (Did I mention I like Jethro Tull?)... Though they seem to have only 2 albums (Aqualung and Original Masters). Apart from my station, the Folk and Jazz stations seem to be good. Rufus Wainwright's version of The Beatles' "Across The Universe" is being played over and over again, probably due to a lack of a good collection of folk music at Yahoo.

One more thing... My second semester exams start tomorrow, so you won't be seeing me for quite some time. Toodle-pip!

Nothing out of the ordinary... NOT!

The past week at college had some weird happenings, including being placed under house arrest. Check out College Life to know more.

I was checking out some blogs, when I stumbled upon this interesting post, about how you can make new fingerprints. If MIB can remove fingerprints, surely you can make new ones yourself? Check it out here.

I've been told that the colour combination in this new template is good. I don't like the header though, and hope to change it soon.

That's all for now. Yes, really. My mind has become number than usual. My powers of imagination have reduced drastically. Forget interesting stuff, I don't even know how to write bullshit anymore. But that doesn't mean I'm quitting. I'll be back.

Update, May 21: To my readers and to anyone who cares, the line about the header can be ignored, for I changed the header almost immediately after the above post. That line was referring to the previous header which can be found here: bannerbeta.