Haunting sounds

For sometime I have been considering collecting sounds that have a haunting effect on my senses. Every now and then I will come across music that can be categorized as visceral or primitive and speaks to us directly by reaching out and grabbing our soul. The substance of the sound sometimes appeals to that which is primal in all of us. Of course this is all very subjective and may not have same effect on everybody as it may have on me but there is some music that has universally subliminal in its effect.
I am not referring to music that I connect to because I grasp the meaning or I like the genre or for that matter even because its on top of charts.  
I must admit that I do have a weakness for crooning music from all parts of the world whether its found in blues or wailing reggae or techno or folk or sufi or even regional music in places like vietnam or thailand.

Let me start with the one I came across today and then follow it up with others that I may have heard in the past.  Going to just label all these as haunting sounds even though they may all not be that haunting but you get  my point.

	Pakistani music that sounds like sindhi or punjabi I am not sure but I like the sound.
	One of my all time favorites by Billie Holiday.
	UK based group indi-pop group Bhangra knights song "husan" featured in a Peugot commercial in the 90s.
	"Por una cabeza" from the album "project tango". This is one of Hollywood's favorite pick to be used as the score for depicting intense (its never casual in movies) Tango scenes. You must have perhaps heard it in movies like "scent of woman", "True lies", "Schindler's list" etc.
	Baul music : Moroner dine kemon kore bolbi Hari (On your last breath, think how will you remember your Lord), by Babukishan Das Baul, in Bengali via Youtube

Support for Wikipedia

Wikimedia Foundation

If you have been to Wikipedia lately you will notice a personal appeal for support from its founder Jimmy wales. I must admit that that my first reaction on seeing that banner was a sinking feeling that this is the beginning of the end of something good. It was those cynical neurons in my brain sending the signal - that of course this is one of those things that has always been too good to last, what did you expect ?. And that the powers to be out there will scheme to kill it sooner or later and say even if it was not so conspiratorial, the natural forces of capitalism will takeover and render Wikipedia unsustainable for the digital have nots and future generation. I sincerely hope that for the sake of humanity that that does not happen, that digital altruism prevails and guarantees wikipedia for eternity and all generations to come. 


This past year at least I must have used Wiki just as much as Google for all my informational needs both personal and professional.  I just took at a peek at my browser history and here is what I learnt in just last month alone......


.. that Ibn Batutta is the greatest traveller of all time and not Marco Polo as I had presumed both in terms of distance and scale.  I would consider Ibn Batutta as the the first truly global citizen who spent 30 years of his life travelling and exploring the world to gain knowledge and wisdom but those kind of similar experiences and knowledge can be tapped into by anybody today by just a few clicks on Wikipedia. 


.. that Giordano Bruno the 16th century  Italian mathematician , philosopher and astronomer who was burned at the stakes during roman inquisition and was a proponent of the concept of infinity and the heliocentric planetary model. He is said to have been inspired by arab astronomy which made its way into Europe via the silk route.


.. that naked cowboy's real name is Robert John Burck. 


... that MasterChef is originally a BBC cookery game show format that has been adapted in 10 other countries besides UK - Israel, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, Greece, India, Peru and Belgium.


... that Zynga the social gaming company founded by Mark Pincus in 2007 is valued at 5 billion dollars more than Electronic Arts (insane!)


...and much much more...


This type of knowledge sharing and abundance is unprecedented in human history and it would be a great tragedy if Wikipedia were to shutdown or move into private domain.


Wikipedia is at the center of  democratization of knowledge and its contribution is  much bigger than what Gutenberg's printing press did to usher in reformation, renaissance and eventually industrial revolution to Europe and rest of the world.

 I encourage you to contribute if you can afford it.

WPF

Its been little over 6 months that I am attempting to teach myself WPF. 


I am liking many things about WPF but still bit unsure about XAML. Don't get me wrong I am not intimidated by learning a new format or a new paradigm.  I learnt windows programming by hand coding .RC files so I am all for XAML coding.


What I am worried about is Microsoft's penchant for abandoning technology with lesser adoption or worse introduciong a drastically redesigned version.  I hope I would not be left high and dry after investing my time and energy into this.


I have jumped straight into 3d WPF instead of Windows GUI. Whether this is a good idea only time will tell.


Meanwhile if anyone has any recommendations of either books or WPF podcast do let me know.


At the moment I am wiring myself strongly with codeplex, several WPF books and some excellent 3d samples out there.

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[Random thoughts] Jaw dropping human feats

For some reason I cannot resist posting videos such as this that challenge my senses and leaves my lower jaw hit the ground :=>

jerome murat
Uploaded by segalier

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Posted by Suresh to Random thoughts at 12/30/2006 09:15:00 AM

[BOOKS TO READ] books

Reading.....

Marc Aronson :The Real Revolution : The Global Story of American Independence

Fascinating... I liked his analogy of India and America being two daughters of a british father -one rebelling and the other daughter who stayed home paying the price for that. He traces historic events that connects Robert clive to George washington, Bengal famine to the boston tea party. He connects the dots so well that its indeed a truly "ah ha" moment as he calls it.


Completed:

The Second Coming of Steve Jobs by Alan Deutschman -

I highly recommend this book. Was a good read and reveals the complex mind of steve jobs and you even briefly see him not as a creative genius but as a mad man and a neurotic slave driver. The book ends up rescuing steve jobs from that devilish portrayal and leaves you with respect and some awe at his second coming.
The only disappointment for me was that it did not cover the ipod success but the timing may have been overlapping and perhaps there might be a second edition that covers it.
If you are looking to get inspired or get of essence of steve jobs I would recommend reading his commencement speech at stanford :

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Krishna Playful Divine by Pavan K. Varma

This book was a bit scattered for me or maybe I built the wrong expectation about this book.

I was expecting the book to appeal to be similar to the sensibilities he evoked in his other book "Being Indian".

I would still recommend it for contemperary indians who are pavan varma fans. You still appreciate his intelluctual and scholarly approach he takes in his writing




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Posted by Suresh to BOOKS TO READ at 6/17/2006 02:06:00 PM

[Random thoughts] Dear God,

Dear God,

When I die and come back I wanna be like this guy who can do this ==>




If my Karma credit does not permit that than, I wanna be able to do at least this =>

I Challenge Numa Numa Watch it now on StupidVideos!

Oh and also one other thing God, Can you make me capable of playing at least one sport even if its only DodgeBall ?

Thank you. Much appreciated.

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Posted by Suresh to Random thoughts at 4/29/2006 01:28:00 PM

[Random thoughts] Tube Talk

Commented on Jinal's post:

http://stylestation.typepad.com/home/2006/04/late_night_voye.html

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Posted by Suresh to Random thoughts at 4/29/2006 09:28:00 AM