. : : Marc Sez : : .

Stone, Paper, Scissors Is Flawed!

I was thinking about this just recently and it annoys me!

Pakistan, A Nation of Cosmetics

From Deccan Chronicle, first page (October 26, 2007):

The so-called rouge nations, Iran, North Korea and Libya, described by US President George W. Bush as the “Axis of Evil,” got their nuclear technology from Pakistan, the authors added. Describing Pakistan as a rouge nation at the epicentre of world destabilisation, the book claims that Pakistan was still busy selling its nuclear secrets in the world market.

Rouge?

They meant rogue of course. Doesn’t the paper have proofreaders to prevent exactly this sort of this from happening? Right on the first page. And twice, that too.

Perhaps they should just stick to importing articles from other newspapers rather than attempting to write them with their own staff.

‘Spyker F1′ Becomes ‘Force India F1′

Check it out. Vijay Mallya, the guy who owns Kingfisher (airlines and breweries) bought the Spyker F1 team and is renaming it to Force India F1!

Here’s the entire article (from here):

Spyker F1 team to become Force India
By Alan Baldwin

SAO PAULO, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Spyker will be renamed as the Force India Formula One team next season, new owner Vijay Mallya said on Saturday.

The flamboyant Indian billionaire, who bought the team this month with Dutch businessman Michiel Mol, told Reuters at the Brazilian Grand Prix that he had asked the governing International Automobile Federation (FIA) for approval.

“We have applied to the FIA for a change in name of the company and the team from Spyker to Force India,” he said. “I think that sums it all up as to why I am here.
“I believe that there will be a huge surge of support for this team once we present it as the Force India team.

“Having an Indian-owned Formula One team on the grid was something that was considered completely out of reach before…this reflects the new India and new ecomomic prosperity,” he added.

If approved, the name change will be the third since 2005, when Silverstone-based Jordan was sold to Midland. Midland became Spyker last year after being taken over by the ailing Dutch luxury sportscar maker.

IMMEDIATE PRIORITY
Mallya expected the management of the team, who have scored just one point this season, to stay the same and he was determined to keep highly rated German rookie driver Adrian Sutil as well.

The team logo will be in the colours of the Indian flag but an Indian driver was less of an immediate priority.

“It would be very complementary, however it is not essential,” he said.

“We need a driver of some calibre to also improve the performance of the team. We can’t have rookies only…for better performance I need a proven driver.

“It’s true that a driver does do a lot to propel the momentum of the fan club, and there was certainly a spike in the interest levels when Narain Karthikeyan was driving in Formula One,” added Mallya.

“But I think that to have an Indian team in the form of Force India on the grid will attract far more interest from the Indian fans.”

The tycoon, whose business interests include Kingfisher airlines and the world’s third largest spirits maker in United Breweries Ltd, said he had already had plenty of interest from would-be Indian sponsors.

As a major client of Airbus, Mallya said he had asked the European aircraft maker to help with CFD aerodynamics work.

“I am very excited about the prospects going forward from 2008 and beyond,” he said.
“No miracles in 2008, but a few positions further up the grid will be very welcome and a few points would be something to feel good about. It’s certainly within reach.

“But from 2009 onwards I think the team will start to perform fairly strongly.”

India is due to host a grand prix for the first time in New Delhi from 2010.

Damn cool. I wish stuff like this happened on a regular basis here in India rather than once in a decade. The problem is, all these people are still obsessed with cricket and F1 is behind the set top box wall for most people.

This is perhaps the first F1 team to be named after a country (not counting British American Racing - remember BAR Honda?) It’s going to get India some big time exposure in a true international event (as if anyone watches cricket apart from Indians, some Australians and a few other people here and there).

I’m watching the Formula One Brazilian Grand Prix as I type this. What an amazing race! A three way championship battle. Hamilton dropped down with some electronic problems to last place and had to work his way up. Quite a lot of action with some crashes, some guys running off the track, a Spyker colliding into another car, a Williams hitting the pit crew and Toyota’a Barrichello laying down a smoke screen with a busted engine.

Finally Hamilton came 7th and lost the championship by just 2 points! If he had come 6th he would have been world champion. Raikkonen won the race and is the world champion. What an awesome race! Damn exciting. Hardly felt the 180 minutes go past.

Read more about the F1 teams in my previous post here.

Lamborghini Needs Better Designers

Isn’t this the ugliest car you’ve ever seen? It is the Lamborghini Alar.

What were they thinking?! It’s not just ugly, it’s hideous.

They should go with cool designs like this one by Luca Serafini who calls it the
Lamborghini Embolado.

It probably is a bit too concave just before the rear wheels, but looks pretty cool apart from that. I wonder how this car will perform on Indian roads. I’m not talking about the handling but the problem of speedbreakers and potholes in our barely-there roads. It’s the first thing I think of when I see cars with low ground clearance.

Formula One F(or)ever!

I watched the Belgian Grand Prix yesterday and as always the race was great. Now we can see throttle and braking percentages on screen when following individual cars. There is a G force indicator too. You should see the indicator climbing to 4 Gees in turns and while braking! Good stuff. However I didn’t know where the old teams had gone. Jordan, BAR Honda, Jaguar and the rest. Back in the days when everyone had cable (and pay channels) we knew all the Formula One teams and most of the drivers. Well, I had the paid channels now and it was about time I followed the sport again.

I compiled a list of current teams and drivers from Wikipedia.

Super Aguri

These guys operate out of the old Arrows factory. Honda funds them. I liked the Arrows cars. They looked awesome. Super Aguri uses an old Honda chasis.
Drivers: Takuma Sato, Anthony Davidson

Spyker F1

The old Jordan team was bought by Midland Racing and they eventually sold it to Spyker.
Drivers: Adrian Sutil, Sakon Yamamoto

Red Bull

Red Bull, the company that sells that overpriced ‘energy drink’ of the same name that tastes like cough syrup bought Jaguar from Ford.
Drivers: David Coulthard, Mark Webber

Toro Rosso

Red Bull and Gerhard Berger bought the old Minardi team.
Drivers: Vitantonio Luizi, Sebastian Vettel

Ferrari

The well known team. Slightly less competitive now that Michael Schumacher has retired but still doing extremely well.
Drivers: Kimi Räikkönen, Felipe Massa

McLaren

They dropped the boring old West logo (I learnt from Wikipedia that West was a tobacco company). The only team that can consistently compete with Ferrari.
Drivers: Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton

Renault

Drivers: Giancarlo Fisichella, Heikki Kovalainen

BMW

Drivers: Nick Heidfeld, Robert Kubica

Honda

Drivers: Jenson Button, Rubens Barrichelo

Toyota

Drivers: Ralf Schumacher, Jarno Trulli

Williams

Drivers: Nico Rosberg, Alexander Wurz

Some interesting news:
Do you recall the Malboro logo everywhere on the racetrack and on cars a few years ago? Well, due to good anti-tobacco campaigns they are now out of Formula One advertising. No more Lucky Strike or Mild Seven either. Ferrari is the only team that is still promoting a cigarette brand (Malboro) in the 2007 Formula One season.

Now We Are One!

Phew. Finally imported my old blog like I’ve been planning to do.

The actual importing was very easy. WordPress managed everything. But the problem was that it didn’t ask me which category to place the posts in. It chose the default category (Introspection, in my case) and I had to spend some time manually moving some hundred posts or so to the correct category (Old Blog).

Anyway, it’s all done and the old blog’s URL is permanent redirecting to this blog. You can view all the old posts from this link: Old Blog (it’s also available under Categories on the left).

Some tutorials I consulted: Link 1, Link 2

Rambodoc, please look at the second tutorial link to further improve your redirection.

If there are any errors in the redirections or anything, please leave a comment.

A Faster Lighter Rodent, FTW!

I booted up the computer and when Windows started I launched the usual Firefox and Pidgin but something was odd. The mouse was moving oddly on the mouse pad. I lifted it up and looked at the bottom and found that a plastic layer on one of the pads that contact the mouse pad was peeling off. I removed the layer since it was coming off anyway and went back to using the mouse.

Except that now the mouse moved sluggishly and it was quite unusable. It was also 35 degrees and the TV was blaring so I set off to buy a new mouse right then. I went and got a Pleomax (Samsung) mouse for Rs. 250. Damn, this mouse it good. Lightweight and moves like silk. Good stuff.

Moser Baer - They’re An Indian Company!

A few years ago, when the first Moser Baer blank CDs (writable CD media) came out we were quite impressed with the quality and we thought that Moser Baer was a German company.

It was only later on that we found out that it was an Indian company. Read the Wikipedia extract:

Moser Baer, is the world’s 2nd largest optical media manufacturer and supplies to the world’s top dozen brands. The company was founded in New Delhi in 1983 . 75% of its revenue come from exports. Although most of that is from OEM products. Their product range includes floppy disks, CDs, and DVDs.

Incorporated in 1983, Moser Baer has a presence in over 82 countries, serviced through six marketing offices in India, the US and Europe, and enjoys strong tie-ups with all major global technology brands.

Even today Moser Baer disks are the preferred brand if you want high quality but don’t feel like wasting money on over-priced Sony disks.

But we really can’t afford Moser Baer disks either so we buy stuff like Scorpio, Rainbow and Master DVDs. I don’t think anyone uses CDs anymore. If we had to, HP CDs are reasonably priced.

More Blog Modifications! The Return of the Infinite Sidebar

Check out the new look!

I finally felt like adding all the usual stuff to the sidebar so I went ahead and did. I’m quite sure a description of each sidebar element will be annoying to read so that’s exactly what I’m going to post.

About
I thought the blog should have a few lines welcoming visitors. I’m tired of the ‘Hi, I’m Marc Zephyrin’ stuff so made it a little different this time. And the Counter Strike graphic is too cool.

Pages
The links on the top right are repeated here for accessibility.

Shoutbox
For quick communication and comments, very visible since it’s on the main page. Useful for asking me to update.

Search
If you want to find something I said a long time ago.

Calendar
Calendars are always useful. And this one tells you the days on which I’ve posted. (Wait, how would that be useful? Hmmm… I’ll remove it after a few days I think.)

Categories
Post categories. Useful if you want to read a certain type of posts only. Standard stuff.

Recent Comments
Damn useful to readers, if you don’t subscribe to my Comments feed. Let me know if you want the number of comments on display increased.

Blogroll
Links to all the peeps!

Word of the Day
I brought it back after Suren wanted it. Useful AND funny. Today’s word is hautboy. Whatever.

Hangman
Yay! That insane game with sometimes ridiculous words is back! Wish it had highscores and stuff.

Webcomics
Links to the webcomics I regularly read. You should really check out Chopping Block and Elf Only Inn.

Things I Dugg
Track what I do on Digg. I don’t Digg that many stories though even if I read them.

Blog Config
This plugin lists all the other plugins I run on my blog! Sweet eh?

So now the sidebar is really really long, the way it used to be in my old blue theme. If you have any suggestions for reordering the sidebar elements, post it in the comments along with the reason. And if you have anything that you’d like to see in my sidebar, tell me that too.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows leaked? Not!

The PDF file that people are distributing as the leaked version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is actually fan fiction from here. (Thanks to Adithya for the link.)

Wait your turn for the book release like everyone else.

Note that if anyone reveals any part of the story to me after the book is released I shall never speak to them again. I hate idiots who spoil stories.