Why I'm no longer blogging

Painfully aware of my non blogging status at the moment and thought I’d at least blog why that may be:


Firstly, it’s simply down to the fact that I haven’t been moved to do so, or, put more bluntly, I can’t be arsed. In mitigation I would say that on the odd occasions when I’ve blogged even though I have nothing to say, I’ve always been embarrassed at the resulting prose and have therefore come to the conclusion that if I’m not moved to Blog then I shouldn’t bother.

Drilling down a little further and examining the possible reasons why the muse has not come upon me lately and I find there are a number of possible explanations:

I’ve spent so much time in India that I no longer get the ‘charge’ of mental activity, the desire to tell all and sundry about my experiences and I have a sneaking feeling that my readers may have begun to feel the same.

I’m happily engaged in many other activities these days such as photography/uploading files to my flickr site, facebook, skype, getting pissed with friends etc.

Negative comments from some quarters. ( ‘Too effervescent’ – you know who you are!)

Lack of security after comments I made about A****t**s, my sons band were lifted from this site and broadcast across the net without my permission. A good job they were positive ! Made me think twice about spouting off about anything even slightly controversial and where’s the fun in not being able to be a bit provocative?

The fact that only about two people ever read what I wrote in the first place and nobody ever commented.

Sending emails to peoples inboxes is more effective than putting stuff on a blog, and more personal.

So there you have it, seems like a convincing list of reasons to me. Perhaps you’d like to comment??? Someone? Anyone?

It aint 'arf 'ot etc

I like hot weather, I hate cold weather, but being in Mumbai, at the warmest time of year, in a heatwave, really tests ones resolve. Over 40 most days at midday and not dropping much below 35 at night, high humidity and scant air movement combine to product a climate that is not really ideal for Homo sapiens. I'm also a miserable luddite when it comes to air conditioning, but when the weathers like this, I reluctantly admit that its an essential. Still, rather than than the bone biting chill that seems to be England in May. Watching the election coverage ( and by the way the vast majority of people here have no idea that theres an election in the UK) I note with satisfaction the warm clothing and scarves that are much in evidence. Sitting here in my shorts and tee shirt, feeling hot seems to me to be a far preferable state of affairs.
Spare a thought though for those poor sods and soddesses who have to work, outside in this sort of weather, I trip from one AC space to another during my working day but there are planty of people labouring outside, building workers, road builders, agricultural workers etc. It is inconcievable to me how they manage, but of course, they dont have a choice.....

Of news I have little, been out and about in South Mumbai, patronised Cafe Leopold, a must for any reader of Shantaram, goy offered Hash, weed, Opium, Girls, Boys etc at the gateway to India, did some street photography but thats about it. Apart from that its been werk, werk, werk. Still with the climate as it is, the thought of trekking through the jungle is not a massively attractive one!

Boys now in LA, staying in ahotel that they say is mainly frequented by prostitutes and meth heads, stsrting on the new album and working with the semi - legendary Steve Evetts. If his work with Dillinger Escape Plan is anything to go by, the new album should be beyond amazing! I'm 'Counting The Days' until I here the distinctive Architects Inharmonic sonic signiature.

iMac

Well its been a week or so now and what are my comments? Mainly that its absolutely dead simple. The learning curve is extremely shallow, everything works, its all extremely elegant, intuitive and straightforwards. The GUI is dead sexy, fun and very useful. Software and periferals install in moments, I've added a USB hub ( one pence from Amazon) and a Hitachi 1 TB external drive which I'm using with Time Machine.
The 21.5 inch screen, from two to three feet away appears simply huge so no real regrets about buying the smaller screen.  For me, the most amazing thing is the shear power of the beast however. Opening programs, performing processor heavy tasks, just take a second or so. Making HDRs with Photomatix Pro takes, what? five seconds? My old PC used to take over a minute. Enough said I think.... Now to persuade work that I need a MacBook!

iMac

Still learning. And let me say that, thus far there's been no real head scratchers, its all been plain sailing. There's a huge amount of depth to OSX but the average user doesnt need half of it. Stuff like Expose and Spaces is useful if you are going to have twenty windows open at once but I don't see myself being in that situation. Nevertheless, the power of the machine and its ability to run loads of open applications at once could eventually lead to me needing to investigate these options. Whatever, its all fun and interesting.

Unboxed and set up.

One of my sons remarked to me how easy he found setting up his iMac and its true! An unbelievably smooth and easy experience. As soon as up and running I downloaded Firefox 3.6.2, Lightroom 3 beta and Skype. A bit puzzled about the final stages of the download but it all worked out in the end.
The first impressions? WOW is probably number one. Its like a computer from the future or from some parallel universe where things are really nicely designed and all work well. Its absolutely amazingly fast and runs lightroom 3 like lightening. All in all a very positive experience thus far, No negatives. OSX is pretty damn intuitive but I'll clearly have to read my Rough Guide to Mac and OSX very carefully to ensure I'm in the groove. Was agonising over 21.5 vs 27 inch. Sitting here looking at the 21.5 inch screen it seems VAST to me and so I am more than happy with the decision I made.

The Big Switch!

Hi, my new iMac arrives today according to UPS packaging tracking and I have been reading all I can about making the switch from Windows to OSX or Windows XP to OSX Snow Leopard to be precise. Unfortunately I find virtually all of the resources on the net ( and there are many) assume a level of geekiness or intelligence that I dont have and am therefore viewing the fast approaching learning curve with a a small degree of trepidation ameliorated only by the exitement of having a shiny new and hopefully fast machine to play with. I have to say I love the look of the GUI on Macs and am assuming that over the next days and weeks I will come to love it. I have to say that I, seemingly alone, find iTunes very un-intuitive, it must be my age. Whatever, I'm going to post my feelings and impressions on converting to OSX over the next days and weeks, heres to it being a positive experience!

My name is Chris and I come from England

I’m attempting to learn Marathi, the language of Mahrasthra and I have to say that over the last few weeks I have actually enjoyed some small degree of success! The principle reason for this is that , outside of work, pretty much everybody I interact with are Marathis and I can thus get instant feedback on the quality of my attempts.
Hindi defeated me because of its many versions and subtleties, it’s a ‘poetic’ language – and full of ‘silent’ n’s and h’s and these guttural sounds that frankly all sound the same to me although slight changes change the meaning of a word or sentence completely, enough said I think.
So Marathi is the way to go and let me tell you it seems to gain me instant kudos (something I’m in desperate need of, let me freely admit). Of course |I’m only learning the spoken language, the script? Ha! Forget it, it aint gonna happen! My first words were Maza now Chris, me England la ratau (see the title of this piece). No sooner had I learned it than I was presented with an opportunity to use it. I was in a small seaside town South of Mumbai and was taking a photograph of a restaurant, as I pressed the shutter a large family group came out and the man immediately came towards me, I thought ‘shit’ and decided to try and disarm him with my command of his language so I said ‘Maza now Chris, me England la ratau’ and the effect was electric! He smiled and grasped my hand, called his family over and introduced me, asked me to pose for a photograph with them! Ashok, my driver told me that I have been lucky as he was a Senna guy, a right wing firebrand type and I had managed to reverse a potently difficult situation with a few words of his native tongue. Let me say that there are relatively few European Marathi speakers! Great, so I was off to a good start. I try and learn a couple of useful words a day on the way to work and Ashok is diligent in making me practice. Yesterday I was able to completely rid myself of hawkers on the beach by explaining that I lived in New Mumbai and was not a tourist, that I did not want to buy there wares, what was their name?, mine was Chris. I’d surely see them again soon! Again a few sentences worked wonders, they smile and say OK, fair enough! See you! Bye! This is really first class confidence building feedback, and the feeling that I can make myself understood is really thrilling and satisfying, unlike my attempts at Hindi which have always been met by stares of blank incomprehension! The major issue now is being able to recognize Marathis. Out in the countryside it’s easy – it’s everybody! In town the issue is more complex as I can’t tell from looking what language they will speak, whereas ‘the locals’ can. Anyway, I’m currently enjoying the experience, not that it will be of much use in the UK! Whatever – ‘ Chal y a tomi!