Palm Springs is referred to as "The Golf Capital of the World," with more than 100 championship courses. The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway is one of the biggest attractions in Southern California and is a way of getting from the floor of the Coachella Valley to near the top of San Jacinto. One of the interesting sights that i got to see right in front of my eyes was a Dust Devil. A dust devil or whirlwind is a rotating updraft, ranging from small (half a meter wide and a few meters tall) to large (over 10 meters wide and over 1000 meters tall). In the southwestern United States, dust devils can be known as dancing devils. Navajo refer to them as chiindii, a ghost or spirit of a Navajo, if a chiindii spins clockwise it is said to be a good spirit, if it spins counterclockwise it is a bad spirit.

This video captures the remainder of the match.

Watch the video before you read furthur!!!

1 balls, 2 runs :- Plenty of mind games going out here. First the bowler pulls up in his run-up stride and warns the non-striker of backing up too far. The bowler repeats the same thing (pulling out of his bowling stride) to build the frustration of the batsman. Finally the ball is bowled, it is on a length and seams in a touch to beat the batsman's attempted forward prod. Quite obviously (going by the type of stroke played), the batsmen were clearly looking for a tip and scamper single to tie the game (safety first approach). The batsman is comprehensively beaten (plumb lbw infact) and the dot ball means that the bowler has won the game for his team.

The defending team has won (by 1 run) and the bowler and everyone are ecstatic with the thrilling victory. Don't forget to miss the celebration dance (similar to the Indian cricket team).

Bjarne Stroustrup had this to say about it (in an interview from a long while ago):

Incredibly over-hyped. I'm unhappy about the degree of intellectual dishonesty surrounding its advertising. It is probably a nice platform for running small self-contained systems, but it is being proclaimed as the solution to every problem and for every programmer. It is not. No language and no system is. Even the platform independence issue is not as clear-cut as it seems.As the Java libraries are extended to deal with more application areas, these libraries themselves become a platform. As vendors add new facilities, portability to machines using facilities from competing vendors' portability becomes compromised.

Java is hyped as "Write once, run anywhere" but in my opinion, Java is failing miserably. It's true to the axiom of "write once, debug everywhere". Anytime you have a software stack, you always have support issues. JREs on Windows is one software stack and JREs on Linux, Unix, and MACs are three more software stacks requiring support. I find that Java does cross platform fine for basic web apps and simple file driven programs. But if you are developing for specialized embedded systems used by alien proctologists, then you better not sell your soul to the java environment.

Yes, java will be taught in universities 10 years from now and more importantly in the marketing classes and so you will still have fanboys with MBA degrees (but don't have a clue about programming languages) plug java as the panacea for software development. But a growing trend these days is that .Net and C# (its favorite child compared to the bastardized step child also referred to as VB) are penetrating the hallways of universities. With slicker and extremely impressive development tools for the .Net platform coming out, the days ahead look promising.

Note here, that I am not talking about the language differences between java and other languages since that argument is mute. But the focus is that enterprises who do not wish to sell their soul to Micro$oft (but inadvertently end up selling a large portion of their soul a vendor such as IBM, WebSphere, BEA, etc all on the context of staying vendor neutral and not getting into vendor lock-in) and opt for entire java stacks thinking that it gives them the most flexibility are actually fooling themselves. The problem is that java hasn't been able to reach the platform independence that it claimed (and everyone hoped) it would. The problem is caused by vendor (IBM, BEA etc) interests creeping into the framework libraries which compromise the platform independence goal.

One of the key points that Mark made was that neither java nor .Net are going away, but he also emphasized on how .Net has caught up with java which was once said to dominate large scale implementations (enterprise level) and how the vendor interference was hurting java badly, whilst allowing .Net to grow. He predicted a very rosy future for .Net and .Net developers which was music to my ears.

All is not lost for java developers. Atleast they are better off then developers working for non-software companies where a programmer is viewed as an expensive typist and people often associate programmers at the level of plumbers.

Culture is probably one thing that restrains the mind from straying and falling prey to thoughts which seemingly rational and interesting ultimately lead to mayhem. The misconception that getting Westernised is synchronous with improvement has housed itself in the minds of the youth. While in some cultures, it is not absurd to end up in bed with someone you just danced with at a party and believe that you are thinking and acting rationally. Hopefully our culture can stay away from such impressions.

Media is probably the biggest culprit and facilitator in glorifying sensation, thereby diverting the attention of the youth from the ground realities. Bangalore Times is one newspaper media that comes to mind right off the bat. The youth today are falling prey to the worst of values that are unfortunately glamorized by a section of the media ultimately succumbing to a culture whose birth was uncalled for.

From my brief stay in Bangalore, i see that the Pop Culture is well and truly going strong in India. For the time being i only see the youth spiraling into a culture which is similar to the western US with no shortage of bare midriffs and drug abuse. Hopefully i will be proved wrong.

Whether the attention generated when a blog post is dugg is enough to cause a reader to re-visit the site is debatable. I think it's been pretty much proven that any traffic a site gets from digg is fleeting and doesn't translate into long-term traffic however I think there is much more value for the blogger than the initial burst of traffic.

Sure it generates a lot of traffic for the website but if they have a business model that is solely ad-based then having your website dugg would not generate any money for you. I mean, how many digg users would click an ad even if it was relevant? Some of the obvious benefits of building a Digg Culture on your blog include the fact that you get Fresh RSS subscribers and Newsletter subscribers.

Every time a blog gets dugg a leap is noticed in RSS subscriber count. Similarly newsletter subscribers (if you have one) will generally get a bump when you're dugg. On the contrary sometimes The Digg effect can have killed a site in the first six hours.

If you are able to convert your incoming readers from Digg into regular readers you then have a unique opportunity to get repeat appearances on Digg again.

The actual traffic from digg is a nice (but short lived) thing - but the real benefit of being dugg regularly is the increase in traffic from loyal readers (RSS, bookmarks and newsletters) as well as the benefits of new incoming links.

Some ways to improve your chances of being digg-itized.

Style of Writing

While many hundreds of pages get to the top of the digg pile every week and there is quite a variation in their style - many of them do tend to have similarities. They are often lists and are usually easily digestible pieces that appeal to a skeptical yet reasonably knowledgeable audience. I don't know their demographics but I suspect it's largely a young male audience so your writing needs to be appeal to them. This includes code monkeys like me.

Topic of Writing

Digg has recently broadened the topics that it covers, however it's roots are technology based.

Titles and first lines are Important

I find that in most cases that people who submit posts to Digg re-use the same title or atleast something close to it. In many cases they also use the first line or two of the post as the description.

Quality Content

Ultimately Digg users (like most web users) like quality, useful and unique content. They get frustrated with second rate writing, lots of mistakes, recycled stories and sub standard site design.

It's a film where, in between drying your eyes, you'll shake your head in disbelief at the sheer insanity of what's going on in front of you - and perhaps feel a bit uncomfortable about how no-one is spared in the name of comedy. If you're easily offended or sensitive, stick with the re-runs of 'Friends'. While the ending is a huge anticlimax, it's easy to forgive because so much of what's gone before is unforgettable.

The other movie i watched (incompletely) was Man of the Year staring a perennial favorite of mine Robin Williams. Although the critics have been harsh on the money, i enjoyed the movie and the jokes. After watching the movie, I was able to entertain myself with thoughts of what might happen if an actual celebrity were elected president. Would Oprah hire Dr. Phil as Secretary of State, and would Mick Jagger make a good Press Secretary? Don't laugh. Truth is stranger than fiction.

The last movie i saw was Vivaah. I was watching a Hindi Movie in the theatre after a long time and this was only my second ever Hindi Movie in the US (Rang De Basanthi being the other). The movie depicts the old-world charm of an arranged marriage and is depicted well by the lead pair (Shahid Kapur and Amrita Rao) who go through the mellow motions of falling in love similar to the adventure of an unexplored journey. But an unholy fire creates a crisis in the last half-hour. That's when (according to me) the movie comes alive.

On a side note, i just posted the album for my toronto trip early last week.

If the pitch at Mohali is in any way similar to the one Pakistan were blown away on today, you would think the hosts might struggle more. If they do go out, it would mean no subcontinent representation in the semis, thus reaffirming the age-old belief that batsmen from this region struggle on juiced surfaces. The only consolation, on the evidence of this tournament, is they may not be alone. New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Australia, South Africa, West Indies and England, all have struggled appreciably.

For India though there is no consolation, Aleast the other teams get frequent flyer points.

If your wondering, Gule Gule means "GoodBye!!!".