27th Jan 2012
- How Did John Terry End Up On A Packet Of Cigarettes?6th January 2012
- Waiter, what’s this fly doing in my soup?9th September 2008
- Mastering The Indian Language21st September 2006
23rd Jan 2012
The Future of Football
I came across this video today and decided that it is without doubt the future of football. I might start a Government petition to get it included in the Olympic Games too. Even if you don’t like football and think it’s a bunch of overpaid sissies running after a bag of air, you’ll want to watch football if it was played like this. Dubbed boblefotball, it was invented by those crazy…Norwegians. Now every player can bounce and roll around like Drogba and Cristiano Ronaldo whenever another player comes near them. Actually, thinking about it, we should wrap the original man of glass, Michael Owen, up in one of these the next time he steps out in a United shirt.
bubbles, diving, football, olympics
- If Ryan Giggs Can Do It Then So Can I!15th September 2011
- The Lilliputians Versus The Brobdingnagians24th September 2011
- You’re No Christiano Ronaldo!8th September 2011
My New Year’s Resolution
I forgot to publish a New Year’s Resolution, I hope I’m not too late! I’m going to keep it simple this year, so here we go:
1. Learn English proper, like. I’ve been told by many people that I have a wonderful writing style (Naaw, thanks guys!), but I’ve also been told by an equal number of people that my grammar sucks, my girlfriend even told me that a little piece of her dies every time I use an errant “are” instead of “is”. To rectify this (and to save my girlfriend) by the end of 2012, amongst others, I will have finally mastered the common apostrophe, know the exact times when to use the semi-colon, the colon and of course the hyphen and be the foremost expert on the tricky difference between “which” and “that”.
2. Lose another 4kg. It doesn’t sound like much, it doesn’t need to be much, I just need to be lighter at the end of the year than I am now.
3. Turn 29. Well, I need to have at least one resolution that I’ll be able to stick to! I’ve now successfully turned 29
4. Go to bed early. If I’m going to turn 29 this year then I need to stop going to bed at 1am and stop writing blog posts at 12:30am like this one, even if it is a Saturday tomorrow.
That’s all I can think of at the moment, it should be good enough, I’ll see you in 2013 to see how we all got on.
bedtime, grammar, resolution, weight loss
- Good Job, Dave20th October 2011
- Daylight Robbery On The British Trains10th October 2011
- The Winner1st November 2011
6th Jan 2012
How Did John Terry End Up On A Packet Of Cigarettes?
Not sure if it’s been widely reported back in England but it’s making the national news here in India. Apparently someone from the Indian Directorate of Visual Publicity decided to use John Terry’s image as part of a health warning on the packet of cigarettes here. Obviously this wasn’t authorized and Terry has taken legal action against ITC, the manufacturers of the cigarettes. Judging by the comments in the link below it seems many people in India don’t understand what the fuss is about.
From my own experience I have found there to be a certain copy and paste culture in India where people will copy the content from a website and pass it off as their own not realizing the legal or ethical problems with it. A case in point is that I do all the writing for my company website and marketing literature and I’ve lost count how many other Indian IT companies here have simply copied and pasted my content, in some cases forgetting to even remove the company name! An SEO candidate came for an interview once and was very proud of the book he had “written” on SEO and used it to show off his skills. A quick search on Google showed that it was a PDF anyone could download for free. I know copying and pasting happens everywhere but the feeling I get is that it’s more endemic here because there are no implications should you be found out.
In the case of John Terry, I’m sure the designer simply did a Google images search, found this image from the Internet and didn’t see any problem with using it – after all, it is slightly blurred, right?! I’m actually kinda curious as to why they used this image instead of an Indian man, it’s not like John Terry is particularly famous here – although he is now!
- If You Go Down To The Beach Today1st February 2010
- Check Out My Wheels!11th October 2008
- Social Media Summit 20114th November 2011
30th Dec 2011
The Battle of The Bulge
beer, fat, fitness, gym, pain, pizza, torture, weight loss
- The Rise of The Man Cave19th September 2011
- Why Does The Sky Turn Purple?12th September 2011
- Daylight Robbery On The British Trains10th October 2011
27th Dec 2011
A Very Chennai Christmas
carols, christmas, dinner, goat, men, presents
- Things That Remind You That You Are In India: Part I24th November 2008
- Three Men Get Locked in a Room1st February 2008
- Christmas Shopping!2nd December 2006
23rd Dec 2011
Christmas Carols Like You’ve Never Heard Them Before
This is a video that will be understood by geeks and confuse the hell out of most regular folk. So the musical duo in the video below recorded themselves singing popular Christmas carols and then uploaded the videos to Youtube. Now Youtube has some automated closed caption technology which tries to understand what’s being said and show the correct words in the captions. As you can imagine the computer coded heuristic algorithms are still a long way from being perfect and famous lyrics like “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow” becomes “there is no, that is now, let us know”. Aww, bless those useless algorithms. Anyway, once the captions had been automatically generated the duo then sing the words that Youtube decided they were singing. Sound strange? It is, but it’ll put a smile on your face!
algorithms, captions, christmas, singing, youtube
- A Very Well Behaved Car Tyre!22nd September 2011
- Let’s Hear It For The New Dork20th September 2011
- Astrology Will Solve All Your Problems7th September 2011
21st Dec 2011
The 1000KM Wedding – Part 2
bus, food, ist, racing, wedding
- The Two Indias and Generalizations6th February 2010
- Weekends in Chennai27th September 2009
- Bangalore Trip Part 227th October 2006
12th Dec 2011
The 1000KM Wedding – Part 1
bus, tiruppur, travel, wedding
- Mobbed By The Kids27th February 2008
- Excuse Me, You’re In My Personal Space21st September 2011
- How to spot an Indian16th February 2009
6th Dec 2011
The Fastest Foreigner In Chennai
1km, cardio, gym, running, speed, treadmill
- The Winner1st November 2011
- This Is The Worst Flu Ever!23rd September 2011
- The Battle of The Bulge30th December 2011