Rungta’s Webmarks

Filmy Classical ∞

A record of classical music in modern Indian films

Curated by Rakesh.

The BBC Boys on the 2010 F1 season ∞

The brilliant Martin Brundle, David Coulthard the Scot, the opinionated Eddie Jordan and Jonathan Legard join the witty Jake Humphrey for a round of talks on the ever so close 2010 Formula 1 season.

• Schumacher’s return
• Button and Hamilton
• Who will be World Champion
• New teams
• New rules

An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs ∞

Or so they say. Gareth Collins, one of the authors of the study, writes:

The KT extinction was a pivotal moment in Earth’s history, which ultimately paved the way for humans to become the dominant species on Earth.

Drunk with domination, we humans might not need an asteroid to wipe ourselves out. (Via Abhishek)

Programmers don’t like to code ∞

We solve problems by coding, and we’re all happy and enthused while typing away or talking code. But they’re confusing the action and the intention. It’s not pulling the trigger that makes me happy, it’s hitting the target. The action approaches incidental.

Bang-on-target piece by Wolf Rentzsch. I strongly concur with his second argument too, that in most cases programmers rewrite/reinvent to learn and understand, not just for the heck of it.

How to use a semicolon ∞

Random sentence with a semicolon; shows that I’ve got the hang of it.

Snapsort ∞

Camera showdowns based on their specifications. Should come in very handy when choosing a new camera.

FontFriend ∞

Very useful bookmarklet by Soma Design for live sampling most font–related CSS properties. Gains a permanent place in my toolkit for designing in the browser.

Overseas and Overwhelmed ∞

From Pictory, a very well crafted new magazine featuring photo stories.

Alternate H2G2 Covers ∞

Much better covers for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series from Nimbupani Designs.

The Return of Schumacher ∞

… is how I’ll be following, duh, the return of Schumacher. (by Rakesh)

RCA student radically improves the UK plug ∞

Choi picked an everyday product that most other designers find too mundane to dabble with and drastically improved it – exactly the kind of thinking that we should be celebrating right now.

“A planet with better designers” is what we need. (Via Rashmi)

Getting off to a good start ∞

A snippet from an interview with Raj Thackeray after the recent Maharashtra state elections:

Mumbai Mirror: So we take it that your MLAs will be suspended in the first session for being disruptive?

Raj Thackeray: (laughs) No, no. They will be raising issues in an aggressive manner. We have experienced people like Bala Nandgaonkar, Shishir Shinde… They know the rules and procedures. We will be holding sessions for our MLAs before every session. My agenda is three-fold: water, power and roads. My MLAs will hold this trishul in the Assembly and I will drive this agenda outside on the streets.

The opening paragraph of a report on the State Assembly’s first session:

Maharashtra Legislative Assembly on Monday suspended four MNS members for four years on charges of assaulting SP MLA Abu Asim Azmi, who took the oath in Hindi against their party leader Raj Thackeray’s diktat, and misbehaving with a woman legislator.

Good one Mr Thackeray, I almost fell for it.

Why do we have an IMG element? ∞

Take a history lesson on the HTML IMG tag.

Who are your peers? ∞

Having undergone 3+ years of university education as a software engineering student, I could not agree more with Joel Spolsky and David Humphrey about the significance of one’s peers and the need to work on stuff that matters. Also, I think this choice is just as, if not even more important outside academia.

NDTV Reports: Two persons hurt in climbing mishap ∞

Two persons have been injured in a freak climbing accident. Jack and his companion Jill had gone up a hill to fetch a pail of water when Jack fell down and broke his crown. Jill came tumbling after. Live from the hill, our reporter, Amrita Shah, takes up the story.

Hilarious and sad. (Via India Uncut.)

Note & Point ∞

Filling the gaping void of inspiration for those of us who use projectors.

Great gallery of slides both for their design and the presentations’ content. No points for guessing where I drew inspiration from for my ‘Accessibility & Usability on the Web’ slides.

India’s tree planting guru ∞

The BBC reports on an ingenious scheme started by one SM Raju under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act:

“I told the villagers that they would get 100 days employment in a year simply by planting tress and protecting them. The old, handicapped and widows would be given preference.”

Let’s hope this is replicated by states all over the country.

Road, Movie ∞

The trailer makes me impatient, but if that’s not reason enough (no kidding), how about a director who reads Daring Fireball, run’s a blog with posts dating back to January 2004, and *drumroll* uses Vimeo instead of YouTube.

I hadn’t heard of Dev Benegal before Sumit’s tip, but now I can’t wait to watch all three of his movies.

By the way, the film’s website has some great content so do venture beyond the home page glance.

iTransliterate ∞

क्या अाप iPhone पर हिन्दी एवं मराठी, ગુજરાતી वगैरा में लिखना चाहते हैं?

Well look no further. Great compliment to my web based हिन्दी Transliteration, courtesy of Karan.

Kaminey from Kaminey ∞

Once you get past the, uh, monetization efforts of the blogger, what follows is a nice analysis of Gulzar’s mastery behind Kaminey’s title track.

Such songs are quite like one of those old cities. Its buildings and monuments at once enamour the casual visitor. Yet the deeper one ventures, the more they discover. The more time one spends at and explores the place the more one learns about its inhabitants, its history, and the greater is the aura cast by the ages past.

Become conscious of a song’s composition; the instrumentation, its orchestration; the vocals, their lyrics, their meaning; the context, and feel the blood surge through every last vein on your body as you listen to a work of art. The experience is, in two words, truly magical.

[Tip o’ the hat to Rashmi for help with the metaphor.]