There’s no logical explanation as to why this is. It’s not the cleanest of environments. There are huge delays. It’s noisy. It probably makes me feel like a foreigner ‘discovering India’ in a very poetic way. Though probably not.

Sometimes I don’t even know why I carry this camera with me. It’s free, I guess.

“Yes of course I could do it. After all, I’m hardly attached to all of this. I could in fact wipe my entire hard drive and still not worry about a thing.”

But did I do it? No. It would be stupid to do so, right? Of course it would.

When you watch movies like the Terminator, where machines turn against Man, it’s always a measurable war between the two. In that world, the humans want the machines to die — to stop functioning, or gain control, rather. But what if that’s not the way we lose control over our existence?

I despise dogs. I hate them to the core. That’s not part of this argument, but I had to mention it. Dogs are dependent on humans for almost everything. Without humans, I doubt dogs would survive. Most of them have long since lost their natural instincts to hunt for food, and survival in nature is out of the question. Even street dogs are fed and sheltered by civilization. Dogs wouldn’t wish humans to go, because they’ve grown comfortable with our existence, and have evolved to be dependent on us. They’ve evolved to be dependent, because life with humans is easier than life in the wild. A dog is mostly always assured of food (unless I’m in charge), but the trade off is that without us, they don’t.

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I reach out for is my iPad. I check my email while walking around, look at what Twitter is up to, check some sites, RSS maybe, fill up a glass of water and drink it while still peeking at my iPad screen with one eye. For god’s sake I can’t make number two without a healthy reading list in my instapaper queue. Through all facets of my life, technology and the internet play a huge role in maintaining my happiness, my high. Even during my long biking trip to South India, I had my iPhone with me, guiding me with its maps, keeping me entertained with music, and in touch with everyone. I think of train journeys in terms of what videos I’ll watch on my iPad. I think of runs on the beach as which playlist I’ll load on my shuffle. And I’m not even calling out the things that are not directly related to technology in hand. These are of course good things, and our quality of life has vastly improved because of such amenities.

The thought of living without any information technology seems like a possibility, sure. Even though most of my work depends on using technology, I know I could tune out entirely and find something else to do. Something that’s less involved with computers and the internet. I could do farming. I could hang out with people who have no interest in information technology, and talk about sports. But it would be uncomfortable, and I’ve grown comfortable with technology. I have real friends on Twitter. Leaving this would be the human equivalent of a dog hunting for food in the jungle, when there is a meaty bone being offered right where it sits.

The terminator of the real world isn’t going to kill you. It’s going to keep you alive, it’s going to keep you happy, but you won’t be able to live without it. Skynet is already here; it’s called the internet.

But I think I’ve figured out sleep. After so much of first hand experience with the sleep monster, I think I know pretty well what causes problems, and a few solutions. There’s a saying I could have used here but I just can’t put my finger on it.

All of this is knowledge based on my own experiences, and wherever I say you, I mean me.

Insomnia comes over if you stay up more than an hour after you first feel sleepy. It’s your mind forcing itself into a second wake cycle, but your body still wants its sleep. Essentially your body is too tired to work any longer, and your mind is actively thinking up new shit.

My first bit of advice is to go the fuck to sleep when you feel sleepy. Nothing better than doing that. I sometimes practice regular sleep timings, and for a week or two I manage a strict 12 a.m sleeping schedule. Those days I wake up fresh.

If you’ve lost your way for a few days and want to get back on track, it’s a little difficult sleeping before your new usual time. Drink lots of alcohol, or smoke up. Bound to knock you out at any given time. Be sure not to knock out more than 4 hours before your usual sleep time, because this will trigger a nap, leaving you wide awake a few hours out. That state is so twisted even I’m yet to figure it out.

If you do enter into a state of insomnia, get up, eat a lot of food. Don’t eat carbohydrates or things that will turn into sugar. Meat, eggs, milk are the good stuff; basically heavy foods. Eating cookies is the worst thing you could do at this point, tempting as they might be. Don’t do this every day though, as it’s bound to muck up your digestive system.

Your thoughts also need to be conditioned. Think of vague things. Don’t think of the thing you’ve just been working on. Those are the things that will keep your mind engaged and ruin your sleep. Think of improbable things that you could only dream about (see what I did there?). It’s time to bring up those unholy fantasies (though careful not to take them too far or someone else will wake up).

Never listen to music or read something while on the bed. This is one sure fire way to stay awake. Unless you’re really sleepy, and you’re sleeping at your regular time, music and reading will trick your body into staying awake in that position (unless it’s some vague dreamy music—though I still tend to pay attention). Reading is especially bad—Instapaper being the main culprit here—because when you’re done reading, your mind can’t just switch off. I know this, and have since done my reading while sitting with the lights on, or even standing, and only going to bed when I really mean it.

Lighting. Apparently there’s some warm light cold light shit going on. I read this article by Jason Freedman, which talks about bad light. Apparently, evolution has tuned our body to waking up with bright cold light, and falling asleep to warm dull light. And we need to model our environment accordingly. The first thing I do when I wake up, is walk the fuck outside. I get my sunlight units no matter what time of the day it is. This first of all flushes all the sleep out of me, and second, resets my bio clock to mark this point as the day’s beginning. Now what do we do about night? I’ve switched my cold flourescent tube with one that glows warm. I also use f.lux, which automatically warms my Mac’s display temperature; although I had been using it more because it’s soothing to the eyes. I don’t know whether this works, because I’m too darned stupid to follow a schedule, but it does make a lot of sense.

But the most important thing, is you can’t keep your phone or notebook, or iPad next to you. The motherfucker will ring in a new email, your cunt of a brain will want to check Twitter, and its back to square one. Being woken up just as you’re drifting asleep is the worst thing that could happen, and you’ll inevitably land up with another hour of tossing and turning. The best thing you can do at this point is wake up, do some work, and then reset your mind into going back to bed.

Even with all this knowledge, my sleep problems still remain, as I write this at 7 in the morning. God help me. Oh wait, I forgot, he doesn’t exist. But that’s a topic for a different story.

I hope you’ve been having fun on the world’s most popular social network. I must admit, after learning to ignore useless apps and hiding unwanted nitwits from clouding my news feed, I’ve been enjoying myself as well. But this is not about how lame facebook is, or how awesome twitter is. Those are two cold truths you will never realise, and I’m okay with that.

This is about Facebook, and how it’s treating your privacy. More importantly, why you should give a fuck.

Most people are narcissistic attention seeking gargoyles, who’s sole goal is to get their activities seen by as many people as possible. Myself included. And Facebook seems to be the best place to do that. Had a wild party last night? Upload that album to Facebook and get a hundred likes and comments. You will of course complain about the number of notifications you had to deal with the next day, but deep down you’re smiling. Smiling wide.

Facebook wants to help you attain your goal, but trust me (rather, don’t trust them) they don’t really have the same intentions in mind. If Google wants to control you from the outside in, facebook has been going from the inside out. Here’s a chart that illustrates facebook’s privacy settings.

But it’s a win-win situation, right? After all, Facebook is showing more of you, to the whole world. That’s a good thing. Fulfills that narcissistic ideal I pictured above. Wrong. Facebook wants to sell your privacy to advertisers. This is not traditional advertising, where the ad is brought to the user. It’s the other way round, and in its creepiest form. Imagine a company knowing where you’ve been, what you’re planning on doing, what you like, your location, your phone number, your relationship status. Facebook isn’t concerned with your life getting fucked. They’re worried about posting good quarterly results and they’re using your data to get to that.

You’re on some blog. It was just a meaningless gif of a cat jumping about. It has Facebook’s new ‘Like’ button. Little do you know, the website owner has been given the right to publish posts directly to your News Feed. There’s talk that if you like an ad on Facebook, the advertiser gets more than just access to your News Feed. A car company knows that you (the individual you) likes that particular car, and know your lifestyle, relationship status, and phone number, and could keep their call centres busy ringing your phone. This is right now, and without your permission; they aren’t going to hesitate in giving out more info in the future.

Let’s not forget about collateral.

You say something about your work. Your boss isn’t in your friends list. But he’s in your friend’s friends list. Taking into account Facebook’s new default privacy settings, he see’s your status. You’re fired.

Some guy is stalking you. He sends you a friend request. You ignore that. He befriends a friend of yours, and inadvertently gets access to all those pictures you’ve uploaded to facebook. Fuck that. With the default privacy setting for new users, a stalker doesn’t even have to sign up on facebook to see those pictures.

When it comes to Facebook, you have an illusion of privacy, while all your information is really shared across the web. When you say something, you think you’re saying it to your closest friends. When you upload something, you don’t realise the whole internet can see it. And you have a right to believe so. It was like that when you signed up two years ago. Just that Facebook got greedy, and decided to pull down the curtains without asking anyone.

Facebook of course offers you a way out. You can customise the hell out of your privacy settings—there’s so many of them. And that’s the problem. There’s so many of them! Take a look at Facebook’s privacy settings. There are over 50 settings spread across 6 categories. Compare that with Twitter—public or private (and no sheepish fucking around thereon). You might argue that this gives you more control. Bullshit. It’s meant to confuse and tire the user into succumbing to their corporate plan—the sellout of your privacy. Moreover, there are things that are beyond your control. Like how all those Like buttons are popping up on various websites, without your explicit permission.

You might say I’m a lunatic proclaiming an apocalypse because a light bulb went bust. Truth is, even Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks so. “A small fraction of our 400-million-plus active user base.”, says Zuckerberg. Yes, he’s not concerned about what I’ve just said. He’s just concerned that a small fraction of his userbase is aware of it. The tech community of course doesn’t let things slip by. The last time when Facebook wanted to legally own all your data, they fought back, and Facebook returned ownership rights. Now I, along with many others, am quitting facebook. I doubt it’s going to have an impact on Facebook’s hold over the internet, but it’s the least I can do.

Now I’m sure you won’t leave facebook no matter what. All I ask of you, is to be aware. Do consider going through your privacy settings thoroughly. Don’t allow permissions to suspicious applications. Consider the implications of your actions. Be smart. Trust your friends, but keep an eye out for when they might not really be your friends. And if you have to Like something, like this ‘note’. That’s safe (for now).

This is going to be my last post on facebook. I might return some day. Probably not. I really am going to miss all those Likes and comments. :-*

March 12th: The pre-orders start. I, of course, am in India and can’t do anything about it.

April 3rd: I wrote about it. Possibly the worst day of my life. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as when I crashed the car and had to deal with a bitch and a half, but it was pretty fucked up. I couldn’t stand it. I closed twitter.

Ankur had offered to get me an iPad at the beginning of May. I took this as my only opportunity. I said yes.

April 5th: I meet Preshit on chat. We both need to get one. “Who’s gonna send it?”. The search begins. I hit up a bunch of contacts from the US. All of them agree. Internet friends FTW! (Just so we’re clear, I would have done the same). This one guy though—I won’t mention his name though—was so cool about it, I was surprised, really. I can’t describe the exact transaction, but it can only be described as angelic.

We were getting two iPads. 16GB. Wifi only.

Two hours later: The money was sent, and the iPads were ordered for.

Days go by: We watched, as the parcel travelled from China to the US, marveling at how nicely it adds to the carbon footprint. Fuck the carbon footprint, I want my iPad! Within 3 days, the iPad was at this guy’s place in—let’s not get into specifics here. Within one hour, it was in the hands of a FedEx employee, and so the tracking began. Paris. Paris, how happy I was to see thy name in the tracking page! Another two days, and it was in Bombay.

Bombay: Why did I choose Bombay? Goa is a terrible place for business. People are lazy, shit never gets done, and I was pretty sure the package just lie there in the postage office—unless of course FedEx imports their staff from some place else, which I doubt. I regret this error in judgment.

That morning, I dial a number.

“Hello”.

“Hi”

“Tell me something.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Come on. Fucker. Give me the news.”

“You know the feeling, where you’re placed in a big room”. I didn’t really know what he was talking about, but I acknowledged it with an “Uhuh”.

“Well that’s exactly what I’m feeling like right now.”

I knew he was going to get the iPad before me. I knew I’d have to wait another few days before I got mine. But going through this, just like the iPad, is totally different from what your mind imagines. I hated the prick.

That evening, I get on chat. I’ve assumed that the magical device has already been posted and had been jerking off to some iPad porn. You know, photoshopping busty babes into an iPad frame.

“I couldn’t send it. Apparently, the courier companies do not accept packages containing electronics if it’s between two individuals. A company has to initiate it.”

Suddenly it became how whorish those busty babes looked. Fuck this, fuck the Indian postal system, and fuck the goat. Another day wasted. I waited till the next day—didn’t sleep lest I should miss out on the opportunity—and arranged for a courier to pick it up from his place. Fuck the goat and hammer it with a rubber duck because the pick up never happened and my iPad was still in the hands of a slippery serpant. I mean, this was just plain torture.

I’m thinking of my options. At one point I almost jumped into an overnight bus to Bombay, but decided against it. I haven’t travelled by bus in almost 10 years now. I’m sweating (although mostly because it’s very hot in Goa). I try calling up random people who’re in Bombay. “Are you coming to Goa for the weekend?”. On any given weekday I’d have gladly taken a shit at their doorstep, at night, but today they were the best of friends.

I consult with my father, who’s the resident expert on all things. He suggested Preshit should dump it into a bus heading for Goa, and I pick it up here. It’s actually a little more professional than that, but that’s essentially the action. I could have caught a train the next day, but decided against it, since I wanted to go back again on the 23rd of this mont—

“What the fuck is wrong with you, you fucking ingrate?!”, says mother. Well, those aren’t exactly here words, but if I had to convey such emotion, those are the words I’d have used. She doesn’t swear, ever. Good for her.

“If you’re going on the 23rd anyway, why not wait till then? What’s so important?”, she continues.

“Imagine the time you unleashed your first kid onto this earth. Well, imagine yourself back then; I’m sure you regret him now. Back then, what if the nurse said you couldn’t see him for 8-9 days?”, I asked. She tried to contradict, but I was firm. You can’t fuck with a fanboy and his iPad.

A few hours later, and I had scrapped the send it by bus plan, and had booked my ticket to Bombay. It all happened so fast.

I tried to sleep, but couldn’t sleep. I tried watching a film. I don’t even remember which one it was; I was so distracted. Coldplay sounded like a bunch of village idiots banging on church bells—how garish those songs are. I hardly ate any food; mostly because it’s hot and I’m not really a food enthusiast. I don’t know why I’m filling you with unrelated jabber, but I think it added to the discomfort I was going through.

For instance, one evening, for two hours, I was caught waving the mosquito bat around. You know the electric tennis racket, which zaps the motherfuckers. It’s fun, I must admit, and for a few moments I was lost in the zapping. It didn’t last long though. The mosquitos didn’t last long either.

April 17th: I board the train. The super fast Shatabdi Express, and even though A/C, it only had chair cars. I write this. I sleep. Try to, at least. The train is fast.

2 a.m., April 18th, 2010: iPad.

When it comes to communication in general, I’m kind of a skunk. I hate to pick up phone calls, many a times ignoring them (and then guarding the landline lest someone else should pick up). It’s not like I don’t have the answers, or am afraid of what awaits me at other end¹. Nothing like that. I’m the master of my own life and I care a fuck for what anyone thinks². I’ve observed my behaviour—almost an out of body experience—and I’ve noticed that it’s a sort of unwillingness to succumb to someone else’s will of making me do something that I didn’t want to in the first place. It’s either that, or I’m a pussy.

I understand that the day I signed up for an email address, or got a phone number, I signed the unwritten agreement to respond to any incoming communication. The rule states that if I’m cool with the person, I have the time, and the answers, even if it’s an “I don’t know”, I need to send back that communication. This rule of course carries over from our offline conversations, the one we have in our day to day lives. Unfortunately, electronic communication has its faults in the indirect way it presents itself. If someone asks me a question point blank standing right in front of me, I can reply. If someone asks me a question on the phone (after me having picked it up mistakenly), I can reply. If someone gets me on IM, I can reply. But email, an incoming call, incoming chat, or what have you, are all indirect forms of communication, where if I don’t respond to the communication, it’s not yet acknowledged, and I’m off the hook. That’s my lazy explanation to it at least.

So the next time you send me an email (which by the way is still the best way to get in touch with me), and I don’t reply, please don’t take it out on your dog. I don’t usually like dogs, but whacking them for when it’s not their fault is not something I you should be doing. *kicks dog for no reason*. Instead, know that I’ve read your email, silently acknowledged it, and am on my way to acting upon it (if I have chosen to do so). There are of course exceptions to this, and that’s usually when I just don’t like you.

1. If you can believe that load of shit.
2. Still believing, aren’t you?

Praying to God to get your wishes fulfilled was invented because that’s the only way you could get the ordinary unwashed masses to meditate, an activity which has actual scientifically proven benefits today; old Hindu saints preached that the cow was a sacred animal and that keeping one in the house as a pet would get you to heaven (and killing it would reserve you a seat in hell) because they knew how essential milk was for our health and wanted to ensure that we would have a constant supply of it. […]

The forebears of human civilisation realised that they needed to incentivise doing the everyday good deeds as well and make people fear doing anything wrong and that’s why they invented God. For that reason, I believe in God, even though I don’t.

Since Aayush went ahead and shared an anecdote to illustrate his point, I’ve decided to go ahead with one, too. I have a lot of vivid dreams during my REMs. Sometimes it’s an action sequence, sometimes it’s horror, and sometimes I’m about to get lucky with Carmen Electra. I mention ‘about to’, because some assturd will wake me up just as the good stuff is about to begin. As soon consciousness takes over, the dream starts fading, and I don’t want that to happen. I quickly shut my eyes, and try to get back into that dream. I try to dream of Carmen again, about how my hands were about to discover the plastic in her chest, but she’s fading away. Everything is slowly turning to reality. The pillow now feels like a pillow, and the simulated perfume no longer exists. I will never have Carmen.

Now whether you like Carmen Electra or not, is a different matter. I have my days; but mostly, I do. That’s besides the point. The point—hypothesis, as Aayush says— is that once you know, you know. There’s no turning back. You can’t dumb yourself down, because let’s admit is, religion is all about dumbing you down. The problem with Aayush’s convoluted mess of a hypothesis, is he confuses God, with religion. God doesn’t exist. End of story. You know it, I know it he knows it. If that’s the case, you’re an atheist, and I’m an atheist; there’s no argument beyond that. Unless, of course, you do believe in God, in which case you should probably stop reading this blog, rethink your beliefs, or just sit quiet in the corner—grown ups are talking.

Religion is culture, with God thrown in just to fuck with people. Aayush is right on many counts, on how many of the religious practices came into being. Whether they are good practices or bad, that’s a whole new argument. But he confuses religion with God. There’s two things about religion that one can be absolutely sure of is thats (a) it’s man-made, and (b) is heavily evolved. Religion of the cave men is different from the religion of the Rishis a few thousand years ago, to the religion of modern day god worshippers. You can single out a few instances where practices in today’s religions have real world benefits, but collectively it’s a waste of time, and mostly detrimental.

A little about my religious beliefs. I’m a Christian. I was born into a Roman Catholic family, and I went was forced to go to church till the age of 18. I’m essentially a Christian Atheist. But I respect other people’s I celebrate Christmas, enjoy village feasts of Saints (the food part of it at least), Easter, San Joao, all that. I even celebrate Hindu festivals with my neighbours. I do not have any Muslim friends though, sadly. To me, religion is about celebrating culture, about taking days off from your regular work-life, about your relatives and friends coming together, communicating. These are important social interactions for healthy human living, and I enjoy them. I do not however waste my time at sunday church, nor do I sit around chanting the rosary, nor do I write letters to the Pope. I am, in my beliefs, and actions, an atheist.

But atheists are not just non-believers. They’re people who think for themselves. Once you remove God and religious doctrines, you have to make up your own. Every decision is your own, and you are aware of it. An atheist understands—or at least tries to understand—the thresholds of what’s good and fun, and what’s detrimental, causes harm, or is just plain fucking stupid. ‘Make up your mind’ doesn’t mean violent, uncultured, anarchic or stupid. Atheists don’t around slaughtering cows, eating unhealthy foods, or refuse to eat neem leaves, any more so than they would if they were followers of a religion. An atheist understands the reasons behind any religious practice, and practices them because of that understanding.

Thankfully, modern civilisation and things-to-do-other-than-god-stuff is bringing about a change in thinking, with a lot more atheists roaming free on this planet. This is a good thing, for the points illustrated above. Aayush isn’t exactly wrong, but he isn’t right either. First of all, I think he’s got his concepts about Agnosticism wrong. He’s clearly an atheist, so we’re off on a good start. His folly is he wants to blindly follow religion because he assumes it’s good for him; and that’s an irresponsible decision. He quotes neem and meditation, and while those are acceptable religious practices, we’ve seen a lot of them which are detrimental to humanity. Besides, religion is not even required to perform them. As we have seen, you can meditate without praying to a God, you can have neem leaves without a morning sacrifice, and humanely rear cows without considering them to be gods.

But let’s excuse Aayush this once. I have a feeling the Hawas got to him which resulted in his thought-compass going haywire. I mean, on this very same day the idiot actually wanted the iPhone to have an extra button, that would serve functions like creating new tweets. Oh Aayush, get well soon.

[To note: A German Nazi helped me collect my thoughts.]

If there’s any indicator of where design is going to be, it’s the Mac community. Developers and designers are the first ones to display the future of design, and what they’re all talking about now, is minimalism. The future of design is not in the designer’s ability to incorporate features, rather, it’s their ability to remove features. It’s not about adding what’s important; it’s about throwing out what’s not important. Tumblr has got a lot of things right with its themes. They’re simple, focus on the content, and are perfect for personal blogs. But, Tumblr lacks in features and making your own theme can be quite a pain, which is why I’ve stuck to Wordpress.

A while ago someone asked me to do a piece on how I redesigned this blog—speaking about my previous design. I don’t think the sh.it was my ultimate design, in that I still found some glaring errors in it presented (hence the new design). But I did do some things right that time. I totally obliterated categories and tags. Understanding your content and audience is key to any design. The sh.it is a narrative, so there’s absolutely no need for categories or tags—anywhere. Even if your blog does have varied sortable content, with a readership that would sift through it, placement of tags makes a huge difference. They’re useless on the home page, but for individual articles it makes sense to have them running along the footer, defining the article and encouraging further exploration. Some argue that it defines the content. I’d say it’s meaningless clutter. Categories on the other hand help sort content. Unlike tags, it’s not so easy to create a new category, at least mentally, so they stay organised.

When we redesigned Beautiful Pixels, one of the things we changed was instead of automatically generating categories listing, we decided to go with a static list—a list of icons it was. The point is that we already know the type of content we’re producing, and having categories like “Misc” just don’t help in navigation. Nobody in their right minds would ever click on the Misc category in a list. Even when defining categories, we’ve trimmed down on SA by about 50%. The result is a much more focussed list—although still not focussed enough. The thing about categories and tags, is that they make sense to you, but not to your reader. Put yourself in the reader’s shoes. When was the last time you navigated using categories? Instead of categories, how about a list of featured articles. Your best work will obviously attract more clicks. And your goal is to enable readers to find your best work.

Search is another thing a lot of people give a lot of importance to. I for one can’t remember the last time I searched for something on a blog. This is mostly because Wordpress search is a fucking turd, but even otherwise, I think Google.com is a better way to search for content. This is especially true of personal blogs, like this one. But a search bar is important. You’d want to enable your readers to be able to find articles they might have read in the past. I took my search bar, and shoved it right at the bottom. Unless you need it, it’s not there.

One thing you need to pay close attention to, is link dilution. There’s always a treshhold after which links do not make any sense. Having fifty recommendations in your blogroll leads to not one of them getting clicked. Inversely, you can’t have just one link. You can’t have two. Isolate what’s most important, most common to your kind of content, and recommend it. Again, decide whether you even need to have a cloud of links pointing to other peoples’ sites. More often than not, you don’t need to.

I didn’t want to be very specific about what you should do or should not do. It all depends on the content, and the audience. If your readers are largely IE6 users, god bless your soul. For the new design, I’ve used web fonts with CSS @font-face; the titles and sub-text treated with Yanone Kaffesatz. I wish I had used some Ajax or CSS animations, but apart from pop ups for the thumbs above, it just didn’t make sense.

I hope you like the new look of the sh.it. I think it combines good typography, whitespace, and the ability to present large images without ruining the design. The general look is inspired by Made by Sofa’s redesign, which is one hell of a job by Jorn van Dijk. I did not work very hard on this one, though. It’s been minimally tested to work right in Safari and other webkit browsers; it should work in Firefox; Internet Explorer users can suck my brother’s dog’s loose balls. Big thanks to Ole Teucher for his invaluable feedback. If you’re ever on the lookout for a nazi of any kind, they don’t make em better than the Germans. I’m sure there’s a bunch of things broken; I don’t want to hear about them. Also, I don’t think I’ll ever go back and fix my earlier articles, which now feature a warped look. My excuse is that I’m looking forward.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

I obviously have a problem with this.

Let me start by saying I’m not against tigers. I think they should be protected, and allowed to regenerate their population. I’m not against killing anything—except bloodsucking mosquitos and maybe our three dogs—so tigers are safe. In fact, I’ve always wanted a Tiger as a pet cat; where even an extremely large house cat would do. But, I have a problem with this largely fake sympathy toward Tigers.

Tigers and other carnivores are ecologically redundant. Their purpose in nature was to make sure the herbivores don’t eat up all of the grass, thereby leaving the earth barren; ending life. Now, humans are very well capable of doing that job—trigger happy Salman is just waiting to shoot down some black buck—so where does the Tiger fit in? The Tiger is only for the saving. The vanishing of the glamorous cat puts us all in extreme guilt for our better lives, so we want to do something about it. Nature doesn’t give a shit about Tigers. Nature doesn’t need tigers. Existence is not depending on whether or not tigers roam this planet. What are we saving them for. Our children? Aside from knowing that there are tigers in the wild, when was the last time you ever saw one? I’m not counting zoos here. And if you did make a Safari trip, how do you feel about yourself, disturbing their lives with your fucking cameras and littering?

Say something against Tigers, and it won’t be a second before someone yells out, “what a fucking self-important self-riteous selfish ass-tard”. Which is what I am. All individuals are selfish. It starts at the individual level, them family, local society, country, and finally, the species. With animals on the other hand it’s much simpler. In many cases it’s a direct jump from individual to species. Sometimes not even species. My point is we’re all selfish, so it’s not wrong to think of our species first.

Let me get the trivial stuff out of the way. We have no reason to kill tigers. Poaching is just plain wrong, and people who own tiger skin should be hanged at the local beat show. But that’s not why Tigers are disappearing—rather, they’re not proliferating. It’s because of drying watering holes, lack of prey, receding forest cover, and things like that which lead to the Tiger crossing paths with a human. Should we do something about it? What can we do about it? Not much. No matter how many speeches and documentaries we watch, we continue to use motor vehicles, we continue to eat chicken and beef, we continue to live in concrete houses, and continue to breed. As long as there’s development, there will be a climb. The climb may show a steady decline in increase, but it’s increasing nonetheless. Selfish species for sure, but evolution taught us that. It’s nature’s mistake really. It made man so powerful and smart, that he has taken over the planet. I’d like to blame this God fellow, but I’ll leave him alone for a change. But then, the age old philosophical question is asked again, “what are we here for?”. We don’t know. Intelligence, collective consciousness, and documented history could be far greater evolutionary achievements on nature’s part, than something as minor as a four legged carnivore.

So what do we do then? Just stand by and watch? No way. Do something. My parents are one of India’s greatest environmentalists (please don’t tell them I said that), and have played a crucial role in saving Goa from destruction. Truth. My brother is one of the most knowledgeable natural scientists I know, and has been educating people about the harmlessness of snakes for several years now (don’t tell that asswipe I said this either). I have reared the most awesome cat in the world. He’s been bred to be soft, sissy, good looking, and a good internet marketeer apparently. Do something for sure, something selfless that will prolong the life of this planet as we know it.

The problem with this “Save the Tiger” bullshit, is that it makes you feel like you’re doing something by not doing anything. As long as you don’t kill any tigers, and maybe have your kid draw some shitty paintings of happy tigers, you’ve done your job. It’s as fake as using a fleshlight to jerk yourself off. The real problems are swept under the rug, because (a), they’re not glamorous enough to sell a story to the public, and (b), it requires major effort and lifestyle changes on part of the public. The Ganges has turned into one filthy flow of sewage, the mountains are being hacked by people who can afford to pay bribes; we’re not worried about frogs killed for their legs, or indigenous primitive trees being hacked to make way for teak and other desirable wood, or that forest mushrooms hardly grow these days. Our priority should be to create a sustainable environment for the natural ecosystem to thrive. We need cleaner sources of energy, better laws and administration at from our government, and we need to understand that the last link of the chain is not nearly as important as the first. Make that happen, and tigers will most certainly take care of themselves.

A rare red and white tiger, spotted in its natural habitat.

Fact is, I needed to explain all this to a friend of mine who recently joined twitter (and is making an ass out of himself), so why not put it in words. There’s a shit load of Don’t in here, so if all you’re going to do is point out the negativity, I advise you to bend over and stick a carrot through the hole facing the sky. On to twitter…

Retweet Responsibly.

People don’t know how to retweet. You may say, just use the twitter retweets feature, which is fine for some cases. But other times you want to own that piece of news, so you retweet traditionally. Here’s the syntax.

If it’s a piece of news, send out the news first, then add a slasher “/via” followed by @whoever. So, “Michael Jackson has risen again! http://link.me/xhs5y /via @jerkoff” is the right way to go. Always put the content first, and then the credits. Why is it important who you or your followers who you got the information from? But you do want to credit the source, so the via link is apt. RT is just in bad taste.

But what about if there already is a “via @firstperson” in that tweet? I’ve seen so many cases of “RT @someone Here comes the news http://link.me/sexdoll /via @else”. Please don’t treat your followers like shit. In most cases, I’d say give credit only to the person you got the retweet from, not the original source. If you do want to give credit to two sources (never more than two though), add use the slasher and tack em on, like “/via @dumbass @goobimama”.

Sometimes, an ultimate original source will tweet a link. Like for instance, TUAW tweets a link to one of their articles. If that’s the case, you don’t need to add the “via”, because you’ve already credited the source with that link. I would recommend that you change the words though, so it’s more personal.

When it comes to quotes and funnies, instead of using the RT syntax, append the Twitter handle at the end of the tweet using a hyphen. “I vote for world peace — @brandonpittman” is way better than using via or RT. Although, I’d say funnies belong to the original author, so it’s best you just use the new retweet feature.

Avoid Twitlonger

I’ve seen so many people make me hit the unfollow button because they were too lazy to edit their tweet. If the tweet is over 140 characters, don’t tweet it. Just don’t.

The only time Twitlonger is appreciated, is when replying to someone and the answer is too long to be covered in two tweets. It should be at least more than 300 characters to make any sense. For the rest, take heed to Aayush’s advice on cramming your tweets into the 140 character space.

Don’t use hashtags unless you know what the fuck you’re doing

“This #ipad makes you look #cool. #mac #apple” in fact makes you look stupid. Hashtags serve two purposes: to add a tag categorizing a tweet which otherwise doesn’t contain that tag “I’m leaving now! #pakapukutweetup” would being all tweets related to Paka Puku tweetup together. They don’t work for broader untracked subjects—things like Apple or #India. The other use, is sarcasm, satire, and humor. as Patrick does it.

You’re not stupid, are you? No wait, don’t answer that.

Follow Friday

I get the idea behind follow Friday. It’s about recommending your favourite twitterrers so others can enjoy their tweets too. What I don’t get however, is this large scale back scratching that goes on every Friday. I’m even willing to entertain a meaningless tweet with a bunch of people thrown in tagged with #FF, but when I see more than one in a row, I immediately unfollow. There’s absolutely no excuse for that kind of rubbish.

For what exactly are you trying to achieve with a #followfriday? I can bet you not one of your followers will follow someone from an #FF tweet. I don’t, and I don’t even get new followers from such tweets. It doesn’t work. The only way you can truly recommend someone, is by sending out a single tweet explaining why you think that person is great.

Don’t use yFrog

Use Img.ly, or Droplr, or Cloud (if you have an invite), or even trusty old TwitPic. yFrog is the ugliest image host you could find, and I despise even seeing the link in my timeline. Curse @Tweetie for defaulting to yFrog, which inadvertently leads to me sending out a yFrog link once every few. Using a better host not only reduces clutter, it also makes your images look better. I say Img.ly, because not only is it the best looking one out there, they’re also the most innovative of the lot.

Don’t ever fuck with my timeline

Whenever you’re going to do something, know that it’s stupid, because that’s what you’re good at. So take a step back for a moment, and think about me for a change. Will I benefit from seeing those >140 characters? More often than not, it’s going to be a big no. Do I think I’m as stupid as you to believe I’ll win a MacBook Pro by tweeting about it? Do you really think I’m interested in seeing pictures of your cat? Of course, your timeline belongs to you, and you should post whatever the fuck you feel like. Just don’t overdo it, because you know, the big bad wolf has a habit of dropping in unexpectedly.