Ah the cliché of New Year’s resolutions. And it’s ok to be skeptical about them, it is really. Just another day on an arbitrarily calibrated calendar, but we mark with with such celebrations. Sure, it’s not like Christmas or Chinese New Year, with all these unspoken and unmissable rituals. But still, we mark its passing.

But you know, I now think of it differently. I think of it now, as a symptom of our unwavering hope for the future. No matter how good or bad the past year was, here it is, the first day of the new year and it’s only going to get better. And I respect that. So in the same spirit of exuberance and optimism, I’d like to just have one New Year’s resolution this year. And that’s to (learn to) live better.

To live better. To experience all the good things life has to offer. And no, while advertisements have convinced our collective subconscious that living better means having something or the other in whatever fantasy you care to think of, I don’t think living better has to do with being able to afford anything really. I just want to learn to appreciate the fact that I (can) breathe, see, hear, smell, taste and think. By living better.

Even from the concept stages of building this site, I had a very clear idea about the things I wanted to do with it. I had to narrow it down you see? Because I was going for minimalism, and that meant cutting anything in excess. Besides, it was essential in deciding the “site architecture”. As it is, I am “abusing” WordPress’ category hierarchies to create “sections” like “essays”, “notions” and “scrapbook”.

So what is the “scrapbook”? Very much the same as what the word means IRL. The Internet is a constant source of information right? Web 2.0 gave birth to the idea of mashups, among other things. Mashups essentially meant sites weren’t built like monoliths anymore, but in a modular manner. Think of it like every block of text in a magazine having perforated edges, so you can tear them out easily. That’s how I see the web now.

And I thought, wouldn’t it be nice, if I could tear out the pieces I like, and post it here much like one does in a scrapbook? That’s also the disclaimer: most of the content in the scrapbook is not mine. (But don’t worry, I take every effort to attribute them at every opportunity.)

That said, it’s not stealing! Ideas are meant to be shared. The point of the internet was so that we could share things across computers. I don’t see what the difference is *where* it’s being shared.

So enjoy the stuff; don’t hate. Cheers.

And it’s been a long journey getting here!  It’s been 4 years I think since I got the domain, and this is truthfully the first time I feel like it’s going to last. The first time I feel I won’t someday, in a fit of perfectionist rage,  just demolish all the hard work to start afresh, again.

Yet it’s never been annoying (to me at least!). I admit, it is an obsession with the idea of doing everything *myself*, which is why I could never just use a free theme off the internet. I haven’t decided yet if this has to do with a superiority complex that only *I* can make something I like or if it’s the joy of learning and creation. Mostly the former, I think.

The good news is, each time I revamped the site, I learnt something new. PHP, Javascript, server management, CSS3 and HTML5, (web) typography, grids, minimalism… that’s just the list off the top of my head. What I love, in retrospect, is that all these technical structured concepts help in making something beautiful (something intangible). That’s pretty cool, no?

So, yeah this is pretty much it for now. I call it the Ionic theme, inspired by the simplicity of middle-​​era Greek columns. In the next few days, I’ll add a few more specialized templates, but the main theme concept is this right here, and unlikely to change. Looking forward to writing again!

I admit I only made the acquaintance of David Foster Wallace well after his tragic suicide. Perhaps it was the articles that spoke of his beautiful contemporary prose that found the joy and wonder in even the most mundane of human experiences. Perhaps it was the kindred spirit I sensed when reading of his intense and even intellectual standoff with depression, that at one point brought tears to my eyes in a rare moment of genuine empathy. Well, rare at least for me.

Whatever it was, this “it” then became the reason I tracked down several eBooks of his, all at once. Imagine that. Despite my long estrangement from books, for the dislike of simplistic fiction and the overwhelming ennui in non-fiction’s typically academic vernacular, “it” compelled me to invest speculatively, and generously, in an author I’d never read, whose style I didn’t even know I liked (yet). It was the same with many of the other authors I instantly fell in love with — the tingling pre-​​sensation that here, within, lies the prose of a kindred spirit.

And intuition, that the universe deems to grant us so much of, is rarely wrong. Like a compass to true north, intuition seems to guide us to our affinities & friendships, to our places of comfort & items of significance, to our idyllic mindscapes. I must thank intuition then, for guiding me, books-​​wise, from Chrichton to Cook, from Hesse to Amis, from Banks to Auster, and now to David Foster Wallace.

If nothing else, allow me to share one thing Mr. Wallace (for I can’t bring myself to address him on a first-​​name basis) has shared with me — the realization that floral prose is not a shield and all the jargon in the world could not hold back the emotion & empathy inherent in a passionately written letter. A letter not in any traditional sense. A letter not to someone, but to humanity’s shared intellect. Indeed, the realization that objectivity need not deaden the soul, nor the language of its description. For some reason, I needed to hear that.

Maybe there’s a reason CSS is just not given the same “respect” as say Python or PHP. They’re all languages after all. They each have distinct advantages and achieve specific things by way of code. Either has the potential to exercise creativity – I would visualize CSS as the programmer/​painter vs PHP/​Java as the programmer/​architect. Overall they’re equally valid languages/​art to me.

Which is why it gets on my nerves, it irks me so, that CSS developers & users are so complacent when it comes to actually deploying the code. The very concept of “hacks” to make CSS work is so alien to me. Would any self-​​respecting programmer in any other language allow such blatant disregard for standards/​conventions in their compilers (in this case, the browsers)?

I respect the industry for working tirelessly and I respect the Standards Working Group for constantly adding to the protocol, I do. But if developers really want to take themselves seriously, then the entire experimental empirical process of adding new features on a liberal independent roadmap per browser has to change.

When I write code for a C compiler, if the syntax is valid, then it should work. Period. If it doesn’t work, it’s a bug and must be patched. I don’t see why entire games and OSes can be patched but not a paltry browser engine. So what if IE6/Netscape/FF1.5/IE5 Mac is an old browser, why is the engine not patchable?

And my exasperation is not limited to the ever-​​repulsive Internet Explorer family. I’m looking at “modern browsers” too. I find this whole direction of vendor-​​specific CSS to be disgusting. Am I the only one? Vendor-​​specific code can be used for debugging. Keep those in the nightlies.

I don’t see why vendor-​​specific code should make it into production/​deployment code. To have mutiple declarations that do essentially the same thing, is just not good code. Again, as a programmer for any other language, would it be acceptable to have a compiler-​​specific syntax for certain actions? And would any self-​​respecting programmer, pre-​​emptively code multiple versions of the same functions so when people download the source code, it’ll work in arbitrarily different compilers? Javascript/​PHP doesn’t have to be coded differently depending on the browser being used. Why should CSS be any different?

You know what would be nice? A universal roadmap that all browsers try to implement at around the same time. And a modular design of browsers such that the engine is patchable. A transparent upgrade mechanism à la Chrome would be just as nice. What do you think?

Have you seen Danny Boyle flicks? They’re all the rage, when they first come out. If they happen to debut closer to Oscar season, they even get nominated for a few awards. But they might never feature in any criterion collection or achieve any cult following. And I think I’ve figured out why.

*Ok maybe 28 Days Later could be nominated for a cult status – fast “zombies”? Unheard of!

Danny Boyle is a talented film-​​maker. What you see on screen is a compelling watch. He captures drama, he injects humour, he experiments with presentation to always deliver something more than a stock uninspired camera angle. I admire that artistry, I do. That he chooses some of the best scripts is great too. I couldn’t imagine Danny Boyle choosing another run-​​of-​​the-​​mill rom-​​com as his next project. And you know even if he did, that would be something markedly different from the rest, with that invisible Danny Boyle signature.

What he misses IMHO is transcendence. The best cult shows are not necessarily perfect in every way. But something they all share are ideas. The ideas don’t even have to be the premise or the plot. The ideas don’t have to feature in the climax. The ideas don’t have to be expressly seen or heard, as long as their effect is tangible. From Kevin Smith’s disgruntled angels & career slackers to Gilliam’s signature grotesquely opulent fantasies, from Bergman’s gentlemanly Death who’d like nothing more than a chess game to Coen Brothers’ Dude’s absurd quest for compensation for a pissed-​​on carpet, cult movies immerse you in their bubble universes that literally condense and anthropomorphize some abstract concept that we take for granted, in a distinctly unique way.

Danny Boyle’s films don’t do that for me. 28 Days Later is about a zombie-​​fying virus, Slumdog Millionaire is about a poor Indian winning Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Trainspotting is about the social network of junkies. These films are amazing in themselves, but they don’t transcend their immediate plots. There is no conceptual take-​​away, and this is my peeve with Danny Boyle’s direction.

Maybe it’s just me.