Pink Floyd's Pulse

Hello everyone. The week has gone by pretty fast and by extension, that means it has been a quiet week on the blog here. However, the work week is winding down this afternoon and I wanted to take time out and let everyone that reads know about the recently released "Pulse" DVD.

Now, this concert of Pink Floyd was recorded in 1994 - the year I passed out of high school. To me that seems like yesterday but it has now been 12 years!! I guess my '94 is like Bryan Adams' '69. Anyway, back to Pulse - I have always wanted to see the concert in its entirety and when it was recently released on DVD, I added it to our Netflix queue and promptly moved it to the top spot.
Last weekend, I eagerly awaited the first disc (yes, it takes 2 DVDs!) and had a hell of a Sunday evening watching DVD 1.

I had seen bits of the concert on (M)TV a few times but was still amazed by the show that Floyd put on. As an avid Floyd fan, I was able to sing along to every song. If found myself mesmerized by the awesomeness of the music and just the way all the members of the band came together to sing all their classics. Since this performance was just after the release of their last album Division Bell, there is a bit of all their best stuff.

Looking at David Gilmour lean back and grin at his bandmates while he performed some of the most amazing riffs on a guitar that anyone could, was (please excuse my limited grammar) awesome! The lights show that accompanied the performance was without parallel in any other performance I have ever seen and while the video quality of the DVD seemed on the lower end, the audio was top notch on our home theatre system. I'm not sure if the lights and colours of the concert were stretching the limits of the DVD format or the original recording itself was lacking but I really hope it's the former because I would love to see this concert on a Blu-Ray disc! :)

I had a day's break before I got to watch DVD 2 on Tuesday night and again, it was an experience par none. If I ever doubt the need for a HDTV or a home theatre audio system, please remind me of these 2 nights. The second disc was a non-stop performance of the complete Dark Side Of The Moon album - including all the little sound effects in the original album. Simply amazing, with a surprisingly satisfying encore. I heartily recommend this DVD set to all Pink Floyd fans and indeed, all rock music aficionados.

The surgeon's shoelace knot

I didn't know there was more to a shoelace knot than the simple shoelace knot. That was before I encountered Ian's shoelace site, a whole website dedicated to the art of tying your shoelaces!

In my case, I have a pair of shoes made by Skechers that I really love. The laces are made from some new hybrid material that makes the shoelaces really tough and keep them looking new. However, this new material has very little friction when I tie my shoelaces which means I had to keep tying them about a dozen times a day (only a slight exaggeration) because they keep coming off!! After using the surgeon's shoelace knot, however, my laces stay put all day and I can vouch that this variation on the shoelace knot indeed does work! I was surprised that you can still untie the knot like a regular shoelace knot, just pull.

I have no idea if this is useful to anyone reading this blog but I decided to tell you guys about it anyway. :)

Found through Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools

Death Cab 4 Cutie @ Berkeley - Aug 11th

Death Cab 4 Cutie @ Berkeley - Aug 11th
Originally uploaded by Jillako.

Quick concert report from last friday -

* We liked the Greek Theater. Good location, casual atmosphere, plenty of good seats.

* The band rocked, like, seriously.

* The audience didn't seem to get into the music too much. Which leads me to believe that most of them were not familiar with Death Cab's earlier work, much like us. Everything they performed from 'Plans' (the latest album) was well received.

* Once the lights dimmed out in anticipation of the main act, a whole bunch of folks lit up their pipes/bongs?? whatever, they put weed into. I mean seriously, this in a venue where no smoking was allowed. People were puffing away like steam engines.

* My Sony Ericsson camera wasn't too bad actually. This picture looks decent.

Scramble for Lentils - "dal" shortage is real!

So it wasn't just a rumour after all. I've heard people talk about the lentil shortage and ban on exports by India but I didn't really think it was real. So today, I went searching online and apparently a lot of Indians and Indian Restaurants are being hit hard by the ban!

Scramble for Lentils: "Local retailers still have Indian toor dal on their shelves, but that's unlikely to last. Ajit Kaushal, owner of Bombay Trading Company in Concord, says he's pleading with customers not to start hoarding. 'It will only make the prices go higher,' says Kaushal, who sold up to seven hundred pounds of toor dal a week before the supply started drying up. Since early July, he has had to double the price, which is currently at $2 per pound. "

What's that? Wow, its a Firefox crop circle!!

This past weekend, the OSU Linux Users Group descended on a field in Oregon to create a 45,000+ square foot crop circle of the Firefox logo.





Here's the logo for reference -



Read the story. See the photo gallery.

Via Slashdot.

Joy of Tech cracks me up.

Hahaha. Steve Jobs is about to start talking at the WWDC in San Fran shortly. Of course, the rumor mills have been in full swing as prior to any major 'Stevenote'. Check of Joy of Tech's take on the situation while I check out Engadget's live coverage and report back later today. :)



Late update (25th Aug): The WWDC Stevenote was a bit of a letdown in that Apple decided not to divulge all the features of the next OS (Leopard).
The new Mac Pro & XServe were introduced, as expected and they both look to be pretty good. Leopard looks like a good upgrade to Tiger from what we were shown but key features are still under wraps.

Kinda quiet around here..

I'm back from India and well into the flow of things here. Nothing happening that's really out of the ordinary though, so not much to add here.
The last batch of photos from India (Mahabalipuram) will be ready for upload sometime this week so watchout for that. I'm looking forward to the Death Cab 4 Cutie concert next Friday, with App.
Also, Apple is hosting the WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) in San Francisco starting Monday. WWDC has not been a stage for important product launches in the past. However, the last few months have been kind of quiet for Apple and there is a lot of buzz around Steve Jobs' Keynote. Come back next week to see if anything interesting turned up.
Til' later...