Everyone seems to be in a holiday mood today. There isn’t much work being done and we seem to be forming the ‘huddle’ every second hour discussing things from politics to pepsi(?) to noise cancellation(??). Amongst all these, the topic that garnered the most interest was mobile phones.

Yes, you’re right. After the recent MMS scandals (no, this is not an attempt to generate traffic), the mobile phone market is said to be booming. According to the Times Of India, there has been a lot of enquiry on MMS enabled phones and people who had the option are now activating it and learning more (I’m sure!). This has also enlightened a few souls at my workplace as some of them are contemplating on upgrading their existing phones to the ‘all-wonder-camera’ phones.

With multitude of phones with ‘oh-so-many’ features available, deciding on which one to buy can be a difficult process. If ease of use is what you’re looking at primarily, Nokia used to be the only company that could get this right. This has changed a bit- partly because other companies have realized that user testing is important and partly because Nokia has been drawn towards including more and more features on underpowered processors.

Don’t buy a phone that you can’t personally play with if the UI matters to you. Even if the documentation (imagine that) were to show the complete UI, it wouldn’t give a sense of responsiveness, etc. Sometimes I wish consumer electronics companies could realize the value of a web-based simulation of their product’s interface.

Movie : The Incredibles

I watched The Incredibles last night. In one word (and I know its cliche), it was simply, incredible. Heck, its fantastic! The best Pixar film to date, and possibly the best animated film in the past few years. It’s one of those movies that is of such a high quality all around, I could probably watch it over and over.

At times, I must admit, I forgot I was watching an animated film. With the brilliant graphics, stupendous animation, great plot, believable (yes!) characters, and a captivating story, it was easy to forget that the entire movie is a digital world. The ultra-quick Dash provided the best laugh of the movie for me.

The Incredibles outdoes most big-budget live-action Hollywood action movies in the effects and action department, and what amazed me the most was the sheer quality of the sound effects that went into the film. Because of the action, the movie is geared to an older crowd than Pixar’s typical audience, and the jokes are all that much funnier when you’re old enough to get them.

Already a huge fan of original animated features and Pixar in general, this movie was a must see. I love the way Pixar makes movies from beginning to end, and they never cease to be creative at every step.

Its interesting how the brain works. Let me explain. I got myself a new pair of spectacles today after around 4 years or so. Yes four years, or maybe more!! I never felt the need actually. Till a couple of days back. Today I went to collect it from Lawrence & Mayo at M.G. Road after having given the order the day before.

I got the frame and tried it on. It looked nice, but everything appeared different- crystal clear. The visual feedback was so sharp and clear that it gave me a headache. My right eye power had increased a bit. So after putting on the new glasses, it took sometime for me to focus on what I wanted to see. I wasn’t quite happy with that. I told the salesman. He told that it would take a while for me to get used to it and that it would be fine in a weeks time. I wasn’t satisfied. I told him I was happy with the one I had earlier. He got the optometrist and she explained to me why my power increased – my right eye was more dependent on the left and that its become ‘lazy’. She made me read text of varied sizes and I realized that it had indeed become ‘lazy’. I thanked her, took my new frame and left the place.

On the way back, I started noticing people – the kind of spectacles they wore. It was something that happened sub-conciously, I started looking at the eyewear and how it suited the person than looking at the person itself. Its like some kinda file you registered in your brain. The brain being a complex supercomputer has about 100 billion neurons in it. Amongst all those neurons, one of them registers a ‘new glasses’ file and that appears in your ‘Recent Documents’ list in your brain. So everytime you look at a person, the ‘Recent Documents’ folder tells the brain about the neuron that registered a ‘new glasses’ file. So automatically (without you even knowing it) you look at the glasses and all the associated properties before you actually look at the person. Its interesting how the brain works.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Movie – Swades

Just got back after watching Swades, this time at PVR Classic Cinema. It was nice – but I had a tough time trying to avoid comparing it with Lagaan, Gowariker’s first film. Both films had earthy tones set in villages, a pinch of team-spirit and issues within villages. However, Swades was different in a way that it had more of a documentary feel to it.

Swades – a story about an NRI who comes to India in search of his childhood nanny and ultimately rediscovers and returns to where he belongs. A simple quest that everyone of us goes through in search of that metaphysical and elusive place called “home”. Having been an NRI for a good chunk of my life, I can relate to it. There are some moments that I share with Mohan Bhargav (the protagonist, played by Shah Rukh Khan).

The film is quite long. At 3.5 hours, there were times when I felt that some of the scenes could have been done away with. For example – the Ramleela song (which appears somewhat out of context) and a few others. I also felt that they could have reduced the scenes taken at NASA and instead, shown a little more on the kind of lifestyle that Mohan had in the United States. They do show him driving around in a Jaguar and living in a swanky apartment but could have elaborated a little more on that.

Swades does not come across as a commercial film. It is not as gripping and ‘edge-of-the-seat’ entertainer as Lagaan (sorry, but I just can’t help comparing it with Lagaan). This film is meant for a thinking audience – a message to the Indian diaspora across the globe.

SRK does a good job although there were some of his trademark acts (as expected) thrown about in the film. Geeta, played by Gayatri Joshi is actually quite impressive. Some of her emotions came across really well on screen. Good work by a first timer. A.R. Rahman’s score is nothing short of brilliant. The track ‘Yeh jo des hain tera’ with the shehnai backing infuses a kind of modern patriotism not heard since ‘Maa tujhe salaam’.

43 Things, Twinkler

Very, very cool.

TWELVE IS THE NEW ELEVEN

Watched Oceans’ Twelve last night at PVR – Cinema Europa. I was quite excited to see what O12 would be like after the brilliant heist of the Bellagio in O11.

In Oceans’ Eleven or most heist films for that matter, watching the heist itself unfold is the big payoff. Watching it switchback, double-over, reverse, tie a knot, is a pure joy and the heist in this film (although convuluated and outrageous) is quite entertaining. There are moments when you guess and it comes out right and then there are moments where you are left waiting for the solution. In the end, the crooks get away with the money and the con is played out successfully like we all hope it is.

O12 didn’t appeal to me as much as O11 did. In 011, every member had his role to play in the heist. They were people with special skills and their skills were tastefully used at some point in the movie. O12 lacks that.

There are a great deal of things to like about this movie. My favorite bit has Tess joining the gang in the eleventh hour by impersonating a famous actress (can you guess who?). Along with that comes a pretty fun Bruce Willis extended cameo.

I laughed a few times, mostly at Brad Pitt. I really like his Rusty character (even if he is eating in every scene again this time). I enjoyed some of the clever camera work, and the cheesy throwback title overlays. Zeta-Jones was fine as Rusty’s love interest. Not great, but not bad, either. I just didn’t get a sense of fun like I did in the first one. If the gang decides to make an Ocean’s Thirteen, I will definitely see it because I love the characters. I just didn’t like where they went or what they did in this film.

Too often sequels are made to capitalize off the initial and perpetual success of a film. Too often said sequels are painful to endure.

Ok, I’ve just changed my homepage to this. Google Suggest guesses what you are typing and offers suggestions in real time. Its like instant access to any piece of human knowledge; it now can guess what you are looking for as you type.

Most of the work happens in a condensed Javascript library (not easy reading though). It disables the autocomplete feature on the textfield and defines a hidden div for the auto-complete dropdown (variations of this for different browsers). Each time you type a character, it populates that div body with the results of a quick, tiny query back to Google. It’s NOT running the search for you; it’s hitting (I assume) a simple, probably totally in-memory list of the most popular searches and number of results. That’s how it can be so quick a response — the lookup on their end is super-minimal, and the data to be transferred is probably less than 1k each time.

Neat concept.

I got back from Hyderabad early Saturday morning. The trip was good, although I didnt get to see Hyderabad much, not even the charminar. I stayed at Banjara Hills, close to Taj Residency which was the venue of the RFID summit. Its a beautiful city with wide roads, lanes and gardens – a la Bangalore. There is also another part to it – the old Hyderabad, which is chaotic, has narrow lanes and crowded junctions. I just caught a glimpse of it while passing through that way. Its like two different worlds that co-exist in perfect harmony. From what little I got to see, I must say that I was pretty impressed with the city.

Some of things that I really wanted to do but couldn’t due to time constraints – visit the IMAX theater, take photos of the Charminar, eat Haleem, etc.

And some of the things I did – tried Hyderabadi Biryani at Tabla – a fine dining restaurant at Banjara Hills. Somehow it didn’t feel all that great. Hyderabadi biryani should be tried at old Hyderabad with the crowd, where they prepare it in large quantities and serve in plenty. The whole fine dining experience spoiled the very essence of it. But Tabla is quite a nice restaurant. Got to see Est – Azharuddin’s state-of-the-art gym. It was pretty impressive. With a membership of Rs.25K per annum inclusive of a spa and a beauty salon, it had to be!

I dont clearly remember how those 2 days zipped by so fast. But as with everything else, theres always a next time. Looking forward to that!

A few good snaps from our trip

Just over a month after the release of the highly successful Firefox browser, the Mozilla foundation has announced the release of Thunderbird 1.0 email client. Thunderbird, similar to Firefox, was developed with the support of hundreds of volunteers and developers across the world.

I’ve been using Thunderbird right from version 0.8 when it was still quite buggy for general use. There were some features that I found really interesting – like labels and spam protection. It had this whole GMail feel to it. I’m sure the guys at Mozilla must have souped up the client in more ways after that. Thunderbird will surely prove to be the perfect companion for Firefox.

The startling fact about Firefox and Thunderbird is that both have been really well designed. I think the design skill here takes us well beyond the simple observation that the Mozilla team isn’t working for Microsoft, or that they are consulting the users (which they clearly are). Good interfaces are very sticky.

Now that GMail supports POP3, using Thunderbird for GMail could be a really good option incase your the type who’d want to download emails onto your desktop.

Try it and let me know what you think.

In yet another attempt to take over all of the Internet, MSN has launched a blog service called MSN Spaces with the new version of MSN Messenger ( public beta of MSN Messenger 7 available for download ) due out shortly. Features include comments, stats and trackbacks just like every other blog out there. Another built-in feature is also available where you can send pictures from your camera-phone directly to your Space.

Hotmail has increased its storage to 250MB!

I’m off to Hyderabad for a few days to speak at the ‘Exploiting RFID for ROI‘ summit, meet a couple of potential clients and enjoy the state’s wonders. Hyderabad is one of the few states in India that I have not yet visited, so I’m excited to see what’s it’s like. I’ve got the RadioHead-UB (Updating Bot) switched on, so there should be some new posts for you to read while I’m gone.

Sorry, for the lack of posts – haven’t been feeling well lately. My head feels like as if its gonna blow any moment. Couple that with a terrible shoulder pain. I ask my colleague for a remedy and he tells me that the place where I feel the pain is the pectoral girdle. For the uninitiated, thats the set of bones which connect the upper limb to the axial skeleton on each side. So much for the remedy!

Really not upto it, so I’m gonna go home.

By the way, I saw a five rupee coin on the sidewalk today!

G’nite.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are quietly developing new search tools for digital video, foreshadowing a high-stakes technology arms race in the battle for control of consumers’ living rooms.

Come Clean is a fun flash advertisement for Method. The idea is to confess your sins and come clean about it. Come clean also allows you to view the recent confessions that people made. A few, are shown below

“I stole toilet paper from school because I did not want to buy it or my apartment.”
“I lied on my resume.”
“I used a used paper towel.”
“I voted twice.”
“I hate my husband’s mom.”

Check it out. Its funny!

Koders is a search engine for source code that enables developers to easily search and browse source code in thousands of projects in hundreds of open source repositories.

Something caught my attention while using GMail today. A friend of mine had emailed me about his plans to come to Bangalore. I had replied almost instantly. GMail has this great feature of automatically grouping an email and its replies as a sort of conversation to keep things in context. Well, what caught my eye was the following-

Apparently my friend had emailed me at about 11:59 am. My reply to that mail would have been atleast 2 minutes later. But thats not what GMail tells me. If you look at the image above, you will see that I had replied to his email even before I got it! Wow! GMail must have thought that I have sort of extra sensory perception.

You would probably argue that its because both our system times dont match! That his email was sent to me with a time stamp of his system. Correct. But I simply could not have sent a reply 7 minutes ago to an email which I got only 5 minutes back!!! You see the point?

Is GMail becoming creepy?

When it comes to food, there is no place like India. Just like its people, there is diversity in tastebuds too. From north indian favourites like chaats, sarson ka saag to dosas and idlis of the south, we have it all. One of the advantages of living alone, is the sheer pleasure of trying out new cuisines, restaurants and the many eat-outs that Bangalore has to offer. Quite recently a friend and I had made a sort of a pact; to try new places to tingle our taste buds.

I managed to compile and put up a list of all the places that one can try in Bangalore. Hope it is as useful to you as it is to me. Incase, I’ve missed out on anything, do let me know.

Indian cuisine

• Golconda Chimney – Airport-Whitefield Road Tel : 91 80 2487 5532
• Grills-N-Oodles – 8th main, Malleswaram Tel : 91 80 2346 4517
• Herbs & Spices – Whitefield Main Road Tel : 91 80 2845 2803
• Jamavar – The Leela Palace, Airport Road Tel : 91 80 2521 1234
• La Casa – 4th Block Jayanagar Tel : 2691 0732
• Lotus – Grand Ashok, Kumara Krupa Road Tel : 2226 9462
• Maharaja Multi Cuisine Restaurant – 80 Feet Road, Kormangala Tel : 91 80 2552 6408
• Monsoon – The Park, M.G. Road Tel : 91 80 2559 4666
• Raaga – CMH Road, Indira Nagar Tel : 91 80 2525 2189
• Ramana’s – Cunningham Road Tel : 91 80 2226 3200
• Samudra – Gangamma Circle, Jalahalli East Tel : 91 80 2372 1042
• Shezan – Cunningham Road Tel : 91 80 2228 7895
• Shiv Sagar – Narayan Pillai Street, Off Commercial Street Tel : 91 80 2509 8892
• The Monarch Hotel – 54 Brigade Road, Tel : 91 80 2552 1915
• Samarkand – Gem Plaza, Infantry Road Tel : 91 80 2552 3901
• Wanley Restaurant – 17th F Cross, Indira Nagar 2nd Stage Tel : 91 80 2525 3463

Andhra

• Amaravathi Restaurant – 45/3 Residency Road Cross Tel : 91 80 2591 3718
• Bheema’s – Church street Tel: 91 80 2558 7389
• Gongura’s – 100 Feet Road, Koramangala Tel: 91 80 2552 5944
• Maurya Andhra Style Restaurant – JC Road Tel : 91 80 2670 9222
• Nagarjuna Residency – Residency Road Tel : 91 80 2591 3717
• Nakshathra – 27 Lady Curzon Road Tel : 91 80 2559 0777
• Nandhini Palace – Rajaji Nagar Tel : 91 80 2335 0055
  Gandhi Nagar Tel : 91 80 2220 3842
  Sankey Road Tel : 91 80 2344 8985
  Indira Nagar, 100 Feet Road Tel : 91 80 2528 8881
  Jaya Nagar, 4th Block Tel : 91 80 2699 1199
  Koramangala Tel : 91 80 2563 0202
• Plantain Leaf – New Thippasandra Main Road Tel : 91 80 2529 7407

North Indian

• Aangan – Lady Curzon Road Tel : 91 80 2558 2528
• Dhanush – Airport Road Tel : 91 80 2527 6770
• Magnum – Jayanagar 3rd Block Tel : 2653 0052
• Nizaams’ – BDA Complex, Indira Nagar Tel : 91 80 2525 1097
• Northern Gate – Gateway Hotel, Residency Road Tel : 91 80 2558 4545
• Palki – Residency Road Tel : 91 80 2558 0440
• Ramana’s – Cunningham Road Tel : 91 80 2226 3200
• Samarkand – Gem Plaza, Infantry Road Tel : 91 80 2552 3901
• Sigri – 42, Castle Street Tel : 91 80 2509 8308
• The Basil Hotel -8, Sampige Road, Malleswaram Tel : 91 80 2331 5123
• The Royal Afghan – The Windsor Manor, Sankey Road Tel : 91 80 2226 9898
• Tiger Trail – Harsha Park Inn, Park Road Tel : 91 80 2286 5555
• Tijori – The Atria, Palace Road Tel : 91 80 2220 5205
• Treat Restaurant – 80 Feet Road, Indira Nagar Tel : 91 80 2528 2137

South Indian

• Dakshin – Windsor Sheraton, Opp Golf Course, 25 Sankey Road Tel : 91 80 2226 9898
• Konkan (Manglorean, Goan style) – 6th cross, 6th Block, Koramangala Tel : 91 80 2552 1530
• Mavalli Tiffin Room (MTR) – 11 Lal Bagh Road Tel : 91 80 2222 0022
• The Palms – Highgates Hotel, 33 Church Street Tel : 91 80 2559 7172

Hyderabadi

• Hyderabadi House – Raheja Arcade, 18th Main Road, 7th Block, Koramangala

---

International Cuisine

• Civet – ITPL, Whitefield Road Tel : 91 80 2841 1678
• Dahlia (Japanese) – Church Street Tel : 91 80 2558 0958
• French Bread Pizza – Residency Road Tel : 91 80 5114 4111
• Grasshopper – Bannerghatta Road Tel : 91 80 2659 3999
• Sue’s Food Palace (West Indian) – Indira Nagar Tel : 91 80 2525 2494
• Zaks (Arabian) – Coles Road Tel : 91 80 2530 1307

Chinese

• Aromas of China – Richmond Circle. Tel : 91 80 2212 4275
• Bamboo Shoots – Museum Inn, Museum Road. Tel : 91 80 2559 4001
• Beijing Bites – Richmond Road. Tel : 91 80 2207 5060
• Chinese Hut – 4105/4106, High Point, 45 Palace Road. Tel : 91 80 2226 7364
• Chung’s Culinary Art, Varthur Main Road. Tel : 91 80 2854 0049
• Chung’s Pavilion – 3047, 80ft Road, HAL 2nd Stage Indiranagar. Tel : 91 80 2525 4142
• Chung Wah – 45/1 Residency Road Tel : 91 80 2558 2662, 2555 0053, 2558 0708
• Continental Restaurant – Centre Point, 56 Residency Road. Tel : 91 80 2559 7756
• De Noble House – Infantry Road. Tel : 91 80 2558 0208
• Jade Garden Mahjong Room – Windsor Sheraton, 25 Sankey Road.Tel : 91 80 2226 9898
• Mainland China – 15/16 St. Mark’s Road.Tel : 91 80 2227 7722
• Mandarin Room – Grand Ashok Hotel, Opp Golf Course. Tel : 91 80 2225 0202
• Memories Of China – Taj Residency, 41/3 M.G. Road Tel : 91 80 2558 4444
• Opium – No 1, Carlton Towers, Airport Road.Tel : 91 80 2527 6770
• Outhouse China – 26 Wood Street, Off Richmond Road ,Ashok Nagar.Tel : 91 80 2530 6555
• Schezwan Court – The Oberoi, 37-39 M.G. Road. Tel : 91 80 2558 5858
• Shangrila – Brigade Road. Tel : 91 80 2558 8994
• Shangrila Bar & Restaurant – 182 Brigade Road. Tel : 91 80 2558 8994
• Silk Winds – The Atria, Palace Road Tel : 91 80 2220 5205
• Silver Wok – Sheriff House, No 85 Richmond Road. Tel : 91 80 2224 2288,
• Taipan – Krishna Manere, 14/1 Wood Street, Richmond Road. Tel : 91 80 2554 5637
• The Oriental Haveli – 100 ft Road, Koramangla. Tel : 91 80 2553 6239
• Three Quarter Chinese – 2 Church Stree. Tel : 91 80 2532 7982

Italian

• I-Talia – The Park, M.G. Road Tel : 91 80 2559 4666
• Little Italy – 100 Feet Road, Indira Nagar Tel : 91 80 2529 7482
• Ragoo’s – 16 K.R. Road Tel : 91 80 2676 2940
• Sunny’s – Kasturba Cross Road Tel : 2224 3642

Mexican

• Latino’s – 9/11 Lady Curzzon Road Tel : 91 80 2509 8873
• Little Italy – 100 Feet Road, Indira Nagar Tel : 91 80 2529 7482

Sea Food

• Chillies – Opp Bangalore Club, Residency Road Tel : 91 80 2207 5050
• Kabini – Infantry Road Tel : 91 80 2286 8673
• Konkan – Coles Road, Frazer Town Tel : 91 80 2506 6613
• Kubay – Koramangala Club Road – Tel : 91 80 2552 1530
• Oasis Restaurant – 1 Church Street, Off Brigade Road Tel : 91 80 2558 6081

Thai

• Lemon Grass – 32, Castle Street Tel : 91 80 2536 1167
• Shiok Far-eastern cuisine – 12 CMH Road, Indiranagar Tel : 91 80 5116 1800

Its slightly over a week since I’ve been using Firefox and I couldn’t resist the temptation to write about some of the features that I liked in it.

Here are some features that I like, in no particular order -

Secure site – Firefox makes it very clear when you’re visiting a secure website. The address bar glows yellow and a lock appears on the rightside.

As a part-time web developer, I find myself fishing through the output of the View Source… menu looking for some little snippet of code like a needle in a haystack. The Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox browsers have a great and little-known feature that makes this job much easier.

Select an area of a web page in one of the Mozilla browsers, and right click on the selection. Choose “View Selection Source”. This option brings up a view source window showing only the source from the area around your selection, the with exact source of your selection already selected in the View Source window.

Very nice.

Google scholar is a new search service aimed at scientists and academic researchers. All major scientific and research publications indexed on the web is now accessible universally.

This is a blessing for students who want to research on certain specific topics for their projects/dissertations.

A query for “fast fourier transforms” for example, pulls up 30,800 references along the left-hand side of the page, clearly identified as articles from the Web, or pointing to offline material such as citations or books, which when clicked on are presented much in the same manner as a library card catalog.

“Google as a company has greatly benefited from academic research and this is one of the ways we can give back to the community,” – Anurag Acharya, Project Lead, Google Scholar

It makes me wonder – will the Scholar turn out to be the perfect tool for plagiarizing?

Now with GMail, you can finally download your email messages from GMail servers to email applications on both PCs and wireless devices like PDA.
Along with this and the other continuous enhancements that are being made, GMail stands to be the most feature-rich Web mail service available.

In a surprise move on Tuesday, Google cut a deal to let its home page be co-branded with Firefox as the default home page for the publicly released version of Firefox.

Is this is one of the many steps towards the Google Browser? Only time will tell!

The wait is finally over.Firefox ver 1.0 is out! It was launched at around 5pm IST. I’ve just installed it and by first impression its really sleak. I’m gonna test this baby now!

Make the switch today and you’ll see the difference.

An excellent article giving you an insight of American ideology -

“..Half the country is not stupid. We’re all stupid. We’re convinced several times a day to do things that aren’t in our best interests. We work too hard. We’re drinking, eating, medicating, and smoking ourselves into early graves. We overextend ourselves on credit. We knowingly stay in emotionally or physically abusive relationships. We let television raise our children. We’re deliberately mean and nasty to people we don’t like or agree with. We learn science from the Bible. We stay silent when speaking out would help someone. We fear the future. We fear death…”

Jerry Yang on the future of search over in Yahoo’s Search Blog. Nothing mind blowing here, but it’s sure nice to read his blog.

“Ten years ago, we were focused on a simple yet vast problem: finding better ways to aggregate and organize information so people can find it. Today, the challenge is different. On the one hand, there’s a lot more information to aggregate and it’s not just more in terms of quantity; there’s a larger variety of content as well — from products and images to news and business information. In addition, we’re pulling content from more sources than ever before.

On the other hand, our user’s expectations have also changed. It’s no longer enough to simply provide a structure for users to find what they want on the Web. Today, people expect to find precisely what they’re looking for exactly as it relates to them. It’s the old example of the “Java” search query. Are you looking for coffee or for the programming language? People want to define what’s relevant to them in their own personal way. They also want to tap into the source of their information at will and they want to manage it all to personally suit their needs.

That’s what is exciting about where we are today. Search as a problem is still far from being solved. The user is in the driver’s seat: they want an experience that is increasingly personal, more relevant, and ties into their task more integrally. Search is just a way to get that integrated experience, but it’s all about what the users want – when they want it, how they want it, and who they want it from.”

It’s election day in the US and it’s possibly the most important election we’ve seen in a long time. I tried to keep politics out of this blog, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me this one time. I’m not going to stand here and tell my American readers what to do. It’s your elections and at the end of the day the buck stops with you. However as one of your allies in the world, if your friends lean over to you at a party and tell you that you’ve had too much to drink and are making a fool of yourself, it’s probably worth listening to. If you choose to carry on, when you wake up in the morning with a screaming headache and the realisation that you pissed everybody else off at the party and won’t be invited again, you’ll only have yourself to blame.

I’m sure most of you would have made up their minds weeks, if not months ago. With early voting many of you will have already had your say. As it stands the elections results will be decided by around a million undecided voters in half a dozen swing states. It will be decided by glossy commercials, staged appearances and millions upon millions of dollars, all of which will need to be paid back in one way or another.

At the end of the day, this election will determine how the worlds largest super power is perceived by the rest of the world. Do you want to be seen as the popular kid? The one everybody wants to be like, who gets invited to all the cool parties, gets admired by all the cute girls and is nominated “most likely to succeed”. Or do you want to be seen as the hard drinking tough kid. The one who pushes the smaller kids and gets away with it because he’s bigger than everybody else and has equally tough friends.

Is it useful to use large, obscure words when smaller, more well-known words will do? I agree that we can all use a little vocabulary workout from time to time, but when does one cross the line between creative vocabulary and just plain showing off? If the meaning of your communication is hidden from the user (unless they have a dictionary handy), then why bother saying anything at all?