What am I saying really when I say, “Happy New Year”. Am I saying that I want the new year to be happy? That’s great, but really, I want you to be happy. In… the new year (but not in the middle of the year, gosh no). Or does it mean that I want you to be happy because it’s a new year. Because, you know, it’s new and shiny.

Nevermind, it makes sense now.

What doesn’t make sense, though, is to say, “Have a safe flight”. I mean, “fine, if you say so”. Maybe it’s just me, but I think you really ought to tell the pilot that. Or, more to the point, “fly well”.

See what I did there?

Happy New Year everyone!

The way things worked back then was that Shaurya, Parag and I would usually play a variety of instruments (sometimes switching among them!) on a selection of The Beatles, CCR and Hendrix songs.

This time around, the only instrument we had was a guitar and our voices. But thanks to the amazing MacBook (with GarageBand 2), we also got  a piano and drums!

Videos of two of our cover jams:

The Beatles – Michelle

Coldplay – Don’t Panic

I’m flying out of the UK early tomorrow out of Gatwick, so it’ll be a while before we’ll be able to jam again. But these videos by themselves have made my UK trip more than worth it.

We’d love to have your comments and feedback. And thanks to all who’ve responded on YouTube, on Facebook and by email!

As I was taking the underground trains from Victoria station to Tottenham Hale, I picked up an abandoned copy of the day’s Metro daily and discovered that a production of ‘The Misanthrope’ was currently being shown at the Comedy Theater. Moreover, and really this is why I noticed, Keira Knightley was a part of the cast!

I was surprised, of course, by this immensely serendipitous order of things. Day one in the UK and already I find a way to be in the same room as Keira Knightley (fine, with five hundred other people, but still). Plus, Molière’s great, right? Right there I had resolved to make Martin Crimp’s adaptation of Molière’s classic ‘Le Misanthrope’ my first West End outing.

Although based on the original French comédie, Crimp’s version is set not in 17th century Paris but in modern-day London and makes plenty of allusions to such modern conveniences as cellphones, motorbikes and even YouTube. While protagonist Alceste retains his original name, Célimène becomes Jennifer (or Jenny the spoilt American superstar), just as other characters have been modified to suit the context.

I’ll say right now, before I get into the details, that I absolutely loved the play. And not just because I managed to get in (to the Royal Circle, no less) for just £15. The dialogue was witty, the acting terrific, and the quick meta-references and pseudo-anachronisms gave the production the extra kick that made it a smart, self-aware, self-mocking, hilarious and entertaining show. Plus, it’s really fun seeing Keira do an American accent; she slips a few times, especially when the dialogue moves really fast, but the accent itself is really funny. But as always, she’s ravishing and her acting’s fantastic.

Damian Lewis is amazing. The entire cast is brilliant, really, but Damian as Alceste absolutely shines. There’s something about the cynical, hyperbolic way in which he delivers his lines that gives him a somewhat comedic yet powerful presence on-stage. The sort of presence you’d expect from, for example, Dr. House. His stubborn disregard for social politesse is just as endearing as it is excessive, and you’ll find yourself rooting for the misunderstood hero of the drama until the very end.

The lines are particularly well-delivered, and I think credit is due to Thea Sharrock for the spot-on direction. Damian Lewis’ lines stand out, but since much of the dialogue was wordplay and, one quickly discovers, rhymed prose, everyone does a great job with delivery.

Sharrock’s modern-day production of Crimp’s modern-day “The Misanthrope” is excellent: witty, contemporary, and at times laugh-out-loud funny. I’m glad I got to see it. If you’re in the area, I highly recommend going!

Now Playing at Comedy Theater on Panton Street, London SW1Y 4DN, until 13th March 2010. More information and tickets on the official The Misanthrope website.

As for how I got in to the Royal Circle for £15, there’s no trick or loophole. Once tickets run out, West End theaters usually sell ’standing tickets’ for a fraction of the total cost. You get to see the play; the only catch is you have to do it standing up.

I thought I’d start things off a quite trip report, with pictures and captions laid out  in chronological order.

I met Nicole (another intern at Hampshire College) at Bradley Airport in Hartford, CT, and was surprised to learn that she was taking the same flight to Atlanta (and flying on to California). I was progressively less surprised each time we met another one of the dozen or so Hampshire students at the airport. Was a bit of a party, really.

I was really excited to get on an MD88. I’m sure Delta are phasing these out pretty quickly. Soon we’ll talk about these McDonnell Douglas aircraft in the past tense. Maybe even in the plus-que-parfait! (Oh no!)

But these aircraft are old. It showed. On board flight 1804 en route to Atlanta (ATL), photo by Nicole:

I was apprehensive about my transatlantic flight on Delta’s 777. Memories of my flight with United flight from Sydney earlier in the year with no seat-back entertainment and the five-hour cross-country SFO to IAD flight with no food service (at all, zip!) gave me little reason to believe Delta’s service would deliver. It was my first time flying Delta, but the reviews weren’t encouraging.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t bad.

There were personal entertainment systems on coach seat backs (about 20 movies, a dozen TV show episodes, music and games), the flight attendants weren’t grumpy at all (on the contrary, they seemed rather cheery) and the food wasn’t particularly bad. They served us dinner and drinks as soon as we took off, then drinks at various intervals, and break fast prior to landing.

Chicken teriyaki dinner:

At around 8am, which was late to begin with given we were supposed to land an hour earlier, the captain tells us that thanks to snow (and quite a lot of it it seemed), the airport was actually closed (yikes!) and that we’d probably have to divert to some other airport. (I later learned that Luton was closed the entire day that day, and it would have had to be Heathrow).

Soon we get word that we will probably be able to land at Gatwick after an hour, when the airport reopened. “We have just about enough fuel to hold on for that amount of time”, the captain assured us.

Finally at 9am or so we touched landed on the blinding whiteness that was Gatwick Airport at 9am on Friday.

Made my way towards passport control at Gatwick:

Took a shuttle to the North terminal, where the trains are:

Decided I was hungry, and bought a croissant and a latte for £2.95 (”le petit dej: un croissant et un café,” read the sign; funny that the first thing I order in the UK happened to be in French):

Eventually reached Victoria Plaza. Decided I wanted lunch and, seeing Oporto (the portuguese-theme Aussie chicken Burger chain from Bondi beach), went for a hot and spicy burger. Previous to this, I bought a cheap Virgin Mobile cellphone for £19.95 (with £10 credit) and set it up as enjoyed meat on bread:

Onwards I traveled, reaching Tottenham Hale station, from where I could take the Northern Express East Anglia line:

Got off at the Harlow Town station. Was past noon by then. Some photos of the station:

More from Essex in the days to come.

I previously posted a video of my presenting a development plan to the class about a month ago.

The font sizes (in points) are in scale relative to the percentages they represent. Click on the poster to view a larger version.

It’s called iSnack 2.0.

Weren’t excepting that, were you? Neither were Australian consumers, who were outraged at the suggestion. Vegemite, a national Australian icon (and the breakfast spread that people love to hate), reduced to the whims of the Web 2.0 crowd? And when did food items start requiring version control?

But, as it were, the product will not be called iSnack 2.0. It’ll be called Vegemite Cheesybites, after another round of polling. And although most will agree that this name is certainly more fitting than the first one was, I doubt it would have gotten as much publicity as the first name did.

The spread is actually not bad. It doesn’t quite taste like cream cheese, but it’s certainly a sweeter version of the spread.

In any case, good on’ ya Kraft.

It isn’t as advanced as Firefox quite yet, but its strength in its leanness and speed.

1. It’s Fast
   This is what pleased me about the browser when I last used a while back, when it was just not as mature as Firefox was at the time. It loads fast, feels lightweight and is generally just very snappy. Part of the reason is because it doesn’t do live-search on the URL field (and that’s actually a really nice feature in Firefox), but the speed is important so that’s a compromise I’m willing to make for the time being.
2. Respects Favicons
   Favicons—those little icons that websites have next to the URL—are important. They’re visual cues that make navigating through multiple pages and bookmark/history lists easy. They’re also part of the personality of a website. I don’t like that the Safari bookmarks-bar doesn’t include these little icons.
3. Recently Closed Pages
   It happens to the best of us: you close that tab with a quick Command+Q, and it turns out it was the wrong one. You’d like to get that page again, but you first access that page 2 days ago, and it’s buried in the history somewhere. Great, you’ll just use the “Reopen Last Closed Window” function in Safari. Except that won’t work because that wasn’t the last closed tab and window. Camino has a “Recently Closed Pages” that gives you a convenient list.
4. Tab Overview
   Sure, Safari shows websites you frequent in a nice grid. But Camino brings Exposé to the browser with ‘Tab Overview’. Click a button (or hit a shortcut), and all your open tabs are visible. Click a thumbnail and you’re at that page right back where you were.
5. Source Syntax Coloring
   Click ‘View Source’ in Safari and you get a window with the HTML code. Which is what you wanted, but it’s all in black. Camino (like Firefox) colors the syntax so it’s really easy to browse and analyse code. Which is a great way to learn, too, if you’re into web authoring.

Safari Love

Safari’s got a few things though that are well thought-out that other browsers might consider implementing.

1. Expand Text Fields
   Safari adds a little anchor to the edge of multi-line text boxes that let you change their size. I didn’t think I’d use this very much when I first read about it—I actually thought that’s giving users one one way to ruin the design of a website—but I’ve noticed I tend to use it quite a bit. And it isn’t intrusive.
2. Context-click menu bar to go up one level
   If you context-click (Command/right-click) on the title bar of a Safari window, it reacts in much the same way Finder reacts. It shows you the directory structure of where you are, so it’s easy to move one level up. I don’t use this too much, but it is quite neat.

Firefox Awesomeness

Firefox isn’t particularly fast for me, although there’s a chance the add-ons are responsible for this. (Which is odd, because I don’t have very many of them). There’s no doubt though that it excels as a browser and is the gold standard for web designers, leading the way with its innovations, rapid development and adoption of new web formats and specifications  (If only it were snappier!).

It does certain things so well I think every browser should follow suit:

1. Live search
   Firefox’s URL bar is really also a live search tool cleverly embedded where it’s most useful yet almost impossible. Or would be it were faster. Unlike in Camino and Safari, you can type a bit of text in the URL bar and have it search not just your bookmarks, but your history as well. What’s more, results don’t have to start with the search term – they can be anywhere in the title. This approach takes the concept of ‘bookmarking’ to a whole new level. Bookmark, forget and rest happy knowing you’ll be able to find it without having to dig through lists.
2. One-Click Bookmarking
   Also related to live search is the easy single-click bookmarking. Just click the little star icon in the URL bar, and it’s bookmarked. No additional views. Click it again add to the metadata Firefox already collected.
3. Save Login Alert Box
   Both Safari and Camino ask you if you’d like your username and password to sites remembered for the next time—no?; never?; always, you say?—which saves you the hassle of having to type these in each time you’re logged out. But Firefox’s approach is especially elegant. Instead of the regular alert box/popup, it’s shows little non-intrusive little yellow bar with the same options. This way, you can see if your login worked before deciding to save it. Or you could ignore having to decide altogether.

Camino 2.0 Improvements

Camino has visibly matured in this new version. It’s implemented a number of interesting features that makes it safer and easier to use. It has now has built-in phishing and malware protection, support for Growl notification, ‘annoyance blocking’ and keychain support.

It does have its limitations, of course, one of which being its support for HTML 5 and CSS3. It’s Gecko 1.9 engine’s rendering capabilities are far from inadequate—the engine is actually a huge reason Camino is successful—but it certainly isn’t where Firefox is. Camino also does not have the equivalent of Firebug for Firefox yet (or the Web Inspector in Safari if you enable it), but chances are you if you’re developing/debugging, you have Firefox running anyway.

Opera on the Horizon

I should mention also that I haven’t looked at Opera for a while, and the newest version (Opera 10) looks exciting! I remember loving Opera’s built-in M2 mail client years ago (before Gmail implemented most of its features online) and it seems they’re continuing that tradition, with integrated an email client, a web server and a debugger among other innovations.

Get Camino

If you’re on a Mac, I definitely recommend downloading Camino 2.0 taking it for a test drive. Camino is a pleasure to use. It’s refreshing to see a very capable browser that still feels light.