Implicit Truths

Whatever happened to Ananth, he was pretty hardcore about anime and manga and that kind of stuff. You know, his avatar was an anime character no one would recognise. He also had some interesting science interpretations and we would have crazy discussions about gravity and stuff. Funny. Marc used to pick on him for no reason.

M.M. Ananth

Description: Is rumoured to be linked to Marc in someway, a fact that irks “The Tyrant” to no end. Known to have created Highly ‘Scientific’ Topic in Technology sub-forum. Little is known except for his love for Anime on which he has remodelled his looks. The link with Marc has no real basis but a lot of circumstantial evidence. About the time Marc acquired the Throne (by a coup), M.M Ananth dissappeared. Has yet to be seen. His comments, though rather thought of as “sweet” and “cute” by some members of this nation, have demoralised his fellow warriors.

Last sighting: Animax???
Conclusion: another innocent bystander. Probably annihilated by Marc.

Marc was the guy who had root admin powers to that invisionfree board and so he was the natural choice as the evil leader that was oppressing us. He intensely disliked grey posts.

The Tyrant a.k.a Marc Zephyrin a.k.a Pizza Maker

Description: Overlord at Alternation. Rules with an iron hand. Is extremely lazy and uses old workmen armed with answering machines and refrigerators to run ATN. Fighting these has proved an almost impossible task. When feeling bored makes changes at ATN which (whether good or bad) automatically attract criticism since they come from Marc. As the only person who is allowed to make Pizza he has suppressed his people and forced half of them to make pasta. Even this recreative activity is denied some who are labelled “Dead Men”.

Is rumoured to have sold his soul to the Devil. Calls himslef Admin in an effort to confuse his foes. ([i]What do you do to an AddMinus[+-]?). This hasnt worked upon any of his subjects since they do not know how to add or subtract.

Is known to be obsessed with a certain type of substance known as a Ben Joke. (Subsequent investigations on London’s most famous cclock tower revealed nothing.)

Has hired a henchman, Nikhil, who he set up under the title Super Spammer
(a.k.a Propagada Master[PM]).
Is responsible for large scale destruction of valuable material (posts by those who he subjugates) and blaming it on his supposed associate who is rarely seen.

Conclusion: If you see him, throw anything nearby at him. If spotted, cover your face and run for your life. In case, he is in the presence of his PM, refrain from above activity. Simply flee for your life.

Last Known Sighting: (All those who may have seen him have been rendered incapable of speech and action and cannot confirm. )

Latest Crime: He has turned upon Nikhil and rendered him ineffective by removing his primary source of nutrition (the post count display).

Back when I was still in school and used to use IM-speak like LOL, and ROFL and stuff like that I hit upon a brilliant idea, talking about each of the fellows on the board as if they were fighting a giant evil Admin Marc, the stereotypical BOFH, even though he wasn’t our tech man or anything.

Anyway, here’s the posts:

Conky Leon.

Description: Wasn’t a team member. Usually waited for the rest of the squad to fight the crazy old men Marc kept sending at us and then ate all the food. His last supper was when Nikhil stepped out of the shadows and grabbed his icecream. This terrified him so much he has retreated into the shadows. Has been spotted in Zap once or twice. Has turned pale and eats only raw fish and spider-stung hobbits.

End of Service:

Reason: Fled in terror when confronted by MArc’s henchman Nikhil
Date: Jul 20 2004, 09:20 PM

Every time there’s a literary event in our college, there’s a quiz. It’s one of those inevitable things. I’ll put up all of the quizzes in PDF form on this blog when I find them. This’ll teach me to be more organised. Anyway, here’s the College Auditions Prelims quiz. Simple, with a little trivia to make it painful for no reason.

College Auditions Quiz Prelims [PDF]

I was thinking perhaps it is only right that some of our college newsletter stuff should go up on the Internet if the college isn’t keen on it being in print. They can’t censor me here, and I doubt they’ll find this before I graduate. These are all from the print issue, so yes, they are carefully censored:

Creativity, are we at the end of our rope?

Creativity. It is the sole reason why we aren’t hunting for dinner or bashing women on the head and dragging them off when we want to marry them (and yes, no matter how interesting that sounds we can’t do it anymore gents, sorry).

If it weren’t for different people and their seemingly crazy ideas, life would be a whole lot more boring. Imagine life with no music, books, movies, television or any of our modern comforts. Well, think about this, every single invention that man has cooked up is the fruit of some seed of inspiration and creativity which germinates in somebody’s mind. Creativity is not just limited to art; it is applicable to every facet of our existence. BUT, as I am more concerned with how creativity applies to entertainment, I shall stop rambling and come to the point.

When new movies, books, et cetera come out these days, we find increasingly less original material. We have come to the point in our history where we have reached the conventional and contemporary limits for all facets of entertainment. And it’s not just the artists’ fault either, but also ours. The onset of Consumerism has brught artistic development to a screeching halt. Too afraid to come up with something that might upset the pblic, artists have chosen to make formula art that will please the masses and keep their fridges stocked.

Mankind has been coming up with stories and music for over 5000 years! When we view it from this angle, it’s not too hard to see why there’s a dearth of original material; it’s all been done before. Our fear of the new and of change should also be taken into account. We are getting far too comfortable with what we have already and are not ready to accept something which might be amazing but drastically different to what we are used to. As I said before, we have reached our limits. If we want to evolve not just in mind but in soul, we must cast off the chains that are binding us to yesterday and keeping us from flying. The conventional and contemporary limits of our imagination have been found wanting.

So it is up to us, the newest and latest generation of artists and people, to come up with something better, something new, something that will make people shudder with some new and hitherto unknown sensation as they experience our art. Something.

But how are we to accomplish this mammoth task? We live in MCC, Tambaram. What ever could we do to make ourselves think a lot and come up with new, original art? What, I wonder? Hmmm…

I was talking to Marc some time ago and told him about how shortcut keys are the best way to work with a browser, because it takes time to use the mouse. He claimed that you can’t shift to the search engine box easily. Well, the command for that is Ctrl-K. There’s a huge list here that I picked off a blog comment.

CTRL + W close tab
CTRL + R refresh page
CTRL + T new tab
CTRL + U view page source
CTRL + I open bookmarks panel (also CTRL+B)
CTRL + O open file
CTRL + P print
CTRL + A select all
CTRL + S save as
CTRL + D bookmark the current page
CTRL + F open find panel
CTRL + G find next (if nothing is in the find box it just opens find)
CTRL + H open history panel
CTRL + J download manager
CTRL + K change focus to the search field
CTRL + L change focus to the address bar (also ALT+D or F6)
CTRL + B open the bookmarks panel (also CTRL+I)
CTRL + N new window
CTRL + M mail

CTRL + # switch to the # tab
CTRL + +/- increase/decrease text size
CTRL + zero change text size to default
CTRL + up/down toggle search engines when in the search field (CTRL+K)

CTRL + TAB switch forward through tabs
CTRL + SHIFT + TAB switch back through tabs
CTRL + SHIFT + W close entire application
CTRL + SHIFT + I open DOM inspector

SHIFT + F10 opens the right-click context menu (ESC to close)

F1 help
F3 find
F5 refresh
F6 change focus to the address bar (also ALT+D or CTRL+L)
press F6 again and change focus back to the page
F7 turn caret browsing on/off (i.e. you can see a cursor on the page)
F11 full screen view on/off

I found this list on my harddrive. They’re pretty funny I remember seeing them on digg, but not sure where exactly. Anyway,

A guy walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says, “A beer please, and one for the road.”

An amnesiac walks into a bar and asks the bartender, “Do I come here often?”

A guy with dyslexia walks into a bra.

A young Texan walks into a bar and orders a drink. “Got any ID?” asks the bartender. The Texan replies, “About what?”

A pair of battery jumper cables walk into a bar. The bartender says, “You can come in here, but you better not start anything!”

And then Marc did decree from through the Great Fader in the Sky:

in yet another example of ruthless suppression and neglection of fundamental rights, i have closed this thread to promote communal hatred and disharmony…and so on and so forth.

His indifference galvanised the mob, driving them to madness as they frothed in rage for his blood. As one they matched toward his palace, but they were struck down own by Corrupted Moderators. The Corrupted Moderators were poor men, once great thinkers and philosophers, now they were slaves to The Tyrant, minds dessicated by his words, their will subject to his. Wave after wave of post marched, only to be deleted, marked as spam or turned grey by the flick of a wrist. All seemed lost…