Fed does it again!

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“It’s always important to be calm, to stay positive, and to believe, to believe that you can win” [emphasis mine] said a certain young Serb last year after defeating Federer in the semi-finals of the US Open championships last year. That, as I pointed out in my previous post, would have been key if Federer was to defeat Nadal in today’s semi-finals in Australia. The mental component of his game, as in previous attempts, has once again proven to be the great RF’s Achilles heel. I’ll have to watch a recording of the match to see what he did wrong, but from the reports, it looks like he blew many key breakpoints. Again, a key area that I pointed out.

All in all, another sad defeat for this Federer fan :-(

Roger Federer and the 2012 Australian Open

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Can Federer win the 2012 Australian Open? That is still a few days out in the realm of possibility, but before he looks forward to a possible championship match, he has one giant hurdle to cross in the form of his nemesis and tormentor-on-the-other-side-of-the-net, Rafael Nadal. So, can Fedex win his semi-final match?

Not unless he:

  • goes into the match with an uber-positive attitude. This does not merely mean that he thinks he has a chance to win. Rather, he must believe that he can win, and not just if Rafa has a bad day. He must absolutely believe that he has the game and the athleticism to overcome the barrage that Rafa is going to throw at him. Rafa being Rafa is not going to quit until the last point has been won or lost. He’ll try to keep coming back no matter how many games or sets he has lost.
  • hits his backhand deep. All too often, Nadal wins points against Federer by hitting his ferociously top-spinning strokes to the smooth Swiss’ backhand. The extraordinary top-spin with a higher-than-average net clearance imparts additional bounce to the ball, and his left-handed strokes tending to go more to his right-handed opponent’s backhand. The extra bounce doesn’t make it easy to hit a high single-handed backhand, not even to one as gifted as Federer. Thus, it’s of utmost importance that Federer try to hit as many shots as he can to Nadal’s backhand. If he’s pushed, then he should go for a low but deep slice.
  • serves well. In almost all matches that he has won against Nadal (not very many, as RF fans will sadly note), his first service percentage has been high. This is easy: the more first serves you put in, the lesser the chances that your opponent is going to hit a whizz-bang return winner.
  • pounces on every single breakpoint opportunity. Fed’s breakpoint conversion against Rafa (and also a lot of other top ten players against whom his win-loss record is not so great) is appalling. It’s almost as if he doesn’t know what to do while playing those points, and shanks his shots going for an outright winner when constructing the point as he normally does would do. After all, when you’ve got your opponent down a breakpoint, keeping the ball in play is going to put pressure on him, and you’re essentially asking him to step up and do something remarkable to win the point.
  • finishes points and games at the first available opportunity. With a terrific retriever and counter-puncher like Rafa, unless you close out a point decisively, you’re running the risk of letting him play himself back into the rally, commandeering, and then winning the point! Case in point.

In other words, Fed has to go into the match with a precise match plan, and execute it to perfection. In terms of sheer ability, I think RF > RN, but if you bring in mental strength and an all-conquering attitude, RN has proven over and over again that he’s heads and shoulders above.

Opera 10.50 developer preview blows away the competition!

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My favourite browser has just helped me overcome the Javascript envy that I was secretly nursing for a long time now (after the Javascript browser wars began): it was lagging behind in the speed benchmarks that mattered, viz., Sunspider (and more recently, Google’s V8 Benchmark suite). No longer is this the case as this brand new version beats even the venerable Chrome on my machine (and presumably on other computers as well). See for yourself:

The headphone problem with Android 1.5 phones

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Weird problem to have with a phone, and is yet another eye-opener for me. Plugging a headphone into your phone doesn’t somehow automatically make it aware of the headphone; you need software to make it aware, and that software for Android 1.5 phones is now here. Okay, let me now describe the problem a bit more in detail.

I’d got a HTC Hero phone (yes, shamelessly lured by the Android promise) about a couple of months ago. I had been a happy user with lots of applications installed, uninstalled, regularly used, etc. Happy, that is, until my headphones stopped working about a couple of weeks ago. I’m not sure when exactly it stopped working, nor am I sure whether it was after installing the last.fm application from Android Market, but stop it did. Until yesterday, I was confident that it was something to do with hardware. (Had my brain worked, though, I shouldn’t have been so confident.) In fact, I remained confident even after a friend casually mentioned that it might be something do with some setting on my phone (this was justified as there isn’t any such setting of course).

However, after calling T-Mobile customer care yesterday and agreeing to send my phone off to repair at a nearby T-Mobile store, I woke up early this morning, unable to sleep further (since I’d hit the sack last night at an unusual hour for me – 8 pm! (Or was it 9? Can’t quite remember!)). Anyway, as I was surfing, I stumbled on to this thread and realised, again, that I – or rather, my phone – was not afflicted with a unique problem (tangentially, here’s a thought: can phones be afflicted with problems, even if they happen to be called Android?). Two things are immediately clear:

  1. This is a widespread-enough problem that a fix should to be included in the Android 2.0 update
  2. There’s a fix available today!

What should also be clear to developers is the extent to which software controls nearly every aspect of the phones that we use, even down to recognising if a headphone has been plugged into those tiny devices that we’ve come to love.

HP leads the list of most troublesome laptops

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I knew this way back in 2004 when I bought my first laptop, a used Compaq 2500. By then, HP had acquired and assimilated Compaq and its products, enough to tarnish the once-reputable Compaq brand (with its Armada brand of tough road-warrior laptops. My knowledge was further reinforced when I foolishly decided to give HP the benefit of doubt and purchase my second laptop a couple of years later, this time an AMD-powered one.

Different processor, same result: trouble with the hardware components. While my first laptop’s display conked out twice, yes TWICE in two years, my newer laptop’s Wi-fi card decided to vanish one fine day from Windows’ device list. A visit to an HP service centre (that is a tale for another day!) revealed that there was some hardware/software problem which was sorted out, thankfully, without my having to pay them anything. Anyway, the link below will give you a statistical reason why you should never, ever, go in for an HP laptop if you can help it.

My current laptop? A Dell Inspiron 1525.

The Ubuntu Journey

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Remember I mentioned that I was going to try and switch over to using Linux – and Ubuntu in particular – full-time? Well, that effort is into the second week and going strong. Stronger, I should have said, since I’ve switched over to Ubuntu at the workplace as well. And I’m enjoying every minute of it. What with eye candy like Wobbly Windows, built-in support for Last.fm in Rhythmbox, why wouldn’t I? (And yes, the icon of the clouds that you see on the top panel in this screenshot is that of a weather widget. There are weather widgets that sit on your desktop on Windows (built-in in Vista and Win7), Mac and every other OS, but I like this one for its unobtrusiveness.)

Using a computer is so much fun again. The only instance when I had to boot into Windows was when a DVD misbehaved, and wouldn’t play on Rhythmbox. I’m positive it would have played on VLC, but I hate that program, and so didn’t install it. Haven’t done yet, and never will probably.

Karmic Koala

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That’s the name of the Operating System that I’m running. It’s the latest version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution that has taken the pride of place on my laptop. It’s a long story, but here it is in a nutshell: I got tired of paying for every bit of software on my machine when I could get the same, similar or better quality software for free.

And thus it is that I’m into my second day of using Linux as my primary operating system. I’ve attempted this in the past, but my resolve then wasn’t up to much – I’d always switch back to Windows, because that’s what I was most comfortable with. No, I’m not a Linux newbie, and have played with Linux right from the day when the Indian computer magazine PC Quest used to promote Linux as a toy for geeks. I’ve had my share of long nights out installing, configuring and troubleshooting various distros, but never have my attempts at replacing Windows been successful. So, how is it different this time?

Firstly, the quality and number of programs that are now available on Linux have increased tremendously since those days. In fact, over the last few years, there has been a tremendous amount of momentum behind this Debian-based Linux distribution called Ubuntu. I got sucked into the Ubuntu wave about four years ago (when Hoary Hedgehog and Breezy Badger were the latest versions), but it hasn’t been mature enough for me until now. Secondly, my reasons for using a computer these days are primarily to surf the Net, check email, chat using Instant Messengers and occasionally, program. For the last mentioned last, I’ve started using Eclipse, after much reluctance (yeah, there’s no love lost between me and Java). Lastly, I like alliterations :-)

So, how long will this latest attempt of mine last? Forever, I hope. At any rate, I’ll keep you posted. In the meanwhile, here is a screenshot of my desktop:

P.S. Does this mean the end of Windows on my computer? No, Windows will always live forever. Er, I mean, I’ll have it around, just in case I run into a situation where I don’t have a replacement for / equivalent of a Windows program. But for the time being though, my Karmic endeavour begins.

Strange Google logo

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I saw this

googlle

on the Google search results page today. Notice what’s unusual?

No? There are two l’s instead of just one. What was even more weird was this:

googleresults

Again, did you notice the options on the left? I’ve seen this in the list of features introduced through Google Experimental, but on the main search results page? Something’s definitely cooking!

What’s up Google?

Update: This is what was up. Thanks to a well-informed reader for the heads up.

Laudable Linux distributions

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…on a thumb drive, no less? Whether you have never heard of Linux, or Linux is old hat to you, there may be a thing or two that this post may surprise you with. Of course, if you’re a hard-core geek who lives and breathes Linux, you can safely skip this post since there will probably be nothing in the rest of this post that will be new to you. If you aren’t one, then maybe you should read on.

Yes, it’s true: Linux can be run from a thumb drive (a.k.a. pen drive, flash drive, etc.). And what’s more, if your USB drive is 2.0 compliant, it can run at least as fast as, if not faster than, Windows. Don’t believe me? Try it out for yourself using Parted Magic and Ubuntu.

Before you go ahead with the instructions on the two previous URLs, there’s a question that you might want answered: will my existing Windows installation be affected? The answer is an unequivocal No. In fact, no part of your hard disk is even going to be touched, since these Linux distributions run exclusively from your USB disk, and if the RAM on your machine is large enough, they can even offer a phenomenal boost of speed (by using a RAM drive)! Too good to be true? There must be a catch, right?

Well, it really depends on what you want to use these tiny Linux installations for. If what you want is full-fledged Internet usage – email, surfing and streaming videos (like YouTube) – whether on a public machine (at a browsing center) or your own computer, with or without a Wifi connection, then there’s absolutely no catch whatsoever; the OS is functionally as good as Windows, and mostly faster too. If your intention is, however, to use it as a full-fledged operating system with all the conveniences and frills that you’re used to on Windows, then you may have a few problems or showstoppers. The latter is especially the case with Parted Magic, which is a thumb drive Linux distribution specifically meant for partitioning jobs; though you can comfortably use it to perform all the Internet functions enumerated above, its primary purpose is to create, alter the size of, and remove your partitions. In fact, if you are in a particularly destructive mood, you can even erase your disk clean and create completely new partitions with it!

On the other hand, Ubuntu on a thumb drive is a completely different story. You can do just about anything that you can with Windows, often with less hassle and more speed.

Like they say, your mileage may vary but the convenience and the extraordinary Internet security that these Linux distros give you, without compromising on functionality or speed, is simply unbeatable. What’s more, if you’re convinced about any of these operating systems, then taking the next step and installing them on your hard drive is not very difficult either. But that is a topic for an entirely different discussion which we can have sometime in the near future.

Leave your feedback about these distros in the comments below, or mail me at me AT maheshj DOT info. So long, have fun with Linux.