Incongruous Balderdash

Ah yes, sweet summer has come and I’m unable to enjoy it to the fullest because of many distractions. My recent inactivity on the blog can be attributed to some of the very same reasons - the most important of them being my exams.

It feels strange when you’re one of the last persons to write your USMLE step 2CK exam, when you were one of the first people who actually started the trend to prepare for the exams early. Well life’s like that - comes with all the ups and downs. I’ve scheduled a date for my CK exam on 25th June (just in time to celebrate my birthday) and don’t even feel an iota of confidence in my preparations. Which brings me to my next big distraction: Work

I’ve not been able to concentrate on the exam preps becuase of work issues. Previously it was due to the fact that I was engaged deeply into my research and lately because my fuding is being pulled out and am loosing my job on the 29th of May. I’ve got enough savings to last me for the whole summer but these are tough times and I cannot necessarily engage in enjoying the summer because of monetary constraints. I’ve thrown some last minute attempts to get a job in summer 2 but for most of summer 1, I want to focus entirely on my USMLE preps starting June 1st. I hope that 25 days is enough time to prepare and get a decent score (fingers crossed).

Keeping the monetary constraints aside, I plan to invest in a good road bike to enjoy the later part of summer. Unlike India, where I could definitely get a good quality bike for about $50, Quality bikes start at $350 over here and they are the most basic ones. I’ve seen some that sell for well over $8K but I’d rather settle down for a used one with some life left in it. I believe I can get one for $200 if I keep my eyes and ears open. I’ve been searching on craigslist and haunting local bike shops for the past 3 weeks to find a good deal. There’s many details to look into before purchasing a bike but that’s a topic for some later post. This is another one of those distractions that I’d love to keep because I plan to ride the entire Schukyll river trail before the end of summer. Take a look at some of the pictures of the trail:

I’ve got no clue where I’m going with this post and looking back, the title does not make sense at all. I’m too lazy to change it now. I believe the post is a reflection on what I’ve been going through for the past few weeks - things that are mostly sad or depressing. Oooo!! and almost forgot, My GF is back in Ahmedabad for a month and I’ll have a chance to meet her (online) more often now. Yay!!! There’s always a silver lining in the dark cloud.

The last fortnight has seen many developments in the online social communities.

Microsoft Zune upgraded its social feature to a new level with the ability to see what your friends are listening and even download their Zune cards onto the devices. It is a very nice feature to discover new music since you do not have to search for the top 10 or maybe 100 songs on radio - just go online on your social page, look what your friends are listening and have an option to buy or lease that song.

Check out my Zune social page

Facebook Connect will provide the hooks to let users port their friends, profile photos, events, and other data across the Web to partner sites.

MySpace on Thursday announced Data Availability, with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter as initial partners for its effort to let members port their data.

Yahoo is partnering with the leading social networks so its users can take advantage of the freeing of user data, and it will also be crafting its own social network and APIs as part of its forthcoming Yahoo Open Strategy.

Even Google does not want to lag behind and is expected to join the social network data portability crowd with “Friend Connect” on Monday

If you read in between the lines, it means that these sites are basically allowing external sites to use your publicly available information on their networks. This may mean that we get more integrated services but raises serious security issues. I do not know how Facebook and Myspace manage their data but I’ve enabled a bare minimum of applications on those sites to protect my privacy.

Google’s Orkut, on the other hand actually lets the user know how those applications will access the users information. The Orkut applications will have:

1) Access to your publicly available profile information and your friends list
2) Share your publicly available information with other viewers and users of this application
3) Get a link in your left navigation bar
4) Put a gadget on your profile page

I do not mind that last 2 points but why should my friends information be shared with Google’s partners? I can understand that my information is shared because I agreed to add that application to my profile. Why drag my friends into all this?

I am a bit skeptical about all this. I joined orkut in the first place because of its clean interface and no nonsense social features (meet with friends, scrap them and connect). Now its aiming to be the next facebook or MySpace and miserably failing at maintaining the same clean user interface that lured me to Orkut. Add security issues to this and I’m thinking - Is it time to pull the plug on my profile ??

What are your thoughts about this?

Its that time of the year again when every girl in town comes out wearing nothing but an inch (or maybe two) of garment . Check out the pics of spring fling 2008 at Temple University.