• If a man speaks in the woods with no woman to hear .. is he still wrong?
• I can’t believe Murdock beat out a million other sperm.
• If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders. (Hal Abelson)
• In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. (Carl Sagan)
• A closed mouth gathers no feet.
• A consultant is someone who takes the watch off your wrist and tells you the time. Then he keeps the watch.
• I never repeat gossip, so I’ll say this only once.
• I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
• I couldn’t fail to disagree with you less!
• Our universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time.
• What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? (Stephen Hawking)
• To be immortal with a finite memory is highly unsatisfactory. (Freeman Dyson)
• Why should I care about future generations - what have they ever done for me?
• Maybe one day we’ll figure out how to synthesize a new universe in a lab, set off a Big Bang, and move in.
• Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before. (Steven Wright)
• The three great American lies: Of course I’ll respect you in the morning. The check is in the mail. I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.
• Committees do harm merely by existing. (Freeman Dyson)
• Your IQ is so low it’s almost a shoe size.
• I keep six honest serving men (They taught me all I know); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. (Rudyard Kipling)
• There is a wide variety of opinions on consultants. Some people hate them, and some people hate them a lot.
• I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. (Woody Allen)
• Humanity can be divided into two categories: those who divide humanity into two categories and those who don’t.
• The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I’ve found it!) but “That’s funny….” (Isaac Asimov)
• And finally, to my cousin Willie, who always wanted to be remembered in my will, Hi, Willie.
• Dyslexics, untie!
• Sure I am a freeloader but my morals permit that.
• And this is your wife, or am I mistaken again?
• You can observe a lot just by watching. (Yogi Berra)
• In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. (Yogi Berra)
• The noble art of losing face will one day save the human race. (Piet Hein, quoted by Hans Blix)
• Everything’s either concave or -vex, so whatever you dream will be something with sex. (Piet Hein)
• I was promised flying cars! Where are the flying cars?! (Avery Brooks)
• It’s not the things I forget that bother me; it’s the things I remember clearly that never happened.
• If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.
• Weather prediction will never be accurate until we kill all the butterflies.
• I do not know who discovered water, but it probably was not a fish.
• When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.
• Theology is man telling God what to think.
• I believe you when you say that you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you understand that what I said is not what I meant.
• Eschew obfuscation.
• I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming like his passengers.
• It ain’t over till the fat lady sings. (Tristan and Isolde, perhaps?)
• The fat lady is clearing her throat. (A standard comment from kibitzers on the Internet Chess Club.)
• Of course I don’t believe that putting a horseshoe over my door will bring me luck, but they say that it brings luck even to those who don’t believe in it. (Niels Bohr)
• Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. (Groucho Marx)
• Basically my wife was immature. I’d be at home in my bath and she’d come in and sink my boats.
• If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee.

I bought my iPhone 3G on the day it was launched in India: August 22, 2008. I had to go book mine a day before and I guess that made it easier, I did not have to wait in a queue. I just landed at the store, showed my booking receipt, they charged my card for the balance and handed me the phone - but then they took it back to ‘activate’ it and gave it back after another couple of minutes. Largely a smooth process - compared to the horrific stories about the US Launch on July 11.

The first thing I did was to turn off the 3G radio. Since India does not have 3G yet, and not expected for another 6 months on Airtel. It’s best to turn this off to save battery. To do this, just go to Settings->General->Network and turn off ‘Enable 3G’.

Next thing I noticed is that iTunes would take way too long to backup the phone everytime I wanted to sync. So I disabled the automatic backup by doing the following on my mac:

Open Terminal, type: defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true
and hit return

Note iTunes should not be running when you do this. Launch iTunes after doing this and it won’t backup the phone every time. I am thinking that I would like to re-enable backup by changing the ‘true’ above to ‘false’ once in a month.

For Windows folks:
1. Locate your iTunesPrefs.xml file. It’s usually located in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes or C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple computer\iTunes.
2. Open it in Notepad and search for a section called User Preferences and paste the following snipped into the User Preferences Section after the first <dict>:

<key>DeviceBackupsDisabled</key>
<data>
dHJ1ZQ==
</data>

3. Save the file and launch iTunes. You may want to take a backup of your existing iTunesPrefs.xml first.

Next: Turn off the Equalizer of the iPod since it eats up battery when it plays songs. Turn off the EQ by going to the Settings > iPod > EQ and change to Off.

I’ll add more as I use my iPhone more

Apple plans to introduce the iPhone 3G to new countries this month. The company said that the latest iPhone would go on sale in 20 additional countries by August 22.

The announcement came during a quarterly conference call with financial analysts in which chief operating officer Tim Cook and chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer discussed Apple’s results for the fiscal third quarter.

Rumours are that Vodafone will make iPhone 3G available in the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, South Africa, Turkey, and most importantly — India. Details of price plans will be made available in the respective countries by individual Vodafone operating companies. Vodafone customers in all of these markets including India can pre-register online and in retail stores in the next few days.

Meanwhile, Airtel customers who wish to receive more information on the Apple iPhone can send an SMS with keyword “iPhone” to 54321 (toll-free number). Airtel will announce details regarding pricing and availability at a later date, the company said.