The internet made this redundant

Cleaning out my cupboard, I felt my hands on what my mother described as gathering dust and probably insects - my 12 year old collection of newspaper cuttings - mostly the Sci/Tech and Young World supplementary of The Hindu, occasional cuttings from the Sunday Magazine and a painstakingly curated series of articles which appeared before the 1999 World Cup, comprising of the best batsmen and best bowlers.

The newspapers immediately felt huge, because The Hindu reduced the width and length sometime back. Equally reminiscent was the progressive space allotted to the supplementaries - Open Page on Mondays, Sci/Tech on Thursdays and the Sports Extra before they were folded into the main newspaper or, in the case of the Sports Extra, cancelled.

Sad, it is, that the year 2000 we remember as 'a couple of years back' but is nearly 11 years in the past; then, computers and the internet were in the hands of a few, so every bit of information 'had to be preserved' for future use, hence the huge pile of newspapers. There is little use for them today because the web has made it easier to index and search for articles, photos and curious information, even when those science articles are beyond redundant.

But, that 'must preserve' attitude hasn't been lost yet - I currently have over 1800 bookmarks in Firefox right now - with more than a 100 in Chrome; this apart from another 1800 or so I backed-up in the middle of the decade. Videos, 'that famous piece of music'-links, magazine and newspaper editorials, analyses of politics and the economy, 'I will watch this later' documentaries and essays, doomsday predictions, time wasting websites, 'this is a good book' links(nearly 200 of them), website design tips, links to catch the action in cricket and movies(though a good chunk of them are dead) - basically any and every link which says 'this is a good link'.

I think I should dump a few really interesting links every now and then. Like this one - the top 100 classical pieces of music you've probably heard. Did you know the Raymond's suiting theme music is Schumann's Traumerei and the simply classic Titan watches music is cleverly adapted from Mozart's Symphony No. 25(you can find almost all the ads by Titan on their official youtube page).

I find tons of such interesting tidbits, which if I don't blog about, my twitter handle is @1729. Follow me/RSS if you find it interesting.

I'll also be including more of my photographs in blogposts. I don't think there's any use of keeping the photos on only my harddrive.