Shifting to Wordpress :-)

My dear friends, I'm shifting my blog to wordpress. The blog may be unavailable for a day or two since I'm experimenting a few things. The experiments will definitely be updated on my tech blog.

Just to assure you, my non-tech blog URL (http://blog.aswinanand.com) and its feed URL (http://blog.aswinanand.com/atom.xml) will continue to work as they were :-). Thanks to the magic of mod_rewrite. The same goes with my tech blog also. The existing links http://tech.aswinanand.com and http://tech.aswinanand.com/atom.xml (for feeds) will work as well. That saves you from updating your feed links ;-). In a day or two, I will be updating my feed burner feeds as well.

Shifting my blog to wordpress, writing a wordpress plugin, wildcard domains, htaccess and mod_rewrite... whoa! All that was such a nice learning experience. Will be posting all that over some time on my tech blog.

Thanks a lot to all my readers :)

Update: The shift has been completed. The old non-tech blog is at http://aswinanand.blogspot.com/ and the old tech blog is at http://techlight.blogspot.com/.

Lock your bikes when you park

So, you are out shopping in the busy Tnagar area in Chennai and you don't find a place to park. After struggling for half hour, you come to terms with a small place with enough place only for a rat to sneak in. Somehow managing the difficulty, you park your brand new Bajaj Pulsar 200 cc bike and set off happilly for shopping.

Now, when you return your bike is lost! How come? You start wondering, start crying and even roll on the road. But the bike won't come back. Here's why.

Just a few days back, I went to the mechanic shop to repair my bike horns because they were not functioning properly. The guy who repaired was small... say may be 14 years old. He challenged me by saying that he could kick-start my bike without the keys! Man.. I was shocked. After meddling with something below the handlebar, he told me to remove the keys from bike. May be offered a small prayer or something but as soon as he kicked on the starter, the bike came to life. He was beaming, all this 32 teeth showing. He went for a small round and came back!

Now you know how many (if not all) bikes get stolen. Never ever forgot to side-lock your bike. If at all your bike was side-locked, even though starting it is not a problem, riding it IS definitely a problem.

Get it? :-)

Echo Club

Hi guys, it's been a long time since I made a post on the blog. I will be back in full swing soon.

But before that, a small news :-) I have been writing a few articles on http://thoughts.clubecho.org/. Please do read them and comment on them.

Independence Day Initiative - Fill up Potholes in the city

A few of my good friends have come with this initiative of filling up potholes in the Chennai city. They will be doing it over a period of 2 days, starting yesterday night and resuming again tonight. Please visit the wiki for more information.

I may be joining them tonight :-)

BarCampBangalore 4 - Day 2

As expected, the rooms running the internet, mobile and startup collectives are packed. Will keep this post updated as the day unfolds :D

Yay!! I got into IIM ...

...for BarCampBangalore 4th edition :D. I'm taking part in the Ruby and the Startups collective.

I attended a few sessions on the Internet collective. But they were pretty boring.

The session by the co-founder of Sloka Telecom, one of the selected companies of the Proto.in first edition, gave an awesome pep talk on how he built his own startup. They are 3 years into it and doing a pretty good job. He made the whole thing look so easy that, the next thing that you want to do after getting back home is to form a startup :D

Another guy from PicSquare (sorry, I forgot his name) also shared his experience. I'm with the ruby collective now. Will keep you updated on this.

Very much looking forward to the Startup collective that is going to continue tomorrow morning.
Oh! yah.. met some pretty cool people, including Freeman, who is organizing SkillsCamp in Pune.

Having a nice time! :D

Update: The ruby collective was damn interesting yesterday. The crowd seems more interested in the internet, mobile and startup space. So, hopefully day 2 will be packed of such sessions.

Change in breakfast

Hi guys, Good Morning !

Just to try out a change in the everyday breakfast, I decided to have cornflakes. So, since this Monday, I'm on cornflakes. Here's my preparation for you to try out.

1. Take a nice bowl and put 2 to 3 handful of cornflakes. Spread them out evenly.
2. Take a small cube of jaggery (called vellam in tamil) and crush it well. Add it to the cornflakes and mix it well by hand. Now, sprinkle some raisins (also called kanja draksha in tamil).
3. Get a half litre packet of cold milk and pour half of the "half litre pack" of milk to the mixture of cornflakes, jaggery and raisins. Don't mix it now.
4. If you have honey, add a dash of it :D
5. Get a banana, preferably ones that are big, such as the famous nenthirampazham or the pachai vazhai pazham (the bananas with the green skin). Cut them into small pieces and add them to the bowl.

Take a spoon and mix it well. Let it rest for a few minutes and then devour it :D

Now, since this is mango season, instead of banana, you can use that also. Take a mango, a ripe one preferably. Peel off its skin properly, cut it into small pieces and add them to the bowl of cornflakes. That would make it delicious. Yesterday I tried out a mixture of both banana and mango and the resulting turned out to be awesome!

Try this out and let me know :D