Shopping in rain

hi!!

Shopping in rain is a great experience, especially when all routes from ashok nagar to tnagar is flooded. Just on the spur of the moment myself and 1 of my friends decided to go shopping for deepavali because of 2 reasons.

1. TNagar wouldn't be crowded today.
2. We can go splash..splash.. in rain water all the way to tnagar.

Nothing to stop us, we made our way to the shopping hub of chennai. As expected, there was nothing in sight expect some 2 or 3 autorichshaws & some die-hard shoppers who were in the same mind set as me ;-). In most places, we waded & literally swam across in knee deep water. The rain had started coming down heavily, thankfully i was covered....

Going thro' the waters, the fastest mode of transport was the newspaperwalla tricycle and walking. After enjoying for more than an hours walk, we reached a place called duraisamy subway, the main link between Tnagar and the western side of the city. The subway was 95% submerged in H2O.....

Gosh!!! what a site it was to see a diesel auto half submerged in the subway. Water had already started to seep in thro' the door & the driver was struggling. But anyway, we had to move. So we took a snap of that in my friend's mobile & left for Tnagar. It was 5 minutes away & we were beginning to sense victory because the Pothys logo was visible. After another 15 mins of wading, we managed to reach Mount Everest (Tnagar)...

After shopping in Pothys, RmKV & Saravana Stores, we started heading back. Having tea & some hot bajjis, we saw yet another incident at the same subway. This time it was a van. Despite all the warnings of not to enter the subway, he entered the subway in full speed. He also reached the middle of it & the van stopped all of a sudden & didnt start. Watching all that, we smiled to ourselves thinking how much of a chennaite he was, "Born to break rules" even though it meant good to him.

The water that was knee deep had another grown another 10cm in the 3 hrs we shopped & started wetting my pants through the rain coat. We bundled all our clothes in 2 huge bags that we got from the shop & started floating the bags. What was the need to carry it when we were finding it difficult even to walk comfortably?? Splashing ofcourse was fun. :-)

Another hour later, we reached home & received a sound thrashing.....yea, both of us :)). With a cup of piping hot chocolate, we narrated all our shopping experience. The 5th grade guy i told about here burst out laughing when i told him how a wave of water splashed on us when a jeep was trying to make it across the road.

On the whole, the shopping we did was something that i cant forget. This is the first time ever in my lifetime, i had shopped sooooo comfortably, dat too in Tnagar. Just for the sake, we went to Tnagar again today & my gracious God!! look at the crowd outside Saravana Stores. You would go mad just at the site of it.

Signing off now!! bye!!~~

DOS Games ...

hi!! this is a continuation of the previous blog...myself & one of my friends Ram had a chat about our memories & ofcourse most of it was filled with how we played DOS games. You can read that post here. That post is a bit long.

Here are some links where you can find your favourite DOS games.

1. DOS Games Archive
2. DOS Games Online

Some games are not supported on 32-bit platforms. To run them, you can download dosbox from sourceforge.net.

bye!!~~

Some Good Old Memories

hi!!

This blog is about some good old memories that had been and will be with me.....

First off, my darling sunny. How many of you have used bajaj sunny. Well, we were one of the first buyers here & its been with us for the past 10 years & ya..... its still running. Some 3 days ago, i was compelled to take that vehicle out for a nearby store. & what a surprise it gave me when it started after 2 kicks. Great!!! bike oops! moped or scooter whatever...

Even today, its giving a mileage of 30kmpl & it travels at a speed of 50kmph after some struggle with the accelerator. My dad wanted to sell it last month. But i stopped saying that after another 10 years, it will become an antique & bike lovers will come after it... ;-)

Second, comes my age old computer....not this 1 ofcourse!! I got my first computer during 9th grade summer holidays & what a superb configuration it had.
1. 1GB of HDD.
2. 8MB RAM.
3. A 31/2 floppy drive
4. A 51/4 floppy drive .... yes i got one with my old comp!!!
5. No cdrom drive or multimedia.

Floppy drive was considered to be the most modern thing ever at that time & we used to buy DOS games in at a rate of Rs.100. Games such Dangerous Dave & Prince of Persia 1 were the most popular with us at that time. Later, after around 6 months, we upgraded our system to 32MB RAM, got a 32X cdrom drive with a multimedia set. The first cdrom game that i played was RoadRash, followed by Motoracer 2, NFS 2 and Claw. They still remain the favourites primarily because they dont use much of system resource & they are simply great!!!

Still later, that same old system ran Windows 98 & we used to be very content with playing all the games mentioned above, all in 1GB & 32 MB RAM.

Third, its the magazine Tinkle. I cant just forget the days when myself & my brother used to wait for the newspaper boy who used to deliver it. Then as usual every fortnight morning, begins the fight as to who should read it first. Thanks to Uncle Anant Pai (Tinkle Editor) who made such a superb magazine.

Its very difficult to write for kids & i realised it when i read tinkle sometime back. There was a recipe to make ice-cream & there were instructions such as, "Take help from an adult for this" and "Be careful with knife" etc...

There are ofcourse lots of memories but i will reserve them for another post.

Till then, bye n take care......

Back with a bang...

hi!!

The broadband is finally working & it excites to see a page load at the blinking of an eye. So gud is the excitement & feeling dat, it makes u download the whole world. As of now, there are these listings waiting to be downloaded tonight.

1. Photoshop CS2
2. Flash 8
3. Dreamweaver 8
4. Adobe Reader 7.0.1 for linux, windows

Lots & lots more coming up....

bye!!~~

Updating my blog.....

hi!!

With my dataone broadband connection wrecking havoc all around, i found it too difficult to cope up with dialup :-(. But something is better than nothing ;), so i was sticking around with it & thought of some things that i had not done for the past 1 week or so.

After broadband, checking mail was part of my routine - morning once, evening once & night once, like breakfast, lunch and dinner. Now checking mail using dialup even once is becoming a nightmare. Second one was updating my blog. I was horrified by the thought that i hadnt updated it since the last 2 weeks. Third one is even worse, didnt read more than 3 dozen of offline messages that i receive. boooohoooo!!

Its sickening in dialup to see a google search webpage load at the "speed of light" for 2 minutes at 563 bytes/second. The speed also varies from 563 bytes to a blinding speed of 1.5 kbps. As far as downloads, 1 mb downloading for 5 mins 30 secs tears my nerves apart.

So, all i do is put a webpage for loading in the browser and go for a cup of coffee or choclate & come back to see to my heart-felt satisfaction, the webpage has half-loaded........as i press ESC in frustration.

And as expected, this page too is still loading, as the rest of the posts contemplate whether to appear or not...

bye!!~~ anyone reading this post, plz wish me good luck. Thanks in advance.

Microsoft e-Learning - Free !!!!

hi!! Microsoft has given some very cool online courses for free[1]. Check them out and make sure you make use maximum use of them. Most of these free courses are available for download also. To view them after download, u need the Offline Player.

1. ASP.NET - http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/learn/asptraining/
2. Visual Studio 2005 (Whidbey) - https://www.microsoftelearning.com/visualstudio2005/
3. SQL Server 2005 (Yukon) - https://www.microsoftelearning.com/sqlserver2005/

Note:
1. The courses are free only for a limited period.
2. For optimum performance use IE6.0 SP1 with 1024*768 resolution.


bye!!~~

Lots n Lotsa free eBooks

hi!! chk out this link http://ftp.anyhost.ru/books/www.krf.bsu.by/

This page contains a lot of freely downloadable e-Books such PHP, Ruby, Win XP for Power Users, Flash Actionscript etc. and a lot more.....Donno when the site will expire, so download all that you need immediately.

Using FDM, i have already scheduled for some downloads tonight. Dont miss this & chk it out ;-)

"Google" has started blogging

hey!! guyz, Google has started blogging. Its been around for quite sometime & its right here on blogger. This is the link http://googleblog.blogspot.com

Check it out.

Superb Imagination !!! ha ha ha

hi!! couldnt control laughter when i saw this link http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1322360

superb imagination about the search capablilities of google :)) =)). Jes go 2 the above link m chk dat out.


bye!!~~

The Joy of Teaching Kids...

hi!!

Right next door to my house, there is a small guy doing his 5th grade. Since, we know him right when he was born, he used to be very free with our family. When i came from college yesterday, he immediately came running to my house, sat by my side & told me a very BIG secret !!!!!

Guess what it was??? His parents had bought him a brand new computer (pretty decent configuration) & he was excited about it because he could play "car race" (still NFS 2) & "bike race" (Roadrash). Other than this, what excited me was that he told me how to open "MS Paint" from the start menu & before that switching on the UPS, then pressing the blue button (boot button) near the small opening...... (floppy drive). All my tiredness completely vanished when i heard those words from a kid who had learnt all these just by watching the system assembler work at his home the previous day (quite amazing right?? atleast i think so).

So, without even changing, i went with him next door & asked him to show me a demo of creating a drawing because i didnt know how to do that. By seeing the interest he showed towards this, i thought i should teach him some more in MS Paint. Then i told him how to use brush, change some colours, save his work & reopen his work etc.

But, what really amazed him was, when the desktop background was changed & kept on asking me, to know how it was done. Since his dad had hidden the games from the start menu, he told me that the game was hidden somewhere in the computer & was pestering me to find it for him. As they had also listened to some songs the previous day, he asked how to do the same (he liked the Vijay starrer Ghilli very much). And do u know how he found it!!!!! He clicked on start, programs & instead on clicking on NFS2, he clicked Windows Media Player (a little unsteady with mouse). You should have seen the brighter than the sun smile on his face.....a sense of achievement began to envelope him & shouted Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! with so much ecstacy that bought his mom running from the kitchen :)).

Coming back home, i feel his quest to know more touched me deeply & rang a bell in my mind, that told me to be a MASTER of 1 trade & jack of others.

Right now, he is sitting besides me, tugging at my left hand, to show him how to open the white screen (notepad) so that he could type something & i keep smiling as i have a tough time finishing this blog.....

Fun...Fun...Fun...

hey!! guyz, i took this "stupidity" test. click on the image below for more. all i can tell u now that its funny. ha ha ha!!!

dont forget, there are more funny tests on dat site. neway heres my score...

Security threat in Internet Explorer

hi!! here is a major security threat in IE. Using jes a line of javascript or vbscript, u can retrieve text from clipboard. And using technology such as AJAX, it is possible to send it to the server without page refresh i.e. user willnt know that some communication has happened between his sys & the server. 1 e.g. where AJAX is used is wen u sign up for a new mail account at gmail or yahoo. It gives u a button to check whether the user id u selected is available or not & the result is almost instantaneous without the whole page refreshing.

Btw, i read abt this somewhere around 2 weeks ago, but i understood the threat & its severeness when i was reading Sudar's blog yesterday. Thanks 2 u sudar!!

Click on the links to get more information, a demo and a possible(not fool-proof) way to get rid of this problem.

1 more thing, this problem occurs only in internet explorer and i feel its mainly because of the extensive support of activeX controls. if u have some thoughts 2 share, dont hesitate to post a comment.

Start downloading 2 to 8 :-)

hey!! ne1 out there using dataone like me???

well, v hava reason 2 b unhappy 'cos they r giving only 1GB download/upload per month. But there is 1 small reason to be a "lil" happy. 2 AM to 8 AM is free for unlimited usage. To take advantage of this, i created a scheduled task to start downloading using Download Acclerator Plus (DAP) at 2:10 AM & shutdown the system after download completes or at 7:55 AM, whichever occurs first. Ok, heres the procedure to do that. I did this WinXP home and DAP version 7.2.
1. Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Scheduled Tasks.
2. Click next & select a program from the list or click "Browse" button to select ur own. I selected DAP frm the list.
3. Type a name & choose an option from the 1ce given. I chose daily.
4. Give a start time. As for this, give it as "2:10 AM" & select a start date.
5. Enter ur user name & password.
6. If u wan something else 2 b configured tick off the chk box & say "Finish".

Now, u gotta config DAP to start downloading at 2:10 AM. Other download managers vil surely a similar feature.

1. Fire DAP frm Start->Programs->Download Accelerator Plus->Download Accelerator
2. Goto Options->Preferences.
3. Select "Scheduler" from the left side menu & select the chk box
4. Tick the chk box dat says "Start scheduler at..." & select "Daily" & give the time of starting. If u want give the time at which the scheduler has to stop.
5. Select the options from "After scheduled downloads stopped/finished".
6. Click "Apply" & say "Close".

Dats!! it u can now close DAP, leave ur comp on & happily go 2 sleep......Today i have scheduled for 2 downloads from channel9. The 1st 1 is here & the 2nd is here, if u want to c them. They both promise 2 b gud. bye!! n have a gud day.... ;-)

Update: Read through Part 2 also.

BEA User Group Meeting

hi!! i attended the BEA user group meeting at Taj Connemara & this is the first session BEA is having in chennai. Its having plans of starting the same in other metros (its started in mumbai i think, not sure) & pune too.

The topic that was covered in that session was on their "Diablo" (WebLogic Server 9.0) & BEA AquaLogic. Aqualogic is 1 platform for integrating systems of diff. architectures & enabling communication between them. It is more architecture oriented. & b4 going into that there was an hr session on SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). If you dont know what SOA is, it is the next wave of the future & to ride on it, read the June 2005 magz of Developer IQ. There r very good articles on SOA, more importantly Web Services.

In brief, SOA talks about exposing ur application or ur code as a service. This means that, the methods you write for ur app can be called from any OS, any language & also it is available anywhere, anytime. Therefore, you first need to publish your code or class (enabling the service) & make it available to the world (discover) by registering at any of the registries available E.g. UDDI (Universal Description Discovery Integration).

And obviously we were given a DVD containing the WebLogic Platform 8.1, Weblogic Server 9.0 beta, Apache Beehive, Spring framework 1.2 etc.

Gotta try it now. bye!!~~

Pharming Attacks.....Beware!!!

Pharming is a very popular type of network attack among hackers. Lemme explain the process in brief.

1. The hacker looks for a web page from where he wants to get details. Typically it will be a bank’s website.


2. By viewing the design source code of the web page (View > Source) from internet explorer, he recreates a similar web page.


3. Then, he looks at the DNS (Domain Name System) table of the ISP (Internet Service Provider). He gets the list of IP addresses for the different websites & searches for the website he wants to spoof.


4. Now in the DNS table, he changes the IP address of the website to represent his server’s IP address. Eg: If he wants to spoof yahoo.com, he changes yahoo’s IP to his own IP.


5. Whenever a user accesses the site by giving yahoo.com, the DNS now redirects him to the hacker’s system. Since he has recreated a similar page, the end user believes that he has come to the correct page. Now, he gives his user id and pwd to login to the site & wat happens now?? The website shows an error & by this time, the user has lost his user id & pwd to the world.

Prevention is better than cure

1. Banks & other institutions which take data such as user id & pwd often put up a notice on their saying that they never ask for other details.


2. For the users, plzz b careful. Have a look at the url each time u see the site. If it differs, cross check by sending a mail or calling them up. Most probably, the mail wont b replied bcos, the hacker’s IP wont be having a mail server.


3. Check whether the website’s certificate is from an authorized agent. Most hackers don’t have a proper certificate. For this, c whether u have a small eye icon on the status bar of the internet browser (internet fxplorer, firefox, opera etc.).


4. Double click on it to c the certificate.Or better still, don’t use internet :-). That way, u can remain safe forever.

Caritor Orientation Programme Cont....

hi!! im back with the update on Caritor orientation programme....

It happened on 10th and 11th of Sep at my college and was really excellent. Ok, heres a short desc of wat exactly happened. These sessions have proved wat a gr8 company caritor is.

Day 1

After the inaugral function with our chairman, we were left with Mr.Kaushik & Ms.Nidhi from Caritor. They started the sessions by introducing themselves & i should specifically mention here that both of them were real cool. The first session was on "success" and how success is different from happiness (this was eye opening). The second session today was on introducing ourselves. This was not the normal kinda intro v r used to. V were paired up in groups of 2 (1 guy & 1 gal) & told to know abt each other.

After talking with ur partner for sometime, each group went on stage to introduce the other. This was a lot fun, especially "unique experience" section.

Heres my expr. As for me, i went to Tirunelveli with my dad once. He went to office dat morning & told me to visit a temple dat was abt an hr from the city. So, i had breakfast & headed to the bus stop. Since i didnt know the city or its suburbs much, i asked the bus conductor to tell me wen the stop came. He was very cool & didnt tell me abt it. Soon, something at the back of my mind told that i may have missed the stop & i asked the conductor abt it. He told im 45 mins behind that temple..... :) I got really mad & asked him how do i get back. He told me to take a bus dat goes to tirunelveli & once i got onto the bus, i was looking at each board of the stop until i was sure i got down at the right place. phew!! i had travelled for more than 4 hrs dat day alone & once i got to the room, i slept until the next morning. :))

Day 2

Today, the first session was on corporate ettiquette. Then v had some more sessions on how to achieve success. 3 main ingredients for achieving success are

1. desire - the burning desire to do something
2. knowledge - that helps u move towards the desire
3. skill - helps u perform the task more efficiently to achieve ur goal

The 2nd session was on listening skills & there were some tests on listening comprehensions. Importance was on managing with other english accents & it can be improved by listening to news channels, movies etc.

Dats it for this post guyz, have anything to ask, plz post a comment. bye!!

Ilaiyaraja's Thiruvasagam

hi!! friends, heard Thiruvasagam? For those of u who dont know wat it is, it is a set of hyms or poems written on Lord Shiva by Thiruvasagar.

For the mortals, the great work by the poet is remade in such a way so that, it reaches the common man. There was a program on sun tv abt this where Ilaiyaraja was giving interview. The question was, "Sir, you very well know that the meaning of the words in the work are difficult to understand. How do u expect it to reach the common man?" The answer was, "The feeling u get wen u listen is what that is more important then understanding the words, which induces change in u (+ve change)".

As an example, he recited the words in the poem (which had no effect ofcourse) & then he sang it in a particular way, which had some effect on me (couldnt really explain dat, u have 2 feel it). Whether u r Ilaiyaraja's fan or not, u must listen to the 1st song. It starts like this

"Poovar senni mannan empuyangap peruman siriyomai ..........."

It was done with Budapest Symphony Orchestra (120 singers), conducted by Laszlo Kovacs & sung by Ilaiyaraja, Bhavatharini etc. A must listen for music lovers around the world. Without doubt, its 1 of the greatest creations!!!

Caritor Orientation Programme

hi!! some of my future colleagues (Caritor) had some orientation programme that was conducted by Caritor itself in their colleges. They had a lot of fun in the 2 days of the program. And v r having it in my college along with the guyz n gals frm Jerusalem & SRM Easweri.

Looking forward to it. seems to b very exciting, i vil surely keep u posted...bye!!

No mouse click??? chk this out

hi!! i found a site called http://www.dontclick.it from this blog. Its a site where u neednt click to navigate.

Chk it out, its really kewl!!.

Oh dear, Its a saturday again....

Its dat time of the week again ..... when all your friends r njoying a good morning sleep & u have to get up early and go to college. And what happens here???

Friends!! its 1 of those sat's again for me & My mom will be asking me to get up, from 5:30AM until its 6:15 AM. After dat, a splash of water goes off on my face & i get up wincing to c dat its a saturday. Rest assured, i lazily brush up & get ready for college ...... oh!! God its 6:45, my buz leaves in another 5 mins & im still dressing up :-O

I scrammble for my socks, stuff them in 1 of my pockets to wear it in the bus (I dont disturb my bag because it isnt opened on normal days) & bolt to the bus stop. Phew!! jes in time to catch the bus, its already leaving. What do i notice now??? I have taken 1 black & 1 white sock in a hurry. oh!! wat a saturday morning itz been. Lets c wat happens 2mrw.

Till then, bye & good night ;)