Hi guys, I went on a cool South Indian tour of some of the greatest temples. Will talk about them in the coming posts and also about how they positively affected me.
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Just that, this little thing popped up. I think Yahoo! should acquire Wordpress. That would complete the circle of a bookmarking tool, a social networking site, a photo sharing utility and a blog tool. What do you say?
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Friday, August 18, 2006
Kids Again
Kids have this natural ability to be so innocent. Two kids came to my house yesterday. The elder one was a nine year old boy and the younger one was a three year old girl. The boy wanted to play spiderman on my computer. I loaded the game and he started playing. He became engrossed to the extent that he didn't know what was happening around him. Sensing that he was missing, she came looking for him. Seeing the computer monitor, she shrieked SPIDERMAN!!, her tiny hands pointing to the monitor.
Immediately, she moved to the other side of the table and started moving the mouse away from him. She was also pressing the return key. He got irritated and told her that if she came to his left side, she would also play... Lol!! As she was slowly moving, he hid the working mouse, took a broken one nearby and placed it to his left side. Seeing another mouse, she was super excited and started moving it.
As much as he was playing and making the characters on screen move, she thought she was playing and made faces to the boy.. ha ha ha!! she was also pressing some keys too. She played like that for sometime. Then, it was time to move :-)
Immediately, she moved to the other side of the table and started moving the mouse away from him. She was also pressing the return key. He got irritated and told her that if she came to his left side, she would also play... Lol!! As she was slowly moving, he hid the working mouse, took a broken one nearby and placed it to his left side. Seeing another mouse, she was super excited and started moving it.
As much as he was playing and making the characters on screen move, she thought she was playing and made faces to the boy.. ha ha ha!! she was also pressing some keys too. She played like that for sometime. Then, it was time to move :-)
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Ban on Cola
Hi!! day-before-yesterday, City Express, a daily supplement for The New Indian Express carried an article on whether colas should be banned due to their high pesticide content. It also asked the readers to send their responses to cityexpress@epmltd.com. I sent mine too. Here it is,
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Banning colas won't have such a widespread effect because of the levels of penetration they have had in the society. Go to party, any small gathering, pizza corner or pizza hut, you are bound to find many 2 litre bottles bottles of coke, fanta and similar fizzy drinks. Pizza Corner always has 1 offer or another round the year. Avail that offer and you get a bottomless glass of coke free. What's more, while they serve the pizzas, they ask whether we want coke or water.
This type of penetration can be broken only by constant awareness programmes. Let pizza corner offer coke, but then let them hang medium sized awareness boards inside, which illustrates the ill effects of coke. As a first level, most of the habits of youth are formed during the schooling or college period. Therefore, the colleges and schools should refrain from using colas and serve fresh juices instead. For example, my college has a small canteen and they never sell any kind of bottled drinks, not even Slice. They sell only fruit juices and that too fresh fruit juices at very affordable rates. Seeing this for the last 4 years has made me look at the good effects of fresh juices rather than bottled drinks.
Charity and everything else beings at home. Therefore, at the second level, parents and relatives should never encourage children to drink coke, instead buy them tender coconuts or fresh fruit drinks. Home is the place where the parents can impose bans on cola and induce fruit drinks. This issue is similar to the crackers during deepavali time. Just by imposing a ban on not bursting crackers before 6am, not a single soul stopped doing so. When small children are told about the ill effects of crackers, they stop bursting them and think of more useful ways to spend time and money. The same should happen with coke also.
We cannot change anything immediately by imposing a ban. Good people will continue to be good and bad people will continue to find new ways of getting the banned thing in. It is only by constant awareness can coke be banished from the society. Only time will tell how long it will take. Till then we must show our perseverance on the awareness programmes.
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It got published yesterday :), on page 4 of City Express under the title, "Ban won't help, let's create an awareness".
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Banning colas won't have such a widespread effect because of the levels of penetration they have had in the society. Go to party, any small gathering, pizza corner or pizza hut, you are bound to find many 2 litre bottles bottles of coke, fanta and similar fizzy drinks. Pizza Corner always has 1 offer or another round the year. Avail that offer and you get a bottomless glass of coke free. What's more, while they serve the pizzas, they ask whether we want coke or water.
This type of penetration can be broken only by constant awareness programmes. Let pizza corner offer coke, but then let them hang medium sized awareness boards inside, which illustrates the ill effects of coke. As a first level, most of the habits of youth are formed during the schooling or college period. Therefore, the colleges and schools should refrain from using colas and serve fresh juices instead. For example, my college has a small canteen and they never sell any kind of bottled drinks, not even Slice. They sell only fruit juices and that too fresh fruit juices at very affordable rates. Seeing this for the last 4 years has made me look at the good effects of fresh juices rather than bottled drinks.
Charity and everything else beings at home. Therefore, at the second level, parents and relatives should never encourage children to drink coke, instead buy them tender coconuts or fresh fruit drinks. Home is the place where the parents can impose bans on cola and induce fruit drinks. This issue is similar to the crackers during deepavali time. Just by imposing a ban on not bursting crackers before 6am, not a single soul stopped doing so. When small children are told about the ill effects of crackers, they stop bursting them and think of more useful ways to spend time and money. The same should happen with coke also.
We cannot change anything immediately by imposing a ban. Good people will continue to be good and bad people will continue to find new ways of getting the banned thing in. It is only by constant awareness can coke be banished from the society. Only time will tell how long it will take. Till then we must show our perseverance on the awareness programmes.
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It got published yesterday :), on page 4 of City Express under the title, "Ban won't help, let's create an awareness".
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Anna University Homepage
Wow!!! look at that! Anna University, one of the foremost universities in India has a RedHat test page.
Here's the screenshot.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
BlogCamp.In Update
Lot of things, yes! quite a lot of things have been happening now on the front of BlogCamp. Myself and Moyeen have designed the website for BlogCamp.In, with Hitesh giving inputs on the overall design of the page. I did the design and layout. Moyeen took care of the ajax part. Based on the homepage for blogcamp.in, I created a wordpress template for the blog so that we have a consistent look over the website as a whole. The site is now open. Ofcourse there are many things missing; like many URLs are broken except http://blogcamp.in and http://blogcamp.in/blog.
It has been an amazing experience learning the working of wordpress. Hey, did I tell you that I'm the mini webmaster? Yes, I'm managing http://blogcamp.in. If anything on the site doesn't function as expected, I get an email or a phone call and I just love it. The wiki is getting ready now. It will be up tonight (most probably). You can check it at http://blogcamp.in/wiki.
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Did a video cast in the evening with a 73 year old lady, who also happens to be my cousin's grandma. Will upload it to youtube soon. It is in tamil.
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Got the equipment for doing a podcast with Kennedi G. Have to test it and schedule the podcast :D.
Well, that's it for now :) Bye!!
It has been an amazing experience learning the working of wordpress. Hey, did I tell you that I'm the mini webmaster? Yes, I'm managing http://blogcamp.in. If anything on the site doesn't function as expected, I get an email or a phone call and I just love it. The wiki is getting ready now. It will be up tonight (most probably). You can check it at http://blogcamp.in/wiki.
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Did a video cast in the evening with a 73 year old lady, who also happens to be my cousin's grandma. Will upload it to youtube soon. It is in tamil.
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Got the equipment for doing a podcast with Kennedi G. Have to test it and schedule the podcast :D.
Well, that's it for now :) Bye!!
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Security Breach at PMs House
The situation is pretty simple. Three people entered the Prime Minister's residence at about 8.45 PM tonight without any documents or appointment what-so-ever. They were until gate 2 and were then turned back. A pretty serious issue in terms of the security concerned.
Now is a ripe time to blame the media. NDTV reports that their reporters had chased down the car to get an interview of the breachers. I had been seeing the news channel for about 45 minutes now and every 5 minutes, the interview is being played. Watching it was funny though. And showing the interview for every 5 minutes was like castrating those 3 young people who came upto the reception.
According to me, the 3 people are not to be blamed. As far as I saw, the media never interviewed any security personnel who let the car in. Leave off the interview, they never even showed us their god damned face. This shows clearly that the media is perfect in character assasination. They never told why the security personnel let them in. Interviewing the 3 people is only part of the story. They should have interviewed the security personnel too. More so, the security personnel should be punished for letting in a car without checking.
This security lapse clearly shows the reason behind the attack on the Indian Parliament.
Now is a ripe time to blame the media. NDTV reports that their reporters had chased down the car to get an interview of the breachers. I had been seeing the news channel for about 45 minutes now and every 5 minutes, the interview is being played. Watching it was funny though. And showing the interview for every 5 minutes was like castrating those 3 young people who came upto the reception.
According to me, the 3 people are not to be blamed. As far as I saw, the media never interviewed any security personnel who let the car in. Leave off the interview, they never even showed us their god damned face. This shows clearly that the media is perfect in character assasination. They never told why the security personnel let them in. Interviewing the 3 people is only part of the story. They should have interviewed the security personnel too. More so, the security personnel should be punished for letting in a car without checking.
This security lapse clearly shows the reason behind the attack on the Indian Parliament.
Google Experiments UI
Sometime back, Sudar told about Google experimenting its UI designs. I think it's my turn today, as I had this new UI during the display of search results. I grabbed a screen shot and about an hour later, the redesign vanished. I had read at lots of sites that Google's simplistic design of the Google homepage wasn't enough to showcase their products, the result being not all their products are as popular as the search engine.
Here is the screen shot of the new layout. Look at the menu on the left. There is no menu above the search text box, which usually consists of web, images etc.
Here is the screen shot of the new layout. Look at the menu on the left. There is no menu above the search text box, which usually consists of web, images etc.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
First Podcast Interview
Hello friends!! within next week, I would be doing a podcast interview with Kennedi of Team A. Kennedi is a full time astrologer residing in Chennai. He was one of the participants of the Vlogger Tinker Meetup and he was part of team A. He is a very active blogger too. You can check his blog at http://www.askenni.com/ where he talks about astrology, spirituality etc. Notably, he is an expert in face reading, tarot cards, energy reading, horoscope reading, vaastu & fenshui.
I'm doing this podcast because it will be a small worthwhile experience for the both of us who are amateurs in this. So, if you have got any questions that you may want to ask astrologers, you are most welcome. Post your question in the comments section and I will be very glad to consider them.
Bye!!
I'm doing this podcast because it will be a small worthwhile experience for the both of us who are amateurs in this. So, if you have got any questions that you may want to ask astrologers, you are most welcome. Post your question in the comments section and I will be very glad to consider them.
Bye!!
Monday, July 17, 2006
Vlogger Tinker Meetup was AMAZING!!!
Yesterday was yet another sunday spent usefully :D. We met at Kiruba's wife's office to get our hands dirty on video blogging. And hey, it's an amazing platform once you learn the basic nuts and bolts.
Team A's Video.
What did we do?
Well, we split ourselves into teams of 3 and 6 teams in all. There were about 6 digital cameras that could record video. One team went out into the open to shoot their video. Another team started from the bottom of the staircase and headed up, doing the "Walk the Stair" show. This something-exciting-so-I-have-to-try-it feeling is not new to me. We decided our team will do the video at the terrace. We went up, shot the video, did "Walk the Terrace" and finally recorded for about 2 minutes.
Then we all came back and imported all the videos to PowerDirector. One team found out that their digicam didn't have the capability to record voice. All of us sneered at them and ultimately, their video was the best, because it had a youtube director in it ;-) They dubbed the audio. Excited to the core, we imported our's soon and set about editing it. Found that instead of focussing on ourselves, we had shot all the banians and jettis hung for drying up under the sun. Nevertheless, it was fun because this was our first hand experience. We reduced the size of the video from 60 mb to 16 mb to finally 6 mb.
Two teams came up with proper videos. One is uploaded to YouTube. It came out very well and had that professional touch. Another video was an interview type one. I do not know whether it's been uploaded. Will let you know on that.
After this, we had a small session on podcasting. The technology is same. All we need to know is, how to combine two or more items to produce a third useful one. Look at the Blogcamp.in blog.
Softwares/Hardwares Used:
We used PowerDirector, vlog it, snag it, audacity, windows movie maker and hardwares such as a digital camera capable of recording videos or handy-cam and microphone. Install required drivers from the cd/dvd given by the manufacturer.
Happy video blogging, podcasting :)
Team A's Video.
What did we do?
Well, we split ourselves into teams of 3 and 6 teams in all. There were about 6 digital cameras that could record video. One team went out into the open to shoot their video. Another team started from the bottom of the staircase and headed up, doing the "Walk the Stair" show. This something-exciting-so-I-have-to-try-it feeling is not new to me. We decided our team will do the video at the terrace. We went up, shot the video, did "Walk the Terrace" and finally recorded for about 2 minutes.
Then we all came back and imported all the videos to PowerDirector. One team found out that their digicam didn't have the capability to record voice. All of us sneered at them and ultimately, their video was the best, because it had a youtube director in it ;-) They dubbed the audio. Excited to the core, we imported our's soon and set about editing it. Found that instead of focussing on ourselves, we had shot all the banians and jettis hung for drying up under the sun. Nevertheless, it was fun because this was our first hand experience. We reduced the size of the video from 60 mb to 16 mb to finally 6 mb.
Two teams came up with proper videos. One is uploaded to YouTube. It came out very well and had that professional touch. Another video was an interview type one. I do not know whether it's been uploaded. Will let you know on that.
After this, we had a small session on podcasting. The technology is same. All we need to know is, how to combine two or more items to produce a third useful one. Look at the Blogcamp.in blog.
Softwares/Hardwares Used:
We used PowerDirector, vlog it, snag it, audacity, windows movie maker and hardwares such as a digital camera capable of recording videos or handy-cam and microphone. Install required drivers from the cd/dvd given by the manufacturer.
Happy video blogging, podcasting :)
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Banana Mash
Hi!! friends, today is Sunday and I'm in a very good mood. As told in the last post, I will give you the recipe for the banana mash. It's a very simple and a very tasty dish that can be prepared without any special kitchenware.
Ok... let us proceed and get our hands wet :-)
Minimum requirements: Half dozen ripe bananas, jaggery.
1. For every banana, take 2 tea spoons of jaggery. Therefore, for half dozen banana, you would have around 150 to 200 grams of jaggery.
2. Now, after peeling off the bananas, break (not cut them) them into 2 halves.
3. Put the bananas in a bowl and mix them with the jaggery. Mix them with your hand (like you mix rice with sambar) and mash them together.
4. Add half cup of cold milk and 5 tea spoons of honey.
5. Sprinkle some raisins, finely cut cashews and don't forget the diamond kalkandu for that kadak-modak effect.
Extensions:
1. Take 2 ripe mangoes and peel off the skin using the regular vegetable skin remover.
2. Cut the fruit and mix them with banana. Add some more jaggery too.
3. Add raisins, cashews, diamond kalakandu, milk and honey etc.
4. Add any other fruit you want. Seedless dates is a good option.
The banana-cum-mango mash is now ready. Tastes good with roti, chapathi and poori. Make sure that you have banana or mango for this preparation.
Slurp!!! the taste is too goooood :D I can't to wait to finish it off.
Ok... let us proceed and get our hands wet :-)
Minimum requirements: Half dozen ripe bananas, jaggery.
1. For every banana, take 2 tea spoons of jaggery. Therefore, for half dozen banana, you would have around 150 to 200 grams of jaggery.
2. Now, after peeling off the bananas, break (not cut them) them into 2 halves.
3. Put the bananas in a bowl and mix them with the jaggery. Mix them with your hand (like you mix rice with sambar) and mash them together.
4. Add half cup of cold milk and 5 tea spoons of honey.
5. Sprinkle some raisins, finely cut cashews and don't forget the diamond kalkandu for that kadak-modak effect.
Extensions:
1. Take 2 ripe mangoes and peel off the skin using the regular vegetable skin remover.
2. Cut the fruit and mix them with banana. Add some more jaggery too.
3. Add raisins, cashews, diamond kalakandu, milk and honey etc.
4. Add any other fruit you want. Seedless dates is a good option.
The banana-cum-mango mash is now ready. Tastes good with roti, chapathi and poori. Make sure that you have banana or mango for this preparation.
Slurp!!! the taste is too goooood :D I can't to wait to finish it off.
Monday, July 03, 2006
A Trip to VGP
Whoa!! Its an exciting time today :D 6 of my cousins came down to my house yesterday. This excited my mom too. It was some kind of holiday for all of us and that too yesterday being a sunday, there was nothing to put down our enthusiasm. Suddenly, we decided to go to VGP golden beach.
VGP may not be the best amusement park in town and honestly, I don't know how or why we wanted to go there. My mom is a great cook :D and piping hot masala dosas were waiting for us. Masala dosas make us thirsty. So, I made some thick ice-cold mango milk shake to wash the dosas down the throat. We left our home at around 10 AM making our mom happy :D We were making so much noise that the roof would have come down.
After a quick ride down the ECR, we reached VGP at around 11.30 and it was all fun because all of us were meeting each other after a long time. Had great time teasing each other, splashing water, riding the boring rides and making fun of the stalls. Took some nice snaps on my k300i. Honestly, the camera on k300i is too good. The picture clarity was well worth it and took lots of snaps.
Left VGP at about 6.30 PM and reached home by 8. This time, all my aunts had come down to my place :D and a nice spread was getting prepared. Veg fried rice, poori, aalu masala and banana, mango mash along with jaggary (will tell you the recipe in another post) and my favourite well-decorated curd rice. Ravenous, we sat down and attacked all the dishes at full speed and ate for 1 full hour :D The nice day came to a glorious end.
Hoping to meet them soon!
VGP may not be the best amusement park in town and honestly, I don't know how or why we wanted to go there. My mom is a great cook :D and piping hot masala dosas were waiting for us. Masala dosas make us thirsty. So, I made some thick ice-cold mango milk shake to wash the dosas down the throat. We left our home at around 10 AM making our mom happy :D We were making so much noise that the roof would have come down.
After a quick ride down the ECR, we reached VGP at around 11.30 and it was all fun because all of us were meeting each other after a long time. Had great time teasing each other, splashing water, riding the boring rides and making fun of the stalls. Took some nice snaps on my k300i. Honestly, the camera on k300i is too good. The picture clarity was well worth it and took lots of snaps.
Left VGP at about 6.30 PM and reached home by 8. This time, all my aunts had come down to my place :D and a nice spread was getting prepared. Veg fried rice, poori, aalu masala and banana, mango mash along with jaggary (will tell you the recipe in another post) and my favourite well-decorated curd rice. Ravenous, we sat down and attacked all the dishes at full speed and ate for 1 full hour :D The nice day came to a glorious end.
Hoping to meet them soon!
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Modern Karna
Once upon a time, a great human named Karna was present on this earth. He is most popularly known as the "dhana vallal" (one who donates selflessly). He has never uttered the word "no" in his lifetime and gave away a large part of his wealth to the people who were in need. More so, he went to the extent of giving his kavasa-kundala to Lord Krishna during the historic Mahabaratha war.
What is the relation of Karna with this post? Well, I have a school friend named Nagarajan who did some really good things that made me come up with this. Specifically, 2 things that almost touched me was,
1. He spent a full 14 hours with me during the distress period and kept checking on me every alternate day; one of the prime reasons why the tension, around that time, fell off me like the nine pins.
2. He is an Information Technology graduate. 10 GB of space means a lot to any IT geek/non-geek because when you get more space, you pump in more software and fill up the disk. This guy gave away his 10 GB hard disk to another of my friends without the latter asking him.
That is awesome spirit. Hey Naga, it is people like you who make the world a better place to live in. Thanks for all the support da :D
What is the relation of Karna with this post? Well, I have a school friend named Nagarajan who did some really good things that made me come up with this. Specifically, 2 things that almost touched me was,
1. He spent a full 14 hours with me during the distress period and kept checking on me every alternate day; one of the prime reasons why the tension, around that time, fell off me like the nine pins.
2. He is an Information Technology graduate. 10 GB of space means a lot to any IT geek/non-geek because when you get more space, you pump in more software and fill up the disk. This guy gave away his 10 GB hard disk to another of my friends without the latter asking him.
That is awesome spirit. Hey Naga, it is people like you who make the world a better place to live in. Thanks for all the support da :D
Monday, June 26, 2006
Blog Camp
It's happening again :-) BarCamp Chennai was an out-standing success. The same crew is now organising BlogCamp - India's biggest blogging 'un'conference, set to happen in Chennai :-)
The meeting at woodland's drive inn was truly fun.
Check out more details at the Blog Camp wiki. There are some more exciting details that's not to be revealed right now ;-)
The meeting at woodland's drive inn was truly fun.
Check out more details at the Blog Camp wiki. There are some more exciting details that's not to be revealed right now ;-)
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Chennai Central
Monday morning, I was supposed to drop one of my friend's mom at the Chennai Central station. The train was scheduled to depart at 6.25 AM. We reached the station by 6 AM. As we went there on my bike, I told her to wait at a place so that I can park my bike and come back to pick her up. I parked the bike and came back at 6.05 AM. Lo and behold!! she was missing. I was even having her bag with me.
Frantically, I searched all the places in and around where I told her to stand. There were still no signs of her. I came back and ran through all the freaking 10 platforms. Time was 6.17:29 AM. She is still nowhere to be found. Time is 6.22 AM now. Absolutely no info about her whereabouts. Imagine my tension in the morning when a lady is missing at just about 15 minutes before the departure of the train. I thought of complaining to the police, so that they will make an announcement through all the platforms, announcing her name.
Two minutes later, I heard an announcement that the train was departing from platform 11. I ran to platform 11 from 7 and found her near the 2nd coach after the engine. Heaved a heavy sigh of relief and shouted at her! he he he... When I asked her the reason for her sudden disapperance, she told that someone came to her and told the train was about to leave in 5 minutes. "F" I thought and let her board the train. The train had started moving by then. When I came back home and told my mom what had happened, she was ROTFL :-)
Frantically, I searched all the places in and around where I told her to stand. There were still no signs of her. I came back and ran through all the freaking 10 platforms. Time was 6.17:29 AM. She is still nowhere to be found. Time is 6.22 AM now. Absolutely no info about her whereabouts. Imagine my tension in the morning when a lady is missing at just about 15 minutes before the departure of the train. I thought of complaining to the police, so that they will make an announcement through all the platforms, announcing her name.
Two minutes later, I heard an announcement that the train was departing from platform 11. I ran to platform 11 from 7 and found her near the 2nd coach after the engine. Heaved a heavy sigh of relief and shouted at her! he he he... When I asked her the reason for her sudden disapperance, she told that someone came to her and told the train was about to leave in 5 minutes. "F" I thought and let her board the train. The train had started moving by then. When I came back home and told my mom what had happened, she was ROTFL :-)
Thursday, June 15, 2006
User Interface Bug in Gmail ;-)
Hi!! I have found a UI bug in Gmail. If you take a look at your gmail inbox, note the placement of the "Delete" button. Its the 3rd button.
Now, take a look at the "Delete" button at the Spam tab. Its the 1st button. Lots of times, I have clicked on "Not Spam" button and (doh!!) went on a hunting spree at inbox to perform the S&D operation ;-) S&D = Search and Destroy heheh!...
It would be better if the "Delete Forever" button is placed after the "Not Spam" button.
Now, take a look at the "Delete" button at the Spam tab. Its the 1st button. Lots of times, I have clicked on "Not Spam" button and (doh!!) went on a hunting spree at inbox to perform the S&D operation ;-) S&D = Search and Destroy heheh!...
It would be better if the "Delete Forever" button is placed after the "Not Spam" button.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
The Last Rite
My father passed away on 5th June 2006 at 3.35 PM. I lost a person who was more of a friend to me than a dad. He was the only one with whom I shared everything. Everything = everything from studies to friends to girls to etc. etc. and yes he too was the same with me. He also openly discussed many issues that dads will find it difficult/impossible to discuss with their children. Natural disasters happen only for a few seconds and leave very little time for reaction. Nature
was (and is) a bit cruel on that part :((
Anyway, what has happened has happened and life has to continue. Therefore, in his memory and with his blessings, I will fulfill all his wishes and dreams. He made our life very comfortable. His planning was meticulous and we are always learning from him.
Three weeks before this shocking incident, I had this gut feeling that something bad was going to happen. On 24th June, the day of the last university exam, I was feeling sick. I wasn't able to revise the subject properly and this guy was the only one to whom I let the feeling creep out. Without turning back, I made a dash to the bus after the exam got over. Only on seeing my dad at home, I felt relieved. Sometimes, at nights, I have even touched his chest to feel the heart beat. PHEW!!
Right now, I'm alright. I have let out all the feelings and ready to take on the responsibilities and the challenges. One main reason for that is, I felt the heart beat of my dad stop right under my palm. Thank God I didn't cry at those very sensitive moments. My brother had good awareness to call 1066 (ambulance for emergency) immediately and telephone his friend and our cousin who were here within a few minutes. It is those few hours after death that matters when people are more important than anything else. The more people are near and the more the place of death is crowded, the more comfortable it is.
I want to describe those last few moments with dad, but it is difficult even to try and speak about it, leave alone write about it. I went to the bank today to deposit some money. My hands were shivering uncontrollably because where I saw my dad working a few days ago, that seat is empty now. That empty chair caused me to sweat. My cousin was with me and things eased out a little.
Tomorrow is the 5th day. The rituals are starting from tomorrow. Huge thanks to all the friends, relatives and unknown people who are supporting us.
Praying for the soul of my dad to rest in peace.
was (and is) a bit cruel on that part :((
Anyway, what has happened has happened and life has to continue. Therefore, in his memory and with his blessings, I will fulfill all his wishes and dreams. He made our life very comfortable. His planning was meticulous and we are always learning from him.
Three weeks before this shocking incident, I had this gut feeling that something bad was going to happen. On 24th June, the day of the last university exam, I was feeling sick. I wasn't able to revise the subject properly and this guy was the only one to whom I let the feeling creep out. Without turning back, I made a dash to the bus after the exam got over. Only on seeing my dad at home, I felt relieved. Sometimes, at nights, I have even touched his chest to feel the heart beat. PHEW!!
Right now, I'm alright. I have let out all the feelings and ready to take on the responsibilities and the challenges. One main reason for that is, I felt the heart beat of my dad stop right under my palm. Thank God I didn't cry at those very sensitive moments. My brother had good awareness to call 1066 (ambulance for emergency) immediately and telephone his friend and our cousin who were here within a few minutes. It is those few hours after death that matters when people are more important than anything else. The more people are near and the more the place of death is crowded, the more comfortable it is.
I want to describe those last few moments with dad, but it is difficult even to try and speak about it, leave alone write about it. I went to the bank today to deposit some money. My hands were shivering uncontrollably because where I saw my dad working a few days ago, that seat is empty now. That empty chair caused me to sweat. My cousin was with me and things eased out a little.
Tomorrow is the 5th day. The rituals are starting from tomorrow. Huge thanks to all the friends, relatives and unknown people who are supporting us.
Praying for the soul of my dad to rest in peace.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
That Power Cut !!
Shit!! the power cut yesterday night threw me off-track so much that I was sulking for a while ;-). Ok... the point is, I was doing the following things.
1. Trying out AT commands on my k300i mobile phone.
2. Installing Open Solaris 10 on vmware.
3. Reading Joel on Software.
4. etc. etc.
All those things hung up when the UPS started blaring the warning signal. This is one of the moments I strongly felt the need for a laptop.
1. Trying out AT commands on my k300i mobile phone.
2. Installing Open Solaris 10 on vmware.
3. Reading Joel on Software.
4. etc. etc.
All those things hung up when the UPS started blaring the warning signal. This is one of the moments I strongly felt the need for a laptop.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Windows Vista Boot Loader
I installed Windows Vista build 5308 and after 14 days, it expired. I couldn't activate it also. So what is the use of having it and wasting 10gb of precious space? I formatted the drive and restarted my system only to find that the boot loader is a pain in the neck. It just won't go and refused to give me the default Windows XP boot loader.
Considering the fact that I have 4 OSes ;-) Redhat Fedora Core 3, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows Vista 5308, I have to jump through 3 boot screens to boot into xp, or wait a painfull 70 seconds if it has to be done automatically :((
I popped in the windows xp cd and booted my computer from the CD. I pressed 'R' to go to the "Recovery Console", selected 1 (represents XP on my computer), entered the password for Administrator account and then typed the 2 commands.
1. fixboot
2. fixmbr
After that I typed "exit" to restart.
Voila!! the Windows Vista boot screen is gone :D. Grub is also washed out. But recovering it is not a problem. Now my HDD is happily chugging away releasing 10gb of wasted space. :D
Considering the fact that I have 4 OSes ;-) Redhat Fedora Core 3, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows Vista 5308, I have to jump through 3 boot screens to boot into xp, or wait a painfull 70 seconds if it has to be done automatically :((
I popped in the windows xp cd and booted my computer from the CD. I pressed 'R' to go to the "Recovery Console", selected 1 (represents XP on my computer), entered the password for Administrator account and then typed the 2 commands.
1. fixboot
2. fixmbr
After that I typed "exit" to restart.
Voila!! the Windows Vista boot screen is gone :D. Grub is also washed out. But recovering it is not a problem. Now my HDD is happily chugging away releasing 10gb of wasted space. :D
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Painless Software Engineering
The holidays have begun. Apart from having fun, I have started reading the archives of Joel on Software, one of the most popular blogs on software, usability, software engineering etc.
Wait, I know you are going to stop reading this post because I mentioned software engineering. Now, be a little patient and go through the rest of the post ;-)
The "Painless" series of articles on Joel's blog is just too good. Software engineering texts by Roger S. Pressman are very good to read. But, they are intimidating to the beginner :). Therefore, this series of "Painless" articles should help us to get started and be efficient too.
Mostly, we start our projects by opening the popular text editor and start spewing code. And, there are actually 12 better ways to write code. Once, we complete coding, we figure out that we have missed something and later fix it, which brings its own separate set of problems. At this point, the project goes haywire and becomes like the figure on the left :).
So, all we need is a good spec to which we can refer and understand where things change and what all parts are getting affected. Start here to go about writing effective specs.
Normally, we work without schedules and don't understand the importance of them. Working on a schedule is very important because we know where we are and where we take wrong turns. Here is a way to painlessly schedule your project :)
After you begin to code, you introduce a new set of bugs right? Is there a way to painlessly track bugs? Yes there is :D. Read this article. Most probably, you work in a team and if the team members are a bunch of nuts whom you are finding difficult to manage, read this and this. They provide significant insight on how things happen at the bigger level. Lastly, if you are developing web applications, this article on "Less is More" is excellent.
Oh! and here are 2 nice case studies from Joel's company itself.
1. FogBugz
2. CityDesk
I have linked part 1 of the articles, check the archive for other parts.
Now, that you have read all the links and the basics are firmly established, I recommend going back to the tables and designing your software that way.
Happy Software Engineering !!
Wait, I know you are going to stop reading this post because I mentioned software engineering. Now, be a little patient and go through the rest of the post ;-)
The "Painless" series of articles on Joel's blog is just too good. Software engineering texts by Roger S. Pressman are very good to read. But, they are intimidating to the beginner :). Therefore, this series of "Painless" articles should help us to get started and be efficient too.
Mostly, we start our projects by opening the popular text editor and start spewing code. And, there are actually 12 better ways to write code. Once, we complete coding, we figure out that we have missed something and later fix it, which brings its own separate set of problems. At this point, the project goes haywire and becomes like the figure on the left :).So, all we need is a good spec to which we can refer and understand where things change and what all parts are getting affected. Start here to go about writing effective specs.
Normally, we work without schedules and don't understand the importance of them. Working on a schedule is very important because we know where we are and where we take wrong turns. Here is a way to painlessly schedule your project :)
After you begin to code, you introduce a new set of bugs right? Is there a way to painlessly track bugs? Yes there is :D. Read this article. Most probably, you work in a team and if the team members are a bunch of nuts whom you are finding difficult to manage, read this and this. They provide significant insight on how things happen at the bigger level. Lastly, if you are developing web applications, this article on "Less is More" is excellent.
Oh! and here are 2 nice case studies from Joel's company itself.
1. FogBugz
2. CityDesk
I have linked part 1 of the articles, check the archive for other parts.
Now, that you have read all the links and the basics are firmly established, I recommend going back to the tables and designing your software that way.
Happy Software Engineering !!
Friday, May 26, 2006
I'm an Engineer
Yippeee!! a huge relief atlast, as I completed the last exam 5 minutes before and even checked the answers ;). That was something that happened only for a handful of exams like programming, compilers etc. There is a lot of mixed feelings as I have to prepare myself to face the big bad world out there. Don't no what is in store for the future...
So, what did I do after the exams? Went for the "Pink Panther" movie. Not bad I must say, because it was full of this vadivelu-vivek type of comedy. And later that night, got a nice small treat from this guy. He is leaving to Bangalore to join the company where we got placed. All the best to him. Hoping to join him soon :)
I don't know where I will be posted. I may or may not leave my darling city where I have been for the past 21 years and watched all its development. And I don't want to leave this city because IT is happening. Rapid developments are the order of the day as the IT/ITES companies grab every square inch of available space.
Ok... got to go now.. See you soon!
So, what did I do after the exams? Went for the "Pink Panther" movie. Not bad I must say, because it was full of this vadivelu-vivek type of comedy. And later that night, got a nice small treat from this guy. He is leaving to Bangalore to join the company where we got placed. All the best to him. Hoping to join him soon :)
I don't know where I will be posted. I may or may not leave my darling city where I have been for the past 21 years and watched all its development. And I don't want to leave this city because IT is happening. Rapid developments are the order of the day as the IT/ITES companies grab every square inch of available space.
Ok... got to go now.. See you soon!
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