walk of life ( more like a synaptic loiter)

bacon ipsum :)

2011-06-12T23:04:00.000+05:30

Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet andouille beef ribs sausage ham venison. Cow chuck fatback boudin, strip steak sirloin meatloaf ground round spare ribs meatball andouille turkey bresaola pork belly beef ribs. Beef swine turkey drumstick cow, meatball rump short loin jerky chuck. Short loin pork belly bacon corned beef headcheese strip steak, t-bone pastrami. Pork loin pancetta short ribs, sirloin pork boudin bresaola rump corned beef tenderloin biltong t-bone headcheese bacon. Fatback shank tri-tip venison biltong, beef ribs corned beef ribeye spare ribs tail shankle hamburger pig pork turkey. Flank shoulder biltong, cow pancetta salami tri-tip pork pork loin sausage tongue ham hock meatball short loin.
...

more yummy ipsum at http://baconipsum.com/

ok tata bye-bye to the noughties!

2011-01-02T12:28:00.000+05:30

The noughties were a decade of the best years of my life, spent at college, post-grad and then a long stint at SAP ending the last few days at a new company. Will most probably keep looking back at these years for the rest of my life.
I was lucky to be a part of the huge change in the last decade in India- the amazing growth (both breadth and depth) in opportunities with people carving out their own fields/professions and thriving at it through hard work: from making designer baubles, catering, tech start-ups, freelancing and of course old ones like scamming the country out of its tax money.

The decade's defining moments/memories on the Indian stage were the Science and Tech achievements of Chandrayaan-1's trip to the moon, the obscene-but-legal rise in wealth of certain gentlemen such as Mukesh Ambani and Azim Premji, the rise in usage and fall in tariffs of mobile telecommunications in India (all but phasing out the ubiquitous yellow STD booths) and some disastrous and sad ones such as the Mumbai terror attacks and the rising lethal face of Maoist/Naxalites in large parts of India killing people, security forces, commerce and development.

Hope the next 10 years are as prosperous for india. Hope the prosperity is more inclusive. Hope Pakistan also comes out of it's radicalism-military ping-pong and shares in the prosperity of the region.

[Theatre] MPTF review - "One On One" by Rage Productions

2010-12-21T07:53:00.000+05:30

One of our best Bangalorean Sundays in a long time started at Koshy's for lunch with a chicken steak cooked to perfection, followed on to Blossom's and was crowned by great theatre at Jnana Jyothi Auditorium featuring “One on One” by Rage Productions, Mumbai .

We were a bit leery when we saw the programme mention ten plays of ten minutes each, thinking that might be too many and too short. But were blown away by what great stories can be weaved in those ten minute slices: ranging from some great comic pieces- poking fun at babu-dom, airline food and even the funny side of terrorism- to a dark homophobic tale and even a literally dark (thanks to a lighting/power failure) and beautifully poignant story of an Indian widow coming back to life sexually.
Almost every story highlighted something peculiarly Indian that we laughed, cringed and clapped at.

The acting star of the day was surprisingly not amongst the big names like Rajit Kapur or Shernaz Patel but rather the young and very talented Anand Tiwari, who changed costumes and personalities every 30 minutes to blow away our minds with versatility.

Techno-Soccer

2010-07-02T12:27:00.002+05:30

After the very controversial refereeing errors at the Argentina-Mexico and the Germany-England quarter final matches of the 2010 Football world cup, if FIFA does bow to media pressure and think about introducing technology to assist the referee and linesmen they should definitely not do it during the world cup. There is nothing like a high stakes failure to kill technological advantages as computers have never been allowed anywhere near the same leeway as humans have.

The best way to introduce the new tech would be first at a 2^nd or 1^st division league game and if passing muster then at a series of international friendly fixtures (and no, there this no such thing as a friendly fixture between say Brazil-Argentina or England-Germany) and pending some time to get the glitches out of the tech and the human operators enough time to get used to it, maybe at the next world cup.

PS- Even though I am an avid Argentina supporter I'd say that Tevez's offside goal was the worse faux pas as it really killed hot-blooded Mexico's pretty decent chances. IMHO England, except Gerrard, were never there against a much livelier Germany.

Audiobooks from MP3 files

2010-07-02T12:13:00.006+05:30

After having owned and ipod (classic, 80 gig, 5^th gen) for 2+ years and listened to innumerable adverts for Audible.com on "This Week in Tech" I had decided that it was time to try out and audiobook and see if the experience was any good. However, the audiobook I had with me was a simple MP3 format and I never figured out how to convert it into an audiobook till recently.

Before I jump into a step-by-step tutorial why is an 'audiobook' better than a simple 'mp3'-

The audiobook files appear under a separate menu section in your ipod instead of amongst the gazillions songs in your music library.
Once marked as Audiobook the ipod remembers where you stopped listening to and replays from there the next time.
And for those who find the pace of the audiobook much, much slower than their reading speed- one can speed up or slow down the audiobook file. They do it in such a way that the reader doesn't seem to have ODed on helium or transmogrified into chipmunks*. On the speed note- I've also heard that there exists some research that listening to this faster version results in higher comprehension, but as I haven't had a look at that report myself I'm not sure if they did any correlation analysis with audiobook-listening-while-driving concentration.**

So, how we do that?

Add the MP3 to your iTunes library
Right-click on the selected track/tracks and select "Get Info" from the menu
Choose the "Options" tab and set the "Media Kind" to "Audiobook" and also enable "Remember playback position" and "Skip when shuffling".

* It keeps the audio at the same pitch. It does sound slightly weird though, at least on my ipod and I couldn't get used to it especially for dramatic reading of fiction.
** Note no hyperlink- which means I heard of the study from someone over lunch and couldn't google it successfully.

plants@home anyone?

2009-06-26T22:48:00.006+05:30

I was riding the usual 10.30 AM BMTC Volvo to work watching a TED video about living in a biosphere and started thinking that it's high time I started nurturing something environment friendly.

Then I remembered an older TED video that I had found fascinating. This one (4.04 minutes long)was about indoor plants and came with the tagline

With only three varieties of plants, we can “grow our own fresh air” indoors, to keep us healthy.

Now that's what I need to get ahold of this weekend. Anyone in Bangalore know a nursery (preferably near Koramangala) where I can get these?

death knell of the FDFS?

2008-12-24T09:52:00.004+05:30

Almost everyone I know has at one time or the other (but primarily during college) bunked office/school/college with friends to watch that great (er, well marketed) movie on the "First Day First Show".

Even though I am not that big a fan of watching movies in the theatres, I myself have bunked college during my engineering days in order to watch quite a few movies including Matrix and DCH at the old Swagat theatre in Jayanagar. An essential part of the charm of the FDFS was to 'volunteer' a lucky few who, fortified with magic potion beforehand, would stand in the long serpentine queues in order to book the tickets 2 days in advance.

Last week there was a new phenomenon in the Bangalore movie calendar with Ghajini which released on 25th of December, that in itself is somewhat nonconformist to the Friday release tradition, and was screened in multiplexes across Bangalore in what was termed as a "Paid Premiere" show on the 24th of December. With each multiplex screening Ghajini on multiple if not all screens it seemed successful enough a ploy(?) to be used by other big banner releases in the future.

So, does that sound the first toll in the death knell of the idea of the FDFS?

packing for the trip

2008-10-09T15:10:00.008+05:30

packing for a trip to anywhere- be it a long weekend at Gokarna, a longer trip to my hometown, or even for an international trip- is such a pain in the ass, especially if you are a obsesive compulsive packer like me.

i normally end up overpacking big-time every time, with quite a few backups, the usual just-in-case-it-rains-and-(all)-my-jeans-get-wet-at-the-same-time phobia, and some esoteric items that i might need when the sky falls on our heads.

i think i have inherited this trait from my mom, though without the normalizing ability to pack an elephant very neatly into an overnight bag.

to complicate matters i know that i am an obsessive packer, and so after lining up everything i go over a few iterations to find the balance between removing stuff so as to not appear too weird and adding stuff to satiate my compulsion...

and then usually there is the nagging feeling that have left something out/behind...

Smoking in public banned in India

2008-10-01T09:45:00.005+05:30

The ban on smoking in public is to be implemented all over India starting tomorrow. Personally i welcome this move, as i hope it will help me quit, <fingers-crossed>.

However, on the numerous occasion this topic has come up for discussion: usually at the smoking corners where smokers have lately been starting off the conversation with a request for a light followed by a countdown statement 'XX days to go', there normally is one prevalent train of thought expressed by most people.

"How will they catch me smoking on the premises of my company company <MNC/XYZ>?"

When we will have the mental shift to accept a law as it is instead of immediately trying to calculate the possibilities of breaking the law without getting caught and also factoring in the ability to get off the hook cheap (at most 50% of legally mandated fine) by bribing the said officer of law when actually caught? To them i always reply

"If I were not a smoker I would call the authorities and complain about you!"

To end, one of the very rare intelligent words from our Union health minister Ramadoss

"This is a social movement. First there should be an increased awareness of the new law... This will improve voluntary compliance."

re-blog: new library in whitefield

2008-09-16T20:51:00.002+05:30

my friend Guru recently blogged about a new library in whitefield which is very exciting news for a bibliophile like me.

i tried calling them and asking for some more info (as I am lazy enought to expect all info in the world to be available via interwebs/phones) but couldn't get through... so even though i have not been there myself, am blogging it so that the info is out there already :)

now what?

2008-08-22T10:30:00.003+05:30

after leching at the apple iphone for the last six months, lusting after the new 3G and cheering the announcement that it will be release in india by both vodafone - it took some time for the prices that they are being retailed at to sink in and then on was a continuous stream of expletives ...

so, now that i am definitely not buying an i-frikking-expensive-phone, now what?
- a new high end phone (i dread to think of the comparison hunt between the almost-same nokias, samsungs and sony ericssons)
- or a low end kaam-chalau phone and an EeePC 1000H
suggestions people?

Bengaluru Bleeding

2008-08-13T16:20:00.000+05:30

I just signed the petition on bengaluru bleeding.com .
You should sign up too if you think that citing rising crime and the police's inability to handle it should not and cannot be the basis of imposing abritrary bans- be it time of closure or type of entertainment allowed!

Live bands are what the next generation of artistes/rock bands will be from. Help them to be able to live their passion of music so that you may not have to depend forever on the intermittent appearance of international bands once or twice a year to get your music fix.

presenting ze new 'n' improved TT quick crossword

2008-04-25T16:19:00.005+05:30

after discovering the telegragh india's online quick crossword i posted a bunch of request's in my last post on this topic. looks like someone on their dev team might have actually read it... or at least tried using it and came up with the same to-do list.

they've rolled out a new 'enhanced!' version sometime last week and it simply rocks...

some sexy features-

- much improved navigation, yes you don't have to keep pressing arrow keys!
- a cool feature of checking if you've gone wrong anywhere before submission
- nice correlation between the clues and its corresponding location on the grid... "no more i spy 24 down"kudos!

shameless plug department- did anyone NOT notice my name in the pic above as the 1st successful submitter for todays crossword? :)

Amateur Review- Mad about Money

2008-04-06T01:16:00.008+05:30

We finally managed the Herculean effort of getting together a group of friends and also get passes (despite the near-fatalistic decision that the passes would ONLY be available at the TOI office at MG Road) to the play ‘Mad about Money’ a part of the Times Bangalore Festival 2008 offering.

The venue was the Good Shepherd Auditorium (on Museum Road) which seemed spanking new and pretty big (a board on the gate claimed seating for 110!). We reached there with half an hour to spare and were pleasantly surprised by the availability of ample free parking and the very orderly, patient queue of people waiting outside the audi.

The play started off around 15 minutes late (I hate the marketing/legal guy who came up with the “show time- 7 p.m. onwards” crap) with a sultry-voiced lady from TOI playing the MC and doing a great job of getting people laughing before the play with the evergreen Rs.10,000-hidden-under-your-chair-trick. And then without much ado started the much awaited play Mad About Money (a great preview available here)- a summary of which I quote below

Hasmukhbhai Mehta, the head of Reliable group of Industries, lives in a palatial house in Ghatkopar, with wife Sonal, son Ajit and daughter in law Preeti. He finds his son to be a wastrel and irresponsible, Preeti too nice and Sonal obsessed with cooking and feeding, thus driving him crazy.

And one night, after a heavy squabble with the family, Hasmukhbhai passes away. But his ghost lingers on to control his family from the other world! Before his demise, he has drawn out a will by which his family will lead a frugal life until Ajit turns forty-five.

As the Mehta family reconcile to their fate, in walks Kiran Jhaveri, the will’s trustee and Hasmukhbhai’s mistress, who has to stay and manage the family and the business...

The first act started with a pretty witty introduction of the plot context and characterization via longish asides narrated by Hasmukhbhai ( played by the amazing Amar Talwar). But the pace of the play built up very slowly with reams and reams of dialogue (with a few gems like "We are just middle class people, but with lots of money" thrown in) spewn to enact in excruciating details the miseries of Hasmukhhhai’s life due to the various quirks of his family.

However, the post interval second act, significantly spiced up with the entry of Kiran Jhaveri (played by the looking-great-in-business-suit+tight-pants Suchitra Pillai ), was where Dattani's plot excelled with crisp dialogues and a surgically neat closure of the various threads of the plot.

All in all- very watchable thanks to superb acting from the cast but the script leaving it short of a standing ovation.

The Telegraph Quick Crossword

2008-03-29T17:46:00.005+05:30

thanks to the great guys at the telegraph website i regained a much coveted daily pleasure of mine- the telegraph quick crossword- which was part of the brekky ritual at the dining table back home with the morning's first cuppa in one hand and a pencil in the other.

today's crossword (click on the image above) was a nice way to start off on the old habit again. not too hard but with a couple of clues that you just can't seem to crack, leaving you coming back at it...

hope you guys enjoy it too and do let me know if you get the answers on 5a, 8a, 5d and 7d. ;)

ps- in case the folks developing this app read this- thanks a bunch!!! and only one request- please improve the navigation/interaction. i hated to keep on pressing right/down arrow keys to enter the words letter by letter.
PPS/UPDATE- Guys, please add an option to be able to see the answers after submission (either immediately for a crossword.. or at worst next day). A big part of the crossword experience is to see the answers later and learn!!

catch me if you can...

2008-03-11T12:21:00.002+05:30

someone help me catch up with the internet... i now have around a hundred tabs open across 3 firefox instances on my two laptops and a desktop!!

and a gazillion 'to-read' delicious bookmarks and to-do notes too...

disturbingly good

2008-03-01T00:52:00.004+05:30

was flipping (or is it clicking) though a blog "Emancipation of Eve" suggested by a friend when i came across these lines that struck a disturbingly discordant chord some-bluddy-where...

I am a product of you.
Amoral, illegal, me

The zygote of hard-working parents
The dreams, dreamt within social constraints
The first steps taken in infancy
Pronouncing the A, B, C and D of Democracy.

I am a product of you.
Stubborn, sinful, me

read the rest here.

what's up doc

2008-02-23T21:28:00.003+05:30

it seems that it has been 2008 for quite some time now, and it's just february! signs of old age>?

spent the first 15 days working my ass off at office so that i could go for my annual 18 -day [ya i know, you are allowed to turn green] vacation in Calcutta...

and then came the vacation...
the first week was pretty heavy-duty partying and socializing. yet another of my school mate (Vij) got married and quite a few of our school gang from james were in town, so just the best excuse to drink and catch up...
the second week was as radically different. it kept alternately drizzling and raining and so i spent most of the week with a book in one hand and a variety of hot drinks in the other.
the third week started off with my birthday, which i spent with my family after 9 years... was different in a nice way
of course the thrid week was most spent in wrapping up, packing, shopping, the 'times kolkata festival' and saying good-bye
by the way, if you're ever flying indigo i'd suggest you pay the extra 100 bbucks they charge for the emergency exits. even though the leg space is more there, the fact that they charge extra means that almost no one buys those tickets, and so you have 3 seats to stretch your butt on.

since coming back i realized that 1) bangalore sucks and 2) i miss calcutta.

hope the rest of the year goes uphill from here...

p.s.- despite microsoft (word's ) disapprovals i am tending more and more to keep typing in small case since i saw jerry yang's email . let me know whether you like it or should i actuall listen to my english teacher.

tata indicom datacards

2008-01-31T21:50:00.004+05:30

Just in case you were wondering, yes this is another rant.

My laptop comes with a Tata Indicom datacard.

In the age of Indian pseudo broadband (my Airtel broadband account is 348 Kbps), and American web-sites that take broadband pretty much as granted- I tried and I cried to read email on Gmail account. It was even slower than my VPN!

Fuck Tata Indicom and double-fuck Gmail's cantankerous uber cool email interface which gets into cardiac arrest on vacillating and shit-slow network availability.

Happy New Year

2007-12-31T14:27:00.000+05:30

Wishing everyone a great 2008, and a good new year party too..

[Wishing i was in Calcutta today]

TADA- and finally- Google Reader with SEARCH

2007-09-08T02:04:00.000+05:30

finally the one killer app from the Google stable (the only 'app' other than search i actually use more than once a week) has search integrated into it...

though there are some major contextual stuff that tey have to still factor in (which i feel is a must)... the ranking algorithm is somewhat different in my opinion...

just think about this- i'd expect that one normally starts searching most of the time for something that one has already come across.. and so something like the basic fact that i have actually read an item which contains this search term might just imply that i am more likely to be coming back searching for it... not *in my case* some random news blog which i never even browsed through shining through irrelevantly at the top of the result list..

deep sigh ... maybe i am not the 'ideal' user for them... but then, my mom doesn't use reader either...

Dream on...

2007-06-08T22:49:00.000+05:30

but stop fantasizing like this...

my little bit

2007-03-15T12:59:00.000+05:30

I did my little bit of (pseudo?) donation today.
Your turn- http://friends.unicefusa.org/r/31e2689c2416102a8408

Happy Nu Year!

2007-01-02T10:05:00.000+05:30

Wishing you a very Happy New Year! Enjoy it.

Especially after I personally spent a wasted (pun intended) weekend ushering it in... accompaied by liberal amounts of Absolut, Cognac, Tequila, Anise (yuck) and Jhonnie Walker 12.

On a related note - The 86 rules of boozing. If you're too lazy (or hungover) to go through all 86 Here are a few I liked-

24. After your sixth drink, do not look at yourself in the mirror. It will shake your confidence.
36. If you ever feel depressed, get out a bartender’s guide and browse through all the drinks you’ve never tried.
35. Learn to appreciate hangovers. If it was all good times every jackass would be doing it.
31. If you have been roommates with someone more than six months, you may drink all their beer, even if it's hidden, as long as you leave them one.
32. You can have a shot of their hard liquor only if the cap has been cracked and the bottle goes for less than $25.

54. Never lie in a bar. You may, however, grossly exaggerate and lean.
55. If you think you might be slurring a little, then you are slurring a lot. If you think you are slurring a lot, then you are not speaking English.

69. If there is ever any confusion, the fuller beer is yours.

82. There’s nothing wrong with drinking before noon. Especially if you’re supposed to be at work.

Yahoo boo-hoo!

2006-11-22T18:44:00.000+05:30

Alleged secret memo from a Yahoo SVP

Dilbertian moral of the story -

When you can't,
Manage.
When you can't manage,
Reorg

Time>Money?

2006-09-27T09:30:00.000+05:30

This is the gazillionth time I got this in a mail forward and re-read it....
Very relateable...

What does it cost to have a Celebration ....
JUST IMAGINE..

A winter evening.
Four friends.
One barsaat.
Four glasses of chai.

Hundred bucks for petrol.
A rusty old bike.
And an open road.

Maggi noodles.
A hostel room.
4.25 a.m.

3 old friends.
3 separate cities.
3 coffee mugs.
1 internet messenger.

Rain on a hot tin roof.
Pakoras deep-frying.
Neighbours dropping in.
A party.

You and mom.
A summer night.
A bottle of coconut oil.
A head massage.
Gossiping about absent family members.

You can spend
hundreds on birthdays,
thousands on festivals,
lakhs on weddings,
but to celebrate
all we have to spend is our Time

Maiden all September on VH1

2006-09-20T09:49:00.000+05:30

At the risk of sounding like a spot-ad...Maiden all September on VH1 "Head-Banger's Ball" every Saturday 12:30 a.m. - That's Friday late evening 1230 for fellow insomniacs :-)

Up the Irons!!!

I won!!!

2006-07-30T18:24:00.000+05:30

I managed to win a copy of the book "Life beyond code" written by Rajesh Shetty.

Muchos thanks to Kiruba.

online muzik

2006-07-30T16:34:00.000+05:30

Since the time I've had access to 'broadband' and have been spending a majority of the day fooling around in front of the computer I've been fiddling with the internet as the source to fill my insatiable need to listen to muzik.
So, a quick laydown of where I get the juice from.

• Winamp’s Internet radio playlist – This is normally a good source for quite high end streams. Best bet is to search by tag/genre and then by stream quality. I’ve tried the trance and rock sections.
• Yahoo Launch – My personal favorite. Really lets you customize. Though over the last few months, they’ve been pumping too many ads into the free service. Also, their way of providing content is problematic: with browser support restricted to IE and Yahoo Messenger also as an alternative (but beware it’s crashes).
Of course you can listen to MY launch station too.
• Virgin Radio - This is probably the only broadcast only station that can hold me. Though i listen to the Classic Rock station only. Listen out for the super sexy RJ Leona Graham
• Pandora.com – This site claims to classify songs by “studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song. … [like]…melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics…”. They do come up with good suggestions. Another pro for Pandora is that they play pretty high quality over low bandwidths. The only con I can think of over the top of my hat is that they have a desperate lack of width, no classical!
• Last.fm – This is the latest place I’ve hit. Carries all new buzzwords ‘social networking’, ‘web 2.0’, ‘tagging’(which is nothing but a personalized station) but lacks a seriously good interface and selectibility. Though i did like the parts about it going through your desktop playlist and updating your likes.

** One thing I haven't done, is test the delivery robustness of these on the Linux platform.

All that's been going (wr)on(g) with the world this month...

2006-07-30T10:32:00.000+05:30

The last couple of weeks has had big cataclysmic events-(obviously not cataclysmic in the cosmic sense... but cataclysmic to the people involved and of the level that'll be mentioned in those the-year-that-was series) terror attacks in Mumbai and the "anti-terror" war in Israel. I have been planning to blog on them, but didn't really have much substantial to say. But then, i felt like boring you anyways happily assuming that if you were really vella enough to read my blog, you have a huge ability to accept pain and won't really be affected by this one too....

The Mumbai blasts on the eleventh of seven-
Was co-incidentally home early and caught the news channels interrupting their boring daily-drivel with first reports of the same. Was quite amazed by the amount of information they were collecting in real-time out of the chaos. Immediately called up all my friends in Mumbai to do a status check. The buggers were even aware and were happily going on with their daily ministrations.
Was totally sympathetic to the crowd in Mumbai cussing the authorities, who showed the timings expected of them in Hindi movies- proverbially late after the climax has climaxed...
Was sick of the continuous babbling of the journos who kept harping on about the spirit of the Mumbaikar that accepts any abuse, from external terrorists or internal authorities or a pissed rain god or who ever wishes to, and doesn't give up. I maintain that this is all that distinguishes any Indian. The stoic ability to continue living life without hardly a shrug no matter what has happened in the environment as long as it doesn't directly affect oneself directly.
Then was shocked by the blanket ban on blogs and did my little bit and signed up at Bloggers Against Censorship. I would still be pissed if it wasn't a blanket ban but one that specifically included mine. Though I am not a lawyer, isn't it a part of my "constitutionally granted bit of freedom" to blog-bitch about things? Even if they have a religiously/communally bias/rant? (No, I don't support religious extremism and would rather they all eat shit.)

The Israel-Lebanon war-
Any kind of targeted cleansing be it ethnic-cleansing, religious-cleaning or the newly coined terror-cleansing is a farcical excuse to wreak havoc on a population that cannot fight back. That's what Israel proved when they invoked phrases from the Bush-book of warfare politics and invaded neighboring Lebanon when two, yes TWO, of their soldiers were kidnapped and killed by the Hezbollah terrorists.
And now they have managed to bomb to death a few hundred poor Lebanese, whose role in supporting the Hezbollah would have been from nothing to moral/financial at the most.
I feel the reason that Israeli nation will never be able to live in peace, is that they react to every aggravation with might, and cause equal or more damage. There is no equilibrium towards zero. I admit, that Muslim terrorists/Jihadis are known for their diligent doggedness (take Kashmir as example) but responding by random might is never going to help.

All opinions above are mine. If they cause you any distress/anger/hurt, bad luck. It's a part of my freedom of speech. Express yourself in the comments' section or your own post.

2006-07-22T15:07:00.000+05:30

Amazing video snippet.
Jeremy Clarkson@Top Gear - "Range Rover versus the Challenger Battle Tank"

What a jobJC's got!

Movie review - 'Bandidas'

2006-07-11T09:37:00.000+05:30

Watched the movie Bandidas last week.

The movie is worth watching for the sheer viewing pleasure derived from the co-habitance of Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz in one screen.

Apart from that the movie didn't have anything worth commenting about. Just two very sexy revenge-driven Robin Hoodish bank-robbers.

In all I would summarize with Bill Buck's (the character is their professor for a crash-course in Robbery 101) dialogue "I liked having you girls around".

Shifted base....

2006-07-11T09:32:00.000+05:30

Finally, after slogging through mounds of junk and dust, I managed to pack my belongings and shifted to a new rented place. The geophysical shift is just about half a click.
Pics of the new place later....

Wiki Update

2006-07-08T12:51:00.000+05:30

My first substantial(?) contribution to wiki - My nom de plume ;-)

expensive development

2006-07-07T23:53:00.000+05:30

I just realized that I happened to know one of the most expensive software developers in India...
The chappie in concern has been assigned to a project for almost 3 months...
And finally yesterday checked-in 4 (yes FOUR) lines of production code.... That at a salary of around 35k a month makes it around 575 USD (at today's rate) per line of code...

Phew!!

What's my life become...

2006-07-07T09:26:00.000+05:30

I met a friend's dad this week. To set up the context I was supposed to meet up for high tea, but thanks to yet another crisis situation at office- I eventually reached his home at 11 pm.
The first thing the respected elder had to say was "either you are really dumb or have sold your soul to be working this late". Yikes what a greeting!

Then, as people more than one generation older than you are wont to do, he starting relating to us the working hours of most of the people in his generation...
9-5. Yes 9AM to 5PM, both in the same calendar day...
This included coffee breaks, lunch breaks, pick-up-kid-from-school breaks, pay-the-man breaks....
As the cuckoo cuckoos( or coos?) 5 times it's time to hit the club (not a disc, a real club) and a few drinks interspersing a couple of hours of stimulating 'adda' with a dedicated and exclusive circle of a few...
Then one reached home spend a few hours of 'quality time' (though I guess the reason that it wasn't referred to as that back then, is that it was 'normal').

My routine (and most of my friends' too, whether they be in IT, banking or even construction) has boiled down to this now...

The same old soul-sucking grind from Monday to Friday (8AM to 9 PM normally)- Boring,frenzied,exciting, depressing, fun all at the same time...
And then the desperate partying (read boozing) and socializing (read boozing again) to wipe the weeks ugly pug mark from one's consciousness...
Leaves one bone tired... And blog-bitching** about it. :-)

**Edited: Updated to the new phrase as per popular opinion. One of the better feebacks- "My blogs my bitch"...

The fairer side of the world cup

2006-07-06T15:38:00.000+05:30

http://danielfranklin.blogspot.com/

ogling pleasure... ;)

Upsets et al

2006-07-02T12:08:00.000+05:30

I had predicted yesterday would a day of change...
Me told everyone who cared for a bitter argentine supporter's view that Portugal and France are gonna rule the day...
And so we have an all-European semis
Shit.. should have bet pots of money man... :(

Argentina down...

2006-07-01T03:30:00.000+05:30

Fuck.. fuck..fuck...

Fuck the mental short-sightedness of a fuck of a coach...
It was the most spirited play by Argentina this Cup...
Hats of to Tevez and Maxi...

Fuck.. fuck..fuck...

Argentina Vs. Holland

2006-06-22T14:55:00.000+05:30

For those who missed last night's match....

Last night's match should definitely have been sceduled as at least the second match that either team played... The biggest expected clash in the first round of the WorldCup '06 fizzled out totally due to the fact that both teams had managed comfortable berths in the next round...

Which is what most probably triggered the decision on both sides not to play lots of their star players (Sorin, Crespo, Saviola, Robben etc.) at all..

Even then the match was damn good in the first half... both teams aggressively going for goal.... And Argentina coming off considerably better... but lacking the teeth to penetrate the Dutch seven foot tall goal armor- Van Der Sar...

The second half was terrible (I almost dozed off!)... Me visualizes both team coaches telling their players not to try to hard on a match that doesn't affect anything other than some vague international soccer matches' statistics...

Viva la abliceleste!

Edit- On a note that i have been harping on for quite some time- It's time the Netherlands stop wasting a spot on their squad by giving it to Nistelrooij (is this new spelling thanks to some Astrological/numerological manipulation, a la Indian Politico/Movie Star style?)...

Go Albiceleste

2006-06-19T23:44:00.000+05:30

Looks like all the ruddy superstars in the Albiceleste have decided to play together as a team! That's what everyone else should be afraid of...

social web evolution...

2006-05-14T03:00:00.000+05:30

"dude...ym is yesterday...orkut is today...get it??"
-Seen on a Orkut newbie's scrap!

random CAP(copy and paste)

2006-05-10T14:50:00.001+05:30

The core secret of design....

Principle of Least Surprise---things work the way you would expect them to...

Wish that were so easy!

Yay!!

2006-02-27T22:29:00.000+05:30

A Google Videos Workaround

Caveat: Please hold JovianStorm responsible for the said feature not working if and when you try it!!

Weddings and Tax...

2006-02-02T21:01:00.000+05:30

My rantings on the two topics that I can't seem to escape from nowadays. What with the end of the financial year in India approaching at a fast clip. And Pundit's setting marriage dates uncomforatbly clumped together.

If, perchance your neurons' share the same twisted logic, and you managed to arrive at wedding gifts, full marks to you!!

I demand the right to be able to claim wedding gifts as tax-exemptable items. It is a legitimate business expense if you lay claim to being a part of society!

So, my current views on this subject are not unlike that of Carrie (of Sex And The City fame) though I wouldn't go to such an extent over the same.

**PS: This blog is no way personal, and the gifts that I buy you guys come from the bottom of my heart... :)

Collaboration Sites

2005-10-25T17:35:00.000+05:30

Dear Ashish, Your friend XYZ has invited you to join him/her at XXXYYYZZZ.com
XXXYYZZZ.com is the new way to stay in touch with your friends .... Yada Yada Yada

Are you also sick and tired of subscribing to half a dozen collaboration sites in order to stay in touch with friends... seeing their blogs... checking out their photos... and ***ing them online? And then after signing up at all these places do you find that you're still keeping in touch with you friends over e-mail/mobile/SMS/over drinks...

Maybe, it's high time someone comes up with a 'panacea-like' protocol which allows one to exchange all of one's friends' data (maybe even something as simple as reusing/enhancing the vCard RFC) so that one can choose only one collaborative tool, based on it's features, thereby eliminating switching costs based on data-locking.

If wishes were horses,....!

Exams and devious answers

2005-09-27T14:04:00.000+05:30

Today has had heavy traffic on the mail forwards front.... especially examples of sarcastic/humorous answers to various exam papers...

Thus... me feels the need to spread such pearls...

Another one I'd got aeons back... good read though

The following is an actual question given on a University of
Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so
"profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet.
-----------------------------
Bonus Question:

Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law
(gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or
some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So
we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate
they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul
gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different
religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state
that if you are
not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is
more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to
more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of
souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because
Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in
Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand
proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1) If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which
souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will
increase until all
Hell breaks loose.

2) If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls
in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until
Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Sandra
during my Freshman year, "...that it will be a cold day in Hell before
I sleep with you",
and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in
having an affair with her. Then #2 above cannot be true, and thus I am
sure that Hell is
exothermic and will not freeze over."

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"

* I obvously don't garuntee that these were actual answers to actual questions at actual exams!

Yada Yada Yada...

2005-09-08T19:41:00.000+05:30

What a week....

The weather in Bangalore hass been a bitch... maybe Murphy's bitch... Either I or my plans got drenched everyday without fail... gaaarrhhhh.....

Workwise... crashlanded into the world of c++ and pointers(!!) after yearlong hiatus in the non-pointy world of Java.....

Not even boon meeting my reading quota... been struggling with a book called the 'Assasini'(by some chap called Thomas Gifford), supposed to be the precursor of "Da Vinci code..", everytime I pick it up I keep getting the creepy feeling that this is exactly the kind of book Ludlum would have written had he ever broached the genre; vague and action packed with the blundering hero going through the motions of top-ten-ways-to-almost-die....

Am planning to pick up the book 'MBA: Mediocre but Arrogant', which sounds like a promising book going by it's title... and of course the hoopla created by the much-fabled and many-figured paychecks and the recent mega-success of 'Fivepoint someone...'

The only silver lining(doesn't that make you think of coke?) this week was discovering the ability to spread my yada yada... across the world... yep, right I'm talking about Google Talk man it kicks every1 else's @#$%... the best thingie being the not-so-adverted advantage of it's penetratiing through my company firewall(yay... Finally)!!!
Also, after checking out such sexy (free) software... Steve Ballmer's recent four-letter explosive vow sounds real hollow...

Hoping for an arid weekend....

first steps... think-typing

2005-08-16T15:30:00.000+05:30

In the post-lunch/part-siesta period today, I was perusing my daily digest of the NYTimes news, when I came across this article about the success of KBC2.
No, hold on.... I'm not gonna bore you with the pots of money StarTV is hoodwinking out of gullible Indian dreamer-viewers(I consider that a just penalty for idiot box addiction).... nor about Big B's ability to attract such viewership/ad-moolah at this age...

What caught my eye was this line in the article

About half of those who called in to "Kaun Banega" on a recent weekend live outside the country's 26 largest cities. Even in the smallest of villages, ones with no running water, schools or hospitals, there are mobile phones and battery-powered television sets.

If cell-phone operators and TV content-providers can reach out to these 'smallest of villages' and make money out of providing (relatively) hi-tech services to the 'poorest-of-the-poor', why can't the government farm out basic-need services to private organizations. From what I heard at a lecture by CK Prahlad at iiit-B on his paper The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid he managed to convince a large audience of powerful businessmen that this is a viable, untapped market!

I am sure this question has been asked a gazillion times already.... but whats the answer(s)?

As the dichotomy continues...

first log

2004-05-16T15:05:00.000+05:30

This is my first log.. and in true tradition we say 1..2..3.. testing..testing