Los dioses deben estar locos

Good job saving the tigers

2010-03-23T14:52:00.008+05:30

We all know the proverbial "Save the Tiger" campaign. The billboards and the advertisements are everywhere.

What if the campaign is a huge success? Ten years down the line, we would see something like this

Speaking of animals, did you know that 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity. I think IIIT-H is unintentionally doing a good job keeping the biodiversity levels high in the campus. Especially in the hostels. Dogs, cats, birds, mosquitoes, all sorts of insects and in the midst of all those creatures the occasional Homo Sapiens. Wow, Mr. Jairam Ramesh would be so proud. I think Old Boys Hostel alone has higher biodiversity than The Great Nicobar Bioreserve. Obviously I am exaggerating here. In fact, it is just as much as Kaziranga National Park really.

On a entirely different note, I finally submitted my thesis yesterday. Yay!

The adjective deprivation

2009-11-14T11:04:00.004+05:30

Despite the magnitude of how good something is people tend to use the one word - Awesome. However they end up conveying the magnitude by varying stress and length of syllables. Here is a trend that I observed:

Awesome means something is good.
Aaaawwesome means it is better than good.
A stress on 's' with a ridiculously elongated 'o' means it is extremely good.

One thing that bothers me most is that some people are even coming up with weird spellings for The word. For example, "aahhsum!". Other variants include usage of additional alphabet from the set [a,s,m] and more exclamation marks for added effect. These guys channel all their excitement into spelling the word. How disturbing the spelling is depends on how impressed the person is. Pff. Miserable.

Random Facts

2009-06-23T13:00:00.002+05:30

Some interesting/funny/strange facts (in no particular order) from the realm of Science.

Avogadro, the Italian who proved that two equal volumes of gases at the same pressure and temperature contain the same number of molecules, had a splendid name of Lorenzo Romano Amadeo Carlo Avogadro, Count of Quarequa and Correto.
Mandeleyev was said to have been inspired by the card game of Solitaire in inventing the Periodic Table.
Max Planck was often very unlucky in life. His beloved first wife died early. The younger of the two sons was killed in WW-I. Both of his sisters died in childbirth. In 1944 an Allied bomb fell on his house and he lost everything - papers, diaries, a lifetime of accumulations. The following year his other son was caught in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and executed.
If you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 x 10^8 joules of potential energy - enough to explode with the force of 30 very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.
Edwin Hubble was very athletic in his childhood. At a single high-school track meeting in 1906, he won the pole vault, shot-put, discus, hammer throw, high jump and was on the winning mile relay team. He set a state record in High-Jump in Illinois
After Edwin Hubble died of a heart attack in 1953, his wife declined to have a funeral and never revealed what she did with his body. For a memorial of the greatest astronomer of the century, you must look into the skies at the Hubble Space Telescope.
Physicists are notoriously scornful of scientists from other fields. When the great Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli's wife left him for a chemist, 'Had she taken a bullfighter I would have understood. But a chemist ... ?' he rmarked in wonder to a friend. Rutherford suggested that 'All science is either physics or stamp collecting'. The irony is that his award of the Nobel Prize in 1908 was in Chemistry, not Physics.
The Picture of an atom that nearly everybody has in mind is of an electron or two flying around a nucleus, like planets orbiting a sun. This image was created in 1904 by a Japanese physicist named Hantaro Nagaoka. CERN still uses Nagaoka's image as the logo on its website.
Niels Bohr had an idea about the structure of the atom so exciting that he postponed his honeymoon to write what became a landmark paper.
Tim Berneers-Lee invented the WWW while working for CERN. It was a by-product.
Francium is so rare that it is thought that our entire planet may contain, at any given moment, fewer that twenty francium atoms.
Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day - 12th February, 1809.
Darwin's The Origin of Species was originaly titled On the Orgin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
Modern human beings, genetically, are 98.4% identical to modern Chimpanzees.
Tokyo is known to be in the meeting point of 3 tectonic plates. The Great Kanto earthquake in 1923, with a magnitude of 8.3, killed about 200,000 people out of 3 million in the city. Tokyo is now harbouring 30 million people. If such an earthquake occurs again, the potential economic cost could be as high as $7 trillion. Dare to think how many will die.

All these points were taken from the book A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. The book is impressive. Full of strange facts and interesting findings. Very short biographies of great scientists those who worked in many departments, those who searched for the clues of life deep under the ground to high above in the heavens. As John Waller from the Guardian says about the book, "It's hard to imagine a better rough guide to science".

#unlikelysequels

2009-05-11T18:21:00.012+05:30

Some tweets from the #unlikelysequels

Some of them are funny and good. Some are bad. Some of them are pathetic attempts. Shows you how jobless people can get. Like me, who compiled this list.

SeanMBennett When Harry Left Sally #unlikelysequels

DedrickWelch #unlikelysequels When Harry Tweeted Sally

mo_ali Superman Goes Away Again #unlikelysequels

paddypan #unlikelysequels The Day the Earth got Bored and Went for a Walk

molcher Burn and Then Extinguish Quickly After Reading#unlikelysequels

ceggs Publish After Reading #unlikelysequels

jakjonsun Saving Private Ryan 2: Stuck in an elevator shaft#unlikelysequels

NON53N53 Shaving Private Ryan #unlikelysequels (bet you thought I was going to go for "Shaving Ryan's privates" didn't you you rude buggers!)

brumplum Reservoir Puppies #unlikelysequels

JimJimBinks #unlikelysequels The godfather of the princess bride of frankenstein must be crazy II

nocturnalie Apocalypse When? #unlikelysequels

willtompsett Met The Parents #unlikelysequels

KarlHeld Meet the Legal Guardians (works better)#unlikelysequels

tonynewquay star whores : the pimp strikes back#unlikelysequels

Satans_Thong #unlikelysequels Star Wars : Episode VII - A New Recession

gotapulse Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger #unlikelysequels

smokineddie #unlikelysequels Schindler's Shopping List

KrystalSim #unlikelysequels Schindler's Bucket List

kimshannon #unlikelysequels Schindler's Top Friends List

Hoecs #unlikelysequels Schindler's Phonebook

fosterroberts #unlikelysequels The 50 Year Old Sex Addict

DedrickWelch #unlikelysequels Saturday The 14

TomGriffola #unlikelysequels Black Hawk Fixed and Back In Service

streamertyer #unlikelysequels You've Got Tweet

james_gilbert #unlikelysequels You've got spam

karatex #unlikelysequels Ei8ht

Bruno108 Juno 2 - Pregnant Again #unlikelysequels

lebout @ncguk Love, Possibly #unlikelysequels

ian_Wright #unlikelysequels one swineflu over the cuckoos nest

nicktheowl #unlikelysequels II Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

bashed Majority Report #unlikelysequels

piginthepoke #unlikelysequels A fist full of Euros

ceggs The Andromeda Groin Strain #unlikelysequels

HuskyJon97X #unlikelysequels Ferris Bueler Laid off :)

niceguyjim Ferris Bueller's Mid-Life Crisis #unlikelysequels

Bruno108 The Notebook 2 - Looking for a laptop#unlikelysequels

Shanster8 The (Mac) Notebook #unlikelysequels

gpb_1 The Lion, The Witch and the Ikea Wardrobe, where four children search for their parents who are lost in a furniture store#unlikelysequels

nmau Toy Story 4: The Adult toys come to play #unlikelysequels

llebecire #unlikelysequels Hiding Nemo

Nextman305 Live free Stay hard..Bruce Willis on Viagra#unlikelysequels

jo_xoxo The Bourne Redundancy #unlikelysequels

gotapulse Snoring in Seattle #unlikelysequels

gau3 @roshnimo It rains elsewhere too? Speaking of#unlikelysequels Jobless in Seatlte. Make that #likelysequels

fosterroberts #unlikelysequels No Continent for Old Men

AlexDScott #unlikelysequels Some Like It Climate Controlled

iwrotethis #unlikelysequels Snakes on a Curvature

tonycowards Snakes on a Spaceship #unlikelysequels

egobillot RT@RajaSen #unlikelysequels Snacks On A Plane.

AmberAusten More Snakes On Another Plane #unlikelysequels

bashed Four more weddings, another funeral and a couple of divorces #unlikelysequels

abhimanyu_a Prabhu Chawla/Manmohan Singh (Frost/Nixon)#unlikelysequels

RajaSen #unlikelysequels Revenge Of The Lambs: Silent No More

dawnington #unlikelysequels The Italian Blow Job

georgeantunes Rambo 5-10: Dude, Where the Fuck Is Bin Laden?#unlikelysequels

ReverendHackett: "Defrost/Nixon"#unlikelysequels

JennyWorsley Willy Wonka and the credit crunch#unlikelysequels

cheesymac Independence Day 2: McAfee VirusScan#unlikelysequels

AmberAusten #unlikelysequels The Curious Case of Benjamin Franklin (via @ageekmom)

sarahtonner XX Men: Origins of sex chromosomal mutations#unlikelysequels

willingthrall @AmberAusten #unlikelysequels Twelve Even Angrier Men

chupchaap Ram Gopal Verma ne Fir Lagayi Aag#unlikelysequels

thejestersdead #unlikelysequels please remind me what you did last summer

adropintheocean #unlikelysequels I no longer know what you did last summer

Barbara_Scorp I Did You Last Summer #unlikelysequels

The Movie Graph

2009-04-17T14:25:00.004+05:30

Unfortunately, I don't have the patience to sit for about two and half hours of poop just to appreciate 30 odd minutes of the classic movies.

Library

2008-10-25T14:16:00.001+05:30

What do I have to do to go to the library

Interesting facts from the LOTR

2008-09-05T21:15:00.000+05:30

Arwen ( Daughter of Elrond ) is 2690 years older than Aragorn. Arwen was born in year T.A. 241 while Aragorn was born in T.A. 2931
Lady Galadriel of Lórien is the Mother-In-Law of Elrond. Elrond married Celebrían, the daughter of Galadriel.
Peregrin Took ( Pippin ) named his son Faramir.
Faramir ( Son of Denethor - the Steward of Gondor ) and Samwise were born in the same year. Frodo is 15 years older than both of them.
Samwise was the Mayor of The Shire after Frodo for 7 terms. That is 49 years.
Aragorn served under both Ecthelion II ( the father of Denethor ) and Thengel ( father of Théoden - King of Rohan ) as the Chief Captain of their armies. Back then, he was known by the name of "Thorongil". He also had lots of other names like "Estel" ( Quenya for 'Hope' - given by Elrond ). ( More Info )
Frodo and company leave the shire 17 years after Bilbo's farewell speech. In those 17 years - Gandalf contacts Aragorn to try and capture Gollum, Gollum is captured and they leave him as a prisoner with the Elves. But, he/it escapes cunningly. That IS the reason Legolas comes to Rivindell - to explain how and why he/it got away.
Only seven people have ever used The One Ring. Sauron, Isildur, Gollum ( Sméagol ),Bilbo, Frodo, Tom Bombadil and Samwise.
Of the three Rings that were made for the Elves, One was possesed by Elrond and one by Galadriel. The third one was with Gandalf. (More Info)
Gandalf's real name is Mithrandir meaning "The Grey Pilgrim". Saruman's real name is Eldar Curunír meaning "The Man of Skill". The wizards are called "Istari" ( meaning "wise ones" in the elven tounge of Quenya) There are only 5 of them. ( The other three being Radagast, Alatar and Pallando ) They came from the Undying Lands located beyond the sea. Look at the map. These people were forbidden to fight Sauron directly.

Here's an interesting one. Though it's not from The LOTR. Sauron is one of the innumerable spirits created by Eru . He is of the same race as the wizards but of far higher order. ( More info )

Do you know any other interesting ones ?

Pathetic sales people

2008-08-30T19:30:00.008+05:30

We watched WALL-E yesterday. What a great movie. Simply amazing experience. This was my first PIXAR movie in the cinema hall ;)

That apart, we ( Naveen and I ) wanted to buy some ear phones after the movie. Particularly the ones with the ear plugs like stethoscope that block the ambient sounds completely. They're really nice. Good bass and the max volume doesn't produce any external sound. We went to City Centre Mall first. We roamed around and did not find any.

Then on our way to Ashoka Metropolitan, we went to a few other stores.
- UniverCell: A mobile phone store that sells authentic products. I bought my S500i here. Back then, in this shop, I saw the ear phones I mentioned about. So, I asked them that I want ear phones. Here's the conversation

me: Hi, I want to buy ear phones.
Salesman (S ): Sorry sir, this is a mobile store. We don't have ear phones here.
me: Do you have mobile phone accessories ?
S: Yes we do.
me: OK fine. I would like to see sony ear phones for my mobile.
S: Sorry sir, we don't sell earphones here. We have mobile accessories.

What the -. How else am I supposed to tell him ?
LESSON LEARNT: Ear phones for mobile pieces do not count as accessories.

Then we went to the next store.
- Planet - M ... Mobile, Music, Movies and Masti: We went in and there was a guy who did not even bother to ask what we wanted but he was just staring at us. I went to him and asked

Me: Hi, I need some ear phones, do you sell them ?
S: For your iPod/MP3 Player ?
Me: No. For my phone/pc
* He takes me over to a place and shows me some headphones *
Me: Don't you have those ear plugs ?
S: Do you want them for your iPod ?
Me: I want them for my PC/Phone.
S: We don't have them.
Me: You said you have them, didn't you ?
S: Do you want 2.5mm jack or 3.5 mm jack
( At this stage, I gave up the quest for ear phones for my mobile )
Me: 3.5 mm , the ones which I could use with a PC.
* He goes and brings someone else. This new person had a decent build and a dark complexion. He was not very tall but looked like a typical Hyderabadi guy *
New Salesman: [ with a Why-do-people-buy-things-here look on his face ] Kya Honã ?
* Oh! What the hell !? *

We were very tired after about 2 hrs of walking in city centre and banjara hills for mobile stores. We decided to go to Ashoka Metropolitan. This was our last Hope. I was very glad to see a store "X-CITE" dedicated completely to electronic/mobile equipment. Phones, cameras, TVs etc.
I was really amazed with the warm welcome we received there. Two people came to us even before we put in our second step and greeted us. It's not until they start speaking you'll know what kind of trouble you are into.

*Naveen and I walk in and two people ( Say S1 and S2 ) came to us*
S1: A very good afternoon sir. My name is ****. How may I assist you ?
* I've heard this dialouge before *
Me: We want to look at some earphones.
S2: Please come with me sir
* Naveen went with him as I was staring at the shelf with lots of earphones to my 10 O'clock *
S3: A very good afternoon sir. My name is ****. How may I assist you ?
( Then I remembered. This is how they greet when you call the customer care. What sort of people do they bring in here! Uphh! )
* I repeated to him what I wanted. And surprisingly he leaves *
S3: Please wait a moment sir, let me check.
...
* He comes back and tells me *
S3: These are the ear phones we have
* Pointing at the ones that I am looking at *
( Wow! Is it ? I thought these were 29" plasma TVs you freak )
Me: I want them either for my phone ( I show him my phone ) or to use them with my PC
S3: Sir, you can use them with your iPod.
Me: I don't have an mp3 player.
S3: No sir, they are for iPod
Me: Ok, are these with 2.5mm jack or 3.5mm ?
* Thinks for a while and brings another person S4 *
S4: You shouldn't use them with your PC sir. They won't last more than 2 months.
Me: What!? Why ?
S4: Because, PCs produce huge output and these phones can't handle so much of output and they will quickly stop working. You should be using these instead [ pointing at a very large headset ]
* :O As I was shocked by the pure awsomeness of his enlightening lesson, Naveen came and asked if I had any luck ? A sales lady was coming along with naveen talking something *
Naveen: No, I don't want those regular earphones. I want the ones that go INTO the ear. The "plugs"/"buds"
SL: Oh! Those ? Yeah. we do have them. Please come with me sir.
* We went with her but she again showed us the normal earphones *
Me: No, we didn't mean these. We want those that go INTO the ear.
SL: These WILL go into the ear sir.
* Oh! Really ? Those might as well go right into your C or up your colleague's A. Did you try ? You perhaps should *

We gave up our hope and had a good coffee at Barista. Seriously, what is wrong with the people in these shops? They don't have basic technical knowledge about the things they sell. I had a similar experience when I went to Abids to buy my mobile. I ask for tech specs and they say FM Radio, 2MP camera, expandable upto 2GB memory . Just the three. Once I asked for more detailed specs and the sales person said: "Sab phonã mai is se jyada kya hoga ?"

Right. "Is se jyada kya hoga?" Screw the iPhone,HTC, etc. All you need in a phone is a 2 MP camera, FM Radio and memory expandable upto 2GB.

PS: What is the Portuguese character 'ã' that I used in a couple of places?

Subway at indira nagar

2008-08-13T18:56:00.001+05:30

Amazing. Now, there are more places to eat around here. All that is missing is Mc donalds.

The software we use - not every thing is US based

2008-08-13T09:40:00.001+05:30

The US seems to many people as the hub for software companies. The non-"tech people" might be in an illusion that all popular software companies are from the USA. The Giants - yes. Not the other popular ones though. Most of the softwares we use on a daily basis and companies that produce them are non-US. You'll find the following list interesting. I might say, at least half of these will pop up on your All Programs list ( If you are a windows XP user, that is )

3d software:
Blender - Netherlands
Maya, 3ds Max - Canada

Multimedia:
MPlayer - Hungary
VLC - France
DC++ - Poland

Gaming:
Crytek , Nero - Germany
UBISoft - France
DICE - Sweeden
Sega - Japan

OS related:
Ubuntu - South Africa
Linus Torvalds - Finn

Other:
ICQ - Israel
Python - Netherlands

Did I miss something ?

The Frank Miller edit

2008-08-08T14:32:00.008+05:30

I've installed Hardy on my laptop. I think I will not use XP as often as I used to. Removed all the content from windows, resized the partition, and installed Hardy. Two of the many useful features that I liked: Hibernate and Bluetooth work without any tweaking.

The internet connection was too bad today. It was very irritating. So, I decided to just try the programs that Hardy provides. GIMP seemed interesting but I never used it. I never used photoshop either. I used Flash but I never did advanced photo editing. I also didn't like the GIMP interface. Too many windows pop up and I hated that. I still do. I very much supported Rahul's abbreviation of GIMP: Gimp Is Microsoft Paint [ in disguise ].

I think I need to change my stance. GIMP is decent. Very handy for basic and advanced photo editing. It's not very hard to use either. After watching the trailer of "The Spirit" ( by Frank Miller ) I really wanted to make some photos in partial colour. So I did. Used GIMP. I have found this helpful.

Original image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/harithski/2587002972/
This was at Kufri. Thanks Pramod for the great shot.

Original Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/harithski/2571162770/
This was shot using timer in the guest house lawn on the night before we left for the batch trip.Pramod was wearing Black and White that day. LOL.

Partial colouring is such a great idea. We could also call it The "Frank Miller Colouring" ;-)

Dizi

2008-08-04T23:09:00.001+05:30

Dizi is a type of chinese flute. I find it difficult to use :-(

~palm

2008-08-04T22:45:00.000+05:30

Wow! I can also photo blog using my phone. There is nothing special about this picture btw. Just used the negative effect available.

Downtown madness

2008-08-03T10:32:00.000+05:30

There is a shopping area that we visited in downtown, Suzhou. This post is about the wierd things I found there.

1. "Adidas ... Impossible is Nothing" translates to "Li-Ning ... Anything is Possible"

Li-Ning is a popular sports apparel manufacturer in China. It is quite funny that the logo resembles Nike while the caption is a variant of Adidas'.

2. Keep Moving ...

Who on earth would put a sign that says "Keep Moving ···" infront of his shop ? Oh! wait, I got confused. That's the name of the brand. Another popular sports goods manufacturer. But the sign does mislead you.

3. The one extra degree

This was the name of another shop. Where did the guy get the extra degree from ? Could it be a portal to one of the seven hidden dimensions ? :P

4. Vulgar names

I want to see how Mr. Fook reacts if he knows what is last name means in telugu.

5. Even McDonalds turns pink

Pink seems to be a popular colour in China. Not only to the girls, but also to the boys. There were a lot of men we saw who were wearing shirts. So gay, yaak! So much that even McDonalds is in pink. LOL

WTF: Irritating chat

2008-06-27T12:01:00.009+05:30

I had this chat with someone I know.

After this, he still did same thing.

And there's another person uses a '.' excessively. If you want to start a chat with someone what would you do ? You would either greet them with a "hi" or ask "are you there ?" or just "there ?" This person sends a message something like this: "............................?" I was so irritated that i didn't want to respond. A few minutes later, I got message with even more dots. What the $%&* ?

We usually agree with someone by typing in "ok", "k", "okay", " alright " etc. But this one is interesting. He agrees by saying "kkkkkkk................kkk........"

Did you know? There's this wonderful way of asking if it's alright. "is it okes ......... ?"

Oh God! Life is not easy.

The Last Three Minutes

2008-06-12T00:49:00.001+05:30

Most of the people know The Big Bang theory ( not the TV Series , the actual theory ). Though, not to its theorotical roots, people know how the universe popped out of nowhere. Although, there are other theories about the beginning of the universe, this one is the most popular one. Physicists tried to look into the beginning of the universe. I mean, the very beginning of all the things. What happened in the first three minutes was, in less technical detail, penned down by American Physicist Steven Weinberg in 1977. This book was aptly named "The First Three Minutes". In the past few decades , there has been wonderful evolution in the theories that try to explain the universe. Many variants of the string theory, trying to explain black holes etc. have been heard of. So far so good.

With the people these days making themselves and others aware of global warming, protecting the nature and taking steps inorder to do so, a strange thought occured to me. What is the purpose of life ? Not indivually. The who point of life on earth. The purpose of Humanity. Are we here to achieve something ? If so, what would that be ?

Every project has a specific goal. If the goal is not reached, the project is said to be failed. When the goal is reached the project is closed. ( Please don't talk about maintenance ) Can there be a project who's goal is never truly reached ?

If humanity could some how survive for eternity, what's the purpose ? What is the meaning of an existence toward a destination that is never reached ? If there is a purpose and the goal is reached, the universe must end because it's existence is pointless there on. If it survives forever, it is hard to imagine that there is any purpose at all. So, is cosmic death the price that has to be paid for cosmic success ?

Cosmic death!? Hard to think about. All that I ever heard of previously was that if the density of the universe is less than the critical density, it would continue expanding for ever. If it is more than the critical density, it would fall back. The galaxies that are now receding from us, might one day start coming back. So, what is the ultimate fate of the universe ? Will it squash back to the one single point from where it all came from ? Eternal expansion or eventual extinction ? Many such questions were answered in a book entitled "The Last Three Minutes". If the Universe were to end one day ( perhaps, the notion of day/night would then mean nothing ) , how would it be ? No math at all. Just simple analogies all the way to the end. A highly recommended book it would be. A perfect blend of technical detail and philosphy. I returned it to the library. You might find it if you are 'lucky' - because, there is some tagging ( using bar code stickers) going on.

Tweeting

2008-05-29T09:52:00.003+05:30

Came across this wonderful image that was put up on the twitter page a while ago saying "Too many tweets, try again later". How creative!

Having said that, twitter IM is finally up and running. That was my first tweet after the IM started working LOL. I felt full of life seeing the IM service work. I don't know if twitter will be of any use but, it's fun. If you are feeling bored visit the site http://twittervision.com. An excellent mash up of Google earth and Twitter which shows where the tweets are coming from.

There's also http://flickrvision.com. The 3D earth feature on both the sites is amazing. It shows the dark ( with lights in the cities ) and sun lit zones too.

The Forbidden Kingdom

2008-05-15T22:49:00.003+05:30

"... Strength is like water. Nothing is softer than water. Yet it can overcome rock. It does not fight. It flows around the opponent. Formless, nameless...the true master dwells within. Only you can free him." - An ancient Chinese proverb explained in The Forbidden Kingdom. A good movie. Fantasy, Comedy, Action blended perfectly. Highly recommended if you are feeling stressful, tired, bored etc. It's a feel good movie. Very refreshing indeed. The dialogues were written quite well. The only problem you'll probably face is understanding Jackie's and Jet Li's English. Aah! their ridiculous Chinese accent. I'd rather watch it with sub-titles. The storyline is very predictable in the end but you'll find it nice. closing scene in the movie resembled Kung-Fu Hustle in a way because of it's classy romantic touch.

I am the "lucky winner"

2008-04-17T10:25:00.005+05:30

What a start to the day. The first mail I read brought good news. Here's the mail.

Attn: Lucky Recipient,

Congratulations, it is with great pleasure to inform you, of your E-mail emerging as one of our winners in this year Shell Lottery International Lottery Promotion.

This program is conducted annually and you have emerged as one of our winner for this year 2008. And Note that, All winnings MUST be claimed before 28 days after notification; otherwise all funds will be confisticated.

You hereby have been approved a lump sum pay of US$500,000.00 (FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS) in cash credit file.You are required to contact your regional claims agent.

Nickolas Kidman
Shell International Lottery Inc
Email...nickkidman.shell@gmail.com

Best Regards,
Walter Abramov (Mr)
Lottery Coordinator
Shell International Lottery Inc

LOL. Bollocks! wtf ? Of course, I did not fall for it. Later, I googled for "Shell International Lottery Inc." Here's an interesting link I found which has the list of many Lottery scams.

Altec Lansing

2008-04-03T16:30:00.005+05:30

Bought woofer yesterday. I hesitated a lot in choosing Altec Lansing ( VS2421 model ) . It had to be either Creative A300 or Altec Lansing. I did not have much of a choice. I took out a coin and tossed it. Called heads to buy Altec Lansing. And heads it was. GBR asked for a re-toss. LOL. So, it was best of 3. The other two tosses resulted in tails. Never mind, screw the toss. Manohar insisted that it's worth paying 2.1 k for the 2.1 sub woofer. Indeed, it is. Amazing experience in my room. I am enjoying myself a lot. I hope this is not a moneymoon period.

" What is the first song that's going to be played ? " was the argument among three of us. I suggested Fever Fever. GBR preferred some Jalsa track. We finally decided to stick with some very well established song. Then it struck to GBR - Athadu title song. Great! everyone agreed.

The best thing yesterday was , someone was passing by my room. I started a song. He came back and appreciated the quality.

The vibrations on the sub woofer are remarkable. I captured a video of it when Fever Fever was being played. It looks really good.

Blogger is amazing. It lets me edit the post while the video is being upload. The upload speed is very good too. 21M uploaded in about 8 minutes.

We are starting to the trip tomorrow morning. This is the last day at IIIT with the whole batch. I did not start packing my stuff. But, my wingers and I are going to McD. One last time together ...

Best of the bunch

2008-04-03T15:11:00.001+05:30

Sunset
Originally uploaded by harith.s

This one's the best sunset photograph that I have shot. I wish I could have shot the clouds alone. Damn you! Flood lights.

The thinking theorists

2008-04-01T20:37:00.001+05:30

The thinking theorists
Originally uploaded by harith.s

This was shot yesterday in the evening on the obh terrace. Used picasa to make it black and white. Cropped the image to get the spacing on left and right sides correct. This was shot using timer ( 10 sec ) in the camera. Used little bits of brick and very small stones to get the angle correct. We were looking at the sunset. Brightness was automatically adjusted when we blocked the sunlight. Sony W55 is again total class :)

Sonnenuntergang

2008-04-01T11:51:00.001+05:30

Sonnenuntergang
Originally uploaded by harith.s

Sonnenuntergang - German for Sunset. Sony DSC - W55 is total class. This shot was taken in the evening after PECN exam was over. I need to experiment more on this camera. It might have many other features which would be handy in the batch trip.

On the new google ID and Sony W55

2008-04-01T08:15:00.001+05:30

As I posted previously, I did switch my google account. It is now about half finished. I am using GTalk with "harith.s". I now have most of the contacts of my classmates - thanks to the yearbook. You might have not noticed this but I came up with this interesting idea to invite harith.s to contribute to this blog which is owned by lukas.harithski - LOL. Now I can write here without logging into another account. Most importantly using Flock. I am still using two browsers most of the time. I need to organize my feeds, export and import them into harith.s. Once that is done, only Orkut and GMail will be left. I don't use Orkut much, so that's not a problem. I decided to leave all the mails in lukas.harithski except for some personal ones :D I'll filter the orkut invitations and scraps and forward them to harith.s. I'll be done.

I borrowed a camera ( Sony W55 ) from one of my relatives for the batch trip. This time, I have made sure most of the trip will be cherished for a long time unlike last time when we didn't have a camera and there weren't many pictures of me or my close friends at IIIT. I have started experimenting with the camera at home and there is a lot to learn. Photography is fascinating. Here is a nice one by GBR who is obsessed with macro photography. We shot some photos evening on the terrace. Yes! you heard it right. The terrace. It's open. I uploaded them on flickr.

coming up next ... Posts on the shots.

New Website is up.

2008-03-20T00:22:00.002+05:30

I finally filled in some content and finalized the graphics. So, this is the site. I found very good images at Web Design Guru They seem nice. I used the RSS Icon available there in the "MyLO" page. Currently the whole design is in flash, but I would very much like to port it to html. Since the webpage doesn't have any flashy animations, arranging the images properly is the only challenge that I face. I don't want to go home tomorrow :( I have other work ( PECN and Theatre report ) to do. But, this would be my only chance to go home. If I miss this, I'll probably not go back until we return from the batch trip.

Vision 2020

2008-03-08T09:17:00.009+05:30

10-15 years from now, where do you think I will be ? I don't mean the specific location, but, what would I be doing ? What would my friends be doing ? It's an interesting thing to think of. Where you want to be will is certainly different from where you would possibly be. To make the possible , probable ... ok ok no more philosophy :D ( unlike naveen ) Anyway, this is how I would like to see my wingmen and me by 2020 :)

Me : Would have joined ISRO and living on the Shriharikota island :D

Naveen : Would have finished Ph.D, would be working as an assistant professor in some European university ( OXFORD ? I would very much like it ;) ) . Why an assistant Prof. ? Well, I think 10 years is too short to become a Professor. Especially in a foreign university

GBR : A stock market pundit ( competing with siva kumar ) + a great s/w engg. Even would be taking his suggestions right away.

Pramod P : Would have founded a company. M$ and Google would be in a bidding war ( $50bn ? :P ) for his company.

Sai Ram : You would have two shades here. One guy, a pro s/w engg. living happily with the love of his life ( You need to go azharuddin's for this to happen :P ) But at night ,he would be that person who is on the top 10 most wanted H4CK3R5 list of NTAC , CIA, MI6, etc.

No wonder it triggered a smile on your faces, LOL. First part of what I wrote for each person is realistic. The second might be a little exaggerated, but hey ... anything is possible or put it the adidas' way - Impossible is nothing ;)

Heavy Dinner expenses + diet experiments with my body

2008-02-26T00:48:00.010+05:30

What have I had for dinner in the past two days ? Here's the list.

Feb 24th, Sunday:

Curd rice ( 25/- )
Bread Omelette ( 15/- )
Cold cofee ( 10/- )
Total expenditure: Rs. 50/-

Feb 25th, Monday:

Sweet corn masala ( 20/- )
Pani Puri ( 5/- )
Snickers chocolate ( 30/- )
A banana ( 1/- )
Sprouted Green Gram ( 2.5/- )
Total expenditure: Rs. 60 ( approx. ) + Rs. 25 ( Inevitably cut because I did not cancel dinner )

135/- of wasted money. I could have happily ordered a Veg. Biryani ( you know I am a vegetarian, don't you ? ) from Anupama :(

Inspired by naveen, I too to see how my body responds if I stop drinking Coffee and Tea. So, I just ( as of 2349 hrs IST, feb 25th 2008 ) had my last cup of tea for atleast a week days. If possible, more. Everybody is getting health conscious these days. Sarika is planning to work out at gym. Naveen won't eat bananas for obvious reasons. Pramod wants to eat bananas for the same obvious reasons :P God knows how sairam is taking care of his health. Anyway, I'll try to convince him to come to swimming 'and' or 'or' jogging next month :D May lady luck smile at me.

My Google account

2008-02-25T23:22:00.011+05:30

I didn't know the use of a very good email id in my first year. Precisely the first gmail account that was created for me. harith.s . See, how simple it is :D. I can stay like this and appreciate the simplicity of this ID for an hour :P. Lesson learnt? Definitely. Listen to what seniors say. I'm glad I did not delete this one like I deleted a "few" others. Really a "few". I deleted a google account to see if my orkut account would be deleted. Got bored of orkut and deleted another one. I also remember deleting an account because I didn't like blogger. All these were before the end of my second year.

Anyway, I'm glad to have not deleted this one. I though this could come in handy sometime in the future. Now, the intricacies in switching to this account ? Many.

Orkut: I recently started orkuting and I already deleted a couple of my old accounts. So, it would be irritating for people to add me again and again and again. They might think I am crazy.
GTalk: Though I don't have many friends in gtalk, I still have this orkut problem again.
G Reader: Oh! the feeds I have subscribed to while browsing? This is not a problem , because I can just export and import the OPML file.
GMail: Never a problem because GMail has POP/Mail forwarding. And you can use "send mail as" feature.
Docs, Calendar, etc: There is always sharing. Ah! I love web 2.0 Do you know when it was released ? :P ( Naveen told me that he heard someone asking that question. Funny thing is, the other person replied "I think it's planned for a release in the next year" :)) )
Google: Forgot the most important thing ? My google web history! I don't think there is a feature in google search that allows me to export all that google has learnt from my searches and import this information into another account. I have this habit of referring to java api if I have a doubt. So, when I first started learning java, I always clicked the java docs api pages. Now, google knows that I want those pages. So, it's just giving me those in the beginning. If I google for "String", I have this java docs api page java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/String.html as my first result. Below that, I have the usual wiki links:

String (computer science) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In computer programming and formal language theory (and other branches of mathematics), a string is an ordered sequence of symbols. These symbols are chosen ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_(computer_science) - 47k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

String theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Interaction in the subatomic world: world lines of point-like particles in the Standard Model or a world sheet swept up by closed strings in string theory ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory - 142k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
More results from en.wikipedia.org »

My wingmates very well know why I have that string theory there ;) See the results , even google knows that I am more of a computer science student than a physics student :D So, what do you get if you google "String" ?

Why do I want to switch anyway ? Obvious. I can't tell someone my gmail ID without getting embarrassed , can I ? Since this is the only problem, I can use the cookie swap firefox extension to quickly switch google accounts. And there is a google account multi-login grease monkey script that sucks badly. Since I want my GTalk to tell me when I have a new mail in my Inbox, a simple mail forwarding should do. But, all the tags ? Aah! the nightmare. What ever I do, I need to make a quick decision and get contact IDs of many ug2k4 people.

Techno/club Mixes

2008-01-18T09:55:00.000+05:30

This is my new addiction. My current playlist is an intricate mix of techno, 80's classics ( precisely OSTs from 80's movies ) and R&B. Every time a song is about to end, I hope the next song is going to be a techno mix. Too lazy to edit the playlist :D I listened to techno previously. Songs that belong to this genre never quite impressed me. That was until I listened to "Titanic Techno mix". This one is real class. Totally shakes you up. Mood lifter, I would say.

These songs in general help you a lot when you are feeling depressed or awfully bored. Daka has a collection of around 20 songs. I only listened to Titanic, MI2 and Brave Heart themes.

This genre, which is customary in locals ( that what they call discotheques in Austria :P ) , is not new to you if you have listened to any of these songs:

Fever Fever ( form the previous blog entry )
Aaj ki raat ( Don )
Crazy Frog

A constant beat with high bass in the background is a typical charactersic of this kind of music.
Anyway, titanic, MI2 and "I like to move it" ( The song from Madagascar to which Alex dances in the party with the Lemurs ) are the songs you must try.

Yet another blog

2008-01-16T14:40:00.000+05:30

This is not my first blog. I can't promise that it will be the last or permanent one where I shall regularly post. Let me see how regular I shall be. I know that I am not a very good writer. Mate, come on. At least this is an attempt to be serious ;) I will probably write about something I find new. Since I am one of the few gamers among those I know, the non gamers will be missing some fun stuff. I'll try to put some of that interesting stuff here. Hopefully, you'll like it. For example: New music, music from Game OSTs that you'll probably not listen to anywhere else.

Now, that's the main motivation to start this blog. Recommending new songs. Sharing new ideas. Suggesting new movies. So, this blog is only for friends.

For a start: The song Fever Fever by Melody Club has been ringing in my mind for a few days now. I just can't get enough of it. Fever Fever did to me , what Every thing you want ( by Vertical Horizon ) did to all my wing mates. I still remember those 4 or 5 days when that song was constantly on Naveen's playlist. Being played at least twice every hour. Unfortunately, I didn't find mp3 version of Fever Fever yet. All I have is this youtube video.

I feel the video isn't as good as the song, except for a few glimpses of creativity like using a spotlight to shoot the entire video, using a transparent overlap effect during the change of scene or location, repeating a few seconds of the video to match the tempo of the song, and some good looking girls :D Enjoy the song.

Why aren't my wing-men blogging ? Ofcourse, naveen has deleted his blog as a part of his "deleting-all-accounts" scheme. What about the others ?