The Nub

Broken

2010-10-08T02:54:00.000+05:30

BREAKING NEWS: Yeddyurappa visits Kerala temple.

That's what I saw when I glanced at the idiot box (2 days ago).

Local journalism is in such a pathetic state. It wouldn't surprise me if in the near future, one wakes up to the fresh hot sensational news of the Chief Minister taking a visit to his crapper.

The news is Broken.
And sadly, no one's gonna fix that.

HIGHER POWER

2010-06-14T21:47:00.001+05:30

A Sunday school teacher said to her children, 'We have been learning how powerful kings and queens were in Bible times. But, there is a Higher Power. Can anybody tell me what it is? One child blurted out, "Aces!"

Goodbye cheap chinese phones

2009-11-30T18:16:00.000+05:30

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/5284368.cms

Things I did yesterday

2009-11-29T17:09:00.003+05:30

1) Made a conference call for the first time

2) Broke Paddy's Yezdi's indicator

3) Slapped Paddy accidentally (LOL!)

4) Had a great lunch with B'day boi Aditya, Bhu, Paddy

5) Saw awesome houses in rajarajeshwari nagar (too many rich buggers there!)

5) Had a nostalgic drive through university campus

6) Watched James May have fun with Asimo

7) Dozed all evening

8) Woke up by midnight and slept at 7AM

(great day!)

openvpn on mac (CLI)

2009-07-31T04:45:00.006+05:30

If you've used Tunnelblick, you know it has issues - multiple openvpn processes, or not starting up on boot etc.

So here's how to install openvpn the CLI way that just works!

(You need macports installed)

Quit and remove Tunnelblick from startup (system preferences -> accounts -> login items)

sudo port install openvpn2 tuntaposx

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.tuntaposx.plist

Create /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.openvpn.plist as follows
(Note: edit the working directory and config file name to suit your needs)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
     <key>Label</key>
     <string>org.openvpn</string>
     <key>OnDemand</key>
     <false/>
     <key>Program</key>
     <string>/opt/local/sbin/openvpn2</string>
     <key>ProgramArguments</key>
     <array>
          <string>/opt/local/sbin/openvpn2</string>
          <string>--config</string>
          <string>client.conf</string>
     </array>
     <key>RunAtLoad</key>
     <true/>
     <key>TimeOut</key>
     <integer>90</integer>
     <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
     <string>/Users/shastry/Library/openvpn</string>
</dict>
</plist>

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.openvpn.plist

reboot!

What they do to lure the common man

2009-07-01T22:36:00.002+05:30

The government reduced petrol prices by around 5 bucks before the election. And now, just after they got elected again, price is up!

The Place Where Things Happen(ed?)

2009-06-02T00:29:00.008+05:30

Basaveshwara Nagar Coffee Day brings back some memories.

Sub, gecko, sid and I gathered around the coffee table sipping on some nice beverages.

While it was fun, I couldn't help think - in a couple of months, sub and gecko will be heading off to different countries to fulfill their academic dreams, and sid will be busy brooding over medical books (so thick that they can be used as murder weapons, or as bullet proofing material, chopping board etc,) and cutting open people, operating on penises and what not...
while yours truly will be hopelessly lonely for at least the next couple of years!
*shudder*

The Parallal

2009-02-26T00:13:00.008+05:30

Last week, on a seemingly ordinary monday, GK and I noticed this sign board (the one with a P inscribed in a circle inscribed in a rectangle) while returning from a 2nd hand book store in Church Street. Nothing out of the ordinary. At first, we laughed at it, GK blogged it. I thought some people simply cannot spell, and Bangaloreans cannot parallel park, but only perpendicular park. But something didn't seem right with the above reasoning. After spending countless sleepless nights over this issue, I came up with a theory - a very plausible one!

The painters of the parking sign board came from a parallel univese where parallel is spelt with an 'a' instead of 'e'. OK, so they are from a PARALLAL universe.

Next, the car owners from another parallel (PARALLAL for the above mentioned painters) universe where parallel (PARALLAL) is Perpendicular.

Wait I'm confused.... err... so... they come from a perpendicular universe? ... and our universe is the point of intersection of a set of orthogonal universes? But they are parallel, right?

Brain short circuit. Time to sleep!

The Devil's Desktop?

2009-02-01T10:14:00.005+05:30

A friend asked, "if kde 4.2 was supposed to be the second coming of the christ, why don't we see rave reviews of it everywhere?"

I have an explanation:

It's the beast!!! ;-)

Start Pedaling

2009-01-08T23:17:00.002+05:30

With all these oil company employees and truckers on strike, it's the perfect time to blow the cobwebs off your first two wheelers.

Yes, that's right, get that good old cycle out of the attic and start cycling! Now!

My First Long!

2009-01-01T01:15:00.006+05:30

Date ~ 30/12/2008
home - itpl ~ 30
itpl - channapattana ~ 117
channapattana - home ~ 77
TOTAL - 224Km

Four days ago my body suddenly decided to mend its sleep cycle and I've been sleeping at "night" and waking up at around 4 am (cool, eh?).

It was a boring early morning. Had to do fix that. Subba had just returned from a spiritual conf and wasn't having any fun at the office. What do two bored buggers do? They decide meet up for lunch and go half way to mysore to meet another bored bugger arriving from the other side.

subba & i (b'lore) >>> Coffee Day (c'pattana/maddur) <<< gk (mysore)

Subba showed me the NICE road. My flying machine touched 112Kmph (personal best). I never ever dreamt that such an empty road existed in bangalore. It was a bikers dream road except for the toll gates were we had to lighten our wallets for burning rubber on their tarmac and a small unfinished stretch which made us lose our way and go round and round and round, but eventually rejoin the smooth tarmac.

This road eventually joined mysore road and we were off to beat time as we had promised gk that we'll be there by 5 pm, but ended up 30 minutes late in the end. Sorry Gecko!

Apart from the NICE road, nothing was significant on the way to maddur.

Because of gk's confusion about which coffee day, we had to head back around 5km!
Fed ourselves some delicious cake and samosa with hot coffee.

Then, all of a sudden gecko changed colours (pale whitish) - he had scared himself to death for misplacing his bike key! Time flew by, things cooled down, gecko regained his colours, the sun set, and stars took over the night sky. It was time to part. There was a slight problem. Unlike gecko, we didn't have sweaters or jacket to shield ourselves from the biting cold weather! Still, subba and i set out undaunted into the night to return home 70km from this town.

On the way back, we were up for a surprise. Our orange flying machine needed some fuel, but the greedy fuel pump had cleared out their stock and closed down as there were rumours of price drops. Fear slowly started to grip us as we zoomed past empty fuel pumps one after the other. We were scared about having to walk and push the unicorn half way. Fortunately, luck was on our side and we found a friendly fuel pump who hadn't run out of petrol! Eventually we realised that the "out-of-stock-fuel-pumps phenomenon" was restricted to channapattana.

The rest of the journey was not so eventful apart from the usual clueless buggers crossing the roads almost missing getting hit by a speeding vehicle. This made us wonder about the purpose of their life - was it to just squished to death in the middle of the road like bugs on windshield? - how did they survive this long? - does god really exist and care for them? Big questions, no answers! :-o
We drove at a decent speeds (60-70kmph) even with the biting cold. Every time we passed a truck or lorry, we thanked it for the warmth instead of cursing it for the dirty smoke. Eventually i kinda became numb to the cold. It bothered me no more (Prolly subba was not that comfortable).
There was one more exception to the uneventful journey. We slightly lost track of the road at NICE road - mysore road intersection because of all the construction work and the darkness. They change roads almost every other month! Weird city i live in.

The rest of the rest of the journey was the usual inner roads of bangalore - so many potholes, dried up lakes and ponds in the middle of the road. (Suddenly made me remember why our city cannot afford to have a batman - it's the roads and traffic! No chance in hell he can drive his batmobile here without squishing a lot of bystanders to a bloody death, or batman falling into a ditch. ;) )

Finally made it back home after dropping subba at his place. I was expecting to feel like a battered soldier with back pain and sore muscles, cough and cold and all that crazy stuff, wondering if the drive was a complete waste of time, fuel and energy. Nah, I surprised myself! It was simply a splendid biking experience, one that i enjoyed thoroughly.

I WANT MORE!

PS: Happy New Year!

That 70's song came back to life!

2008-11-23T23:50:00.002+05:30

Video Killed the Radio Star (Live)

firefox mac pdf plugin

2008-10-11T11:58:00.003+05:30

http://code.google.com/p/firefox-mac-pdf/

Firefox 3 doesn't come with a pdf plugin on osx. This one just works!

Our Dumb World

2008-10-10T15:55:00.004+05:30

I recently watched "The Onion Movie". So I went to The Onion's website and look what I found - A fantastic atlas of our planet by The Onion (Our Dumb World).

Some descriptions are spot on. For instance,

INDIA (please hold off while we die of malaria)
Mixed by rising poverty levels, polluted groundwater that threatens the lives of millions, and a rapid crumbling infrastructure, the nation of India has every intention of addressing these problems just as soon as it finished telling Midwesterners how to install Windows XP on their home computer.

(PS: Zoom in the map for city-level descriptions ;) and check out Sri Lanka, Mumbai )

Top 10 Wrong Placed Ads

2008-07-25T20:27:00.001+05:30

http://www.bspcn.com/2008/07/22/top-10-wrong-placed-ads/

(Thanks Prash)

Song of the day

2008-04-12T23:01:00.002+05:30

This lifted my mood up. It might lift yours too!

Lily Frost - Who Am I?

faster than c

2008-01-05T04:26:00.001+05:30

http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2007/12/faster-than-c.html

*chuckle*

A new year, a new perspective

2008-01-01T00:06:00.000+05:30

2008 is here!!!

Looking back (which I haven't done much of late), a lot has been accomplished, a lot left undone, and a lot of new dreams and aims.

The last month has been a real struggle trying to manage between work, family, personal stuff and studies. I think it ended up as a pretty ugly mess with none of them getting enough attention! This has prompted me to change my lifestyle. I've realised that even though my desk and room are organised well, my life isn't! It's terrible! One tiny event not going as planned can screw up my daily schedule in a real bad way. So, I've been looking into how others manage their lives, and how that can help me.

For starters, I'm diving into the GTD stuff (yeah... David Allen's book :-) ); getting out of home daily (a 30 minute morning walk should give me the necessary change of environment); trying to plan my day in a way that'd absorb the negative events so that they don't ruin the whole day; proper prioritisation of tasks; being prepared beforehand (especially for studies); and much more.

Anyway....

Happy New Year!!!! :-)

नव वर्ष की शुभकामनाए!!!

ಹೊಸ ವರ್ಷದ ಶುಭಾಶಯಗಳು!!!

God Nytt År!!!

Video of the day

2007-10-11T18:14:00.000+05:30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYuqoKxRhMg

Watch it!

Edit: Google took the video down! (T video was about how it would be if Al Gore would be the president of USA! ;-) )

Fly Cheap! Fly Safe!

2007-07-21T07:37:00.000+05:30

The best way to live through a disaster in the sky? Move to the back of the Airbus. It's safer in there!

Engineering and Star Trek

2007-05-18T11:12:00.000+05:30

I really liked the "Science vs Engineering" part.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Engineering.html

OOPS!

2007-05-12T21:44:00.000+05:30

http://poetry.rotten.com/suzuki/

one more year in the nub's journey

2007-04-17T00:17:00.000+05:30

One more year has passed since my arrival in this world!

A lot has been achieved, a lot left undone. I expect more fun coming my way :-)

Happy Your Day!

2007-04-01T20:19:00.000+05:30

Happy Fools' Day!!!

Coffee! Coffee! Coffee!

2007-02-07T05:24:00.000+05:30

It WORKS!

I mean... it finally worked!

2 cups of awesome hot coffee and I couldn't sleep. I finally managed to get some decent stuff done at work though :-)

Here's my recipe to pull an allnighter:
Ingredients:
1 cup caffeine kick
1 cup cafe latte
friends

Instructions:
* Meet friends at Cafe Coffee Day for an evening coffee
* Sip on caffeine kick while watching friends fight over the larger piece of chocolate cake (ssshhh don't tell them about that second cup of coffee you can't stop thinking about)
* Watch the sore loser walk away trying to make up a reason to get out because (s)he didn't have it her/his way
* Cheat and order another cup of coffee.. this time.. lets get that yummy cafe latte
* Enjoy that warm mug of cafe latte while everyone gets ready to leave
* Go Home! (pay the bill before that of course... you don't want to waste the caffeine-generated-energy trying to escape from a police chase because you ran away from the shop without paying)

You will spend the night like a squirrel on a sugar high.
Enjoy!