My Writing Desk

St. John's Cathedral, Tiruvalla

2010-02-10T00:08:00.001+05:30

Rang Barse...

2010-01-21T00:21:00.000+05:30

Its been a while that I am searching for a good service that can host my photos and give a nice gallery for viewing pleasure. I toyed with the idea of buying space in Flickr, but for $25 a year for an unlimited space would be a waste of money if I don't post enough.. which I don't. A lazy ass, thats what I am. Picasa would have been cheaper, $5 for 20 GB wasn't a bad deal taking into consideration that the extra space would be shared with Gmail too. But then again, Picasa's slideshow is horrible. I wanted nice gallery badly. Even thought of getting a hosted space too.

Today, a post comparing tumblr and posterous caught my attention and found me researching what is best. Posterous had me hooked with the idea of automatic galleries when you send multiple photos in an email. That.. coupled with the fact that Posterous is on cloud granting me an unlimited space to host my photos did me in. And now i am a posterous user :D. Find my photo blog at http://sajesh.posterous.com/. The blog name "Rang Barse..." was suggested by my dear friend, Avinash. Will soon be moving posterous to a custom domain and filling up with pics. Stay Tuned....

Outlook Poem

2010-01-07T21:31:00.000+05:30

Our office was moving from Lotus notes to MS Exchange and the process started way back in November last year. Given a choice I personally would have chosen some open source options like Zimbra but the policies are made by the higher ups not me so MS Exchange it was. And since the migration started happening around me I had been waiting for one. Between Lotus notes and MS Exchange, I would gladly choose MS Exchange as notes suck big time. But well, the technical team kept the migration on hold for few people, which included me, and i kept on asking them when. Last monday i was all set to ask them a query again . This time coupled with a poem :D. But my bad luck decided to shake things up and before i could finish the poem, i got an email from the technical team saying it shall be done this friday! and they did it on monday itself!.

anyways, i completed the poem and sent them this later. I reproduce it here for public consumption.

pichle saal ka waada tha
jo aapko nibhana tha
lotus notes hataana tha
outlook ko bithana tha

remind kiya baar baar
request bheje the theen chaar
kaha jald aa raha hai sarkaar
aur thoda karo intezaar

gaya november, gaya december
din badle calendar par
fwd mails aate hain outlook se chaaron pehar
dekh nahi paata images lotus par

outlook ki raah take hai mera mann.
dhanyawaad doonga main har kshan,
agar kar do hal mera yeh prashn
kab aakhir kab karoge mera outlook migration?

Ubuntu 9.10 and some issues

2009-12-29T14:59:00.003+05:30

and so finally i got my harddisk back from my friend and decided to upgrade my machine to the latest Ubuntu 9.10 aka Karmic Koala. For the Jaunty release I had problems with the Live CD. It wont boot properly. It would most often boot into a black screen and the LED on the CD drive will show no activity. I finally ended up doing a direct install without trying out the Live CD.

The Karmic Koala was no different. It refused to boot into the Live CD environment. Black Screen came up a couple of times. Tried Direct Install and that too failed thrice in between the installation. The machine would just hang up! Luckily my roomies had laptop which helped to check online about these CDs which refused to boot. Found some boot parameters noapic and nolapic which i had to pass in order to get the Live CD working.

The Installation was successful with the parameters but then the hard disk installation started behaving exactly like the Live CD. I should have passed the boot parameters but tried a reinstall once to see if that fixes it. No go. the noapic and nolapic parameters where handy when i passed them from GRUB and i got the desktop running fine but the parameters passed that way are only temporary. I had to make them permanent. It was then that i found out how much they have changed in GRUB2.

There is no easy menu.lst file which you can edit and hack your way into GRUB. There are atleast 3 different files I needed to work upon to get this thing going. GRUB2 works like this. Instead of a menu.lst we have a grub.cfg in /boot/grub. This file is readonly and is updated by sudo update-grub command. The settings related to GRUB file is in /etc/default/grub and there are some files in /etc/grub.d which are read during the grub update. A fix on ubuntuforums.org suggested to modify the 40_custom file and issue an update-grub command. I did that but ended up my custom entries below the main grub ones. to get them on top i will have to change 07_custom. That doesn't help of course as grub just picks up the first one in its path. besides there was always the problem of updating my list with every kernel change. so i was searching for something like the menu.lst file where you give in the parameters to the kernel. on scanning the grub parameters in /etc/default/grub i came across "quiet splash" value for one of the parameters. I gave in my parameters just after the "quiet splash", saved the file and issued an update-grub. I could see in grub.cfg that the kernel got appended with my values. This time around the machine booted into the desktop just fine.

Installation of all the necessary apps took almost one day. Everything was fine but the suspend and hibernate still refused to work. I suspect its something with the noapic and nolapic i passed but I have left them for time being as i dont use them on a daily basis.

One issue that i faced yesterday was with VLC. The sound output was flaky and choppy a bit. As if i am trying to play an old vinyl cassette. The files were fine in other players. Upon a little investigation found out the culprit. Pulseaudio. Seems ubuntu developers had done a shabby job of integrating it with ubuntu. I tried removing vlc-plugin-pulse but lost my sound in VLC. I tried few other things and in the end what worked for me was this. I removed the vlc-plugin-pulse and set the audio output in VLC to Unix OSS sound. then closed the VLC and installed the vlc-plugin-pulse again. This time around i didnt change the audio output to pulseaudio but kept the Unix OSS sound and voila! no jerks and tears from VLC. Audio is working fine now on VLC.

Another victim of Pulseaudio was my fav game Urban Terror. The sound kept irritating me like hell. It would start and stop and feel jerky all around. luckily found a solution for this too. installing libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio solved the sound troubles with UrT. This apparently works for Quake games too.

There is one thing i haven't tested yet and that is Skype. I hope the sound in Skype just works fine. Will test it today :).

update: Skype works. beautifully.

why?

2009-10-26T23:11:00.000+05:30

when you don't have any kind of commitment to the job, no passion to drive you forward and no incentive to stick to it, why the hell are you still hanging on?

Terminator Salvation

2009-06-28T18:04:00.000+05:30

Like any other die hard fan of Terminator series, i went to watch Terminator Salvation yesterday. Terminator Salvation begins the story many years after the Judgement Day where the Resistance is fighting the machines. This is the future where Skynet controls the world as was told in the previous Terminator Series. John Connor is one of the resistance leaders looking out for Kyle Reese, his father, who technically is still a teenager. There is one more significant character introduced in this movie and that is of Marcus. Marcus was a criminal sentenced to death in the past with the agreement that his organs will be donated to a cancer patient. He resurfaces again in the future with a mechanical body but with a human heart. His objective is to locate Kyle Reese and John Connor and deliver them to Skynet, although he is not aware of it. He believes he is human and behaves like one. Even when his skin and muscles are blown away and all the internal clockwork is revealed. He even fights for John Connor in the climax and donates his heart to Connor to save his life. Arnie also makes a sort of comeback in a digitized form. Watch the scene where he turns his head slowly. You cannot deny that its Arnie.

The movie is a well made action movie and sadly nothing else. The underlying tone being, what makes us human? The action of Marcus, Connors and the Resistance leadership speaking in volumes. I was kinda expecting some answers to the questions the previous Terminator movies had raised. First and foremost is this - In the second Terminator movie, Arnie is sent back by Connor to protect him as a child because the Skynet sent another Terminator to kill John Connor. Why didn't the Skynet send the second Terminator back in time to the point where Sarah Connor was targeted, i.e, in the first movie? Likewise in the third movie T3 where Judgement Day happens and Arnie was sent to protect Connor. My theory is that there was a glitch in the Time Machine where it could send someone back to a certain point back in time only, say 50 years back. Or it could be that John Connor and his men were fighting to prevent the second Terminator being sent back in time and they somehow managed to mess with the time set on the machine and the said Terminator's objective were changed by Skynet accordingly before the Terminator went time travelling. An explanation would have been much better in this movie but the producers stuck to telling the story even before the time travel was possible in the movie timeline. In the first Terminator movie, Kyle Reese says the time machine was destroyed after he was sent. Nobody can come in and Nobody can go back, he says. Skynet wasn't even created at that time. And in the future, there was no way of Skynet knowing Kyle Reese went back in time unless the event happened. That brings to my second question, How did Skynet prepare a hitlist with Kyle Reese as its no: 1 target when he hasn't even travelled back in time yet? How was Marcus programmed to capture Kyle Reese and John Connor? One possible explanation can be that the Skynet got its information from the first Terminator sent back in time. After all, the future Terminators only provided the means to create the Terminators in the past.

These doubts remaining, there were some things shown in Salvation which were quite questionable. Why on earth would Skynet create motorbike killing machines which can be captured and ridden by man? Ridiculous. Why is there a touch screen control and display in Skynet? The machines can very well communicate over Shortwaves or can jack themselves up the old fashioned way. But a touch screen control seems like an invitation for some human to come and mess with the Skynet. Even if its there for Marcus, remember that he is still a machine. The reference to John Connor as some Messiah in the beginning also spoiled the fun a bit. It was so Matrix like but with a Neo who knows what needs to be done.

The movie was made loose enough to allow further sequels. The Time Travel is yet to happen. Kyle Reese is yet to fight along with John Connor. Connor is yet to give Sarah's photo to Kyle Reese. If I were to write the FINAL Terminator series, I would write the story which looks like a prequel to the first Terminator movie. In that John Connor and Kyle Reese are fighting the Skynet and its machines. Both discover a Skynet plan to terminate Connors by killing his mother in the past. They attack the Skynet base to prevent it. Both fight their way to the Time Machine but its too late. Arnie is already back in time and the whole base is gonna self-destruct in 1 minute. Connors know what is to be done and sends Kyle Reese back in time. The whole Skynet blows up as soon as Kyle Reese is gone and John Connor tries to escape but is buried in the rubble. He emerges later and walks away limping in the night. And the movie ends with the last line of the Terminator Salvation - There is no fate but what we make...

Conky Desktop

2009-06-26T00:45:00.000+05:30

Weather finally worked in conky!. This is a newer version of conky-colors with temperature of HDD and CPU cores. I actually went through lots of wallpapers before settling on this one as I wanted conky colors to be white to match the letters in the toolbar above. And only a dark background would go with the white text.

The only minor problem as I see with this dual setup is that no items can be placed on the desktop. The conky would cover it up. But thats something I am ok with as I normally don't keep anything on the desktop.

With the conky conquered, i am looking out for some nice themes to dress up my ubuntu.

wallpaper courtesy: interfacelift.com

A little unplanned trip

2009-06-14T21:34:00.000+05:30

This saturday I had planned to go to the Gateway early in the morning and take a snap of it minus the crowd. Each time I had gone before, there had been so much crowd that I get pissed off. The only time one can see the Gateway without the overwhelming crowd is early in the morning, so I am told. On friday night I put the alarm at 6'o clock in the morning and went to sleep. The next day I woke up at 9. And for the major part of the day I rested my ass on the sofa infront of the television. Not happy, I tried again today morning and somehow managed to get up sharp at 6. Took a quick bath and rushed to the station to catch the train to Churchgate. An upset stomach caused some delay at the station but I did manage to reach Gateway before the junta started to pour in.

After taking out my mann ka bhadaas I went behind the Gateway to see if I can get a shot from there. But no, the place was not suitable to take a photo. But there was something else going on there that caught my attention. There were agents who were calling people to take ferries to Elephanta Caves. Caves! Tempting! Now I had not really planned for Elephanta Caves, you see. My plan was to click the Gateway and get back. I stalled for few minutes deciding what to do but then thought what the hell. Lets go! I checked out the rates. 120 Rs. Yeah, I had more than sufficient amount with me. And so I jumped on to the boat. The boat went on rocking, halting in between. I paid Rs 10 extra and went to the upper deck to have a nice view of the sea. One thing I wasnt prepared with my impromptu trip was drinking water. It takes roughly one hour to reach Elephanta caves from mumbai and the heat and sun can do things to you especially in this summer. I managed somehow, standing in the shade next to the drivers cabin. The steering wheel of the boat or whatever they call it caught my fancy and I ended up asking the driver if I can steer for a while. He refused saying that the engine is already in trouble and handing over the steer wont be a good idea.

The Elephanta Caves are up on a hill. You need to walk uphill for a while if you want to see those. I managed to climb slowly and steadily without losing much energy. There are 5 caves in total. The first cave is the one which has been carved out more than the others. I wonder why. The rest of the caves 2 - 5 seemed to be abandoned. As if they stopped their work halfway. The pics are here. It was early in the morning at 9. There wasnt much crowd but there were few children who were running around in the caves thinking they were in some park! A guard told me its free for children below 15 years. I said they should start charging double for children. That should keep the place nuisance free.

There is also another place nearby called Cannon Hills. I climbed up that hill too. They have two cannons up there from which century I don't know. There was no information nearby but they seemed to be painted and maintained well except for the gears below which can move them in an arc.

I came down and had food from a restaurant at the base along with a beer. With nobody to say cheers to I sent few smses to my booze friends. The booze helped in walking back in the sun back to the boat. After we were back in the sea I went again to the driver and asked to steer. He agreed. And I was the driver of that boat for few minutes! Great!

Getting back home was not without incident. I slept in the train and ended up at Borivali, last stop. Caught the same train and got down at Goregaon. Back home my roomie commented that there is not much to see there in Elephanta. I disagree. There is so much to see there. All those rock carvings dating back from so many centuries. They were artists. They depicted life in those days on solid rock. Although some of us now do it with pixels, they did it with hand on rocks with their primitive tools. And to bring out expressions on a rock is a feat in itself. Appreciating them is the least we can do.

I ought to do more of these unplanned trips. And that too alone like i did today. No friends to pose for photographs, nobody to wait for and best of all nobody to tell you what to expect. The excitement is in seeing what YOUR eyes discover. what say?

PS: was planning to post few pics here but the internet connection is damn slow. Have uploaded the pics in my picasa album here.

Saali Khushi - Dev D

2009-06-10T14:21:00.002+05:30

jalte jalte raakh jaisi hui hai saaari

khak jaisi bewajah si umr saaari

kahan chali gayi hai saali khushi

kahan chali gayi hai saali khushi

jalti aanhein hain saaans bhi

jali hui jali hui

dhoondhu kaise hai aas bhi

jali hui jali hui

saanp jaisi kali raatein hai

hai zehar si yeh zindagi

kahan chali gayi hai saali khushi

kahan chali gayi hai saali khushi

..........chali gayi hai saali khushi

My Desktop

2009-06-07T18:40:00.000+05:30

Last night my lappie latched onto an unsecured wifi and I could see the network in action finally in Conky. The conky still needs some work though. The hard disk temperature and weather are the ones still missing. Once that comes, the current conky look is gonna change. Till then, this is my desktop.

I am running the latest Ubuntu 9.04 with Gnome-Do. Also, installed is Chrome-unstable version (seen in the dock). Still needs to browse with chrome to see how it fares.

Taking responsibility for your actions

2009-05-25T09:24:00.001+05:30

Powered by mouse clicks

2009-05-20T15:43:00.002+05:30

I read somewhere back that nowadays computers seem to be powered by mouse clicks. The author was referring to the increased use of GUIs in today's machines. I agree with him to a certain extent. I say to a certain extent because there are so many tasks which i won't prefer to do via command line interface. I won't prefer having to type a mount command each time I connect a hard disk to my machine. And there are some which I would absolutely hate to do with a GUI. Like mounting an ISO file. Mounting an ISO file in linux is a breeze compared to windows. A "mount -t iso9660 -o loop isofile location" is all it takes. In windows, you will need an external software to do so. And I am stingy about installing apps that I will use rarely. Not to mention of used disk space, RAM, registry entries and crack for the software if its not free. While the arguments for CLI and GUI remains in their place I was actually caught by his words which said 'powered by mouse clicks'. I mean, isn't a great thing if we have a keyboard and mouse which can store the power through the keystrokes and mouse clicks while you use them?. Using wireless keyboard and mouse is pain in the ass. They need power and drain the batteries very fast. With this power storing mechanism, one would not need the batteries. All it would take is to use the devices itself!. Is the mouse indicating a low charge? Play an FPS game. Is the keyboard showing low charge? Open the IM and chat away. Wouldn't that be great? Now excuse me while I go and patent this idea.

Tagged!

2009-04-16T16:56:00.002+05:30

All right, so i have been tagged by Avinash (http://brutescolumn.com/). It seems ages that i have been tagged. I am doing this on my laptop at home with no internet connection. I couldn't do this in office as the only collection i have is on my phone and the playlist is bit outdated. The idea is to complete the tag now at home and post it tomorrow via email to blogger. So, lets see what my Rhythmbox has to say....

Rules:

1) Put your iTunes or any other media player on Shuffle...

2)For each question, forward to next track to answer the question...

3) Write down the track title, it might be a silly one...

4) Tag other poor souls...

a) If someone asks you "are you okay?" you say:

Seene mein sulagte hain Armaan... aankhon mein udaasi chaayi hai - Jagjit Singh. (wtf? I mean WTF?. Really, i skipped the first song because I couldn't make a word out of that English one which incidentally had no track information also. The second song was a Bacardi Blast music with no lyrics and this is the third one.. but WTF?)

b) How would you describe yourself?

Do I have to say the words (James Horner/Bryan Adams - The track info is so misleading. Somebody please correct it)

c) What do you like in a girl/guy?

Main nikla gaddi leke... (Uday Narayan)

d) How do you feel today?

Pal Pal.. Har Pal.. (from Lage Raho Munnabhai)

e) What's your life purpose?

Kay Sera Sera (Kavita Krishnamoorthy and Shankar Mahadevan)

f) What's your motto?

El Mariachi (Desperado)

g) What do your friends feel about you?

Purple Stain (Red Hot Chilli Peppers)

h) What do your parents feel about you?

Please forgive me (Bryan Adams)

i) What do you think of often?

Dil Se ree.. (Dil Se)

j) What is 2+2?

November Rain (Guns N Roses)

k) What do you think of your best friend?

Beete Lamhein (The Train)

l) What is your life story?

Kasme Wade Nibhayenge Hum...

m) What do you want to be when you grow up?

Hero (Enriqe Iglesias - Who wrote the questions? Some kid? I am already grown up! Nature has prohibited me from growing any further!! But a Hero yeah... why not?)

n) what do you think when you come across the person you like most?

The way you make me feel - MJ

o) what will you dance to at you wedding?

Say you, Say me - Lionel Richie

p) what will they play at your funeral ?

Paadatha Paatinte - (Yesudas)

q) what is your hobby?

Nenjunllil nee aanu- (Fathima.. man this song was such a huge hit!)

r) what is your biggest fear?

Kal Ho Na Ho

s) what is your biggest secret?

Dilbar Mera (Anwar - I can listen to its songs any number of time.. love it)

t) what do you want right now?

Mana Janab ne Pukara nahi.....

u) what do you think of your friends?

Losing Grip (Avril Lavigne)

v) when you rush into the washroom, what do you think?

Chhod na chhod na chhod na re... (yes, exactly!)

w) The person you hate the most is in front of you, what will you tell to that person?

You are the love of my life .... (country - not sure if its the album name or country songs)

x) you have just won a lottery, what will you sing?

Gangsta's Paradise (Dangerous minds)

y) What will you post this as?

Nanni Aarodu Njan Chollendoo.. (Yesudas)

Tagging other poor souls.. hmmm.. i tag nobody. leaving it open for anybody to pick up....

Twitter is down, so..

2009-04-13T17:30:00.002+05:30

Do not take Life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

googleapps / notgoogleapps

2009-02-05T16:02:00.010+05:30

I was trying to add @googleapps to my Google Reader by copying the url from the address bar of firefox and adding it as a subscription. I have done same for all the twitter feeds I have subscribed to till now and all have worked properly. This is a first. The twitter handle comes as notgoogleapps instead of googleapps. Check out the screenshots.

Click on the images to enlarge.

I finally added the twitter feed by clicking on the RSS icon and copying the feed address.

The Biggest Disappearing Act

2009-02-05T08:58:00.013+05:30

Three famous Indian magicians are drinking at a “permit room” in Bombay.

The first boasts: “During my last show in Mangalore, I made two women from the audience disappear. Even the Sri Rama Sena couldn’t guess how I had done it.”

The second magician says: “That’s nothing. At my open air show in New Delhi I made the Qutub Minar disappear. Even the National Security Guard couldn’t guess how I had done it!”

The third sighs: “You guys are so local. When I went to Paris and made the Eiffel Tower disappear for a full hour. Even Interpol couldn’t guess how it was done!”

Just then a familiar figure walks into the bar. The three magicians turn quiet, exchange furtive glances and begin to slip away.

The curious bartender exclaims: “Yaaradhu maraya, what happened? Who is that guy?”

One of the magicians whispers: “He is the Master before whom we are lowly amateurs. He has done the biggest disappearing trick of all time. His name is Byrraju Ramalinga Raju. He made $1.5 billion disappear from his company’s balancesheet in front of everyone’s eyes over seven years, and the entire world is still looking for it!”

Via churumuri

Free Fall

2009-02-04T12:37:00.005+05:30

Few days ago, I was in the lift in Oberoi Mall headed to KFC. If you have seen the lifts in the malls, you would know that its a glass enclosed one so that you can look through and see the crowd in there. Its a nice little touch, i say. Not only it helps people in the lift to have an outside view, but also helps to remove the feeling of being trapped in enclosed spaces for some. Some phobia, i forgot the name. There is a sense of more room in the lift. What I like doing most in that lift is to press my head on to the glass and look down while the lift is descending. It gives me a feeling of falling freely. True that the lift is not even falling freely but my senses really kick up and I have that familiar tingle of free fall i felt in my dream i used to have as a kid. As a kid, I used to have this recurring dream of people sitting on green grass. Picnic, maybe. This picnic would always be held on top of a hill. One second I will be surveying the scene and the next I am running downhill towards the edge unable to stop myself. I jump off the cliff and feel that sensation of falling freely and then I would wake up. It may sound weird but I don't know whether what i felt was fear or not. I couldn't tell because my heart would not be beating hard. That sensation of free fall remained for few secs and then wore off rapidly. Or maybe it is Fear. Fear of Falling. I am not sure. Would love to check out how it feels while Bungee Jumping and Skydiving. Someday...

Incidents from my childhood

2009-01-14T16:58:00.001+05:30

Childhood is an interesting phase of life. No. Its THE interesting phase of life. The time when we were free of responsibilities, lived in our own fantasy world and the only worry that we had was what stories the next months issue of muthassi or chandamama held for us. Childhood was so much fun but I am not able to remember all the incidents that happened. There are some people who can tell what and all happened when they were so and so but not me. I don't recollect everything. Just some little portions of my childhood here and there and few of them are in black and white!. Most of the childhood seems forgotten but take a look at what all things i do remember:

1) One of the earliest memory is that of traveling in a train. The seats are wooden. No cushions. I am sleeping on the wooden seat and my dad wakes me up to give the seat to an old lady. My mom is sitting next to the window on the single seat and I move there. This is all hazy in my memory and the image is heavily blackened.

2) We are at a railway station and its a very bright day. A train comes chugging along spewing black smoke from its top. The train doesn't halt at the station. When the train has passed, I look across the tracks at a green hilly mountain and a small bamboo hut in the middle of the field.

3) A Handpump that I am trying to pump up and down to get water to wash my hands but cannot get it to work. A lady comes and does it for me and I wash my hand.

4) I wake up and immediately remove the mosquito net of our bed to fetch the kattan kaapi in a stainless steel cup on the stool. All five of us slept on one BIG bed.

5) We missed the school bus. My bro and his friends who were little adventurous boarded a lorry to go to school. I think I was afraid that I would fall off the lorry so didn't go with them. Don't remember exactly if my sister was with me too. I think she was.

6) Don't know if this happened because of point 4 above but my sis and I came back home and happily announced that we missed the bus. I remember being disappointed that mom didn't let us stay at home but instead got ready, came with us and dropped us off at school. I think she wore a light yellow saree with green leaves then. My mom had motion sickness earlier and couldn't travel in buses. I have no idea how she coped with it at that time. She doesn't have any motion sickness now.

7) Children's Day in primary school was celebrated by making everybody wear color dresses. Thats right. Anything other than school uniform was "color dress" for us.

8) A magician came to school and he made a kid drink milk and then poured it out of the kids ears. Later he threw eclairs in our midst on the ground and we forgot the Principles order to be silent and obedient. I managed to grab one or two eclairs in the melee.

9) Forgot my way to classroom after the playtime..err.. lunchtime. My bro came along somehow and I was back in class. My bro was in another school you see. His school was not far from ours. He probably was playing in the basketball court next to our school and came to drink water that he found me looking foolishly here and there.

10) I had a small aluminium suitcase in which I carried my books till third or fourth class (We used to say 3rd class or 4th class instead of 3rd standard, 4th standard).

11) We initially had a house built of bamboo and wood. We later replaced it with a concrete one. The bamboo was later reused by my bro and I to play Arjun. We fashioned out bow and arrow out of bamboos and tried to see whose aim was better.

12) My neighbour Guddu and I playing badminton. I couldn't understand why he was saying "13-love" "14-love" everytime I missed the shuttlecock.

13) We found a rusted handgun in the playground. I was curious and wanted to keep it. The other idiots with me had other plans. They showed it to the principal and he ordered them to throw it in the bushes behind the school, which they did. There were different theories as to how that gun came there but the most plausible one that seemed right was that it fell off from an Armymans pants when he came to visit his kid. Nobody had any answer to why it was rusted and why the Principal didn't call back the Armyman. Later my bro and his friends combed the bushes when i told him this but the gun was not found.

14) The last day at my primary school (I somehow passed 5th class!). It was an afternoon and my bro came to take my little sis and me home as his exams were over in the morning. We had some kind of farewell for us and I was supposed not to skip it. If I couldn't leave with my bro now, I will have to come back alone in the evening then. I went and asked permission from our class teacher. I remember asking permission and getting a resounding slap on my cheek. I was dazed but asked again and this time she barked a 'Go'. I know I was about to cry but I didn't. There was this feeling that my bro and sis are watching, so I put up a brave face and told my bro that she gave the permission. He saw the slapping but knew too well to probe further lest i cry.

15) My grandfather. He is no more with us. He stayed with us for a short period of time in Andaman but I was too naive to know any love he showered on us. All I heard from my mom and dad is I was afraid to go near him. The greenish tattoo of a fish on his shrivelled right hand was something I still remember. And we also used to hide under his bed for no reason!

16) Our Yellow Tricycle!. It was a kiddie cycle and I used to ride it with my sister standing on the plastic cover of rear wheel. My bro was too big for his age to sit on it and was always left out from riding it.

17) The swinging on the coconut tree. One coconut tree in our backyard was bent such that we could climb till the middle of the trunk. From there, it was easy to grab hold of one of the many leaves hanging down and give out a cry like tarzan while swinging on it. The younger the leaves, the better the swing for it wont come down crashing with our tiny weight. As that coconut tree grew, we also grew bolder and swung higher and higher. Fortunately, the leaves never gave on us and none of us suffered any injury. The only problem was to suffer from the insect bite. That slimy hairy little bastard which left us scratching all over. That slimy hairy little bastard had a knack of biting us at the back where our fingers won't even reach.

Jaaveda Zindagi

2009-01-07T16:05:00.000+05:30

This is something I wanted to do for a long long time... blog the lyrics of the song Jaaveda Zindagi. Here it is "Jaaveda Zindagi" from Anwar. One of my evertime favorites. The music just elevates me. Have listened to it countless times with my eyes closed and lost in the music.....

tose naina laage.... piyaa saavarein
nahi bas mein ab yeh jiya saavarein

mohabbat to ek jaaveda zindagi hai..

tose naina laage mili roshni
tose mann jo laaga mili zindagi

mohabbat to ek jaaveda zindagi hai..
tose naina laage...

mohabbat ki hai daastan zindagi
mohabbat na ho to kahaan zindagi

mohabbat to ek jaaveda zindagi hai..
tose naina laage..

shama ko pighalne ka armaan kyon hai
patange ko jalne ka armaan kyon hai
isi shauk ka imtehaan zindagi hai

mohabbat jise baksh de zindagaani
nahi maut par khatm uski kahaani

kaise jiya jaaye
kaise jiya jaaye ishq bin
nahi koi insaan mohabbat se khaali
har ek rooh pyaasi
har ek dil sawaali

mohabbat jahan hai wahan zindagi hai
mohabbat na ho to kahan zindagi hai

tose naina laage mili roshni
tose mann jo laaga mili zindagi

mohabbat jise baksh de zindagaani
nahi maut par khatm uski kahaani....

My Google Reader Subscriptions

2009-01-06T11:22:00.000+05:30

The Final

2008-12-31T17:58:00.002+05:30

Phew!.. Last day of the year and I was busy learning to scan and copy and shred papers. No I didn't get promoted to the post of peon but was closer. I was also writing CDs and sending files over the network for a while. And I fixed the copier machine and the printer too. All in a day!. Honestly, today was the busiest day of this year.

Ending the year with the hope of a shiny new tomorrow. Happy New Year Everybody!

Ghajini - Not a Review

2008-12-29T10:56:00.004+05:30

And so I watched Aamir's version of Ghajini yesterday. I wasn't keen at all to watch Aamir's version of Ghajini after having watched Surya's version in tamil. But my roomies insisted and since I haven't been hanging out with them for a while, I agreed. I don't intend to do a review of Ghajini here. That is best done by other higher mortals. These are my observations about the movie and about the crowd. All in random bullet points.

* The ticket cost Rs. 250. Tell me Aamir how can you not make profit when the ticket price is double the normal rates?
* Equally overwhelming crowd. 19 shows a day. I crave for a normal cinema hall. Multiplexes are becoming boring.
* Watching Jana Gana Mana on the big screen is something I love. Pride just kicks in.
* Opening my eyes in between to watch the movie.
* Jiah can't act.
* Don't know why but liked the scene where Aamir simmers with anger when the news in Mayapurireaches him.
* The man next to me comments "Smart" when Asin is explaining her love story to Aamir.
* The man next to me was on the edge of the seat when Asin is hiding from goons and Aamir knocks on the door.
* Asin is good. The audience warmed upto her character as the movie progressed. People let out gasps when Asin's mobile rang while she's hiding from the goons. Immersed in the movie!
* Jiah looks starved. Somebody feed her please. Nayantara was little bloated in the Tamil version but she's beautiful and sexy.
* The first victim of Aamir lays dead on the porch and his left hand changes position up and down, slightly. Not so noticeable but I was watching for these little things.
* Multiple Aamirs interacting with each other was not so convincing to me. For instance, the scene where one Aamir rests his hand over second Aamirs back. The scene looked like a cut and paste over another. Also, when all of them dance, their feet doesn't seem to touch the actual floor. You know, the photoshopped look. The one that came closest was the one on the extreme left. Maybe the whole background was also put later with each dance shot separately with green background? Don't know how they do it.
* My roomie liked the love story very much.
* I felt the songs were so so. I like the tamil songs better. They are superb.
* The cop character and villain are played out by same actors as in Tamil.
* Loved the scene where Aamir leaps at the camera as if holding the goon's head and spins it around.
* Liked Aamirs Jacket.
* The tamil climax was the sore point of that movie - Exagerrated Superhuman stunts - Arm breaking - Twin Villains - Screaming Nayantara. Aamir's version is far better.
* Thought Aamir will kill the villain by piercing him with the same rod while the rod is still lodged in his body and then both will die. But its a revenge saga. Villain gets the same treatment as the heroine.
* Aamir's stunts were somehow bearable. Brought out the animal in him. Watch the scene where he beats the cop. I was afraid the stunts will become Tamilesque but its toned down here. Nobody is flying over coconut trees.
* Why do the goons have to look so unkempt?. Give them a haircut and please not typefy them like dark and ugly.
* Asin should learn to keep her mobile in silent mode. But I forget..... its a Movie.
* The man next to me comments "Good" when the movie is over.
* I like the last scene where Aamir is sitting on the bench and the camera mvoes back. The scene is an invitation to jump right in and shoot pictures. Have been longing to take such a picture of myself sitting on the bench and photo taken from behind.

Updated: * Ghajini has an iPhone!

PS: Its my 100th post.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T16:28:00.002+05:30

I have 4 full days ahead of me with practically nothing to do, as usual.

Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate it. As for me, a Cheers will do.

Cheers!

Its not the OS, idiot. Its YOU!

2008-12-24T15:33:00.002+05:30

Last Sunday I boarded SpiceJet from Bangalore to reach Mumbai. As I sat in the flight i couldn't help noticing that every tom, dick and harry was carrying a laptop, including me. Laptops have become comparably cheaper to the desktop nowadays and given the form factor and the ease of carrying it around, people go for the laptop instead of a full fledged desktop. (I must be an odd ball who still thinks of building a dream desktop from scratch using state of the art components with an ultra wide screen for entertainment and experimentations with more than enough RAM (4 Gig+) for running 64 bit ubuntu flavour.) I remember the laptop prices somewhere near the range of 1 lac when I was doing my B.Tech. Now you get a decent one much powerful and at less than half the price compared to those that existed back then. The kids who sat in the adjacent row to me had one each. They were much younger and by the looks belonged to the NRI brigade. Their parents can afford any stuff but the point is this - laptops have replaced desktops. In a big way. Companies also provide laptops to people so that they can work from onsite or from home or anywhere, adding to the number of people who carry around a black leather bag.

There was a gentleman two rows ahead of me on the other side sitting on the aisle seat who had his laptop opened and he continued to work on his presentations making notes in his diary now and then. I couldn't hold myself from becoming a peeking tom when the letters on the presentation were in 36 point bold and spoke of hiring techniques. He was running office 2007 on XP on an IBM machine. I saw that his task bar was choc-a-block with icons. I wondered why do people need to run so many services when you don't require most of them. They can be disabled in a snap and avoids the cluttered look. Same with the desktops. All the important and non-important files and shortcuts and setups dumped on the desktop. And when the system feels bogged down with so many things and responds slowly people wonder whats wrong. My funda for using windows is to keep the desktop clean of everything except the recycle bin (i once removed it by editing the registry in my first company's machine). Run minimal services required by turning off services from control panel and msconfig. Never allow any software other than the ones i cant do without at the moment to have a taskbar icon or even have a desktop shortcut except quick launch. I used my XP like this once and was happy with the performance. I kept the system crash free from viruses (i crashed it by other means) without any anti-virus. Later my machine slowed down with AVG but it was still ok to use. But the AVG was a big letdown after it let Antivirus 2008 and Antispyware 2008 to infect my machine and make it completely unusable. That was when i turned to Ubuntu completely instead of dual boot and have been a happy Ubuntu user since then. Even with Ubuntu I keep the desktop clean and close down apps which I dont use for the timebeing. And the best thing, no need of antivirus softwares and I can always keep my USB stick virus free by just deleting the unwanted files in there which you dont get to see under windows. You can get all the free softwares that you want in linux world and experiment in so many ways to achieve that ideal desktop that you can just dream with windows. And it doesn't slow down over time like windows.

One of my friends who had lost his XP because of some freak recovery partition behavior, had installed Ubuntu on his laptop. Infact, we installed ubuntu to get the XP to boot via GRUB which lay there stubborn refusing to let us in. All the efforts failed and I finally posted this issue in Ubuntuforums - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=940526. Just when we had a faint chance of booting the XP by editing boot.ini he went and erased everything except the recovery partition and put XP over it. Disappointing will be lowkey to what I felt at that point. I was sad not only about the loss of Ubuntu but also about the chance of getting an OS to boot by tinkering with it. I was sad about what I could have learned about boot.ini file and missed. I was sad about the impatience he showed just for one day while he awaited a whole two months using Ubuntu and doing fine with it. He ever lay all our efforts to waste. He always wanted XP. He thought he couldn't recover the XP ever and installed new XP over the Ubuntu partition. The desperation to have all the things back how it was earlier. He is by no means a linux hater. He is an RHCE and knows more about linux than me. Infact, he worked in linux on some project. Actually, a large part of population do not care what goes into their machine. They install all kinds of toolbar without thinking they don't need it and it will clutter their browsers. They install apps with icons in taskbar which they dont even bother to click like Winamp agent, Quicktime, WinZip. For them, its fine if they can edit occasional word document, play mp3s on winamp, watch movies, play DVDs and CDs and browse the internet. And it doesn't matter if the desktop was cluttered or not. It doesn't matter if the disk was fragmented or not. It doesn't matter if they pull out the USB or eject it coz windows will recognize it next time. It doesn't matter to them how the desktop is themed. Things just have to work. And its hard to shake off the perception that with XP everything "just works". My experience with Ubuntu have been much better. I required no drivers in Ubuntu to make my hardware work compared to XP where I had to install separate drivers for display, memory card reader and webcam. Everything worked out of box with Hardy. Its a perception ingrained in most of the users which is difficult to shake that some things wont work in linux. It just takes Google and little patience to find out how to get around the problem. One would do the same with windows too if they encounter some problem. But still there is a familiarity to windows that is just hard to shake off. People need their Start button and Control Panel. The blue sky and green fields to dump their files. Linux beats Windows in all areas except this. Familiarity. The erasing of Ubuntu to get back to XP shows a desire to be back in the familiar turf.

Once I used to be a Windows hater but over the time I realized that its not about the OS. Its how you use it. With Windows also you can be safe and sound from viruses, provided you take adequate steps, and have the snazziest desktop that you can imagine (I like the slickness of Vista). Use Linux without any proper care and it will harm your system. Use a command foolishly in Linux and your machine is dead. Use your windows registry foolishly and see the BSOD. Load any OS, Windows or Linux, with too much apps and it will slow down. The funda is same. Take care of your OS properly and see how it flies.

Dedicated to my Best Friend

2008-12-16T16:10:00.001+05:30

I'll be all right
I'll be all right

Tu hai to tedhi medhi rahein
Ulti pulti baatein
Seedhi lagti hai

Tu hai to jhoothe muthe vaadein
Dushman ke iraade
Sacche lagtein hain

Jo Dil mein taare vaare de jaga
Woh tu hi hai,Tu hi hai
Jo roote roote de hasa
Tu hi hai wohi

Jaane kyun Dil jaanta hai
Tu hai to
I'll be all right

Jaane kyun Dil jaanta hai
Tu hai to
I'll be all right

Saari duniya Ek taraf hai
Ek taraf hai hum
Har Khushi to door bhage
Mil rahein hai gum

But when u smile for me
World seems all right
Yeh meri zindagi
Pal mein khil jaaye

Jaane kyun

Jaane kyun Dil jaanta hai
Tu hai to
I'll be all right

Jaane kyun Dil jaanta hai
Tu hai to
I'll be all right

Ye ye ye
I'll be all right
I'll be all right

Chote chote kuch palon ka
Dostana ye
Jaane kyun abb lag raha hai
Jaana maana yeah
Cos when u smile for me
World seems all right
Yeah saare pal yehi
Yuhi tham se jaaye
Jaane kyun

Jaane kyun Dil jaanta hai
Tu hai to
I'll be all right

Jaane kyun Dil jaanta hai
Tu hai to
I'll be all right

Tu hai to tedhi medhi rahein
Ulti pulti baatein
Seedhi lagti hai

Tu hai to jhoothe muthe vaadein
Dushman ke iraade
Sacche lagtein hain

Jo Dil mein taare vaare de jaga
Woh tu hi hai,Tu hi hai
Jo roote roote de hasa
Tu hi hai wohi

Jaane kyun Dil jaanta hai
Tu hai to
I'll be all right

Jaane kyun Dil jaanta hai
Tu hai to
I'll be all right