California Suite Play Review and Piranha at B-Flat

Watched this play today at Alliance Francaise .
Actually I watched only first two parts, as the acting
wasn't that good. All the actors seemed novices.
Even the theater was not a very well built one,
but I had watched Extremities at not a very good
theater Kala Soudha but had enjoyed it. So I would
say it was the acting which I didn't like.

Since I gave up on the play in the middle of
it, simply roaming around I reached B Flat
in Indira Nagar. And luckily Piranha was playing.

Piranha playing at B Flat, Indira Nagar, Bangalore

Piranha playing at B Flat, Indira Nagar, Bangalore

I didn't know Piranha earlier, but now I won't forget
them. I did never enjoy rock music earlier but today I did.
I had a helluva time out there. So, thanks Piranha !
I got to shake hands with the drummer : George
and one of the guitarists : Shalini Mohan.



At Alliance Francaise  inside the toilets, there
was an interesting verse by Alfred de Musset :

Alfred de Musset's poem inside a toilet at Alliance Francaise, Bangalore

Here is the original in French :

Vous qui venez ici
dans une humble posture

De vos flancs alourdis
décharger le fardeau

Veuillez quand vous aurez
Soulagé la nature

Et déposé dans l'urne
un modeste cadeau

Epancher dans l'amphore
un courant d'onde pure

Et sur l'autel fumant
placer pour chapiteau

Le couvercle arrondi
dont l'auguste jointure

Aux parfums indiscrets
doit servir de tombeau

And the translation :

Thou, in here
Take on a humble posture
To relieve yourself of your burden

After answering nature's call
After placing in the urn, nature's little gift
Please let flow sheer ripples of clear water
And bring down on this glorious recepient,
as decoration this rounded lid
Whose spartan structure like a tomb
will bury all traces of unpleasant odour

Jammu/Katra Hotels

Katra - National Guest House, (close to Katra bus stand and Hotel Chirag International), ☎ 01991-232165/094192-15791/098581-63803. Clean and spacious rooms. 24hrs checkout. Rs600-700/day for a double/triple.

Jammu - Hotel Shivam Lodge, (come out of the railway station and take left, move 300-400 meters and it's on the other side of the road), ☎ 0191-2476909/2477909/2477030. checkin: 12PM; checkout: 12PM. Located at a walking distance from Jammu Tawi Railway station. Good room service. Rs.1200-1300(Ignore the price they give, ask for Rs. 1200/- and stick to it.

Ganguly joins Pune Warriors - The Bong Connection?

"We were waiting for Ashish Nehra's fitness report and ultimately the report came yesterday. I was already in talks with Ganguly and we decided that the amount of experience that Sourav has in cricket will no doubt help the team. So we finalised Ganguly last night," Pune Warriors Team director Abhijit Sarkar said referring to the finger injury that Nehra has been nursing.

 Couldn't help but notice that Pune Warriors Team director Abhijit Sarkar is a bong :-)

Online payments in India : some rough data

Let me share some rough data for an online travel company, a big one (through a trusted source) :
Out of every 100 transactions :

70 are credit/debit card transactions.
30 are net banking.

Of the credit card transactions :
60-70% are VISA

Of the net banking transactions :
~30% are ICICI
~15-20% are HDFC
~15% are SBI

Necessary Targets

Watched this play today @ Rang Shankara.
Worth a watch.

Here are details : (source)

NECESSARY TARGETS
by Eve Ensler

Five women in a refugee camp are recovering from war and all that that means to civilians and particularly women. A mixture of ages and backgrounds, they are here waiting, and trying to survive. Two foreign women, one a psychiatrist with twenty-five years of affluent private practice behind her, the other a young counsellor determined to write a book on 'women in war', are flown in to help them... To help. Does 'talking' help? Does making a story public heal a private pain? The two professionals, with conflicting attitudes, are pushed to their own limits in this confrontation.

NECESSARY TARGETS is not about war, but the aftermath of war, when 'we' who have suffered encounter 'them', who want to help. Or is it when 'we' who want to help encounter 'them', who have suffered?

ON STAGE:
SHARANYA RAMPRAKASH, MAGGY JACQMIN, MAYA GIRISH, SHEILA GOVINDRAJ, SPATICA RAMANUJA, PADMAVATHI RAO and SIRI RAVIKUMAR

BACKSTAGE:
LIGHTS: ARUN MURTHY
ASSISTANT DIRECTION: HELEN HAYWOOD
PRODUCTION MANAGER: NIKHIL BHARADWAJ
DESIGN &DIRECTION: PRAKASH BELAWADI

Sangakara seldging pollock in 2007 world cup

Thoughts...

Some of them are mine, some of them are others'
Some of them do thrive, some of them just wither.

Number of WC semifinals and finals played by various teams

From 1975 to 2015, there have been 11 editions of world cup cricket.

Here is a count of how many times a particular team has reached finals or semis :

Semis :
7 aus
7 nz
6 ind
6 pak
5 eng
4 sri
4 wi
4 sa
1 ken

Finals :
7 aus
3 eng
3 wi
3 sri
3 ind
2 pak
1 nz

Final wins:
5 aus
2 wi
2 ind
1 pak
1 sri

So every time Australia have reached semis they have reached finals.
England, despite reaching 3 finals, are yet to win a single one.

Map of unrest

Map of the revolt

Here is a nice pictorial summary of current revolts going on in
Tunisia,Libya,Egypt,Algeria,Sudan,Syria,Yemen,Baharin

Source

Vishal Bhardwaj : 3 Khoon Maaf

I must say that Vishal Bhardwaj has mastered the art of over promising
and under delivering. Starting from Omkara to Kaminey and now 7 Khoon Maaf.
He was able to lure me to theater with all 3 and disappoint as a result.

I would just like to figure out what makes even the otherwise intelligent
reviewers go ga-ga about his movies. Here are my guesses :

1. Quite early in his career, he gave us Maqbool. So he has earned some goodwill
which would take time to get burnt out.

2. He attributes his inspirations to popular literary figures, including Shakespeare
and Ruskin Bond, which maintains an intellectual aura around him and his movies.

That's the thing about reviewers. But what about the audience. Why do they give
him some very positive reactions?

3. He manages to get some of the finest actors to work in his movies, the likes of
Irfan Khan and Naseeruddin Shah. Add to it the crowd pulling stars, starting from
Omkara. This combination of star power and actor power is hard to beat as Prakash Jha
proved with Rajneeti.

4. He can shoot some really smart scenes which he can put into trailers and fool people.

What else?

PS: BTW here is the most honest and unbiased review of 7 Khoon Maaf  I have come across.

A small,small world

Watched this play in Rang Shankara, this went saturday.
I liked the way live camera and projector was used in the play.
It became pretty boring towards the end though.

   

Details :

Greenland, close to the North Pole, 26th April 2007: By accident a helicopter pilot sees a man in the ice, picks him up and saves his life. The man is Hamidur Rahman from Bangladesh, 30 years old and on his way to his dream land Canada – illegally, ill-equipped and on foot. He has come from Germany, where he was about to be deported back to Bangladesh. It is not the first time Hamidur is running – from his political involvement in Bangladesh he runs away to Malaysia, from there he flees with his Malaysian wife and their son to Germany. What is he running from and who will believe him? Hamidurs life is the story of a smart villager on the global move, getting dangerously close to his dreams and failing to find a place in this world. Two actors with minimal sets and a camera, re-imagine and examine scenes from Hamidurs life. They lend their voices to people who knew Hamidur and seeks to find grains of truth in the fiction that is called documentary.

• Language :
  English
• Genre :
  Documentary
• Cast & Crew :
  Konradin Kunze , Abshishek Majumdar
• Director :
  Konradin Kunze , Sophia Stepf
• Length :
  1 hr 40 mins
• Writer :
  Konradin Kunze , Sophia Stepf

Guruji drops music as Google music marches on

Imitating Guruji, Google had launched music around 22 Oct, 2010.
But now the pioneer itself seems to have dropped music, might be
due to some legal complications.

Can't help comparing it with the social gaming space. Zynga does
similar things out there, copying the most popular games and ruin
them with its money power.

Google Adsense should pay interest on unpaid earnings

In the hope that I would earn something some day, I had integrated Google Adsense in my blog.
Seems that it would never happen as I have around $7 after more than 3 years. And I am sure
there are many people like me out there. Google will never pay us since it doesn't pay as long
as your balance reaches $100.

But, and it's a very strong but, Google is holding MY money and countless others'. And it's
earning a lot of interest on the same. I demand that Google pays that interest to me since
its MY money which is earning the interest.

If Google doesn't pay that interest to me, it's evil.

PPF accounts - ICICI's best kept secret

Update (1st July,2012) : 
If you have PPF account with ICICI, you can transfer money online to it from your ICICI savings account.

Copied verbatim from here.(since I have had the same experience and now hold a PPF a/c with ICICI)

I decided to open a PPF account. First, the venerable SBI closed on me (it was saturday after lunch). The post-office also shot me down (it's right across the street from the main bangalore SBI) although they didnt really give me a reason why. My PPF action item was not going down easy.

Now, at some point, I had read that ICICI was recently authorized to collect funds for opening a PPF account. A press release from ICICI stating that they are going to offer online access to PPF account from your savings account at ICICI. The ICICI website, perversely, makes no mention of this fact anywhere. You can search for PPF all day long at icicibank.com and you wont find a thing. The other scheme mentioned in the press release, some senior saving scheme, gets a page of its own so you're left wondering if the addition of the PPF in the release was a huge mistake by the Marketing Dept.

I figured i ought to give ICICI a shot. I had already heard 'no' twice and was getting used to rejection. i stepped into the main ICICI branch and, wonder of wonders, they do open a PPF for you if you ASK. Ten minutes and one submitted photograph later, I was given a PPF account number WITH online access from my savings account. The account would be activated 10 working days after the submission of the form. There, wasnt that simple?

Questions that I want to scream at the top of my lungs are (but didnt) are:

(A) Why does SBI require two photographs, compulsory witnesses for nomination AND an initial cash deposit? By contrast, ICICI wants one photograph and cash/cheque and no signatures when nominee is a major!

2. Why is ICICI not publicizing its PPF capabilities? Is one web page extra too much cost? I'm guessing, since opening a PPF at ICICI does not benefit ICICI in any substantial way, they'd rather not spend time or money on informing the public.

Jodhpur roadways enquiry phone number

0291-2544989(worked)

0291-2544686(didn't work)

Adsense & Wikipedia

As Adsense is about to celebrate its 8th birthday in a few
months from now, Wikipedia has just celebrated its 10th.

Had Wikipedia agreed to display ads on its site, both Wikipedia
and Adsense would have made millions if not billions.

Yet, Wikipedia continues to thrive on user donated dollars.

Let's see, what the future has in store !

Yahoo! TV vs. Google TV

Haven't used any of them, but while reading online,
came across this and this.

Seems like, Google TV is going to be much more complex
and bigger, like everything Google is. They allow apps, search,
home screen customization etc.

Yahoo! TV on the other hand seems to be much simpler
and just a couple of overlay screens on the television, to buy
things online etc.

Let's see which one takes the cake!

No one killed Jessica is a Hindi movie?

I like the movie, but I had to take a name to prove my point.
Most of the contemporary Bollywood movies use English dialogues
liberally. In the advertisements and the certificates given to these
movies, it should be made compulsory to  list the languages used in the
movie.

There are people who don't understand English and don't want to watch
a movie which has too much of it. They should not be cheated by projecting
a movie as a Hindi movie, when it's not one.

Buying shoes should become easier

It should be same as buying packaged food items/electronic gadgets.
But rather it's like buying clothes.

What I mean is, there should be a model number for every shoe type,
so that the prices can be compared across the stores.
At least from the manufacturers who are selling abnormally expensive
shoes, for e.g. : Adidas, Nike & Reebok.

Then there should be a leaflet, explaining the material used in the shoe.

With the kind of prices they have touched these days,
they need to give the customer a better picture of what's
being sold.

Another RGV movie in limelight for wrong reasons

Contract, which released on 18th July, 2008 was followed
by serial bomb blasts in Ahmedabad on 26 July, 2008.
In the movie, terrorists bombed the hospitals where the victims
of bomb blasts were being rushed in. Actual bomb blasts
mimicked the same pattern.

Now, after the release of Raktha Charitra 2 , Suri, on whom
the movie was based and who was the prime suspect of killing
Paritala Ravi, has been killed.

The movie released on 3rd December, 2010 and the killing on
3rd Jan, 2011.

Contrasting trends in Indian web portals

While Yahoo,Bing and Flickr are censoring porn content in India,

Rediff is morphing into a soft-porn website by displaying backlessly dressed

girls on its home page.

Google Instant - The Real Beneficiary?

I think it's Google since Google Instant makes sure
that number of ad impressions go up 10 to 20 fold.

To the end user, it's more of a distraction.

ToiletWiki

Move beyond Wikileaks, here is a wiki which helps you take a leak : ToiletWiki

Indian Television needs location based Ads

Technology has advanced, and it makes no sense
to show ads for cold creams in southern parts of India,
when the mercury drops in northern states.

Update(3/12/2010) : I think one such company is Amagi, which provides
location based ads for television in partnership with many
cable operators such as Hathway, Digicable etc.

In order for them to be able to extend their business to DTH providers,
such as Airtel,Tata Sky etc., they will have to place their software into
their set top boxes, which currently do not have that much RAM.

Indian athletes need to get sexed up

Joseph Abraham - gold winner in Asiad 400m hurdles

This is Joseph Abraham, unintentionally displaying his well-chiseled bod after winning a gold for India in Asiad'2010. Even with his mustache, I will be ready to sign an advertising contract with him if he's willing to go topless in the ads.

He, along with other Indian athletes who have won medals in Asiad and Commonwealth, should be among the best paid athletes from the advertisers' point of view. Especially the female athletes, if they could project a sexy image of theirs, taking a cue from female athletes worldwide. They already have good bods, fantastic achievements. All they need is that oomph factor!

Some simple search engine optimizations for your website Tehelka.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 3:11 PM
Subject: Some simple search engine optimizations for your website
To: feedback@tehelka.com, editor@tehelka.com


Dear Sir/Ma' m,

I am a big fan of Tehelka and I read most of its content online.
Needless to say that you have an enormous corpus of very
high quality content. At the same time, I think, you have
not put enough effort towards search engine optimization(SEO).

Why do you need SEO?
 To make your website profitable, you are showing Ads.
---- To get more clicks on ads, you need more people to visit your site.
--------To get more people on your site, you need to ensure that your site
 is ranked highly in search results of Google/Yahoo etc.
------------Search engines will rank you site highly, if you follow certain simple
guidelines provided by them.

What are those guidelines?

1. The simplest of all, which Tehelka.com is ignoring is not giving a meaningful

title on every page. All your webpages have the same title : 

<title>Tehelka - India's Independent Weekly News Magazine</title>

which is useless from a user's and search engine's point of view.

So, give a meaningful title to every page. 

For e.g. this page : 

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main47.asp?filename=Ne301010Ananth_Kumar.asp

can have the same title, as that of the main article : 

Ananth Kumar fostered a revolt.  The ploy boomeranged

2. Use meta tags

Meta tags help a search engine in understanding what your web page is about.

For example : http://www.chakpak.com (a popular bollywood portal) has these meta tags on their main page: 

<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Chakpak - Your Bollywood Adda - India's most comprehensive website on Bollywood, provides encyclopedic information including bollywood news, movie videos, reviews, wallpapers, quiz, discussions & more on Indian movies, actors & actresses"/>

<meta name="keywords" content="bollywood India, bollywood online, hindi bollywood, old bollywood, Indian movies"/>

3. Use meta tags on every page : 

Not only should you use the meta tags on your home page, but

every page.

Books on SEO : 

http://www.flipkart.com/art-seo-eric-enge-stephan-book-8184048513

http://www.flipkart.com/seo-warrior-john-jerkovic-book-818404867x

In short, I want Tehelka to become so profitable, that it never has to wind up

its website to cut costs. To become profitable, you need to become popular/more accessible

without compromising on your content. With SEO, you can do just that.

Let me know if you need any more help.

--

Another Mig Crash

While appearing for various engineering entrance examinations during 12th standard,

I had appeared for NDA's entrance examination. I cleared the examination but

could not go for the interview due to time constraints.

Now looking at the number of MIG crashes, that sounds like a great decision I made.

There have been roughly 70 crashes in last 4 years, and many many more before.

I can only sympathize with the dead pilots' family and thank my stars that I am not

one of them.

Hampi - more

Queen's bath : 

Vitthal temple : 

Bazaar ouside the Vitthal temple - supposedly in the empire sandalwood was more precious and gold/diamond used to be sold by cupfuls in these bazaars. There are 3 such bazaars.

Bazaar ouside the Vitthal temple - supposedly in the empire sandalwood was more precious and gold/diamond used to be sold by cupfuls in these bazaars. There are 3 such bazaars.

Vitthal temple entrance

King's balance : 

Earlier here used to hang a balance, where king was weighed with gold/grains which was distributed among the poor.

Mango tree restaurant : 

View of Tungbhadra river from Mango tree restaurent - notice the red color of the water due to the ongoing mining nearby.

View of Tungbhadra river from Mango tree restaurent - notice the red color of the water due to the ongoing mining nearby.

Nrisimha Lakshmi Temple :

Lakshmi is missing - since that part was broken. Even the band connecting the knees was added recently.

Hampi

Numbers of some guides :
S. Chandra : +919449458740 (chandradabbi@yahoo.com)
Nagraj: +919480510871

1. Most of the temples in Hampi, have their main statues stolen/broken from their Garbhgrihas.
It's because locals/foreign attackers knew/believed that below the main statues there is lot
of gold/precious metals. Hence, in most of the temples, puja is no longer performed, since
according to Hindu beliefs, puja is not performed in temples with broken statues.

2. On the walls of the many temples, one can find images from Kamasutra - of different positions.

3. In order to find out which temple belong to which deity(since many of the statues are stolen),
archaeologists looked at the statues of the Dwarpalakas(gatekeepers). Jai-vijay indicated
a temple of Vishnu/Krishna whereas Nandi/Bhringhi indicate a Shiv temple.

4. Major expenses for this one day trip:
(i) Tatkal reservations for two in SL category, to-and-fro from Bangalore-to-Hospet (542*2 = 1084/-)
(ii) Hampi Guide : Rs. 700/-
(iii) Auto for touring Hampi: Rs. 350/-
(iv) Lunch at Mango tree (Mango lassi + Mango tree special thali + Cashew nut currey + 2 extra chapati) = Rs. 275/-
(v) Night meals at Naivedyam, close to the Hospet railway station(Rs. 170/-) (Veg Biryani, 4 Tandoori roti, Kadai Paneer)
(vi) Laxmi Guest House(Behind the tourism office, close to the Virupaksha temple), from 10AM to 6PM : Rs. 200/-


Bade Ganesh Temple : 

View of hillocks from bade ganesh temple

Bade Ganesh statue

View of hillocks from Bade Ganesh temple

Chhote Ganesh Temple : 

Chhote Ganesh Temple - Front

Chhote Ganesh Temple - Back - Parvati hugging Ganesh from behind

Choote Ganesh temple : Bade ganesh ji was a temple for the elite, so it has a Garbhgriha for the deity,
whereas this temple is open for all without any garbhgriha. Built by a trader for commoners.

Sister stones :

Underground temple :

King's palace :

Aqueduct

Secret chamber

Food plate for soldiers - made of stone - notice the 4 holes at the corners for vegetables/chutneys

Stepped stone water tank

Janana enclosure :

Mahauts' residence

Watch tower - eunuchs used to guard the Janana enclosure

Lotus Mahal

Another watch tower at Janana enclosure

Chambers for 11 royal elephants

Chambers for 11 royal elephants.

Badava Linga :

Mastakabhishek used to be performed through the star shaped roof

Badav Linga

Gopura Krishna Temple : 

Entrace of the Gopur Krishna Temple - in the left corner a Kamastura position(lady on the top)

Virupakash temple : 

One of the few temples in Hampi where puja is still performed, also famous for the inverted shadow effect of the main tower.

Programming as a mechanical job

Source : The Pragmatic Programmer

Conventional wisdom says that once a project is in the coding phase,
the work is mostly mechanical, transcribing the design into executable
statements. We think that this attitude is the single biggest reason that
many programs are ugly, inefficient, poorly structured, unmaintainable,
and just plain wrong.

Coding is not mechanical. If it were, all the CASE tools that people
pinned their hopes on in the early 1 980s would have replaced programmers long ago.
There are decisions to be made every minute—decisions
that require careful thought and judgment if the resulting program is
to enjoy a long, accurate, and productive life.

Swine flu vaccination

took it on 5th November, at Goyal hospital, Jodhpur.
It consisted of Agrippal S1 and Vacciflu-S.
Though I am not sure if it's enough to take one dose.
Somewhere I read that you need to take 2 doses
for it to be effective.

Cost : Rs. 850/-

Diwali photos

Some photos clicked this Diwali :

Rizwan

Watched this play in Rang Shankara two weeks ago.
Couldn't grasp much, but overall worth a watch.
Covers the tragic fate of Kashmiri children.

Cast and credits :
Abhijit Pakrashi
Akshay Gandhi
Ameen Haque
Anuja Ghosalkar
Arpita Phukan Biswas
Ashwini Kumar Chakre
Chanakya Vyas
Divya Jain
Jayesh Kumar sharma
Naveen kumar
Neha Bhat
Pallavi krishna
Pratyush singh
Ramneek singh
Shreekanth L. rao
Sweta Desai goudar
Tanzil rahman
Veena Basavarajaiah
Virginia Rodrigues

Munnar Travelogue

Elections are on in Kerala - even Munnar is not spared, flags of Congress and UDF are shown

I had a long weekend, 15 Oct to 17 Oct, which I tried to spend in Munnar, and it

partially worked out. Here is what I had planned originally : 

1. Bangalore to Aluva, by train(start on Thursday 21:40 and reach Aluva on Friday 09:30)

2. Aluva to Munnar, by road (finish the journey in 1 hour according to this website).

3. Spend roughly 2.5 days in Munnar and follow steps 2. and 1. in reverse order.

But as I figured out, source for step 2. was horribly wrong.

Aluva to Munnar is 120 KM, not 18 KM. And so the journey

took more than 3 hours by taxi(a bus would have taken at least

5-6 hours).

So I reached Munnar around 1AM after vomiting twice on the
way, since it was a hilly terrain and the car driver was driving at
a fast enough pace.

Animals grazing - on the way to Top station view point

Anyway, in short, I could spend around roughly 1.5 days
actually touring Munnar.

Here is some useful info :

1. Hotel Misha, (Close to the main market in old Munnar. Opposite Hotel Green Ridge.), ☎ 04865-230376/232376/230076 (mishaholidays@gmail.com), [15]. checkout: 12AM. Can be negotiated further down till Rs. 700-800/- in peak season and lower in off season. 1000

2. Rent a bike :
Rs. 350/- per day. Contact Mr. Chandran - Phone : 9447220648/ 04865-231113

Contact D. Ravichandran - Phone : 9446130363/ 04865-2331543. Rent a taxi :

For more details :
Wikitravel Munnar

Beautiful landscape of Munnar

View outside Tata Tea Museum

Echo Point, but the voice didn't echo for me and others :-)

Government has declared it as a weak bridge, but haven't stopped the traffic yet.

Rent a bike in Munnar

Contact Person : R. Chandran

Phone : 9447220648/ 04865-231113

Psychology of Debugging

Psychology of Debugging

Debugging itself is a sensitive, emotional subject for many developers.

Instead of attacking it as a puzzle to be solved, you may encounter

denial, finger pointing, lame excuses, or just plain apathy.

Embrace the fact that debugging is just problem solving, and attack it

as such.

Having found someone else's bug, you can spend time and energy laying
blame on the filthy culprit who created it. In some workplaces this

is part of the culture, and may be cathartic. However, in the technical

arena, you want to concentrate on fixing the problem, not the blame.

Source

It's a painful thing

It is a painful thing

To look at your own trouble and know

That you yourself and no one else has made it

-- Sophocles, Ajax

What happens to the Early worm?

The early bird might get the worm, but what happens to the early
worm?

From The Pragmatic Programmer(Here is the print edition)

Simplyfly

Just finished this book.

Autobiography of Capt. Gopinath.

One of the best stories I have

read in a long time.

Must read.

You can buy from here.

Strange Railway rules

I was trying to book tickets in Tatkal category at 8AM using

ngpay  app on my mobile and I got this message: 

As per the railway rules you cannot book Tatkal tickets on ngpay
between 8AM and 9AM. Please try after 9AM.

Similar restriction is imposed on Cleartrip.

So, a consumer is bound to book Tatkal tickets between

8AM and 9AM, only on IRCTC.

What a mockery of competitive trade!

Not to mention that, despite being in existence for more than a decade,

IRCTC still sucks at its User Interface and speed.

Forceful conversion to Christianity in Arunachal Pradesh

Forceful Religious Conversion Of Buddhists Into Christianity In Arunachal Pradesh

From someone

दुनिया से जो पाया था, अश्कों में मिला है
सुनते हैं कि इस पर भी ज़माने को गिला है
 - I don't know from who

A fantastic feature : HDFC NetSafe

In Short : 

1. Log in using your Debit/Credit card

number.

2. Allocate some funds towards a new credit card.

3. Create a one-time use credit card, which

expires as soon as it's used, if not used it expires

in 24 hours.

4. Unused amount will be credited back to your account.

In Long : 

Anyone with a HDFC debit or credit card, 

if you don't know about HDFC Netsafe, you

are missing something.

Often one has to submit his/her credit

card details on a website, in order

to access a certain feature. Many a times

the website saves your credit card number

and charges the same for recurring expenses.

And I don't really like that. Ideally, I would

like to create a temporary credit card, which

would expire as soon as it is used for the

first time.

That is exactly what you can do with HDFC

Netsafe. 

How to add your mobile number to Do Not Call Registry(India)

http://ndncregistry.gov.in/ndncregistry/aboutRegister.jsp

Hidden language discovered in Northeast

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_hidden-language-discovered-in-northeast_1448948

197 suicides and 1,733 deaths at India's nuclear establishments in last 15 yrs

http://news.rediff.com/report/2010/oct/04/suicides-at-indias-atomic-centres-in-15-years.htm