Success

Is it necessary to have a "thick" skin
in order to "succeed"?

Worst laptop ever : Lenovo N100 3000

Worst laptop ever : Lenovo N100 3000

Noida : Sector-21 to Income Tax office in Sector-20 to Post office in Sector-19

Today morning I made a trip from Sector-21 to
Income tax office in Sector-20 to Post office
in Sector-19. Here's the map.(Lines
indicate the roads I took)


View Larger Map

Cuil

This new search engine has been
launched today. I ran a few ego searches on it, one for
"my name" another for "fundoo quotes". Results
ain't good. Will wait and watch.

pedestrians

No matter what the traffic situation in Bangalore is, pedestrians
have it better than their NCR counterparts. In NCR, the roads are really
wide, but the footpaths seem to be conspicuous by their absense.

disadvantage of flights

your friends can't piggyback with you
in case of a waitlisted ticket :-(

Good movies watched recently

The Dark Knight
Adaptation(2002)
Himalaya

I miss IIT

IITian pulls off a Sholay stunt

IIT student climbs 110 feet high water tank

Ex-IITian gives up suicide bid

Browsing

It is surprising, all of a sudden, my browsing takes a lot less
time than it used to only few weeks ago. I am done with RSS
feeds in few seconds and there seems to be nothing else
to read about...

RSS

There is no need to subscribe to all the blogs
you like. Some can be browsed and forgotten
too...

Noida Municipal Corporation - helpline

I called them today( July-07,2008) at this number : 0120 - 2425025
to complaint about the clogged drainage system
right in front of my office at A-56,Sector-64.
My complaint number :
30-2008070710043

More info here.

Update I (July-10,2008,10:26AM) :
Got a call from 9810721650,
saying that he is the new supervisor
here, and would get it cleaned up.

Update II (July-15,2008,11:39AM):
I didn't come to office yesterday. Today
morning I saw the drains had a lot
of garbage by their sides, which was
actually a result of cleaning which
had happened yesterday morning.
And, in this rainy season, it is only
a matter of time before this garbage
goes back to the drains.

Kala Pahad(Kala Pahar)

Just finished this book(Hindi/Mewati).

My comments :
It's a good book. Its climax reminds me of the movie
Marhi Da Deeva, when Raj Babbar starts hallucinating
before his death. In fact, even though the movie and
this book track two completely different themes, a lot
of characters and incidents can be correlated. Character
played by Kanwaljeet Singh comes pretty close to
Babu Khan in the book. Cutting of the tree in the movie,
where the Marhi is placed has its counterpart in this
book when Babu Khan cuts a tree at DadaKhanu.
And if there is a movie to be made on this book ever,
its central character Salemi, in my mind, will be
best played by Pankaj Kapur.



Here is a translation of the blurb :
Based in the region of Mewat. Mewat region consists of
segments from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana.
Mewatis had fought the Mugal emperor Baabar and
they have preserved India's "Mixed Heritage" till
today. "Kala Pahad" (which translates to "Black Mountain")
is not only the title of this novel, but it also symbolises
Mewat's geographical and cultural identity. The
author is not only attracted towards the historic
and heroic figure of Mewat, Hasan Khan Mewati,
but envelopes the shadows of the Ayodhya
tragedy as well. He gives the creative expression
to the damage done to the tolerant culture of
Mewat by this tragedy. Importance of the novel
lies in the fact that it allows people on the fringes
of the society to play the central role. Though
a "Dalit", author is free from any "Dalit Syndrom/Complex"
in the treatment of his characters.
----translation of the blurb ends here----

For more about people from Mewat(Meos),
read this.
This book has been quoted in another book on Meos :
Against History, Against State: Counterperspectives from the Margins By Shail Mayaram

Just for the sake of it...

1. I had added a movie named "Shasha Drushti", which was surprisingly
missing from IMDB. It has been approved and is live now.
I had also added the names of Anjan Srivastav and Javed Khan
to Chak De's cast on the same site.

2. LENOVO 3000 N100 laptops seem to have some
real problem with batteries. Me and my room mate,
both have had the batteries replaced twice in almost
17 months. First time it was under warranty. Next
time each of us had to threaten them by invoking
the name of Consumer court. I am in Noida,India
BTW.

3. Firewire/ILink cables available in Delhi
don't seem to be very reliable. On an average
I would say 50% of them are faulty. In Noida,
I couldn't even find a shop with ILink cables.
Once I got it from Nehru Place and another time
from Chandani Chowk. Both didn't work.
It will take a hell lot of time to go there again
just to have them replaced. Better to buy
the SONY cable. 10 times more expensive,
(Rs. 1500 vs. Rs. 150) but at least it will work.

Introduction to Software Engineering in Java

MIT's OpenCourseWare has one more course in its wings.
Updated today Introduction to Software Engineering in Java.
Anyone willing to take a JAVA primer should consider it.

Firefox 3 is out !

Many of you would already know this but if
you don't, get it from here.
Most of the add-ons including Firebug,
Add block etc. have released their
compatible versions as well but you
will have to find them manually over
the net, Firefox isn't yet able to find them.

As far as look and feel goes, yes it looks better.

1. Back/Forward buttons are easier to locate
with the mouse. Seems like a good usage of
Fritt's law.

2. Address bar auto completion searches on
page titles as well. This particular change,
I am not sure, if it actually helps anyone.
Personally, I have got used to the auto-completion
based on URL only, so this particular feature
is more of a nuisance.

If two urls have similar beginnings,
for e.g. finance.google.com/
and finance.google.com/
then depending on which one has been
used more frequently recently, will
come on top.


3. For bookmarking a page simply click the star
in the address bar.

4. A search box at the bottom right of the download
box. Plus some virus scanning is done after every download.

5. Free Download Manager has updated itself
for FF3 compatibility.

6. If you are closing FF3 with multiple tabs open,
now the default action is to save the tabs and quit.

7. Remember password dialogue box doesn't block
loading of the page.

8. Refresh, cancel and goto button are very very
sleek.

PS: It's currently quite unstable and keeps crashing often,
but has the ability to restore your previous tabs even after
crashing.

Mentor Graphics' shares soar

All the shareholders of Mentor Graphics
( including the employees) are laughing
all the way to the bank as its share prices
have soared in anticipation of acquisition
by Cadence at $16 per share as against yesterday's
close of $12.33. Prices rose by as much as 27%
today. Though there is some anxiety amongst
the employees of both the companies as both
of them have competing products in many
market segments. But even if Cadence completes
the acquisition, consolidation of products is
going to take a long long time since most of their
customers have a complicated and delicate
tool flow set up and they are rather reluctant
to any kind of change.

A chat with MG employees highlights the
concern that they feel like they are in a
lose-lose situation. If the deal goes through,
some of them will obviously be laid off. If
it doesn't, Mentor's business will be impacted
since customers will always be reluctant
to buy Mentor's products due to their
uncertain future.

Some of the competing products of Cadence and Mentor :
Emulation : Veloce(Mentor) Palladium(Cadence)
Verilog Simulation : ModelSim(Mentor) NcVerilog(Cadence)

IP 83.32.58.85 Banned : from accessing fundooquotes

On 12th June, someone from the IP 83.32.58.85
tried to break into fundooquotes.com.
It sent 2500 visits to login.php consuming 224.33 MB
of my precious bandwidth.
Banned !

A long time ago there was an attack too. Which took the
advantage of the fact that pligg is an open source CMS,
and hence it added a huge number of users, and then
comments on their behalf selling cheap pharmacy(read Viagra).

Even then, I had to make some changes and blacklist a lot of IPs.
Here is that blacklist.
This blacklist should be used by anyone, basing their sites on pligg.

Bollywood Blog Wave

So, RGV is the latest to join the Bollywood Blog bandwagon.
I hadn't had enough motivation to check Aamir's and Amitabh's
blogs, but RGV was too difficult to resist.
And I wasn't disappointed too. RGV talks about film making,
and that's what I want to read. I checked Amitabh's blog
as well afterwards, and he documents every little detail.
For e.g., boarded the flight, flight landed, went to Mehboob
studio. Good. Me not interested though.
Aamir's blog had something about Sachin and IPL. Couldn't
enthuse me enough, so had to skip it.

As far as RSS feeds are concerned, RGV's blog rules.
The only way I am ever going to read a blog is through
RSS feeds. For me they are synonymous with each other.
RGV's feeds provide the full content of the post.
Amitabh's feeds are very very short. Just one or two lines.
And Aamir's blog doesn't even have a RSS feed, so I have
created one using page2rss. All the links are available below.

According to Google Reader, as of now, 412 people
are subscribed to Amitabh's blog and 57 to RGV's.
Aamir's blog doesn't have an RSS feed, and only
now, have I created one, so 0 till now.

BTW Suchitra Krishnamoorthi blogs too, not
on a personal blog, but on a blog with multiple authors
including Deepak Chopra.
It is here. And no doubt her posts are more interesting
than any other author out there.

RGV : Blog RSS feed
Amitabh : Blog RSS feed
Aamir : Blog Feed

novel movie difference

Almost every movie based on a novel is lambasted by
the readers for not being able to live up to the latter.
I guess I know why.

Reading a novel allows one to visualize the characters
and incidents in their own way. Actually one does never
visualize any character in full detail, or may visualize
incrementally as the story moves on. Especially the
face of the character is rarely visualized by anyone.
And then, all of a sudden, there is a real human
face on the screen, with all its limitations,
claiming to personify a character. Kind of jolts
the reader.

In other words, a reader has a rather abstract view
of the characters and surroundings, which for some
reason makes him/her feel good. But the moment
someone tries to concretize it, reader is repelled
since it doesn't match his mental image.

shimla kufri etc.

Shimla, Race towards Jakhu temple,Ride in Kufri on Tattoos,