Nirenjan’s Space

The Hindu carried a nice article yesterday on the nature of software testing. The title perfectly reflects my own take on testing - the necessary evil.

I’m one of those guys who’s just crazy about ringtones. I like so many tones that I’ve grouped my different contacts together and assigned a different tone to each contact. Just have a look at the groups…

007 Theme music for my colleagues, Mission: Impossible for my friends, Baby Elephant Walk (from the movie Hatari) for my family, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly tune for VIPs, Lone Ranger theme for fellow Bloggers, Pink panther theme music for others, and Star Wars: Imperial March for the boss…

After a couple of days of downtime, my internet is finally back online - BSNL Broadband, quite fast and dirt cheap - comparitively.

One good thing about these holidays like Pongal and Deepavali, the TV networks put on superb movies all through the weekend. Yesterday, I was enjoying Kamalahassan in Thenali, and Sun also telecast Kadhal Konden, and today evening, I enjoyed one of my favourite Rajnikanth movies - Padayappa. Too bad there’s no interesting movie tomorrow.

One good thing is that I’ve got my mom to use Linux, even if it is only for the games. Last night, she was bent on getting a high score in one of those games, I forget which.

After 5 hours, I’ve finally managed to get the damned OS installed, however, although Linux detects both my soundcard and ethernet card, neither of them work. I’m considering replacing the ethernet atleast for now, and later I’ll worry about the soundcard.

I’ve started installing Red Hat Linux 9 on my old computer. The config is Pentium II 233 MHz, 128 MB SD RAM, 10 GB Hard Disk, 8x 4x 32x CD Writer, Not Working Floppy Drive, etc. An ancient machine by any standards, it’s already been over 4 hours and the install shows no sign of finishing any time soon.

I’ve been putting on quite a bit of weight over the past few months and came to the shocking realization that I am slowly, but surely, getting overweight. I’d better start my morning walks…

This came as a bit of a shock to me. When I got back home from office, my mom asked me, “When did you lose your mobile?” I was a little puzzled until I remembered. The bigger surprise was that my mom never read my blog, Ram, chief of Samanvaya, read it and told her. Goody, more readers for my blog.

In 1993, the Delhi police apprehended a crook selling pirated software on those old archaic 5.25″ floppy disks. The entire department was jubilated since this was the first time that a cyber crime had been cracked. The floppies were sent to the archives for preserving the evidence. The archivers, ever helpful, punched a hole through the floppies, tied a thick green string around them, and pushed them into an old paper file!!!

Note:This actually came in the editorial of this month’s Digit. I just had to share it with the world.

I spent most of the afternoon watching Annamalai starring Rajnikanth. Somehow, I didn’t like the movie as much as I liked his other movies like Baasha and Muthu. But still, it was an entertainer, even at the end, with the villain going “I’m a baaad man!”

My site feed is now up at http://www.nirenjan.com/Blog/feed.asp. Although I’ve had problems with getting it to load in Thunderbird, it’s loaded fine in Bloglines. Check it out… (Link on the right side, below the archives)

Check out Samanvaya for the latest updates on relief work in Tamil Nadu.

I managed to totally erase all my ringtones and settings from my mobile today by entering a dumb EEPROM erase code I got on the internet. Not only my ringtones and wallpapers, but also the entire bunch of phone numbers that I had stored in my phone. I have only an old backup. Hopefully, that will be enough to restore my phone book.

It may be inappropriate to wish Happy New Year at a time like this, but I feel we should not let bad things rule our life and the lives of others. Let the good prevail.

By the way, my content management system is online, though it’s not fully bug-free.