January 18th, 2007
These guys are getting smarter, or so they want us to think. Till a few weeks back, they wanted your help to transfer some money out of the country because of some illegal activities by some company. Now, they want you to transfer the money so that it goes to charity because the holder is not likely to live that long.
Now, seriously, GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!
One, this guy from Tunisia, has been able to scrounge up $ 33 million in just 14 years. Two, his sick wife is likely to die within the next 6 months and so wants me (a trustworthy honest individual, as described in the mail) to distribute the money to charity, with 30% as my commission.
Why do I find this mail a little hard to believe?
Posted in Web/Tech | Comments Off
January 14th, 2007
It’s not everyday that you get to shake hands and chat with a former first president of a country. Yes, I shook hands and chatted with Kenneth Kaunda.
Yes, yes, I know. You want photos. Here you go…
Posted in Me | Comments Off
January 6th, 2007
That Four Letter Word (yeah, that’s the name of the movie!), written and directed by Sudhish Kamath, is a new style of film. The story, yeah, pretty much the same old one… boy meets girl, falls in love, fear of losing her if he proposes, blah blah blah… but the way TFLW takes you through the story is completely new. The movie is a refreshing change from the usual “professionally done” flicks.
Sudhish has finally realized his dream of making his own movie, and it has taken him seven years to come to this stage. This movie is all about chasing your dreams. Shot on a shoestring budget, the movie is moderately paced throughout, with a few comic scenes here and there, and no chance of you getting bored. This is a youth film, made by the young, for the young.
My verdict? Definitely a must see.
Posted in Chennai, Movies | 2 Comments »
November 20th, 2006
I couldn’t resist this. Today when somebody from ICICI called me for a personal loan, I told them that I wanted a loan for Re. 1. The lady on the other end was flabbergasted to say the least.
Thanks Gautam.
Posted in Chennai, Funny, Me | 2 Comments »
November 4th, 2006
I’m pretty sure that the entire blogging community (well, at least those on orkut) would have received invitations to join a new social networking site called Gazzag. Soon after he signed up on Gazzag, Ferrari sent a followup mail through orkut. What concerned me was that Gazzag asked the user for his/her orkut login and password, apparently to send invitations to all friends on orkut.
Now, I have a couple of points to chew on.
- Why should Gazzag, a competitor for orkut, ask for the orkut login details? What guarantee is there that Gazzag would not hack the account? Not only that, since orkut is most probably linked to your google/gmail account, how can I be sure that Gazzag is not reading my e-mail or posting to Google Groups using my account?
- Gazzag has a small mention that you can opt out of receiving the invitations by clicking a link in the invitation e-mail. I can count 5 links in each Gazzag invitation that I’ve received – 1 is a mailto link with the e-mail address of the person who has sent me the invite. The remaining 4 are all “Accept this invitation” style links. Now where did I put that opt-out link?
Call me paranoid, but I like to keep some semblance of my privacy intact. What do you think?
Posted in Web/Tech | 7 Comments »
October 20th, 2006
Looks like Google have done a major revamp of Orkut…
First on the list, the ability to sign up, without an invitation from an existing orkut user.
Second, at least what I have noticed, is the ability to reply to a scrap from your own scrapbook. Now you don’t need to go to the other person’s scrapbook to type your reply. Just click on the reply link and a textbox opens to type your scrap. On pressing submit, AJAX works in the background and sends your scrap to the orkut server. And, ta-dah! Your scrap has been added in the other person’s scrapbook without you leaving yours. (AN: I used to do this with a Firefox add-on before orkut was revamped the last time)
Third, I just saw this, the ability to block friend requests from people who don’t speak your language. Hmm, is this a feature or a bug? Open question…
Posted in Web/Tech | Comments Off
October 2nd, 2006
According to the CIA, I’m a Thoughtful Observer…
Take the CIA Personality Quiz, and see for yourself, what sort of a person you are…
Posted in Web/Tech | 2 Comments »
September 30th, 2006
More of a response to a post by B a l a j i than anything else…
Granted, you should judge a mobile more by it’s features than anything else, but given that lots of people are careless, an accidental drop could cause your phone to go bust…
I don’t say other phones are worthless in this regard – I did drop my Samsung C-100 quite a few times without anything happening to it – but, from personal experience and the words of friends, I can safely say that most Nokia’s are nearly indestructible.
Deviating from the topic at hand, my personal preference is for Nokia mobiles for more than one reason.
- The first reason is the solid design. From the rock solid 3315 (my first mobile), to the 6681 (my current mobile), I’ve not faced any hurdles when my phone has dropped from a height of about 4 feet. All that I’ve faced were a few scratches, which weren’t much anyway…
- The second, and probably more valid one (for B a l a j i anyway) is the user friendliness of the set. Of all the sets that I’ve seen (Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Nokia), Nokia stands out as the easiest to use. For example, I’ve not had any trouble finding the Bluetooth control panel in Nokia. The same is a different matter in the Motorola Razr and Sony Ericcson W550i phones though…
Posted in Blogs | 4 Comments »
September 17th, 2006
I picked up a Hitachi 80 GB 2.5″ hard disk for my Thinkpad R51 laptop. The only problem – my laptop doesn’t recognize the disk. On the other hand, it does work beautifully with the USB enclosure that I bought to keep the old 40 GB disk in…
The laptop is a 2887-NQ7 model. So now, my questions to the world.
- Do you have any idea of what problem could cause the laptop to not recognize the disk, and if so, how to fix it?
- Is there a way to install Linux on the external USB disk, and to boot from the disk at powerup?
Update: I think I should have made this point more clear. I tried to replace the primary hard disk (40 GB) with the new one (80 GB). But the laptop does not detect the 80 GB disk in the IDE bay. However, it has no problems when I installed it in the USB drive case.
Posted in Me, Technology | 1 Comment »
September 3rd, 2006
Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu – the latest Kamalahassan flick to hit the silver screen. The movie starts of with the quote Another Episode in a Police Officer’s Life, leading us to believe that this is a sequel to Kaakha Kaakha.
I’ll give my verdict up front: Go to the theatre without any expectations, and be prepared for an immensely enjoyable movie. I should also mention that this movie is not for the faint of heart or even the mildly squeamish folks due to the fact that VV contains a lot of graphic scenes involving dismemberment, blood, rape, etc. Wonder how the Censor Board gave it only a U/A rating instead of an A. Anyway, my advice to viewers, don’t compare Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu with Kaakha Kaakha. They both stand out on their own as great movies. See them as individual movies, and enjoy them both…
Anyway, for those of you who want some detail on the movie, there’s more…
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Movies | 4 Comments »
July 29th, 2006
I guess it’s high time I put forth my view on reservation. The point is that we had Dr. Raj Reddy, the founding Director of the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, speaking at the inauguration of our new facility on this topic.
His major point was that the majority of students who get into professional courses are from the urban environment. Very few rural students have got into a good engineering college, due to lack of quality education. The Government should take steps to identify the talented individuals and equip them with the necessary skills to make them an all round person. Simply pulling a random guy and telling him – “Look, you have a seat in IIM-A thanks to reservation. Go there” is not going to be any use if the guy is not talented. The problem comes from the fact that there is not enough quality education in the rural areas, and even then, the talented individuals are often unable to afford it.
Posted in Current Affairs | 4 Comments »
July 29th, 2006
Well, this is a delayed informative post to inform you folks that I’ve quit my job at HCL Tech and joined the SSN School of Advanced Software Engineering and am pursuing my Masters in Information Technology, with specialization in Embedded Systems Engineering.
Posted in Me | 2 Comments »
July 11th, 2006
Microsoft has been granted an exclusive contract to be the sole Engine Control Unit (ECU) supplier for F1 from 2008.
So we can expect to see the following things in 2008:
- All cars would require to be fitted with a system board running 64 Intel Pentium 5 processors running at 6.4 GHz and having a minimum of 512 GB RAM per processor.
- All cars would need to be retrofitted to include a generator inline with the engine shaft. The ECU power needs would require 99% of the engine output to drive the generator.
- If any car stalls on the parade lap, it would cause the remaining cars also to stall. The race would then have to be postponed to the next decade while Microsoft determines the cause of the stall.
- Turning the steering wheel by at least 0.0001% at speeds of more than 1 cm/h would cause the brake to be applied automatically.
- Attempting to refuel the car while replacing the tyres would cause the fuel valve to close prematurely. The only solution would be to have separate pit stops for fuel and tyre changes.
- Occasionally, entering the pit lane would cause the car to stop. The pit crew would have to push the car into the garage, remove the front wing and reattach it to restart the engine.
- The safety car feature is implemented by sending a common signal to all cars. This signal would cause all cars to move at a speed of exactly 11.309734 km/h (3.14159 m/s for those curious/nutty enough to monitor speeds in m/s). The only way to remove the safety car feature is to move all cars to the starting grid in their current lap positions, stop the cars, remove the rear wing and reattach it.
- Sensors placed on the car will detect possibility of collision and stop the car in the event the possibility exceeds 0.001%. The ECU will also emit a banshee scream, causing the cars (and spectators) in the hearing range of the scream to shut down (spectators collapse)
- Cars fitted with less than the minimum specified hardware (refer point #1) will not run at speeds of more than 100 km/h due to slow processing
Posted in Funny, Sports | 2 Comments »
July 3rd, 2006
After a long time, I’ve enjoyed seeing Ferrari in action, with some brilliant moves at the Indianapolis Speedway.
Go Schumi…
Posted in Sports | 1 Comment »
July 2nd, 2006
Did I mention never to trust statistics? Well I’m about to repeat it…
Brazil lost… 
Posted in Sports | 1 Comment »