2005 Archives
2006 is round the corner. Its been a great 2005 for me personally and hope 2006 is even better.
Here is wishing you all a great and happy new year.
And the passing 2005 burnt a big hole in my pocket while i acquired an IBM ThinkPad R52 laptop and a Motorola L6 cellphone. More about this later.
If you want to watch some clean hitting, dont miss the highlights of the Pakistan England match. They went from 200-300 in 53 balls. Abdul Razaak would have broken the record for the fastest fifty if not for some fantastic bowling from Flintoff.
India SriLanka - Second Test Dec 10-14,2005 Scorecard
So how many overs did the newly inducted batting-allrounder bowl in the second test! Or far that matter, how much run did he score?
Kiran More saying "If we can't win against Zimbabwe, Bangladesh we don't stand anywhere. He's had his opportunity and (we) respect what he has done, but we are looking to the future." overnight and the next day selecting Ganguly as a "batting allrounder" ahead of Zaheer Khan does not happen without a few strings being pulled.
Finally the funny turn of events.
I hate politics, especially in cricket.
Ok, here is the picture which louisuw talked about. And a few more of them up on my flickr page. 
As part of Hanuman Jayanti celebrations, the Ragiguda Temple is having cultural shows every evening from about 5:30 pm for a week. Yesterday was a Carnatic vocal show by Dr.Supriya and party. Tomorrow, Pravin Godkhindi has a Jugal Bandi starting at 19:30. I love both the Ragini collections and the Raag-Rang albums by him. Will be around for the show. If anyone else is coming, please let me know.
I am completely frustrated with myself. Reminds me of a Remo's song titled Revolution.
Every morning I make a resolution
Every evening I make a revolution
Btw, does anyone have a mp3 of this song?
What one heck of a week it was. Due to work schedules clashing with FOSS.IN, I almost missed out the conference. But I was able to get out of office early on Thursday and Friday and was able to catch up with people at the event. On Thursday evening, Laya Taranga gave a stellar performance. Especially, the Thani Avarthanam and Konnakol was exhilarating. Friday evening was spent at the Expo hanging around with a lot of folks, Listening to Phenom and Phriends and experimenting some photos along with Karunakar.
Saturday was the year end party and was spent head banging on the dance floor. Ouch, my neck hurts.
Tried cooking at my house for the first time. Made pulav (easy heh?) and raitha. Had invited Sriram, Venkatesh and Venky for lunch. They seemed to have enjoyed it.
Apart from spamming you, he will have his cousins spam you.
he: hi he: who is this?how come you in my msn buddies? me: i have no idea me: i got a request from you for getting added he: where are u from? me: and i was wondering the same thing me: balaji he: I am from Dubai me: coimbatore me: nope, no chance he: u know anybody in Bangalore? he: I am native of Bangalore me: i live in bangalore me: whats your name? he: or have you travelled last week Mumbai to Bangalore by train he: Nagaraj me: nope me: related to linux? me: or anywhere on linux mailing lists? he: yes he: you know by nake Vikrant aivalli me: nake? he: name he: name me: ok? me: yes. what? me: i know him he: ok,he is my cousin. mostly he did this job he: he is using linux me: so? he: how u know him? me: he added you to me? me: what the heck he: i will ask him,? in detail me: ok! coolness me: :-)) he: its ok,thanks for your kind info me: np he: bye for now
Any idea what was the procession about on MG Road this morning. I heard some band playing along and saw a whole lot of students(Scout?). It took me about 25 minutes to cross less than a km stretch.
Isn't there a SC order prohibiting such processions disrupting public life? And why cant these guys do it at 2AM or some remote place outside the city. Arent the craters on the roads enough to give us jitters during the morning travel?
If you want to save on a CD and use the iso image for an ubuntu upgrade, mount it as a loopback device (say /mnt/ubuntu) and add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list.
deb file:/mnt/ubuntu/ubuntu breezy main restricted
And then do a apt-get update followed by apt-get dist-upgrade.
A stretch of Double Road has been badly damaged (not as badly as Bannerghatta Road) due to the recent rains. They decided to start fixing this on a Monday. On Tuesday when i crossed that stretch, it was half filled but made worse with protruding gravel. Still that stretch is a pain to cross and two wheelers use the foot path :-)
When I was cribbing about this, saw this link on an internal mailing list.
Apart from listing roads with potholes and user experiences in Bangalore, this site also provided some information about potholes, way to fill them and a couple of links to how this is handled in other countries.
Update: On Nov 18, Friday, they had shutdown this stretch on Double Road for some digging and filling. As of Nov 25, this stretch was still unusable, made even further worse by the rain. :-)
When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person than you ever dreamed yourself to be. -- Robin Sharma in "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari"
How true. isn't it?
Chennai is in one hell of a mess. And chennaites will not pray for rain atleast for a couple of years.
The last couple of weeks has been tough. Starting with the heavy rains in Karnataka, then Tamil Nadu / Andhra, general public life affected due to the rain, the accidents / derailment in Andhra and then the serial bomb blasts in Delhi.
Hope the festival of lights bring joy, prosperity and peace. Wishing you all a very happy Deepavali (folks from the south of India) and Diwali (to the rest).
இனிய தீபாவளி நல்வாழ்த்துக்கள்
It's been a while since I watched a cricket match live on TV. Given the ominous form India has been in the on going Videocon Cup against SriLanka, I was getting excited to watch a cracker. But I was up all night yesterday doing random stuff and was off to the Railway Station early morning to pickup my sister and brother-in-law. Then we were off to a temple in the morning and then to People's Park for breakfast. By the time we came home, SriLanka was batting and Attapattu / Sangakarra were settling in. Decided to take a nap, so that could catch up on the Indian batting.
When i woke up, SriLanka was going strong at around 230+ for two with another 8 overs to spare. Finally they managed a 298/4 with Sangakara remaining unbeaten for the entire innings. Was expecting the in form Tendulkar to blast through the initial overs. But when has Tendulkar delivered in chasing a crunch total? The only match i remember was the famous Sharjah chase against Australia quite some time back where he will take India to the final and then win the cup.
In came Dhoni. I had read about his 148 knock against the Pakistanis sometime back, and was hoping that he will deliver today. The couple of clean hits he hit against Vaas was awesome. Shewag was reduced to a spectator Dhoni taking a bulk of the strike and a lot of the initial scoring. He raced to fifty and then to hundred in style even though Shewag got out cheaply yet again and Dravid playing second fiddle and asking Dhoni to keep his cool. SriLankans were clueless against this scintillatingattack by Dhoni. He stood through till the end, seeing that India wins in style and with that finall six equalled Saurav's highest one day score.
Records tumbled today. From what I heard during the commentary,
1) Highest Individual score by a wicket keeper, previous best being Gilchrist.
2) Highest number of sixes in an innings bettering Sachin / Saurav's seven each.
3) His personal highest, the highest on this ground and the second highest by an Indian.
All in all, a fantastic cricket match. As Ravi Shastri said during the presentation, Dhoni did the Diwali fireworks a day ahead of Diwali.
What will happen to the Indian cricket team when Kaif, Zaheer, Nehra, Balaji and (if at all) Ganguly return? It will be a stiff competition to get into the playing 12 (including the super-sub). I guess if Yuvaraj and Shewag continue to show demo's of 20-30 runs every innings, they will made to sit out. And poor Laxman's dream of playing in the World Cup is sealed for ever. With the experiments by Chappell and Dravid yielding results, interesting times in Indian cricket lay ahead.
Having recently flown both Air Sahara and Jet Airways, I second code_matial's opinion that in-flight food at Jet rocks. But, the last couple of times, I have flown Jet, I was given plastic cutlery. Spice Jet's air hostesses are the hottest, though they suffer from an attitude problem. Still need to try out Kingfisher Airlines
So what does a jobless person do?
Monday: Lunch at Krishna Cafe, Afternoon Nap, Spend the evening catching up with friends at Forum / Dinner
Tuesday: Lunch at Transit - Forum, Transporter - 2 at PVR, Dinner (excellent Podi Dosai) at Krishna Cafe, Die Hard -1 at a friends place.
And yes! I am currently on a two week break before taking up a new job. Unfortunately, certain sudden work has kept me back in Bangalore. Else, i must have been in Coimbatore eating "gar ka khana", sleeping and adding some more fat to my tyre tummy :-(
And Happy Dassera to you folks
Using mod_rewrite to convert uppercase url's to lower case url's.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteMap upper2lower int:tolower
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /${upper2lower:$1}
September has been one heck of a month for me. Some things are going to change soon and I should have an update shortly.
Here is an excellent firefox trip via Jeremy who got it via Andrei.
you copy a URL wrapped over multiple lines from somewhere and try to paste it into the address bar, you will end up only with the first line of it. To fix it, go to about:config and change editor.singleLine.pasteNewlines setting to 3 or add:
user_pref("editor.singleLine.pasteNewlines", 3);
to your user.js file. Now all the line breaks will be removed upon pasting.
Setting that value to 2 converts the newlines into spaces. Extremly useful.
Spending most of the time watching TV today, I have observed that
1) Cine-choreographers are the most creative people in the world and their creativity invariably revolves around the actresses navel.
2) KBC-2 in Tamil, running on Vijay TV is a must watch comedy. Nizhalkal Ravi trying to emulate Big-B and the dubbing sound-track is real fun. Don't miss it.
Latest addition to our office toilet posters.
- Please lift both the covers before relieving yourself
- Please do not make others sit on "our contribution"
From one of those forwards. Excellent!
The name is good, the brand is big
But the work I do is that of a pig
The work or the brand, what is my way?
I dont know if I should stay.
To work, they have set their own way
Nobody will care to hear what I say
My will be NULL, they wont change their way
I dont know if I should stay.
The project is in a critical stage
But to do good work, this is the age
This dilemma is killing me day by day
I dont know if I should stay.
The money is good ,the place is great
But the development is at a very small rate
Should I go for the work, or wait for pay
I dont know if I should stay.
The managers dont know what they talk
The team doesnt know where they walk
That's a bad situation, what say?
I dont know if I should stay.
I can go to any other place
But what if I get the same disgrace
I cant keep switching day by day
I dont know if I should stay.
The -ves are more, the +ves are less
Then why have this unnecessary mess
No more will I walk their way,
Its all done, I won't stay.
Surfing on a dialup and checking emails. Hmm... This is a different world, watching the page to load. That also implies, i am back in Coimbatore.
-b-
<me>: do you play carnatic music on your violin?
<he>: i play only carnatic music :)
<me>: :-)
<me>: send me a sample please?
<me>: may be a wav file?
<he>: i need to record first
<he>: i have no good device only the PB microphone
<me>: what is PB?
<he>: Poorbook :)
<me>: powerbook?
<me>: you mac junkie?
<he>: 'coz nying it makes you a lot poorer
<he>: buying
Ok, Life has been moving along at a rapid pace these days. As always, work sucks and I don't seem to enjoy what I have been doing. Atleast, I have stopped working on weekends and they are mostly spent visiting places, randomly driving around, clicking photos and partying, rarely sleeping :-)
Plays Watched: The God Botherers, A Picasso, and The False Servant. The God Botherers is about a NGO volunteer, Laura who works in a fictitious country called Tambia. Some good comedy, hard facts and a nice story. The best thing I liked about this play was the open ending. Not like the usual movie, where the directory director tries to drive home a point, there was no single conclusion for this play. Heidi Armbruster as Laura was pretty good. After they play, there was a live interview session with an aid worker in Rwanda(?), Africa.
Places Visited: Long Island, and NYC, quite a few times. The Metropolitan Museum
Travel Calendar: Atlanta, GA from 4/10 till 4/16 and Tempe, AZ from 4/24 till 4/29. Any one around this area and want to catch up, let me know. B2B on 5/6.
Photos: Check out my gallery.
My sister is getting married and my parents are moving back to Coimbatore. So its going to be a hectic May and June.
More later.
I dont feel like I have slept enough if I dont snooze the alarm and sleep for that extra ten minutes!
Reading a book in the bathtub is fun.
Mrs.Doubtfire
Man on Fire
Hyderabad Blues - 2
Legally Blond
After the Sunset
Sheesha (Hindi)
oh! and when i was talking about Salma Hayek appaji pointed me to this.
I believe that chicken is the best thing on two legs after Salma Hayek. :-D
Kate, to the front desk at the Plaza, What kind of idiots do you have working here? Front Desk: The finest in New York, Ma'am
Daughter(wearing a skimpy dress): Dad, I made this dress. How does it look? Dad: You should go back upstairs and finish the rest.
Adam: I'll buy you lunch. Are you hungry?
Emma: No.
Adam: Perfect. I do not have enough money.
Watched Two Weeks Notice and Alex & Emma back to back on HBO. A Sunday well spent.
If you missed the match between Lindsay Davenport and Alicia Molik, you missed something. Looking forward to the Maria v Serena semis.
There is going to be a lot of snow over the next 36 hours here. Forecast says "Approximately 1 inch of snow per hour will accumulate between 3 and 9 pm today, about half an inch of snow hourly until 4 am tomorrow". It has been raining since almost noon and I had to drive back home in the snow on a desolated road and the car spun while taking a turn. You do not need to drive, you just glide. :-)
Will put some pics later.
[update]
Pics
[/update]
I am feeling dull and void. Don't know why.
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly
-- Henri L. Bergson
Wow! It has been snowing around this place and it was fun to drive back home. Though it was a bit scary, thoroughly enjoyed the drive back home. Ice rain and more snow predicted for tomorrow. Yeah!
