2006 Archives

Here is wishing you and your family a very happy and properours 2007. Have a great year ahead.

Watched The Departed today. Haven't watched a movie like this for a long time. The last 15 minutes was the best part of the movie. Amazing dialogues and a star studded cast. Dont miss it.

Though other than driving down the 17 mile we did not do much, the weekend flew. Recollecting old memories, discussing everything from Tamil Cinema to career, cooking food, it was fun. Some photos are up at flickr.

Charan / Partha, Thanks for dropping by.

Though I have seen a bunch of videos on YouTube, I have not spent much time on it. But ever since I landed in Sunnyvale, I am spending a lot of time on YouTube. I have found an alternate to Comdey Time. A search for tamil comdey gets you a whole bunch of videos and time files. No ads, no blabber. And one of my favourite is there too.

And I was hearing a lot of news about Google and YouTube and then saw this video yesterday after the news about Google buying YouTube was announced.

I will save details about my weekend trip to Sacramento / Lake Tahoe / Reno for another entry. ;-)

Watching Main, Meri Patni Aur Woh. Seems to be a good movie so far. Mitileshji rocks in his role.

Vakeel Sahab, Bareily ja ra he ho?
Phir, Is bus mein baitke Japan jayenge kya?

Aapko khana banana aata hai?
Aata hai, lekin roti gol nahi banta...

Day before yesterday,we watched Pyar ke Side effects. The movie went good for most of the time. The last 20 minutes or somehow stretched like a rubber. And just a few hours back watched Erin Brockovich on TBS. I am catching up on all the missed movies. :-)

Its been little over a week since I landed in Sunnyvale, CA and I am enjoying every bit of it. Except for that fubared Indian flight from Bangalore to Singapore, the journey was pretty good and I did not have a jetlag. Manoj, a college mate, lives here and he has been taking me around places. He did some talking at Avis and got me a free upgrade from an intermediate to a SUV. And so I am driving around a Buick Rendezvous. The next one I am going to try is a PT Cruiser. Its amazing to be driving such a big ones. Compare it with the Maruti 800, I drive in Comibatore :-(

Friday night we checked out downtown Palo Alto, partied till late night at the University Avenue. Saturday evening, we drove down to downtown San Francisco. Checked out the Golden Gate bridge, Fisherman's Wharf. I drove up on Lombard street and I think is one of the toughest one I have ever driven. Its like a 70 degree inclination uphill with stop signs all over and then run downs with sharp turns.

Planning for a vist to LA, Las Vegas and Sacremento (to meet Charan) over the next three weekends I am here. Hopefully, the work schedule remains light. If anyone is living around this area, please send me an email and we can catch up.

Man is a cause of his own misery.
-- Someone

Last night made me remember a remark a coworker would used to say. "You're too impatient to be patient"

SGBS Trust has been organising concerts in Bangalore for over 50 years. The three main festivals are Gokulashtami, Sharadotsav and Thyagaraja & Purandaradasa Aradhana. In addition, monthly music concerts are held on the first Sunday of every month to promote budding talent. All of these programs are free for the public.

The complete kutcheri schedule is here. The katcheris are being held at the Odukathur Matt, near Ulsoor Lake.

Enjoy!

Abhinav talks about Fedora Helper, which is a utility to install all those plugins / packages that you need like Flash, JRE, codecs, but are not available / intalled by default. I bumped across easy ubuntu when I was trying to install and configure Dapper on my laptop. Few clicks to install all those packages that you wanted. And all packages are fetched and installed as debs. Cool. Saves me a bunch of keystrokes so that I can write this blog entry. :-)

Me and Pratheepan were having coffee yesterday at a nearby darshini, when we saw a vendor selling drumsticks. Its been a while since I cooked, so we decided to try it out. With some expert advice and assistance from Pratheepan, we managed to cook some yummy drumstick sambar and lady's finger fry.

I have never managed to get lady's finger cooked properly before. The key is to wash it properly, cut it into smaller peieces and let it dry for about 30 minutes. This helps in removing the watery substance that oozes making the vegetable sticky. Then stir fry it in a pan, keeping the flame in simmer.

It took about an hour to cook and we enjoyed a great lunch. Cooking is fun and does not take much time. Being a lazy bum, I would like to doze or loaf around, rather than spend some time in the kitchen. I am in a double mind now thinking if I should cook or eatout while Synaptic is pulling down the latest updates for Dapper.

Saturday's and Sunday's are for me to sleep. I hate to be disturbed in the morning when I am asleep. And I wake up anywhere between noon - 3PM depending on how hungry I am. But this Saturday was different. I was up at 8 in the morning. Partially because, I went to Sriram's place in BTM the previous night. But the other reason was because, I have heard a lot about YEFI working with Parikrma Foundation in running a school for the underprivileged children. I wanted to understand more about what they do and in what little way I can contribute. I reached the school in Jayangar at about 10AM to see all for myself.

A bunch of Yahoos were already there interacting with the kids. The moment I entered there, a few of them came running towards me, to ask my name, to shake hands with me, to grab my helmet and try it, to play with me. Some of them were very shy and ran away. Others would come and ask you a dozen questions. They will start of a sentence in English and then would suddenly stop, trying to form a sentence in their mind but unable to find the right word to use. After a bit of coaxing, they will complete the sentence and to ensure that you have not misunderstood, repeat what they said in Kannada or Tamil. It was amazing to be there and interact with me. These children live in a different world and the time you spend interacting with them takes you to their world. The couple of hours or so I spent with them was one of the happiest moment in the last couple of months. Damn, I did not take my camera along.

I still have a lot of questions to get answered. I will do so talking to people internally who have been associated with YEFI for a while. But this was one Saturday morning well spent, apart from sleeping.

Does anyone find this program, "Dhuniya Goal Hai", funny? This is telecast between matches and I find it irritating. But the only good thing about this program is when Varun gives that fabulous gift to the person's mom who answers the question correctly. I love that one :-)

Damn. The rain saved them this time. And then Lara seems to have played a pateint innings. Hopefully in the next two tests will produce a result, in India's favour.

I was wondering about the dual stance Jeff Crowe took in the first test. Or how could have he let off Lara was his behaviour on the field and fine Sehwag for celebrating a dismissal without appealing to the umpire. Siddhartha Vaidyanathan writes about this double standards here. If Jayawardene was fined, even after apologising for knocking over the stumps in frustration, how can Lara be let off?

Atlast India seems to be salvaging some pride in the second innings. Jaffer has just a hit a double hundred and Dravid has gone. The lead now is 223. If Yuvraj and Dhoni can show some fireworks and get the lead to 320+ in 20 overs and if they can put in West Indies to bat for about 25 overs and get a few wickets, the game might tilt our way. Too many if's but let us watch and see. Dravid sometimes can get too boring. Yes, he has steadied the Indian innings but 62 runs in 177 balls. Come on guys, the strike rate can get a lot better.

In the England SriLanka series, Murali took eight wickets to level the series 1-1. 104/1, 125/6, 153/9. And a battle by Plunkett and Panesar took the score to 190 all out. SriLanka won by 134 runs.

Atlast, I have a DataOne connection at home. I applied for a BSNL connection during Dec 2005. After a few visits to the local BSNL exchange, I gave up, thanks to their bureaucracy. But when BSNL announced their unlimited plan, a few weeks back, I did not want to wait anymore. I found the lineman who services our area, who was immediately willing to do all the needful, in favor of some quick bucks. Overnight, I had my connection. Last Tuesday, I applied for DataOne and a couple of days back a gentleman called when he could drop down for setting up the connection. Since he did not have the modem in stock, he said he will come on Saturday.

He came down today, with a Huwaei MT841 and a PCMCIA Wireless card for the modem. Did the installation in flat 10 minutes, provided me with details for configuring and it was done. When I asked him, if there was a way to test the speed, happily pointed to Airtel's Customer care site. Amazingly efficient. If only BSNL also outsources all its services and gets rid of the "babudom".

Various speed tests shows the download speed between 20-40 KBps. Will need to play around more to see how it goes.

If you work like this, work and office are always fun.

Sumeet is talking on " Write Web Whatever Web Apps Using Yahoo UI Libs"

He is introducing Yahoo Developer library and the various components available in the library.

Some interesting points discussed in the talk about livejournal community management.

- Moderators for the community
- The issue with the college crowd. wearethespinx?
- Debate caused after the Kannada / Bangalore debate
- Competitive communities to bangalore.
- Anonymous comments on Bangalore
- The ubiquitous cool dude "ravi"
- Governance of communities.

Ok, atlast i made it to the BarCamp. After working for close to 36 hours, thanks to the hack day at Yahoo, the only thing I wanted to do was to sleep. But, I was woken up in the morning by a couple of phone calls. So atlast, I made to the Yahoo, EGL facility, where the BarCamp is on.

By the time, I reached here lunch was on. So everyone was just hanging around. Met a whole lot of old faces and a few names known through IRC / LJ.

Then attended the talk on "The Art of Scaling" by Devdas and Vinayak. Currently there is a good discussion going where Nishant and Jace are presenting "Lessons in Community Management from Livejournal Bangalore".

More later.

Rama Navami starts the Carnatic music festival in Bangalore similar to
the December season in Chennai. Sri Rama Seva Mandali, Chamarajpet is
organising its 68th music festival at the Fort High School grounds.

The entire schedule is available at the link below.

http://www.kutcheribuzz.com/karnataka/events.htm#2

The world's local bank must be the only one who can afford to have a 19 hours down time for its Internet Banking system and this can happen only in India. :-(

Ok, decided to check on Sehwag's Blog which he started a couple of months ago. Since he spends very little time in the field, I thought atleast he would have his blog updated. :-( See for yourself.

Geez. I dont have a better job to do now.

Have you ever imagined, sitting atop a hill and doing a relaxation exercise? How does it feel to do Savasana (a corpse pose) and enjoy the perfect ambience? Birds chirping, wind gushing through your ears, beautiful sky and the moon visible at around 5pm. We did all this and much more at Savandurga on Friday, March 10, 2006.

A bunch of folks from the YESI group went on a team outing to Savandurga organised by KWEC. We started at around 7:15 AM, 30 minutes behind schedule. By the time we reached Savandurga it must have been around 9. Ramesh introduced Rahul, KWEC's founder and chief trainer and he in turn introduced his team. We started off with an ice breaker session where we had to shake hands and introduce ourself to everyone in 120 secs. Then came passing the loop. We were made to form a circle joining hands. We had to move a loop through the entire circle without breaking hands, not using the finger to move the loop, without the loop touching the ground. Next, was to form a line, holding a balloon between the previous person's back and your stomach. With hands on your hips, you were to walk a certain distance. Oh! Boy, was it fun. And those who had a potbelly made better use of it.

Then we split into two teams. One went for rafting, while we went for rappelling. Though initially everyone had their own fears, the way Krishna, Prani, aka Pranesh and Shanthi handled it, they made everything look easy and simple. We had to climb a little hill and drop down the rope tied to a tree. The team was again split into two. While one did the rappelling, the others tried to create a logo (flag) for Yahoo! with whatever material lying around. The entire team finished their turns by around 1 PM and we came down to the rafting point. The goal was to build a raft with bamboo / rubber tubes, raft for about 100 odd meters, touch a rock on the middle of the lake and return and dismantle the raft. There were eight members in the team and had to raft twice, 4 members each and once back had to completely dismantle the raft. The earlier two teams had done it in around 47 minutes. We did it the same in 40 minutes. Gautham / Abhinav's team did the same in 29 minutes. Rahul said that they were the best ever so far he had seen. While one team were busy building the raft, the other team was assigned a task of building a missile launcher with file clips, rubber bands, elastic etc. The mission was to launch the missile farthest.

We assembled for lunch at around 2:30 PM. After lunch, some played cricket while others relaxed. We then assembled to launch our missiles. Gautham / Abhinav's team again won here while our team gave a walkover after our missile did not take off. Another team's missile back fired. Then we showcased our flags. Ankit's team won the best flag award. It depicted two faces of Yahoo!, one about its engineering principles and another about YEFI. Yahoo! Bangalore rocks flag was another interesting creativity.

We then started the rock climbing. It was a huge monolithic rock and there is a fort and a temple built by Kempe Gowda on top of the hill. It was a steep climb and we had estimated that the climb would take about 45 minutes to an hour. But by the time we reached about 3/4th the height, everyone was completely exhausted. We decided that we will relax there for sometime and start our climb down. Rahul made us do some relaxation exercises. It was a fantastic view from the top to see the small village at the foothill, a nearby reservoir.

We then climbed down, had some tea / snacks and started our trip back to Bangalore. On the way back, our "Gana thalaivar" Alex sang a Ghana song for every song sung by the other tem. This guys Gana collection is amazing. Rahul also announced the trophy for the best team player of the day. This was shared by yours truly along with Gautham. Praveen came a close third. We reached our office back at around 9PM.

It was one day very well spent. Interestingly, though I had worked every inch of my body on that day, I woke up the next morning without any pain.

Oh! And about this funky word called "Juguja". Prani used that while doing a warmup exercise prior to the rock climbing.

Pointing must have been happy after guiding Australia to a total of 434, a world record,with his 164.He must have thought that SA would collapse much like how India did on its last encounter with Australia here at The Wanderers. But on a day that saw records tumble, South Africa has won this thriller beating the record for the highest total and the best ever chase with a wicket and a ball to spare. Fantastic batting by Gibbs and Smith and some lower order hitting with a cool headed Boucher on the other end saw history being created.

I always thought that a 400+ total record would be created in the subcontinent. Let us see who becomes the first to score 200+ in an ODI.

1) Wake up at 2 on a Monday morning feeling hungry.
2) Cook noddles and eat.
3) Unable to sleep further,watch Laws of Attraction.
4) And walk into office.

Feels like a bad hangover. And, its just the begining of the week.

While we were watching the Test match yesterday in office, we were discussing Chappell's recent interview to Guardian about Ganguly. A guy suddenly jumps in to the conversation saying "Whenever there is a new series beginning, to save India's embarrassing performance, Chappell starts of a new controversy so that the entire media attention is diverted".

This was way too off and India's performance has not been so bad in the recent times, but yes, Chappell should not have gone to this extent. And why not talk about this to an Indian newspaper or Indian media? Ganguly has been the most successful captain of India and I would have loved to see a befitting goodbye to him.

This is how the last four overs looked like in the second final of the VB Series between Australia and Sri Lanka.

4 4 1 2 3 1 | W 1 4 1 4 2 | 2 2 1 N6 4 1 4 | 4 1 4 . 2 4 |

And this is another interesting figure as well.

Muralitharan                10      0     99      0 (1nb)

Ponting, Symonds, Clark and Hussey seems to have belted the Lankan bowling attack. Rather than sleeping, I should have watched this match.Let us see how Sri Lanka comes back.

A forward that I got today. Enjoy, if you understand Tamil :-)

Sirpi Kalla Uliyaala adicha that is "Kalai" But
Namma Sirpiya Uliyaala adicha that is "Kolai"

Railway Stationla Police Station irukkum But
Police Stationla railway station irukkathu

Yevalavu Dan Neechal Therinjalum
Tumler thannila Neentha Mudiyathu.

Ennathan Naiku Nalu Kaal Irundhalum
Athaala Kaal Mela Kaal Pottu Ukkara Mudiyathu

10 Yerumbu Oru Yaanaia Kadika Mudium Aana
10 Yaanaila Oru Yerumba Kadika Mudiyadu.

Mandaiya Pota Die
Mandaila Pota Dye

Nee Enna Thaan Costly Mobile Vachiruthalum
Adhula Evalavu Thaan Recharge Pannalum
Unnaala Unnaku Call Panna Mudiyathu

Kosu Kadicha Yaanaikaal Varum But
Yaanai Kadicha Kosukaal Varathu

Valkaikum Valukaikum Orea Vithyasam
Onnumae Illatha Valkai Bore Adikum
Onnumae Illatha Valukai Glare Adikum

Policesikkum Porukikkum enna Vithyasam
"Adi-Thadi" Senja Porukki
"Thadi-Adi" Senja Police

Trainnuku Ticket Vangi Platformla Ukkaralaam Ana
Platform Ticket Vangi Trainla Ukkara Mudiyathu

Ennathan Karatela Black Belt Vanginalum
Naai Thorathina Odi Thaan Aganum

Busla Nee Earunalum
Unnmalae Bus Earunalum
Ticket Vangaporadhu Nee Thaan

PAAL Kotinna Vera Paal Vaangikkalam
Arisi Kotinna Vera Arisi Vaangikkalam Aana
Thel Kotinna Vera Thel Vanga Mudiyuma?

Ticket Vangitu Ulla Poradu Cinema Theatre
Ulae Poitu Ticket Vangaradu Operation Theatre

Kaakaa Enna Thaan Karuppa Irundalum Adhu Podura Muttai Vellai Thaan
Muttai Enna Thaan Vellaiya Irundalum Athukulae irukura
Kaakaa Karupp Thaan

Iron Boxla Iron Pannalam Anna
Pencil Boxla Pencil Panna Mudiyathu

Cream Biscuitla Cream Irukkum Anna
Naai Biscuitla Naai Irukathu.

Virendar Sehwag has launched a website and a blog too. The website is an all-flash jazzy one and is most probably maintained by some one else. But let us see what he blogs about.

Oh! and read the 40 odd comments on his blog. Not a single one questions his innings were he fails cheaply. His ODI average in 2005 was around 20, though he has a decent average of 62.66 in tests in the 2004/2005 Season.

More about the website launch at Sehwag launches website.