Saturday, November 29, 2008

My Last Saturday

I promise. I will not do it again!

I don want an extra '0' on my financial figures,
I don want to see that driver looking at me from the cockpit
and saying "You did a good job!"
I don want to walk that extra mile, so that some one can say this is paradise.

I don want to burn the extra oil and go against green.
I don want to hear those vacuum cleaners again.
I don want to see those men in blue crossing around.

I don want to lose the time, before his flight takes off.
I don want to lose the writings, uploads, comments and conversation.
I don want to be a sucker sitting in this 6x7.

Did they come with the pesticide gun to chase me away?
Whatever, I will not do it again!

Friday, November 28, 2008

Why I should not go to TFN and Why you should go?

Me: Tring Tring... Tring Tring..
She: hi.. hru & whats up..
Me: Well, there is a bicycle ride that's happening in Bangalore, I thought I will go there..
She: Oh! Ok.. But you don have a bicycle there..
Me: (grin...) I will buy a new one! :)
She: When is it?
Me: Starting Dec 25 for 7 days.
She: What 7days? and 25. You said you will be home for your Birthday! No way Vijay!
Me: No maa, not interested in celebrating one this year, I had been doing this all thro' 20+ years.
She: I'm twice the age of you and I still celebrate it. You better talk to dad...... (Enaga...)

This is where my tour started and ended. Also I got one reunion and two special people birthday's to celebrate on this time frame. But I will tell why you should go for TFN.

TFN - Tour oF Nilgiris. Its a special interest group of people who wanted to take an adventurous ride through the flora and fauna of the gorgeous Nilgiris with their bikes. (These guys address bicycles as bikes.) It would be a 910 919kms ride in 7 days, at an average 140kms per day! Its a spectacular route these people have come up with. In brief, Bangalore-Mysore-Madikeri-Sultan Bathery-Ooty-Mysore-Bangalore. If you had missed to see any of these places you just missing something beautiful. Mysore is known for its cultural heritage. Sultan Bathery would be breath taking with its greenery on God's own country. Twisting roads through the tea estates would be an amazing site to watch. Ooty! She is the Queen. A favourite destination during my college days. Imagine drinking a hot chaai (tea) standing on a mist covered road after a nice pedal. (I simply call it heaven!) Oh boy! My camera would be loving it, will I stop clicking?...

Well, that said about TFN. How can you be there in TFN? First register, lets do the talking later. Cool. Pal, I did the home work for you... You have to have your own bike, helmet, clothing, toolkit for a mechanical bug like puncture and break wire failure (its hill regions you know). Most importantly need to pay the participation fee for the organiser(s) to take of your food and accommodation for the 7 days. Its 10K for full event and 1500/900 for a stage (1 day) with/without accommodation. Also read the do's/don and T&C before signing in.

(Mom, this one for your question on safety...) Manipal Hospital will be the official medical assistance partner. They have a fully equipped Ambulance coming along with you during the ride, with sport medicine doctors for any emergency. You know TFN is crazy! Making is more crazier is Radio Indigo, the official radio partners. Yeah, I will be missing those food from Nilgiris

What makes this event more beautiful is the people who are associated with it. Its one unique gang! You should read it for yourself about these maniacs. They include tech geeks, doctors, photographers and even a 6th grade student. Now for the final bad news, the registration is closed. :) But, Still you can register and be part of TFN if someone drops out. So now all you need is passion (mixed with a pinch of craziness), love of nature and a bit of preparation.

You know why I made this post? You can also be a lucky blogger to cover this record making milestone event. :) You can also do it, just publish about it and send your entries to contest [ at ] tourofnilgiris [dot] com. Write & Click and enjoy nature.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Did someone slap you?

Did someone slap you? Yes / No! "Yes" They really did. Lucky you are. Go give him a hug. Did they tell everything you wanted to hear and did they tell all? One needs such speed breaks to stop and tell them that its all wrong, that it was never right. You had been leaving your life with assumptions and unsolved equations. You never wished for it. 

He should have walked to him and said, "Hey no, this is not the way to play in the pen-ultimate over on a semifinal". At least the non striker should have told. It was a 41 minutes conversation, after listening he said this is what I read in Monk who sold his Ferrari. Even he too had read it, why din he realise it. He walked into the library and felt the solitude silence for the first time. How had he missed this for such long time? He did waste much of it. Also noted the Cukoo's Egg sandwiched between two big struts. His hand itched. 

Those heavy laughs made his stomach ace! But he was told that it all calls to deep crying. How could he ignored it to cover his thoughts. Well, it came true when the second ring came. He said that he will keep his silence. The beautiful rain can also damp him, when she asked him not to come home over the weekend. It rained badly there.

I just can't continue...
What the hell is happening in Mumbai? Crap! tears and shock... Its bad, worse, worst. 

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Happy Birthday Santy

Happy Birthday Santy.. Wowwie what a beautiful day we had.. Well, if you don know about santy.. He is my beloved roomie in Bangalore for the last 2+ years. In fact did the graduation with me. Actually his parents call him Santosh. But he carries the legacy of santy's in M.Sc Software. Santy is a wonderful person to be with. I got to put this first, a heart throb among girls. :) Also carries the grace of music with him. Nice singer though! (We are even training him for the next super singer) Famous for his jumping hair style. One of best representatives that our class had. (Guess he would also agree that it was his golden period for him too) He has all the patience in the world when you pull his legs. But sill we remember when he chased near C-416 at hostel. Also a lead in our kitchen, famous for his mango sambar. Right now he looks like Subramaniyapuram hero. Yeah he does not gets time for that alone! One more is that he adores cleanliness and keeps things around him. Now that I have trying to keep up with him on this. :) Its fun with him always...

I'm still on the DBC cake hangover. It all started with a game of bowling, after a bad start in the first few throws managed to get around 130. Had a nice dinner and meet some my close buddies. As usual he did not wait for the song to get over to blow the candles. Fun started after applying pastry and gave his an egging bath. The videos have come good! Early morning "Raji" made a surprising (planned) visit home. She woke up santy splashing a glass of water. It was another round of egging by Raji and kiran. It was one of the most funniest video ever recorded, I just laughed out with the style Raji broke those eggs! Girls are expert in breaking them in the kitchen only. It was a record number of times he took bath in 24 hours. Then finally with a nice dinner at Terrace Nation. (we are addicted to that place now-a-days) Also hoping he will now listen to all his favourite numbers. [Pic from left: Me, Santy (nice shirt!) and Peeps age 22]

Well, wishing all the best for him though tout his life. He knows, "What ever happens, life has to move on". Also hoping to see you at Berkeley and searching for a roomie with that guitar! 

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Hibernating again

All my bags are packed
Im ready to go
Im standin here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breakin
Its early morn
The taxis waitin
Hes blowin his horn
Already Im so lonesome
I could die

Thats "leaving on a jet plane" by John Denver in Rhymes & Reasons. First thanks to Gopal to get me this play list in less than a day and sending it across. Its such a awesome collection of few of our favorite number. But yeah I would again go for an unplanned hibernation. :) My grace period is up. Its actual owners needed it back. Got to return the spare mobile and hold my peace for sometime. Now that I hate Motorola, what buggy code the engineer had accepted to ship. :( Next pit stop is Nokia for sure, but not sure when. But yeah, thanks Big Beautiful Fish. It was one roller coaster ride and I say "Thank You". Only regret is that wished I could backup, din have a choice. Flushing them! Still I have my old online phone list to help me out. Scheduling post for daylight...

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Take care of your photographs

Is there a moment that you have thought, Oops I think I deleted that photo and I don have a copy of it or I had all my photos in my laptop! The hard disk crashed. I wrote the photos on the CD but its no more readable. Personally I have learned my lessons. If you are serious about what you shoot you should be serious about how to store them. I was cleaning my reader and came across this excellent post on DPS.

On a personal choice I use Flickr for my personal preference to dump all I take. Share the best I feel. Get a Flickr Pro account for 24$. Its worth the money. To share the photos, I use picasa web. Its really fast and simple interface. But less space. Never mind create multiple accounts to share is the advice I got. Youtube for your video //works well for sharing, but only limited to 25 person :-( // Try writing it on DVD, CD or External HDD all are non reliable. Try replicate your copy to many on line storage. But keep track of it. :)

Happy Clicking...

Beyond this, you are most welcome to voice out...

Project "unnamed"

This is special and to my heart. I have started working on this project starting now. I'm talking less about it. I don have not even brainstormed about this to anyone yet. The requirements doc is not ready even. Ah Let me stop this, enough of those processes and documents. If you ask me how many loc its gonna have I don think there could be any! Also the people I planning to work with have no idea about it. Planning for a closed beta within end of 2009. :) If you have the patience to hang around here, hope you get access. Thats it for now, got to write more.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Sad & Angry

It was a usual weekday morning yesterday at one of my friends house in Bangalore. They are close to 5 bachelors staying around the koramangala area. So its usual thingy that there would be two keys thats shared among the gang. That morning one guy who starts early to office is about to leave home. Gets out of door and asks the rest to close the door. He leaves! The others are lazy and in the midst of their sleep and ignored the message to close the door and left open. (It happens when we code late in the night, you can't really complain)

Then they all woke up around hour or so after the first guy left. One guy finds his purse missing from the cupboard inside the house. Then then other guy searches his, finds it missing to. Damn, 3 purses are missing. :( Between the time the first guy has left and these people inside the house woke up and closed the door. Some idiot has got inside the house and nicked all the purse on the cupboard. Next each one rang up to their respective bank customer care to block the card from any transaction. :( Got it blocked and checked the balance. More sad news, it was already used in a petrol bunk and several thousands were missing. All of them were visa debit cards. Helpless they ended up filling an FIR at the police station after a whole day long wait. Sorry for them.

This is the second incident around me where the prior one they lost gold and cash. Mistakenly they have kept the handbag near the window. Some one took the door keys from it and entered home for a loot when everyone were sleeping.

Do take care...
- If you are leaving the home and wanted others to lock the door inside. Just wait outside until the door is locked. An extra min or two makes the difference.
- People leaving in ground floor. Keep windows shut and don place the keys near the window or some place directly accessible from outside.
- Note down the number of your banks customer care in your mobile to call them and immediately block the card.
- Avoid visa credit/debit cards. Go for mastercard.
- Better keep valuables locked at home.
- Not last but not least, never take anything for granted in this f###ing city.
- If you happen to have a lot of jewelery around @ home, the first thing you must do is to put it away in a bank locker. Its worth the money! (contributed: Nishanth)

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Minnale Nee

Song: Minnale Nee Vandhenadi
Movie: May Madham
Music Director: AR Rahman
Singer: SP Balasubramanian
Chorus: Srinivas & Sujatha
Lyrics: Vairamuthu

This song is about a guy who is waiting for his girl to come back. Look at the striking combination of this song with SPB in lead and who on earth would think to put Srinivas and Sujatha in chorus. If it could have been one guy to dare this was Rahman. Vairamuthu just add the depth to it with his awesome lyrics. Wonder how can he write such master piece! Price less combination to cherish for a life time.

Listen here :)

Monday, November 10, 2008

Thanks to Indian Railways

Today Morning I was booking a train ticket read something that got me into big simle. Thanks to Indian Railways for being intelligent and considering this.

One of the passenger booked on an E-ticket is required to present any of the five identity cards noted below in original during the train journey and same will be accepted as a proof of identity failing which all the passengers will be treated as travelling without ticket and shall be dealt as per extant Railway Rules. Valid Ids:- Voter Identity Card / Passport / PAN Card / Driving License / Photo ID card issued by Central / State Govt. for their employees.

This is awesome. At least that we would not have paid all those fines. :) But still I envy those Chennai guys that they have soo so many trains from Bangalore. Just that they get tickets for any weekend at ease.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

git - a stupid content tracker

To start with Source Code Configuration Management is basically tracking your source code with changes made to it. A consistent change will be recorded and can be kept track as a history. In this way there is no single copy of the file. Its maintained as change of change. This is how source code is maintained in any project in both open source and closed source.
"Maintaining code is equally important to writing good code"
Some of the source version control systems that I can think of are CVS, SVN, Perforce and some other commercial ones. I had worked with CVS and SVN extensively. :) In fact was introduced to SVN first and then asked to (cont...)
Cross post: Basics Uncovered

Thursday, November 6, 2008

17

This is the last option I have where there is no soul awake other than those that are right across the globe. Its been hard on the last few days, but happy that my body din complain. Though my brain had some down time. I started to fall in love with this blue seat, which my 'evil' soul tells just don fall in love with it. And you know how good I'm at avoiding evil path. With my neighbors radio running, I don think I need more entertainment. Oh Yeah, thanks to those security who insisted to answer only in Kannada and Hindi despite of knowing my multi lingual skills. What else can I use to fill space? Oh yeah! I heard many people around me say Obama won the US presidential election. I trust them, din go to CNN. Yesterday, Ended up having the funniest conversation with my Dad! This is the last photo I clicked.

Chalo, got to go now! Bye...

Monday, November 3, 2008

Monday Musings / revsjoiedevivre

I was wondering what to blog next, a lazy solution came in the way of these tags. I was tagged twice with in a week. First tag was in office for the weekly magazine Monday Musings. Thats why the week after tagging me, Monday was declared as a holiday. But the sad part of this column is that they wont let out the name of the person who nominated me. I really wished I could know that, to ask "DON YOU HAVE ANY OTHER QUESTION? Ah!. Meanwhile revsjoiedevivre aka revs an future sister in law and my lastest blogger contact tagged me. :) revs tag first.

  • Last Movie You Saw In A Theater Sa-ro-ja for the second time. I jumped out of the seat @ PVR. :)
  • Favorite Board Game Life, Just for the fact that it left me a bachelor for a long time.
  • Favorite Magazine I used to get sportstar for the pictures and its center page poster.
  • Favorite Smells amma samyal
  • Favorite Sound laughing
  • Worst Feeling In The World passing the question, Since I don want to think of one.
  • What Is The First Thing You Think Of When You Wake? Shit! It was a dream, I though she was real.
  • Favorite Fast Food Place Sasi pani poori, Coimbatore
  • Future Child’s Name psdskrbsagaksla (its a concatination of all my girl friend's first character)
  • Finish This Statement. “If I Had A Lot Of Money I’d…” spend it, what else.
  • Do You Drive Fast? No, srihari will speak more about it.
  • Do You Sleep With A Stuffed Animal? Not got a chance.
  • Storms-Cool Or Scary? My vocabulary is poor enough to understand the question
  • What Was Your First Car? The one I got in ammam kovil festival
  • Favorite Drink I will take the answer that SS gives. :)
  • Finish This Statement, “If I Had The Time I Would …..” sleep (easiest question of the lot)
  • Do You Eat The Stems On Broccoli? I eat idly and dosai
  • If You Could Dye Your Hair Any Color, What Would Be Your Choice? rainbow starting from left to right and have an 1:1 with my manager. :)
  • Name All The Different Cities/Towns You Have Lived In Sydney, Shangai, Utah and New jersy.. (belive it..)
  • Favorite Sports To Watch F1 & EPL To Play street cricket, gilli
  • One Nice Thing About The Person Who Sent This To You She is such a kind hearted, caring person. She is one of the best friends whom you can find in a million. She is such a brilliant, studious and clever girl. Provided she is beautiful. :) (I better wash my hands now...) :)
  • What’s Under Your Bed? floor
  • Would You Like To Be Born As Yourself Again? OMG, Not again!
  • Morning Person Or Night Owl? 24x7
  • Over Easy Or Sunny Side Up? pass
  • Favorite Place To Relax friends house
  • Favorite Pie anything
  • Favorite Ice Cream Flavor Chocolate
  • You pass this tag to - nobody :)
  • Of All The People You Tagged This To, Who’s Most Likely To Respond First? nobody!

Part 2: (Monday Musings)

  • I belong to State / Place - zion பிறக்க நீனைத்தேன், ஆனால் கோவையில் பிறந்தேன் (I wish I was born to zion, but I was born in Coimbatore.)
  • In my family there is - நானும் என் பெற்றோர் (Mom & Dad and Meee)
  • I Love - தூக்கம், மின் கட்டுரை, புகைப்படக்கலை (Gaming, Sleeping, Blogging and Photography)
  • I Hate - பெருசா ஏதும் இல்லை (Nothing much...)
  • Most Memorable Moment at Novell - தினம் தினம் இருக்கும் காப்பி ப்ரேக் (Every day coffee break)
  • If I could Change something about myself / a habit of mine that I would like to change - குறைவான தூக்கம் (sleeping less)
  • My Favourite Book - Cuckoo's Egg
  • My Favourite Movie - தளபதி, The Matrix
  • My Favourite Dish - அம்மா சமையல் (Mom's Cooking)
  • My most cherished possession - பழைய நண்பர்களின் கடிதம் மற்றும் வாழ்த்து மடல். நான் எடுத்த புகைப்படம் (Old letters, birthday cards and Photographs that I take)
  • Three things about me that my colleagues would not know - சமைக்க,கற்பிக்க பிடிக்கும்.
    மைவிழியோரம் கருமச்சம். (I love cooking, I love teaching and I have a mole on my left pupil)
  • I Fear - going alone to Hospital
  • What do my friends lovingly call me விஜய், வீ (Vijay, V)
  • Happiness to me means நண்பர்களுடன் இருப்பது (Being with friends)
  • If I win 10 crores on Dus Ka Dum, I would... வேற என்ன செலவு செய்வது தான். (spend it)
  • Message for Novellites - அண்ணா சேம மொக்க question அண்ணா இது. Work Hard, Party Harder!
Special thanks to Santy and Dams for helping me out with the tamil stuff.

Update: I was told I can only post in English in MM. But who can stop me here. :) I call this the full version.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Take care when you invite for your wedding

Hey just few things only. At regular intervals I find wedding invites getting to my Mailbox. I love and respest them all. Just that I just hate some of the things I see in the mail. Some time they are personal invites and not as a backup e-invite. So take atmost care of what one is sending to their friends.
- Send the mail with contacts in BCC. People with 'Reply to All' will shoot at thier leg by sending it to all. Some times I find some X contact getting added into my contacts because of this.
- Take some care in making the image! Crop and resize the scanned image to best fit size. Make the orientation fit to page. Rename the file. (Front page.jpg, back cover.jpg...)
- Best would be embedded the image in the mail and send it rather than a mail attachment. Also have a P.S that there is an embedded image.
- Try writing down what is there on the image as mail content. Images are not allowed in all mail servers.
- I would prefer getting a soft copy from the Wedding card printer rather than scanning it.
- Give equal importance like your printed cards is all I ask. :)