As I type. it is a year since I left home to catch my flight to Vancouver. Been a journey since then.

Starter

I am just another software company employee who is so busy that i hardly get time for anything. This has been talked about too many times. Even my girlfriend keeps hanging up cos i do not spend time with her, “I am sorry my dear compaq with core 2 duo..I still love you” ya thats the way I get my laptop working. Anyway I recently suffered from lots of problems like backache and common cold that never saw its culmination. Thanks to all of that my doctor prohibited me from touching my second girlfriend “Bajaj Wind 125”. I had also heard about so many efforts to save energy and use public transport etc so I thought it might be a good move not only to increase my environment credentials and also try and set right my health. I waited at a shelter-less bus stop near my house and boarded a bus that was quite empty so I even got a seat. I was getting used to the bumpy ride when this guy in khakhi clothes stood next to me. I looked at him and said “boss full tank”. He was just staring at me and it was only after that I realized I was not in a petrol bunk. It was my first bus ride and I am sure to remember it.

Nostalgia... 1996

Over the last couple of weeks, there have been news articles about the arrest of an African-American scholar by some white police officer in the USA. This led to a row over racial profiling forcing US President Obama to intervene.

The entire event however reminded me of a Sam Jackson-Nicholas Cage movie titled Amos and Andrew. I had to force myself to watch this movie on the evening of 21st Oct, 1996. How do I remember the exact date? Was the movie so bad that it left an indelible mark on me? No.

21st Oct 1996 was also the day that India faced Australia in Bangalore in the 3rd match of the Titan Cup. After restricting Aus to 215, India lost wickets early and were on the verge of losing. But Tendulkar and batting heroics by Srinath and Kumble ensured India won - last ball of last over, 2 wickets to spare.

I had to watch the match, but also couldn't - India was losing, can't bear that! So was switching channels between Star Movies and Star Sports. Nice match, nice memories, I like. :)

HDD Weight

Does the weight of your hard disk increase as you install more programs? Some people seem to be worried and have posted questions. Read the entire thread on the Microsoft forum for a hearty laugh.

Ho(r)ney bees

How does Pranab Mukherjee describe the average Indian taxpayer?

Watch the video below, from 2:35 and specially from 2:50.

Cyborg Name

ROTFL!!

Get Your Cyborg Name

Going by 'Nocturnal Troubleshooting', I guess Customer Support won't be a bad option for me as a profession.

Foreign Accent Syndrome

I StumbledUpon a page that listed a bunch of 'bizarre mental disorders'. In the list was Foreign Accent Syndrome. It is a rare medical condition (mostly brought about due to injury), which causes the afflicted to speak their native language with an (apparently) foreign accent. There have been 50 recorded cases of this.

I guess the key word here is 'recorded'. If we were to record cases, then there would be a few hundred thousand (if not million) cases in India alone. And the condition wasn't brought upon them by trauma. A short visit to any natively English speaking country (US, UK etc) seems to be 'injury' enough. ;-)

Videos..

Rangashankara Viral Ad Campaign



Yesteryears' superhit: Tum Tu There Pardesi

Stupidity... taken to all new levels... down

Google has recently announced plans for the Chrome OS. And many articles have popped up on the www including one on CNET by Peter Glaskowsky.

A quote from the article:

"Turning the Chrome browser into the Chrome OS is technically straightforward, though of course it'll take a lot of work. A browser already has most of the key elements of any OS: application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow application software to display content and accept user input, store and retrieve data from mass storage, communicate over the Internet, and so on."

I am unable to control my laughter over this guy's ignorance of computers. And he is a tech analyst!!! Poor guy doesn't seem to know that the browser needs the OS achieve each of the 'element' that he lists. He doesn't seem to know that anyone with a bit of programming experience can write a simple app to read a file system and send it over a network. Well...

FF 3.5 - ACID Test

FF 3.5 (released yesterday) scores 93 on the ACID3 Test. Not bad. But one point less than the previous version. :)

Intel has come up with a new set of marketing names for its Core brand of processors. My first reaction to this news was to shake my head in disapproval.

Intelligence... human/machine

Machine learning algorithms have their limitations. They can find interesting, funny relationships. Take the 2 screenshots. The first one shows an image of a TATA Nano and relates it to a news item concering a student of TISS (TATA Inst. of Social Sciences) . The key thing here is the common word TATA.


The second one is in similar lines. The Indian Govt had something to say to the Pakistan Govt on the same day that India won their T20 WC warmup match against Pakistan. :D
Or finding some interesting correlation between why Adobe flash doesn't work on IE8 and SFU business. ;-)



Other funny output can be due programming blunders. Like the Y! weather page telling that "tonight" will be "sunny". Nights can be 'clear', of course, but never heard of them sunny. Or just plain... having a playlist of size -1 (minus 1)! :)



Click on the images to see the bigger versions.

LHC

A short video on the LHC at CERN.

Austin Powers Credit Card

Did you know: There was a limited edition Visa Credit Card called the Austin Powers Titanium Visa Card. Named after Austin Powers, the International Man of Mystery.

Don't believe? Check slide 11 in the Credit Card Flashback slide show on BigMoney.

99

From the hindi movie 99

"दिल्ली में लड़की का नाम या तो पूजा है या नेहा"

So far, this statement has been a tautology. I have come across a bunch of instances conforming perfectly to the 'rule' above.

megaphone hack

Spy Megaphone Hack - Click here for more blooper videos

What!er

Basha vs. Anthony - Paper Presentation

Ahem! Ahem!

Photo in the Deccan Herald newspaper (1st May, 2009) after the 3rd phase of polling in the general elections.

Passport

Searching on Google Image Search for 'India passport' threw up a page from Frogview among others. It was captioned 'The Most Beautiful Passport in India'. That page had the image below. Would this not account as an invasion of one's privacy?