Things from, of and about the head on the shoulders.
I’ve had the pleasure of working with this fine individual for some time—he joined my team in December from the other team. He’s full of natural talent and the last few months, seeing him walk the path of discovery and improving his skills has been extremely pleasant. He’s a great photographer to boot.
Welcome to the world of blogging Paz!
Just caught this thread on Gaim Forums. Edited juicy parts:
User: When I receive messafes in Gaim 1.2.1 on Win XP, the font appears a lot smaller than it does in AOL IM or Dead AIM. Has anyone else encountered this or know a way to fix it?
Admin: Yes. From Winaim (or “DeadAIM”‘s) buddy list, go to My AIM > Edit Options > Edit Preferences (or hit F3). In the “Category” list on the left, choose “Font.” Then, from the “Text Magnification” frame, choose “75” and hit the OK button at the bottom of the window.
User: So, changing settings in DeadAIM or AOLIM changes the Gaim settings?
Admin: No, of course not. Making Winaim’s font smaller will fix your problem that text appears too large in it.
Exquisite. 
When Vinish upgraded to WP 1.5 and then applied a theme, I too gave in and selected this excellent them called Orange Sky by Nao. Had to do some editing of the template files to make a few things working but I like what I have here. I might even keep it for some time.
PS: Orange Sky was an entry in Alex’s WP 1.5 Theme competition. Alex maintains a WP 1.5 Theme repository.
So now I’m a contributing member at The Razor9.
The razor9 is best described as a ‘collective blog’. A bunch of people, from all over the place, dropping in posts / links / information .. and random thoughts.
This was started some time ago by Karan and has been lying in dormancy for most of its existence. Not any more!
I have noticed that in work hours, I reply to all my business mail within 10 minutes of receiving them. It has not gone into 11th minute since the last 3 days that I started noticing it. That has to be good by some standard.
Well, two months of a perpetual high at office finally comes to and end today. I’d been receiving positive feedback a bit too continuously and in large enough volumes to make me notice it and wonder what was up. I dreaded the ride down since I hate being target of a pointed finger. Wait! Let me say that again: I HATE being the target of a pointed finger. I have been known to go to great lengths trying to avoid it.
Today is the day that the ride down officially began. One, Two and then Three clients voiced displeasure and I know at least one more is on the way. And one of them had to pour the good ‘ol sarcasm on top too. Oh the joys… *sigh*
I know I have to face it, since it’s part of the game, but I don’t have to not hate it.
Update: Here it is… the fourth one. hehehe … maybe I should become a soothsayer. 😉
Maninder at office sent me over to Company Bypasses Cookie-Deleting Consumers story.
The New York company on Thursday unveiled what it calls PIE, or persistent identification element, a technology that’s uploaded to a browser and restores deleted cookies. In addition, PIE, which can’t be easily removed, can also act as a cookie backup, since it contains the same information.
and
Mookie Tanembaum, founder and chief executive of United Virtualities, says … "The user is not proficient enough in technology to know if the cookie is good or bad, or how it works."
WTF?
What do you do when expectations of what is expected of you at work reach a point where going even further out of the way to accommodate them is not possible? Is it a good idea to put down your foot the first time you have to go out of the way to fulfil something, OR, should you do it (fulfil the expectation) once in a while and let the other person (your superior) guessing if you will? Where, and more importantly, how do you draw the line? How do you manage the expectactions your superiors have of you? …
Well, not really. I don’t remember when I signed up for the account but I never really used it till recently when I showed a friend some of my pics. So I set up three sets:
I quickly filled up my 100 photos quota and was about to upgrade to Pro membership when I remembered that they’d been bought by Yahoo! Looking for more information, I finally reached the post about the acquisition and what it meant for Flickr on the Flickr Blog. Among other things, it mentioned the following.
Free accounts will have more storage and uploads — pro accounts too — AND they’ll be cheaper.
Cheaper? I drool. But then, just above that, they say this:
Pro account holders will get super mega bonuses, to be announced soon.
So I wrote them an email asking what happens if I upgrade now. They actually wrote back within 24 hours with a proper reply to my question. That alone is worth upgrading but the content was even more cryptic:
If you upgrade to a pro account now you’ll definitely get a bonus when we change over formally. I’m afraid I can’t reveal exactly what that bonus is, so put it this way – you’ll get your money’s worth, either way.
Sorry I can’t be more specific, but the information you’re asking for is confidential.
Funny. All I’m asking is what happens to my money if I upgrade now and tomorrow you reduce the cost of the pro account. How can that be confidential? But I suppose it would affect things far more than I’m thinking so I’m okay with that. The question now is: Do I trust them to give me my money’s worth?
I don’t own a digital camera yet. Almost all the pics in the near future are going to be from the inbuilt camera of my Nokia 3660 handset. That’s a 640×480 photo (.29 Megapixel ;)). But having completed my 100 at Flickr, do I want to pay nearly 2k (I’m talking INR here) for that as well?
Still undecided, I’m weighing in the pros & cons yet for the amount is significant for me (it represents a substantial percentage of my monthly pay). But I have fallen in love with Flickr interface and utility and I am wondering on how to share the rest of the photographs…
I just read that ESA is going to back Indian moon mission titled Chandrayaan. This is good news!
India is perhaps the only country to have not used its satellite technology and launch ability for massively military purposes. Most of our satellites are remote sensing polar orbiters with a few primarily communication geo-stationery ones. It shows in the fact that we’re selling the most volume of up-to-date and relevant satellite data in the world.
ESA is a long-time customer of ISRO and I would assume, because of our relationship with the French for launching so many of our satellites, would have been perhaps the first to be contacted for collaboration (We apparently had eyes on their SMART-1 technology anyway). The chance to participate in a lunar orbiter mission would make any country drool at this point; as noted in the Register story and ESA’s press release, the race is hotting up with China, Japan and USA making aggressive and bold plans for moon-related missions. With our plans to be there in 2006/2007, we’re going to be there much ahead of others. Far as I know, this will be the first satellite ever in lunar orbit as well. So that’s going to be a big feather in our cap.
Anyhow, I’m very happy to read that Chandrayaan-1 is being aggressively pursued and with the ESA backing and know-how can only mean a better-organised mission for us. In these matters, 2006/2007 launch date is like saying “We’re doing this tomorrow afternoon or maybe at nightfall”. I’m very excited and will be keeping an eye on the progress.
I had an amazing experience a few minutes ago. I walk out of the office to go downstairs and what do I see? Three monkeys just outside the glass in the lobby sleeping in a hugging position. I rushed back in, got my phone and shot a small video and 4 pics. You have to see the video to appreciate the affinity and the pics to understand the marvellousness of the view.
From right to left, we probably have the papa monkey hugging the mama monkey who in turn is hugging the baby monkey. How cute … and amazing!
Here’s the video:
And the pics:
Update: Corrected the links to work properly.
blogged in ages. Thanks for asking. I thought only 2-3 people read it but I guess I’m wrong. Perhaps the logs will tell but I don’t really want to know either. The question “How many?” is best left unanswered. Either way, it was a very different and pleasant feeling when somebody asked me, with a concern that I presumed was carefully screened out for me by most, for the slowdown if not a complete stop of blogging activities. So to answer: I’m here. I will blog. This post is a testament to that.
On another note, I find it awkwardly amusing that despite feeling mostly good past few busy days, going through perhaps one of my most shocking episodes in a long long time (nothing personal but in a passive way very much so), and receiving praises for work from almost all the clients that I have interacted with, I didn’t blog and here I am, at the end of the week, sitting in the office feeling all surly and misanthropic, writing a post that I know I will regret for all times for writing and yet haughtily bent upon writing useless, meaningless and incomprehensible sentences full of verbose inaneness and posting it for all those interested to read and silently affirm to themselves that I am indeed a crazy one.
It has been some time since I’ve written a review of a movie that I’ve seen. I saw Blade: Trinity yesterday and well, this movie is good as any to start.
Movie: Blade: Trinity
Rating: 2.50/10
Cast: Wesley Snipes, Jessica Biel, Dominic Purcell & Ryan Reynolds
Direction: David S. Goyer
Certification: Mature
Genre: Action/Horror/Thriller/Fantasy
This is one of those movies that I regret wasting time over. One of those that shouldn’t have been made, simply for the fact there is nothing to be shown. There is no plot/story to the entire movie unless you want to call the flimsy excuse to make the movie a plot. At the end of the movie, I was left wondering, “So, what’s up doc?”
Blade (Wesley Snipes) is back at hunting down vampires but now he’s wanted by FBI. Set-up and cornered, his best friends (if he had any) dead, he realises he will have to fight the first vampire, Dracula himself, who has been brought back by an unknown but rich clan of vampires for some techno-geek reason. Okay, so he does. That’s about it.
The acting is forced at best. Most people in the movie were probably clueless about what they were doing, perhaps even not even identifying with their characters. The new fad of having professional wrestling stars mean the fighting moves from the regular style to somewhat ring-style—and that’s too obvious and forced as well. The scenes lack intensity like movies of 1930s lacked colour. In some rare instances, the cinematography works but you can only do so much when the screenplay is stupid at best and dialogues cliche and full of useless mature language that does not suit the movie, the scenes or the characters that mouth them. There were a few one-liners but they belong to Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and thankfully he nails them for some relief. I’m not sure the others got more than 50 decent words each in the entire movie. Let’s just not talk about continuity. Blade movies are not known for their continuity. The visual effects were pleasing at times but mostly stuffed just for the hell of it. Understandably, the movie has absolutely no replay value. Zilch.
I think the only saving grace for the entire movie is the music. Despite having the stupidity of choosing a rather famous track from the sountrack of Matrix (especially when you have a small twist in the story that is reminiscent of the Matrix Concept), the soundtrack manages to set some tone. People will notice the product placements as being too obvious though and that, combined with the quality of the movie, doesn’t look good at all.
So should you watch the movie? If you’ve seen Blade and Blade II, I would recommend you staying away if you want to retain your respect for those two excellent movies. Those are proper movies with excellent content and direction. This one is almost a rookie continuation and will disappoint any Blade fan.
So I finally got some time on my hands and spent the last 30 minutes in backing up the database, the old files and upgrading the blogging software to WordPress 1.5 from 1.2.2. For the uninitiated, no, I did not re-design the blog—the default look of WordPress has changed. Be assued however that I will get to the re-design sometime in this lifetime. Meanwhile, enjoy the at-times-confusing-at-times-inane content displayed to you in ever more visual goodness.
The best part I liked about the upgrade was its ease. I ain’t a rocket scientist and I could do it. I’m told this release will help with the comment and trackback spam. Look I’m dancing: \\o … o// … \o/ (that’s ASCII dance and it’s perfectly legit expression of the only dance move I’ve perfected through rigourous training over the last decade).
I was supposed to be in New Delhi yesterday. I had an acquaintance from US going through the city and it was a perfect chance to get to know each other. He’s from my profession too and well, I admit, part of the zeal to meet up stemmed from a greed that something might come out of it in the long run.
But it was not to be.
I got caught in the rain and I had fever. I slept through most of the day while my boys (that’s how I refer to my team) had a lot of fun in the office. Of course, I had to come in late night itself to clean up and answer to all the honks from the clients who wanted an update. Fortunately, most didn’t since I’d informed them that I’ll be away. Special mention: Deb. She’s the cutest one and one of the reasons I love her is that on my hi, she wanted to know what I was doing in office when I was supposed to be away. C’mon, how many clients do that?
But the above is not the real reason why I’m writing.
I came across a report that Red Hat is setting up a small centre in Pune (hurrah for the city! I think Pune is dealing with the rapid growth because of investment in IT much better than Bangalore did/is doing). They’ll be operating a support cell from there as well. They will also be working to have RH releases in Indian languages and spruce up whatever little they’ve done till now.
My initial reaction was, “Right! As if somebody will use these versions!” A little contempt too perhaps. Only initially.
Would I use software if I had the interface in Hindi? Probably not. The Europeans and the South-East Asians use software in their language. We can too. But we don’t. The why is sickening. The reason is not badly translated interfaces. The reason is not worry about raised eyebrows or smirks from the people around. The reason is I (and I would guess many others) probably won’t be able to handle the language. Hindi is my mother tongue. I think in Hindi most of the time. I swear in Hindi (or Punjabi when I want to be really colourful). But I’m not as good with Hindi as I am with English when it comes to written languages. Curse the colonial hangover. Curse the mentality that having an awesome command over English makes one cool (sic) and hip (sic), and is a passport to better jobs in India and perhaps abroad. I’m thankful to my parents for teaching me excellent Hindi and English but I’ve stuck with English past few years and Hindi has been relegated to as being the language of local verbal communication and little reading of newspapers.
Perhaps the next generation will be better off. These days I hear my cousin (he’s 14 BTW) use such words as ‘sthapit’ (establish), ‘viksit’ (develop), ‘bhasha’ (language), etc.; words that are more pure Hindi than colloquial alternatives I use. It’s true: he knows Hindi better than me; he can use it better than me. He’s pretty good at English too. Thanks to Cartoon Network.
Translated cartoons and soaps have done more to keep Hindi alive than anything else. A little over a decade ago, just after reading the book ‘Bharat Mein Angrezi Raaj’ (British Rule in India) which was banned during occupation by the British because of the explosive content, I came out a very proud Indian, and a little worried how the neo-colonialism (let’s not go into that right now) might affect us as a nation. I was worried about Hindi becoming weaker by the day. Well, it seems now my worries were groundless. Hindi is stronger as ever in the heartlands and in semi-urban and urban India, even as we become more western (sic), it is being resurrected thanks to period movies, soaps, translated shows, newspapers, news channels, and … software.
I probably will not be able to handle the interface of my software in Hindi initially. But I’ll try. I use Google in Hindi now.
Of all the strange things one hears and is subjected to, my most recent encounter has been with two people who’ve more or less said the same thing on the same day. Typical of law of averages, things happen in clusters and I’ve had 2 incidents of the same thing within today. I’ll paraphrase what was said and honestly, I don’t understand a word of it.
While talking about my attitude at work, and they both took great pains in trying to impress that they are talking only about what/how I am when I work and not otherwise, they had the following to say:
“You are not aggressive. You merely have an aggressive personality.”
Go figure.
I cast my first vote ever today.
A citizen becomes eligible for voting on attaining the age of 18. It has been 8 years since and in the numerous elections that have gone by, I’ve not been able to vote because I was not a registered voter. This time, when the Assembly (State) elections came along, I was on the voter’s list.
I went over in the afternoon and cast my vote. It was an electronic voting machine and it took about 2 minutes for the whole process: I go in, give my voter’s slip, show my ID, sign in to get the voter card, get my finger marked, hand over the voter card to the voting machine technician to enable a vote, go over to the enclosure, scan the list of candidates, press the button, look at the red light and listen to the beep to announce a successful vote, ask the technician in bewilderment if that’s all there is to it, shake my head slightly in amazement, and walk out.
😀
It was new. It was nice. It will never feel the same. One word: Wow.
I stay in touch with the clients that I handle primarily through IM (and once in a while we voice). Of course, written English provides for lots of fun. This was recently pointed out by Maninder (my senior co-worker) who read a single sentence in a coversation and fell down laughing. That sentence was, “I don’t have 396 Kids, but I have 411 Whales”. 😀
I made a mental note to keep an eye out for the funny conversations. Had this conversation just now:
Client: Cool, I’ll leave it in your capable hands. Hope you had a good weekend…
Me: I had, thank you. Wish you did too.
(2 second pause)
Me: LOL … I meant “Hope”
Client: LOL
Well, sort of anyway. Till now I had been browsing with vanilla Firefox. Suddenly, I now have 12 extensions loaded:
Funny part is that I was doing fine without them but now like their presence enough that I would not remove them either. At least most of them. 😐
I have been putting off doing some upgrades to my system here at office for some time now. I guess now is the time to go ahead and do them:
I thought about doing this in-between many times but I’ve not had that much time to myself past few days when I would want to do this.Okay, time to get all that done and tested. Hopefully, I’ll be able to clean the RAM slot and the system will continue to run stable. As of writing this, my system has been running for 2 weeks 1 day 10 hours and 35 minutes without having to reboot. This is by far the longest in 2 years that I have had this mean machine. 😉