Five continents,Seven seas
Monday, September 24, 2007

Today my blog has been hit by all five continents of the world (thats what my ClustrMap shows).
Time to rejoice :-)

I haven't posted much since a long time (running short of thoughts and time). Nothing much going this side of the life.

I have recently bought an album by Harivanshrai Bachchan having his selected fourteen poems given voice by Big B.
Some collections are wonderful.....

I'm posting here a couplet i really liked

....


यह माना मैंने खुदा नहीं मिल सकता है लंदन की धन जोवन गर्वीली
गलियों में ,यह माना उसका ख्याल नहीं आ सकता पेरिस की रसमय रातों की रंगीली
रंगरलियों में ,
जो शायर को है शाने खुदा उसमें तुम को शैन्तानी गोरख धंदा
दिखलाई देता,

पर शेख भुलावा
दो उनको जो भोले हैं,

तुम ने कुछ ऐसा गोलमाल कर रखा था, अपने घर में ही नहीं ख़ुदा का राज़ मिला,

मैंने तो काबे का हज कर के भी देख लिया ।

...

-- हरीवंश राए बच्चन

Posted by :ubuntu at 4:04:00 AM 3 comments  

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Microsoft Tafiti
Friday, August 24, 2007

To quote a blogger, this is what he pasted:

If you’re looking for a search engine that requires a plug-in, disables your
back button, won’t allow you to right-click URLs to copy them, needs pop-ups
enabled, and doesn’t let you use your mouse wheel to scroll, look no further
than Tafiti.


Tafiti, (you will need SilverLight installed on your m/c for viewing) which means "do research" in Swahili, is the latest development from Microsoft.

It's a new search tool built on top of Live Search and uses Microsoft's SilverLight technology.

And it's a typical MS product, it's the best in what MS is known best to do:User Interface

and not so good in which MS is known to for incompetency:functionality

It has a great GUI, innovative drag and drop save search facility and then a tree view of your search results. You can, through a slider, change the number of leaves in the tree, stripping the results in the order of importance, rotate the tree to see all sides. A nice set of rotating icons, let you oscillate your search b/w web,blogs,books,photos etc.

It's a search tool to play with, but when it comes to finding your search results in .65 seconds flat, no one can beat Google.

As a test I searched 21bakerstreet on Google as well as tafiti, Google took me to my blog, but tafiti could not even search for it :-(

So for me it is a good tool to admire technology and kill yourself from boredom, but when it comes to fast search , let there be Google.

So be it Yahoo! Mindset or Tafiti, long live the Google.

As far as SilverLight is concerned, it's a great technology. You can view a demo site which uses SilverLight: SilverLight Demo

On a different note, i came across a site : YMII (Your Man in India) , it's growing to be a popular site among NRIs. They undertake your works, saving you precious time. You can outsource your data filling jobs, writing emails, meeting someone in India, on your behalf, they will shop for you, will take your friends for sight seeing, whatever you want.

so, that's all to write as of now.

Posted by :ubuntu at 12:14:00 AM 1 comments  

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Books as of now
Tuesday, August 21, 2007

I have finished reading

iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business


It is a marvellous book about the life of Steve Jobs, he is a man of substance.
This book is an unofficial biography of the man, and his quest of power, how is thrown form his own company and later makes a comeback.

He in the process founds two more companies NExT and Pixar and how his fortunes takes him on a roller coaster ride. Being a ardous follower of Zen and a strict veggie, he often projected himself as a harsh fellow, disrespecting people's love for non-veg.

This book nrrates many anecdotes of his life and is a must for every bibliophile.

Steve Jobs was the most shrewd manager one can have, employees in Apple stopped using the elevator which he use to use, for the fear of losing their jobs by the time they exit from the elevator.

I simply loved this book and will recommend this to everyone.

Presently I'm eyeing the book
The KaoBoys of R&AW by B Raman


The book is on the author's memory lane while he was in R&AW and i have heard this book reveals quite a few astonishing facts.

My flatmate purchased it and once he finishes it i'll grab it.

I'll surely post about this also once I finish it.


:-)

Posted by :ubuntu at 9:41:00 AM 3 comments  

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Co-incidence [Twice]
Sunday, August 19, 2007

This has happened with me before, but when it happened second time, i thought I'll post this with a pray in my mind that my good luck (in some things) does not ceases after me telling this to the world.This use to happen in mythological tales that if a person bestowed upon by a benign wish happened to share it with the people , the magic use to cease ...

OK , enough blabbering now to the point ..

On Saturday I planned for the movie Chak De India with my friend. The tickets were not available for the 10 am show in INOX (multiplex in B'lore) and only few were available for 12:30 show, I got this insider info :-)

But still we decided to try for 12:30 show , so it was decided I will do to INOX early and my friend will come there directly.

So I left my home early 9:30 am.

On the way I discovered a new Murphy's Law :

When you are in a desperate hurry to reach a place, your auto rickshaw will stop at every single (yes each and every) traffic light on the way.


So I reached theater at 10:05 am. The tickets were still available for 12:30 show but were showing fast filling ....
Queue was long but I got in ....no other option ..

By the time I reached the counter the tickets were over, so now nothing left to do...

I told my friend about the tragedy and was waiting .... and then magic happened ...

Two boys approached me and asked me whether I want 2 tickets of Chak De India for 12:30 show, they were not black tickters, two boys who had cancelled their plan.
So I got 2 tickets of the movie for the show i was looking for ....
This thing happened to me before when I went to see Cheeni Kum with my friends , the tickets were over by the time we reached theater, then a guy approached me asking me whether I want 5 tickets for Cheeni Kum , so exactly same number of tickets for exactly the same show I was looking for .

So all things went fine. The movie was great, good to see SRK in a non-glamorous role.

That's it, that was how my Saturday flew.

Posted by :ubuntu at 11:43:00 PM 2 comments  

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Belated Happy Anniversary
Monday, July 9, 2007

Belated 1st Happy Anniversary to my blog and a belated happy b'day to me

Wanted to post this on 7Th July, but could not do it.

Q. So how it feels to complete one year in the blogger park
A. I'm feeling glad that I was able to keep my blog alive in this jungle for one year. It seems to be a thing of yesterday when I started blogging.
Learnt many things on the way, my posts speak of thou things.
Along the journey, removed all ads from my template, just felt am being too money minded :-)

Added lot of feeds to my reader,stumbled upon many great blogs and so forth.

Let's hope I'll keep writing more, actually, past few weeks I'm short of ideas.

On a different note, finished reading The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini, an amazing book, you can't stop yourself to finish it first.
I'll recommend everyone to read it, it's kind of different.
Now in a process of reading iCon, unofficial biography of Steve Jobs, this too is a great book which teaches you, you need not be fair and honest to be great :-)

Then new book of Khalid Hosseini is on the block ; A Thousand Splendid Suns, eyeing it as my next target as soon as I get my hands on it (by hook or by crook :) )

And recently was gifted The Mahabharata by Badrinath Chaturvedi, the heaviest book in my collection by one of my friends.
Its adaptation of Mahabharata in today's times.

Another book on the anvil is Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel, again linking Mahabharata to modern India

So lots of reading pending, lets see where it all takes you.

Looking for a splendid new year ahead - Amen

Posted by :ubuntu at 2:22:00 AM 2 comments  

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Jikes- A new java compiler
Wednesday, July 4, 2007

I found this new java compiler on the net, earlier supported by IBM.
This is a cool new compiler and better than javac in someways.

Jikes is claimed to be a much faster compiler than javac. They have listed 5 benefits of using Jikes instead of javac .

Incremental compilation is one of them. Incremental compilation is what IDE's do to your code, its compiling your code everytime file is modified. So u'll catch errors as you type them.

Another advantage is it gets rid of somtimes annoying stacktraces. Instead it points out errors line number wise and points to the position where error occurs and gives a verbal description of it. A cool feature.

So why we need a different compiler when IDE's give much better support for this.

I'll recommend this not for professionals who work on IDE env. It is a good thing for all java beginners who want to try something new and nice.

In my personal opinion you should not jump into IDE mode in the beginning, first dirty your hands with console application development, understand nuances of classpaths and paths and then later go in a IDE mode.

:-)

Posted by :ubuntu at 12:22:00 AM 4 comments  

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Quite Imaginative
Thursday, June 14, 2007

Recently came across a blog by a Indian in New York. He has written a series of conversations with God. He calls them Celestial conversation. I must say this guy is quite imaginative.
The series is really hilarious and a wonderful read. I urge everyone to read the series.

Celestial Conversation

There are 27 conversations and follow a connection, so read from the first.

Hats- off to this guy.

Posted by :ubuntu at 12:13:00 AM 1 comments  

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