youtube to mp3

A simple and zero installation way to convert youtube video to mp3.

Offshore night-out

When i was in offshore, this was the slang word to work late and very late . One of my friend used to question shouldn't this be called "night-in"! Anyway, guy told me today, if someone is in offshore, they are expected to work after office hours most of the time. If you are one of those, i strongly suggest to stop reading further. I usually start my conversation when someone calling me late night from offshore, "why are you in office now?". I'm not going to say that offshore will never have to stay late, but certainly don't have to do it 4 out of 5 days. There were days we stayed back and worked late or come to office on Saturday; sometimes for issues, delivery deadline, help others and even to compensate for good time spent in office stairs vetti talk; but i don't think it was not lot of times.Ok based on my experience and lot of mistakes, following will help one to reduce late hours if not eliminate.

Estimate: Mostly a bad estimate will be the underlying issue. Whatever way you do it either scientific or absolute crap like scribbling in palm (yes i have done that) make sure it is something achievable. A feedback loop with actual will help refine future estimates, even with all tools and things there is always some personal judgment, so learning from mistake is a key.

Plan: Based on my limited experience at onsite "plan is god", everyone will agree to a plan and priorities. Plans can fail, but still there is some plan. In Lucas-TVS, there is 15 mins morning meeting before they start work, agenda is to review plan for the day. It is a stand up meeting and called sunrise meeting, those are days, where i had to start my commute during almost sunrise and glimpse early morning empty chennai.

Onsite call: Can't do much, but interacting through mails will eliminate lengthy calls. May be we can read thro' reqt document with some assumptions and clarify assumptions thro' mail. We can try looking into upcoming things and get clarified thro' mails instead of waiting for that day.

May be it is true that offshore has to work late many times, but what kind of life we are looking at, if we are still in office after office hours. I'd like to look at it from a humane point of view, every one in onsite moved from offshore only and didn't fall from heavens, though some would like to think that way. Drop me a note, if you have something to share.

outer join and group by clause

Nowadays don't get a lot of chance to be hands-on. The following did not fetch the outer join rows

select ordr, grp, count(ser_id) as [Sev4 Created]
from #myHPSDGrps left outer join dbo.ServiceCallView
on AssignedToWorkgroup = grp
where
[Open Date&Time] >= @begin and
[Open Date&Time] < @end and
Severity = 'Severity 4'
group by ordr, grp
order by ordr

but one below does, moved all the where clause to outer join condition

select ordr, grp, count(ser_id) as [Sev4 Created]
from #myHPSDGrps left outer join dbo.ServiceCallView
on AssignedToWorkgroup = grp and
[Open Date&Time] >= @begin and
[Open Date&Time] < @end and
Severity = 'Severity 4'
group by ordr, grp
order by ordr

Didn't have much time to analyze :0

Imperialism or Free market economy. You decide!

Is it fair when a company pays less than 1% of a product's retail price to a toiling worker located other side of the earth; yes everyone know there is raw material and other overheads; but what kind of future are we headed, if these company's only motive is shareholder profit and they don't mind exploiting resources (men AND material!). <todo> I'll scribble my useless thoughts here on capitalism, outsourcing, off-shoring, ... from a humane point of view. Till then here is a documentary. </todo>

Trailer:


Part I


Part II


Here is part1 and part2 in hi-def format for those who are on high-speed. Rest assured there is not a single quote from Karl Marx :) But here is one that i read recently "the capitalists will sell the very noose that will hang them.". I read some criticize the film that is doesn't provide a solution or alternative.

குறை சொல்ற நாய்ங்க, பொற கூட வாங்கி தராதுங்க (எங்கிருந்தோ சுட்டது)

Decade after college

Whooph! its going to be a decade from completion of my bachelor. Gone are those days, one-and-half hour commute, missing morning classes promptly, never caring to listen to lecturer in the class, making sure to just clear attendance level needed, after announcement of exam schedule; running around to xerox class notes and previous question papers, so called group study(!), cramming thro' the exams, luckily (may be with little intelligence) cleared exams without arrears (never worried about occasional stamps).

I can happily recollect the morning of last exam of the course (i think automobile engg), didn't study major part of a chapter and told to a classmate "if i can clear so many papers in past, i should be able to clear this w/o studying this chapter", don't know if that was foolish optimism or damn crap. Other unforgettable paper is mechanics of machines, for some crap reasons didn't attend most part of the class and hence forced to learn from book all by myself. End of the college, did pass out with a decent above average score. Life after that was not so easy, had to toil a bit to get into masters degree and had to take that one little bit serious.

Innovation: Buzz (?)

This should be most abused word, everyone is talking, from presidential candidate's to blue chip's and to your boss. By sheer happenstance i tuned to a presidential debate when american addiction to foreign oil was being discussed, two words i heard from many, one is innovation and other was hybrid. Personally i don't believe there is not going to be a ground breaking innovation (or invention?) in next decade and half, its going to be efficient engines, alternative fuels (not that ethanol crap) till a invention (fuel cell?) is mature for wide use. I did find a sore point in current hybrids "No cord to plug-in" is marketed as a feature; IMHO if its a electric it has to be plug-in.

Some of the big corporates expect innovation a big thing, which i totally agree, but they shouldn't expect few big innovations with million dollar savings but appreciate 1000+ small innovations. This reminds me Toyota production system and lean manufacturing, which aims at reducing waste's in the process using various concepts and continuous improvement. Concepts like Poka-Yoke, SPF, SMED and Kaizen wouldn't have come straight from drawing board, its all very simple innovations, improving efficiency and eliminating waste in the total value stream. பல துளி(யே) பெரு வெள்ளம்.

I strongly believe everyone has innovative ideas but most neglect it. I can fondly recollect old days, when i joined my first project it was 3 member team supporting an ERP application from offshore and client will log issues in a web based system and team used to hit IE refresh button every 5 mins to check if there is any issues logged. Innovations are born for need (and greed?), my unwillingness to do that mundane job, i used autorefresh meta tag and made the page self refreshing every 60 seconds. And there was a satirical comment, why do i even look at the screen; those were days i was just learning VB. Exactly 5 days later i was running a small VB program that will notify updates thro' mail, which was later coded to send SMS notification to support cellphone (though it was not implemented due to costs). Few days back i was able to share the same idea to team here and send SMS notification of prod issues and avoid staring at mailbox. Here is list of email-to-sms mail addresses for US carriers.

உலகத்துல உன்னை விட பெரியவன் யாரும் இல்லை அதனால யாருக்கும் பயப்படாதே அதே மாதிரி உன்னை விட சின்னவன் யாரும் இல்லை அதனால நீ யாரையும் தாழ்வா நினைக்காதே!!!
-அய்யம்பேட்டை அறிவுடை நம்பி கலியபெருமாள் சந்திரன்
(Ctrl-C/V from vettipayal)

Top 3 LIA luxuries!

Today, one of my friend was telling me a list of things he loves in american life. It sparked my thoughts and i was wondering what would be things that i get here which i'll miss back home. Here is that short count down

3. Water
A sound proof what a person who lived 27+ yrs in Chennai dreams of. Back @ home, can i imagine a day taking 30 mins shower; hmmm after r2i, i should put it in a box and bury it 100 miles deep. I hope i can atleast get a couple of buckets of non-saline and some what clear water to take bath.

2. Interstate
As a guy who commuted entire part of his life in public transportation, this is something beyond luxury. Recollecting days in 18J and 47D, no question on India's population. But i see there is some hope on getting better road.

1. Long evenings & Nature
I don't know if this two should be split, but may be these two are some what related and hence shares number one position. I can easily count the number of times i reached home in day light; from there to a place with daylight till 9 PM, there is no words to express. Either it be a national park or city park next door, there is very little i happen to visit in chennai, probably there are places out there but either not easily accessible or known, but i highly doubt i'd have got a chance to walk in knee deep snow or drive on a frozen lake, hike a nature trail in deep woods, 1000 color fall season or tour an underground cave.

How much i'm going to miss these? quite a bit, but i lived in Chennai for most part of my life and i can go back taking these pleasant memories. There will be days where we have a kaakaa kuliyal and rush(!) to office in 1+ hr, get back home after sunset and switch on "Good nite" mat and wake up with 10 kosu kadi's; did i mention we also try to live a life in between.

"Veni, Vidi, Vici" -Julius Caesar

Fall colors @ Great Smoky Mountains

2007 smoky mountains fall season ...

David Blaine Street Magic ;-)

If you have seen Blaine's street magic earlier, here is a funny parody... PG13



here is the sequel ...

Chennai real-estate: Boom or Bubble ?

I don't have any property as of now and i might be speculating on few things here. I keep hearing this "bubble" theory for quite a few years (little more than 4 yrs in my case) in potlucks, parties, media, ... i really like to know where this goes in chennai.

I was under assumption for a long time that this market is more end user driven with very little investor forces playing. But now a days i see lot of people esp NRI, IT folks looking it as a investment option. Is the surge mainly fueled by NRI, IT and investors or is there a genuine rise in demand for housing? I can't believe something getting appreciated by 300+% in matter of 4 or 5 years while there is no change in facilities; and one thing i hear in many instances is properties are shifting hands and nothing is built upon them, no idea how much of it is true.

If i R2I in couple of years, one thing that worries us is whether w'll be able to secure a piece of land close to my work, other will be the dollar dip (i'm sure you heard the scary story of 35 rupees exchange rate), which i leave it to Nilekani and Premji to worry for now.

Evolution or Intelligent design ?

After reading a lot on both sides of the controversy for past few months, i question myself where i stand? And i realize that I'm still standing right on the line. Hmm, i ought to rest the question for a while.

Darwin's theory of natural selection is a scientific fact, but i do find pockets of grey areas (or i didn't get to know much) like, origin of an organic life form from a "primeval soup" and i'm truly not convinced of the counter argument against Irreducible complexity's flagellum example. On other hand in ID (just as a concept and not as a theory) i see a thread of theistic creationism running beneath, which is a dark area I'm not comfortable to enter.

I unequivocally agree that Evolution is a science and ID isn't, but i should say its far better than creationism. There is no way church and science going to get to a mutually agreeable point, so this one should linger around for quiiite a while. Till then i better worry about getting the bread to the table.

Wallpapers

It was kind of boring for a while with my desktop wallpapers, one of my friend sent me a link to this site, i checked out some nature ones, really beautiful wallpapers, though not high res.

Real time flight data and tracker

flightstats.com

real time flight details and tracking. requires free registration for email alerts and extended details.

YouTube >> iPod

Unlike google video, youtube doesn't provide option to download video, one of my friend forwarded me link to Stephen Hawking's Origin of the Universe lecture at Berkley, i wasn't able to control my urge to download to my pod, after few mins of search ended up using this site to download youtube video in mp4 format. I'd highly recommend the site, just for its simplicity of doing all with no software to install in my machine.

Ahem... Dr. Ilayathalapthi

What happen when politician run universities ...




Ooookkkkk... Who's next? ....
((god damnit doesn't shreya deserve one))

History of hAcKiNg

After a longgg time had some time to vetti browsing :) Down below is quite a interesting documentary on the topic.

My take on this, black or white hat, he is just curious (hmm may be little bit too much). Whatever! Here is one of my recent discovery, hole in e.p.a.p.e.r edition of The H>i>n>d>u, deciphering the filenaming took less than 5 mins from start to finish, i think i talked about this hole in one of my prev post; servers change, hole remains.

Few months back, in a IIS7 feature demo there was one interesting item that i can recollect; a managed module for all IIS requests (even for static files); so theoretically i can write a HTTPModule to validate authentication and serve as gate keeper of any IIS requests.

url:
http://e^p^aper.theh^indu.com/pdf/YYYY/
MM/DD/YYYYMMDD?_###$$$.pdf
ex:
http://e^p^aper.theh^indu.com/pdf/2007/
08/19/20070819A_001101.pdf

take out ^ char in the url

? -> content
A --main paper
B --metropulse
C --opportunities or second supplement
T --may be special supplement

### -> running page number

$$$ -> edition
101 - chennai
102 - delhi
103 - hyd

batch download with flashget completes the square. Ok now goes the documentary,



Do i know you ???
I don't think so !!!

myTunes

itunes sucks when you don't find option to take mp3/video/music out of ipod. Today i plan to dump iTunes and replace with idump and ml_ipod, let me see how far i can go with these. I'm copying winamp folder after ml_ipod plugin installation and idump executable in the ipod, with this i should be able to plug and manage ipod on any computer without itunes. But still i'd have to leave itunes in my machine for sole reason of firmware updates.

new desktop!

Screenshot of my new XP desktop macified and vistafied, get it under 30 mins with ObjectDock and Google sidebar.

Whose Fish?

I'm not big fan of puzzles, i did go thro' same old crap for infy, but i do recollect solving this puzzle *supposedly* created by Albert Einstein and said that 98% of the people in the world could not figure it out. Trick to solve is to *visualize*, for those like me, you can write and cut the paper. Save paper, save trees, save earth :)

There are five houses in a row in different colors. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The five owners drink a different drink, smoke a different brand of cigar and keep a different pet, one of which is a fish.

Hints:

1. The Brit lives in the red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the left of the white house.
5. The green house owner drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Malls keeps birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhills.
8. The man living in the house right in the center drinks milk.
9. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
10. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the one who smokes Dunhills.
12. The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Princes.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.

Who owns the fish ???

A key logger

Many came to me asking how a key logger will go undetected with all these security options. I think it may be due to the fact that AV scanners look for known keylogger signatures and if i happen to write and build one, it may not be able to find it. Here is source code of a simple key logger written in VB, tell me if it goes undetected in your AV scan. But this is just a payload, how you infect the client and transmit data out of the client is where the fun is.

<< i support white hat >>

TinTin

Long gone those days, life is fun and free of bs work. I had lot of fun time watching TinTin series those days and probably made me one of those ardent fans, last week i started googling for TinTin series and caught the link, it has dvd rip of "The Adventures of TinTin [complete season 1-3]" and get all srt subrips here.

Make sure all parts are available for each divx file before downloading thro' rapidshare link checker. You can opt to leech from many unsecured wifi next door or have patience in downloading from rapidshare with its time limitations.

Lean, Agile, and Extreme Programming

Jokes apart, if you are interested in learning yet another process copied from manufacturing to software industry, here is a article on Lean, Agile, and Extreme Programming. Couple of years back i have seen advantages with couple of XP tools, peer programming and TDD which we used informally or to be precise w/o even knowing what is XP [Here is some literature on XP link1 link2]. Spending some time googling on lean s/w development brings back memories of how we used to appreciate tools from toyota prod system like poka-yoke, smed, u-cell,... I'd been more happy if i had sticked on to manufacturing domain, if not for C++ and mirage of fat paycheck.

... more free movies ...

TamilTerminal.net

Here is link to another movie site to download latest tamil movies for free, some with divx quality. Many english movie links are dead i haven't checked out other lang sections

here is a link dump site, here is one for english.

Simple way to catch movie links out there, get into a share digger like shareminer.com or megadownload.net, type in the movie name, you should be all set to watch the movie in a day.

N'joy :)

Watermark photo date and time

I wanted to superimpose the picture taken date in the photo's saved from my digital camera, i don't know if i really read thro' the digital camera manual, this doesn't seem to be possible, so after a while had some fun with coding (Ahem... Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V code stitching)

This utility reads the picture information available as EXIF attribute and stamps a watermark in the photo, now i can print those with the date and time on the photo.

Needs .net 2.0 framework, copy jpg's to folder where exe is located and run the binary or you can prefer to pass the folder path as cmd-line argument.
WARNING: Doesn't implement Lossless JPEG Transforms, so image resolution will degrade, shouldn't be a big problem if you are planning to print 5-by-7 and not a poster.

Pls feel free to extend the source to a full fledged app with decent user interface and implement lossless jpeg transformation.

Update 4/28: Some more code stitching and got the windows app interface for the same core logic, find the application and source.

Online Suryan FM, Sun Tv, K Tv, ...

Long expected and finally now its here, listen to Suryan FM Chennai live in online. Hmm lets wait for Radio Mirchi's answer.

As a side note, watch free stream of Sun Tv, K Tv & Vijay TV online @ isaitamil.net . Also here is
link to Mahabharatham (தமிழ்) from rajshri.com

இனிய தமிழ் புத்தாண்டு வாழ்த்துக்கள

Sivaji mp3 with ID3 lyrics

Sivaji mp3 with ID3 lyrics for iPod/WMP/...

.NET and statistic calculations

Today i had to calculate 99th percentile and slope and forecast. I was hoping .net may have something or i should be able to get some open source, but after couple of hours of search i was not able to find anything.

I decided to write my own component and got some java pseudo-code using koders.com and wrote one, here is VB.net code to compute nth percentile, i was too lazy to go back and study statistics literature and client gave me the logic for slope and forecast calculation. (Thanks Terry!)


PS: During this process, we figured out the percentile calculation in Excel is not statistically accurate.

Update 2/10/07: Let me share some of the common code i wrote in last few months. Unlike Microsoft enterprise library or application blocks these were written with some assumptions and simplicity in mind, so don't expect this to be feature rich. If you find any bug/issue with code leave a note. Compressed file has a data access layer component, common routines used for web and desktop, authorization component for web; all code written in .net 2.0

NTFS & Knoppix Live OS. A deadly combination.

Last week my laptop crashed and after multiple tries i was not able to recover the OS and decided to reinstall OS, but i recovered data booting from Knoppix Live OS. Hell with NTFS protection, i figured out anyone with a live OS may be able to boot from it and mount the NTFS file system and copy any file from it, only consoling thing was Knoppix mounted drive as read-only system, so much for NTFS security :-(

How to be a programmer and also *like* being one?

As I'm turning another page in my programmer's life, this is my answer from my experience, obviously there is very big crowd out there and do it in lot of different ways.

• Code for personal use and fun. Helped me to learn things that i wouldn't have had a chance in my professional life.
• Innovate. No, I'm not Edison, but i like to do simple things that makes my life easier, my first one, i was so lazy to hit F5 and created auto refreshing html to check for support issues, you have to believe me, till that team use to hit F5 every 5 mins manually, Duh!
• Learn jargon and go beyond XYZ. Learning something new is always fun, 'coz I'll not be using it professionally and no one knows how bad I'm in it, but when someone needs to use it, they may think i know something on that, of course by that time, I'll have to atleast learn to use it properly;-)
  
• Think Architect - Think Naïve. Sometimes i have to think from an architect angle and next minute I'll also have to think like an entry level programmer, kind of chinese Yin - Yang, if i haven't learn to try things differently, it 'd have been a boring work for sure.
  
• To err is human. Slowly learning(!) from initial dog days, I can now appreciate this concept so much now. There is no such thing as Zero Defect, But why the heck TL's expect bug free code :)
  
• Last but not the least, i think someone in future may look into my code. Yeah, i know what i'm writing is not a kalvettu, but atleast later i should not say "what the heck, is that?".
  

Reminds me incident in my first development project, where i decided to side track from normal VB program style, used encapsulation and coded a class to abstract the logic (some vetti work i should say). I had to take off on one day and there was a bug to be fixed, TL after looking in to the code, decided to wait for me to fix it next day though she had really good developer who knows better VB than me. You rarely get these days where you realize, you do justification when coding.

Happy New year 2007 !!!