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.