Common powerpoint mistakes :)

Funny presentation by Don McMillan

Chennai MTC Routes

Happen to stumble upon the below site for Chennai MTC connections

http://rab.in/bus/chennai/

George W Bush: Go Fish!

US Gross Federal Debt, unadjusted for inflation.











National debt when president George W Bush Jr. took office at the beginning of 2001 was about $5.6 trillion and it is close to 10.2 trillion as of today.



"Humble foreign policy" anyone?

Reminds me a line from Jurassic Park, "I don't blame people for their mistakes. But I do ask that they pay for them."

யார் யாருகோ டாக்டர் பட்டம் குடுகிறிங்கோ, இவருக்கு குடுங்கப்பா டபுல் டாக்டர் பட்டம்.

leanerFox

Off late i was frustrated with Firefox eating so much memory. Its far better from what used to be back.

• Upgraded to latest and greatest version which has many memory leak fixes
  
• Installed flashblock extension
  
• Modded following config entries

browser.cache.disk.capacity 15000
browser.cache.memory.capacity -1
browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers 2 {seldom use back button}
config.trim_on_minimize true {would love if there is a similar thing for lost focus event}
nglayout.initialpaint.delay 0
network.http.pipelining true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests 8 {for DSL speed}

I have the same problem with Yahoo messenger, felt it became more and more resource hog. I don't want a browser window to open all times for the web version (why can't they provide the msg archive on web to standalone version also}. After googling a bit, did the following, but i still see sometimes it gobbles 30k,

• switched to classic skin
• removed all plug-ins
• remove annoying ad-banner {this patch worked for version 8.1.0.421}

Microsoft surface

Muti-touch, muti-user, device recognizing surface computing from Microsoft. Don't expect this coffee table to hit your home for next few years, hopefully demand should drive down the price to something affordable after 2010. This is just beginning of how things are going to change in computing world, from the not-so-fancy box in the desk or that oversize thing in lap. One of the future features is going to be connected devices with intelligent human interface, bye-bye keyboard/mouse.

For while i'm not involved with significant development activities, hence replacing Building tomorrow's legacy system, Today! with something that aptly reflects the real significance of my babbles, err i mean the posts.

Scraps for this week

- The .NET Framework 3.5 Common Namespaces and Types Poster

- iTextSharp. Good/Free/Open-source pdf library. Collection of samples here. Original Java library's ebook.

- Today development site was pointing to prod db and client support team told me this even happens in reverse and they told me biz component uses db config from dll's app.config and hence they recompile the dll with different environment config. First reaction to what is happening stumped me, I was under assumption when web app used this component, component should be erroring out as these config entries are not available in web.config or in worst case retrieved empty string as values. Looks like .net embeds, compile time config entries as default values in the assembly. Some more light to what is happening under the hood here.

- Strange skies

Web 2.x ?

Some useless thoughts of what could be next incremental feature addition in web 2.0 with current available technology.

Speech recognizing websites. How about getting into website and give a voice commands like pay bill, print statement. Web based voice chat apps show the capability to send voice data over the wire and automated telephonic response using speech recognition seems to be much more improved. Can these technologies mash?

Seamless web drives. Platform neutral i/o protocol that will enable users to add personal web space/folder like any connected external drive. People should be able to open and edit a document over web just like one in local drive; underlying protocol should manage connectivity/encryption/transmission with data store in the cloud. With high speed connectivity becoming ubiquitous, it will be a nice feature addition to OS.

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.

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.

Ahem... Dr. Ilayathalapthi

What happen when politician run universities ...




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

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 ???

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.

... 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 :)

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/...

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 :-(