Surprise surprise...I didn't know someone actually read this space....much less follow it. But the latest comment proved me wrong. I have moved to wordpress due to reasons mentioned in detail on the new blog. So the endangered species, that my readership is, please do redirect to:
http://www.thirdrockfromthesun.wordpress.com
See you there.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Monday, June 30, 2008
WTF?
Why is this news...that too in the Times of India.
And while we are at it, I read a few days back that the Maratha Tiger clan of the Thackeray's are themselves outsiders. Immense joy.
And while we are at it, I read a few days back that the Maratha Tiger clan of the Thackeray's are themselves outsiders. Immense joy.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
State of the Nation
So this is what it has finally come down to. All signboards in Marathi and 80% jobs to locals in Maharashtra. And this is coming not from the ill-famed Raj and the other Thackerey's but from the Finance Minister of the erstwhile state.
Its headlines like these that make the idea of economic prosperity and social progress in India look like a joke. On my visits to Chennai and Bangaloroo I was irritated when I saw signboards entirely in the regional languages of Tamil and Kannada respectively and thanked Mumbai's powers to be for not following suite. But it seems that's gonna change pretty soon. I hope sanity prevails and they still keep the Hindi/English sign boards as a back up.
I would like to see the reaction from the various business houses in response to the second headline though. In a hypothetical situation if I had been one of the influential industrialists , I would have initiated a drive to stop any further expansion plans in the state of Maharashtra and start working on a blueprint to phase out the existing installations as well. The problem with this diabolical plan is that it would end up hurting the general populace of Maharashtra who effectively had no say in such arcane plans of the government. That's pure politics for you. The current crop of politicians is no better than the British. Its still "divide and rule".
Its headlines like these that make the idea of economic prosperity and social progress in India look like a joke. On my visits to Chennai and Bangaloroo I was irritated when I saw signboards entirely in the regional languages of Tamil and Kannada respectively and thanked Mumbai's powers to be for not following suite. But it seems that's gonna change pretty soon. I hope sanity prevails and they still keep the Hindi/English sign boards as a back up.
I would like to see the reaction from the various business houses in response to the second headline though. In a hypothetical situation if I had been one of the influential industrialists , I would have initiated a drive to stop any further expansion plans in the state of Maharashtra and start working on a blueprint to phase out the existing installations as well. The problem with this diabolical plan is that it would end up hurting the general populace of Maharashtra who effectively had no say in such arcane plans of the government. That's pure politics for you. The current crop of politicians is no better than the British. Its still "divide and rule".
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Stumble(d) Upon!
I happened to stumble upon this via the aptly named service "stumbleupon". The idea and further the execution is amazing.
For any one with time to kill and a growling hunger for the weird and funny, there is no other place like the internet. And further the stumbleupon service itself is highly recommended.
Keeping in lines with the randomness of this post. Here's an original Chuck Norris fact (as far as I know) : Red Bull gives you wings. Chuck Norris immediately takes them away with a roundhouse kick to the face.
The context of this supposed arbit blabber can be understood by the cult following of Chuck Norris: here and here.
For any one with time to kill and a growling hunger for the weird and funny, there is no other place like the internet. And further the stumbleupon service itself is highly recommended.
Keeping in lines with the randomness of this post. Here's an original Chuck Norris fact (as far as I know) : Red Bull gives you wings. Chuck Norris immediately takes them away with a roundhouse kick to the face.
The context of this supposed arbit blabber can be understood by the cult following of Chuck Norris: here and here.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Ramblings of a Ubuntu Novice - Part Uno
The front banner makes it obvious that I am a recent convert to the upper echelons of the open source community courtesy my recent move from windows xp to Ubuntu Linux 7.10 code name Gutsy Gibbon. That's the charm of open source. The ultra cool code names and the aura of geekiness that it imparts to its beholder. Hardcore open sourcer's though might contest that Ubuntu is a mere sell out and falls short on the spirit part, by providing a GUI that's easy to use (what a shame!) but I couldn't care less about them. For me Ubuntu is the magical passageway to the dimly lit, flickering black and green realm of the famed unix/linux console and the amazing feats that can be achieved using it.
My prior experience with the console is limited to starting the C compiler from Unix way back during my schooling. I didn't realise the coolness of it all back then because I was more intent on getting my hands on that shiny new windows 95 machine my neighbour in the computer lab was using. You see windows 95 was all the rage when I was in school with its media players, games, screen savers and other hoopla and the fact that it was only available to a select few at least in my circle of friends. Windows might be losing its mojo nowadays getting its ass kicked in public thanks to the very bulky Vista, but I still think Microsoft started it all. Before windows a handful of people even knew what an operating system meant atleast in my part of the world. And suddenly people were talking of word and PowerPoint and excel and what not that windows had to offer. And that's what brings me to actual intent of this post. Today when I start my laptop to boot the earth coloured login screen for Ubuntu or when I use the task bar to quickly launch the pidgin instant messenger or when I open the open office word processor for writing a document I see the efficient implementations of these community projects but in the back of my mind I am still relating to the blue splash of the windows login screen, the oft crowded grey task bar on the bottom right corner and the ubiquitous Win Word. Windows brought all these ideas to the masses. And now Ubuntu and other such community projects are taking the same to the next level. They are developing the same idea to a different level of cool. This is like my personal RIP to windows. I will still use it in my office and for other assorted tasks at home but whenever I wanna feel cool (which is like 150% of the time) I will be heading for my Ubuntu powered lappie to respond back to me with enlightenment.
PS: I am in the office right now, so my dear XP don mind my foolishness! I love you.
My prior experience with the console is limited to starting the C compiler from Unix way back during my schooling. I didn't realise the coolness of it all back then because I was more intent on getting my hands on that shiny new windows 95 machine my neighbour in the computer lab was using. You see windows 95 was all the rage when I was in school with its media players, games, screen savers and other hoopla and the fact that it was only available to a select few at least in my circle of friends. Windows might be losing its mojo nowadays getting its ass kicked in public thanks to the very bulky Vista, but I still think Microsoft started it all. Before windows a handful of people even knew what an operating system meant atleast in my part of the world. And suddenly people were talking of word and PowerPoint and excel and what not that windows had to offer. And that's what brings me to actual intent of this post. Today when I start my laptop to boot the earth coloured login screen for Ubuntu or when I use the task bar to quickly launch the pidgin instant messenger or when I open the open office word processor for writing a document I see the efficient implementations of these community projects but in the back of my mind I am still relating to the blue splash of the windows login screen, the oft crowded grey task bar on the bottom right corner and the ubiquitous Win Word. Windows brought all these ideas to the masses. And now Ubuntu and other such community projects are taking the same to the next level. They are developing the same idea to a different level of cool. This is like my personal RIP to windows. I will still use it in my office and for other assorted tasks at home but whenever I wanna feel cool (which is like 150% of the time) I will be heading for my Ubuntu powered lappie to respond back to me with enlightenment.
PS: I am in the office right now, so my dear XP don mind my foolishness! I love you.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Doctors and Developers
It took a mildly bad case of cold and accompanying strange headache for me to figure this one out. Considering the not so optimum incubating environment the analysis and corresponding conclusions might not stand a good test. But they sound alright to me right now.
So lets ask this question. What is common between a Doctor and a Developer?
Answer : They both end up clearing someone else's bloody mess and buggy code.
And now let me go ahead and explain that. The smart ones may skip the following part. Developers in 90 % of the case end up supporting an existing application or worse an application "designed and developed" by themselves. Doctors similarly 99% of the time end up fixing natures bloody mess. The remaining 1% is attributed to the seldom heard cases of "doctor left a glove in the patients belly during operation" or "mis-diagnosed heart patient gets his kidney removed"and suchlike.
Again lets talk of percentage. 90% of the time a developer tries to fix an exception by restarting a server or the application. Similarly a doctor prescribes a bunch of antibiotics and other generic drugs irrespective of the symptoms. The last bit on the Doctors is based on the common belief that medicine is still an experimental science. And it works in both the cases. The restarting of the server/application cleans up all the logs and caches and the application starts running smoothly. Similarly in case of the Doctor one of the generic drug hits its target and the patient is cured.
Moving forward further 9% of the time, the developer finds a documented exception , a known symptom in case of the doctor and uses the prescribed solution to fix it.
The remaining 1% are the undetected and untraceable bugs in an application for which the underlying coding language isn't developed enough. And for the doctors these are the HIV's and Hepatitis B-C's and suchlike incurable diseases.
Now both doctors and developers might take exception at this post blaming me of gross assumption. But I have nothing but immense respect for both the professions, I being a developer myself. They both do a really tough job of fixing stuff and they inadvertently get blamed for someone else's faulty design.
So lets ask this question. What is common between a Doctor and a Developer?
Answer : They both end up clearing someone else's bloody mess and buggy code.
And now let me go ahead and explain that. The smart ones may skip the following part. Developers in 90 % of the case end up supporting an existing application or worse an application "designed and developed" by themselves. Doctors similarly 99% of the time end up fixing natures bloody mess. The remaining 1% is attributed to the seldom heard cases of "doctor left a glove in the patients belly during operation" or "mis-diagnosed heart patient gets his kidney removed"and suchlike.
Again lets talk of percentage. 90% of the time a developer tries to fix an exception by restarting a server or the application. Similarly a doctor prescribes a bunch of antibiotics and other generic drugs irrespective of the symptoms. The last bit on the Doctors is based on the common belief that medicine is still an experimental science. And it works in both the cases. The restarting of the server/application cleans up all the logs and caches and the application starts running smoothly. Similarly in case of the Doctor one of the generic drug hits its target and the patient is cured.
Moving forward further 9% of the time, the developer finds a documented exception , a known symptom in case of the doctor and uses the prescribed solution to fix it.
The remaining 1% are the undetected and untraceable bugs in an application for which the underlying coding language isn't developed enough. And for the doctors these are the HIV's and Hepatitis B-C's and suchlike incurable diseases.
Now both doctors and developers might take exception at this post blaming me of gross assumption. But I have nothing but immense respect for both the professions, I being a developer myself. They both do a really tough job of fixing stuff and they inadvertently get blamed for someone else's faulty design.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Day 5 - 1st anniversary time
Day 5 was special. In fact it wouldn't be entirely incorrect if I say that day 5 or rather the date that day 5 occurred on was the sole reason for this Hawaii trip. You see last year on this very date I was participating in the royal ceremony of tying the wedlock with the iconic missez of mine. I then went on and committed the horrible sin of ditching the honeymoon and flying back to this firang land that too alone. The agonizing 1 month that followed has been well documented in this very blog in the past. So you see this trip was sort of like my redemption. I was taking the missez on the mother of all honeymoons - a no holds barred week long trip to Hawaii, albeit a year too late. And I had a bagful of phrases to emphasize this very idea which I used althrough the trip and will continue to use whenever I am fighting a losing battle with the missez. Just the phrase, "....but I took you to Hawaii on our 1st anniversary, didn't I??" and all will be well in my stormy world. I hope it keeps working till eternity. Amen!!
But I digress, so day 5 had been very carefully planned to make it that extra bit magical in the words of a romantic. The morning was gonna be stress free, without any prior reservations we were free to roam around. And roam we surely did, spending a good deal of time at the beach and then in the long eluding hotel pool where I took a dip and the missez bathed in the sun. At the stroke of noon we were right in front of a surfing center. Yes...we were going surfing today. Now disclaimer here. The following part of the blog will be part fiction, because I sucked at this surfing thing. Yes sucked is the perfect word to describe my antics on the waves. And the parts where I describe myself surfing like a dude can be safely attributed to the missez. Because she had yet again taken to surfing like fish to water.In fact I sometime wonder if she was born fish in any of her prior incarnations and thus still has those fishy instincts. But thats just my jealousy showing its bright green color.
So we embarked upon the surfing adventure. We were an assorted group of 6 adventure seekers. Two young ones, a dad, a 40 something spinster from Seattle, the missez and yours truly. I was secretly judging them on their ability to grasp this tricky sport of surfing. I quickly choose my closest competitor and thus adversary.The spinster.Everyone else had way too much unfair advantage. The young ones, obviously. They are not afraid of anything, darn age. Missez too, obviously.The fish thing remember. The dad was now looking kinda shaky so he could also fall in my draw. So there was no pressure. I was surfing against a old lady and a shaky dad. Piece of cake man. Where's the dude trophy?
This one too , like snorkeling, began with a not so short course on surfing and this too as before was utter bullshit. On the beach ,I was still fumbling around with the instructions being thrown at me when it was already time to efficiently execute the very same at sea without someone actually throwing them at you. Pompously I assumed that I was a pro now and the 2 ft waves were looking like a mild disturbance on a calm lake surface. Bring on the good stuff, where are the 10 footers. Thankfully the natural forces that determine the details of the height of the waves were taking a coffee break and cared less about my lame provocations. My brain was running on overdrive and I let everyone else pass ahead of me. You see I was just trying to access what I was competing against so I could lower my ability and effort accordingly and still supersede them comfortably. Ohh such shrewdness,pat on the back dude. When ultimately my turn arrived, I paddled towards the instructor, swiftly ignored his last instructions and lo and behold I was one with my old pal, gallons of salt water. And with every turn of mine, we extended our friendship to higher levels. Over the 2 hours or so of this activity, my cumulative standing time on the surfboard was an impressive 5 and half seconds, counting the half second for the time while I was struggling on my knees to stand up. In hindsight I would officially like to blame this catastrophe on my body's center of gravity which failed to lift itself to surfing standards. Case closed.
As expected missez was doing superbly on her own and I was content watching her appreciatively while flapping my hands in the sea lying horizontally on the board.Soon enough it was over and we were back on the beach. It seems there was some dude who was taking our snaps during all these acrobatics in full 1280 HD glory. To his credit he had captured the entire 5 and half seconds of my verticalness on the board in 15 different snaps. And there was the graphic proof of my amazing surfing abilities.
Content, we were back in the hotel to chill out till the sunset cruise, icing on our anniversary cake. We had booked the priority tickets in the hope that we will finally get the flower garland welcome on the cruise ship. But all we got was priority seating which ended up being public after all. Initial disappointment withstanding we secured a cozy little corner for ourself. From then on till the dark of the night it was all about the sea, the sun and the sky. The 3 elements intermingling in innumerable formations of unimaginable beauty. The high point was when a mother and calf humpback whales decided to pay a visit to personally greet us on our anniversary. They were literally in touching distance of the boat. I captured umpteen fit-for-wallpaper snaps. The fading light brought with it some unwanted rain. Luckily we found an aptly shaded seating right on the deck while everyone else bar the captain ran for cover in the belly of the boat. So the scene was - lashing rain, fading light of the sun, the sea and the two of us. Magical.
Other passengers finally decided to brave the now thinning rain and ascended to the deck. Many interesting conversations followed including one with the captain of the boat herself. We also discovered a bunch of ghost boats, supposedly floating in the middle of the ocean with their lights turned off.
By the time we stepped back on land it was totally dark and it was curtains on a very special day. Lights out day 5. Snap count 550 something.
But I digress, so day 5 had been very carefully planned to make it that extra bit magical in the words of a romantic. The morning was gonna be stress free, without any prior reservations we were free to roam around. And roam we surely did, spending a good deal of time at the beach and then in the long eluding hotel pool where I took a dip and the missez bathed in the sun. At the stroke of noon we were right in front of a surfing center. Yes...we were going surfing today. Now disclaimer here. The following part of the blog will be part fiction, because I sucked at this surfing thing. Yes sucked is the perfect word to describe my antics on the waves. And the parts where I describe myself surfing like a dude can be safely attributed to the missez. Because she had yet again taken to surfing like fish to water.In fact I sometime wonder if she was born fish in any of her prior incarnations and thus still has those fishy instincts. But thats just my jealousy showing its bright green color.
So we embarked upon the surfing adventure. We were an assorted group of 6 adventure seekers. Two young ones, a dad, a 40 something spinster from Seattle, the missez and yours truly. I was secretly judging them on their ability to grasp this tricky sport of surfing. I quickly choose my closest competitor and thus adversary.The spinster.Everyone else had way too much unfair advantage. The young ones, obviously. They are not afraid of anything, darn age. Missez too, obviously.The fish thing remember. The dad was now looking kinda shaky so he could also fall in my draw. So there was no pressure. I was surfing against a old lady and a shaky dad. Piece of cake man. Where's the dude trophy?
This one too , like snorkeling, began with a not so short course on surfing and this too as before was utter bullshit. On the beach ,I was still fumbling around with the instructions being thrown at me when it was already time to efficiently execute the very same at sea without someone actually throwing them at you. Pompously I assumed that I was a pro now and the 2 ft waves were looking like a mild disturbance on a calm lake surface. Bring on the good stuff, where are the 10 footers. Thankfully the natural forces that determine the details of the height of the waves were taking a coffee break and cared less about my lame provocations. My brain was running on overdrive and I let everyone else pass ahead of me. You see I was just trying to access what I was competing against so I could lower my ability and effort accordingly and still supersede them comfortably. Ohh such shrewdness,pat on the back dude. When ultimately my turn arrived, I paddled towards the instructor, swiftly ignored his last instructions and lo and behold I was one with my old pal, gallons of salt water. And with every turn of mine, we extended our friendship to higher levels. Over the 2 hours or so of this activity, my cumulative standing time on the surfboard was an impressive 5 and half seconds, counting the half second for the time while I was struggling on my knees to stand up. In hindsight I would officially like to blame this catastrophe on my body's center of gravity which failed to lift itself to surfing standards. Case closed.
As expected missez was doing superbly on her own and I was content watching her appreciatively while flapping my hands in the sea lying horizontally on the board.Soon enough it was over and we were back on the beach. It seems there was some dude who was taking our snaps during all these acrobatics in full 1280 HD glory. To his credit he had captured the entire 5 and half seconds of my verticalness on the board in 15 different snaps. And there was the graphic proof of my amazing surfing abilities.
Content, we were back in the hotel to chill out till the sunset cruise, icing on our anniversary cake. We had booked the priority tickets in the hope that we will finally get the flower garland welcome on the cruise ship. But all we got was priority seating which ended up being public after all. Initial disappointment withstanding we secured a cozy little corner for ourself. From then on till the dark of the night it was all about the sea, the sun and the sky. The 3 elements intermingling in innumerable formations of unimaginable beauty. The high point was when a mother and calf humpback whales decided to pay a visit to personally greet us on our anniversary. They were literally in touching distance of the boat. I captured umpteen fit-for-wallpaper snaps. The fading light brought with it some unwanted rain. Luckily we found an aptly shaded seating right on the deck while everyone else bar the captain ran for cover in the belly of the boat. So the scene was - lashing rain, fading light of the sun, the sea and the two of us. Magical.
Other passengers finally decided to brave the now thinning rain and ascended to the deck. Many interesting conversations followed including one with the captain of the boat herself. We also discovered a bunch of ghost boats, supposedly floating in the middle of the ocean with their lights turned off.
By the time we stepped back on land it was totally dark and it was curtains on a very special day. Lights out day 5. Snap count 550 something.
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