India's disastrous performance
Friday, October 29, 2004
These two posts appeared on my company's internal newsgroup soon after India's disastrous performance against Australia:
---Post 1---
hurreeey australia ko bevkuf banaya
australia ke betsmen ne itnmi mahenat karke run banaye.
jabki zarurat hi nahi thi.
wah wah !!!
--------
---Post 2---
BCCI CRICKET TEAM recruitment
Calling Guys For Place in the INDIAN Cricket Team ( Oooopsss BCCI CRICKET TEAM)
Experience --- 1+ yrs in playing Gully Cricket
No interviews … direct recruitment…
FCFS basis …. HURRRYYY RUSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
desired skills:
batsmen should have expertise in managing run outs out of nowhere
fielders shud be sure to fumble when catches come along and gv as ugly a dive as possible
if applying for the post of skipper, shud have gud vocab to gv bold and outrageous comments to match other teams' mind games
if applying for WK, shud be able to manage let everythin pass between the legs and score consistent 40's in all matches
bowlers shud be capable of maintaining regularly irregular line n length
if applyin for the post of GOD, shud be sufferin from tennis elbow so as to b able to furnish proper excuses for non performing
if applyin for WALL, shud be able to struggle shamelessly on "non-foreign" pitches
if applying for VERY VERY SPECIAL post, shud be able to struggle against spin and play as far from the body as possible
if applying for OPENER, shud hv an inspiring "maa"
finally bowlers shud be able to score runs and batsmen shud get wickets regularly......
----
For the impuslive forwarders
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Hi
This post is being made to address the species (as christened by me) " Impulsive Forwarders ".
Here it goes.
If you believe to this rather abundant species, then before mailing me, please note that:
1) I DO NOT want a free phone from Samsung, Nokia or Motorola
2) I DO NOT want any share in Bill Gates' money
3) I DO NOT want to protect my computer against any "newly discovered" and "covered by CNBC and CNN" virus that is going to hit me through my email with a "loving" subject and blow my hard disk, processor and everything.
4) And yes, I DO NOT want to help that blood cancer affected 10 yr old girl by sending his plea to more people (For GOD's sake, tell me how come she's still 10 yrs old though i've received her plea for past 9 yrs now)
Tagore and mails making him turn in his grave
Recently I received a mail in my account. It was one of those forwarded mails that everyone just keeps on passing for the "good" of humanity (in their opinion, that is). It related to how our National Anthem was not actually the praise of nation but it was abt the king of Britain (whor ruled over the Indian Colony). It took me by shock that people could believe all that without even verifying anything that was written in the mail. And they were not just believing it they were leading several other morons to believe the same by fwding the mail.
Here's the mail and my reply to it.
---The original mail that I received----
hi guys,
Please note that I do not mean to insult the national anthem by any means through what is written below. But it certainly provides some food for thought.
Please do read it. Every word of it.
I don't know how authentic this article is, but it made me think seriously. Are 100 crore Indians so dumb they will be singing praise of King Geroge for 55 years even after Independence, there is something seriously wrong somewhere...
A thought for our (Indian) National Anthem!
How well do we know about it?
I have always wondered who is the "adhinayak" and "bharat bhagya
vidhata", whose praise we are singing. I thought may be God! Our current National Anthem "Jana Gana Mana" is sung throughout the country. Did you know the following about &nbs! p;our national anthem?
I didn't. To begin with, India's national anthem, Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka, was written by Rabindranath Tagore in honor of King George V and the Queen of England when they visited India in 1919. To honor their visit Pundit Motilal Nehru had the five stanzas included, which are in praise of the King and Queen.
(And most of us think it is in the praise of our great motherland!!!) In the original Bengali verses only those provinces that were under British rule, i.e. Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha ...etc. were mentioned. None of the princely states were recognized which are integral parts of India now - Kashmir, Rajasthan, Andhra, Mysore, Tamilnadu (old Karnatak) or Kerala. N! either the Indian Ocean nor the Arabian Sea were included, since they were directly under Portuguese rule at that time. The Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka implies that King George V is the lord of the masses and Bharata Bhagya
Vidhata is "the bestower of good fortune". Following is a translation of the five stanzas, which glorify the King:
1st stanza (Indian) People wake up remembering your good name and ask for your blessings and they sing your glories.
2nd stanza Around your throne people of all religions come and give their love and anxiously wait to hear your kind words.
3rd stanza Praise to the King for being the charioteer, for leading the ancient travelers beyond misery.
4th stanza Drowned in the deep ignorance and suffering, poverty stricken, unconscious country? waiting for the wink of your eye and yo! ur mother's (the Queen's) true protection.
5th stanza In your compassionate plans, the sleeping Bharat(India) will wake up. We bow down to your feet O' Queen, and glory to Rajeshwara (the King).
This whole poem does not indicate any love for the Motherland but depicts a bleak picture. When you sing Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka, whom are you glorifying?
Certainly not the Motherland. Is it God who is praised here? The poem does not indicate that. It is time now to understand the original purpose and the implication of this, rather than blindly singing as has been done the past fifty years. Nehru chose the present National anthem as opposed to Vande Mataram because he thought that it would be easier for the band to play. It was an absurd reason. But today, for that matter, ba! nds have advanced in technical skills and they can very well play any music. So they can as well play Vande
Mataram, which is a far better composition in praise of our dear Motherland -India.
Wake up, it's high time! Vande Mataram should be our National Anthem. Forward and spread this truth to as many as people you can.
Don't forget to do it.....
----
---My first reply----
Ok, Actuallly, ahem......
Well, before forwarding this mail dutifully (as asked in the end of the mail), did u ever try to find out if the facts were true.
It clearly says "I don't know how authentic this article is," but even then that guy and then u just blindly forwarded it. If u say "I do not mean to insult the national anthem by any means through what is written below." then i'd say that it is sheer lying cuz if one has even a bit of respect for his/her national anthem he/she wud not forward such a mail without checking out the facts.
Everything in the article is based on an stupid hypothesis.
If the mail mentions "Is it God who is praised here? The poem does not indicate that." then it doesn't even mention that it was king George.
The 1919 provinces of 'British India' did not include Sindh, Gujarat or Orissa. At that time, the first two were part of the province called the Bombay Presidency, and Orissa of the Bengal Presidency. Sindh and Orissa were created as provinces only in 1937, and Gujarat and Maharashtra - the province of the Mahrattas - were created only in 1961 - after Independence!
The vast majority of the provinces of 'British India' are not recorded by the anthem: Baluchistan, The North-West Frontier Province, The United Provinces of Agra & Oudh, the Province of Central India and Berar, the Bombay Presidency and the Madras Presidency, the provinces of Upper and Lower Burma, the province of Ceylon, etc.
And the portuguese DID NOT control the Arabian sea and Indian Ocean in 1919, they lost this centuries ago.
SO, please refrain from just mindlessly forwarding such things. Atleast the mails which attack ur nation or its integrity.
Regards
Shantanu
-----
---The Sender's reply to my reply---
well....
before saying anything, did u verify the facts or just went onto replying for the sake of replying,
i said it's a food for thought,
it needs some thinking before inferring and replying,
i don't forward mails for the sake of forwarding,
every word written in the mail is true to my knowledge,
Rabindra Nath Tagore was in no way a supporter of patriotism,
He had
reservations about patriotism, which, he argued, can limit both the freedom to engage ideas from outside "narrow domestic walls" and the freedom also to support the causes of people in other countries.
y i'm tellin u this b'coz he did never tried to make india separate from the other parts of the world , his vision of this land was a part of the world and it should not be left behind , or cut off for that reason ( patriotism) from the rest of the world, and one thing,
at that time in the eyes of many leaders of the day, loyalty to the nation and loyalty to the Emperor were identical. King George V had proclaimed on Dec.12 the annulment of the partition of Bengal. There was therefore nothing unnatural or extraordinary in a Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore, composing or singing a song in praise of the Emperor out of gratitude.
want to see what the newspapers of that time said:
The news papers reports had the following comments on Janaganamana:
"when the proceedings of the Indian National Congress began on Wednesday 27th December 1911, a Bengali song in welcome of the Emperor was sung. A resolution welcoming the Emperor and Empress was also adopted unanomously." (Indian, Dec. 29, 1911)"
"The Bengali poet Babu Rabindranath Tagore sang a song composed by him specially to welcome the Emperor." (Statesman, Dec.28, 1911)
"The proceedings began with the singing by Babu Rabindranath Tagore of a song specially composed by him in honour of the Emperor." (Englishman, Dec.28).
------
---My Final Reply----
Well my frnd,
That is what I want to infer. Food for thought is not "processed" through newspaper reports but hard facts. Media can write anything they want.(Like with one failure they can just lambast a cricketer over his bad technique and then write another full page report on his deftness and skill just 2 days after when he makes a ton) How do they know for sure what was the purport of the song. BTW, did u notice that all the newspapers quoted were run by the english.
>Rabindra Nath Tagore was in no way a supporter of patriotism,
And just where did u find out that Tagore wasn't patriotic. In fact, Tagore was a proud and ardent partiot.
He renounced his knighthood in 1919 as a protest against the Amritsar(jalian wala baag) affair in a letter to the Viceroy which is among the great documents of freedom.
In 1939,Tagore asked Gandhiji to lift the ban on Subhash Chandra Bose and have his cooperation cordially invited in the "supreme interest of national unity". What do u call that???
And even if he wasn't patriotic then why the hell was " his loyalty towards nation = loyalty towards king" cuz as per ur words he didn;t have any loyalty towards the nation at all. So if LHS doesn't exist then how come RHS does???
If he had reservations abt patriotism and wanted that lands shud not be separate, then why did he write "Amar Sonar Bangla" (which is now the national anthem of bangladesh)
Look at this excerpt from the official website of nobel prize (nobelprize.org):
For Tagore it was of the highest importance that people be able to live, and reason, in freedom. His attitudes toward politics and culture, nationalism and internationalism, tradition and modernity, can all be seen in the light of this belief.11 Nothing, perhaps, expresses his values as clearly as a poem in Gitanjali:
Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been
broken up into fragments
by narrow domestic walls; ...
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit; ...
Into that heaven of freedom,
my Father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath's qualified support for nationalist movements—and his opposition to the unfreedom of alien rule—came from this commitment. So did his reservations about patriotism, which, he argued, can limit both the freedom to engage ideas from outside "narrow domestic walls" and the freedom also to support the causes of people in other countries. Rabindranath's passion for freedom underlies his firm opposition to unreasoned traditionalism, which makes one a prisoner of the past (lost, as he put it, in "the dreary desert sand of dead habit").
So, we can clearly see that waht his reaservations about patritism were. He di want India to be freed. He was the most avid supporter of freedom but what he didnt want was that one is chained in traditions and that u r not open to outside world. But it didnt mean that he wanted to be ruled over by someone.
Again from the site, I quote this:
Tagore was predictably hostile to communal sectarianism (such as a Hindu orthodoxy that was antagonistic to Islamic, Christian, or Sikh perspectives). But even nationalism seemed to him to be suspect. Isaiah Berlin summarizes well Tagore's complex position on Indian nationalism:
Tagore stood fast on the narrow causeway, and did not betray his vision of the difficult truth. He condemned romantic overattachment to the past, what he called the tying of India to the past "like a sacrificial goat tethered to a post," and he accused men who displayed it - they seemed to him reactionary - of not knowing what true political freedom was, pointing out that it is from English thinkers and English books that the very notion of political liberty was derived. But against cosmopolitanism he maintained that the English stood on their own feet, and so must Indians. In 1917 he once more denounced the danger of ‘leaving everything to the unalterable will of the Master,' be he brahmin or Englishman.21
Tagore was strongly involved in protest against the Raj on a number of occasions, most notably in the movement to resist the 1905 British proposal to split in two the province of Bengal, a plan that was eventually withdrawn following popular resistance.
Tagore's criticism of the British administration of India was consistently strong and grew more intense over the years. This point is often missed, since he made a special effort to dissociate his criticism of the Raj from any denigration of British—or Western—people and culture.
He wanted to assert India's right to be independent without denying the importance of what India could learn—freely and profitably—from abroad.
---
So, I can say that people just read one or two lines about him, quote them out of context and then try to make others believe. That line abt narrow walls, if u read it in this complete context now as given above, u'll understand that it meant that India and Indians should be free from aoutcracy of british rule but they shouldn't have reservations about accepting the good things in their philosophy.
In the end, I'd say that all u got is a few newspaper reports (infact opinions of english writers) and one quote , presented out of context.
On the other hand, what I offer u is hard facts.
Its for u to decide what u want to believe.
- Blindly accept someone's opinion
- or see the facts and decide for yourself
Regards
Shantanu
------------------------------
Actually the point is that what the mail wanted to tell might actually be true (though I whole heartedly believe its not and even if it was then the song might have meant something else that time but now it means something completely different to all of the Indians and that is what matters), but still one should not believe anything without verifying anything. And nowadays every mail that one receives listing one hoax or the other is sent to the complete address book by almost half the population using internet.
Think about it.
Back from Home
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Am back from home. It was a nice trip. Met so many frnds. Also visited my college. (PEC - Punjab Engineering College). It was so nostalgic.
Drove past the verka booth where I used to hang out so often. Went to the cafeteria. aah.
And yes, a visit to the girls' hostel was a must too ;).
Now that I'm back, it feels so odd to get back into the daily grind of mindless coding.
Lets see when I'm able to head back to home again.
The Zincer Song
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
The Zincer Song
(Courtesy: The original zincer aka Rahul Jindal aka Zombielabs)Here's to the crazy ones...
The Misfits,
The Rebels,
The Troublemakers,
The Round pegs in the Square Holes,
The Ones who see things Differently,
They're not fond of rules and have no respect for the status quo,
You can quote them,
Disagree with them,
Glorify or Vilify them,
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them,
Because they change things,
They push the human race forward,
And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius,
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world,
Are the ones who do.
(Yes, I'm proud to be a zincer http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zincers )
Copy Protection
Monday, October 18, 2004
Here is a story courtesy
Google Blogoscoped that tells us about the mindnumbing effects of the MPAA and RIAA.
In fact, they are hurting themsleves in the process too.
------
Copy Protection
Here's the story of a boy who was mildly angry at vendors shipping copy-proteced CDs and DVDs.
He always liked to buy stuff at Amazon (or offline shops), and this worked well for a while. He didn't like KaZaA and others because he wanted things to be complete, in good quality, without spyware, and easy to get – he also didn't mind paying the artist. (Mind you, he wasn't mildly interested in booklets or fancy covers, or something to stick in a bookshelf, or so stuck to the material world he wouldn't accept anything purely digital. That wasn't it.)
Now the industry tried to protect itself from those people it feared would not order the stuff at Amazon (or offline shops), and they came up with Digital Rights Boycotting, pardon, Management, software. The boy who sold his old DVD player and bought a new one now found he couldn't play most of his DVDs because he bought them in a shop selling American movies. But the boy happened to live in Europe. (The boy also found some DVDs suddenly started to ask him to key in a password because they were for adults only. Luckily the boy was in his late 20s. You could rightfully call him a man, except for the fact he wasn't always treated like one by the industry.)
Lately, he also couldn't play some of the CDs he listened to on his computer (he does have a pair of speakers, but no stand-alone hi-fi set). Whenever he gets a copy-protected CD which will open up a web site or a shockwave file or tries to do something else than play music, he promised to himself to never buy from this band again. And he did. He was fully aware the actual artists might not be responsible for the copyright protecting mechanisms, but he didn't care, as it was not his responsibility to pay every artist.
Lately, he also wanted to buy a CD from a band he heard on MTV. This happens about once a week when MTV or another music channel would play interesting music for around one hour, to then continue with the same old. (It might also have been mainstream, because as we know, not everything falling prey to mainstream is automatically worse than before.)However when he came upon Amazon, he saw a review warning of a copy-protection for this CD. Seeing this he gave up on his plans to buy the CD, and told his girlfriend – who happened to use KaZaA on her own computer. She sent him the music files several minutes later after downloading them for free. (Thanks to Gmail, it was actually possible to send these via email.)
Lately, the sister of the boy told him they couldn't play a CD they bought inside their car. When they went to the store they told them this is because the CD protects itself against copying it to distribute it for free. Of course, as side-effect it also wouldn't work for a gazillion of other uses. Oh my.
Lately, the boy was more and more convinced people stopped caring for those actually buying CDs or DVDs, or they just didn't care enough. Maybe they wanted to push their online music services. Then again, there was no way to let the DVD player download movies just yet. Maybe they were just incredibly stupid.
See, with DVDs it's like this (and you probably know if you ordered from foreign countries because something wasn't available in your own country): most DVDs come with a region code restricting it to play in just a certain DVD player supporting this, and no other, region code. (Interestingly enough, there's even a region-code for places such as aircrafts or cruise ships.)This of course is silly because you paid for the product, and you are not a thief, and you don't really care about anything else except the gut-feeling the company cheated you.
Sidenote: the boy remembers that in Malaysia, things were quite a lot easier for people. You would walk into a store, and there were a lot of mediocre movies available for 30 Ringgit (and for RM30, you could eat one week – the best food, by the way). Now here's the twist: nobody actually bought these DVDs or CDs which were showcased. You had to walk up to the counter and ask for "movies," upon which you were handed a case with movies filmed straight from the screen (which is illegeal, as every cinema-goer is painfully made aware of prior to recent movies). These movies were so fresh they weren't in cinemas yet (or, in case of movies such as Daredevil, which were banned in Malaysia, would never be in cinemas). And these movies were actually affordable (around 3-6 Ringgit).
Now when the boy went to the shop to ask for a region-code free player, he was told that there was no region-code free player sold. But he was also clued in to the fact there were web sites on the internet which would educate the customer on these issues. So what was suggested to him was to make a note of DVD players available in this shop, then go look them up on the internet, then to come back and buy one (incidentally, he never did). Hey, the boy's being pushed onto hacker sites once more, and he can't help it. Again, this must be the music and movie's industry's utter cruelty, a suicidal tendency, a last cry for help, or just plain stupidity. The more the boy feels it's just stupidity, the more he wants to make the industry wake up by spreading the word.
The good thing, though the battle was far from over, he wasn't alone. I for one am definitely on his side.
Da Vinci Code
Just finished reading The Da Vinci Code - By Dan Brown. Have to say the book is just amazing.
A must read for all. The story takes constant twists and turns. The conspiracy theorists will love it. I like the way the story moves, intertwining different scenes/stories so seamlessly within the chapters. The emotions depicted so beautifully. The images, whether of the situation or of the artwork, are painted in words so intricately that u feel u r standing there facing it all.
More importantly, the character of Robert Langdon has been conceived so beautifully. His stance on the whole of the issue (I'm not spoling anything for u by revealing the "Issue" here) was the perfect stance that shud have been. It'll let u think on ur own whether if all that was said in the book was true, even then wud it be wise for the world to accept the truth in an instant. Even the greatest lie (as portrayed in the book) has given the world so much. In fact, it has given the world much more than it has taken away. So, Robert's (and Priory's) stance stands vindicated.
BTW, I can tell u the "issue" itself will change so many meanings during the book, u'll just want to read it all in just one go.
The epilogue was, once again, a fitting ending to such a good book.
Thanks Mr. Brown for producing such a masterpiece.
The Page rank 100 incident
Friday, October 15, 2004
Just came across this. Makes for a good read :)
----
The PageRank 100 Incident
It was an incident, Google later said – a mere wrong "0" deeply hidden in the code of the ranking algorithm, triggered at completely improbable circumstances, a bug so exotic and rare one could say it practically didn't even exist. But of course, it existed. And one person's life in specific would be changed by this little bug. This person was a 20-something with a keen interest in the Web by the name of Josh.
When Josh woke up this fateful morning to update his blog (he wanted to talk about the nightmarish colors he experienced, something not too unusual for Friday nights, after all there were a lot of nightmarish things going on in the world)... he already felt something changed. There were 320 comments to his last entry, which was unsuspiciously titled "Meeting Joann For Dinner". 320 comments were about 320 more than Josh usually got. His blog was up and running for just well over a year, and even he didn't feel it was especially exciting (mirroring his life, like personal blogs do).
Hundreds of comments on a single entry? And these were real comments, practically spam-free, taking apart his grammar, commenting on the food of the pub he mentioned, freely chatting away and just saying Hi. So really, what went wrong? Was there one of the big sites linking to him? For this quantity of visitors, and there surely must have been millions this morning, he wouldn't be surprised if Amazon or Apple used their start page to roll the drums for him.
Josh checked his mailbox, but it was crammed. Completely full with hundreds of emails, some of them – hmm, this was weird. Some of the emails talked about "PageRank" in the subject line. Josh knew well his little blog, thanks to some avid backlinking he did from other sites he maintained, had a PageRank of 3. "Not too bad" in the eyes of Google's measuring algorithm, but nothing that would ever rank him especially high. So Josh opened up one of those emails, and then he had this awkward head rush which made him jump to the kitchen for cigarette and coffee.
PageRank 100. Apparently, his little blog achieved a PageRank of 100. And after a coffee, Josh realized what this must mean. He called up one of his friends, a search engine affiniciado who took computer class. Matt arrived quickly, because he too never saw anything like this, and equally quickly Matt checked the rankings for some words Josh wrote in his blog. He mentioned "dinner", and boom, his site popped up on Google's number one spot for this word. Hundreds of millions of people visiting Google, thousands of them entering "dinner", hundreds of them being transferred to Josh at any second.
And "dinner" wasn't even one of the hot words. In fact it was the mass of words and phrases taken together, like "eating out", or "San Francisco", or "dating", or "singles", that had the huge impact. Josh, as Matt knowingly pointed out to him, gained the complete power of the word. Something like instant world control, he jokingly added.
"Whatever you say man, whatever you say, people will listen to you. And there will be a lot of people. Don't tell anyone about this, you're gonna get rich. And famous."
Nothing too bad, as Josh thought, "After all being rich and famous means a lot of money and fame" as Matt concluded.
And three months later indeed Josh was a celebrity. Every single word of him got quoted somewhere. CNN. ABC. BBC. Slate. Wired. Daily Mirror. New York Times. Some opened up daily Josh-columns. Josh never imagined there would be so many journalists around spicing up their story with a random quip they just googled. There were Josh fan forums. There were sites dedicated to post essayist comments on Josh's posts. Illustrations. Explanations. Discussions.
Josh, slowly and inevitably feeling responsible to say something at least remotely interesting, changed his weblog from personal diary to commentary on important world events. He didn't have the insights, it's not that. In fact you could consider him exceptionally clueless about politics and all. But he did have a way of putting things straight, a no-nonsense, plain real approach of talking. Not a style he invented – it was around in millions of blogs before. It was around when your neighbor started talking in the bus. It was the every-day chit-chat traditional media doesn't consider polished enough to be worthwhile. But Josh got a PageRank 100. And Google did not know about it.
So when Josh talked about Iraq, the President had to give a press meeting. When Josh found that his Operating System was buggy, Bill Gates had to announce to do everything to better help the "average user". (Josh was mildly annoyed by being considered an average user, so Bill Gates had to call in yet another press conference promising not to think in terms of "average users".)
In fact when Josh commented on anything happening in the world he found to be somewhat wrong, it got changed within a course of a day or two. Nobody likes bad publicity.
On the other hand – talk about mind control – whenever Josh mentioned a record he bought he liked, it would jump into the Top 10. It would become a world wide hit almost immediately. Not everybody would like the song, but you just had to know what the hype was all about. (Loudon Wainwright III in Top of the Pops. And he didn't even have a new album out.)
Josh could now end wars, shape products, close shops, invent fashion (the list goes on)... and revamp the life of a generation.
Of course now Josh knew why every celebrity around complains they get too much attention outside. When he walked the mall, girls would snicker. On the street people turned around, pointing. There were camera men outside in the garden, for chrissake. Josh felt like he had to adopt an attitude quickly, something like a rock-star lifestyle, so he would always know what to do and say and walk like. That's probably why later the talking Josh-doll (Mattel paid him well) uttered clichees like "You know you want to" or "All the world's a blog" or "Don't listen to me, listen" or "You are a stranger, my friend".
The only friend he lost was Matt. Matt felt like Josh didn't have as much time these days as before... before, when Josh would still meet him and Joann for a drink. So Matt decided to end the charade; he emailed Google. And Google reacted. Josh was not only put down to a PageRank 0, he was completely banned from all rankings. It was like he lost his voice.
Sure, as Josh would later say, he enjoyed celebrity status for some more weeks before the media decided to shift focus. But maybe it was for the better. After all, he didn't have that much to say, really. So in his journal he continued to write about his nightmares, which admittedly gained a few outlandish colors. He could even find time to meet Matt and Joann. Knowing he'd be a footnote in future history books sort of made him proud, and well, a bit lazy.
These days mostly Josh wanted to find a nice restaurant to relax. Listen to the music, have a dinner. And whenever someone asked him if he liked the food, or if he liked the music, or – beware – brought up a political issue, Josh would keep awkwardly quiet. Changing the world was a job for others. And today, Josh found a nice restaurant indeed. He lit up a cigarette.
That evening someone, somewhere at Google, was laughing. He just put a "0" deeply hidden in the algorithm, so exotic and rare it practically didn't exist. Diane was in for a surprise.
Google Search: More, more, more
Google Search: Now for ur desktop
Google just continues to amaze me more and more. NOw the power og google search for ur own computer. Now i dont have to use that f****** MS search anymore to find that file i made some years back :)
go download it now
Quote for the day
Thursday, October 14, 2004
There's no place like 127.0.0.1 . Yup, am feeling homesick.
But yes, I've taken 2 leaves for this dussehra. Team em up with the subsequent Dussehra hol and the following sat sunday, and man, is that a killer combo.
Yeah dudes, going home for full 5 days this time.
So far every time I went home, the schedule was like this.
Get a bus to Delhi on friday evening around 6:00. Read ISBT by 8:00. Take a bus to Chandigarh (my home :) ) from there. Reach home by 2:00 AM on Saturday.
Sleep out the whole of the saturday. Then start back for Gurgaon on Sunday around 11:00 AM.
So, this is like the real homecoming (going??) for me. :)
Something u'll surely want to try
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
If u trust Google translation , try this ....
step 1: go to http://www.google.com.my/language_tools?hl=en
step 2: enter the following line into the translate textbox: Aishwarya's mom is nice and cool
step 3: translate from english to spanish.
step 4: copy the translated text, and translate it back from spanish to english.
So, what did u find, Sonny Boy?? ;-)
Thwart those firewalls
Yes, I'm gonna tell u right that.
The quest started when my company blocked orkut. My expression was "WTF!!I can't use orkut??". Hell, i tried a bit and here it is for all of u.
Well, for IM's the best tool i found was hopster.
Download
hopster. Install and let it configure itself. Might take abt 10-15 mins for that.
Then fire up ur fav IM. Set it to use a socks5 proxy with server 127.0.0.1 (localhost) and port 1080.
Also ask it to use proxy to resolve hostnames. And u r ready to go chatting.
However, u cant use yahoo msgr this way cuz yahoo doesn't allow logins from systems that have yahoo msgr and proxy servers running on the same system.
Also, u can't use hopster with any browsers (like IE, Mozilla firefox etc) cuz there was no option to let it use the local proxy to resolve hostnames.
Then what.
WTF, there is a solution for that too.
Download sockscap , a tool that'll add socks support to any of ur apps. So, just d/l and install sockscap. Add ur apps to it. Also set sockscap to use the local proxy that u r running (hopster). And there u r ready to go.
So, in these 2 ways, u can thwart most firewalls.
The only drawback is that u'll get limited speeds for free version of hopster (abt 5 kbps) but for just 2$ per month, u can get much more bandwidth.
So, thats it for today.
Happy surfing. :)
Gmail Drive
Monday, October 11, 2004
GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account, allowing you to use GMail as a storage media...
GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to.
Ever since Google started to offer users a GMail e-mail account, which includes storage space of a 1000 megabytes, you have had plenty of storage space but not a lot to fill it up with. With GMail Drive you can easily copy files to your GMail account and retrieve them again.
When you create a new file using GMail Drive, it generates an e-mail and posts it to your account. The e-mail appears in your normal Inbox folder, and the file is attached as an e-mail attachment. GMail Drive periodically checks your mail account (using the GMail search function) to see if new files have arrived and to rebuild the directory structures. But basically GMail Drive acts as any other hard-drive installed on your computer.
You can copy files to and from the GMail Drive folder simply by using drag'n'drop like you're used to with the normal Explorer folders.
Because the GMail files will clutter up your Inbox folder, you may wish to create a filter in GMail to automatically move the files (prefixed with the GMAILFS letters) to your archived mail folder.
Please note that GMail Drive is still an experimental tool. There's still a number of limitations of the file-system (such as total filename size must be less than 40 characters), and it doesn't make full use of the secure internet protocols available.
Visit
here to get gmail drive.
DSP/BIOS et al
Friday, October 08, 2004
AHHHHHH!!! How boring this all is. been mugging all this stuff abt this TI RTOS that works on the TI DSP c64x. Well, its driving me#$@$..................sleepy, what else ;)
I'm Back
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Yes dudes. Am back.
Well just a few days after I started blogging, I joined the corporate world and blogger was banned at my company ( :( ). NOw that the ban has been lifted (temporarily or permanentaly, I don't know...), I'm back to give a vent to all my random thoughts.
Well, the past few months have been quite exciting. The professional life has been quite kewl so far.
Even won the alpha award for quality of project (yoo hoo).
Bought a Hero Honda Karizma.
Started learning Guitar.
Going to Gym.
Well, life's hectic but still it feels wonderful.
Chalo rest later. Gotta code now.
::
