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If only ads dont lie
2008-05-08 21:04:00
A picture is worth a thousand words. Obviously simplymarry.com went overboard with the ad campaign.   Common yaar every body knows there are no beautiful girls in Software. By the way never heard anyone say Software Engineering as their qualification. What do you think of simplymarry.com now??   A few other ads which they may have A hunk describing himself as havaldar or constable. A hottie posing as PhD in science. Another hottie posing as Women Welfare executive Can u think of any other situations??

Manoranjan Unlimited -- Baap of WWE is here
2008-05-04 20:31:00
Now if someone says I am proved wrong then buddy you need to look here and here. What the heck is it man. Isnt it what WWE is all about. After all its about entertainment. Stupid entertainment. You play with feelings and generate regionalism and hatred. Is it what entertainment is all about. What ever happened to cricket. I had initially surmised that all the entertainment would there due to SRK and Priety being around. But as it turns out Ganguly, Warne, Harbhajan and Sreesanth are not bad. To me it sounds more like those Rs20 per over games which are there at a lot of places where you can go and hit the ball as hard as you can. Stupid junta will watch anything. Since the organisers did not have faith in the stupidity of the Indian Junta, they got themselves skimpily clad cheerleaders who would entertain the crowd with their moves. Wow  now that something I would pay anything for. After all staring/glancing/X-Raying females is the national passtime of India. The lesser the c...
More About: Unlimited

My experiment with microblogging
2008-04-27 23:13:00
Well I have heard enough of microblogging. I dirtied my hands with pownce and then later with twitter. Pownce as I found was more of spam than anything else. On twitter there are so many interesting people, sharing some good ideas and links. But of late its been inundated with chat messages. I think thats one thing that sucks on twitter. You just get inundated with so much of ignorable chat that you want to remove it. Anyways thats a different story. Now what I am trying to do is start up with a twitter account called stupidquestions. What is going to posted on it is, well stupid questions. Some crappy questions and I expect people to come up with some good/smart answers. Now I am not going to read whatever the followers or people I am following are posting. But what I will be doing is that I will respond to all messages for stupidquestions(All messages which start with @stupidquestions). Hoping to get something good going . Do let me know what you think about this experiment of...
More About: Experiment

My takeaways from Barcamp Bangalore 6
2008-04-27 21:44:00
Its always been that one post for Barcamp Bangalore is not enough. Its always that I have had multiple posts. This one could not be an exception. I not being an RIA fanboy did not care to attend the marathon hijack sessions on it. Neither did I care to attend Myspace thing. I kind of hated the fact that those RIA guys did not care but take a room for themselves for the entire time after lunch. Not that I did not like it happening but would have loved if there were people talking about other things also. After all this was not an RIACamp. Anyways there were these interesting parallel sessions which happened. Among the first which I attended was Blogathon India. Me being an planner for Blogathon India started the session. Later it was taken over by Sanjukta. Next I preceded to help people with their wifi connections to the extent I could . Anyways gurus Akash and Cruisemaniac aka Ashwin were always there. After some loitering met a few people who were interested in my idea of BuddyHe...

Barcamp Bangalore ... Rock the world
2008-04-21 20:09:00
Well if India is diverse its so because of the people. Barcamp is for, with, by people and no wonder you had the ultimate kind of diversity in it. You had lawyers, CA, MBA, profs, CEOs, coders, developers and geeks (yes they are different) among various other people. It was an awesome mix of ideas and people. The planners met some time back and we had a lot of discussion over how to do things this time around. I was a yet another experiment. Thankfully it came out good. If there is anything to complain about, it probably is the content. But friend isnt content something that has to come from us, the junta. I had been planning for some sort of an open source project. I thought BCB would be a great place to find people. But sadly it did not turn out the way I wanted. No hands to join in for the project. But anyways I did get some feedback on the objectives of my BuddyHere. I did take another session on Hacking Canon compact camera to provide extra features. I will be writing a pos...
More About: World , Rock , Bangalore , The World

Of Barcamp Bangalore
2008-04-16 08:53:00
The barcamp movement has taken India  by storm and Bangalore has now become the center of this movement in India. I think it was Barcamp Bangalore where it all started and now its in its 6th edition. I was introduced to it in the 4rth edition. I liked the concept at the very first. It was very clear that everyone is equal. You would be admired based on not what you are but what you deliver. So if someone is talking crap, you can just walk out. True there were a lot of freeloaders out there who came to do nothing actually. I was supposed to be one but then I realized that I too could talk. Well not technical but the I could speak about "How the bloggers are affecting other professionals". I thought this was the beauty of Barcamp. You could discuss anything under the sun. When the next barcamp was being planned and call was made for other to chip in, I decided to go ahead for it. Sadly I could not attend the Barcamp because of personal reasons but I could not attend i...

Blogathon - Giving power back to people
2008-04-14 05:44:00
If it was the newspapers which gave the power to the freedom fighters, its going to be the blogs which will give power to the us in fighting injustice so prevalent in the society. It would not be the voice of one or two people but the collective voice of hundred thousands whose voice will shake the blogosphere. The media as we see today is open to manipulation and more often not carrying the voice of the people. Blogathon is an attempt to unify the voice of 6 billion Indians. Together we shall talk about issues which affect us and society in general. Lets come together and talk about it. Its happening in the blogosphere from 20th to 26th April 2008. Each day the blogosphere will be talking about a particular topic. They are out now Infrastructure: Sunday, 20th April 2008 How can we improve the traffic condition in our city? Politics: Monday, 21st April 2008 How do we change the focus of politics from caste/religion to grassroot issues? Entertainment: Tuesday, 22nd April 20...
More About: Power , People , Back , Giving

BuddysHere --- A Mobile Application idea
2008-04-11 22:42:00
Well this is an idea that I would like to share with all so that my dream can be realized. So here is the idea. Now that we have mobiles with GPS we should make use of it. So now you have this messenger which would update your position in your IM every time you move over 100m or something. I am assuming that either the GPS now or sooner will be accurate to something like few meters. So when you have some of your friends around, you know that they are. Cool dont u think? Here are options to make it happen. 1. Send update about the location to all/selected your buddies. Pro: Simple and effective Cons: No Privacy and your exact location is known to all. 2. Server gets updates and it pings you about friends close to you Pro: Agains simple and effective Cons: Requires server services. You location data is on a central server and this is a possible privacy risk. 3. Each person broadcasts a location to all his friends which is nearly correct. Now this nearly is something debata...
More About: Mobile , Idea , Application

Aamir Khan - The looser
2008-04-01 20:21:00
For those who do not follow news or anything let me point you to his blog. First of all he has this terrible Web 0.0 type of blog which basically sucks. Add a dash of the usual dramatics and you have a super blog. Super not because its good or thoughts are good but there a fan following of his. Thats the only reason I could see why anyone would follow his life force sucking blog. I had great respect for this guy until he wrote this post. I thought he was different when he came in support of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. He was very right. But now he has made monstrous decision. HE HAS DECIDED TO GO AHEAD WITH OLYMPICS TORCH RELAY. Wow when the world realizes to protest something we have a supporter in India other than the spineless mindless communists. I was rather happy with BJP in this regard, at least they showed some spine. Lets examine some of the finer points which Mr Khan had to make. I would like to state that I have the highest regard and respect for the struggle that t...
More About: Aamir Khan

Thoughts on love and likes
2008-03-24 20:50:00
Sometimes I wondered if there is anything called love. To put it plainly till I was in college I had this firm belief that love is not in the heart but in the mind. Being in love with the hottie in college was the passion and pride of most ppl. Though ur stupid as a dunk or having looks of Pankaj Kapoor(Apologies to Mr Kapoor but thats a good description) but you will never settle for anything but Aishwarya. They put everything at stake for her. Fight off guy who comes within 10m of her. But then when they realized that the girl has gone the other way, the guys would desperately hunt for a gal. Be it of any type or taste. Having a gal takes a high priority rather than any of the features of the gal. Then you would commit yourself to spend 99.99% of you telephone bill on SMSing her. Better still, hunt for a free SMS plan. Change numbers to get that plan. Picking and dropping the gal home becomes a top priority. The guy would also probably write/engrave on his arm the name of his 'su...
More About: Love , Thoughts

This Congress government is communal, Now is that something unknown
2008-03-19 19:40:00
The current Congress government is anything but secular. You cannot be secular just because you support a minority more than the majority and other minority communities. I have always believed that BJP was more secular than the current government. Now Taslima Nasreen has given her certificate of communality to the Congress Government . "I was put under tremendous stress but I could not speak out as I was under their (government) surveillance and could be harassed by them," she said in a choked voice. "The government is no better than religious fundamentalists," she said. If you want more proof of it, you can just look at whats happening in Andhra Pradesh. Total nationalization of all communities other than muslims and the mullas are given total control. God please help us. These guys are worse than anything they can be. Please give good sense to the people of India that they kick these people out of places of power and reverse the acti...
More About: Unknown

Whats right and whats wrong?
2008-03-18 19:31:00
Sometime I feel confused about whether what I am doing is correct or is it wrong. Then if you look back in time it seems like some of the actions of yours were actually wrong though it seemed correct at that moment. So is it that There is nothing right or wrong, its just the most convincing argument at the moment. I might seem wrong but you surely have least convincing of arguments to prove me wrong. Lets see at some of the things in the past and reflect upon they being right or wrong. Socialism was right and Capitalism was wrong a few decades ago in Russia. But then the fall of Russia and towering of US made Capitalism look good. I am sure that in a few decades if Capitalist US takes a beating and the Islamic Banking concept takes root, then everyone will be cursing Capitalism. So basically based on situation opinions change. A few years back(rewind to Rajiv Gandhi) bringing in computers was considered a job eraser. The Red flag bearers(CPI & Co) were ecstatically agains...
More About: Wrong

Mobiles in the era of IBM PC compatible predawn age
2008-03-12 20:23:00
A lot has been said and done about mobile phones of today. iPhone has brought a brand new concept in phones. It really moves the mobiles to the mainstream to do things other than talking. Just when things seemed bright for the mobiles we have Mr Jobs giving out a big MSish rules for development of Apps. I am not sure of its real usage. Probably he wants to protect iPhone from viruses, but then destroyers dont wait for a legal or easy means. They will find a way out anyways. The hardware for mobiles available is sadly built and around it software just manages things somehow. I see this as what happened to IBM PCs. They gave way to PC Compatible s with MS making a killing out of it. Even now its because of this that we had such a boom in PCs, atleast in India. It was this parallel development which actually boosted usage. If there is a corporation today which does something similar to what Intel, MS and others did together to kill the mafia of Apple and IBM. I am sure had it been the...
More About: Mobiles

Risk while in Jet Lite
2008-03-10 19:00:00
Well this Wednesday 5th March 2008 I had this unfortunate experience of flying by Jet Lite . I must say that if there is a competition among the worst airlines in India, Jet Lite would definitely be a winner. Well as it has been renamed by some as Jet Late as its too often too late. As if that was not all, what is worse is that aircraft that they have. They are literally held together by duct tapes. These were the comments on the plane by one of my friend on it. Initially I thought it to be a joke, but then he asked me to look at the window and what I saw was this(they say a picture is worth a thousand words ) A little more in detail in the following two pictures   So you can imagine what we went though. But the bottom line is that we are alive . I am not sure if it caused a security risk or something but I did not feel comfortable at all. Obviously unless there is a crash or sorts there would be no learning for these airlines. Worst there are something which not ju...
More About: Risk

Akshardhaam, Delhi --- A brand new Amusement Park concept
2008-03-06 19:58:00
Recently I had this opportunity of witnessing this amazing concept. Let me start from describing this place. This place is stretched over acres of land, with a parking lot bigger than the car park at any of the Indian Aiports I have seen. So u can imagine the total size of the complex. Its just humongous. So I enter the gate and am there inside this really huge open area. Now time for the first surprise. We need to deposit all out bags, cameras, mobiles, handsfrees and basically everything that is there with you except of course you cash and other valuables. Anyways proceeding from there I moved on. At another point I was told to take off my belt. Yo Baby. This is amazing. Never seen this thing happen anywhere. I believed that Airports and Red Fort also dont have this amazing security. Then a 'proper' security check and we are now allowed to proceed and put on the belt over the falling pants. Obviously the complex people dont want to visitor with their trousers falling every now a...
More About: Delhi , Park , Brand , Amusement , Concept

Welcome to the localized version of WWE, IPL
2008-02-28 20:04:00
Well IPL is finally there. It has all the common ingredients required for a bollywood blockbuster. It has the best of bollywood stars Shahrukh Khan and the lovely Priety Zinta. There are a lot of financial muscle behind it too. You have best of the class cricketers who were auctioned off just like some antique. Some getting a price beyond expectations and some just getting selected. The current controversy in Australia has anything to go by then we can expect fireworks in IPL. Just like WWF you have two men engaged in a personal fight initially and then getting onto the ring. I dont expect anything else out of IPL. I think these guys should do some more preparation to make a Rocky kind of atmosphere. The underdog will go down in the first round and then spring back to end the game in a win. There would be mics everywhere to record what any of the player says on or off the ground. 24hr Reality TV format would be even better. All this would surely add to the entertainment value. Viewe...
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Bug in Google Reader
2008-02-26 19:02:00
I have been a big fan of Google Reader even since it was launched. Its a cool application for news reading if you really love the gmail interface. Anyways some time back Google guys updated it. And from then I can see this awesome bug(Click on the image to see full sized one). Well actually what happened was that I had left google reader open for some time. Later when I came and finished what all was there and marking the uninteresting ones as read, I saw this popup. I had some 39 items only open(Look at the text bound by green lines at the bottom right of the image) but when I said Mark All as Read, I wanted to mark all 557 item(Not in the pane but updated ones) as read.Boy I got frustrated at this point. But I said Cancel, Refreshed the whole page and went through all those news which I did not find interesting enough to read. Finally I did Mark All as Read. Later I realised that even if I had done OK instead of Cancel, it would have worked and only those 39 items would have had b...
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Events at iCamp Bangalore
2008-02-25 19:08:00
The First Innovation Camp or iCamp Bangalore for short happened in Bangalore on 23rd Feb 2008 at Mindtree Consultings office at Banashankari. Here is how it unfurled to me. 09:30hrs := Registered and I am in 10:00hrs := I am in the room for intro of Barcamp Concept, given by Murali. Some rules etc. A lot less ppl compared to my expectations and NO WI-FI to connect to :-( 10:13hrs := Henry Jacob start with design driven development. Surely its true for IT Industry, Innovate or Die. (SCO, Sybase etc are examples of that) Some interesting concept for Design Foundation,  Games and Cube. Key points Innovate to hasten, eliminate jobs,  A god system should eliminate existing tasks, speed up tasks, save money, time and make ppl fall in love. Hot discussion on whats innovation and what design is on. I believe he was going on a good track and like many other presentations at Barcamp this too got lost somewhere. 10:40hrs := now we come to some conclusion. Basically it is clear t...
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Expect all days of the week blocked
2008-02-21 20:00:00
Well it all started with a small revolution called Mobile Monday, Bangalore. It was an initiative of some minds behind the mobile technology in Bangalore(Keshav, S R Raja, Rajan & Rajiv). It was actually a success. The reason behind the success of the Mobile Monday has been its unique concept. The community meets every 3rd Monday of the month. They have a set agenda and people with passion. So much so that many communities in Bangalore are planning to adopt a similar approach. Like all good things he success of this has lead into a next step, which make use of Saturday. Now what rhymes best with Saturday, well one of thing is Startup. So here we have Startup Saturday. An interesting concept building momentum. What I expect next is the following, Testers Tuesday, Web Wednesday, UX Thursdays, FOSS Friday, Startup Saturday and finally Sleepy Sunday. Guys at least Sunday deserves a break :-) Anyways I dont see this thing not materializing. For a very simple reason, the community...
More About: Week , Expect , Days

Barcamp Bangalore - A new experiment
2008-02-21 13:20:00
There is surely something about Barcamp Bangalore . It keeps on changing. The people driving it are always changing. Newer ideas keep pouring in. Discussion on those keep on happening. There are people who are always whining about things that are not right in Barcamp. Well the only thing I can say after meeting the guys working behind Barcamp Bangalore is that they are very open to ideas. But then some people are always there to complain. Probably thats a property(I am getting geeky nowadays) we inherit as Indians? That question mark is there because I am not sure. But the fact remains we have people coming in who are there because they like this kind of an event. They have an idea on how it should be done. So whats new in this barcamp? well as I read from the mail Akash to BCB Mailing list, the Barcamp Bangalore wiki is open for all. There are no registrations. Only way you can register is by either being a speaker, volunteer or letting other know in specific, what u want to know ...
More About: Experiment

How to do a Semi-Transparent Splash screen
2008-02-19 20:12:00
Well this was one thing that I had thought a lot about. In college when I was totally unaware of the alpha blending technology. So I wondered how the ppl would have had got hold of it. I had this weird idea of having a pixel taken from background and using that to make us believe that its semi-transparent. When I learned about Alpha Blending I thought my idea was really childish. I should have thought beyond. Then came the question of how to make the splash screen transparent. Well as many of u might be knowing, splash screens are bmp images by default. You cannot have any special effect using them. But then I had an idea, how about taking a snapshot of the current screen and then generating a splash bmp giving a nice semi-transparency. This was one among the many ideas that bumped by head at some point of time.  Coming back to today. We all must have used the Windows Live Writer or other applications. If u havnt then give them a try. This application has a nice splash screen...
More About: Screen , Splash , Semi , Transparent

iCamp, Devcamp, Barcamp - Bangalore Campified
2008-02-12 19:13:00
Well as I have been observing Camps happening all the time. Its like they are happening dime a dozen. We had Barcamp Bangalore . DCamp Bangalore was introduced later. Kamp was one more even to add to the list. Then suddenly some techies join forces for Devcamp. Now I see iCamp(Innovation Camp) in sight. Cool stuff happening. But then isn't it a little too much. Actually to come to think of it. Most of those are in their first inning. I wish they go into their centennial editions. Infact India need more of these camps. The camp phenomenon has hit the Kashmir Valley too. So the fever is finally catching on. I really loved the discussion at Devcamp which talked about a lot things. Most make no sense to me but some did. I am sure there were other who took home more than what I did. I heard there is this OSSCamp which also happens regularly in Delhi atleast. So its clear that Barcamp fever has gripped India big time. So what next. Well next step is converting this movement in...

Be smart die young
2008-02-11 19:24:00
In the list of those seriously stupid researchers we have one more. These guys are saying that smart people are more likely to have alcohol related problem. So how is that. Well they offer a rather simple explanation. Well the smarter the guy, more money he will have. All humans get stressed equally. So the rich guys have more money to spend on alcohol and hence more the problem. What a stupid research once more. Let me make one of my own . Ok here it is. All smart people die of unnatural causes of death. Well they are all rich. They all love fast cars. So when they drive is real fast, they sometimes end up in a fatal crash. So they dies a lot earlier than any person who is stupid and does not own a car. Serious Crap....
More About: Smart , Young

Post no 100
2008-02-10 20:45:00
Well its been almost one and half year and I have been able to blog for this long. Its nothing short of a miracle. But I am not sure how many people read this blog. But one thing is sure, I dont care. Why the hell should I care. I write not for money, not for fame. But for myself. I write because this is the only way to let my thoughts out. I remember, I used to keep one book when I was in school. My friends still remember that and keep comparing my blog to that. It does sound good that I am able to continue the hobby that I had in my childhood, may be in a different way. As a mark towards my 100th post I switched to a new theme Semipro-II. Some of my favorites, in no particular order, from the last 99 ones are here. http://the100rabh.blogspot.com/2006/09/wa h-re-bande-vande-matram.html http://the100rabh.blogspot.com/2007/01/ja i-ho-reservation.html http://the100rabh.blogspot.com/2007/02/ar t-and-culture-of-salesmanship.html http://the100rabh.blogspot.com/2007/07/wa nna-learn-from-i...
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Devcamp Bangalore - A Hit
2008-02-10 20:42:00
Devamp Bangalore happened yesterday and I was there to witness the event. It was a real cool place to be in first place. A real gathering of geeks. You could hear people talking passionately about the semantic web, AIR, mobile technologies, JSON and many others. You could see ppl blogging or working with their laptop. It turned out to be a wonderful event. I had shortlisted 5 sessions to watch out for, and I am happy that out of those 2 were really cool, Microformats and Semantic Web and Clutter. Microformats and Semantic Web talked about poshzone, which is an acronym for Plain Old Simple HTML zone. More details here. Clutter is a new Library which is a wrapper around OpenGL and OpenGL ES. It allows you to do the same cool stuff with a lot smaller code that you could achieve by coding endlessly in OpenGL. Its a new thing which is coming up and we should collaborate and work on developing it further. The best part is that it can run on the mobile platforms as well. Another cool th...

What lacks Devcamp Bangalore
2008-02-08 20:27:00
Devcamp Bangalore is another attempt to have a good unconference style developers conference. But I feel its been plagued by several issues. I am writing it today because I did not want to generate negative publicity around an event which could have been one of the bridges for moving of Indians from coding coolies to tech giants. Still there were certain things which made me doubtful of the motive of the event. I am post now about it because there are only a few hours left for the event to start and I am going to attend it. But these are something which the organizers on their part must make sure does not happen. First thing is, probably this event was there because Martin Fowler was coming to Bangalore. He is being treated as the chief guest. His topic too is yet to be decided. In true Barcamp spirit, this does not happen. I dont know if Martin Fowler is driving this camp or the campers themselves. The event homepage at one point of time had link to a post by a gentleman who had...

Selling online hits a new high
2008-02-06 19:35:00
One my friend Saiyed pointed out to me something amazing at click.in. It was a used toothbrush which has been put up in classified. Rest you can see and laugh. Here is the link http://bangalore.click.in/classified/for- sale/household-appliances/238985/used-too thbrush-execellent-working-condition.html . Enjoy and have fun. If possible do reply to this guy
More About: Selling , Online , High , Hits

Another gem of a useless research
2008-02-05 19:30:00
I just read this amazing research which says Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn't save money Here is the story on Wired. Le me quote the article "It was a small surprise," said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. "But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more." Some more interesting lines "Lung cancer is a cheap disease to treat because people don't survive very long," van Baal said. "But if they are old enough to get Alzheimer's one day, they may survive longer and cost more." The ultimate suggestion "We are not recommending that governments stop trying to prevent obesity," van Baal said. "But they should do it for the right reasons." Stupid fellow. He was surprised. What the hell. Well if you are a smoker or an obese you definitely do the world a great service. You live a rather short life, hence consum...
More About: Research , Useless

Oh My God!!! What next
2008-02-04 18:44:00
It seems like the Indian judges have got a new sense of humor. As long it had only been speculated by humorists that Court will send notices to the Gods. But a court in Dhanbad has done it. Seems like really no one is above the law. Lets see if 'Kaanoon ke haath, kitne lambe hai'(how long is hand of law). Can it bring the Gods to court? Great going India. Now look who is making a mockery of law.

Amazing Bombay Trip
2008-01-30 16:27:00
Now you would be thinking, why Bombay not Mumbai. Well, there is no rocket science or rock solid logic behind it. Its just that I find it easier to connect to Bombay rather than Mumbai and as Shakespeare said it, "Whats in the name". Anyways some of the rather amazing observations of mine in Bombay recently were If Mumbai can have such an amazing running traffic, there is something for the Bangaloreans to learn about. Its not that distances have reduced or the traffic. It takes a hell lot of time to go from one place to another. But the point here is that we are still able to. If Bombay has grown as the rest of India(Bangalore included) then I am sure there is something in it which makes the traffic move. Otherwise we would have had been stuck in traffic like we do at the KR Puram Bridge or MG Road or Silk Board. There were more hoarding for IPOs and Mutual Funds than everything else taken together. I could not believe that there are so many IPOs in the offering. I...
More About: Amazing , Trip