Who is John Galt?

This is the question I try to answer. Those of you read "Atlas Shrugged"” by Ayn Rand, might have got idea what I am talking about. For those who didn'’t, do have guts to ask me, for which you will get an awkward reply cos I am still thumbing through the pages. I don'’t say that I have little or no time to update this blog, but it is kinda become, spending lesser and lesser time towards my creative side. It is being eaten upon by so-called important things. More I work on my dreams, more revealing is harsher reality. Self-doubt consumes like anything. At these times, self-confidence raises the morals to great heights. It instills courage, when you are in utter pain, stress, despair and anguish. But still one corner of my heart says go through these pains for the better tomorrow. I think this hope is running everyone lives. Going through this phase and hopefully I will wade through successfully.

When something is extracted from you and end up losing energy to liven up your dreams, you look for something that motivates you, inspires you, energizes you.... I am looking for that inspiration. I am searching it. I am in hunt for its source. In short I am trying to get answer for: "“Who is John Galt?".

Life is a journey

Ya I mean it. Life is a long journey. Everyday I travel. Day in day out, I travel. Traveling is not my passion, or my boon or not even my curse, it became my duty. When I was doing higher secondary schooling, I had to travel 10 km by bus (thru MTC ) to reach school everyday. For those two years, I nearly traveled, 12,000 kms. Wow ! Then came my college studies. That's even worse. I expected to be better but this time the journey became longer. Blame on my college for not providing any transport facility near my place. So I was forced to use two modes of transport, both by MTC bus and EMU train to reach my college everyday. I used to start at home when many start to dive into deep slumber. arghh!! So how much did I travel ? Another 33,210 kms added to my traveling kit. Wow!! another milestone touched.

Ok, now out of college, into the work. Things should be better this time. But, the traveling God (if exists) never satisfied with my journey. He put me into another quota of seeing the Chennai's traffic, suffer from the pollution and see endless number of road side shops cramped with each other. Yes, this time too. Again another journey. Journey to work ! Another 30 kms daily to reach my office. Already 5000 kms covered, still continues.

My traveling mileage reached 50,000 kms so far. So this post I made to mention its significance. Man, its 50 k ! Is it time to rejoice or still believe in "Life is journey" ?? Dunno, may be "Life is long journey", or is it "Journey is Life" ????

DVD Mantra

I bought a LG DVD player recently. I have so far seen movies in DVD format only at my friends home. So I never bought any dvds. No idea how much does it cost n all. People in Chennai would invariably know where Burma bazaar is and what for it is popular. For uninitiated , it is the place where a series of shops lined up in very crampy space selling latest electronic goods at cheaper prices than its counterparts in the city. One can even get latest import goods.God knows how they get it so cheap with good quality. Anyways, Burma bazaar(any one knows how it got its name do tell me !) is also popular for its Dvds & Vcds. Once I went there to buy few popular english movies, I was surprised to see a sea of dvds and vcds piled up (or dumped!) in front of elevator size shops. I came to know there are two varieties of dvds available. Locally named(or real., dunno.) Blue dvd and Gold dvd. Blue dvds are cheaper.You get it for as low as Rs.30. One can get three-in-one movies and some times four-in-movies in one single dvd. Imagine four movies in one single dvd and that too for Rs.30, human psychology tells you gotta have best deal. I thought the same bought few movies. But human psychology some time doesnt tell you the other part of the story until you realise it. Me too realised only I played those cheap dvds. Poor sound, poor video clarity, scenes cut and many more. Arghh.... Damn those shop owners who said their dvds are better than what are available in next shop and gave me his business card,with a warm smile, saying "please refer your friends this shop " !

'Brain' Virus

First PC virus - Brain, has just celebrated its 20th birthday. It infected the boot sector and spreaded through floppy disks of the age. It is considered to be no way in comparison with its modern counterparts. Interestingly the first virus(Brain) also called by the names such as Pakistani, Lahore, Pakistani flu !!!! . Two brothers from Pakistan wrote this virus to protect their software from infringers. They wrote their address with their phone numbers in the virus and notified the affected that they can contact them for vaccination !!! Here is what they included in their virus code : - source

Welcome to the Dungeon (c) 1986 Basit * Amjad (pvt) Ltd. BRAIN COMPUTER SERVICES 730 NIZAM BLOCK ALLAMA IQBAL TOWN LAHORE-PAKISTAN PHONE: 430791,443248,280530. Beware of this VIRUS.... Contact us for vaccination...

They are the true virus writers !!! Ha ha.. :)

Agely observation

Its been long time to post here. Time and again I try to keep up with you folks but, damn work time I couldn't but look for a escape.

I am now reading a book called " The World Is Flat : A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century " by Thomas L.Friedman . May be I couldn't give review of the book or for that matter my opinion as I am marking on initial pages. This morning while I was reading, I remembered of a small note in one of Swami Vivekananda's biography. I will reproduce, in my own words, about one of his thoughts.

The thing goes like this, the world was influenced by many sections of people all over the ages. Initially the world was lead by people who are philosophers in nature like Aristotle. People followed their wisdom and their speech. In Hinduism caste division terms, world was lead by Brahmins. Then came Kings who ruled all over the world. In Hindu terms, Kshatriyas. In the late twentieth century world was more influenced by business people. Things like globalization had profound impact on people's lives. In Hinduism, the influencers were Vaisyas. The next in the row of Hindu's lexicon is Shudras who roughly equivalent to the people who do services.

Thomas Friedman in this book started with the factors that influenced globalisation in recent years. Though I haven't finished reading this book, I got hints from his initial pages that the influencer of next wave of globalization going to be Service Industries. He predicts that a person can book a table in a restaurant through a call which traverses across the boundaries. That is, the booking actually happens in a remote call center that may be located way across the globe, and things like that.

The period influenced by businesses(at present) might be followed by the age of Services. People will serve other people. That might definitely influence the way we lead our lives. If that happens, it will reaffirm Vivekananda's thoughts .

Pirate of Bloglines !

Today as I opened bloglines to check my feeds, I saw this amusing pic. Thought of sharing with you folks. The picture tells you how a plumber turned to pirate ! click on pic to view clearly.

Plans changed

My friend told me that my every next post is about google or Linux or open source related and wants me to try out something else, if I really want to make my blog interesting to folks out there. Well, its true that, people out there really understand if you speak your heart rather than your head. So, plans are changed. Thinking what to post in these pages in future, meanwhile here is the link that might interest you. answers.

The Strategy

This is snapshot of an article in eweek . It is about GPL 3.0 (general Public Licence) & Open source. If it sounds greek & latin, pls bear with me. The point is, the advertisement (played in flash) is about Windows Server system - Microsoft product. The advertisement given in an page where an article written about its rival -- open source community . The link (flash link) tracks to a page where first few lines goes like this :

"As you weigh the costs and risks of Windows and Linux, consider this: More and more independent analysts and leading companies find that Windows Server System outperforms Linux on TCO, reliability, security, and indemnification. Get the facts, and make the decision that's right for your business."

This is what we call Strategy !

Tossy Cricket

"You win the toss, you win the match". This is how the currently concluded India - South Africa one day series went. You win toss, put the opponents to bat and ask your best bowler to bowl and thats it. Rest assured you win the match.

Experts say One day matches are more depended on conditions rather anything else. But, what we have seen is more than the scope of the statement. The match result was always decided by the toss. The initial dew on the pitch always helped bowlers to get initial breakthrough. Thats how Pollock rattled Indian top order throughout the series. Then again. Blame it on day-night play, the dew set on the outfield will always make life pathetic for the fielding side.

About Indian pitches : come on every one knows about it.

These kind of pitches, conditions killing the spirit of Cricket. Though one can argue like winning team should win in all pitches and conditions. Well, if the pitch conditions are same in all matches and if you can guess which team will win easily based on toss, then whats the point in playing ?? and making millions of people watch the game whose outcome is known?? We like to have matches dictated by team performance not decided by conditions. Why cant BCCI conduct Test matches in winter season and one days during summers ???, if at all they cant bring really good cricketing pitches and thus help in bringing quality of cricket.

New Internet Age

This is one of my favourite area of study while I was studying in college. Broadband over PowerLines. Though many technical details involved here, I like to put it as simple as possible. What does Broadband over powerline mean ? - it means that you access internet - broadband access, through existing PowerLines not via telephone lines.


Lot of reasearch going on and many big companies like Intel, Google are showing interests in this field. Our government making policies to implement this technology ! read here. That must be a gr8 joke (with existing conditions). The highly disorderliness of our power sector make sure this super technology never reach masses effectively.

I am no pundit but thats how I put my opinion. But I appreciate the motive behind it - to bridge digital-divide. To bring rural masses into mainstream this technology will surely aid. Forget the side-effects of it, as it is no way in comparison with the amount of knowledge-ignorance (relatively) in the country side. Before trying to implement this technology, our Government should remove the blockheads, hindrances and anything that infuses inefficiency. I hope that this dream technology won't remain as a mere dream, to help our people living in unfortunate rural India.

Google's new Avatar

God of Web - Goolge has come up with new service - Google Analytics. Really mind boggling for any ordinary neitizen. The features offered in this service are truly amazing. The small piece of code which you need to embed in your site can do magic. The features ranges from hi-fi marketing optimization to content performance to the place where a person is seeing your site to the browser setting he/she using to the operating system being used.....

There are many features which I just keep wondering what for they are used ? How effectively it can be use ? and that too free ! Never mind. They got their own way of doing business. A small question cropped in my mind. With the help of this small code in user's page they could track, describe and build on so many things and offer you wide range of features, I think , it is still possible, for them to get the details of commercial value from the users' activities without the laters' awareness. That could roughly mean " someone watching you ". Hopefully God of Web shouldn't be trending in these waters.

Thanx to keerthi I came to know about this service.

Mascot of 2008

The official mascots for 2008 Beijing Olympics are unveiled exactly 1000 days before the event. They are called as " Five Friendlies". Guess what each ' Five Friendly ' mean ???

The mascots were presented as Bei Bei, Jing Jing, Huan Huan, Ying Ying and Ni Ni - which, put together reads in Chinese "Beijing welcomes you!" read more

The No : 3 slot

The great Indian Cricket team . Four wins. Against a team which seemingly surprised by the embellishing form of its opponent. After the messy encounter of Sourav v/s chappell, the Indian team not only return to the top form but with the perfect winning formula.

Rahul Dravid, my favorite, has shown his style,smartness,quality and all those that required for a captain in all these games. In terms of batting skill set he certainly outshines former captain Saurav Ganguly. It seems from these four matches that he is going to outshine his predecessor in captaincy role too. Rahul's execution of his new role with adroit leadership has invited all praise from cricket fraternity. Perhaps he is reserved in this role at least till next World cup.

One of the effective and innovative strategy Dravid infused in last four games is No: 3 slot. He gambled with this slot very diligently. Perhaps gambling is wrong word in this context.He played it very smart. Very very smart.The promotion of young players having different skills to first down spot in these matches shown how well the strategy paid off. It also installed certain kind of uncertainty in approach in Srilankan camp. It also played spoilsports in opponents strategy. Upsetted their plans. Upset of Apple cart.

Well done Rahul. Well done Indian Team.

Re-returned...

Again I am back...long time gap...hmmm...The reader might have thought I would have been busy all these time...Perhaps not. Perhaps yes. I am in different phase of my life. From college to work. Lots of changes. Lots of friends lost. Lots of friends gained. When I try to rewind the past(College life) it seems it went past like a flash in front of my own eyes. The moments I enjoyed in college would never return. I understand the trueness of this statement only after coming out of college. Pity late. Four years in four seconds. Came. Went.

This is how my lonely moments are spent.Digging the memoirs of College life which brings big curve on my face.Sometimes laugher.Often inviting raised eyebrows on others.. :) Come on dude... this is how life moves. Shakes. Rocks!

Recently I read a book called "The Monk who sold his Ferrari" by Robin Sharma. No review.The book is perhaps best self-help book I have read ! The reading went like dusting my 22 year old memory and brought my good old habits.The book didn't enlightened me with highest knowledge but explained how simple actions,positive thoughts could bring joy in our life. Positive. Contentment. Happiness.

Atlast I configured my system with perfect dual boot in my not very old machine.It took nearly 10 times formatting the hard disk in a period of 6 months. Hours of patience. Hours of pain in sitting.Hours of learning. Satisfied. Still learning.

Now planning to put my muses here often. Think. Plan. Execute.

Finally returned !

It took me exactly 912 hours or 54720 minutes to post this write-up. Quite a long time indeed. What on earth (or outside of it) had changed due to no-posts in my blog. Actually it didn’t make any changes --- Our nearest star– Sun continues its nuclear fusion reaction process and which is responsible for binding of our blue-cum-blackened (as well as ozoned) Earth in its belt and helps the later to keep rotating to create day and night, the anti-matter in CERN reactors is still being tried upon to create ultra - super clean energy that will purify your soul and show how big bang happened and also answer the most intriguing question “is God exists?” (ideas inherited from : Dan Brown's ‘Angels & Demons’), environmentalists never came to agreement ( at least no MoUs ) about our world climate, Katrina’s merciless attack didn’t show any trace of mercy on the people whom its government neglected them and showed interest elsewhere in a country which is half way round the earth only to jeopardize the already existing system, no freezing of Sania mirza’s non-stop run from 300 odd rank to 34 th ranked women player in world of tennis which gave her enough guts to wear a t-shirt saying " You can either agree with me or be wrong " at a press conference and she is from a country where certain section of people with their old attitudes and beliefs dictate dress codes to women, no stopage of bloggers’ postings and comments on unfathomable memory space maintained by thousands of computers running on Linux across the world, it never changed the speed with which Windows Xp work on my moderately outdated computer system or the troubles it brings almost everyday, no breaks to my unceasing thoughts on myriad things around me or to my 'always on silence mode ' which makes my friends think how controlled I am and instill ephemeral envies in them ……….

One thing it (non-posting time gap) certainly helped me to do. Thinking about how I spent (wasted) my precious time to write this write-up which effectively speaks nothing but just make one of my fellow blogger to read the post which I have made after 3196800 seconds or 37 days.

Google's 'failure' !

When I was googling , I happened to google a word - " failure ". For which , I got 78,200,000 search results in 0.11 seconds. The first search result is about .....-- click here

Is that deliberate tweak by anti-b**h google employee or the bitter reality reflected by google's search algorithm ? any thoughts???

Smokers' money

While I was going through the Hindu's editorial , an interesting point caught me between the lines :

......While big strides have been made in combating cancer in recent years, the fight against the disease has been wanting in funds not only for research and treatment, but also for educational and awareness programmes. As cancers of the mouth, throat, oesophagus, and lungs have been linked to tobacco use, funding for such efforts is crucial to the future of containment and control.....

While I was musing on those lines, an idea struck on my pristine grey cells to solve this funding problem. The main culprit of these Cancers found to be tobacco. What if government levy heavy taxes (heavier than what is existing) on the tobacco products and use this tax money to fund the institutions like Cancer institute,Chennai. It may look contradictory to use the money out of the same product which causes disease to cure people. It is similar to what government is doing like encourage the products and issue warnings on them ! One can easily guess this heavy tax if collected will certainly be passed on to the consumers in the name of price hike. This will directly/indirectly discourages tobacco usage and helps to strike a balance between funding problem and health issues.

Anyone would have noticed the policy of the government is like give necessary permissions to tobacco industries to produce products (tobacco products) and in turn help itself to fill its kajana , issue warning messages on the same products,ban the usage of the products in public places, ban smoking in movies saying that it encourages smoking among gullible and then spend huge amount of money in health sector, to fight against the disease which is caused by the same products, without producing any effective results. No one knows where the money -- hundreds of crores of rupees the government gets from tobacco industry every year -- is being used.

The kind of research going around Cancer related issues in the country needs encouragement from the government in all aspects. Not only monetary requirements it should quench but framing the policies to find the right balance between economic and social walks of life.

I have expressed my views as a common mortal and that will anyway demand not me to be an economist of yesteryear !

'Prince of Calcutta' is back

Inventors of Sourav Ganguly's jokes, which are widely distributed through e-mails and SMS , hereafter, may not find ways to strike up on a joke (thats what it is being called) on his batting style or performance. He silenced his critics with his career saving innings (perhaps) - 51 against a better opponent (Srilanka). During his innings he has joined 10000 run club.

When we rewind our memories for few months back, we have seen his pathetic batting display and single-digit innings. Everyone knows he is not technically a sound batsman like Dravid or Tendulkar. Still he was able to score twenty odd centuries. Thats sounds a bit awkward . Perhaps those centuries and accumulation of 10 k runs are possible only due to his gifted off-side drives and breath-taking shots of spinning deliveries.Though his inability to will the willow off the pads and poor shot selection (on the chest), which made him vulnerable, he was able to heap the pile of centuries into his kitty.

Ganguly did played brilliantly in many innings in which of few he had even lead India to victories . His captaincy is the most successful stint by any Indian captain till now, but that can't speak his skills or leadership qualities. His recent batting form was the most sort out news in the media circles. His rejection in the fothcoming Asian-Afro cricket matches made his supporters wake up from deep sleep and make voices just to inform public space that he has following too. Certainly he had worst period of his career and he was trying hard to comeover it. But he is such a lucky kid (to say the least) for having played so many matches with his poor run. Thanks to luck or Jagmohan (God only knows) he had played good number of matches in the name of regaining his lost form. If the same thing happened to any Australian cricketer he would have been sacked long back (eg: Steve waugh). See,this is how our cricket works... oops ! rather our cricket body works !

The 'Mighty Mouse'

Apple - who first introduced 'mouse' to the world has unveiled yet another innovative product. An optical multi-button mouse dubbed as 'Mighty Mouse' enables you to perform 360- degree scroll with its scroll ball. Two buttons at the sides of the mouse and middle click ball along with special sensors which can predict your clicking intentions and programmable buttons, makes this mouse really a mightier one. This mind-blowing product works on Windows operating system also.

Musing on the world of difference the 'Mighty Mouse' could make to the lives of computer literates ......

Sources : Mighty Mouse , Neowin

Links :Apple Insider , Dissect Mouse

A Common man PC

Prices of computers (read PCs) are racing at one heck of a speed . Recently HCL infosystems released the magic sub-10k (Rs. 9990 ) personal computer. Sub-10k is the recent mantra of PC market in the country . Xenitis , a kolkata based company also bought sub-10k Intel based pc to the market. "Computer for Rs. 9990 " based on a processor by Taiwan based VIA Technologies in partnership with esys is also on the cards.

By googling I stumbled upon a article (PDF) , a bit old one but gives interesting insights of low cost PCs , expressing on " A PC for Rs.5000 " ! In fact the author of the article , Rajesh Jain , a tech blogger , with an IIT professor are looking to bring 5K PC to reality (according to article).

One GHz processor, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB hard disk, 15-inch digital colour monitor, 52X optical drive, keyboard and scroll mouse.

This is the specification of the sub-10k PC launched by HCL on Monday. The processor is neither of Intel nor AMD rather one of the processors of VIA technologies. Interestingly the operating system is not a Microsoft product (read windows) . They have opted Linux to keep costs down. I think this brings smiles to those who declared themselves to have "divorced windows and married Linux" , not because of yet another company shipping Linux with its product but for the 'promise to initiate' "open source software centre" in chennai in months time.

In my opinion , this announcement (along with low cost PC) blows trumpet to the IT world that our government is in direction of supporting Open Source products . And the reason being simply to enable the reach of computers and Internet to the mass of people especially to rural parts of our country in cost effective way and help them to enrich their quality of lives.