Grey Matter

Recently my grandma got curious about what i do. I told her that i work on the web. And went on to explain her how the internet is so cool.She was disinterested about the whole web thing. I showed a sample of web2.0 sites to get her excited about web.I showed her wikimapia and told that you can zoom in and see anywhere in the world. She got curious now.

“You mean i can see any where in the world?”

“Yes.Infact you can see the place names marked in it.”

“Then show me my house in our village.”

I panned and zoomed to show her that.

“Look.This is the house.See its even marked with your name.The website states that its your house.”

I had earlier marked the place on wikimapia.I didn’t say her that.

“Hmm”

I was expecting a WOW. But she gave a duh ‘hmm’ reaction.

I then told her that you can book your train tickets sitting at home.I was desperate to get a better reaction from her.I went on to book her return tickets to show a demo for her.

“See.I said get me all the trains between these two stations.It listed all the available stations.I asked for availability.It showed that too.I booked the tickets,gave my bank details thats all.You will get the tickets by courier at our doorstep.”

She was still not that excited.She still had the same disinterested look.I gave up.

Days later when our house got a number of visiting relatives my grandma would some how bring up the conversation about the web.Then she would ask me to show them a demo.

“Hey show them that site in which you can see the whole world.”

The relatives all excited would come and sit near me. They would ask me to show them their respective house on that.I dont know why people choose to see their houses first.C’mon you can see the whole world.Why not the Americas or the Australia.But its their fate they chose to see their houses.

I would pan and zoom show them their respective houses. And unfortunately their houses will not be marked.

My grandma would remark with a smug “Aren’t your houses marked up on the site.Mine was marked by default.Poor fellows. It may be because your houses are in remote villages that they didn’t care to mark it.”

Oh i forgot to tell her that it is user generated content.Now i had a choice.I could say her that it is me who marked her house and that any body can mark any place or i could keep silent.The former would make my grandma less proud.So i chose be silent.

And when ever some relative would talk about taking their return tickets she would tell “why are you guys going to reservation offices,standing in line and all to buy tickets. You can buy sitting at home.” with a you-didn’t-already-know-this look.

And again she would ask me to buy their tickets online.

I would dutifully follow wondering the whether the relatives would pay me the ticket cost back or not.If they didn’t then how to politely ask them that.Now this is a risk my grandma is simply pushing me to take.

Luckily i didn’t show her the social networking sites like orkut,facebook et al. Else she might have sent a “Dude your profile looks so coooooool.Shal v b frnds?” request to me!

I don’t intend to write a FUD article supporting either Windows or Linux.This opinion is based on my personal experience.

Every once in a while i would take the decision that i wouldn’t use Windows any more and install some Linux distro.I would use it and after some time i find myself creeping back to windows.

When i installed the first time linux on my machine i didn’t have a Internet connection.This made it really difficult to install new apps.For non linux users:Installing application in linux is slightly different from that on windows.On Windows we would have a setup.exe for most of the applications that would take care installing all that’s  needed for the app to run on your machine.But on most of the  linux we have a package manager through which we would download and install the apps. For any app to install the installation of its dependencies is a prerequisite.The package manager takes care of downloading and installing the dependencies for you.But the problem i had was that since i was not having a Internet connection i had to manually download all the dependencies somewhere and install them. Imagine a six layer dependency tree.So with out internet connection its a bit difficult living with linux.

The other major concern why i would switch back was performance.I have a modest 256 MB RAM,Pentium IV,40 GB hardisk machine.This is a decent configuration for running windows XP.With Windows XP my machine never slows down unless i have more than one big software running simultaneously.But for linux the above stated configuration is the minimum required.The ubuntu live CD didn’t even install with this configuration.I had to use the alternate CD(text based installer) for installing it.Never have i got the apps running fast in linux.Even with only firefox open the speed would be very much less on it.So if you have not so bleeding edge hardware most of linux will be slow.

I am currently on Xubuntu which is ubuntu with Xfce desktop environment.This is supposed to be a fast OS because of its Xfce advantage.But even this is slower than the Windows XP professional.

I know there might be exceptions.I read somewhere slackware running on a 90 MB RAM.But slackware is 6 cd download! I wouldn’t try it until i get extremely bored .

BCCI has released the IPL media guidelines,which prohibits implicitly bloggers from covering the event.

The tone of the guide line is “hey you websites what worth are you of.You aren’t worth the millions that other media like television generate for us.So better stay away from us”

While the mainstream media have planned a black out of IPL.The underground secret community of bloggers (USCB) has planned a colour out of the event.Wonder what color out is? go outside your apartment and see clothes of various colours hanging in balconies.Yes thats colour out.Colour clothes on the outside.Colour out.

Yes BCCI.Pat yourself on the back.You have credit for yet another first.For helping USCB frame the term colour out.

When media persons asked what is this “colour out” to USCB permanent resident president Blog Bla Bla,(his actual name was Bala but since he writes Bla Bla in his blog he has rechristened himself as Blog Bla Bla)

he said “It can mean many things to many people. We bloggers love freedom.If i say do this or do that, to protest, then the other guys will write posts opposing it.Remember Hawkeye and Gaurav Sabnis fighting each other.”

So what does one do if one is doing a colour out.”That is your wish.But just make it a little bit colourful”

People have started speculating what would be done.They are having a big fight on NDTV on what the bloggers can do.CNN-IBN is having the same topic but just the name of the programme is Face the Nation.

Other channels not to be left behind are having polls like what colour can bloggers choose to display their protest.

When a reporter of a famous television asked this question to somebody in Mumbai the guy replied “Hey you Bihari.You are every where.Sala @&^#*&@^” The guy apparently bet the reporter up and asked to him to tell the people the color of his blood.Thats what he suggests RED.

Another reporter has this peculiar story:

Reporter: “Hi.Do you know that the bloggers have pronounced a colour out of IPL”

Person 1 and Person 2: “Yes”

Reporter: “SO what color do you suggest them to use”

Person 1 and Person 2: “Pink”.

Reporter: “Pink.Wha what a beautiful suggestion.And by the way what is your respective names.”

Person 1: I am Ram and he is Lakshman.

Reporter: “Wha here is Ram and Lakshman the brothers from Delhi who are suggesting Pink”

Person 1 and Person 2: “Brothers! Are sala !$&@#^$&^”

This reporter was also beaten up.He should have guessed it when they suggested pink that they are gay and happy.

Now what has happened to all Indians they have started beating up everyone. There are exceptions though.

When Rahul Dravid play and miss a ball.One commentator says “he is beaten by beauty of a ball”.The Indian is actually beaten here.Don’t ask me whether the two reporters who were beaten up aren’t Indians.I am not sure.Mumbai calls some people Biharis. Chennai calls some people Goltis.And there are many other types like mallus,panjus,gujjus, and legendary madarasis.Never know what these people are.Pseudo Indians- probably.No we are not racist.We are just ’state’ist.

The other commentator says “No it is actually, Well left.What a batting.Rahul Dravid the wall as they say” They both started having a argument and start beating each other!

The reporters have decided not to ask any more of these colour questions to the public.But rather ask politicians.But oh! Govinda is a politician and he slapped a reporter and they showed it all day in their channel.So they decided to ask politicians who are old enough not to beat them.

Karunanidhi is reported to have suggested Yellow..When the reported asked him why is that he is superstitious about yellow.His reply was “I am an atheist.I will remain one for the support of the millions of tamilians across the world even if you break my spine.” The reporter escaped without saying he is a Karnataka origin.

The other famous patrons of Yellow such as Ramarajan have also joined the bandwagon of people suggesting yellow.Do to the strong alliance yellow is getting Karunandhi has written a letter to Prime minister of India asking him to make a law that yellow should be the colour used by ValaiPathivalargal(Bloggers in tamil) or in exchange give a cabinet seat for his great grand child’s second cousin. The prime minister has said the party high command (implicitly madame) will take a decision on this.That is allocation of cabinet post for great grand child’s second cousin of Karunanidhi.Since the former is a hard decision.The left parties may come out of the blue and protest that Blue should be the color.

Interestingly Aamir Khan who pokes his nose into every controversy and a blogger is not saying anything on the issue.

So whatever the colour is.Whatever they do with that colour.Bloggers are colouring out IPL.

PS:All names and characters featured in this are fictional unless they are linked.No offense intended towards anybody.And I know this seems like a rip off of Cyrus Broacha script.

You get calls at odd times and that too repeatedly from unwanted caller.Here is a list of few ways you can dis them.

1.Keep your caller tune as “The person you have called is currently busy”. And don’t pick the call.

2.But the problem with 1 is that all your callers will get it.So if your connection provider has feature for customized caller tunes.Keep it only for the person you don’t want to hear from.

3.If 2 is satisfied.Keep your caller tune as “The person you called will always be busy.”

4.There are lot more possibility to play with caller tunes but alas it will cost you.So we will find ways without costing you.

5.Pick up the call and say in Nayagan accent “neenga nallavara kettavara”

6.Pick up the call and say “please press 1 to continue.Please press your yahoo password to continue.Please remove your battery,put it again and call.Please scratch your head to continue”

7.And yes there is this legendary way for the non fun loving people : say hello,hello,hello for 5 to 6 times and cut it.

Feel free to add to the list.

Our Hero gets little bit geeky and decides to tryout google app engine.He finds out that he would need python to work on google app engine.His habit is using the i am feeling lucky feature of Firefox address bar, he would type in only “python” in the address bar.And he typed it not in Firefox but in Opera.And Opera brings up python.com instead of python.org.Guess what, python.com happens to be a porn site.Whats more, he is seated in between his manager and a girl.Never know whether they peeped into his monitor.

Why should switch statement ever fall through?

That is if we don’t give a break; in switch case the program flow goes to the next cases and executes them also.

Wonder why this redundant break; needs to be given.When the idea is to do switch case statement  something like if else if statement.

we could have it like : if at all the programmer needs the flow to fall through to next case why don’t they specifically say a continue;

Huge number of protesters are gathered in front of the Cinema theater.They are all shouting anti-someone slogan.They are preparing to assault the theater.Cut. Zoom out and through a wikimapia like interface pan and zoom into another city some 350 km away. Here protesters wearing lawyer’s black dress are in front of a restaurant.Same slogan shouting.They are about to break the restaurant.Zoom out and show both the places simultaneously.In parallel frames.Both the group start pelting stones,bricks and whatever is in their hand at the glass door and walls in front of the theater and the restaurant respectively.But alas nothing breaks.

A marquee in the middle of screen pops up.Saint Gobain Glass.Unbreakable.

Nada Nada Nada is the new anthem of a few rock fans.This is a song from a malayalam rock band called Avial.I have heard these songs some pretty long back.But it is now that the band is finally releasing their eponymous debut album called Avial.

Avial is, by the way, a food dish which is a mixture of many vegetables and coconut.

The other band that i have been hearing to long enough now is junkyard groove.This band is from chennai.They have a song called folk you where the singer goes thanthana thane thanthana thane.Its a folksy catchy song.

These rock bands not only capture the local musical flavour but also the poets.Recently i caught glimpse of Raghu Dixit project.Their popular Hey Bhagwan is a reggae style song.Gudgudiya is written by Sant Shishunala who they say to be Kabir of Karnataka.

The first time i listened to somebody make contemporary song out of famous poet/song was when Susheela Raman played in chennai some years back.She sang a few songs which are normally sung in carnatic fashion.

And finally anybody for a TR tribute band? Dandanakka,danakkunakka.