Viva

Hurray!!! Eventually done with Ms. viva voce. I just learned that its not viva voice but viva voce :)

Dancing Queen

How bizzare is this?

You are in the US, click a family photo and post it on your blog and facebook.....only to resurface in Prague as a full size poster ad at a local supermarket :-)

The Blog

The new on Telegraph

Kookaburra

This is one long forgotten bird that we had studied at school. The Kookaburra is also known as the laughing jackass and the name comes due to its resemblance to a human laughing. There is an audio clip of the kookaburra Laughing on wikipedia.
Click Here. Headphones on and it probably will take 30 seconds before it buffers and starts playing. No wonder its a little unnerving particularly while in a jungle :-)

More about the bird can be found Here.

Bring me to life

Perfoming at NIT-Calicut

Brother on Drums at NIT-Calicut. Seems to be performing to a dark theme :-)

Matrix-Lobby fight Scene

The original



Our Bollywood ripoff


Akshay Kumar slips on the wall but credits to him for doing it without the heroine :-)

How to successfully find time to blog on a busy schedule

Image courtesy

1. http://www.flickr.com/photos/shapeshift/85220007/

Hail the storm

Snippet:

Rainfall and hailstorm in several parts of Delhi and adjoining areas at around 3.30 pm considerably brought down the temperature.

Temperature dropped by almost 13 degrees, from 38.4 degrees to 25.6 degree Celsius within five minutes, with winds blowing at 96 km per hour gusting through the city bringing rain and hail, the weather department said.

Another 13 degree drop consecutively for the next 10 minutes and you would get to see snow in Delhi :) Unbelievable drop in temperature!

In more strange news, I saw a camel eat snow in the desert on National Geographic...yes, it snows in some of the deserts!!!

Source:
1. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Rain-hailstorm-hit-Delhi/articleshow/4506459.cms

Dreams-Cranberries

That humming is so beyond me.

Click here for YouTube video. Embedding has been unfortunately disabled.

At 40

The outdoor temperature in Chennai is 40 Degree C. The indoor temperature is 23 degree C. I stay indoor all day. There are a lot of trees around but there are 'sun crossings' when the trees are a little apart. I took three sun crossings today on my outdoor adventure with the sun.

Hope the weather has been cooler and you have been cozier on your part of the planet:)

Orkut: India, Brazil and Identity theft

To put it all in perspective, there is this small story. I never thought of online social networks as but a medium for 'social networking'. In one of the conference I attended there was a speaker from AT&T who does his research on online social networks. In one of his slides in his presentation he cites the high popularity of Orkut in India and Brazil due to 'cultural reasons'. His presentation was followed by the questionnaire session and I out of curiosity asked him what he meant by 'cultural reasons'. He said that the reason for the high initial popularity of Orkut in India was because 'Indian men found Brazilian women on Orkut to be expressive'. Well, the rest of the audience starts giggling and then he tells me 'there is nothing to be ashamed of it'. Well great! Thank you.
That probably explains why some of our folks have Brazilian friends on their Orkut friend list. This probably worked well but then Indian men started inviting their Indian lady friends. It may have started well, the ladies put their photos online. The photos were publicly available, their scrapbook was public but all that suddenly changed due to a few tragic crimes. Orkut decided to have privacy settings where you could control who sees your photo album and scrapbook.
Now, the liberal model around which Orkut was built disappeared. Folks could no longer see your photo album or your scrapbook all depending on your privacy settings, which leads to this clever scam where someone can trick you to adding strangers as your friend.

Read about the clever scam that appeared in a popular security experts blog this week.

Click here for how the scam works.

The author talks about the scam in the context of facebook and myspace but the attack can be directly replicated for Orkut. The author talks about possible money laundering as an advantage of the attack. That's not the case in India.In India it's not about the money, it is about the women. You can bet that these attacks will quickly pick up in India because someone wants to see someone else's photo album and scrapbook whose privacy status is set to-'only friends can view/read'. Like the attack on Facebook, if the scam works-even Orkut will suggest an imposter as your friend.Imagine the number of folks in India who would be more than happy to try out this scam!


Ps: The scam described is clever because it is simple and it works!

April?

Darn, it's getting hot and sticky!

300 Kmph to 0 in ten seconds

No, I wasn't landing a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier or trying bungee jumping. This one is simple. Book yourself on a night flight to Delhi in December and you will get more than you ask for. Chances that the flight will be delayed due to fog and poor visibility at the Delhi airport will be at 100%. The chances that you are in landing queue at a number greater than 10 will again be 100%. You will soon find the pliot's announcement saying there is a 'traffic jam' in the sky and asking you to sit back and enjoy your flight.You could, if the plane did actually go in circles but it doesn't. It keeps changing altitude at the end of each circle and there is a fairly significant change in cabin pressure. If you can still hear anything after completing two circles, you should be surprised.

However fog does have its advantages if you specifically asked for a window side at the airline counter. Delhi has so far the most beautiful night lights visible from an aircraft. You can see beautiful well arranged lights shimmering on the ground like they were stars, some white and others yellow. You can see the peculiar fog patterns on the ground. At some places the lights will be dimmed by the fog and a few hundred meters away you can see bright lights with absolutely no fog. Put in the landing queue makes it all the more delightful to watch the Delhi night light for so long.

The airliner doesn't expect us to stay in the sky forever, so eventually you get to land braving the fog and near zero visibility. The pilot's voice cracks on the speakers and announces that you are now ready to land and that cabin crew should take landing positions.( I think he means-hang on for dear life).

You get to fasten your seat belt and the descent begins. The night light gets bigger and brighter. The fairy tale world up from the sky slowly disappears and you start getting the feel of the 'real world'. The pilot apparently overshoots by a few dozen meters. The wheel hits the ground rather smooth and then comes to a screeching halt. (I remember counting till 10 before it came to a complete halt. i bet it was close to 10 seconds). This however is a little different from the braking in buses(you get to fly there without actually taking a flight). Here you get to experience 4g to 6g, all free of charge. The pilot announces the outside temperature (2 degree C) and hopes that we enjoyed our flight. Sure, I did! and hope to do it again :-)

ps: Back to probabilities, the chance that you find fog in December in Delhi and finding yourself in a long landing queue is 100%. The chances of a successful landing to enjoy the freezing weather is definitely not 100% :P

The Boo-Boo Key-Key test

Above are two alphabets of a martian language spoken on a far away planet. One of them is pronounced Boo-Boo (similar to pronouncing Boo-Hoo). The other is pronounced as key-key (with an emphasis on the 'k'). Now you have to decide which of the above image is going to be key-key and which one is going to be boo-boo.

Try it out and lets see what you think.

Note: The two martian alphabets are those to the top left and top right of the rectangle.

Once you have made up your mind, look for the answer in comments.

Back to back accidents

It was one of those festival times where one couldn't get train tickets(usually the best way to get home). I figured that I should be home anyway, packed up a small bag, bought some cookies, bottled water and set out to in search of an interstate bus. however, the buses were overbooked and getting a seat even at double or triple the price was not feasible. That would mean that I would not get home. Didn't seem like a good idea then. So, I figured that I could catch multiple buses and get home. I go a ticket for my first destination from which where I needed to catch another bus. The seats were okay and to my cheer they had a TV in the bus. The bus started at around five in the evening and soon it was on the highway zooming its way through. After, a while they played a tamil movie, one of the 90's movies. Interestingly Tamil movies are as intense and melodramatic as hindi movies. It must have been around ten in the night, the movie was over and started dozing off in the seat. The next thing i remember, i was flying in the bus and landed on the floor. Someone, decided to take his chances crossing the road and got hit inspite of all the braking efforts. The whole bus was rumbling due to the sudden braking. It sounded like the bus might disintegrate. Almost every one in the bus escaped unhurt and a few sustained very minor injuries. However the person who got hit was not very lucky. He hit his head on impact and had to be taken to the hospital. After an hours delay of sorting out things, the bus continued and reached my first destination just past midnight. I got out pretty hungry, though i knew to catch my second connection bus. It so happened have that they have good round the clock restaurants at the bus station. After a reasonable dinner, I got another ticket for my second connection bus. This too had a TV. I was not very keen on watching the movie but they were playing it on full volume, that i didn't have much of a choice. this was more of an action movie, not very dramatic like the previous one. This movie comes to an end around 2:30 in the morning. i though, oh good...finally time to catch some sleep. But it was not meant to be. Again, i find myself flying, hitting the seat in front of me and rebounding back to my seat. This time the driver had fallen asleep, got to the wrong side of the road at a divider and hit a motorist. The motorist was seriously bruised though it didn't appear to be life threatening. Waited for another 20 minutes or so hoping that it would be sorted out and that we could continue our journey. Another five minutes passes, the police appears and takes away the driver. A press photographer appeared from no where and starts clicking photos of the accident site. That went on for another few minutes. The passengers were asked to disembark and get another bus plying on that route. I get down and it starts raining immediately. Well, great I thought and got back in. After a while some of the other passengers who were braving the rain stopped a bus and I managed myself into it though it was overcrowded with all the extra passengers it picked up. Luckily, this bus did not have a TV and i was hoping i wouldn't get hit(get unlucky) a third time. But every time the bus braked my heart would miss a beat. By morning, around 5:30 AM i reach the third bus connecting point. Now, i get into the bus and am a little relieved because its already dawn and people see better and start afresh. Even, if they were asleep-the chillness in the air from the rain would keep them awake...and most importantly, no TV in it! Anyway, i get to hop two more buses after that and reached home by noon. If there is anything i did learn from this trip, it was not to take night buses, though i have done it a few times over the years. Either the driver is driving the bus in his half sleep or someone will be crossing the road in his half sleep. Both not so good.

Nested Dreaming

it so happened that i dozed off and very soon stared dreaming. then started dreaming again in the dream. After a while the second(inner) dream terminates and I wake up finding myself conscious but unable to move. well, guess what- i had to go back finish my first (outer) dream to wake up and get moving.

Power me up

Re-charge time :-)

Slumdog Millionare funny goof

Continuity: A large pimple on the right side of Jamal's face appears then disappears then reappears, depending on whether he is being interrogated by the police or is answering questions as a television game-show contestant, even though those events supposedly occurred in the plot within a span of just a few hours.

The mystery of the disappearing pimple!

Quote Source
1. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1010048/goofs

...and a sparrow comes