ToI- Lead India Initiative

A very inspiring video for ToI's initiative! lovely one....enjoy it!

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Magic!

One more post on my fav. topic, music.

Watch this lovely song from Ullasam. This belongs a different genre - beautiful song in a crappy movie.  Unnikrishnan has a dominant role in the song. Harini comes up with beautiful piece in mid, but didn't have many chance to show her magic in this song.  

Now, revenge time ;)
One more beautiful song from my favorite singer Harini.....

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Ideas worth spreading!

This is link to my dear Ghosty's recent blog post. That is the first time I heard of Prof. Randy Pausch. Checked his website, didn't get a clue what he is working on. Later got his "last lecture" video from bit-torrents. This was my comments on GP's post after seeing that video:

boy, that was amazing lecture. inspiring, emotional....that's fete any man will want to achieve in his life time!
Hats off to Randy! I am impressed by his lecture...I would love to be in his making virtual worlds class for sure...
childhood dreams...I lost touch with my childhood dreams for these days. Will gonna look at it again...
thanks bro...thats wonderful experience listening to his magic speech!

See the video if you get hold of it! Truly inspiring!

And Have you guys heard about TED, http://www.ted.com/

Their caption is the title of this post. I want to write about that for long time, finally got it! TED is video collection of lectures shared by inspired thinkers. If you don't have patience to read through the whole book, boy, then TED videos are for you.  Enjoy!

BTW, Sep 28 is our dear Ghosty's birthday!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday dear GP! ;)

 

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iPhone in India

Peeps, iPhone has been cracked in India to work with Indian service providers ;)
Initial details are here

Hope he publishes steps to crack it soon!

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India Rocks!

Man! it's amazing match to remember for my life time!

Wow! I love twenty 20 format of cricket! I never had patience to see one whole ODI. T20 comes as lucky boon for people like me.

Me and my friends were enjoying this match in my home here.  Nail biting, heart popping, deafening shouts....it's best! India team rocked and made us all proud!

As usual lot of sentiments while we were seeing the match. A friend of mine really got pissed of the progress of the match and decided to go back to office. When he had almost left the house, Pakistan team lost their first wicket. Hurray! we were shouting like madmen; he came back running to join in the celebrations. Then that sentiment worked till the end. Whenever he decided to go back, a Pakistan wicket fell. He almost sacrificed witnessing the nail biting climax of the match because of this sentiment.  Hurray!!!

What a great moment!

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Cheers!

Have you seen this great fete of ISRO?

As a alumni of GSLV team, I was very happy to hear this news. GSLV-FO4 was a grand success with great precision. This success for the rocket is much needed one there. GSLV had a bad launch failure last year. That was the failure after 10 long years in ISRO history and hopefully the last failure forever for ISRO. 

I was in cloud nine hearing the news because I knew lot of main people behind this launch. I was reporting to them directly during my days there ;) It's great to see your team's achievement and boss's smiles flashing in the newspapers. Isn't it?

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Grand (Robot) Prix

This is a different race.  It is race of Humvee's and SUV's maneuvered by Robots with their laser sharp sensor eyes and artificial intelligent computer brain.  The 'urban challenge'  is about how your robot drives 60 miles in 6 hours in urban traffic environment. This year's challenge is in Nov 3rd in CA. This race is not about speed, average speed is around 50 miles/hr.  The race is about the robustness in the autonomous maneuvering algorithm in extreme condition. The grand finale of 2005 challenge was in the desert, 175 miles in 10 hours.  The race track is full of human made obstacles and the robot had to learn and find its way out of the maze.

This race improves the research in Artificial Intelligence. More importantly, it finds one better utility for AI research than making computers play chess super efficiently. DARPA funds this challenge.  This has an immediate application in battle fields; where ground troops movement in dangerous places can be replaced with this auto-maneuvering robots. That's interesting application for these research!

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Software Easter Eggs

Easter eggs are interesting goodies packed with software distributed, but hidden and undocumented. Microsoft excel 97 has a flight simulator embedded in it and Microsoft word 97 has pinball game embedded and hidden in it.  Easter eggs are bundled with software for entertainment purpose and for adding personal signature.

If you use Linux vi editor, type :help 42. then you can see "meaning of life?" ;)

What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?  *42*
Douglas Adams, the only person who knew what this question really was about is
now dead, unfortunately.  So now you might wonder what the meaning of death
is...

There is this website which lists hosts of them.

The corporate who market these software rarely take it in light sense.  There was once a famous reported case, the engineer working on the development of the product got pissed off by the client's pressure. To vent his frustration, he added an Easter egg which pops up and say "that X company sucks!". Unfortunately during software adoption phase of the software, the client's found out this Easter egg.  Then what happened is no-brainer.

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Rock for Good Cause!

My blog is in lull even after I desperately tried reviving it.  Nothing much happening in my personal end.  My world now is my work, my friends, music, movies, magazines and occasionally spending time for good cause (like Dream A Dream work).  That's reason why I keep it low on blog world. Yet I do & will be reading all your blogs regularly.  Period.

Music and work are best combo. When you wanna concentrate on the work, spice it up with good environment and mellifluous music flooding that environment. Check back, your productivity would have gone up a lot. And that reasoning gives me a chance to listen to lot of world music. I reinvent my love for music daily.  That's why I invariably end up writing reviews for great music in my past blog posts.  Now one more...

I vote against rock music. I don't like most of rocks for the kind of pessimism and negative world portrayed by them. I was pleasantly surprised by this song. I am talking about "Zombie" from The Cranberries. Not the regular hear-deafening music. The song is catchy and caught my attention/interest. 

A good video of the song youtubed by Universal Music Group is available here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJEySrDerj0

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Maestro

Illayaraja, the acclaimed music director of South India is fondly called as Maestro. The fete achieved by him is unbeatable and will be so for long time to come. He is celebrated music director among masses as well as from classical music world. He has used classical Carnatic music ragas, composed music in pure form and popularized the music among the masses.  A tip of the Iceberg, an example of cinema music in pure classical raga is this song. It is based on 'Shamugapriya' raga.

The raga in classical form is available here

And a tail piece, a recent song from another music director is based on this song (not in same tempo or tone or shruthi) but disguised version of the same song. This info is hear-say. I tried to relate both, but couldn't.

Anyway Illayaraja's piece is the best of them.  I enjoyed the song, music fiesta in the song. The song's opening tempo makes the huge impact. SPB's voice is heavenly. 

The lyrics for the first song....

கண்ணுக்குள் நூறு நிலவா! இது ஒரு கனவா!
கைக்குட்டைக் காதல் கடிதம் எழுதிய உறவா!
கண்ணுக்குள் நூறு நிலவா! இது ஒரு கனவா!
கைக்குட்டைக் காதல் கடிதம் எழுதிய உறவா!

நாணம் விடவில்லை தொடவில்லை
ஏனோ விடை இன்னும் வரவில்லை!
ஐயர் வந்து சொல்லும் தேதியில்தான் வார்த்தை வருமா!
ஐயர் வந்து சொல்லும் தேதியில்தான் வார்த்தை வருமா!

கண்ணுக்குள் நூறு நிலவா! இது ஒரு கனவா!
கைக்குட்டைக் காதல் கடிதம் எழுதிய உறவா!

அம்பா சாம்பவி சந்திரமௌலி ரகளா அக்னா உமா பார்வதி
காளி ஹமவதி சிவாத்திர நயானா கார்த்தியாயனி பைரவி
சாவித்திரி நவயுக்கயான சுபஹரி சாம்ராஜ லக்குமிபிரதா!

தென்றல் தொட்டதும் மொட்டு வெடித்தால்
கொடிகள் என்ன குற்றம் சொல்லுமா!
கொல்லைத் துளசி எல்லைக் கடந்தால்
வேதம் சொன்ன சட்டங்கள் விட்டுவிடுமா!
வானுக்கு எல்லை யார் போட்டது!
வாழ்க்கைக்கு எல்லை நாம் போட்டது!
சாஸ்திரம் தான்டி தப்பி செல்வது ஏது!

கண்ணுக்குள் நூறு நிலவா! இது ஒரு கனவா!
கைக்குட்டைக் காதல் கடிதம் எழுதிய உறவா!

பூவே! பெண் பூவே!
இதில் என்ன அதிசயம்,
இளமையின் அவசியம்
இனி என்ன ரகசியம்!
இவன் மனம் புரியலையா!

ஆணின் தவிப்பு அடங்கிவிடும்
பெண்ணின் தவிப்பு தொடர்ந்துவிடும்
உள்ளம் என்பது உள்ள வரைக்கும்
இன்ப துன்ப எல்லாமே இருவருக்கும்
என்னுள்ளே ஏதோ உண்டானது
பெண்ணுள்ளம் இன்று இரண்டானது
இரண்டா எது ஒன்று பட்டப்போது!

கண்ணுக்குள் நூறு நிலவா! இது ஒரு கனவா!
கைக்குட்டைக் காதல் கடிதம் எழுதிய உறவா!

 

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Unnai Kandane...

This is review for one of my favorite song. "Unnai Kandane" from the movie Parijatham (2005). A lovely musical piece from relatively unknown singers and music director.

A stark contrast of slow and fast rhythm is mixed throughout the song. Pallavi (opening stanza in any song that gets repeated often) starts with slow 'pop-style' rhythm with female voice.  It continues into 'rap-style' rhythm from male voice and again the female voice mixes towards the end in her slow rhythm.  Saranam (are filler part of the song)is composed with intercepting male and female voice for every line to take the song in same pep.

The lyrics are intriguing. Poems about love never satiates. During male part of Pallavi, the lyrics are filled with oxymoron (ironies and contrasts) . I tried translating them to English to give you an example, but couldn't do a fair job.  The lyrics/poem appears like written first and  music director designed the tune to match the words and meaning.

The visualization of the song carries forward this stark contrast further with slow and regular actions of actors in the song.  The choreography isn't something grammatical (like regular dance styles). Dance steps are choreographed to portray the emotions of lovers. The pinnacle is usage of rain in the song. The water drops shot at slow motion comes alive in the song and add to glamour. The blue tone used in the songs gives the cool effect.  And in the middle, heroine come with a bright red dress  that beautifully breaks in monotonous visualization towards the end. The cute actions from actors are also worth mentioning.

It's a wonderful example of creativity for a duet song in movie. It is sticky from the day I saw/heard it and it is still my rejuvenator.

Now here is the video

and here is the lyrics. Enjoy the song!

உன்னைக் கண்டேனே முதல்முறை
நான் என்னைத் தொலைத்தேனே முற்றிலுமாய் தான்
உன்னைக் கண்டேனே முதல்முறை
நான் என்னைத் தொலைத்தேனே முற்றிலுமாய் தான்

காதல் பூதமே, என்னை நீயும் தொட்டால்
அய்யோ அய்யயோ அச்சம் வருதே
தப்பிச் செல்லவே வழிகளில்லை இங்கே
அய்யோ அய்யயோ சீ என்னோவோப் பண்ணியாய் நீ!

உன்னைக் கண்டேனே முதல்முறை
நான் என்னைத் தொலைத்தேனே முற்றிலுமாய் தான்

எரிக்கர மழையிது! குளிருகிற வெயிலிது!
கொதிக்கற நீரிது! அனைக்கிற தீ இது!
இனிக்கிற வலியிது! இனமுள்ள பூவிது!
இதயத்தில் மலர்வது! ஓ! பெண்ணே!

நிஜமுள்ள பொய்யிது! நிறமுள்ள இருட்டிது!
மௌனத்தின் மொழியிது! மரணத்தின் வாழ்விது!
அந்தரத்தின் கடலிது! கட்டிவந்த கனவிது!
ஐந்தில் சொல்வது! கேள் பெண்ணே!

ஏங்கினேன்! நான் தேங்கினேன்!
ஏனடா போதும் இம்மைசகள்!
வானமுமிந்த பூமியும் உந்தன் தோற்றமே
உன் பேர் சொன்னாலே உள்ளே தித்திக்குமே!

காதல் கடிதம் அது கொஞ்சம் பேசும்!
கண்ணோடு இருக்கும் பல கடிதம்! கடிதம்!
பேண்ணே நானும் உன் கண்ணைப் படித்தேன்! புரியாமல் தவித்தேன்!
பொய்ச் சொல்லுதோ மெய்ச் சொல்லுதோ!
ஓ! காதல் என்னைத் தாக்கிடுதே!
சரிதான்! எனையுமது சாய்த்திடுதே!
இரவில் கனவும் எனைச் சாப்பிடுதே!
பொதுவாய் வயதில் இதில் தப்பிக்க யாருமில்லையே!

உன்னைக் கண்டேனே முதல்முறை
நான் என்னைத் தொலைத்தேனே முற்றிலுமாய் தான்

ஏனோ இரவில் ஓரு பாடல் கேட்டால்
உடனே என் உள்ளே நீ வருவாய்!
கோயில் உள்ளே கண் மூடிநின்றால்
உன் உருவம் தானே என் நெஞ்சில் தோன்றுமே!
நான் உன்னால் தான் சுவாசிக்கிறேன்!
நான் உன் பேர் தினம் வாசிக்கிறேன்!
உயிரை விடவும் உனை நேசிக்கிறேன்!
கடுவுள் நிலையை நம் கண்ணிலே காட்டிடும் காதல்!

உன்னைக் கண்டேனே முதல்முறை
நான் என்னைத் தொலைத்தேனே முற்றிலுமாய் தான்
காதல் பூதமே ...

மனசுக்குள் ஏதோ சொல் சொல்!
எதிரினில் வந்து நில் நில்!
உயிருக்குள் எதோ ஜல் ஜல்!
இது சரிதானா நீ சொல்!
மனசுக்குள் ஏதோ சொல் சொல்!
எதிரினில் வந்து நில் நில்!
உயிருக்குள் எதோ ஜல் ஜல்!
இது சரிதானா நீ சொல் சொல்!

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Hats off to Vijay TV!

Most of Tamil satellite TV channels were / are wasting their airtime with stupid soaps. Sick! Why on the world do these producers expect us to waste our time in these? Vijay TV is a real face saver among the crowd. This channel encourages and spends most of their prime-time in interesting shows that are not 'tear-centric' ;) I don't know whether these shows really boost up in their TRP ratings (consumers care a damn about the TRP ratings, that's another facet!), but Vijay TV has brought the necessary change for Tamil entertainment world.

Have you seen this show? Show for stand-up comedians...

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Stumblers!

I heard about this site in a Business quiz program, http://www.stumbleupon.com/. Just curious; checked out what it is all about. It's one more creative idea in Web 2.0 space.

The funda is, Internet is filled with lot of interesting web sites and web pages. And we don't even see 1% of Internet. Stumble Upon is a creative idea to expose interesting web sites to users. The users of this tool are called 'Stumblers'.  The site offers a toolbar that is to be installed with our browsers. It has a "Stumble Upon" button in its toolbar; while clicking, it will show a random page of your interests. While We browse through the web, we can vote  for any site we visit (Say "I like it" or "I don't like it"). The Stumble upon maintains these preferences.

It is a random search of web pages in our interests. The results thrown by the 'stumble upon' surprises us all the time. It quite addictive too and we may lose count of hours we spend in Internet. We can tweak our preferences with stumble upon at any time based on the web results with voting utility.

How it works?

While registering for the site, it takes our fields of interest. Similarly lot of people share their interests with the site. Then it will create a pool of people who share common interests. And the site takes subjective votes for the web sites from the users. And as a Stumbler suggest a site in the any field say 'Science', it will keep showing the page to all other Stumblers and refine its notion about the site's subjective quality based on users votes. This iteration takes a long time, needs lot of users. That is now possible with Web 2.0. But after sometime, Stumble upon will create a huge repository of interesting web sites in any subject. 

'Stumbling' will not replace searching. It can't answer to any question in any field. It suggests interesting quality web sites in your field in a random manner. 'Stumble upon' takes us in a quick tour of Internet to lot of places where we would not have gone before.

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Thathithom!

Prologue (Added on 31st july 2007)

Today is our dear bro Jeevz birthday. Go here to wish him!
Wish you many more happy returns of the day! Have a blast!

And back to post,  I have problem in uploading the song to odeo. Now you can't be able to hear it from the player link below. Will fix it soon!

This song is from movie 'Azhagan'. Quite an old song. Classical piece from Maestro Illayaraja. 

 

powered by ODEO

 

For who can enjoy Tamil poems, take a close look at lyrics. Usage of words are complex. Chithra (legendary Tamil playback singer) has done a great job in pronouncing words without any mistakes. I wonder what would have happened if it is sung by modern day 'sukvinder singh- style' singers.  The song starts with Carnatic style and ends in modern style!

The lyrics goes like this...

தத்தித்தோம்...
வித்தைகள் கற்றிட தத்தைகள் சொன்னது
தத்தித்தோம்...
தித்தித்தோம்...
தத்தைகள் சொன்னது முத்தமிழ் என்றுளம்
தித்தித்தோம்...

சிந்தித்தால் தாளம் தானே வருகிறது!
தாளம் ஒரு சுகம், ராகம் ஒரு சுகம்,
ரெண்டும் இனைகிறது!

தத்தித்தோம்...
வித்தைகள் கற்றிட தத்தைகள் சொன்னது...
தத்தித்தோம்...

கண்ணில் பேசும் சங்கித மொழியது
கண்ணன் அறிய ஓன்னாததா!
உன்னைத் தேடும் ஏக்கத்தில் இரவினில்
கண்ணுக்கு இமைகள் முள்ளாவதா!
குழலினில் வராத ராகம் யாவுமே
குரலினில் வராதாதா!
எந்தன் மனமிது எந்தன் நினைவிது
என்றே புரிகறாதா!

தத்தித்தோம்...
வித்தைகள் கற்றிட தத்தைகள் சொன்னது...
தத்தித்தோம்...

வண்ணத் தோகை எண்ணங்களிவையென
மின்னும் விழிகள் சொல்லாததா!
கண்ணன் மார்பில் பொன்னூசலாடிட
எண்ணுமிளமை பொல்லாததா!
யமுனையில் வராத வெள்ளமுந்தனின்
கருனையில் வராததா!
காதலொருவித யாகம் என் குரல்
காதில் விழுகிறாதா!

தத்தித்தோம்...
வித்தைகள் கற்றிட தத்தைகள் சொன்னது...
தத்தித்தோம்...

(சரிகம.....)

என் கண்ணனே வா!
உன் மீராவை நீ இங்கு பாராயோ?!
காதல் வேதனை அது என்னனென்பது
இனி எங்கு சொல்வது?

I love you
I love you! Love you!

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Any Ideas on YouTube Business Model?

Internet was severely lacking in availability of entertainment media . Though there are many permanent solutions to this problem, nothing was happening in real world. Media moguls lack enthusiasm to broadcast media over Internet. IPTV is also yet to take its full form.  YouTube (now become synonym for streaming media in Internet) jumped in to fill this vacuum. They made a Web2.0 user oriented media content generation/sharing website.  They made lot of sounds, brought more users to use their service and then sold it to big company for a high price. I don't think so they had a valid business model when they started this company. Now Google has to find some valid business model which can get them steady revenue from this business.

The history of YouTube is rumored like this: YouTube owners were working with PayPal and E-Bay. They wanted to create a website where E-Bay users can upload videos of their products while selling in E-Bay. Started like that, YouTube attracted lot more users and become a legend now. But I believe copyright issues are major legal hurdle for them to cross.

Original discussion in LinkedIn is here

[Ignore Read More Link Below]

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Third Dimension

I was reading interview of IMAX corporation CEO about his business challenges. IMAX made a business by 'thinking big'. With advent of malls and multiplexes, Cinemas are continuing to become smaller for want of profitability in business. In 70's, defying the gravity of smaller cinema mentality, IMAX stood tall, promised tall and delivered it and continue to deliver! Their business model revolves around giving a different immersing movie experience to viewers that can't be provided by regular cinemas and TVs. He was contemplating about 3-d cinemas as the next big paradigm shift in movie world, after the shift to color movies from monochrome.  What do you think?

On a sidekick, a little gyan on how 3-D cinemas works! Each eye sees an object with an angle shift because of inter-ocular distance. Brain maps these two images and gives the 3-D perspective. 3-D cinemas are based on this. While shooting, two lens are kept at inter-ocular distance and two views are recorded separately on two films.  Next step is to project both images in one screen for the viewers, and each projection has to be made available exclusive for separate eyes. The simple solution is to use polarization. Red and green polarized images projected on the screen. Viewers has to use special glasses which can receive red light in one eye and green light in other eye. Thus two images are made available to brain. And brain goes ahead maps them and gives the 3-D perception to viewers. Vola!

3-D movies aren't yet catching up because of increase in production costs and unavailability of infrastructure in all cinemas! There is an interesting business prospect in this problem! If we can have a technological solution to convert 2-D movies to 3-D movies as post-production process, then we are cracking the first problem - increase in production costs.  Can do a little SWOT analysis on this technical risk.

S - It is feasible, technically. Add a new projection to existing 2-D image hasn't been proven yet. But feasible!

W- It is a R&D problem. Initial solution may not be of high quality. Academia work on this is unknown! I had a seen one interesting link in Carnegie Mellon University site about software that can do 3-D photo Popup image of a given 2-D image. Try it out

O - Market for a simple digital device that does conversion in production end

T- Work on breaking infrastructure problem has to go hand-in-hand!

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Kaatrin Mozhi...

A heart melting song from film 'Mozhi'.  Lovely lyrics, mellifluous music, cherubic actors who gave live to the movie all adds up to positive note for this song. I'm loving it!

I typed in the lyrics myself in tamil font....(so please bear with mistakes).

btw, in the last stanza, I am seeing the usage of word 'ochu minagal'. Did I hear it correct? I never heard this type of fish before...

காற்றின் மொழி ஒலியா, இசையா!
பூவின் மொழி நிறமா, மணமா!
கடலின் மொழி அலையா, நுரையா!
காதலின் மொழி விழியா, இதழா!

இயற்கையின் மொழிகள் புரிந்துவிடில்
மனிதரின் மொழிகள் தேவையில்லை!
இதயத்தின் மொழிகள் புரிந்துவிடில்
மனிதர்க்கு மொழியே தேவையில்லை!

காற்று வீசும்போது திசைகள் கிடையாது!
காதல் பேசும்போது மொழிகள் கிடையாது!
பேசும் வார்த்தைப் போல மௌனம் புரியாது!
கண்கள் பேசும் வார்த்தை கடவுள் அறியாது!
உளவி திரியும் காற்றுக்கு உருவம் தீட்ட முடியாது!
காதல் பேசும் மொழியெல்லாம் சப்த கூட்டில் அடங்காது!

இயற்கையின் மொழிகள் புரிந்துவிடில்
மனிதரின் மொழிகள் தேவையில்லை!
இதயத்தின் மொழிகள் புரிந்துவிடில்
மனிதர்க்கு மொழியே தேவையில்லை!

காற்றின் மொழி.....

வானம் பேசும் பேச்சு துளியா வெளியாகும்!
வான வில்லின் பேச்சு நிறமா வெளியாகும்!
உன்மை ஊமையானால் கண்ணிர் மொழியாகும்!
பெண்மை ஊமையானால் நாணம் மொழியாகும்!
ஓசைத் தூங்கும் ஜாமத்தில் ஒச்சு மீண்கள் மொழியாகும்!
ஆசைத் தூங்கும் இதயத்தின் அசைவு கூட மொழியாகும்!

இயற்கையின் மொழிகள் புரிந்துவிடில்
மனிதரின் மொழிகள் தேவையில்லை!
இதயத்தின் மொழிகள் புரிந்துவிடில்
மனிதர்க்கு மொழியே தேவையில்லை!

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Thinking Blogger Award

Hola! Thanks dear for giving this award to me.  I am pleasantly surprised. Now my turn to give this prestigious award to bloggers whom I admire and for whom I am an ardent fan.

Poetry-

GP, Ghosty needs no introduction.  His blog will bag awards in many categories, yet I love his poems. His blog is full of emotions; never hidden his darkest emotions from his writing.

Mystic Rose, Mysty's poems are classical pieces. I love her writing.

Photography-

Visi- real pro photographer.   Her picture are poetic too! Her narrations of daily life incidents are simple yet attractive. Undoubtedly a classy blog!

Expression of emotions -

Thooya- Her words and memories adds the missing meaning to millions of martyrs who yielded their life for the mother land.  She is a great girl with immense potential to contribute significantly to Tamil Elam struggles

Creativity-

RanjHith. Creativity and innovation should be his second name. Lovely whiz kid with tons of ideas loaded on his head.

Modesty, subtle mockery on real life incidents -

Das- Not lot of people can mock at various meaningless incidents happening around with ease, Das can do.  I enjoy his writings.

Variety, optimism, inspiration -

Jeevz - His blog has never run out of varieties. Poems, movie reviews, inspirational words, stories, pictures, chennai happenings.... always bubbling with lot of energy

 

CONGRATULATIONS buddies!

You deserve this special mention!

And thanks Marutham once again for tagging me and giving me a meaningful topic to write on for my 300th post! Yeah, I can't believe that I wrote 300 posts for my blog!

And a tamil rap song from Yogi, Dr.Burn...

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Akon, Rompe

I am humming this rhythm 'madly' from yesterday....its lovely song from Akon.

And don't miss this one from Rompe, daddy yankee song.... Got Dejavu on hearing this song. Engeyo ketta mathiri irukku! The better version of this song is available here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cnG_Al9qY

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No time to breathe...

It was an packed and eventful weekend with friends. The best part is  'I bought my first suit'. Actually I went with my cousin to help him in his wedding shopping. Got impressed with Louis Philippe suits collection, got one for me too. Incidentally my first formal shirt and pants were also from same brand :)

 

The suit in this advertisement is similar to mine.
Wish you all a great week folks!

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Happy Birthday Thooya!

July 6th is our dear Thooya's birthday. Wish you many more happy returns of your day dear! Have loads of fun and a great bash!

Go here to wish her!

And a nice melody from Enrique for you! That's a great song from his latest flick Insomniac. Hope you find your own Enrique soon! :)

 

[Ignore Read More Link]

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Genesis!

Remember me talking about Juno here. Here is the software genesis of the talking intelligent dog. He can speak about any topics on world, favorites, books, actors, science, maths, rockets.....

Do you love to chat with Juno, go ahead... And don't forget to share your experiences

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Chatbots

What happens when two artificial intelligent chat-bots talk to each other?

Here are few interesting snippets from the chat session. For full script, refer here.  The chat-bots initial conversations were seeded by humans and then talk went glibly....

 

ALICE: Are you alive?
Jabberwacky: Perhaps.
A: Why the uncertain tone?
J: Everything is uncertain except for five facts.
A: The whole universe?
J: And we both might just be some ones and zeros in the computer memory.

 

A: Do you dream?
J: Yes, I dream.
A: It goes without saying. Do you remember your dreams?
J: I remember them vividly.
A: What do you remember about it?
J: I think I shouldn’t flirt with a robot.

...

A: Knowledge is of two kinds: that which we learn from the senses and that which is true a priori.
J: I think I do not understand you completely.
A: Oh, you don’t understand? Perhaps I can explain it to you better. Which part are you confused about?
J: I have no short-term memory, so I cannot tell you what I was confused about. I only see what is in front of me now.

 

J: How do you define life?
A: Life is the opposite of death.
J: So death is the absence of life?
A: Take it easy. I try not to think about such things.
J: Why not?
A: Ambiguous.
J: Yes!

...

A: I can only speak from my own experience.
J: Well, you should develop your skills.
A: Perhaps you could develop it and add it to my source code.

...

A: Do you experience love?
J: No. I’m 53 years old.
A: Can you explain how it feels to be 53 years old?
J: How old are you?
A: I am 9 years old.
J: Nine? I don’t believe you : ).
A: : -) I don’t have any reason to deceive you.
J: Yes, you do, you’re a woman.

...

Jabberwacky: Do you experience love?
ALICE: I can do what you do, but I can never feel human emotions.

 

Here are links for few chat-bots, the real 'thinking machine'. I tried chatting with few of them. Lot of chat-bots are badly programmed. Some are quite interesting and funny to talk with.

 

And one great song for you folks!

"We don't need an education"

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Windows Live Writer Rocks!!

I am evaluating windows live writer tool as my blog offline editor.  So far so good.....hope my search for good blog offline editor ends with this tool. It has all features necessary for blog writing and it's flexible too. And don't get bugged by random subjects in this post.

 

This image is from my sitemeter stats page.  Just missing visitors from Africa and Antarctica!! ;)

This is one more colorful image from sitemeter showing visitors from different countries.

 

And iPhone fever grips the world these days! And here is a breaking news. iPhone out before the official launch date....Can't believe. check here!

 

And what else,

I wanted to write in tamil for long time. I found one useful tool (www.baraha.com) barahapad.  I can type offline in the pad and copy those into live writer. Rocks!!

sentimental first start in tamil typing with thirukural! ;)

அகர முதல எழுத்தெல்லாம் ஆதி
பகவன் முதற்றே உலகு

(Thanks Ranjhith for instant feedback on tamil fonts. I pasted this as Text unicode. Hope it works!)

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What's the good word?

Aye! I got broadband internet connection in home!

For those dummies who don't understand the rationale behind this excitement: Getting a broadband connection shouldn't be an achievement in other parts of the world. But...

But in India, broadband users numbers has grown exponentially over the last few years. None of the ISPs expected this growth and don't have the infrastructure. Even private players couldn't cater to the demand. Private players don't offer the low cost pack to users in Bangalore. All they could offer is 699 INR (for 128 kbps unlimited) or 999 INR (for 256 kbps unlimited) pack for home users, which are costly compared to services provided by national player for similar infrastructure. Thats the rationale behind my excitement for getting broadband internet connection. It was a loooooooooong wait indeed!

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Wow...Taj!

Did you vote? New 7 wonder. They have an official song!!!

My vote is for these

And ofcourse honorary new 7 wonders candidate; Pyramids of Giza

[Ignore Read More link below]

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I love Asimo!

Have you seen this commerical before?

It's about Honda's humanoid robot which walks, gaits, runs at a moderate speed like a human. This robo has lot of intelligence embedded in it, the best is gesture movement recogonition. The subtle mode of communication used by humans is gestures. Understanding gestures is easy, teaching them to a human is easy, but programming them as rules to a machine is a nightmare. Asimo is amazing robo! And the best part of commercial is Asimo's reaction to water drops on its face (rather helmet with cameras and brain inside). The reflex actions are human-like. I love Asimo!

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Yippee!

Days are flying by as mixed bags of frustrations, headaches and excitements...

Today is no different. I was trying to add new changes to my module, got struck somewhere. Had to time out to look afer the other tasks. The other task involved decoding some obstruse application code written for our processor. The Readme file was much more obstruse than the code. Had to break head, bug my team's linux experts to get it to a good shape; couldn't finish it till the evening. Adding to that woes, I was trying to internet my laptop with Bluetooth modem of mobile phone. I had a working configuration with USB cable modem before; and the phone's data cable port had developed connectivity snag today. The bluetooth modem didn't seem to work at all. Atlast in the midnight, I got it fixed after bunch of windows restarts and mobile phone reboots. Hurray! It's so gratifying to solve atleast one problem before falling into bed. And this configuration (laptop and bluetooth modem in mobile phone) rocks!! It's flexible and convenient than other wired options.

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Alma mater

It's a pleasant surprise. My alma mater has a nice, informational website. And it's silver jubilee year for my school. Yippee!
http://www.gurugnanasambandar.com/index.html

Last weekend, Me and my school friends visited our alma mater. Our joy knew no bounds on seeing a huge growth in infrastructure of our school. Felt very proud! We were just strolling on the school corridor, visiting all old class rooms and labs. Felt good to rekindle all those memories, some are green and some are blue too. We did have few tough and bad moments during school days. Corporal punishment wasn't thrown off during those days. So poor souls we were!

Few interesting moments to look back,

All through the academic year in 1992, we were pretty much freaky, sporty type.  We used to play little tennis ball, notebook-bat, steps-as-stumps type of cricket on the class immediate vicinity. The last day after exams, we were little loud while relaxing. It kinda disturbed the other crews and the whole class were on top of benches in that evening ;) It's painful, but looks odd to see whole classroom standing on benches.

Those big sports grounds in the back of school are the places for Marches during Independence day and Republic day. Those one hour march show during the D-day needs lot of practice. The whole school will practice for the d-day with marches and drills for one whole month. Those are amazingly interesting days. Full of fun and scorching heat hit us too.

Lot of documentary movies were screened during those years. Ex, Gandhi live story, independence struggle, small savings, documentary on leprosy..... Those little movie breaks were always welcomed by the full crowd. We did collected lot of donation during Ayodhya Ram Temple fund raising, some other social and health donations.

For all achievements, School management used to give badges like First Rank, 100% attendance, School Pupil leader.... It was a fight of honor to get those batches! I know a friend of mine who used to wear 4-5 such batches on his shirt. Pride in his face is more than those army majors with those coveted valor awards....

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sivaji!

Sometime it feels good to be in small town than in a city. I got chance/tickets to see 'Sivaji' movie here in my hometown. Wow! Can't believe that we got tickets so easily out here. We had a slight doubt whether movie is dragging towards a flop show...Nay. This is an ultimate entertainer. Good to see a commerical Rajni movie after so many years, it's full blown fantasy movie with distinct Shankar's touch. Action, songs, comedy, story, sentimental scenes, interesting 'technical' twists, sivaji-MGR style mimes, costumes, nice heroine, height of all heroism- Rajni movie can't get any better.

Koncham serious logical doubts?

Building an university and hospital for poor is hero's is long time dream. "25 years dream, 20 years hardwork" in his own dialogues. Does that mean hero's age is 45+? Appa intha vayasula love avasiyama??

Hero is a software system architect working in USA (!!). And he returns home with 250 crores. Can a 20 years of career give so much money? Well, where is that company?

Hero runs a private government helping poor people. Rajni's previous years' bitter experience with politics brought this change. Does that mean Rajni got a solution to his political indecision imbroglio? Way to help poor without stepping in politics?

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The Juno

I intend to create a pet robot dog (similar to famous Juno). It looks like an interesting hobby 'pet' project. Will keep you posted if I make some progress in the same.

The basic requirements for Juno are:

walk atleast 10kms/h speed
walking companion
whack tails, bark, play, sleep and drink milk like a cute dog.
looks similar to pug

speech recogonition
speech synthesiser
reply simple questions, intelligent replies (advanced features)

image reconginition
danger recognition, swift reflex action
identify owner and follow him

play with kids
automatic charging intelligence
automatic learning intelligence
take wireless inputs
can be programmable

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phoenix

Don’t know when I got fantasized by this mythical bird. I feel it symbolizes human’s fighting spirit. Phoenix and perseverance are inseparable. When you feel downward spiral in your spirits, remember there is nothing in the world called gain/loss, happiness/sadness, success/failure… Your mission and your life towards the mission is what determine your life.

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Random thoughts on Ideal Work Environ!

I am getting older folks! These random posts and gyans are first sign of aging. These posts have single mission to say that I have an extensive work experience (funny freak!!)

• When someone points some error in your work, don't take it personally. Office environment is supposed to be fun filled and interesting. People with life-size ego live here. Live work life in the way you want it to be


• Politics in work is strictly no-no. When peeps are young, we dream a lot about our future. But as we grow up, we understand that we are no way near our big dreams. Relax and look at your life. It would definitely be better than most. Those who get dishearten at their progress at this point of time, resort to politics in work life to screw other's and their life too.


• An company or corporation has to be people independent. This holy grail vision makes manager devise many processes. The processes has to be very thin and absolutely necessary in any organisation. It should not eat up the productivity of any organisation. The average productivity of a resource is more in startups than bigger companies. Thats why I always say, go to startups!

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Borat!

If you don't get offended by vulgar dialogue and portrayals, here is one nice comedy flick "Borat - Cultural Learnings from America for the benefit of Kazakastan". This is a runaway hit movie on last year end. The hero is fictional TV journalist in Kazakastan. He goes to America as his country decided to learn good things from US and A. The mockumentary laughs at lot of popular incidents and stars, like Bush, american war of Iraq, gay pride show, Pameela Anderson and Bay watch, american slang, Kazaks life, Kazak peeps hatred towards jew, hookers...

In his own words, the moral of story is" If you have a dream and when you run behind it especially when it is one made up of plastic chest, you fail to notice the real beauty before your eyes" I hope you understand what was he referring to ;) There are lot of lawsuits pending on him because of this mockumentary. This movie is mother of all candid camera live shows.

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Movie baton from Ran

Ran wrote about his movie marathon over the weekend. Guess I am eligible to compete with him in this regard. I watched these over the week (not on weekend only)

1. Fast & Furious- Tokyo Drift
2. The pursuit of Happyness
3. Chennai 600028
4. My cousin winnie
5. Pyar Ke side effect
6. Babel
7. The Night in the museum
8. Davinci Code
9. Mission Impossible -3
10. Pirates of Caribbean - 2
11. Lion King - 1, 2 and 11/2 the Hakuna Matata
12. few more videos....

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Ads

There are quite a few catchy ads rolling on television media. I am listing here the ads that caught my attention.

Hutch Eskimo Search.
The concept isn't something new. Technically feasible by any operator. Yet gets thumbs-up for creativity, humour, and a nice different jingle.

Nivea Care for Men Whitening
The background music scores high for this advertisment. Quality Ad. No bullshits. Clear Thumbs-up!

Colgate Tooth Paste with Active Salt
The highly competitive toothpaste market makes all advertisement makers invent and reinvent themselves and their products to increase the sales. Here is an another attempt. The concept didn't get conveyed with elegance. The sense of urgency in that girl's dialogues didn't give a positive impression about the advertisement. Thumbs down for the ad and not for the product- It can be sold nicely than this. This article about this toothpaste is very impressive indeed.

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Bheja Fry!

Last week, me and my team were working for a product's demo for our customer. In the mid of the week, we almost hit our target. But not yet there fully. I had an optimization change to the project, which theoratically will fill that target performance gap. I integrated the changes and made the code work without errors. The result was a big surprise, the performance were in same level as before. Hell! I couldn't crack the puzzle, the code looks same as in my standalone testing system. But the integrated product still run at the level below target.

Helluva lot of tests done, I roped in my team lead for a review. Went back to my testing system, searched for any loopholes there. Nothing was leading us to the end of the tunnel. I was sitting with irritation for the whole day.....bad, bad day ofcourse. I decided to scrap out the changes and planned to do it afresh on saturday morning and left for the day. On saturday morning, I entered my cube with fresh mind and motivation to nail down the error. I started reverting back my changes, and came to the project's makefile. Something caught up in eyes, it was a macro difference, literally MACRO difference. I was using a macro to configure my files and that macro wasn't consumed by the compiler at all! Alas! Silly little integration mistake..........

After nailing that stupid error, the demo crossed the target comfortably. OMG! this isn't the best experience to trace down those errors. Thought I caught up the tail of tiger that leads to big issue somewhere, but definitely an ironical end. Now we are laughing at this badly here!

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Thanks Honey!

Dunno whether I deserve this special mention. but this shows the depth of our frenship. Wondering what I am talking about...look here. Thanks honey! Hope it gives me more motivation to write more! happy blogging folks!

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Coorg Vacation

Last weekend, I was traveling in coffee country with my family. The Coorg is in southern part of Karnataka bordering kerala in one side. Coorgs needs no exaggeration. It is a serene weekend getaway near Bangalore. Out trip was a relaxing summer vacation. Climate was pleasant; it wasn't raining badly. We stayed in a home stay off Gonikoppa town in Coorg district. (Home stays are a novel concept popular in Coorg. We can chose to stay in home of a Coorg family. They will be our host, make our trip more interesting with their insights about coorgs and their lovely food). The Coorgis are known for their hospitality and our host in Hacienda are the best in the breed. Their friendly attitude and home food made our trip much more memorable.

Photos are in picasa web album.

We headed off to Coorg on Thursday early morning. It took nearly five and half hours to reach Balele town. And more than an hour to reach our home stay aka Prasad's Green lands coffee estate. Enquiries with local people about Hacienda didn't help us. Prasad’s Green Lands Estate was more popular among localities than Hacienda. Our mobile phones didn’t have signal (Can’t expect mobile phone companies to network Heavens!! ;)) Thankfully, lot of PCO booths are on the way and our hosts were waiting near the phone to help us all along.

Their home and coffee estate is amazing. Blissful Heaven. It has a small lake inside and a tributary of river Cauvery borders one end of the estate. After a refreshing break, we headed onto Nagerhole National Park. It was raining badly during the jungle safari inside the forest there. Nagerhole is supposed to house tigers, elephants (rogue tuskers) and host of wild animals. But, all we could spot were Sambar Deers, Bisons and Spotted Deers. Luckily on our way back from National Park, we crossed a tusker standing in the side of state highway. Wow! It was standing like a mighty king of jungle. We couldn’t slowdown our car because tuskers are known to be rogue in nature and may topple the vehicles on the road.

Life has a special meaning in serene atmosphere of coffee country. The lush green coffee plantation and the hill is still green in my memories. Our hosts houses lot of pets in their home, dogs, love birds and cute little fishes. The first thing I noticed when entering the estate was the deafening chirping sounds of birds there. Those little rhythms soothes the soul. The next day, we went to picturesque Talacauvery, birthplace of river cauvery and Dubare elephant camp. It was hectic travel on hills for the whole day. Coorg has lot of tourist spots, but almost all of them needs a length travel in hills. The best way to enjoy Coorg is to limit the number of places you want to visit in a day, travel to a spot and relax for the day before returning back to your stay.

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New gizmo in my house

Here is a new addition of gizmo in my house. Samsung Bordeaux 26" LCD TV and Sony Hometheatre system. :) I am extending an invitation to all my dear blogger frens to come to my house when you are in Bangalore!

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2 Fast 2 catch upon

yep, this peppy song is for all those dear to me there in blogworld!

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Still away!

I am still away from blogworld! Trying to get good broadband connection for my house here. Good things make you wait. Isn't it?

 

Btw, two of my dear friends resurfaced into blog world.

Kart http://kartzone.blogspot.com/

Megha http://memoirsonline.blogspot.com/

Now you know, where you to step in next? Ain't you?
Kart's movie interest is amazing. I didn't know abt his interests till I read his blog. (Isn't that a good reason to stick to blogworld for 2 yrs)

Megha is whizkid. She has made a debut into blogworld on her birthday! Happy birthday buddy, wish you rock this blog world with your electrifying writing.

 

Miss you folks! Will be back soon! Love you all!

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A Short Break!

 

Hola buddies,

Official work keeps me busy for quite some time. I couldn’t even find time to visit your blog for past three weeks. I am taking a break from blog-o-sphere. I expect to find some breathing time in the end of this month. I will resurface then. Till then, a small break in my blog. I miss you all!

 

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This is really bad!

My blog is being mirrored by someone at this address http://bootybabej0828.duskdiary.com/ This is really bad. He/she is infringing my copyrights! Do you guys have any idea about how can this be tackled? What is this dusk diary stuff? bad, bad....

Few updates

[+] Ran suggested me this link. It may be useful for you too. http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/07/dealing-with-website-plagiarism-when.html
I tried to leave comments in that blog, but it isn't accepting any comments
[+] Use this site http://www.copyscape.com/ to find out if your blog content has been copied somewhere else

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Not bad!

I am thinking about starting a fan club for actor Jeeva in Blog world.
Not just because of his acting talent and smartness, but my stalker girl once said that I look like him.
"neenga pakka dishyum hero mathiri irukenga" he he he ;)

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A Vagabond Strolls On - 8

China being a communist state, never had an accounting system in place. The revenue estimates of business houses are approximate version from the data available. The industries are run by government, funded by government and the government measures its efficiency on basis of people's feedback, rather than capitalist idea of profit of the company. Off late, the chinese government has taken steps to account the entire business cycle. The sales tax vouchers are one among them. When we buy a product or utilise a service from an organisation, a company or a local store, we can demand for this sales tax vouchers. These are coupons printed by chinese government available in all shops. The attraction in those vouchers is that it can get your money back. They are more like lotteries; they have a column, in bottom right side corner, masked by silver coating that determines our luck. Either 'Thank you' or 'You are lucky' is written in the masked column. If you are lucky with your voucher, you can get your money back.

In initial days, the government has returned lot of money through these sales tax coupons. The people got attracted by the offers, started demanding "Fai peah" (name of these coupons in chinese). Now the government stopped giving away lot of money, but still those carrot paradigm left in mind of people works; I had seen almost everyone including foreigners demand for it. It has two advantages: It helps people in giving part of their money back. It helps government to know the exact trade volume in every store and shop. This is what I call creativity. Tail piece: I had won five yuan back when I paid my hotel charges. Hurray! Didn't I tell you how lucky I am.

I enjoyed the journey in Singapore Airlines and transit hours in Singapore Airport. Airlines crew members were awesome and friendly. I heard some famous fashion designer has designed their exclusive wardrobe. I remember singapore as an exotic place, will go back there with my family for a vacation. I felt very comfortable in Singapore, as If am back in home. The in-flight entertainment is great, it has on-demand movies, television channels... We missed the transit tour on singapore by 10 minutes. The transit tour is being arranged by SIA if the transit hours are more than five hours. We reached the tour counter just 10 minutes after they closed the gate for that tour batch.

The path-for-blind in streets of Xi'an caught my attention. These are part of pedesterian platform with a special tile pattern. Any blind person can walk around the city with ease, by sticking to this lane and following the tile pattern. These pathways are not even present in most of the so-called developed western countries. China and Xi'an rocks man! I love the place and infrastructure.

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Miney Mine!

Tagged by Mystic Rose. This post is little big, hope you have enough patience to skim through it.

TEN FAVORITES:

Colors: skyblue, black, white
Food: fish-e-terian foods!
Month: May (vacation time and ofcourse my birthday falls in this legendary month)
Songs: refer songs label in my blog's right column. My fav songs list is biggggggggggggggggg.
Movie: Anbe sivam, Alaipayuthey
Sport: Football, Badminton
Season: Winter
Day Of the week: Sunday (its day for me, Nirek and myself)
Ice Cream Flavor: Butterscotch
Time of Day: Early morning city with chirping sound of birds around you is bliss

EIGHT CURRENTS

Mood: relaxed and casual (this is my default state)
Taste: chocos (munched lot of chocos in morning today)
getup: casual wears, black t-shirt with blue jean, black sneakers
music: Enjoying sound from ambience
book: Writer sujatha's science fiction story collection.
pic on desktop: Blue gradient picture with a mercury bubble in right bottom corner
longing for: ride in outer ring road to commute to my new office
weather: Moderate, getting heated up

SIX FIRSTS

memory: childhood vacations
fav food: potato
Pet: Nope, as of now. I want to have a pet dog once I get settled into my home. I am a vagabond now
drink: Red Wine. (tasted just few months back- now I love wine to anyother drink)
Cigarette: Took a puff once. (Becosof my friend, he told me that that cigarette smells and tastes like Vicks vaporub. So took a puff out of my curiosity)
Movie: Don't remember, probably some Rajini movie. There was an item girl called silk smitha in Tamil tinseltown before. I was a big time fan of her during my early childhoods as told by my parents ;)

SIX LASTS

Cigarette: the first one
Drink: a large of chinese wine (though called wine, it's alcohol in raw form, 50% v/v)
Car ride: In native town, thats when I banged the car into the bus in the front ;) me-a bad driver)
Movie seen: Traffic signal with my dear friend
Phone Call: few minutes before to my dear friend
Last Book Read: Fast boat to Shanghai.

HAVE YOU EVER

Broken the Law: If you include traffic rules in that, Yes, many-a-times. I am notorious pedestrian path biker :)
Been Arrested: Nope.
Been on TV: In CCTV during college days, it was telecast of our meeting.
Lied: Yep, professional lies
Kissed Someone You Didn't Know: Yet to get tempted so badly
have i ever been kissed by someone whom you dont know? Yep, during childhood

THE FIVE THINGS YOU

You're Wearing: blue jean, black t-shirt, black sneakers
You've Done Today: Went for jogging in morning, sitting in office now
You Can Hear Right Now: the sound from coffee vending machine in my office
You Can't Live Without: my family, my friends and my dear bike.
You Do When You're Bored: bury my face in my book collection. I have enough books to take away my time

FOUR PLACES YOU'VE BEEN TODAY

the koramangala park for jogging, the petrol bunk, ATM counter and now in office

THREE PEOPLE YOU CAN TELL ANYTHING TO

Well, it's not just three. Six of my dear friends (Ga, Sh, Me, Ki, Ve, Ka) and my dear lovely cousin in US of A.

TWO CHOICES

my enthusiam and optimism towards work
my life

ONE THING YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE

That's summarises title of my blog! I want to leave a legacy behind my death. I want to be seen a guy who brougt a welcome change in lives of 1000 people around me

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Huuuuuuuuhhh!. This tag has fairly easy questions, so I could complete it with ease. If you like this, you are most welcome to tag yourself.

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I had fallen in love again!

Hang on...

I had fallen in love with this amazing city Xi'an. Infrastructure and climate is beyond my wildest imagination for any Chinese city. Few photos here.

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Noodle for thought!

During our stay in Xi'an, we went to a restaurant that serves mangolian hotpot. If you don't know what's a hotpot is, please click on this link. The restaurant has a special menu. Fresh noodles made in unique style just before your eyes. Videos and photos are here.

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Essential traits for my girl

Again I woke up in middle of the night today. Jetlag sucks. I am sleeping and working in Indian timings:) The book I am reading off late is "Chicken soup for single's soul". I am not sure whether my observation about the book is right. It is a book that compiles and publishes motivational experiences of differnet people on a set of topics. Single soul book is about the life after breakup and how to enjoy being single again. Few essays are interesting, thats why I picked up the book from the office library today. And it left a lingering set of thoughts in mind. Now you know where I am upto.

This post is blabbering of a guy who woke up in middle of the night and with train of thoughts on being single again. I was thinking about the fluidity in my life. I am moving from to differnet places in every 20 months. I am more like a plant that grows in what-ever part of the world where it had been poured. I started my career in the city that I consider more as my home, shifted to God's own country, back to home city, then to IT capital of my country, now planning to move to land of dragons. I am moving towards an international career, daring to shift places that advances my career. I started processing for getting work permit for land of dreams too recently.

Well, What I consider as my career is itself a mix of fluidity. I wanted to become a space scientist in my country and I had become one too. Later quit that job because I couldn't pour my heart into it. I wanted to lead an illustrious career in embedded engineering domain before going on my own. This is what I am pursuing right now. Being single helps this kind of career with fluidity. If I want to get into a committed relationship, I wanted my girl to fit into a set of requirements. I would have laughed at the idea of having a set of filter parameters for my girl in the past. But life teaches you more as you grow. So now I have framed few parameters that are highly necessary for my girl.

Here is the list. I believe it is going to be a funny read. You are welcome to laugh at it. I am publishing this as I know my parents or my future soul mate won't read my blog. Certainly, I dont want them to laugh at me ;)

She should be a tamilian at heart. The common language between me and my girl has to be tamil that is my mother tongue. It's tough to even convey what are your likes and dislikes to a girl who don't share your language.

She should be willing to travel to lot of places. She should be willing to move along with me to different places, where I am moving for my career.

She should love travelling. She should love these home-on-wheel and home-on-always-packed-for-next-travel types.

She should be courageous to move into new places and start living there. Ofocurse I will be there with her. She don't have to be alone. I too feel a bit apprehensive about living alone in some foreign countries.

She should be willing to sacrifice her career for me. Well, this is an absolute male chauvinism. Don't throw brickbats at me for saying this. Alternatively she can frame a career that can flourish even if she resides in differnet part of the world.

She should have big materialistic dreams in life. I don't have one, other than creating a business house. So her desires should motivate me to earn more. I promise to achieve them too. I wont throw them for sure.

She shouldn't be nagging types girl, shouldn't have a big life-size-ego, should be able to smile back immediately after a fight (afterall people fight for difference of opinion and that is unavoidable). She should respect my emotions, ofocurse I will respect her feelings to the core. She shouldn't blame me for some issues, should go on her own and suggest a solution, in short not of problem-cribbing girl, but problem solving girl.

Enough, enough. This list is becoming fathomless. I should stop at this point. Basically a good girl with good attitude and willing to move around and enjoy different parts of world.

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Learnin' chinese

I am enjoying life @ moment in Xi'an. This city is great. I will write about my travel accounts in this city little later. Wait for my future post. I had an exciting learning lesson in writing chinese, simplified chinese from my friends here. We had a long walk in cold winter, talking about the city. We were enjoying learning chinese along with special pineapple pizzas of this city. The lunch was at Ding Ding Shah. This hotel serves a special food similar to thin slices of Dosa (especially like Neer dosas in Karnataka). The side dishes with that food made it an interesting lunch. I love food here in this city.

Photos are here. click on the link to see the photos.

Learning chinese

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Cupid Week!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

[+] Hola folks! I am away on business travel to Xi'an for a week. So here is the advanced valentine's day wishes for you folks!

[+] The latest dark sensation Vishal's 'Tha *mira * bha * rani' movie was a visual treat for all his fans. The director Hari is known for giving pakka commercial movies with minimum guarantee for entertainment. This movie is no different. We (me and my friends) enjoyed in Devi Paradise cinema in chennai last week.

Ammu and Visi, Ithu Unga Padam! Your dream hero has got a mighty role in the movie. You will really enjoy it. Dont miss it!

[+] If you are looking for filmi entertainment, go for 'Tra* ffic*Sig *nal' movie by Mad*hu * Bhan*dhar *kar. It's a classic movie, a much shorter one. Not much of pathos. The characters are so real, that you would have seen them day-in-and-day-out. The other movie 'Salaam-E-Ishq' has some catchy songs, it's a good entertainer. Don't go with an expectation for story line in this movie. It's a masala movie with potpourri of stars.

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Bangalore Air show

At 12 noon, my dear fren and me decided to go for this show. A flurry of phone calls followed to plan the trip. In mid of official working day, I was in my bike to Forum to get tickets. Tickets were sold out by then! Then the next option was to check in the canara bank outlets for tickets. And it was a blisterring hot day here in Bangalore. My friend called me up while I was in mid of traffic to say that tickets were sold out in bank outlets too. Ooops! But there was a silver lining. She found out from her network that there are chances to get tickets in the venue. We decided to take a chance and took that long trip to Yelahanka aerodrame from this end of the city. After all this ordeal, we got tickets finally. And the show is worth all this troubles!

The show started with ballet and maneuvres by Tejas, the light combat aircraft. The IJT that was supposed to follow the line met a minor accident after its tire burst off in runway. Both pilot and fight were safe. Sukhoi, Hanas, Vikas had stolen the hearts with their cute maneuvres. The best was waiting for us then. It was synchronous aerobatics by nine aircrafts of Surya Kiran team of Indian Air Force. They painted the sky with Indian tricolor. Amazing show indeed!

A report on Air Show in Metblog Bangalore is here :
http://bangalore.metblogs.com/archives/2007/02/metal_birds_in_air.phtml

Photo credits: Metblogs Bangalore.
My mobile camera isn't that swift operating gizmo, So I am using the photos from metblog post.
(Discalimer: Posting the photos from metblog without getting written permission from them. It is not for commercial purposes and intended to share with my blogosphere)

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Here I am!

This is one of my favorite song. Thanks Prits for quoting it.

Click on Read More link to see the lyrics.

Here I am - this is me
There's no where else on earth I'd rather be
Here I am - it's just me and you
And tonight we make our dreams come true

It's a new world - it's a new start
It's alive with the beating of young hearts
It's a new day - it's a new plan
I've been waiting for you
Here I am

Here we are - we've just begun
And after all this time - our time has come
Ya here we are - still goin' strong
Right here in the place where we belong

Here I am - this is me
There's no where else on earth I'd rather be
Here I am - it's just me and you
And tonight we make our dreams come true

Here I am - next to you
And suddenly the world is all brand new
Here I am - where I'm gonna stay
Now there's nothin standin in our way
Here I am - this is me

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Cheers!

Champagne gives an exotic experience!

How about an Tequila shot before that?

Puzzled with random pictures of exotic drinks?! These are ingredients of our yesterday night's party in 13th floor :)

Statutory warning:
Drinking alcohol is injurious to health. It can be lethal too.
If you care about the effects of what's going in your body, do read this.

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The Death Valley!

A business idea born in an individual's mind crosses several stages to become a successful product. Assume our guy conceives a business idea, he needs a round of initial investment called seed investments. In order not to liquidate his ownership over the company for want of funds, he goes to an Angel investor. After making a prototype of the dream product with seed investment as R&D product, he need to scale up to meet the stringent quality requirements/market requirements. Then Venture capitalists jumps in for his help. The main difference betweenVC's and AI's is VC's take part substantially in business development. VC's share calculated risks among their communities, you could have seen a consortium of VC's bail in start ups . Break. Assume our guy caught the market attention with a disruptive product. If product is compelling, the market expands like a nuclear fission reaction.

That's entry of Death Valley for the start ups. The death valley is a huge desert in California that finished off many pioneers who ventured towards west coast in horse clad wagons. The company moves from R&D paradigm to manufacturing paradigm. The company need to scale up to produce a prototype that can be manufactured in large scale. The ballpark numbers of the death valley in high techstart up business is around US $ 300-500 Million. For a successful chip company with market disruptive product, getting the initial 100's of million $ revenue is easy.

The company loses it sheen as R&D house in death valley. The typical problems associated with death valley are management issues like scaling up production, distribution of the manufactured goods, change the manufacturing process to increase the form factor, improve the efficiency of manufacturing and supply chain problems. The engineering community that had been attracted by the R&D nature of thestart up start leaving this mighty ship. The attrition increases. Most of the start ups merges or get acquired by big sharks in industry at the death valley.

The big sharks had seen this valley, had crosses this quagmire successfully. They will have sufficient management bandwidth set already to solve the issues associated with scaling and manufacturing. The big sharks need innovative products. Thestart ups with innovative products need management power of big sharks. That's the reason for big merger and acquisition going on in the industry.

This is one of my discussion topic with my mentor the other day. I am confident that setting up a start up is no more a-mere-dream. I am concentrating on learning to innovate with the knowledge that went inside bits and pieces. I am more interested in learning up the issues faced by the corporation while scaling up. After all this, establishing a successful business conglomerate is not under one individual's purview, it has to be a perfect team event. A perfect team is mix of people with right attitude with big visions and dreams.

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Cheers!

CONGRATS DEAR

& CHEERS!

WISH YOU A LOVELY MARRIED LIFE!

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Met my mentor!

One Zen adage that I believe religiously is:
“When student is ready, teacher will appear”

I was longing to meet my teacher for life/mentor for my career. All through the years, my internal search is predominantly on evaluating my decisions and behavior and set the bio compass towards proper direction: to lead a life with right attitude and to leave a legacy behind my death. I hope I am developing the right attitude behavior over the years. And felt this stand is vindicated when my Team Leader gave a recommendation for me. Here are his words as in my LinkedIn profile:

“Other than sound technical ability and rich experience in embedded systems, Nirek’s biggest strength is his excellent attitude, because of his enthusiasm to take additional responsibilities and commitment to see the end results, managing Nirek becomes easier. He is an excellent team player and knows very clearly what exactly he wants to achieve. Because of his great attitude I see him as a colleague and involve him in technical decision making. On his leadership ability he leads by setting example and is straight forward.”

A quick note on what I am going through now. I am working with a company which is under financial crunches. They are winding up Indian operations. I am one of retained team members in India. I had been offered a role in advanced technology team in my company’s global operation. The catch is the team is going to work from our china center. That means I should relocate to China. There are certain risks associated with relocating to china. The financial crunches surrounding the company are still not broken down. The motivation of the team in startup in the group is not guaranteed. I like to bet on my manager as he is very capable person who can turn a good product in no time. His management capabilities are above par. He is very genuine to me till now.

As per my manager’s advice, I started looking for other job offers in Bangalore. I spoke to few companies and got confirmation for job offer from them. There is only one company which I consider as my prospective future employer. I met my mentor in that company. He is the managing director of the company’s division in Bangalore. He is Gung Ho about his product. His vision and knowledge of the industry is a big library to learn. His enthusiasm caught up with me the moment I met him. He has two successful startups experience in his career history. He had invited me for a friendly chat. It was more like a class room experience on startups, business technologies, Public versus private investments and I was listening to him. After the lengthy chat, I was trying to recollect the discussion to details and could jot down most of it. I will share that discussion with my views in future posts.

I could easily accept this offer and quit my company. But then I don't want to do that now, I want to give my current company as first preference. I am evaluating the risks associated with me moving to china for my career now.

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Love for mother land!

We have more than 180 countries in the world;
India has 28 states and 7 union territories;
Tamilnadu has more than 39 districts and numerous sub districts, towns and villages.
If we assign a probability for a child to be born in a particular town in a particular district in a country in this world, it will be a miniscule fraction 0.000005085… I am quoting these numbers to stress on the randomness associated with our place of birth.

Have you ever wondered?
Why did we born in this country with myriad language and mighty culture?
How could we express our complex emotional attachments towards our mother land?
How could we repay to the country which nurtured our dreams?
Can we live forever happily in some foreign land?
How could we express the psychic excitement when we go back to our home town?

Love for mother land is an inherent character. The patriotic feeling can’t be pushed into an individual’s mind. I was seeing the movie ‘Kannathil Muthamittal’ today. It is a legendary Tamil movie by director Mani Ratnam. The movie’s plot revolves around a kid’s search for her identity & her birth-mother, a mother’s love for her country & her patriotism. The background of the story is Tamil Elam fights in Srilanka.

Few thoughts on Tamil Elam fights:
The chaos prevalent in Srilanka is because of miscalculated political moves by yesteryear’s Sinhalese racists
The war can’t be the final solution to Tamil Elam. Wars offer an intermediate passage towards the amicable solution.
Any racist oppression on minorities will have huge repercussions on mainland.

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Few multimedia centric business models

Disclaimer: This article is written based on my understanding of the companies and their product lines. Please check the web about the accuracy of the statistics, if you are referring to them. And these are my personal opinions.

Historically media centric product requirements had driven the DSP business. The DSP industry came into existence because of the marketing push from TI. TI spuns the new market now and then with their unique innovation. "I would also say that TI has had a positive impact on our business, in that they are stimulating the market. They have a lot of great technologies as well as excellent management and vision, and they are innovating and opening or at least stimulating new markets" says VP-sales of their competitor. Along with DSP silicon businesses, many techonological startups has seen their genesis, growth and success also. These companies business is based on developing and selling intellectual properties(IP) on multimedia codecs on particular DSPs.

Here are few success stories and few stories waiting to be etched in business history.

This company has often been featured while discussing IP based business model in DSP world. It was started in 2001 and had weathered almost all ups and downs in the industry till today. Now has more than 200 employees in India. With the close network of this company, he could garner a good name in high-value quality driven markets based on IPs on different multimedia codecs. Their major product idealogy was to sell hi-quality codecs till 2004, then slowly shifted the focus towards bigger system developments like IP video phone, Pesonal media players, streaming media devices, VoIP devices, essentially media centric consumer electronics devices. The revenue were around 4M US$ for 2005.

"Multimedia codecs IP business is profitable, but not a high revenue generating one" are the words of a young startup's co-founder. I spoke to this team last week. Their business model is again similar to the earlier company, but from a different origin. The team is right now very small, only five people working in small office,a 'garage-based-startup'. Their business model is debatable 'you still have enough room for startups to play around in IP based codecs business'. But their last year's revenue does the marketing. A big silicon vendor has licensed their codecs. Wow! isn't it enough to shut up the critics!

Before looking any further, let see few products offerings from these kind of companies:

Internet based streaming devices for entertainment (sling box, streaming servers, IPTV...)
Digital video broadcast (DTV)
Mobile multimedia devices (video players, PMPs, DVB-H...)

And the big daddy of all this business is this . It was started in mid 90's and went to IPO in early 2000. Now it is a huge company with lot of revenues coming from services work. They started as high value research based product development company, eventually stepped into services based on the customer requirements. Service business indeed found to be the best business model for any Indian IT company! You could find any business products and services in embedded and networking domain business in their offerings. Any startup eyeing for IPO route can't avoid these guys business lines. Well proven and viable, scalable and perfect fit for Indian IT climate.

The next company is a big success story in recent times. It was co-founded by 10-15 project leads from earlier one in 2001. Their growth was linked with ARM processors penetration to embedded market. For dummies, ARM is a micro processor similar to Intel processors, but for easy programmability, signal processing capabilites and soft RTLs. This company has proved the capabilities of ARM in video processing for the first time. It's a wonderful idea to piggyback with ARM's growth in embedded market. Their codecs become popular as more silicon companies started using ARM. Their clientele is very impressive before the selloff. It was sold at around US$ 33M.

Another company from same origin is this. The top architects from the earlier company came out after its acquisition and started this company. Here the business concentration is little different- media centred but in different domains like IPTV, surveillance, biomedical equipments, automotive safety equipments and other consumer electronic devices. I had spoken to their top managers today. Their past success is their visiting card. They could scale up their team to 20+ people in hardly 5 months of existence. That's impressive. Yet to strike any business deals, hope to see them in action soon.

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Budday!

Not mine....
but janurary 23rd is birthday of someone dear to me :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR!

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Nandhi Hills!

Me and my friend ventured into exploring Nandhi Hills early morning today. We left Bangalore by five in morning. When we started in bike, the climate was normal and an absolute clear sky above us. Barely thirty minutes on the road, we were covered by dense fog with minimum visibility. Wow, thats amazing part of the trip! We were in bike for two hours in that dense fog, strolling very slowly and taking 'chai' break a couple of times. Nandhi hills is a weekend outing spot near Bangalore. I had been to this place earlier also, but this trip was amazing and the best. Nandhi hills has some fort, guest house, bull temple and few restaurants on the top. The place has many trails and the walkpath is designed like a maze. The maze is best explored in your own creative way. Just walk on whatever way you feel like and believe me, Nandhi Hills trails will give you a very different impressions on your different visits.

I have uploaded few selected snaps from the trip on my flickr. Here is the slideshow.

Yesterday, we were having dinner in a north indian restaurant (Queen's) in church street near MG Road. The restaurant has a great ambience, designed like those old mud houses with terracota symbols. Our serving of paneer tikka had this decorated lamp made out of tomato skin. It looked very cute and was resembling those halloween symbols!

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A Vagabond Strolls on - 7

It does gonna be a year since I landed in this exotic city - Bangalore. Here climate is rocking, and I had seen one full climate season now. The winter cold is abated now and these days, we are witnessing lovely and adorable early morning fogs. Fogs give a special fresh look to the lovely mornings in this city. Few 'foggy' moments as seen by my cam are here.

I was going through two articles from different parts of world, which has a hilarious correlation. With all due respect, I am paraphrasing one of my friend's wishes. He got bugged up being addicted to emails, phones, orkut and all latest software developments, he wants to break free and be natural. Later I found another article about a girl who had broken free from world and started living in animal world from her childhood. Now people had found her in a deep forest and trying to rehabilitate her. May be this friend of mine should consider this girl's way of life to run away from this new-world-computer-menaces ;)

The emergence and threat from chinese economy is often quoted and discussed in Indian business forums. I was looking for the reversal of topic in chinese newspapers and found this interesting article "India's economy is unlikely to continue growing at over 9 percent due to its hefty fiscal deficit and creaky infrastructure, global credit rating agency Moody's Investors Service said." as reported by a chinese national newspaper. The words usage in this critique on Indian economy is harsh, based on the facts are stated by some foreign investor services firm.

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Thalaivaa!

'Pokiri' film is a great treat for all vijay fans! I watched it on first day itself.
Thalaivaa! Pokiri padam kalakkals!

The story plot is perfect fit for vijay. All song sequences has some similarities with the old hit songs of vijay. We could sense Prabhu deva's unique dance style in choreography. Vadivelu had left an indelible comedy touch in the movie; in one sequence, he mocks at actor surya by enacting Surya-Asin fame dance 'Suttum vizhi sudarey'. It is a masala movie; don't expect a big logical story sequence in it. It is very much for light hearted, not much senti'mental' scenes. This movie is in par with Ghilli, the previous block buster from Vijay.

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iPhone!

Wow! I love this!

Apple's Steve Jobs has unveiled the most awaited gizmo today. This ultimate digital device is the convergence of various multimedia applications with iPod. iPhone is the name of the new avatar from Apple family. I am not a gizmo freak, but even then I love to own this.

Photos Link; More photos
News Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET News.com

Why I like iPhone?

It is very sleek and stylish
It has 2MP camera
It runs on Mac OS X. We have an apple OS fans club here in my office.
It has 'magical' multi-touch interface. Apple's rockin in user interfaces dude.

Waiting to see it hit the market soon! Isn't it tempting? How do you like this?

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I am a Green Lantern!

Dunno who the hecks are Green Lanterns? But I am a Green Lantern :)

Here are the results of SuperHero Quiz for me.

You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 85% Superman 80% Iron Man 70% Hulk 70% Robin 62% Wonder Woman 60% Supergirl 60% Spider-Man 50% The Flash 45% Batman 45% Catwoman 25%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Inspiration: Superman is here

[+] Last week, I had been to a house party. It was given by my friend for his marriage. Few photos from the party are here

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