Found a different place

Hey just incase you still view this area of my post, I've since shifted it now to http://venkkats.wordpress.com

So, please update your blog readers :-)

Windows Live Writer!

Well this is a realy cool blogging applicaton I've got my hands on now. Its called Windows Live Writer and it lets you compose your blogs in the comforts of MS's visually appealing UIs. :-) I actually like it cause it gives you things in a WYSIWYG form so you can edit the pictures and other things with ease. Man that's something you just can't get right when you're on blogger!

Check this app out if you get the chance. Am too lazy to put up the link so just go do a live search for windows live writer! ;-) Enjoy!

50% pass, the icing on the cake!

So I shifted to Bangalore last week and by Tuesday felt like a fish out of water wondering if I'd done the right thing... Sniff sniff... its always a bit nostalgic leaving... Somehow I thought I wouldn't feel it considering the amount of travelling I've been doing but then 12 years in one place was a lot longer than my other best of 4. Still things seem to be fitting in now...

Well, the first week at work here was anything but lite... And trust me sitting in a conf room for a large part of the day is not exactly 'fun'. :-) Still I somehow got through the week and was kinda relieved that the weekend had come and that I'd actually be home to do something instead of just coming home to sleep! It was really a learning week, especially the travelling. 1.5hrs each way and well all I can say is that I'm glad I had those 50 songs on my trusty V3i to listen to while on the bus.

Cut to the weekend. Man I had a large set of items set to go like getting a new cell number, picking up a bag and setting up the wireless LAN in the house. Phew seemed like a lots tasks and in the end I was amazed that I got all of it done on Saturday itself!

The cell connection was ready in like half and hour. Man I never knew that a government agency like BSNL could operate that fast. I still remember having to wait 10 days for Hutch in Mumbai to activate my number! Hmpf! Go Gov! Got the bag as well pretty easily, but then the wireless LAN had me in tangles. Finally got a piece of info that I should connect my broadband into a normal LAN port instead of the internet port. Thing works like a dream now. I also managed to add access control and WEP security (whatever that is...). The security stuff had me in twists at the beginning but then it worked out well in the end.

So that explains what the cake was but then what's the icing I'm sure you're wondering. Well... I checked out the results for the CNET quiz and woooooo hoooooo I got the marks I needed to pass! :-) Exactly 50% marks that were required. Man I can still remember the days of trying to get 90% and all and now its down to just passing! Oh well... guess the times have changed. LOL!

So that's the 50% icing on my cake this week. Just can't wait to see how the coming week turns out.

Something to keep this going...

Just writing something to keep this place going... There's nothing really to comment on other than Israel and well that's really not something that has lack of coverage for me to spend space on it :-) Went to see Golmaal and it is a cool flick. Definitely worth seeing!

"When in doubt always blame the other guy!"

If only I'd left half an hour later...

There are times when you feel, why did I do that? I guess this is one of those days looking at the amount of rain that fell!

Here's some of the snaps I managed to capture on my adventure out there:

Never seen S V road this empty!

The water is rising in SEEPZ

SEEPZ getting its fair share of water!

S V Road is really never this empty!

England go HOME!!!

There's only one way to describe what England did in the penalty shootout and that's 'pitiful'. After being gifted a 1 up lead they just couldn't hammer home the advantage. Its kinda strange how Gerrad missed but then if you can't hit those then you better be hitting home! Looks like they could learn a bit from the Germans on how to hit penalities!

Microsoft to buy eBay????

Perhaps I'm late on this but then is Microsoft going to buy out eBay???

http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-6077695.html

This seems to have interesting implications in the dymaics of the on going Google - MS wars. :-)

Do read the comments section of the article. Makes more interesting reading than the actual article itself.

Reservations? Lets talk about economical upliftment!

Been a long time sicne I've got around to blogging but when you read someting like:

http://reservation-and-present.blogspot.com/

then it really makes you wanna get up and say something.

There's probably been enough said on how reservation is bad blah blah and what all these articles seem to portray is that they want reservation for the low income backward castes.

My question (as I have posted a comment on that above blog) is how does this help the backward upper castes? When you look at places in India today, its starting to become a fact that OBC = Other Brahmin Communities! Upper caste people facing poor socio-economic situations and on top of that now have to put up with more reservation, less chances of getting to do something to uplift themselves. Some justice eh?

What we need is not social discriminaiton, but some sort of system to help those that don't have enough money to live properly to gain some sort of livelihood. Lets try and look at providing a truely equal sense of upliftment for people.

Innovative monitoring

Interesting article about using a PSP for plant monitoring. Read on:

http://www.automationworld.com/cds_search.html?rec_id=2002

Holi

This post has nothing to do with Holi other than the fact that its being put up on 'Holi' day. The good thing though about today is that we get a holiday for it! Bonus!

There was something intereseting that crossed me yesterday though... I came across this blog which was saying goodbye to everyone. Something to the extent of, "I had a good time blogging and reading all your comments but now its time to say goodbye." Seemed kinda weird, cause you can blog no matter where you are unless of course someone has unplugged your net connection.

What it did though was re-iterate this thing I had come across of how people are now communicating with eachother using blogs. Its like, stuff email and IM, I'll just blog about myself and people can come and comment on it and end up knowing what's going on with me and what I think by reading my blog. Reminded me of message queues in programming. Asynchronous communication if you want.

Subscribe to a service. The service keeps posting information. Whenever you feel like seeing it, you go and view it using your service reader. Pretty neat. Something I guess that .NET also is trying to push with WCF et al. I could be wrong of course, so correct me here if I am but it does look like message driven architectures are coming up.

Anyway, while this type of asynchrous stuff seems good as far as programming goes, but is just a bit too weird to think of talking to people that way. Maybe that will also evolve. :-)))

Nothing to say... Just putting up another blog entry.

Programming tips...

Came across this nice article for newbie programmers on some good tips for programming... Somehow the tips seems like something we could all do with when we find ourselves spending a lot of time writing code.

http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/academics/courses/is255/f01/assignments/assignment4.html

"Its sometimes easiest to just keep going rather than stopping and starting later"