The Silmarillion

This is the prelude to the Lord of the Rings Trivia though posted posthumously by J.R.R Tolkien's son christopher Tolkien. This a must read for the people who wishes to know more about the environment and history of the LOTR in which it is set. The story starts of with Iluvatar the supreme god creating the world of Ea from a symphony and void. The Ainurs (Components of the symphony who are the gods of the world) or Valar descend into Ea to chisel out the world to perfection. As usual we have Melkor the evil Ainur planning with his devisive ways to corrupt the first children of Iluvatar - Elves. What ensues further is the war of the Ainurs with Morgoth alias melkor and chaining him up in the tomb of Mandos in the First age.

The Elves themselves are of three clans headed by Ingwe of vanyar, Finwe of Nolder and Elwe and Olwe of Sindar.Thus we enter into the second age with the elves living in Valinor, the blessed realm of valars. But Melkor gets released and by this time we have Feanor a master craftsman, son of Finwe, creating the three silmarils, the jewel blessed with the light of Trees created by Yavanna (Valar) which is abducted by Morgoth.From here on the story concentrates wholly on the line of Finwe's sons(Feanor,Fingolfin,Finarfin) and to some extent on the line of Elwe (Thingol). Most of the anecdotes in LOTR are described in detail, eg-Beren and Luthien's affair, Ring of Barahir(given to Barahir by Finrod Felagund), Castle of Thangorodrim.

After many deaths in Nolder's line in the hands of Morgoth's host, Earendil the half elven sets on a voyage to seek the help of valar themselves. The valar ambushes Morgoth's Followers and the infamous Lieutinent of Morgoth,ie.Sauron who sheds off all evil after the battle fearing the Valar.Morgoth is pushed into the void for all ages permanently never to come back.Most of the Nolder return back to Valinor, but some of them remained back. eg gil-galad son of Fingon, Celebrimbor Grandson of Feanor & maker of the Ring, Galadriel daughter of Finarfin, Cirdan the Shipwright who even in LOTR takes Elves to Valinor and Elrond - son of Earendil. The infamous Battle of Fingolfin with Morgoth and Fingon with Gothmog are depicted greatly.


The Sons of Earendil are Elrond and Elros. Elrond chose to be an elf while Elros represented men. He was known as the Tar-minyatur from whom the race of the Numenor starts.After 2000 years The heart of the numenoreans is blackened for the need of immortality and Sauron uses this as his high time to put an end to Numenorean race.The Might of the Numenoreans could be figured out when sauron surrended to Ar-Pharazon, king of numenor though sauron wielded the ring at that time. Though Sauron's cunning devices kills Numenoreans, Elendil and his sons Isildur and Anarion survive and comes to Middle-Earth to start the age of men in Middle-Earth.The rest could all be found in LOTR. Many questions of ambiguity in LOTR (like where & why Elves are going to the west in ships) would have it answered in THE SILMARILLION.

Ouch! i forgot to tell the destiny of the silmarils. one of the silmarils would be recovered from Morgoth's crown by beren and luthien and put up in the sky, but the other two would be put up in fire and Water of Ea.

The Silicon Beast comes into existence

It was the month of december and it was dark in the evening, with the bitingly cold breeze wrapped around the smokey mist.It was the perfect timing for the rise of the black blended in silver.The laser Verve is infact the hood of the monster inside. It engulfes the victim with the desire to possess it. It bares one of all the sophistication that he has possessed before. It sounds the death kneel to other makes and defeats them with its stylish looks and sheer performance.It is the master of the Black which prevails over the others. Not many clones or equals it has,

Ladies and Gentleman,

Behold!!! for it is the HP's BlackBird, Emperor of all Desktops, exclusively designed for gaming.It is the dawn of the new era in gaming. No specs here. Get it for yourself from
http://h20435.www2.hp.com/

For heaven's sake dont miss the Flash intro

Finally, Aragorn is here

On december 7th, i bought HP's dv2601 TX Special Edition Laptop. I christened him as Aragorn, the elessar who never fails. Truely The mark of the Anduriel Sword of the west is set as the laser verve design on my Laptop(just kidding, but the fluid design is cool). I had Windows Vista in that, and then i installed Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. The sound worked just out of the box.Kewl thing indeed. I am waiting for the free 20 DVD movies to arrive at my doorstep :)

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/in/en/ho/WF05a/1090709-1116637-1116665-1116665-1116665-80627766.html for the specs

The Saga behind Middle Earth - Lord of The Rings Trivia

Three weeks is too small a time to read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy that too on the walks of life of an Software Engineer during his free times, if not for the Knack in narration of J.R.R Tolkien or for the Grandeur of the characters. The trilogy includes,

* The Fellowship of the Ring
* The Two Towers
* The Return of the King

Though the films got 8.7, 8,6 & 8.8 respectively in imdb.com and bagged many oscars, they are in no way as expressive as the books.That too reading a book after watching the film made out of it would not give good impression of the book normally, but here is a book with a difference. Though i have seen these films a number of times, the book gripped me throughout.It is pity the book of such calibre was written way back in late 1940's and it became famous only after the filming of it. It is a shame that i stayed out the hullabulla of the Lord of the Rings release in 2001 to 2003 and saw the films all at a time one fine morning after the aura settled down.It is no doubt here is where the heart of Historical fiction lovers reside.It is a epic by itself set-up in a different timeline, different world, different species, different languages and what not.

For people who have seen Lord Of the Rings, it is just a part of the happenings in the end of the Third age and start of the Fourth Age.Not many knew that sauron the evil-incarnate actually was a servant of Morgoth, the evil valar(Valar=God in middle-earth) in the first age.It was morgoth who brought orcs into being and he had an army of Balrogs(The shadowy fiery creature which Gandalf encountered in the first part at the Mines of Moria) and during his time(Gothmog being the leader of balrogs) complete evil resided. The shaping of Middle-earth is a separate story by itself.The story of the first age, second age and other folklore of middle-earth are included in the various books like,

* Silmarillion
* The Book of Lost Tales I & II
* The Shaping of The Middle Earth
* The Hobbits
and many more to add

Truly the majesticity of Aragorn is derived by giving brief accompilishments of his 39 ancestors before him. The Story of Elendil the tall, Isildur Elendil reaches the pinnacle at the Battle of The Last Alliance of Elves and Men. Be it the High Elven Lords from Rivendell, or the Dunadians from the north, Tolkien has picturequely portrayed their history in the Appendix. The Rise to throne by Aragorn alias King Elessar of Gondor & Arnor marks the realm of Numenoreans of the west after a long time in history and the flame of the Anduril the sword that is reforged continued to flash against all evil.

In my Opinion, This is by far the best epic i have ever read, from Illiad to mahabharata, and by far the best novel in its category above the infamous Harry Potter.I couldnot take away the characters of my mind and because of that i bought a Lord of the Rings DVD rightaway as a memento of this great saga that i read.

Gutsy's compiz-fusion in Intel Graphics card

Gutsy Gibbon wont be much different from fiesty fawn if you dont enable compiz-fusion in it.By default compiz-fusion would be installed.but you have to install compizconfig-settings-manager additionally. after installing this visit System->preferences->Advanced desktop effect settings. Then select which ever effect you want to have and then close it. go to change desktop background and select the visual effects tab and select custom. Most drivers would start compiz effects now like magic.but mine being a intel built-in graphics card, certain changes had to be made in the /etc/xdg/compiz/compiz-manager just add SKIP_CHECKS="yes" in that and you would have compiz-fusion running :)

for starting the cube-effect you have to increase the number of workspaces to 4 which would be 2 by default.

The Bicycle Thief -> Pollathavan

Among the diwali releases many find Pollathavan better than the lot.I saw this film in trichy the day after Diwali along with stylesen, Siva, Ashok & Vinoth as we were returning droopy faced cos we could not get a ticket for Vel as well as Azhagiya Tamil Magan. It seems it is a blessing in disguise as i heard from people the plight of the audience who viewed ATM.

Though we entered after the start of the film by 10 minutes, i found the film pretty captivating though similar to puthupettai & 7G rainbow colony in certain aspects.Later i came to know that the story line is taken from a 1949 Italian film Ladri di biciclette - The Bicycle Thief. Namma Tamizhan paakaatha padamae illa pola :)


Here the story of Bicycle thief is tweaked a little by replacing cycle with pulsar, and peppered with villians throughout the story and seasoned with one Remix song and 2 nice to hears.The fight sequences are bound to captivate the audience for sure.Overall it is a nice film to watch and helps to be on the watch-out(sarcastically) for other releases with it.

All the Fuss about Gmail 2.0

i was upgraded to GMail 2.0 quite before some my friends could feel the new GMail. How Google Inc chose me early i have no clue about.Overall i find some new features peeping out here and there. Some to list are

* Now group chat could be done through Gmail itself by selecting Options in any one the friends chat window and then selecting group chat.EMoticons are also added in the corner :)

* The all new sign-out of chat feature enables you to check mails without being disturbed by pinging.

* The back button in the browser is atlast made to use with ordered naming convention to take people thro previous pages.

* The new Contact list with enhanced navigation, and ability to to take in the form of vCards.

* Faster prefetching of messages to enable quicker viewing of mails.

* The new filter messages like these option in actions menu.

* Integrated Photo picker with Picasa web Album.

* Apart from this the availability of IMAP support is an added advantage.

* Ability to bookmark important e-mails which could be later reached though one has to be logged on into Gmail.

* Ability to share email seraches with friends.Thereby you could direct your friend to reach the mail you are talking about.

Brewing hot soon to be served are:

* Social Gmail, which comes out with a group out of one's contacts depending upon the amount of data you type, and how fast you respond etc, it would be more like a live profile. Also one could share documents, web-links,photos, what not through here itself..

* Gmail Offline, when microsoft office suite is feeling the heat of google docs, now its outlook's turn to feel the heat. Google is trying to come out with Gmail Offline with the google gears in the back-end, it is possible to check mails, etc when the internet connection is down(by aggregating the mails in local hard disk), and later when it is up it could be synced with the gmail servers.Soon it would become a full fledged offline Mail client.

* Viewing Account Activity: It would be possible soon to check your gmail account activities to figure out when it was last logged on, System IP address and all other log related information.

For the People who changed the segregation of mails into searching of mails it would not take much time to come up with yet another revolution.

Feisty Fawn to Gutsy Gibbon

Though a patroniser of Debian GNU/linux for a long time, i didn't have Debian Etch with me to install .Therefore i tossed Ubuntu CD in the Drive and proceeded with it.Initially i installed Fiesty Fawn [7.04] and then the desire to use compiz made me to upgrade to Gutsy Gibbon[7.10].

The way to upgrade is to visit System->Administration->Update-Manager. First update all the softwares available for Feisty. since the update manager is configured to work by connecting directly to internet, it gave some problem initially.To correct this you have to do two things

1) Open Software Sources from System->Administration then make it to use main source from the list box.
2) Open Synaptic Package Manager from System->Administration then go to Settings->preferences and in the Network tab give your proxy details.

After this try to update all the softwares.Once it is ready you can move on to the next step.

Feisty Fawn sometimes comes up with a empty meta-release file in /var/lib/update-manager/. This file should basically contain the information on the next release etc, to enable upgradation. To overcome the empty file problem, download the following file and put it as meta-release file in the above specified folder

http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release-development

Now launch the update-manager, and proceed on with the upgrade button that is available there.Enjoy upgrading and be sure to read my next blog entry on how to enable compiz in Gutsy Gibbon in a system with Intel Graphics card.

Easylib - Kick-starting a new relationship

Last weekend i became a member of Easylib.com, a private lending library in Koramangala - Bangalore. Thanks to my sister through whom i came to know of this. Though i was a voracious reader during my school days, i couldn't maintain the consistency through my life.To ensure a steady flow of books, i enrolled myself with easylib.The nearest landmark is Maharaja Hotel. from there take the road opposite to it and then take the first left. Here is where you end up in front of the library.

They charge a refundable deposit of 500 and a membership fee of 100. If you want your book to be delivered at your doorstep just pay them a debit amount of 100 more and they would take Rs 10 from that debit amount every time a book is delivered to you. Its just that easy and hence the name.it is open from 10 - 2 and 4 - 8 except on wednesdays.It is a nice hangout for book lovers who likes to have a nice rapport with the latest releases and the best ones in the literature world. What appeals more is your monthly premium (ie 10% of book cost) is waived off if your accumulated premium costs crosses 100. :)

visit easylib @ www.easylib.com

Ponty why dont you look back in time?

What the few cricket fans did at vadodara is unacceptable.That too in India where hospitality is very well known.But Ricky Ponting's advertisement of this issue through press meet is quite weird.Some points to ponder here are

* Which team turned this gentleman's game into an arena to vent out vengence in the form of sledging?
* Which Team showed off its disrespect to elders by pushing senior citizens like Sharad Pawar off the stage to poss for Photographs?
* Which crowd spewed off rascist remarks on Monty Panesar and on the South African team?
* Which country all the cricketing nation fears to go? not because of the winning ways of Australian Team but because of the hardness of the players on the field backed up by their crowd
* Which Team doesn't have a sporting spirit and accept defeat in a friendly manner when defeated? Which Team hate other Teams winning the series or celebrating it and follows it up with a weirdo kind of a explanation for the defeat?

Australian cricketers consider themselves to be masters in sledging and make it part of cricket.If that be the case why are they annoyed if they are on the receiving end when Sreesanth did it? What actions Australian Cricket Board took when Rascist chants like "Give us a wave, Monty. You can't speak English, you stupid Indian. I'll have to say it in Indian.What are you doing playing in the English side? You're not English." were heaped upon Monty Panesar. Mukul Kesavan, one of India's best known cricket writer makes a point while saying "You did not see it with the West Indian cricketers because Indians always admired them a bit like Brazil and football. Symonds is seen as part of an abrasive, white team. But it is still deplorable racism."

Now With the srilankan tour of Australia round the corner,Bayliss,the srilankan Coach hoped the majority of people would respect his side, saying: "There's always idiots in every crowd, but most realise it's wrong and don't get involved."The same thing holds on for the players on the field.Some gentlemen like Adam Gilchrist exist in their midst too.Therefore it would be better if Ponting Stops his allegations and starts mending their ways to play a neat and clean cricket devoid of the so called "Sledging" that they Coined...

Gmail joins the Mailbox size increase Competition

It seems that the gush of high capacity hard disks which have hit the market predominantly finds its way to the Data Centres around the world which powers the E-mail Industry.Recently Microsoft Hotmail Live increasing the mail box size to 5GB and Yahoo Mail celebrated its 10th anniversary by providing a mailbox size of Infinity from May 2007.Gmail which has remained the leader of the pack joins in for the fray too. Gmail which came into being in 2004 with a whooping mailbox size of 1 GB gave out 2GB in 2005 and released a "Infinity + 1" plan by which the mailbox size counter was always kept on the move.A graph outlining their plan attracted many Gmailians in 2005 and it is shown at the side

Gmailians would have noticed that their mailbox size have crossed 4 GB by now and speculative MailBox sizes are predicted all over the Internet.But the answer lies in your Gmail homepage itself.The counter is incremented by a javascript in the homepage where they set the limit to be achieved at a specific point in time.As per that, the following stats are arrived

Apr 1 2007 13:30 2835 MB
Oct 12 2007 13:30 2912 MB
Oct 23 2007 12:30 4321 MB
Jan 4 2008 13:30 6283 MB
Jan 17 2038 13:30 43008 MB
Jan 2 3456 12:30 number.MAX_VALUE = 1.79E+308

People @ Google Inc seems to have immense foresight however one question still lingers in my mind.The number.MAX_VALUE is the largest number could be represented and a value above this is called as infinity. So if Gmail has to stick to their plan of "Infinity + 1" then they have to score two more :)

Sivi - Remake of shutter

Last weekend we consumed some 6 -7 films but not on a single sitting :) One film worth noting is Sivi. priyan told me about this film when the songs got released and believe me from that day on i became the advertiser for this film.I wont reveal the plot of this Ghost based thriller story which gripped us on the edge of the seats. Not just that,even if we think of this film, it terrorizes us day and night :( The film is a class apart neatly taken except for the fact that it is a remake of the Thai film "Shutter". Though a scene by scene remake, Sivi strikes the chord by clipping off the gory in the ghost of Shutter. Even then it is a High_end Thriller.

All the three songs in the film have been rated high in the charts but it is a pity that "Neruppum" song doesn't feature in the film.This film is highly recommended for people with a strong heart.But faint hearted people like me should not also miss this because neatly taken films like these are hard to come by..... For people who doesn't know what sivi means, it refers to the snake which adorns the neck of Lord Shiva.. still dont get the connection?? well watch the film yourself, not alone but with an escort :)

Blogging is getting tougher and tougher

In college, blogspot was restricted hence i was able to chip in contents only now and then. Now there is no such restriction, but still blogging is getting tougher. if i started chipping in some technical stuff it would already be listed somewhere in wikipedia.so i started blogging more on my happenings in my life. Since i spend most of the time with a group of my friends everyone end up recounting the same thing in their blogs. It has become more like a ticket booking schedule in the Diwali crowd (ie first come first write). This is one such attempt to increase the no of posts in my blog :)

Top 10 Songs - Rated by me

Here is the list rightaway

1. Way i are - Timbaland & Keri Hilson feat
2. Say it Right - Nelly Furtado
3. That ain't Right - Sean Kingston
4. Hips don't Lie - Shakira
5. Umbrella - Rihanna feat Jay-z
6. Beautiful Liar- Beyonce feat Shakira
7. Sorry Blame it on me - Akon
8. Give it to me - nelly furtado, Timbaland
9. In the Morning - Gwen Stafani
10. Whenever wherever - remix (Shakira is a dancer) - Shakira, jirob
Lately i got some material to hear other than the Tamil songs and popular tracks from Michael jackson, BSB, etc.I got inputs that there are some great music being produced by groups other than the well known singers. The names i got after some research and hearsay helped me to locate the best hits of them and i started hearing them.The above list that i have released is what i consider as really good. Try hearing them @ www.deezer.com

Ideafest '07

Time passes on...The transition happened from science exhibition in schools to technical symposiums in college and now i attended the Idea Fest in my Company by wearing the audience tag :) This grand Tech mela consists of the people coming up with innovative ideas with implementation.Ideafest '07 - Monsoon session was conducted for 2 days and some 200+ ppl exhibited their wares.Some ideas really touched me as i have faced the same problem but not even once had i thought of finding a solution for them.Though i was able to cover just 10-15% of the stalls i learnt a lot in these two days than any other week.

As a part of Ideafest'07 a quiz competition was conducted, myself, vineet and sathya prakash formed a team and participated. We could not cross the written test itself but had a nice time watching the finals. thankfully we were not on the hot seat!!! It was a full-blown IT quiz and i understood that i have to learn a lot in that area. In short the whole 2 day grand gala rocked and i am looking forward for the next IdeaFest.

Headset gear adds to my arsenal

Yesterday i attended the PCQuest Best IT Implementation awards ceremony @ Hotel Grande Ashok, Bangalore as TCENet Bagged the best innovative product award. Attendees include Mrs.Shalinie Mam, Stylesen, Ranjani, smartsara, Senthil, subbi and myself. while myself and stylesen were wearing jazzy jeans and T-shirt, every other person in the conference hall were in Formals and some in suit :( Our jubiliant nature made many to turn their heads.

The Master of the ceremony kept the function on the roll by asking GK questions in between the awards distribution. After my 2 year winning streak in quizzes during my school days i maintained a low profile by not participating in any of the quizzes during my college days. For two questions the opportunity evaded me. Atlast the finale moment arrived and the MC quoted "Name the other countries that have their independence day on August 15th apart from India" Though i was not sure my basic instinct made me to raise my hand and my mouth squeaked "South Korea" The MC asked my name and congratulated me and very soon a ramp walk model walked her way through to hand over the "Logitech Mobile Express Headset" worth around 3000 :)

I finished my dinner at the same place and returned home holding the headset which has entered my sophisticated gadgets arsenal. I realized that luck sometime favours me too.kudos to those old GK books that i read during my school days which made this happen.

Trussed like a Chicken on seat no 43

It is the passenger's most avoidable seat, that too on a Worldclass A/C Volvo bus and evidently i fell for the trap last weekend.To make ppl understand the location of the seat, it is located in the middle of the last row in the bus ie, the seat at the end of the pathway.

Here is how the plot unfolds :)
The conductor paid a personal visit to my seat to ensure that i have strapped the seat belt(exclusive for seat no 43 passengers) properly. By having this seat belt around i could not even budge a little.My neighbour understood my plight and made the best use of it by conquering my seat little by little.All night i had to wage a war to keep a small part of my hands on the handrest.it is a pity that i had to share the handrest on both sides :( The A/C slits are available only for the two ppl on either side and a cool breeze would hardly make it to the passenger on seat 43. Being a volvo, where the engines would be on the rear side and i became the prestigious person to sit over the whooooooooooring engine all night with the heat waves flowing in.Hot sauna bath for free!!!! Added to that is the glaring headlights of the vehicles coming in the opposite side peeping through the gaps in the curtain.And at situation such as these you would be blessed with a stinking snooring neighbour falling over you all the time!!!!!!!

The HP way

This book was handed over to all the new recruits when we joined HP. This is written by David Packard, one of the founding fathers of the Company. The HP way is a set of ideologies which was framed by the founding fathers as early as 1957 when no other company had even thought of it.hp way considers both the employees and customers as equally important and one of the speeches given by Bill Hewlett in 1960 to a set of new joiners states exactly that.

The book starts of with David Packard recounting his childhood days and his friendship with Bill Hewlett during their college days at stanford.The group consisting of Bill, Dave, Ed porter and barney registered for the class by fred terman which eventually turned out to be a turning point in life. After the college days Packard joined GE for a short stint while Hewlett did his masters in MIT and both started their company officially in 1939 in a small garage in Palo Alto.This garage now has become a historical monument and is called as the birthplace of the silicon valley.


HP initially concentrated on oscillators, High frequency counters, video/audio parts and microwave products. The HP desktop calculator marked the beginning of the digital era and later it plunged into the computer industry. Some of the path breaking HP's invention at that time includes the usage of caesium for accurate measurement of time pulses,LED's, very High frequency counters, etc.Since this book is written way back in 1995 not much information about computer development is given.


When the company grew the founding fathers came up with many management styles which have become the benchmark of many companies these days. Some of them like sharing the profit with the employees, Management by walking around, Management by objective are a path-ahead in the 1950s. HP's Open door policy resonates even today as even the Managers or VP sits in open cubicles without any door like every other employee in HP.It is said that the Legacy, the founding fathers left behind is not just the 100 billion dollar company but the HP way.

SRK's Magnum Opus

Add Chakde India to Shahrukh Khan's best performance list and believe me it would top it all.Though he had a variety of roles round his buckle from a romantic romeo to vicious villian, the NRI and the Kabir Khan character suited him the best in Swadesh and Chak de India respectively.Many wouldn't have imagined that this baadshah would ascend to the top when he first showed up in Fauji, a serial in Doordarshan long time back.

These two film's baseline or the underlying story were pretty strong which added gravity to the lead role.Chak De India is a neatly compiled flawless picturing of how a disgraced hockey captain after a gap of 7 years comes back with a sole aim of coaching the undisciplined and egoistic women's hockey team to win the world cup thereby to redeem his pride.Some say that the story is similar to Miracle, a Hollywood film but i don't mind as long as i could watch some worthwhile films like this.The director's skill lies in clearly evading any romance or song sequence from the film thereby keeping the tempo on the go without any disturbance.The matches that are played are damn real

The film also delineates the sorry state of the affairs in the sports authority board and also the mindless cooking-up of stories by the media people. SRK's acting touches the heart when he leaves the home with a heavy heart and also in the end when his team wins. It would be great if other actors too tries something different like this rather than playing the same monotonous roles.After a long time i am seeing a film that is both gripping and inspiring till the end.I came out of the theatre wondering why SRK didn't coach the Men's team, only then it struck me that if he had done that perhaps his team would have won but this film would not have been a blockbuster!!!

Naanum Nalla Paiyan than

This weekend i turned out to be good boy and started visiting temples (Plural because i went to 2 temples :) Saturday evening i went to the Maha Shiva Mandir in Kemp fort(Airport Road). The walk from 100 ft road through domulur to the temple was pleasing in the evening.The forest cover inside NAL, HAL, ISRO which could be seen from the road on one side and IT parks like Diamond District on another side strikes a contrast.

The entrance to the temple is very small and one would find it hard to believe that a huge statue of Shiva is inside that. For any tourist or a resident of Bangalore it is a must watch.There is a small cave kind of setup through which one could find all the Famous Shiva lingas and also stories about them.

Next day morning i went to the Iskon temple in Yeswanthapur. Instead of taking the straight route i went through hebbal with the BMTC daily pass tucked away in my pocket.The serene and clean surrounding speaks high of the temple.The grandeur of the structure makes one spellbound.Inside the Iskon there are sweets stall, Hotel, book store & Art emporium kind of. It is heartening to know that Iskon temple feeds 42000 children everyday. Iskon temple is one of the places which requires regular attendance.

South Indies - truly South Indian

This time i happened to chip in to this restaurant (south Indies - 100 feet road, Indiranagar, Bangalore) with Vineet and sarit to experience new things. If the receptionists in sarees are surprizing you in bangalore wait till the waiter pops in with a cool HP iPaQ to take orders from you. Then one of them hands over wet scented towels to clean your face and hands. What thoughfulness!!

The Menu card would stike you with awe because its nothing like anywhere else. The exotic thing with this is everything has been designed with some creativity from dishes to menu card to interior decor. Here you could have foods from all the 4 south indian states (Thats why its south indies!!!). we started of with the murungai charu(Drumstick leaves) soup with fried onions ( really nice combination!!!). Then we went on to kal dosai with karuverpilai poondu kuzambhu. This combination is smashing. Then we ordered neer dosa which is yet another delicacy. We finished off with besi bela bath. Infact the waiter told us that there is some 8 - 9 course treat for 500. since we did not have that much appetite we ordered individually. Surely i would go for that one day.

Comin to the wallet part, the bill was around 650 which is really worth. The hospitality of the waiters would amaze you. I would surely recommend people to this restaurant. This provides not just food but rich experience. GO Xperience it!!! For more details visit http://www.thesouthindies.com

Non-Stop Film Festival

If you are thinking that i am going to blog about Cannes film festival or something similar you are wrong. This is about a group of 4 guys who ended up watching 5 films non-stop on a Saturday night. Dont make guesses, its just me,sen,subbi and musi who did that inevitable feat.

It all started by 9 after our dinner at amirtham@ koramangala. after the first film which i am not supposed to name,me and subramani "veerappoda" thoongalammnu ninachoom,but we moved on to the next film starring ajith during which i slept.Then i got up to see the next film by 3:00 which is normally the time when the "flowers used to unfurl" its petals.Then by 5 i thought ppl would atleast consider to have a small nap. To my astonishment some were washing their faces to prepare themselves for the next show!!! Then we watched the madhavan starring film. Atlast ppl went to bed and i saw a part of Indiana jones "The raiders of the Lost ark" After that i had a nice sleep and got up by 10 only to see another film which remained us of our "school".

What a night it was!!! Thanks to Subbi and Prabu anna for providing us this entertainment gala and also for patiently getting the scoldings from their neighbours for we had kept them from sleeping too :)

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What a welcome for new employees!!!

This video is a must see for every software professional in India where a software guy is highly revered and respected. But this company took a step further and made these new joinees cherish the moment forever.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GpPcMVbmtw

Geeks of india you rule the world.Give yourselves a pat.

Solaris to be shipped in IBM blades

A strategic alliance is what Sun tells about this deal with IBM. IBM has accepted to ship Solaris OEM with their blades. So what is going to be the impact in the market? If you have a look at the market share of lower-end x86(blades, Proliants) servers its the HP which leads there followed by DELL and IBM. In an attempt to raise through the ranking IBM has accepted this strategy which might help Sun in promoting Solaris. I do not want to speculate much on this but going through the some analysis reveals that there wont be much change in the rankings.Perhaps the deal might affect the GNU/Linux market especially Red Hat's Enterprise editions as Sun is slowly trying to penetrate the GNU/Linux deployments in the internet arena where x86 & GNU/Linux combination rules.

For IBM its an optional offering with their hardware. For Sun its a new arena where their solaris has not penetrated much.Keeping my fingers crossed i am watching what is going to be the impact of it in both the hardware and OS Market share world!!

It happened in India

One thing that strikes you is this person's inspiration to setup Big Bazaar, Bangalore central and other establishments are not after looking into walmart but after paying a visit to the infamous saravana stores in Ranganathan street,T-nagar, chennai. This Book by Kishore Biyani along with Dipayan Bhaisya takes one into the life of Kishore Biyani, the Rajah of Retail. Though the excerpts by different people who are part of the retail conglomerate are filled up with praise for Kishore which normally irritates you the rest written by him are the ones which pulls you into the vortex.

He recounts how from being an ordinary cloth seller he evolved to such heights. though he was from Mumbai his initial stunt was in calcutta where he setup his first pantaloon store. Later he moved on to mumbai and other cities. Later he went on to setup the Big Bazaar hypermarket customized to Indian style. His attempt to attract the tier-2 people of India (middle-class) was an instant success added to the lucrative offers his retail gives.No Big Bazaar remains the same, because it is customized to the regional taste. His foresight in procuring large enough real estates for building his malls are seen when he setup the 1.4 lakh sq ft Big Bazaar in Noida(The largest in india). He made some bold stunts in bollywood too by producing Na Tum Jaano Na Hum & Chura Liyaa Hai Tumne. His future group is aiming at various prospective areas where they could step into, to channelize the people's spending into their stores. Central is an idea born out of here.

Certain brands like John miller,Scullers, and Indigo nation are owned by them and by obtaining legal rights they are the dealers for puma, mark & Spencers in india. Just a three day offer(sabse saste din) in Big Bazaar during this year attracted people to spend 125 Cr in this shop.His separate unit for churning out new creative ideas lies in the Joseph chemmanur hall, Indira nagar Bangalore. These designers look into people's activities and behavior to understand more about people's need and tapping them. so next time if someone stares at you near indira nagar it could be one among them :)

he palns to own 30 million lakh sq ft of shopping paradise by 2011 with an annual turnover of 30,000 Cr. with the giants like walmart and Reliance stepping into retail business only time would tell whether he achieves his goal.

Trip to Sivasamudra (Bharachukki) Falls

On August 15th we had been to Bharachukki falls which was not a planned one. This is 140 Kms from Bangalore on the mysore road ( not exactly). we got down at anapost and then caught an auto to this falls. We missed the ganganachukki which is some 8 kms from that place.we survived solely on cucumbers and bhelpoori that whole day.Later in the afternoon we suddenly thought of going to somnath temple which we heard was some 30 kms from there. but due to non-availability of Straight bus we abandoned that. we didn't go to talakkad ( the point where cauvery is huge) due to the same reason. Probably a detailed surrounding information before the next trip would suffice to end such dissapointments.

By 7 we reached bangalore totally famished and this prompted us to visit the Maharaja Hotel @ Koramangala where we dined pretty well along with Prabu anna.very soon we all departed in all directions to reach our home.

Visit http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/BharachukkiWaterfalls
for more pics

A better Xperience

yesterday i went to the HSBC ATM center @ indira nagar. I came to know that the ATM machine is having some problems and i came out of the ATM center without taking the money.I was in for a surprise.The way i had walked through was fitted with granites and marble flooring which was unique in its own way and i easily missed the highlight of it when i came in.
Now i sat down and starting analyzing what design it was. Some architect or the owner of the building seems to have a good taste for the Zodiac signs and it showed off in the flooring. The floor was studded with a patterned granite slabs with the Zodiac signs too impregnated on it. Since i know the difficulty in cutting a marble slab the perfection in the cutting of the granites in various shapes including intricate curves amazed me. The design was somewhat similar to a sundial in the side and the flooring was like the sun flares.

I managed to take a closeup snap of my English Zodiacal sign Leo :) if you pass by the CMH road near the KFC you have this ATM and it is worth peeping in.

It is the creativity of the one and ability of the another to make it into reality, made me to enjoy this art in serenity

The Alchemist

This book by Paulo Coelho is for those who are in pursuance of a goal in life but getting held up in the middle and for those who feel contented with the present state of affairs.Though it has a illogical happenings near the climax like the boy talking with the wind, sun etc the story line keeps you hooked till you reach the end. I read the whole book within a night.

--Spoiler starts here--

Santiago being a shepherd is content with his life until he comes across a gypsy lady who interprets his dream and from then on our boy undertakes an task of unearthing a treasure near the pyramids of Egypt who is helped by the king of salem initially.on his way he meets the englishman and then the Alchemist who guides him to his dreams.The story is written excellently by paulo coelho.

--Spoiler ends here--

Apart from the above lying story the author makes us to understand the way of life and some lines are sure to have an effect on one

"Every search begins with beginner's luck. And every search ends with the victor's being severely tested."

"If you start out by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work toward getting it."

"There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure."

"The darkest hour of the night came just before dawn."

Power of Itanium 2 (Montecito)

Itanium has been the most talked about processor even before it hit the market in 2001. it competes with the enterprise server processors like IBM's Power and Sun's UltraSparc. But when it hit the stands its sales didn't soar up as it was expected.This is mainly because of the ignorance of many people about its architecture and how to get the best out of it. some time back when in college some people had sarcastically pointed out for our college going for a itanium processor based Symmetric Multi Processor system(SMP). Now i would like to clear out those dirt out of the Byte-crunching Itanium processor.


Itanium is designed using the Explicitly Parallel Intruction Code (EPIC) architecture which is a completely new design neither near to RISC nor to CISC. EPIC means the that Itanium processor does not have the hardware in its chip for identifying instruction dependencies for parallel execution. By doing so some amount of chip space is vacuumed which could be used for accommodating additional registers.All the parallelism has to be decided by the compiler itself during compiling. The resulting binary could be made to run on the Itanium processor at mind boggling speeds. Imagine having 128 (64 bit)General purpose registers, 128 (82 bit) Floating point register, 64 branch and predicate register, 64 application register etc working on your data. really stupendous!!! Therefore if your compiler doesn't parallelize the code just like for other processors you would find itanium lagging, leading to people doubting its capacity.Itanium is best suited for places where the applications are fine tuned for it and then would one realize its sheer speed in computation.

Itanium could theoritically execute 6 instructions per cycle and practically known to execute 3 instructions per cycle while x86 architecture could do only one instruction at a time.Itanium's latest release Montecito has 2 cores each with 2 threads(coarse multithreading - doesn't run concurrently, one thread chips in when other does memory lookup ) emulating to 4 processor. Thunder and NASA's Columbia supercomputer's secret lies with Itanium !!! Apart from this Itanium has built-in capability to handle virtualization which means it can run multiple operating system concurrently. its huge 24 MB L3 on-die (internal) cache adds to its efficiency in fetching data as quickly as possible.The speculative execution in Itanium is very robust adds to its performance. Itanium 2 has improved a lot in power consumption and in price/performance arena. Itanium's sales is picking up and latest survey has indicated that its revenue is over 63% of SPARC system revenue and over 54% of Power system revenue.

As Tukwila (Itanium's next generation)is round the corner packed with quad core, Simultaneous MultiThreading(SMT- Intel's next Lethal weapon) and Common system interface and other features up its sleeve, i could smell out a competition brewing in the processor arena with IBM's Power7, Sun's Ultrasparc Rock(16 cores with yet to be decided on number of threads) and from AMD's Fusion

ping --duration 2 days Chennai

For the weekend i had been to chennai and the onward journey was by KSRTC mayura which i enjoyed the most. They took the chittoor route and in the midway they stopped at the cool A1 plaza owned by reliance. A1 plaza had a neat parking lot and the traveling facilities provided by them were many and was very clean too.The lightings and the spacious restaurant were worth noting. Reliance have their own knack of attracting people to their bunks by providing such facilities.

For the rest of the two days i had to stay back in my paternal uncle's house except for a quiet stroll to Priyadharshan's. With the glittering hoardings all over the place i got a quick update of the happenings in Tamil nadu. Madhavan and bhavana starring Arya got released the day before and the deserted satyam theatre is enough to tell about its success. Kalaignar Tv is all set to be launched by september 15th as per one of the huge hoardings in the city. Kalaignar Tv actually owned by Raj Tv became the talk of the town as they bagged the rights to air the films Shivaji , Guru, pokkiri and varalaru after three years of release.

i had to miss the class reunion planned at spencer plaza due to one good reason. On sunday night i caught the Corona which was very spacious. Though they put Dhoom in the bus i resorted to peer through the window to have a look at Vestas, Nokia, Motorola, saint Gobian and samsung industries in the sriperumbuthur area. Later by early morning 3:30 i reached my home. These people drive pretty fast and that helped me up for a cosy 3 hour sleep before starting to office.

Getting older year after year

yeah today is my birthday. It was a smooth one as far as birthday bumps are concerned. I did nothing great or special today. But it is really surprising to see so many of my collegemates and schoolmates ringing me up and wishing.I was never a good guy in remembering these important days in others life. probably i have to be more careful next time.Nothing more to pen down for the day.

looking through the pensieve

Happy Birthday Harry Potter!!!! i saved up my blog on you for this special occasion. "To buy or not to Buy" was the dilemma which i had for the "Deathly Hallows", the last book in the Harry Potter sequel. Harry Potter series is the best book that gripped the hearts of the people of this era. It is hard to come across such treasure in ones lifetime with the last being TINTIN. Saying all these i pre-ordered this book for just 633 @ indiaplaza.in while the book on the stands was about to cost 975.

Though i ordered this book i went to my native for the weekend and got the book in my hands only on monday morning. It was followed by a two sleepless nights and atlast i finished reading the climax of the gripping story which encompassed 7 books across 10 years. I have no words to explain my experience with it. Never had i read any story so very engrossed all through the night and sometimes dodging my mom's call to sleep and sometimes leaving the studies behind in 12th standard :)

It all started like this. i never knew what it is some 10 years back. it was my good pal Bharathi who handed over the philosophers stone book. it made me feel as though its all realistic and i started living in the potter's world from that day on.Then i got the chamber of secrets game on my PC which thrilled me to read the second book. From then on there is no stopping me, i jumped straight to the Goblet of fire which as per to me is the best of all classics. Then i read Askaban courtesied from Bharathi again. similarly i laid hands on the 5th and 6th book during my college days.

Atlast when the final book was released i made up my mind to buy the book on the day of release itself.The deathly Hallows ended on a happy note.Truely J.K rowling made a difference in the literary arena which created an impact on many including me. With the 7 years of Harry's school days over now i wish that he had not passed the O.W.Ls at all so that there could have been two or more books on him :) Really i miss Harry and the Hogwarts. Ending this post with a hope that Rowling continues to write such magical adventures.

Starting a new Thread

This is nothing to do with POSIX thread or kernel threads. As the days go by i find myself in a similar situation as i was some 4 years back. that is when i joined my college in madurai & i used to go far and wide to try out new hotels out there and sometimes i used to recommend people about which recipe is good at which place. similarly after been here in bangalore for some one and half months i have been to quite a lot of hotels and more joints are yet to come.Therefore i thought of recording my new discoveries right here.

Three Quarter Chinese
This fully chinese style restaurant is in the AMOEBA complex off brigade road.Though the entrance to it is not grand, once you are inside it strikes you with awe. The service is at its best. I was offered a non-smoking zone with two menu books(liquor & food) of which the first one i clearly evaded.I ordered for a LAT-CHE noodles veg and it puntured my purse by 170 (145 + VAT + all TAX) Though expensive its worth the experience and i would recommend it for atleast once.

Ambience : good
Service : Excellent
Taste : good
Bottomline : not exactly one of the places to throw a grand party.

50% off ? total crap

My father used to tell me "Dont fall for any discount offer" hmmph, just now i fell for one. It was a saturday morning and i had no plans for the day. sitting with the Bangalore mirror is the best thing in life i would say. An advertisement in that attracted me immediately . Woodlands offers "50 % discount on outdoor gears" hurry i was planning to buy a woodlands for myself and this offer really made me jubiliant.

In the evening i ended up in the Woodlands store @ commercial street and browsed through the collections. cool man i found a perfect pair for me. it was love at first sight as it was exactly the way i wanted. Enquiring the cost made me to know that it would take away 2290 from my purse. And there was no discounts on it as the product on which discounts applied were kept separately in which i could not find anything similar to my pair. Deciding to go forward with it, i bought it.

The shopkeeper twitched a smile of satisfaction as i got down from the shop with a pair of shoes + woodlands shoe polish spray(175) + a brush (45) exclusively designed for my woodlands. Though i fell for the offer i would say that the shoe is worth the price :)

Rummaging thro others playlist

I dont know how many people have this habit but i find this pretty enjoyable when i start looking into people's music CD collections. It has been quite a long time since i got an excellent candidate for this. Last week i had been to subbi's house and i faced a stacked up CD collections of Ekanth,SAP,Prabu and all. I was pretty engrossed in that and least noticed what others were doing. I started playing them in the philips boom box they had.

The interesting aspect of this habit is you tend to know about new albums and new singers.The two albums that struck me are Guitar prasanna's "Be The Change" and ARR's "Bose, the Forgotten Hero". Bose had some 10 songs and 10 themes. It is really great to hear those songs.Then i also had my hands on "Pray for me Brother" DVD and CD.After those enconters i watched the Raiders of the Last Ark, an Indiana Jones Trivia.

With the Harry potter's "Order of the Phoenix " film out in the theatres we are planning to watch it next weekend. COming to the "Deathly Hollows" i have not yet decided as whether to proceed on to buy a book or to wait a little longer. only time would tell.

Emacs vs Vi

Oh god!!!! not another flame war. Today as a part of training session seminar i took emacs and as usual it ended in a flame war. very particular in not degrading any other editors during my session and giving out the salient features of Emacs itself lead to this.

Once started would i leave it so easily??? no way man. its a crusade from the chruch of emacs headed by me. I started of protesting vehemently. The moderators atlast put an end to it and asked us to come up with a list of differences between them some time later.

many links speaks in volume about the differences. but the below one is really funny.

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/12/04/0326236

An anecdote in my life

Accustoming myself to the new city has been the chore that i have been doing for the second time in my life. i am almost settled after some 3 weeks in Bangalore. i like the Bangalore times and Bangalore mirror newspaper.It has the right mix of stuffs i need. The night lights in Residency, brigade and MG road would attract anyone.

After many bumps with autowallahs who cheating me, i memorized the map of Bangalore so that i know the route that i am taken through in auto. These days i am even showing directions to the autowallahs :)

Yesterday one thing happened.i was in majestic to board the bus back to home.I was on the 17th platform waiting for any 300 and above number buses which passes through my house. to my dismay only two digit number buses whizzed past me(basically 2 dig buses are internal buses and 300+ are sub urban buses) normally those buses wont come on 17th platform. i made sure i was on the right platform. i waited for some 15 minutes only to realize later that i have to turn around to view the predominant 333 HAL bus waiting in the bay for someone to get in. what a fool i have been to miss all the buses just behind my back. Then i boarded a 317 and reached home. Such errors are part of human and are never to leave.

Two inspiring films

With the people and even Ad-film makers paying little attention to the Indian Cricket Stars after the fall of the so called Goliath batting lineup of the indian team to the david bowling queue of the Bangladesh cheaply in the infamous World Cup 2007, There is an upbeat enthusiasam in the dressing rooms of other sports in india.People of the cricket crazy nation have turned their heads to other sports these days. The Indian tour to Bangladesh attracted very few and the Afro- Asian cup is being conducted in india with unbelievable quarter to half filled stands.

This being the situation around i saw two sport centric films which are worth mentioning here."The Greatest Game ever Played" is a film about Golf.This is a real life incident in the early 1900. Harry vardon considered to be the best golfer of all times is overthrown by Francis Ouimet in the US open in 1913, an amateur in Golf. Insults, humiliation and discouragement in the family circle doesnt deter Francis from winning the game. The story is woven around the theme that family linearage doesnt play a part in one's success and upliftment. In those days and even now Golf is the game of the elite society and Harry vardon and Francis Ouimet break these rules. The sportiveness of Harry strikes the pulses. The plot enlivens from the day the US open begins and Francis atlast makes it into the tournament with his puny caddie Larry.His loyalty till the end to his caddie touches the soul though he was offered paid better caddie near the end.The background score really tantalizes the tournament.

The Film #2 "Goal" is about soccer.These films are not much heard of in India. Santiago a street kid masters the game right from his childhood days and a glimpse of his game is tasted by an agent to NewCastle, an English League.Amidst protests from his father and through his grandmother's benevolence Santiago hardly makes the trip from california to London. In the Testing session Santiago fails to impress the league manager but in his second and final attempt he does that. Though he makes it into the team he is really made to sweat it out in the training and practice sessions without being given a chance to play. Finally chance comes and he plays a vital role in the games one and only goal thus taking the league to the final match against liverpool.As usual disaster strikes and his father dies and decides to play the game than to travel as nothing could be done.In the match against liverpool NC strikes early with one goal and liverpool strikes back with 2 goals.Santiago and his teammate works out a strategy and scores one goal each in the final minutes to get past liverpool thus qualifying for the next biggest tournament. NC hasnt made that before.Santiago changes his life path and the way the film is taken really speaks in volume about the research done by the director to exactly portray the match as it is.

The Field,the crowd,the jersy,the dressing room and each and every thing makes one feel that we are watching a game than a film.i wonder how they made it. The appearance of David Becham, Zinedine Zidane and two other colossus of soccer really takes one with surprise.Believe me these two films kept me in tenderhooks till the end not because of the action or animation or grandeur but because of the solid suspenseful storyline. Wish i know to play these two games.Dont miss these films for anything.

Travel quelled the Tantrums

I had not vacated my room in madurai by june 1st so before doing that myself and my parents went to kodaikanal, palani and while returning came to madurai and vacated the room. The ascend to Kodaikanal by the road devised by the Englishmen with just two hair pin bends was smooth. I searched the net for info about kodaikanal and got quite a few.Kodaikanal history dates back to 14th century. By the 18th century the people fled to kodai hills from palani to thwart Tipu sultan from conquering. It was in 1845 that the U.S missionaries and Englishmen actually thought of setting this place as a hill station. The Britishers could not tolerate the heat in madurai during summer hence they searched for a cooler place and they found this abode 2200 metres above sea level. At that time it was just a mountain it is they who set up the artificial lake that we use for boating.Then they setup the Bryant park.It was one of the Major who brought the pine and Eucalyptus tree here. An English Enthusiast climbed the 112 metre pillar rock and planted the Cross on its top. Berijam lake was a swamp some 80 to 100 years back. They used it as a catchment area which now provides water to Periyakulam.Coakers walk along the hillside edge was found by coaker a sergeant in British army. (The pics to the right and above is that of the lake)

So much to the history of Kodaikanal. The present state of the affairs is quite different. The Princess of hills or perhaps the infrastructure could not handle the amount of people during summer. The falls view tower on the edge would give a good view of rat tail falls(dum dum).i dont know why the silver cascade din have a neat and clean base though visitors are not allowed to take bath. The Parking lot is very small and not properly setup with the municipality people charging Rs 20 without even giving a receipt evidently to hide the fact that the parking cost would be much lower.i never thought that i would travel some 180 kms to see the small Bryant park where they charged Rs 5 for nothing.Then the Pine forest was nice(pic to left). I didnot go to the Devil's kitchen (Gunna cave) as i din have much time left. The pillar rock is where the scenic beauty is great(pic below). The green valley or suicide point has a sheer drop of 500 metres which obviously one cant see as its thankfully barricated near the edge. The shops on the way to green valley is worth noting which contains stuffs ranging from yummy home made chocolates to eucalyptus oil. The Kodaikanal golf club looks great from outside especially because Trespassers are not allowed :) The really fresh carrots with leaves is what i enjoyed the most. It was raining heavily out there in the afternoon while there was scorching heat in the plains below.

My kind of advice is its not a place to just visit the important spots. Just book up with Carltons or other such high end hotels and resorts up there during july or august. It is during this time that there wont be any crowd and though the temperature would be quite low you can watch the fog hovering over the lake and below you near the coakers walk. Then doing some expedition sort of stuff with your pals would be more interesting than anything else. Especially you would not see the litter rampage done by the tourist during this time. The lake and the Park needs to be expanded cos they are designed for the small crowd that it attracted in the early 1900. A massive transformation has to take place to make it attractive in the years to come.

thanks to the highway people for devising the road from kodaikanal to palani with loads of hairpin bends also the road being in dilapidated condition for most part of the year hence its virtually untakable. what could have been just a 55 kms trip from kodai to palani through that road turned out to be a 120 Km trip through kodaikanal - Bathalagundu - sempatti - Palani.

Opal Mehta - fully algorithmic

not more than 3 minutes have passed since i finished reading the book "how opal mehta got kissed got wild and got a life". since some part of it sounds familiar in my life i wanted to make a note of it here before it gets erased from my mind by tomorrow morning. how many of my school mates would have believed that praveen would transform himself into a "take life easy" guy from being the ever studying class topper in school. surely the part of the plans that Opal does to transform is what i dont like in the story. how could i forget the day when my geography sir(Mr.Solomon) whom i regard as the best teacher that i have come across forgot his best pupil(i.e me got 98 in the geography paper that noone in the history of our school has ever obtained) but remembered the all-rounder in the school during the alumni meet. it was this incident that made me to consider marks as just yet another part of life and not on what the whole life depends upon.
The other place where the story strikes chord is in the science scholarship award. Balaji Viswanathan, Heronimous Pandian, Navanetha krishnan were the Best outgoing students in the college level. Yogaesh, Balamurugan, Senthil kumaran were the BOS for the computer science dept in the last three years.Though i had an eye on this prestigious award from the day Balaji viswanathan got it and it was me who did not even apply for the award due to one very good reason.

HairCut creates a flutter

Day before Yesterday i had my haircut at the usual joint -Galaxy Saloon - Kamarajapuram. This time i asked that guy to do a Mushroom cut. That guy dutifully did his own version of it. To be true he did a nice job. Things started falling apart when i came home. There was a clear upheavel from both my mom and dad and i tried in vain to convince them. Last time when i bought my new jeans i faced a similar situation but that time it was only from my mom. The news spread like wild fire and reached even my sister in virginia within 24 hours. Hmmm stuck up in my house i could not get a proper comment from any of my pals even. i dont think next time i would go for this mushroom as this has already created a much higher hype than i have expected.

Then comin to the films that i saw this week, its "paycheck" which has been tailormade into Krrish in Hindi. Then i saw enemy of the state.

lighter hollywood film stories finds its way thro kollywood

When murugadoss could churn up a ghazini from memento, Gowtham could make a frame by frame PachaiKili Muthucharam from Derailed & Selvaraghavan could brew up a puthupettai from city of Gods, wait!! where is the originality in storyline going?? These last 4 months of college life went especially great because my DVD librarian arun dutifully supplied me with his bundles and bundles of lighter hollywood movies from his collections. After watching those, i understood that the tamil directors prying eyes are on such films which could be made in Tamil with Tailor-made customizations for the Tamil Viewers

Not only the storylines are being remade but bits and pieces from the hollywood movies too are being inserted here and there.The fight sequence in Transporter I is cleverly simulated in Ghilli by Dharani. Even the Debutant PrabhuDeva skillfully copied the fight in B13(picture to the left) to Pokkiri. This trend is not a new one in the industry the film Vettri Vizha was inspired by the book Bourne Identity. I could not assess whether this is a healthy trend or not. But not all films are not like that. Some directors really put in their work which needs special mention.

Apart from these some really good movies like phonebooth, cellular, in pursuit of happiness doesn't get the needed acclaim in India while Spiderman and other things are Box office hits.

Nokia 5300 and ipod Nano gizmos serves the purpose

I am one among the fortunate idiot in this world to clutch my hands around two hotsellers in the market at the same time.well it was in January 15 that i swapped my 3 year old nokia 1100 for the Nokia 5300 with 256 MB microSD memory. Thanks to my pops for buying me that without even a word of giving a second thought to it. 5300 serves all the purpose that an youth expects from a phone. its sleek and trendy with its slider model though not slim. The display is cool and outwits all other similar slider models like samsung 250. due to my greed of storing more songs i had to bit compress the mp3 songs using ease audio converter :(

it was during this time my sister and brother-in-law dropped me the ipod Nano - 2 GB gizmo. i started loving it. how many of you have faced a problem that end up in cycles? here goes one. ipod needs itunes version 7 for transfering music. itunes needs Windoz sp2 edition which i dont have. i started with the sp2 patch. no use, the same old problem that every average indian would face. i gave up the idea of transfering music from my system fully.i started transfering music from my friend's system. beware of ipods they sync with only one system at a time. if you join with a new system you end up formatting the earlier songs :(

Now am using my 5300 for taking pictures.it has got a 1.3 MP camera. though not a great one it serves the purpose. Am now thinking of people who could drop me a Laptop with all these sp2 patches fixed so that i could transfer the music from my laptop to my ipod and another person who could buy me a BOSE speaker system so that i could connect my ipod to BOSE system to hear the music lavishly. could you be one of the two samaritans who could get me those?????