Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Paritrana

The new political outfit started by five IIT alumni. They have formed the party to fight out current political stigma and bane suffered by our country under the selfish politicians. Hats off to these guys for their courageous move to clean the political system in the country and bring out relief to the suffering.

Monday, January 30, 2006

Off from tech savy world

It was a rejuvenating weekend. Took off on friday to grab a long weekend. Spent half the time at my maternal grandmother's place in a rustic village farm house amidst raffling sound of tree leaves and unheard bird sounds (which one can not have in the chaotic city life). The peaceful atmosphere kindled a lot of thoughts. When you stay calm for a while in this kind of a place you start hearing your inner voice. You could think profoundly and make critical decision in an easier way.

For the rest of the period did a lot of talking (all due the lot of thinking) leaving my parents sullen.
My dad got a TVS Star City(deluxe) bike and I did most of the test ride over the weekend. The feel of the bike resembles much like Splendor. It is as light in weight as Splendor but with more engine power. The gear shifting is in the same fashion as Splendor (shift from the traditional TVS way). Will get some pictures next time.

Monday, January 23, 2006

iLap - innovative and useful laptop stand

The other day when I was using Dell D610 laptop at home, I nearly got my lap burnt due to excessive heat emitted from the laptop. I was twiddling as I could not sit with the laptop supported at my lap. I was going through a Apple's site on their Mac Products guide when I saw their accessory laptop stand for Mac books.

The product is named iLap, has innovative and thoughtful features considering the heat dissipation and ergonomics factor.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Spruced Up - Part 2

Added a new header image with link to my blog mainpage. Moved out blog description to the sidebar. Seems pretty neat now!

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Spruced Up!

For those reading this post through RSS aggregators, I have spruced up the face of this blog.
The idea behind this page layout is to display post contents in a broad space and stick to the conventional method of displaying profile and links on the right side of the page. This mostly involved hacking a bit of CSS from the Minima template.

It is not over yet. Some more sprucing up is on the anvil.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Necessity is the mother of invention

The other day, myself and krish were talking about designing a helmet with built-in head-phone in it. This will enable us to listen to songs in our mp3 player while commuting to office. The conventional ear-phone get away when you wear the helmet.

I am quiet surprised when another guy in the blogsphere shared the same idea.

Friday, January 13, 2006

Dublin too crumbles in traffic

I was interacting with an Irish person from Dublin. He was complaining about traffic snarls in Dublin. The pictures shown in the link doesn't really do justice. In my perspective, dublin traffic is very less compared to bangalore.

These infrastructure problems in upcoming cities seems to be common. But how well and quickly the city copes up is to be watched.

Infy has pointed out that all its expansion for 2006 would take place out of bangalore and consultants have predicted that bangalore will loose its percentage of expansion. Will ever bangalore political honchos pickup these clues.

Monday, January 09, 2006

WinXP login screen titbit

Have you ever noticed WinXP login screen prompting Caps Lock turned on for your password field?

It is a nice thoughtful titbit that WinXP has provided. Most of the time you unlock and just type in your password without noticing that Caps is on and get your password denied. After trying couple of times you get to notice that Caps is ON. Even you can end up in your account being locked. All these hassles are prevent by this little titbit.

See how a small feature improves usability.

Friday, January 06, 2006

Spam

Most email systems ardently fight to protect your inbox from spams. AOL reported last year that it has blocked half-trillion spams over the year. Out of these, majority of the spams are porn related or sexually suggestive. Though the article suggests that such sexually suggestive spams took a tumble last year, I am not still spared.



I am more conservative in revealing my gmail address. I give out only to legitimate sites/person so that I would not end up using it as a junk box. Still I get close to 5 spam mails per day and out of which at least one in sexually suggestive.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Got my camera back

Just got it repaired back. After an arduous wait of over 2 months, I got my Canon Powershot A70 camera returned from Canon Service. As I reported earlier (link to my earlier post) it was down with the CCD manufacturing defect.

Though I had to wait for a long time, I am quiet satisfied with the service. The Canon center representative was approachable and cooperative. They gave me the status every now and then. Even the delay was attributed to CCD out off stock as there was a large number of turnout for the CCD replacement.

I haven't tested the camera completely, but took a couple of shots at the service center to confirm that it is working. I am quiet pleased with the handling too. No scratches or rough handling.

The crux of this exercise is that I haven't spent a penny from my pocket, everything is taken care by the Canon Service. This is an exemplary of QoS.

Traffic woes back in form

In the last two weeks of december, the traffic woes has come down drastically as majority of the people has gone out for vacation. This trend points us how much tourism industry is picking up in India. With good pay checks and LTA (Leave Travel Allowance) at their disposal most of the IT employed people look for lucrative offers from tourism sponsored states. As well it symbolizes that the western life style is picking up.

With vacation coming to end, the traffic woes are back in form. You could see bumper to bumper traffic in all signals. Commuting is a pain in bangalore.