AntiCorruption

When you get obsessed with rampant corruption, you really want to break free and take punitive steps against those who demand it. But being a meek person, you will never have courage and time to do so.

Now there is a non-profit NGO who helps in this. It seems that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Visit 5th Pillar

'0' Rupee note is the brain child of this org to root out the corruption.

It is raining in bangalore

Over the weekend it rained cats and dogs in bangalore. Though the pre-monsoon shower is a good one, the heavy downpour caused much misery to low-lying areas. On the Bannerghatta Road, clogged storm water drains overflowed on the road and flats with basement car parks were inundated.

News on TOI
News on Hindu

Cooking Recipe

Came across this excellent site hosting Priya Madhan's gourmet recipes. The ingredients for most of the recipes are the standard spices that are available in any home and not that you get only in a five-star hotel chef's kitchen. Last week I tried out Chettinad Pepper Chicken and turned out good.

Photos from Road trip to Erode

Some where in between Salem and Dharmapuri, where I had a small pit-stop

Thoppur Dam


The toll-gate near krishnagiri


Sunset near Hosur


Some more photos on the Flick (Tag : Road trip to Erode)

Against KPN

Gops has posted his horrifying experience with KPN travels and their sheer disgrace towards the customers.

I have already posted about my horrifying experience. There was one more, sometime back which I skipped unintentionally. I had booked tickets to Salem from Bangalore in 11:00 pm Thiruchengode bus. I was particular about this bus, since it reached Salem at the time I wanted to land there.

After reaching KPN office at Bommanahalli and waiting more than the slated time, the staff announced that the bus has arrived mentioning its registration number. When I reached the designated bus, I was told by the cleaner that bus is not heading for Thirchengode. A little later one of staff told me that the original bus has broken down and there is no alternate bus. Since I had booked only till Salem, they will put in some bus which goes via Salem. Imagine this situation in middle of the night with dependents by your side.

After waiting for a while in the pavements, I was given two seats in another VOLVO bus. All my plans got disrupted and managed to reach Salem with this horrifying incident running back on my mind all the time.

Hope Gops would succeed in teaching a lesson to KPN through customer redressal forum.

Road trip to Erode

During the long weekend, I did a road trip from Bangalore-Erode-Thiruchengode-Bangalore traveling in the gorgeous 4-lane NH-7. While the NH-7 is till Salem, I had to travel in NH-47 from there.

NH-7 is part of the North-South corridor and NH-47 is part of the Golden Quadrilateral project.
Map of the Highways in India shows the extent of coverage by these highways.

In both the highways, the work is in progress to make it 4-lane completely. The 4-lane is from Bangalore till Thoppur and then from Thumpipadi to Salem. These projects are implemented by NHAI.

A glimpse of how the highway looks (picture courtesy NHAI)

Upgrade

Had a few free cycles and thought of upgrading my blog layout. With blogger2, tools are provided to edit the template. The past option of editing the template manually is gone. Now you have widgets that you can add to your template.





Also upgraded the statcounter script, so that now I catch the referral links and visitor activities.

How to connect you laptop video output to a TV

"Necessity is the mother of invention" - by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato

No, I didn't invent anything over here. While in the process of setting up a home entertainment system, I preferred not to buy anything in haste. In India, the home entertainment portfolio is under major revamp now. LCD's and Plasma's are entering the home entertainment market in a big way. The prices of the TV's and home theater systems are crashing down.

In the meantime, to enable me watch my favorite movies, I was in need of a stop-gap solution. I thought of using my laptop as a DVD player and connecting its video-o/p to the TV. The following are the steps to connect Dell Latitude D600 laptop to Sony 29" CRT TV.

What you need?
1. Dell S-Video to Composite TV out adapter. (You get this adapter normally with the laptop)

2. Composite video cable (You can purchase one from your local electronics store)

How to connect?
1. Connect the S-Video to Composite TV out adapter in your laptop S-video output.
2. Connect one end of you composite video cable to the S-Video to Composite TV out adapter
3. Connect the other end of your composite video cable to your TV video input
4. Switch the TV to appropriate Video mode
5. Boot your laptop
6. Go to Control Panel > Display > Setting tab (Win XP OS)
7. Right click 2nd display and attach it.
8. Set the resolution and color properties. (Generally the TV supports 800x600 resolution. Sony 29" TV supported 1280x780 resolution with 32 bit Color)
9. You will see the extended desktop.
The TV screen behaves like a extended monitor. Drag the applications you want to run into the TV screen.

This way you can run movies from your laptop on to your TV screen. In order to get your audio output into your TV, you need to take the audio out from the headphone-jack in your laptop to your TV audio input.

P.S: It is imperative that you get a properly insulated composite video capable. Otherwise when you connect the power chord to your laptop, you shall get electrical noises in your video signal

Links:
Dell Documentation
HP India site documentation
S-Video site