Google turns down my request suspecting a virus

See the snapshot



Btw had a hard time guessing the word verification. The image is so crumbled.

Will this spell the end of aquaguard monpoly

I had been cribbing about the monopolistic practices by Aquagaurd Water purifiers. It seems that Philips had listened to it. Philips India is entering the water purifier market. I hope two things will make Philips a big hit

1. The price range of their water purifiers are in the same range of Aquagaurd.
2. They sell their product through retail outlets. (So customers win here. They get cheaper maintenance)
3. Battery backup

Google's Bot is amazingly fast

Google's web crawler bot is amazingly fast. My yesterday's post on Nimishambha Temple trip has been already added to google's search index and ranks first.

Nimishambha Temple and Sangam Trip (13-May-2007)

After a long while, the remnant guys in Bangalore (myself, Nag, Gops and VK) (that's how I guess we should call ourselves after the brain-drain in our gang) thought of a get-together. I came up with the idea of lunching together, but as per the de-facto standard, Nag came with the dynamic plan of a one day picnic. The choice of place, transport, itinerary were all decided on the previous day night.

So we all stared an hour late on Sunday due to the mess-up my car created. Vk's new Indica Xeta came to our rescue. We stopped at Kamat on Mysore Road for breakfast (We made use of the buffet really well).


(Remnant Gang with the Guest of Honor Nag Jr.)


(Gops, VK with Guest of Honor Nag Jr.)


(Simian Acrobatics for the Guest of honor)


(Simian Acrobatics for the Guest of honor)

Reached our picnic spot of Nimishambha temple around noon-time. This place is near SriRangapatna en-route to Mysore. The Mysore highway SH-17 had unusual high traffic on the weekend.


(Cauvery River bank)


(Gops on way to cool off his heels)


(Nag and VK taking a dip)


(Nag and Vk discussing a shot)


(Vk and Nag fishy)

Ate lot of junk stuff (such that we can skip lunch). Unusually there was lot of crowd over the place.

Then on the way back went to Sangam.

(Confluence of three rivers)


(Winding flow)


(Another shot)


(Rocky terrain on the banks)


(Grand view of Sangam)


(Another shot)


(Nag Jr. on a pensive mood... on how to get a mallu girl)

Evening tiffin again at Kamat. Back in bangalore on time.






(End of Trip)

Game shows: People attitude

These days private TV channels are flooded with umpty number of game shows covering people in all age categories right from kids to couples. Out of these some are quite interesting like BBC's MasterMind and Star Sports Quiz. Even DD's BSNL Sports quiz is worth watching. Sun TVs "Thiruvalar Thirumathi" is for married couples and is one whole crap game show.

I am alarmed at the outwardness of the people participating in such game shows. They reveal lot of their personal things to the whole world for the take-aways they get in the shows. I hope not those holiday packages comes with no-strings attached. We the viewers never get any clue whether the people who were given the holiday packages really went for such ones.

How to connect cellphone using IrDA port

This post is based on the experience of transferring content between your cellphone and laptop using IrDA port.

Is this the latest standard?
Using IrDA port to transfer content between your cellphone and laptop is really old way. The latest way to communicate is to use bluetooth.

Then why?
But at some juncture IrDA comes in really handy. Say when your laptop doesn't have a built-in bluetooth adapter and you doesn't have an external one too. And more you are lazy to use the wired approach of connecting using USB cable.

How to?
Laptop: Dell Latitude D600
OS: Win XP
Cellphone: Sony Ericsson K700i


Firstly the Dell D600 had built-in IrDA adapter. One needs to enable them.

1. Go to BIOS setup. (Press F2 when the laptop boots up to enter the BIOS setup)
2. Press Alt+P to go the various pages in the setup program
3. Find the IrDA section in the Commuincation Ports page (I guess so)
4. If it is disabled, then enable and set to a particular COM port. I used COM2 as COM1 is used in my laptop.
5. Save and Exit the setup and boot the laptop.

Enable IrDA in your phone and place in the line-of-sight with IrDA port

Win XP had default drivers and it was able to recognize the device. From then on, it is a single click to transfer data from laptop to the cellphone and vice versa.

Recent tamil movies and my ratings

All of a sudden tamil movie buff kicked in to me and I happened to see four movies in a span of two weekends. I have given "my" fair ratings for these movies.

1. Unnale Unnale - Promising (Happened to see part of the movie and it looks pretty promising)
2. Mayakkannadi - Cheran movie, realistic approach. Average
3. Naan Avan Illai - Below average. Hopeless screenplay
4. Parattai Engira Azhagu Sundaram - Pathetic (only one word)

Online Vulnerabilities

The other day when I was having a conversation with a friend using orkut scrapbook, suddenly I realized how much personal information is left open to the world wide web. Scrapbooks are not private, anyone can read others scrapbook. If one could correlate they could get all vital information about a person.

Other way if one uses mail, there is much more confidentiality involved. Mailboxes are private. Hence the rule to delete scrapbook entries once I reply. By the way then why is there a scrapbook and what is its purpose?