Some interesting links

Just discovered some interesting links

What Makes You Fancy Someone?

Are You Born Brainy?

BBC - Science & Nature

Corporate Personality Test

Yet another test to see me from the other side.

My score and comments below,

Your score: 38

Others see you as sensible, cautious, careful & practical. They see you as clever, gifted, or talented, but modest... Not a person who makes friends too quickly or easily, but someone who's extremely loyal to friends you do make and who expect the same loyalty in return. Those who really get to know you realize it takes a lot to shake your trust in your friends, but equally that it takes you a long time to get over it if that trust is ever broken.

The Search Engine Experiment

Find out which search engine offers the most relevant results. Google seems to offer the best results for me, or, is it that years of googling has my quering style in advantage to google?

Schloß Schönbrunn

The Schönbrunn is the first place to be visited while in Vienna, It is the summer residence of the habsburg dynasty.

Hofburg palace

Hofburg is the winter residence of the habsburg dynasty. The picture gallery here now has a collection of various austrian, italian and other europian style paintings. There is also an exhibition of egyptian and roman antiques.

In Vienna

Reached Vienna after 12 hours journey. It is the first time I am flying but my other two friends, Ram and Rajesh, accompanying me had already flown several times so I was very comfortable and had no difficulties. Started from home at 0030 IST. The flight, Emirates, to Dubai was at 0415 IST. All the formalities were completed smoothly. The emigration officer forgot to stamp the passport but we found that out before the security check and got it stamped. "The 101 dalmatians" kept me hooked up to the TV well for a major part of the 4hrs journey. We took some photos at the Dubai airport and boarded the connecting flight to Vienna.


It was a 6 hrs journey from Dubai to Vienna which was completed without any events. We landed on time at 1310 local time(GMT+1hr).We took a Taxi to the hotel at Wiener Straße and took rest the whole evening.

Google - Beyond searching

I am an ardent Google fan. It has been lovely watching Mr. Google grow from being a search engine to a multifaceted personality. Google has become a part of my life and every day I eagerly watch out for a new google idea. Google, gmail, google groups, google alerts, google personal home, google search history, google maps, blogger, google suggest, and many more.

Today, this post has really shown the world, where Google stands now.
tag: {google}

Up and working

Finally the PC is up and working today but not without problems. The service engineer came in the morning with a PCI ethernet card. The motherboard which was previously given as replacement had problems in connectivity. This wasn't the first time i am getting a replacement board. Right from the begining I am facing problems with this board. This one is the third.

My main reason for staying with this board is because of its fairly good linux compatibility. This one is a gigabyte GAK8VM800 motherboard based on the via K8VM800 chipset. It has a VT6420 SATA raid controller, via 82xx audio controller, Realtec 8139 on board ethernet, and via 82xx USB controller - all of which are well supported in linux. The only downside is the onboard S3 unichrome graphics controller which doesn't have linux drivers yet but the vesa drivers serves me very well for my non-graphics intensive work.
tag: {hardware} {experience} {linux}

Shattered plans

Beside other things, my plans to develop a zero configuration and easy to use wiki was severely affected due to the said problem in the earlier post.

Other thing being affected is my commitment to regularly post on this blog.
tag: {plans}

Disaster has struck

It was july 17, I turned on the PC and was reading mails, suddenly it stopped responding. Restarted it only to find it wouldn't boot. Called the Xeroxtronics helpdesk the next day. The service engineers took the Motherboard and the processor on 19th for diagnosis. The doubt was on the motherboard which had problems earlier also and was fixed. Last time they took the mother board for a repair it was almost a month before they returned it to me. This time I didn't want the same response and requested them to fix the problem at the earliest. But to my despair, this time too the response wasn't any different. Its more than 20 days now and still no information when the pc will be restored. I have made more than 15 calls now. Whenever I call, the response is the same, "Sir, innum rendu naal-la unga motherboard redyagidum", all those promised dates passed but the motherboard wasn't restored. Some days passed and they started a new story, that a new motherboard will be restored. This was to reach me last week but it didn't. When I called them last saturday the status was that the problem was not in the motherboard but with the processor, They promised to restore the pc by this tuesday. But this too didn't happen. When I called up, they had no reply. Only thing they can say is "romba, romba sorry sir(very, very sorry sir)". When I called them today, They have promised to restore it by tomorrow.

I am currently not using this pc for any critical jobs. But i had some plans for this month and this totally irresponsible behaviour of these people at Xeroxtronics had shattered them all. It's not the long delay but the lack of commitment is what makes me tighten my fists.
tag: {experience} {consumer}

Joined Thuligal

Just subscribed to the Thuligal groups at yahoogroups. This is an initiative taken by the AITEC students for welfare activities. From a first look at the website, I should say that this is very well organized and professional.
Quoting from the home page: "THIS GROUP IS CREATED TO GENERATE WELFARE FUND THROUGH WHICH ORPHANS CAN BE BENIFITED..... THUS INTIATING OUR FIRST STEP TOWARDS SERVING OUR COMMUNITY."
tag: {society}

Writing skills

Lately, I have bee doing less writing. Already, I am using the desktop dictionary extensively. If the same continues, then it will not be long before I forget a language. I remember having read an article on importance of writing skill for any programmer and how important the documentation is. Planned to post regularly starting today. Hoping to see a better language in the days ahead...
tag: {language} {english}

Work, Taste & Me

I hate people without a taste. You should have a passion in everything you do. Don't do what you don't feel like doing. For long, I was misguided and told that the success of a task is in completing the task. Now after these many years when I look back, I realize that the success actually lies in _doing_ things and not in completing it. This may sound strange but this is what works for me and is true for me. When people usualy set goals it is always about completing something within a time frame. After this the entire focus turns to the completion point and the mind throws you down and dreams about that day when you will be completing the task. The task in hand becomes less important at this point. Both mind and body marches towards the completion through the shortest available route.

tag: {taste} {me-me} {work} {philosophy}

Anniyan and 8 of us

Eight of us from SCM decided to watch the evening show of the much awaited film Anniyan. The booking was done yesterday over phone. We were all sitting in Vichu's car by 1800hrs and were ready for the drive through ECR to Mayajaal. It was a cool drive and arrived almost on time for the 1830 show.

This is my first visit to Mayajaal. The pleasant climate added colour to the already nice environment at Mayajaal. The film, with the right mix of all the ingredients, is a really nice one - the best i've ever watched. The first half was light and comical, it was a laughing riot with me almost splitting in to pieces. The second half was thrilling. The end is beautiful.

We drove back with a lot of funny remarks and every one bursting into laughter. We stopped at woodlands and had a nice dinner. A wonderful outing altogether.

tag: {experience} {fun}

New blogger hack

I'd like to be able to label each of the posts. Seems there is no option available yet on blogger. For now, using an invisible tag at the end of each post to label it - not the best idea, though, but should make searching the blog easier.

Here are the list of tags:
* blogger
* consumer
* english
* experience
* fun
* hack
* hardware
* language
* linux
* my-art
* me-me
* philosophy
* plans
* tag-list
* taste
* tech
* travel
* work
* society
tag: {blogger} {hack} {tag-list}

New look blog

Finally managed to pull some time to modify the blog template. Now it looks a lot more simpler and neat.
tag: {work} {tech}

Swimming at last

Atlast went for a swim in the tidel park pool today. Years before I used to wait for holidays to go for a swim in a nearby pond. Also when the well in front of the house is filled during rain, It was a time for celebration. Todays swim was greatly refreshing. Planned to go daily. Let me see how it goes.
tag: {experience}

Piggy

hope you identify this creature - created with gimp/mouse/my hand
tag: {my-art}

My Boy

I made this one with Gimp. Planning to do some more
learning (drawsketch.about.com).
Drawing is my long time hobby, though I have not learnt it formally.
tag: {my-art}

Adhanda, Idhanda Tux

Hehe my first try with Gimp.

tag: {my-art}