Carvings

Bliss of Solitude

2010-06-14T09:39:00.000+05:30

For oft, when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude

extracted from Daffodils by William Wordsworth

"Blog this" - flickr button

2010-06-09T20:37:00.000+05:30

For all the photography enthusiast out there, there is a compelling feature in flickr that will be quite useful for frequent up-loaders. Whenever I upload a photo on flickr, I usually share it with my friends by copying the URL and tweeting it from my twitter client. Perhaps this is the most conventional way and few people I know, also do the same thing. But, there is this button called "Blog this" which can make this a facile job. A first look at this button may be slightly misleading as it says blog this. But this can actually be configured to be used with many things not leaving twitter. Follow the following steps and your done.

Steps:

1. Click on
2. First time users have to configure with twitter or other blogging sites like blogger or wordpress. To configure with twitter, just click on "do that now". Select twitter from the drop down selection box. Authorize flickr to use twitter by clicking "Go to twitter to authorize". Enter your credentials with twitter and click "Allow". You'll be redirected back to flickr. Your done with the configuration.
3. Once this is done, now you can click on "blog this" button, select twitter and tweet your photo right from flickr.

Upload a picture and a couple of clicks and there you go your art have already become the talk of the town.

Web Numbr

2010-06-03T15:42:00.000+05:30

Recently, I came across this site/service called Web Numbr which was quite interesting and cool enough to share it. Web Numbr is a service which can be used to track any numbers in the web and plot graph over the same. For example, you can track the stock quote of particular company say YHOO, plot a graph on the same data and all in 3 simple steps. First login with any Open ID. Second, Enter the URL of the page which contains the data you want. And as the last step, select the element on the page which has the number you want. You are done by now. You can also set the polling frequency. I started experimenting with it and created a graph for the number of followers for Sachin Tendulkar in Twitter.

Number of followers for Sachin Tendulkar

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Graph showing the follower count of Sachin Tendulkar on twitter

Dad

2010-05-28T12:13:00.000+05:30

It was not so long that I promised myself not to use facebook frequently. Breaking that I do occasionally log on to facebook to look into the photos updated by my friends or FOF.

Last weekend out of my boredom logged on to facebook and clicked the photos tab. I could see lot of photos with people wearing yellow robes. They were all my juniors who had updated their graduation day pictures. I felt poignant about my graduation day. Dad was there beside me during my graduation, but now he is no more. He had always been my best friend. I still remember the day of admission where we had to perambulate the entire campus. He became tired, unable to walk but still continued to slog for my own sake. He has done countless little things for me. Today, I am comfortably placed in life. I can live independently. Though he is not with me anymore, his memories will stay in my heart forever. Love you dad...

Advertising today - My views

2010-04-29T12:57:00.000+05:30

For all of you who have pondered about the evolution of advertising, would have definitely startled about its advancements. Advertising is a vital part of any business and this had been true for ages. Its started just as simple as name boards, bill boards and pamphlets. Today it has scaled beyond imagination as radio jingles, eye-catchy commercials TV ads, display and text ads on the Internet. Perhaps for all these advertisements, the advertiser has to pay. Not all but few keen observer would have surely noticed that in recent time two different kinds of advertising strategies have become more common. The first one is "controversy" and the second one is what is called "viral advertising". Controversies are common marketing strategies for cinema. Films without controversies are unlikely these days. "My name is Khan" and "kites" are some good examples for this type of advertising. Viral advertising is very common in social networking sites like twitter or facebook. Advertiser ask people to like or retweet(RT) some status or tweets which end up your friends, friends of friends (FOF) and the whole network doing it. We unconsciously become prey to such advertising strategies.

I want to write something....

2010-03-04T11:50:00.000+05:30

My blog usually frames things I like and things happening around me. Though I have not written anything for a considerable period of time, it doesn't mean nothing great has happened in my life but only means that a lot of things are happening that I don't get time to update. The previous statement only shows that the writer is lazy. I always consider the phrase "no time" to be a diplomatic way of saying "I'm just lazy".
Lot of things happening in my life. I always have a passion for traveling. And it happened that I went on a pilgrimage to the holy land visiting Jordan, Israel, Palestine and Egypt. It was a great trip and I had a wonderful chance seeing and learning, an entirely different mosaic of cultures and heritage. Place of Birth of Jesus, the sepulcher of Jesus, the port of Haifa, Pyramids and the River Nile are some of the places I visited and it will be in my memories forever.

Life is a roller coster. Things are being tough after returning to Mother India due to multiple personal reasons. Still, I know life has to go on. Presently, I am engaging myself in things just to keep me busy and shed my laziness. Lot more things happening, will update in coming posts. Keep me subscribed :)

Why work life is important?

2009-10-26T10:40:00.000+05:30

These days, I have started interacting a lot with my team mates. This has helped me learn about things around me in a different perspective.. Last week we had gone for a team movie.. The most interesting part was the hot discussions that we had, rather than the movie itself. Our discussions mainly revolved around companies, our work, managers and many more.

One of my team mate, A genius I say, shared his thoughts about,"why he considers his work life in Y! important.."
He had worked for many big names.. such as Intel R&D,Microsoft and Oracle!! He was not quite satisfied with the work in all these places and finally landed up in my team!! I am sure, he would have got a really heavy pay cheque and good benefits in all these companies.. Curious to know what might have disappointed him
I started a conversation with him.. His reply was really intersting.. " Life is not all about pay cheque.. Draw a simple gantt chart for ur life.. Color all the time you sleep in a day, say 8 hours a day thats about 1/3rd of a day. Another 3 to 5 hours for travel and food. With 12 hrs or so remaining 8hrs to 10hrs we spend in office which is major part of the time, we usefully spend in a day. I want this time to be challenging, real value adding and interesting. I really enjoy when I write code that incorporate rich algorithms and those which are revenue impacting."

During this tough period of Y!, I was worrying about my job security.. I was questioning myself about why I should I have to put my heart and soul into a project,which will be scrapped soon.. I thought all my work was in vain!!.. But now I realize, I am taking home lot of experiences.. Technical expertise, how to handle a crisis and lot of other stuff.. His thoughts were really inspiring.. It gave a lot of meaning to the work I do. His thoughts motivates me to work harder and bring meaning to the time I spend in office. Happy to work with him!! Cheers to u man!! U changed my life in a short drive!!

Are all KPN Buses safe to travel?

2009-08-25T11:57:00.000+05:30

Recently I happened to travel from Karaikudi, Tamilnadu to Bangalore in KPN travels. The bus started from karaikudi around 8:30 pm. The journey looked smooth in the beginning. But around 12:15 am the bus stopped in the middle of some deserted place. The engine was still on. There was nothing around except few trees. The only thing we could see is a railway gate far away. To start with I felt that it was OK because stopping in the middle was common in KPN buses. 45 mins had passed away but the bus was still there. I felt something was wrong and told my friend Vignesh to check what was happening. He went and tried to open the cabin door, It was locked. He banged twice on the door but nothing was happening. Then, he came back to his seat. We decided to wait for another 15 mins. Most of the people in the bus were sleeping only few thought something was wrong but were still hesitant to find out what it was? Only one lady in the front got up and started banging the cabin door from where there was no reply. Looking at this me and Vignesh felt something is really wrong. We started banging the door hard. At last the cleaner guy opened the door. He looked so tired and sleepy, he dint even know that the bus was on a halt. Further to our surprise we found the driver sleeping on the seat. We tried to wake him but failed. We realized that the driver and the cleaner were drunk. We dint know what to do for a while. Then we called up the KPN customer care. They wanted to talk to the driver who we could not even wake up.
Meanwhile 2 people on a bike where passing by. We stopped them to find out the place where we were. We were shaken when they told that they saw the driver in a bar in Karaikudi. The 2 people woke up the driver. The first thing the driver said was
"This is not my bus and I dont know who you people are".
We were shocked to hear this. Then, people told to switch the engine off, for which the driver replied its off only. We pour water on the drivers face. The KPN customer care told to somehow manage till Salem with the drunken driver and then we will provide an alternate driver. It was a 3hrs journey from that place to Salem. We had no choice, we decided to keep an eye on the driver while he was driving. We reached Salem safely. The KPN authorities denied an alternate driver as they stated the drunk driver has brought us safely till Salem. We were not in a position to argue as many people wanted to reach Bangalore soon. Then we traveled with so much fear. The bus stopped in Adayar Anandha Bhavan near Krishnagiri. We got another driver there. Then, at last we reached Bangalore safe around 9:45am. The bus was late by 3 hours. It was a dramatic experience. The only thing the KPN authorities did was to call every 2hours asking where the bus was.

August - Month of Birthdays

2009-08-07T12:09:00.001+05:30

This is August and the month of Birthdays has already begun. There are 9 birthdays from my class, 2 seniors as far as I know and a school friend celebrating their birthdays in this very month. And putting a little mathematics into it its 1 birthday every 3 days. There will be bunch of mail threads flooding into my mail box. Hope there will be few parties too. Gonna have a exciting month..

My Life @ Present

2009-07-17T12:51:00.000+05:30

How technology solves

2009-07-13T12:07:00.000+05:30

Recently I traveled from Erode to my home which is a small village after Dharapuram. I went in a government bus. The conductor had an electronic ticketing machine. I was watching the conductor so closely as I was quite surprised that even these buses that don't connect big cities have such technologies. As I was thinking so, I noticed the conductor checking the machine after every stop and counting the number of heads in the bus. Then, suddenly in the middle of the journey the conductor said that two people have not taken the tickets and asked them to get the tickets immediately. Nobody responded to it. Then, he asked the driver to stop the bus and asked everyone to show their tickets.And very soon, the conductor was able to track down the two people who did not purchase the tickets. It was the machine that was able to track and tell the conductor how many people were inside the bus between two stops. Traveling without a ticket has become impossible now. Thanks to the simple technology thats able to solve everyday problem.

A small story

2009-06-29T19:46:00.000+05:30

Lord Buddha used to travel to many villages preaching his philosophy along with his disciples. During their journey, they don't carry any food with them. They usually beg for food on their way and eat it. Once he and his disciple where on their way to a small village. As usual Lord Buddha asked for some food to a lady outside the village. The lady got very angry and started scolding at Buddha very badly. But Lord Buddha did not utter even a single word. He silently left the place. The disciple was very much surprised by the behavior of Buddha. He immediately asked Buddha, why he dint react and told that he should have shouted back on the lady. Now Buddha wanted to teach a lesson to his disciple. So he put his hand into his bag and took a handful of rice and gave it to the disciple. The disciple immediately received the rice in his hands. Now Buddha asked him to return the handful of rice back. The disciple gave the rice, but Buddha never lifted his hand to receive it. The disciple told Buddha to lift his and receive the rice. But Buddha did not move. Then, slowly Buddha enlightened the disciple saying "I never put anything into my heart that makes me angry or unhappy. Its always under my control to take things into my heart. I did not take into my heart what the lady scolded. And that's why I did not react". That day, the disciple learnt a beautiful lesson.

Sunfeast Majja Run 2009

2009-05-31T15:02:00.001+05:30

The twitter is so fast... as gmail goes down...

2009-05-08T15:40:00.000+05:30

Today being a friday afternoon I wanted to relax apart from my usual work at office. I wanted to check my inbox in gmail. I was logging into my account but unfortunately it showed a server error. I tried 3 or 4 times but my efforts were in vain. Immediately i wanted to find out whether gmail is down or there is some problem with my account. Now twitter was my only hope. Opened twitter searched for gmail down and to OMG i found more than 20 tweets saying gmail is down.. below is the snapshot from twitter

CAPTCHA

2009-04-17T18:37:00.000+05:30

Whats CAPTCHA? Whenever you fill an online form you come across a small image which is very not easy to read and you have to recognize and type them in the form to successfully submit the form. This is actually a CAPTCHA. The wikipedia definition says captcha is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. This is done mostly to prevent crackers to automatically run scripts to submit the online forms, thereby bring down the resources of the host. It is a kind od security service. Captchas are most common in email registration, blogs when you post comments, banking applications and other sigin features. But this is sometimes horrifying to many users because they have to recognise the text and enter them everytime. Also in some sites such as banking captchas are too difficult to read. Though they are hard to crack by text recogniton software, they frustrate the users. The user need to refresh to get another image. I have even seen images which has to be typed case sensitive and it becomes even more difficult. Arent there any other way to prevent these issues. Lets wait n watch.

Power of CSS

2009-04-14T21:33:00.000+05:30

CSS stands for cascading stylesheets. In a normal web document the HTML gives structure to the web page, Javascripts adds behaviour and CSS gives the presentation. All the three are considered to be the tri-God of the web. All the 3 together gives a powerful and amazing user experience on the web. Here is an interesting page which has the same content but different presentations. Its an wonderful example how we can seperate data from presentation.

The following is the link to the site http://www.csszengarden.com/

Something I found interesting

2009-04-14T21:24:00.000+05:30

I attended a web front end training programme recently. The trainer gave many interesting information about front end tools. During his speech he gave some interesting links. One of them was http://www.archive.org/index.php. This site which is called wayback machine was interesting because it had the snapshot of all the websites in varying time frames. Out of curiosity I tried the Yahoo! homepage. I was surprised to see the page with just hyperlinks in the year 2000. Really web 2.0 has changed the internet a lot and is changing more rapidly than anything in this world.

Welcoming Onboard

2009-03-28T12:49:00.000+05:30

There are three new comers into the entertainment club of our house. One is a home-made bowling kit, Funskool Monopoly game board and a wooden top(Pumbarum). The bowling kit is made from Tropicana twister bottles and a ball purchased from sapphire toys. We had excellent bowling time from 11pm to 12am yesterday. I had very tough competition in which i somehow managed to finish third place. Then we had a game on the monopoly board. We started the game at 12am. The game was really interesting. We never felt bored or sleepy during the course of the game. But unfortunately I had to file a bankruptcy at 3am with no money to pay rent and leave the game :( The game is real fun but you need to have some luck on the dice too.. This morning we started experimenting with the pumbarum. We were experts in the past. We showed technical expertise by dipping the rope in water to gain grip over the rope. Even though we had lack of practice in the recent past we were able to spin the top upside down :p. Hope we regain over our expertise and become professional pumbarum players by spinning it right on our palm.

To see pictures of this click here.

Flash Update: The pumbarum has started to spin awesomely in the right posture

Random Surfer

2009-02-26T22:00:00.000+05:30

In my last post i mentioned a word Random Surfer. It was purely under my subconscious mind. When I just started reading that post again, my concentration suddenly turned towards this word. Who is this Random Surfer?? It was a very familiar word to me and decided to write about it. Its gonna be a bit technical kindly excuse. Last semester in my semantic web course I had to implement a paper titled "Ranking Knowledge in Semantic Web". It was very interesting paper where i came to know about the concept behind Search Engines and the way they rank the result pages. The famous page rank algorithm used in search engines like Google is based on the Random Surfer Model. The code of the surfer is very simple. Whenever a surfer views a page he has certain probability to click a link in that page or to jump to a some other page. This is usually the famous 90-10 rule where the probability to click a link on the page is 0.9 and to jump to a random page is 0.1. The page rank will be a summation of all this probability. To sum up if a page has lot of inbound links it has the greater probability to be visited and hence has a higher page rank. In the real web this is more complex because the actual page rank will also depend upon the page rank of the page from which it has a inbound link. This will seem too complex and it is complex reallly. Imagine the graph or matrix the search engines has to maintain to establish the relationship between these pages(Thats awesome Isn't it?). They achieve this type of computing power very easily using grid computing.
Now if you are really curious and want to know the number of inbound links you have just click here and enter your blog or website and findout. To get more information on Random Surfer Model and Page Rank Calculation Click here

Random Surfing

2009-02-24T22:50:00.000+05:30

I am a Random Surfer on the net. I search on some irrelevant keywords and end up finding something else. Doing so i suddenly came across two blogs which was quite interesting to me. These two bloggers are actually singers. The first one was by Chinamayee, the singer, CEO, Blogger,Translator,TV anchor and RJ. Her Blog had lot of information about music and her careers. The next blog was from Blaaze, the rapper. It was nice reading his blog where he gives lot of information about his early life. His latest song is dedicated to the victims of Mumbai Terror Attacks. He has done this along with Prince Ali & Raqueeb Alam. The message he tells through the songs is really wonderful. I salute this person for he has used his talents in the right direction. Not many do that. To download the song Click here. Hear it and pass the message to your friends.

A Tribute to ARR

2009-02-24T22:30:00.000+05:30

Right from the days i began to listen to music, I admired AR Rahman so much. I could feel the freshness in each and every song that he has composed. He had been one of my inspiration right from my early college not for the musical talent he has but for the person he is. His early life was a tragedy, poor boy had to play keyboard for his living. But today he is on each and every part of the media around the world. He is actually the true slumdog millionaire. I am happy and glad that I gave a speech titled "From Napier Bridge to London Bridge" throwing light on the biography of this maestro in my English Skills Class in the first year of my college. I admire him for his love for the motherland and his humility "Ella pughazalum Iraivanukay". When i first heard slumdog millionaire it didnt sound that great comparing his earlier projects. Slumdog millionaire earned him 2 Oscars. But according to me 2 oscars for slumdog millionaire means he should have got more than 50 oscars for his earlier works. Rite from Roja, Lagaan, Vande Mataram, Swadesh, Range De Basanthi, Taal, Yuva and Jodha Akbar should have been given oscars. I congratulate him for the winning 2 oscars and wish him to spread love towards mankind through his music

Yahoo Search Enhancements

2009-02-14T11:34:00.000+05:30

Always I used to compare search results from google and yahoo. These are my little findings and i am not sure how many of you agree with me. When you search for some technical stuffs google seems to be more accurate in what you want. But when it comes to non-technical stuffs Yahoo tops the result. And moreover yahoo search results have many enhancements which are really useful and awesome. Many would have not be aware of this. Next time you want to get some information probably from say wikipedia, then use Yahoo search. You will get a nice cool looking preview as below.
Like this there are lot of enhancements for imdb, wikitionary, PHP tutorials and lot more. Few are enabled by default but you can add lot more from the search gallery These enhancements will be very useful and a guide to get the right information quickly. These enhancements are result of open source developement called SearchMonkey scripts. Even you can write one and it has very easy steps. Enjoy Yahoo!...

1234567890 Day

2009-02-14T11:15:00.000+05:30

Seeing the topic you might be wondering what the post is gonna be about. Everyone might be knowing that Friday the 13 is very unlucky. But this friday is a day to celebrate for another reason. On this Friday, Feb 13 at exactly 3:31:30 (PST), Unix time will equal '1234567890'. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity! It's amazing isnt it?

Open Hack Day in India

2009-02-10T15:45:00.000+05:30

Yahoo! conducts Hack Day for Hackers around the globe and now it is going to be in India for the second time. The last open hack day was conducted in 2007. Open hack day is for non-Yahoos! It is been conducted on 14th and 15th Feb at Taj Residency Hotel, Bangalore. During the Hack day you need to develop applications using Y! Services in 24hrs. Interested hackers can register here. There are also various technical talk to be held at the venue.

My Recent Chennai Trip

2009-02-10T10:10:00.000+05:30

Last weekend i had gone to Chennai to attend one of my senior Venkat's engagement with seniors, my roomie and Classmates. It was after a long time i got a chance to visit some places in Chennai. The whole two days was filled with fun and excitement. It reminded me of my old days in Chennai. The engagement was on Sunday. So, I decided to do a little bit of shopping on Saturday with my classmates. I reached Adayar where my classmates Suba and Deepthi stayed. Then, we did some shopping in Adayar. We planned to have lunch in Sanjeevani - a Ayurvedic Kerala Style Restaurant, but unfortunately we ended up being late and also due to the crowd we ended up in a ordinary restaurant nearby. We were fortunate to meet one of our senior Sethu. It was nice talking with him after a long time. Then, along with Pavi and Suba proceeded to T Nagar for a second round of shopping. The place was the same old with heavily crowded streets. We went to Saravana Stores and Pothys. We bought couple of clothes for each of us and returned home. The next day we had to get up early by 4 am since the engagement was at a place called Perambakkam 40 km away from the City. It was a very pleasant experience. Most of the time we spent pulling each other legs with special target as me. Then we played UNO with much fun. The journey was awesome with greenaries on both sides of the roads. Once we reached there we had a wonderful village style hospitality. We were given a great hospitality there only the red carpet was missing. The engagement went on well. Thanks to our photography experts Satyendra, Ragu and Satish who had been clicking all the time. Then myself, suba and Pavi went back to Adayar. There we joined Deepthi and left to Besant Nagar Beach. It was really exciting experience there. The beach sand, lot of ppl, kites flying, ballon shooting, beach volley ball etc every scene was filled with beauty. We played in the Sea waves for sometime. The large golden sun on one side and the rising moon on the other side was a awsome scene to watch. We ate fried fish at the beach which tasted heaven. Each and every moment in the beach was amazing. Then we had tasty idly, dosa and paniyaram at murugun idly shop. Since Pavi was new to the city we decided her to take her in the metro train. We also met our old friend Paul at the railway station. It was nice meeting him after a long time. Then we enjoyed the short ride in the metro train to park station. We were tight on schedule and reached the Central Railway Station on time. All together we had a small Chennai Class get together but missed Raji. We were left with nostalgic feelings of college life and missed our beloved friends. Meeting friends and sharing things after a long time is really a pleasant experience and these fun and sentiment filled moments will be cherished forever.

Dubai - A Magical City

2009-02-06T15:56:00.000+05:30

Most of them would have heard lot about the city Dubai. The word is so common that we come across it more frequently. People can never forget the Vadivelu Jokes such as Hello!! Dubaaai ah? and Vivekananda theyru. Recently I happened to visit this place. It was about 14 long years I had been to this place. Though I was too young to remember, It was obviously clear that the growth the city has undergone is unbelievable.
Dubai as a city has very scarce resource of oil. The Ruler of the city has realized this and started transforming the city into a wonderful tourist destination. Unlike other Arab countries Dubai does not have a very strict Muslim culture. The expats contribute about 80% of the population and are from different parts of the world. Rich people around the globe such as tennis players, football players, actor, actress and business people own a apartments with a private beach. They spend their holidays there. The city has a really become a center for real estates.
My days in Dubai was really memorable so i would like to share the must see places in Dubai. Touring Dubai is relatively cheaper. The following are some of the best places to see.
The Beaches and Creekside
Dubai is known for its beaches. Despite having a minimum strip of beaches they have made artificial Islands and cut lands for beaches. The Jumeirah beach is a public beach with a view of the world famous 7 star Hotel Burj Al Arab. Opposite to that there are parks which are good place for relaxation.

Dubai is divided into two sides by a artificial sea water channel as Bur Dubai and Dubai. On the bank of this channel is the creekside where there are lot of cruises. You can sail in the cruise along withdinner, dance and rocking arabian music. There are lot of boat service to cross the channel which poor people use even today.Jumeirah Beach

Creekside

Shopping Malls.
There are lot of huge shopping malls in dubai. Mostly suited for window shopping. The most famous is the Mall of the Emirates. It has the largest artificial skiing arena which has a height of a three storey building. The next is the Dubai Mall. It is the largest mall in the world. The world tallest building, Burj Dubai is a part of this mall. Once finished people can freely visit to the 144th floor and be at the tallest manmade structure in the world. There is a very big aquarium in the center of the mall. There are lot of rare fishes ranging from big size sharks and small fishes. You can see Shark Feeding by divers twice a day.
Never miss Ibanbatuta Mall. I liked it very much for its architecture. It features different cultures of the world lije chinese, egyptians etc. Actually Iban batuta is a traveller and this mall features the places he visited. There are large boats and ancient market place like structures inside. The other malls in Dubai include Outlet Mall and Dragon Mart. You get only chinese products in Dragon mart.

Mall Of the Emirates (backdrop : Skii Dubai)

Artificial Islands
Palm Jumierah is the largest man made Island in the shape of a Palm tree. The Island is fully self contained with schools, apartments, hotels and recreation center. There is a underwater tunnel to connect to the cresent of the Island. Once you reach there. You can see the magnificent Atlantis Hotel. Lulu Island is another man made Island situated in Abu Dhabi. It has rafting on speed boats, desert scooters and fresh water pools. Never miss these Islands if u go to Dubai.
Shiekh Zayed Road
All the skyscrapers in Dubai is strictly concentrated in and around the Shiekh Zayed Road so never miss this road. I fortunately was able to be at level 79 of a building and snapped few pics of this road. Adjacent to this building was the Burj Dubai, The tallest building in the world. When you come along the road you can see lot of car showrooms all ranging from Ferari, Mercedes,Volskwagon,Bentley,GT, BMW to Toyoto, Hyundai and Nissan.
Desert Safari.
You must never miss desert safari if you go to Dubai. Its a event which starts in the evening and ends with the dinner. They take you through a muddy desert which would be very thrilling. They stop for the view of the sunset in the evening and then halt at a camp at the center of the desert. There you can go for camel ride, wear traditional Arab dresses and apply mehandi. They have traditional pipe for smoking called See-Shaw. Liquor is also supplied and heavy non vegetarian dinner with Barbeque, Kabab and Deserts. The highlight of the event is the famous belly dance for about 30 mins.

Apart from all this places you can see lot of high-end cars. There the minimum speed ois 80 km/hr. Even i experienced a speed of 180km/hr and cars overtaking our car in that speed. All together it was a pleasant experience.

Resuscitation of my Blog

2009-01-19T18:03:00.000+05:30

I started writing blog during my 7th semester internship at Intel. But coming back to college after the the internship I could not continue my blogging. Now coming back to the corporate life. I decided to give a restart to my blogging. Also i would like to thank my senior Vijesh for encouraging me to start over again through his posts. As i was in a deep thought of what to write, I decided to start with my sweet memories of last year. So, I would begin with those in my coming posts. Leaving you all with a tag "Coming Soon"

One love

2007-07-31T15:05:00.000+05:30

Reading the title "One Love" many people would be guessing what i am going to write about. I'm a die hard fan of AR Rahman not only for his music, but even for his attitude which i feel is very important in everyone's career. His album "Vande Mataram" which was released for the 5oth year of Independance shows his great love for his motherland. The subsequent year he created a new version of our national anthem "Jana gana mana". It was sung by many famous singers. Now the recent one is "One Love" an album with the one song in 6 different languages Tamil, Hindi. Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Bengali. This song commemorates Taj Mahal and what it stands for. The song is all about love and it is aimed at bringing the Taj Mahal into the 7 new wonders of the world. While i was enjoying this song for a while. I got a mail that turned my attention towards it. It stated that Taj Mahal was not actually built by Shah Jahan for Mumtaz. The mail with the subject "Da vinci style - Hidden Truths abt Taj Mahal !" told that Taj Mahal was an ancient Shiva Temple which was got by Shah Jahan from the king of Jaipur. It portraited many pictures and presented proofs that it should be an Hindu temple and been built before the period of Shah jahan. To throw more light, read this. But to me whether its Shiva Temple or Tomb, whenever i hear the name it symbolizes "True Love". I read these lines some where " A girl tells to her lover that i'm ready to die if you would built such a beautiful building for me after seeing the Taj Mahal". Since i have never visited Taj Mahal, the eagerness to see it has increased. Will update my views once i visit it.

Will Microsoft 'Gatineau' be a competition for Google Analytics??

2007-07-24T08:35:00.000+05:30

Microsoft and Google have become best competitors in the software market. While the first concentrates more on desktop business, the other has captured the Web. Now both of them have come to a stage where each of them wants to enter into the others domain. Since Web based products are gaining popularity these days with Google introducing most innovative products such as spreadsheets and documents on the web, Microsoft also wants to dominate the Web. Their most recent strategy was leaked in the net with some screen shots. It is called 'Gatineau', a analytics tool like the Google analytics. The beta is expected to be available this summer. It is further reported that Microsoft will use live Id's (formerly Microsoft Passport) profiles in order to get the demographic data such as age and gender. Will this work out is a big question?? Will it be able to take the share out from Google.. Lets wait and see.

To know more about this click here.

My First Team Outing...

2007-06-19T10:36:00.000+05:30

I work for the CSE Team of TMG group @ Intel. It is one of the most fun loving team in Intel. team outings are arranged for each quarterly. Since I joined Intel a month ago, it was my first team outing. We went to an eco-friendly resort called Our Native Village on 15th June, the very day Sivaji was released. It is about 40kms from the city. We were 17 people in number and we went in a cab. By no surprise, we were talking mostly about the movie Sivaji. Each one shared their bit of information with others. The most interesting part of the travel was when we watched the song chennai senthamzhil from M.Kumaran s/o Mahalakshmi which had subtitles in English. We enjoyed the funny translation like Oh banana for neynthrpalzham.. We reached there by 10am. We were given a warm welcome there. They invited us into the resort with a glass of juice which tasted like jaggery water. It taste good. Then we went around the resort seeing the art works around everything had a village touch. There was a eco-friendly swimming pool with frogs swimming around. Oh! God..how could people swim in that????
The Village Olympics:
Then we started to play village olympics.. Blinking... Cool buddy!!! These are some "veera vilayatu" like Undigol (Catapault), Goli, Gilli Dhanda, Pumbarom (Top), Kite Flying etc.. It was all fun.. All these reminded of my childhood days where i used to hang around with slum boys to play all these.. But the poor thing is i dont remember any of these games.
Bullock Cart Riding.
We had a bullock cart riding where we went a around in a single bullock cart.. It was real fun though the sun was vertical above. It was so funny to hear one of my team mate holding the rope and telling "Hogthavu basva" which in kannada means "Go Cow". Then we played some board games such as Chess, Ludo and carom. The ludo game was really boring with all the four not getting a six on the dice to get the coin out of the house. Then we had lunch in village style.. the spoons and the dishes were made in wood and coconut shell.
Potters shaping life.
The post lunch session was the most interesting one. We were thought how to make pots.. Each one made a pot for them and had it as an memento. I made a small flower vase kind of thing.. I liked it so much.. The day was really exciting for me..

Its Our Internship

2007-06-12T15:07:00.000+05:30

We are students of PSG TECH, Coimbatore doing MSc(Software Engineering) a 5 year integrated course belonging to the 2004-2009 batch. We are really lucky to be a part of this great institution and this course. We are 38 in number and we join hands in every endeavor. We have 2 internship in our curriculum, 1st at 7th semester and the 2nd at 10th semester. We do these internship in companies so that we get a very good industrial experience. This is considered to be one of the strengths of our course. Usually getting into big companies is not a easy task and we people work very hard for it since we have to attend interviews in order to enter into these companies. My internship experience was amazing and i am gonna share it with you. My internship preparation started 6 months before the actual internship during the 5th semester holidays. Though not very serious i started collecting materials for the interviews and began reading some good books in computer science. I didn't have any dream company as such but i had one thing in my mind to get into the first company because it relieves a lot of pressure. Slowly as the days passed, we had special classes conducted by us revising important topics and the real fire of internship started. We dont attend regular classes properly stating we need to prepare for interviews. Since i don't have good memory i can't reproduce the days of the interviews. The first company that had its interview(telephonic) was Google Hyderabad, the king that rules the web. Fortunately or Unfortunately i could not attend the interview because only the first 4 ranks were called and i was the 7th in class. 2 people got selected. The next company was Intel. I got into intel along with 10 others. Then came Goldmansachs, it was a finance based company. 2 people were selected in it. Then it was OAT systems, a company which sets standards in RFID. 2 people were selected in it. Then again it was Intel for another requirement. This time it was only 1. Then, we had a company named interchain Solutions with 4 guys to go into it. It was a startup company, started by our senior Vishnu. The technology they are working on is really amazing. They work on a product called GPSWatch which is really a great. Next it was Kuliza with two girls. Their product is like a social network group based on GPS. Then came Ver se' Innovation with 3 people. They work on different kinds of search engines. We have 3 people in CTS Chennai. 6 people got into Cordys, Hyderabad and 1 is doing in college and other got into a company called omnigate, chennai.
Some of the exiting features of our Internship are as follows.

Most number of companies ever. -10 companies.
Most number of first time companies - 7 companies
Most number of startup companies-3 companies
Most innovative RFID technology- OATSystems
Most number of geographical locations -4 places (Coimbatore, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad)
Highest stipend -25k (Google)
Highest average stipend - 13k
First time to have 8 people in Hyderabad

Cool Song

2007-06-12T14:12:00.000+05:30

I am fond of reading blogs than writing them. I feel wonderful when many people pen down them very nicely. One of my most frequently read blog is from my senior vijesh. I am a constant reader of his blog. Very recently i read a post about this song. I liked it so much and wanted to have it in my blog. I wanna share it with you people.. Guys its really really cool. Enjoy the song

The lyrics also is fantastic.. I love it so much.. here goes the lyrics

 I walk a lonely road
 The only one that I have ever known
 Don't know where it goes
 But it's home to me and I walk alone
 
 I walk this empty street
 On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
 Where the city sleeps
 and I'm the only one and I walk alone
 
 I walk alone
 I walk alone
 
 I walk alone
 I walk a...
 
 My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
 My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
 Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
 'Til then I walk alone
 
 Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Aaah-ah,
 Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah
 
 I'm walking down the line
 That divides me somewhere in my mind
 On the border line
 Of the edge and where I walk alone
 
 Read between the lines
 What's fucked up and everything's alright
 Check my vital signs
 To know I'm still alive and I walk alone
 
 I walk alone
 I walk alone
 
 I walk alone
 I walk a...
 
 My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
 My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
 Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
 'Til then I walk alone
 
 Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Aaah-ah
 Ah-ah, Ah-ah
 
 I walk alone
 I walk a...
 
 I walk this empty street
 On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
 Where the city sleeps
 And I'm the only one and I walk a...
 
 My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
 My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
 Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
 'Til then I walk alone...

Re: Bit Hacks

2007-06-08T15:15:00.000+05:30

Previously i had post on the Bit hacks.. I got those from a site and was quite interested in it. I want people to know that, so i posted a couple of things. One of my senior santhosh popularly known as santy who read my blog asked me about the one which i posted.. It was to find the absolute value of an integer. I worked it out, but could not find it out. can anyone go through it and work it out for me it will be great

note: The CHAR_BIT is normally take as 8

My Movie Clips Collection

2007-06-07T14:19:00.000+05:30

It was a long time i was thinking to write a nice blog. Since i am in intel now, they had me given a utility to develop. I was doing that but i could not complete it successfully. So I had to try different experiments and test it as it was gonna monitor some critical tasks. So, I had to spent most of my time testing the application. So i needed something to kill the time, which i think is the most difficult. I used to browse through youtube finding and watching interesting movies. Fortunately, I came across many good movie clips from my college (PSG) which were from the dramatix club. I enjoyed the shows watching live and want to present some rare interesting collections.
The Stunt Show -Enjoy!!!

The Dream Farewell - Don't Cry Pls....

UV Dance -PSG

Really Touching Trailer for Dramatix -PSG

Best of All times Video taken for Dramatix Show

Its the Time to Disco!

Bit Hacks

2007-05-23T08:50:00.000+05:30

I would like to present some of the interesting Bit Hacks..

Determining if an integer is a power of 2

unsigned int v; // we want to see if v is a power of 2
bool f;         // the result goes here

f = (v & (v - 1)) == 0;

Note that 0 is incorrectly considered a power of 2 here. To remedy this, use:

f = !(v & (v - 1)) &amp;amp;& v;

Compute the integer absolute value (abs) without branching

int v;      // we want to find the absolute value of v
int r;      // the result goes here
int const mask = v >> sizeof(int) * CHAR_BIT - 1;

r = (v + mask) ^ mask;

Swapping values with XOR

#define SWAP(a, b) (((a) ^= (b)), ((b) ^= (a)), ((a) ^= (b))) This is an old trick to exchange the values of the variables a and b without using extra space for a temporary variable.

On January 20, 2005, Iain A. Fleming pointed out that the macro above doesn't work when you swap with the same memory location, such as SWAP(a[i], a[j]) with i == j. So if that may occur, consider defining the macro as (((a) == (b)) || (((a) ^= (b)), ((b) ^= (a)), ((a) ^= (b)))).

For many other bithacks click here

My First Blog

2007-05-18T08:57:00.000+05:30

I had blogs before they were too technical. So i decided to have a new one with some semi-technical stuffs so that people from every domain can enjoy. I am presently doing my Project at Intel Technologies.. Bangalore..
I work in the Technology Manufacturing Group (TMG)..I am in the Control Systems and Engineering(CSE) Team presently working with Vidya Sridhar. I hope the life here gonna be great and interesting. I will come up with interesting things. Keep reading and have a great time.