Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Loved this ad

I totally totally identify myself with this ad. At the college days, even now you can try it with your better halves....It works ...I suddenly remembered this ad because I have this (bad/good)habit of "switching off" when things get complicated.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

TWTW (The week that was)

Harbhajan Singh is one fellow who proves that more than talent, to win matches, you need the hunger and the patience and determination. Of course I cursed the Indian Team and went ahead to change the channel, but it just shows that cricket is a "mind-game" and everyone can be distracted. Australians need to be distracted after they make comments like "We'll win 7-0". I hope Harbhajan's hunger also inspires people like Raina, Jadeja who have failed miserably.

One more comment : One dayers are definitely more charming than a 20-20 match. I thought One-Dayers would be finished because of 20-20. But no, it is really much more interesting than a stupid 20-20.

Other than that, the week that went by was a very low week. Fever, cough and all that. Looking fwd for a monday and the tuesday morning to get over favorably. Thursday, I saw the movie "Snatch". There is no story but the movie is good in parts. The story exists just to showcase the characters. The characters are funny and the characters which I liked the most was that of "Franky Four Fingers" and the Pig Farmer "Brick Top". Gloriously potrayed by the actors. But these movies cannot be digested in one sitting for me. I need at least 2 viewings to understand things because there are so many subtleties. Nowadays I rather prefer a simple comedy as a good entertainer than figure out a complex plot with 2 or more interwoven stories and 1 dozen characters and some weird unheard accents.

I shall end this post with a funny thing I heard on radio.

RJ : Snehitare, Neevu invisible aadre yen maadthera ? Eega line alli idaare idanna heLokke, Bangarpete inda Syed avaru. Namaskara Syed avare. Neevu invisible aadre yen maadtheera ?

Syed : Saar naanu invisible aadre Puneeth Rajkumar avara room ge hogtheeni.

RJ : Hogbittu ?

Syed : Ashte saar, avara room ge hogtheeni.


Monday, October 19, 2009

The future : General chit chat

What a delight early in the morning having no official emails to read. I start blogging just to let my thoughts roll out.

I saw the theatrical trailer of the movie 2012. Of course I will not watch any disaster grand spectacle movies in the near future, but my mind wandered into another side as I thought about Planet Earth.

See, right now we have petrol. A person can fly to another place say Newyork or Chicago or Finland or Antarctica from Bangalore. Say about 50 years from now, I think the fuel reserves might deplete and petrol might be really costly. Might be in 50 years maybe more.

This also means, an alternate fuel must be examined. We might be heading towards an energy crisis. I did a quick google on Energy crisis and looks like :Hydrogen and Nuclear Fuels may seem to hold the key to our future generations.

Mankind maybe propelled by a Hydrogen based Economy. But from what I read (courtesy Wikipedia) : in practice, production of hydrogen from water requires more energy than the enregy released when the hydrogen is used as fuel. Free hydrogen does not occur naturally, and thus it must be generated by electrolysis of water or some other method. Countries in the world should start thinking of alternatives to Hydrogen production. How to produce Hydrogen cheaply and sell this ? => Very interesting stuff on the net.

Natural Gas might offer a quick solution to this problem, but H2 is a better option because, there is no ash and only water vapour is released which is environment friendly. GD might know better and have a better idea on this ...

And regarding Nuclear Energy it is the case of how well we can control the energy released and how efficiently energy can be utilized. You cannot generate 100000 deg centrigrade in an internal combustion engine. The engine parts may end up being vaporized. Also after hearing abt the side effects of Hiroshima (the hagaisha, hibakusha) and those people, I am really not sure whether Nuke is a great deal. However there is a lot of honcho talk regarding nuclear fuel as an energy investment .... Notice the way John Kerry says "China and India are among the many countries investing heavily in clean-energy technologies that will produce millions of jobs."

Lastly, communications and making the world closer might play a key role in the economies and I expect this sector to grow like anything. So, your super techno handsets can enable you to download a 23.5 Gigabyte leaked BBC Documentary and enable you to see the same in the loo and also act as a room freshner.

So people, invest your monies on these sectors ;-)

Friday, October 16, 2009

A nice question


In a function / or a party occasionally, a familiar face walks to you and asks the question : "Do you remember who I am ? ".
You might reply "No".
(S)he might reply " I am your (fa/mo)ther's blah blah ..."

This is a very common situation, right ?

Now here is a very interesting study(at least I found this interesting) about relations which might startle that "familiar face" referred above :

Consider all the living females on this planet. They all have descended from a single female who lived about 1.25 million years ago. This female is called the mitochondrial eve. This is proved , because the mitochondrial gene passes on only from mother to daughter (not sons).

So mathematically :

Let x be an element belonging to F, the set of all females who are living today.
Then for all x, M(M(M(.........M(x)))))) = will lead to Mitochondrial Eve. M(x) is defined as Mother of x.

Now my questions to the reader who has kept his attention until this point:-
a) Was there a single Adam and Eve pair when this Mitochondrial Eve lived ?
b) Was she the only female living then ?

Update with Answer :-

Here is a graph which is showing the Mito eve of the 4th generation tracing back to the 1st generation.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Recipe for the masala in "Masala puri"

I really want to try doing Masala Puri at home , exactly the way a street side fellow guy makes. Getting the taste at the comfort of your home is a good thing. Anyway you get the puris and the other stuff could be got at your friendly grocery store wallah.

But the big question is : What is the recipe for the masala in masala puri ?

Of course you cannot ask the guy because it is a trade secret. But we might have to build this recipe. I found one link which does talk about it.


But after eating this for so many years, I do not think I have found how this could be done.

Any ideas floating around ?

Sunday, October 11, 2009

I read Subroto Bagchi's viewpoint about professional life :-

One of the things why Indians don't get to understand workplace issues till they are 23 or 24 is because they don't go to work as youngsters. When a 13 or 14 year-old in a country like the US or Japan or Europe or anywhere goes and works in a store, packs bags, or becomes a gas station attendant that individual knows the difference between my time and company time, my money and company money, what is the meaning of a paying customer.

So when you are a waiter or a waitress at 14 you know very well that you can't be on a cellphone when a customer walks in. The point is simple: workplace issues may not be understood when you take a big degree from a reputed college. You can make people aware about issues in a classroom but you can't make professionals in a classroom.

I remember when I graduated from Engineering, I thought I will be typing programs like I used to in my labs all the time. Later now I realize (I hope!) the program executable is something for which people PAY MONEY for and making it work. This will be stronger when you join a small company fighting for funds. This is something which is not taught in classrooms. Showing up on time (punctuality), proactive spirit and other things are not taught. Some people pick it up as soon as they enter the workplace, some people do not.

I feel budding engineers should be sensitized on aspects of Project Lifecycle Management , Budgeting and Management.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

The largest dead snake ever found, over 50 feet.

In case you have the time to 30sec. video, let me know what was your reaction :-
See the video titled The largest dead snake ever found, over 50 feet..

Saturday, October 03, 2009

Lounge

There are some lounge songs which are tingling in my mind. Enigma, Buddha Bar, Karunesh and once again Rahman's song is up there.

Enigma is just an amazing project. They really managed to make Lounge partially mainstream. Very intricate and very close to nature and most of the times, very dark. Some songs of Enigma are like "eargasms" (or if there is some word like that)....Deep Forest is another band who samples forest sounds into music.

I found the history of "Buddha Bar" (according to Wikipedia) pretty interesting :-
It is not a band, but a restaurant in Paris, famous for its ambience! They have made a franchise out of the music. But I think the music is really serious, and it needs more attention than just being played in the background.

Rehna Tu from Delhi-6. To appreciate this song and intricacies you should have a keen ear to music. Rahman sounds like Sting in this song.

Enjoy Lounge when you are in introspection mood.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

My uncle's blog has got featured in Star Bloggers of Big Adda.
Great Going Chikappa.

Have a look at his blog here

one random song

long time ago there was a time when we used to have 6 cable channels. At that time there was a song called poda poda punnaku.

No idea what it meant. But I used to find it funny. Suddenly remembered that song after seeing a guy in office with a comic face the song just came out from my head