Tuesday, April 30, 2002
I am back!
After a cool and invigorating holiday in the hills, I am not only back to the heat of Mumbai, but also a lot of heat in the blogging community.
I guess we could all do with a getaway in the mountains :)
Munnar was breathtakingly beautiful. And, what's more, it rained when I was there... *sigh* to be back in Mumbai....
Kodai was ordinary, till I went on a one-hour trek to a place called Laughing Thrush Estate... It was a steep uphill trek, almost five km, and then suddenly you break out on the top... and you gasp at the sheer beauty of the mountains... i just gaped for a full five minutes... before I could say anything... we just sat there staring in silence... soaking the rarefied air and the scenery... it will take me a while to acclimatise to Mumbai... :(
After a cool and invigorating holiday in the hills, I am not only back to the heat of Mumbai, but also a lot of heat in the blogging community.
I guess we could all do with a getaway in the mountains :)
Munnar was breathtakingly beautiful. And, what's more, it rained when I was there... *sigh* to be back in Mumbai....
Kodai was ordinary, till I went on a one-hour trek to a place called Laughing Thrush Estate... It was a steep uphill trek, almost five km, and then suddenly you break out on the top... and you gasp at the sheer beauty of the mountains... i just gaped for a full five minutes... before I could say anything... we just sat there staring in silence... soaking the rarefied air and the scenery... it will take me a while to acclimatise to Mumbai... :(
Tuesday, April 16, 2002
The price of words, as determined by Google.
Interesting.
This could well be my last post in a while. Am off on a two-week southside sojourn.
Interesting.
This could well be my last post in a while. Am off on a two-week southside sojourn.
Sunday, April 14, 2002
What face will we show the world, Vajpayee had asked immediately after the Gujarat riots. He repeated those words again a couple of days ago. Being one of the most travelled PM, according to the Indian Express, Vajpayee's concern is understandable. But I think the more pertinent question would be: what face can i show the mirror.
We are always so concerned about what other people think of us, that we lose perspective of the issue on hand. I am sure you have, some time or the other in your life, been told by your parents "what will the neighbours think of us" or "what will we tell the rest of the family".
We are always so concerned about what other people think of us, that we lose perspective of the issue on hand. I am sure you have, some time or the other in your life, been told by your parents "what will the neighbours think of us" or "what will we tell the rest of the family".
I was watching Aaj Tak's coverage of the BJP conclave in Goa, and was struck by how biased it was towards the ruling party. Prabhu Chawla, the India Today editior, reporting on the developments sounded more like a BJP ideologue than the editor of one of India's leading news-magazines.
Saturday, April 13, 2002
Friday, April 12, 2002
Ask Jeeves is supposed to answer natural language queries. But most of the time it sucks. So how do you find quick answers to questions, without having to click through to web sites. For instance: which is the tallest building in the world? I have ocassionally used this method: Never ask a question of a search engine. Just supply a part of the answer, because that is how it is likely to be on the page. So instead of asking a question pose this query to Google "tallest building in the world is". Google will fill in the blanks and you will usually find the answer in the abstract itself. Try the natural query on AJ, you will see the difference. A better example, that I tried on Sunday. I wanted to know when the Titanic sank. And here are my queries to Google and Ask Jeeves.
A good way to protect your email address from being harvested by spammers, when posting to a public forum is to give your address as myname[at]mydomain.com rather than myname@mydomain.com.
But is this really foolproof? How much time would it take a writer of an email harvesting program to add the logic that myname[at]mydomain.com=myname@mydomain.com?
Is there any reason why the characters [ ] should throw them off? Not being a software programmer myself, I really wouldn't know. Logically though, it shouldn't be so difficult. Maybe, some of our fellow bloggers can shed some light.
But is this really foolproof? How much time would it take a writer of an email harvesting program to add the logic that myname[at]mydomain.com=myname@mydomain.com?
Is there any reason why the characters [ ] should throw them off? Not being a software programmer myself, I really wouldn't know. Logically though, it shouldn't be so difficult. Maybe, some of our fellow bloggers can shed some light.
Has this man completely lost it! Is he fit to lead a country which claims to be secular (especially with his weak knees and advancing age)? At a public rally in Goa, Vajpayee attacked an entire community and blamed Gujarat on Godhra. Can the Muslims really feel safe when the PM himself begins to talk like this? How is this very different from the war cries the reverberated in Ahmedabad?
I think India should just get rid of its gerontocracy, once for all! If we have a superannuation in jobs, why not for politicians. I think they should ban people above 55 from holding public office. They just aren't in touch with reality.
I think India should just get rid of its gerontocracy, once for all! If we have a superannuation in jobs, why not for politicians. I think they should ban people above 55 from holding public office. They just aren't in touch with reality.
Thursday, April 11, 2002
Usually, during prime time, I steer clear of Zee and Star Plus. Last night, against my better judgment, I watched the Playwin programme on Zee. It was pathetic. 10 minutes into it and I had a headache and switched right back to Hooper and Sarwan.
Here was a TRP goldmine for Zee and they screw it up big time.
Here was a TRP goldmine for Zee and they screw it up big time.
Tuesday, April 09, 2002
An article I wrote on why the Lotto is heavily loaded against the players. You have one chance in 250,000 years of winning the jackpot!
Spent the last three days doing little else other than multiplying, dividing, fooling around with large numbers, and generally trying to get a grip of probabilities, lottery odds and what have you.
Which is why I haven't had much time to post here. And I yet have to update my profile at Khwab
Which is why I haven't had much time to post here. And I yet have to update my profile at Khwab
Friday, April 05, 2002
Dog owner says cats committed hate crime by attacking his pet.
Wednesday, April 03, 2002
Flash-haters will love this humorous take on the ubiquitous thingy!
Tuesday, April 02, 2002
The most frequent visitor to my inbox is a guy called Sachin. On a slow day, he sends me about eight mails, all one after the other, all with the same subject, and all with an attachment. On a productive day, I get up to 30 mails on the trot. His subject lines change everyday. A few samples: Bank of England, textoverlayer, harish, Job Control Language Standard, AllWebMenus_Patch, JCL Language, Principles, printit, IBMOS, Leave Record, ~$nnectivity to Mainframe, life is beautiful... I have tried to block him and set the anti-virus hounds on him... but he is a hard customer to block...
Any ideas? Right now, he just ends up in my delete folder.
Any ideas? Right now, he just ends up in my delete folder.
Monday, April 01, 2002
Jesus was a Hindu!
Or at least that's what Zurich-based filmmaker Preeti Chandrakant, whose Jesus Goes To India, is screening at the International Film Festival of Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram would have us believe.
Or at least that's what Zurich-based filmmaker Preeti Chandrakant, whose Jesus Goes To India, is screening at the International Film Festival of Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram would have us believe.
An Economist article which tries to Explain altruistic behaviour:
"People contribute to charities for the homeless, return lost wallets, do voluntary work and tip waiters in restaurants to which they do not plan to return. Both economic rationalism and natural selection offer few explanations for such random acts of kindness."
Acts of kindness? Are these really acts of selflessness and kindness?
"People contribute to charities for the homeless, return lost wallets, do voluntary work and tip waiters in restaurants to which they do not plan to return. Both economic rationalism and natural selection offer few explanations for such random acts of kindness."
Acts of kindness? Are these really acts of selflessness and kindness?
My friend vows he never specified language. Yet he got this page for a search on google. I couldn't replicate it. But it's still interesting. Unnat Khoj? Web Marg Darshak? Samooh? Humari Prati? And, best of all, their explanation of stopwords: "bahut aam shabd hain aur is liye inhen khoj main shamil nahin kiye gaya".
