It is Munnar Again

 


I have lost count how many times I have visited Munnar. Maybe it was my fourth or fifth. But, I found the natural beauty of munnar still enhanting and romantic. Reached there on 25th November morning with seven others from work. We were on our way to attend Jimmy's (another colleague) marriage. Our stay was in Hotal Oakfields which was at some remote corner of munnar and the road to that place was really narrow and dangerous after the monsoon and landslides. But the scenery that welcomed us to that place was really breathtaking. Midhun, Prem, Nagesh and me went for cycling on 26th morning to explore the surroundings. The hotel was on top of hill surrounded by tea estate and offered fabulous viewpoints. The wooden house on its backyard was also beautiful.

Went to Eravikulam National park to see the endangered "Nilgiri Tahr" on the first day. It was on the foot of Anamudi , the highest peak in south india. I forgot the angle from which the peak looked like an elephant. :-)

The place I liked the best was Madupetty dam. The lake was full and it offered beautiful scenery. Look at the pic taken from the dam. This is one of the best I have taken.


Munnar is a very very beautiful place. All the keralites I have shown that photos from munnar have expressed surprise that such a place existed :-). Muttathe Mullakku Manamilla (The literal translation of that would be: The jasmin in the backyard does not have fragrance.. :-)). The photos can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dinuraj/tags/munnar/. Some of them are really amazing..

creative ads

Posting after a break. Found this great collection of interesting ads. The axe
advertisements and the erotic ads are really great.. :-)

http://www.coloribus.com/

The below pic of an open book is my favorite.

Tic-Tac-Toe

Heard this in Radio City today. Somebody was asking Rohit Barker tips for his first date. Rohit's tips were amazing.. his three ideas follow

- Take her to a coffee shop and have some romantic talk
- Go for bowling and enjoy a good session..

Now comes the ultimate one

- Play Tic-tac-toe !!!!.. How is it ? It is not the usual 3x3 grid game where you have to fill in tics and crosses. This game is linked with testdriving cars :-).. In this version of the game, each square is filled with different colors or brands of cars. Now, the game starts, the dating couple has to go around car showrooms posing as prospective customers and try to get cars for testdriving.. and in the process, filling up the tic-tac-tow grid if the car matches the specification.. And the one makes three grids in a row wins the game (as in the normal version).. !!!!

Wow!!! I was bowled over by the last one.. the way he said this one was really funny ( I may have spoiled it).. really impressed with this idea.. that too on the first date.. any volunteers ? :-) I have posted a sample grid to start off :-)

Blistering barnacle .... $@#%@#

Look at a post in friend's page.


I don't know about the authenticity of the story he is telling. But, I have heard similar opinion about malayalam movies from many sources (from non-malyalies, of course). Its very sad to hear that it is the impression about malayalam movies, even though we used to churn out some of the well acclaimed movies in India.. :-(

nowadays, I am feeling more love towards Malayalam. Is thinking about start blogging in malayalam. As the following Vallathol Snippet says, no other language is dearer than your mother tongue.



 

Beware the speller

The speller in our word processors, email clients etc is definitely useful.. but when
we use SMSlike lingo in our docs, we should be really careful..

For instance, one of my colleagues was sending a congratulatory mail to his female friend when she was blessed with a kid.. this was the original content..

"Congrats.. hows ur kid doing ? blah blah... "

After that, the default spellchecker in his thunderbird mail client kicked in and corrected it to

"Congrats.. hows our kid doing? blah blah... "

Fortunately, my friend noticed the terrible thing he was about to send in time and corrected it manually.. so beware the speller.. :-)

WiFi @ Home

The long wait is over.. got my linksys 802.11b wireless router today.. could not wait to try it out.. hurried home after buying a 220v - 110volt converter. it booted up in seconds.. wonder what software it runs (my IOS isdn router takes at least two minutes). It throwed up a configuration webpage on the default IP address and allowed me to do some basic tweaks.. Voila !!! my laptop detected a wireless network .. :-).. this is really cool.. This post is carried over this WiFi link from my living room :-)



I should get rid of the ethernet cables lying on the floor.. need to install some security stuff on it so that my neighbours do not get into the my WiFi zone.

Thanks Midhun and Asif for helping me buy this router.. :-)

Masala Mango Slice at the top of Yercaud 

Age of Empires III .. Can't wait to lay my hands on

According to AoE III homepage, the big daddy of Realtime Strategy Games is coming. Age of Empires III. It will have full 3D graphics realistic water effects, shadows, and terrains. The screenshots at this site are really amazing. Whoever watched this site, vowed to buy the game as soon as it is launched. Unfortunately, the site does not mention the release date (it says, latter half of 2005).

AoE-III is looks very different compared to its ancestors. We don't have to manage iron and bronze civilizations. It tells the story of European and American people of 1500-1800 AD. AoE III introduces the concept of the Home City, the city which grows with your progress and supports you by sending ammunition and military reinforcements. This somewhat goes inline with Caesar III, where you can borrow money and food from Rome. And, it seems the combat animation and AI are drastically improved. The building destructions and infantry deaths are rendered on the fly to generate unique animation each time. I hate to play salesman for M$. But, I can't help it after seeing the site. I can't wait to play it.

I am just wondering why such games are not being developed by the open source community. I am aware of only Quake and its siblings (FPS games) available in Linux. Are there other games being developed for linux ? If not, why ? Hackers and nerds are supposed to the best gamers, aren't they ? Then, why this dearth of linux games ?

Constellation Big Tux and Giant wheel of Linux

Any guesses about what the above pictures represent ? They are drawing of lines of code in the Linux Kernel. The blue nebula shows 2.4.1 kernal and the wheel like diagram shows 2.4.0. Even though I am not sure about the value of these renderings, they look really amazing. http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.brisset/kernel3d/kernel3d.html has an animation showing the growth of the Tux Nebula from v1.2.0 to v2.4.1.

http://fcgp.sourceforge.net/ is the source of the second picuture. The diagram above was originally a 22MB Postscript file.

WTO, but not World Trade Organization

Then, what is WTO ? I found an article in the May edition of IEEE Spectrum about this new WTO. It is World Toilet organization!!!. It is the consortium of people designing nextgen potties and recycling facilities . Why they are in IEEE spectrum ? They had an World Expo in Shanghai last month showing off the innovations in the toilet technology area. The article describes an amazing range of high tech toilets exhibited there, some of which does not require even water for their operation.

The official site of WTO says that there is a World Toilet summit to be held in Sept'05 in UK. This might be interesting to a friend of mine who wanted to import an autocleaning toilet from Japan to Kanjirappalli.. :-)

I am just thinking that we can have other similar organizations too.. Such as World Diningtable Org, World Earbud Org, World Barstool Org etc.. the possibilities are enormous.. :-)

Driving through dust, falling trees and hailstorm...

Rain drops are making a sweet sound.. Marred only by the occasional hums and honks of vehicles. The electric supply was ceased earlier during the thunderstorm. So, I am sitting in the dark, enjoying sound of rain and the cool wind. So my only sensory organs working are my ears. It is the nature's music... quite relaxing and peaceful.. But, it can have a devilish face too.

I always enjoyed rain and the sound of it. But, the day before yesterday was different. It was really scary driving in the wind and among swinging trees. I even saw a tree getting uprooted unable to withstand winds lashing out at 90kmph. Almost eighty or so trees were uprooted in Bangalore that evening. All the roads were carpeted with leaves and flowers. The fury of nature was visible in the air. While I was feeling lucky to be inside the car, I was really afraid that some tree might fall and crush me at traffic signals. Even though I did not realize at that time, it was raining ice instead of water. The first time, I was seeing a hailstorm !!!. The drops were making a different sound on the metal. I had to read yesterday's newspaper to read to realize that it was the sound of ice hitting the top of my car.

By god's grace, I could reach home safely and without damaging my car. I was just done reading Michael Crichton's "State of Fear" a couple of days back. Some of the scenes from the book came to my mind that day. Is nature punishing man's misdoings ? !!!!

Anyway, it has started raining again and I am finding it to tough to keep my eyes open.. let me got to sleep enjoying the music..

This picture is taken from the Ooty Boat Club. I somehow liked the constrast the leafless branches of the tree making demonic stabs at angelic clouds..  

Went to Ooty, the Queen of Hill Stations last weekend. Here are some of my exploits with my Canon A95..  

Meet Marten and Faye .. the cool Indies.

Couple of days back, I "stumbled upon" a cool cartoon series. QuestionableContent tells the story of Marten and Faye. Marten is a 20 something music nerd and a mysterious girl Faye who punches Marten whenever she feels insecure. Forgot to mention Marten's anthropomorphic PC, Pintsize. He spends his time playing with Faye's clothes and chatting with other female anthropomorphic PCs.

These three provide very good entertainment along with Faye's boss Dora, Marten's friend Steve and his new GF Ellen. I finished the 350 odd archives in two days.. :-)

I can not wait to read new editions of QC.. Hope Jeph Jacques keeps up the good work.

The myth garage

This is wonderful collection of feminine mythology from the greekland. Women in Greek Myths I would have liked longer stories though..

Quwwatul-islam Masjib near Qutb Minar - A Panoramic view

A panaromic view of the quwwatul-islam masjid in the qutub minar complex. The intrinsic artwork on red sandstone is really amazing eventhough they are in ruins 

Ubuntu Hoary LiveCD Experience

I tried Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary HedgeHog) Preview LiveCD on my T42 last week. First experience with a LiveCD. I was in for in surprise.. Please read on..

Looking at the new features and apps coming with it, I was anxiously waiting to get the new Ubuntu release, strangely named Hoary Hedgehog. I already have a system running Warty, which am very pleased about. It is so easy to get new apps for it and there are lots of howtos available if you want to try out a new one. I was very not brave enough to dist-upgrade it to a probably unstable hoary. Then I came across the concept of LiveCD which will run the new release without touching my harddisk.. WOW.. This is the one for me..

I downloaded the LiveCD iso and burnt it. Booted my T42 Laptop with it. This was my first experience with a LiveCD, so did not know how it was going to behave. The initial stages of the bootup was simillar to an installation CD. Was very tempted to stop the procedure lest I downloaded the wrong CD. But, after asking the keyboard layout stuff etc., it detected the various devices and proceeded to start X.

It started a gnome session without any problems. Now my T42 was running linux kernel 2.6.10 with Gnome 2.10 instead of M$ W2K, that too without touching my harddisk.. wow, isn't that great ? I want to know how it is really done. Mapping /dev/hda to memory ?? :-).. I should read on that. Coming back the main topic, the various apps it included was Firefox 1.0, Thunderbird 1.0, OpenOffice 1.1.3 etc. The openoffice suite was not the latest (1.1.4 was out in dec ). But with OpenOffice 2.0 release around corner, it is not a major problem. I am sure Hoary will be updated when Sun confirms its stability.

The major disappointments were the absence of Tomboy and Beagle. The two new kids on the block powered by Mono, Novell's implementation of .Net. I am using Tomboy in my Warty machine to manage my notes. It was not in the liveCD. Could get it from the universe tree and install it, but could not manage it to run. Absence of beagle was a real disappointment. I was not able to run beagle in my current machine even after spending countless hours of recompiling the kernel, tweaking inotify etc.. So I was really waiting for a stock version of it which just ran at the click of button. sad.. :-( it was not there. Hope, they will include it in the final release.. (But I heard they have frozen the feature list long ago. )

But, on the whole, the entire liveCD experience was nice. The concept of it itself, charms me. It is really wonderful idea to safely experiment with a new release or a new distribution. Hope others are listening.

Hey, one more thing.. I am posting this from my LiveSession.. :-)

This is my friend :-)... A mini football..I am very pleased to introduced him to you

How to say "Linux"

Is it Linux where `i` is pronunced as in "pit" or Linux where `i` is pronounced as in "sign" ? The argument goes on.. People swear by what they use. But which is the correct one. As the name of this widely used OS is derived from its author's name, lets here from him what he has to say on this..Here is the sound file that used to come with the "sndconfig" utility.. It says Hello, this is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as Linux!. Here are the files. WAV MP3. I think this settles the argument, but people are just incorrigible. :-)

Cox on Linus

It it an interesting read.. Alan Cox lets out his opinion about Linus Torvalds. "Linus is a good developer, but is a terrible engineer" :-)

Bond car is really possible ?

This article describes technologies to make objects invisible. So Brosnan's Aston Martin Vanquish in "Die Another Day" can really become invisible !!!

I have made my Enzo invisible, but forgot to make it visible :-)

Linux Stuff

i am a linux user and lover. using ubuntu warty distribution on my desktop now. It is really a wonderful distribution. like it very much over redhat..

i have done some kernel hacking stuff like some clustering things.. after joining the industry, i could not find the time to tweak in something in to the kernel.. just keeping updated on the latest stuff now... thanks to kerneltrap and slashdot. :-)

my photo 

Hello World

Hello World, my first attempt at blogging... just a place holder for the moment.. will put more stuff
now..