Slash

Being from the field of computing and computers, we inadvertently use a lot of "slashes" everyday. Thought I make a stupid tutorial for all those of us who are confused between the terms "back slash" and "forward slash" :) !!

Imagine a slash to be a guy ---> |- with a head and a toe.

If he leans on his back he becomes a back slash like this --> \
If he leans on his front he becomes a forward slash like this --> /

If he can hold a guitar in his hand and wear a hat and play with his hair on his face, while smoking a cigarette, he becomes Slash and is a part of the Guns N' Roses :P

And if you didn't find this post funny, its absolutely okay, neither did I :) !!!

Food for thought

Going by the title, I bet most of my regular readers are anticipating another blog where I talk about food, fat and other pleasantries :) !! Naah, don't you worry, this time, I am actually thinking, so this ain't a stupid blog on food.

I read this particular comment on Slashdot by a user "Opportunist" and it got me all thinking about our responsibilities as netizens sharing a common information highway. Have you ever wondered that to do anything in this society you need a license, a permission? To drive, you need a driving license, to possess a weapon you need license etc. etc. This licensing scheme though has many pitfalls, actually makes you liable for your actions, and brings order in the otherwise chaotic society. I remember my Indian license has these words on its last page "Driving is a privilege, not a right".

However, when it comes to sharing the Internet (hey you can't deny, the entire Internet is a giant interconnected web) we somehow don't seem to have any responsibilities. In this world of always-on Internet if your computer gets compromised, you are not only hurting your own self, but also hurting others on the Internet (which means, technically you are a threat to everybody!). If a user doesn't know how to protect his/her computer on the net, then he/she shouldn't be allowed to use the Internet. Cause every compromised computer is a time bomb waiting to wreak havoc ....

Well, on a lighter note I remember two years back there was this particular virus that infected my client organization's computer network. Around 10:00 AM in the morning I got a instant message from my boss which said "Hey Girish! Check this out, photo of you and me from last night ". Luckily for me, I didn't click on the link, cause well I didn't expect my straight faced boss sending me such messages outta context and secondly I wasn't with him the earlier night :P !! But all said and done, there were at least 100 other users in the network that clicked on similar messages that they received, and in no time the entire network was infected by the virus. We lost most of our network functions for more than 2 hours after that. Imagine 40000+ users not working for 2 hours because some people were fullish enough to click on links that weren't relevant.

Hmm, so what am I trying to say from all this? Well, since we are not as computer savvy as the brains behind these attacks are, our only defense is to be street smart while on the Internet, and behave like responsible citizens, who are sharing a road!

Diet Control

Though I regularly cook lunch or at least have one in the cafeteria everyday, the friendly vending machine still happens to be my chief source of nutrition (the bad kind!). So everyday around 4:00 PM, my stomach growls and then I go and spoil myself crazy with a high calorie snack or two.

Every time that the vending machine dispenses the oh-so-tempting forbidden fruit, I promise to myself that this will be the last time that I will ever eat outta the evil machine, but come tomorrow ... and the cycle continues... so much for self-control :) !!

But the last week has been funny! I have been outta dollar bills. The vending machine just accepts 1$ bills and loose change. So, though my stomach growls, the poor me can't feed the vending machine a credit card and make it spit out poison! And everyday in the evening I promise myself that I will get change tomorrow.

Today happens to be just one more time that I did that, and I suddenly realized that procrastination is not all bad. Sometimes it does good to your health :) !!

Mona had eyebrows

I am not an art aficionado nor am I remotely interested in history, but yesterday I paid a visit to "Da Vinci - An Exhibition of Genius" in San Francisco, and the 4 odd hours that I spent there were truly unforgettable. My knowledge of Leonardo Da Vinci was limited to his role in my history textbooks in school and thereafter his passing references in "The Da Vinci code", but yesterday I got a glimpse into the life of a genius. The breadth of his knowledge and the contributions that he has done to a vast spectrum of fields is amazing.

Also, yesterday was the first time that I studied Mona Lisa so much. I mean, I had heard about the painting and that it existed in the Louvre in Paris. But I almost attended an art appreciation class yesterday :) !! From figuring out that there is a bridge behind the left shoulder of Mona and a road on the right, to the presence of an "H" written behind the painting for no particular purpose, I did learn a lot about her :) Other than helping rookies like me to understand how to look at a painting and genuinely admire it, the exhibition also lists the in depth analysis that was done by Pascal Cotte (I can't believe there is no Wikipedia entry on him :( !!) on Mona Lisa using his multi-spectrum 240 megapixel camera.

Coming back to my subject line, well, the research done by Pascal Cotte indicates that Mona indeed had eyebrows, laying to rest some of the most profound questions of history :) !!

If you live in San Francisco bay area, and are remotely interested in art, technology, war or history, this exhibition is a "must attend".

Blogging in plain English

Found this funny video by common craft about blogging and thought I share it with you guys...

That reminds me, I have been using del.icio.us for more than 2 years now. Everytime some one asks me what it is, I have to sit and explain a million advantages. Some helpful soul from (Common Craft again) has made a video explaining del.icio.us too :) ... check it out:
The video is titled "How to explain del.icio.us to your parents :) !!"

Grow with time

I have been cursed to be clumsy since July this year. I have dropped everything and anything that I lay my hands on. So, I have been consciously trying to avoid holding anything nowadays, lest I drop it and cause a mess :) !!

All said and done, I dropped my dear watch a Casio G-shock in the shower today and for a moment missed my heart beat. She (I have decided that all things that I own are going to be of feminine gender from now on :P ... my car, my computer and yes my watch!) has been my faithful companion for approximately 3.5 years now. I know you must be wondering what I was doing with my watch in the shower. Which reminds me, practically the watch has not been off my hand ever since the time that I bought it. May it be while I am swimming, bathing, cleaning, working out or just generally being clumsy, the watch stays on.

It stays upto its reputation of the toughest watch in the world, and with a solar panel, it never even would need a battery replacement. This has got me thinking on a new business idea ;) !! Let me explain....

Casio should tie up with all the hospitals that deliver babies all around the world. Immediately after the baby is delivered depending on whether its a boy or a girl, a watch should be put around its wrist. The parents can ofcourse choose the kind of watch that they want to put on their baby's hand. So along with the name, the genes and the fat cells, parents also get to choose their baby's watch. Now to make it more useful, we could have some other defaults embedded into it like the kid's SSN, its Passport no., blood group etc etc. Also a built in RFID tag would make it more geeky and we could program more things into it as and when required. It should also be designed to grow along with the kid. With interchangeable face plates and other whiz-bang, it will be a product of the future! Haah, I can only pat myself for the amazing ideas that I come up with :) !!

And here is a thought for the day --- do not write a blog when you are dripping wet right out of the shower, cause your chair will get soggy .... God should have given us the amazing shaking power of a dog. So right after my shower I shake myself crazy and there I am dry and ready to rock :) !!

Happy Diwali

A very happy Diwali to all of you and I wish you have a healthy and prosperous year ahead.

Support Wikipedia

Since I rely so much on Wikipedia for all the information I need or I provide, I guess it is my duty to contribute towards Wikimedia Foundation's Fundraising drive. If any one of you would like to donate, here is the link. Also watch the video, it is inspiring....

Excuses

I know I lost some of my very loyal readers thanks to my being lazy and not writing a blog for one whole month. So I thought I give the rest of you some genuine excuses for my delay in writing ;). Please understand! There are 6 reasons I can think of as to why I didn't write a blog:

1. My dog ate my blog (yikes, it rhymes!)
2. My car felt that I was neglecting her because I spent too much time with the computer. So we spent some "quality" time together.
3. My keyboard randomly put "l" while I was typing. "Slo thle blog thlat lI wlote clame lout llike thlis. lI knlow thlis slounds slupid blut thlats whlat hlappened. "
4. My horoscope said that I should not write more than 2 blogs in the month of September.
5. I was researching on the global warming problem and searching for alternate sources of energy.
6. And the ultimate ... I was helping Steorn to violate the law of conservation of energy :) !!

The 6th point needs more elaboration. There is actually a small company in Ireland named Steorn, which claims to have found a novel way of producing energy without consuming any. If proven true it will violate our fundamental foundations of thermodynamics :) !!! Yippee, time to go back to college again.

I hope this is not a hoax, but somehow it reminds me of one Mr. Ramar Pillai (sorry no Wiki entry for him :( !!) who claimed that he could produce gasoline from a "magic" herb that he found in some village in rural India. He actually took the country for a ride for a couple of months (including a few IIT professors) only to be later proven to be a hoax.

And I hope at least one of you believed the 6 reasons I gave above were responsible for me not writing a blog :) !!!

Hello?

Before I know it, its been one month since I last blabbered out here. The cereals put me into deep slumber and I only got up after I realized that I am three days away from the go-live of the biggest and longest Project of my life! Can't believe that I have spent 30 days doing nothing. Hmm, actually this time I managed to squeeze in a lot of things in these 30 odd days. So if you have insomnia and that sleeping pill isn't really taking you to your "happy place" ... read on...

3 things that I did in the last month

Kick-boxing:

I still can't believe that I tried my hand (and leg?) at kick-boxing. Well, the gym that I go to has got these classes for lazy bums like me to be motivated. So there used to be this amazing workout routine for 1 hour once a week in which the instructor would teach us to kick box and in doing so help us burn some calories. I attended quite a few of those sessions. It kinda helped me figure that there are many muscles in my body that I haven't used since the day that I was born. Also the jab, cross, hook, up routine kinda helped me hit the hell out of that imaginary pillow and release my pent up anger :) !! However the sad part of the class was that right since I started attending it, the room in which it was being conducted received irreparable structural damage (That reminds me, some one has asked me to no longer crack any "fat" jokes :) !!) because of heavy pounding and it has been stopped for ever :( !! So much for enthusiasm.

Bryan Adams:

I had the time of my life last Saturday. Bryan Adams had come down to the Greek Theater in Berkeley. Not only did I get to visit UC Berkeley (the University that I adore soo much!) but also I got to see Bryan Adams :) !!! Well its been quite a while since I have heard his songs. I was a big fan of his in my junior college days , but this time his show got me all nostalgic (signs of old age?) ... For a change I also figured that I remembered the lyrics of most of his songs :) !!

Astonishing as it might seem most of the crowd seemed to be 40+. All the young people were mostly Indians. Kinda shows that as far as music is concerned we are at least a decade behind the Americans in our choice of songs :) !! Anyways, I got to work out a lot (thats a good way of putting down the fact that I shouted at the top of my voice for 2 hours and jumped like crazy. That also reminds me, my doctor has asked me to be good to my knees, so I consciously jumped on my toes and not on my heels :) !!)

Geocaching:

I ain't gonna explain what geocaching is out here on my blog. So go read the wiki link that I have provided. But I sure would like to say that this sport has got me hooked. An aimless treasure hunt combined with a GPS can very well be interesting :) !! You will also find a photo of a "happy me" at the end of this blog; with a cache that I found!!