Sam's Lodge [chai-coffee]

Time

2011-05-14T00:40:00.000+05:30

Time flies!

Isn't this a conclusion everyone reaches at some point in their life?

It is intriguing though that when you think about it, the clock never ticks faster than it is supposed to - unless it is need of repair. No matter how quickly the minutes seem to turn into hours, or the days seem to transition into weeks, or even the months seem to transform into years; a second still is, has been and always will be the duration taken by radiation to travel between two levels of the ground state of the Caesium-133 atom.

Despite the constantly relentless (and sometimes monotonic) march of time - millisecond upon millisecond, the human brain somehow seems to perceive time to fly at varying speeds depending on our state of mind. When we are bored, time seems to fly like a powerless glider drifting over a windless desert, and when we are excited, time seems to fly like a supersonic jet fighter on a supercruise. Just imagine how life would be when our perceptions get switched around such that time glides when we are excited and blazes past when we are not, but I digress. The point remains that we always seem to perceive time flying - whatever the speed.

Its been 7 months since I last blogged, and in that time (you guessed it), time flew - at an insane, breathless pace. I've been through some ups, more downs, traveled places, met many people and learned an awful lot. Its almost funny now, when I look back at how naive I was back then. Even looking back a couple of months, its startling to see how much time can change a person. If there is one thing I realized in all this time was that time (while doing its unrelenting flying) also teaches - if you are willing to learn. Time teaches at a pace as rigorous as its flying.

Time flies, but also teaches! I guess the question we need to ask ourselves is, are we learning?

20102010 and Changes

2010-10-20T20:10:00.005+05:30

Its been really long since I posted anything on this blog.. Initially I thought that a short blogging break was justified given that I was slowly starting to get used to all the (tumultuous?) changes in my life including, but not limited to;

bidding a temporary 'au revoir' to my student life
getting used to a 6 day, 8 to 5 work week
getting a new laptop
finally buying my own motorbike
learning to drive a geared vehicle on my new motorbike
shifting to a new accommodation

But then as the 'short' blogging break started turning out to be longer than expected, on the few occasions when I was motivated enough to blog, I found it hard to find anything worth blogging about. Thankfully a short conversation I had earlier today with one of my friends on that big time-sucking blackhole, also known as facebook, has pushed me to reorder my priorities and blog again.
Now while the 20th of October is significant for many reasons - the Battle of Navarino, the first amateur video of Bigfoot, the opening of the Sydney Opera House to name a few; the 20th of October 2010 will also be special, if nothing for the unique numerical combination the date represents. If you haven't guessed it already, in the 'dd-mm-yyyy' format, today is 20102010! The cynic in me is just waiting to burst out and say, "So what? Its just another day". But for some reason we humans seem to be attracted to symmetry and the child in me is buzzed up so much that I'm attempting to restart this blog at 20:10 IST on 20-10-2010, so that the format becomes, you guessed it, 201020102010. While some of you wonder about the lameness of this post, I shall leave you with a picture of my new ride and a promise that I've got something significant cooking for the next blog post.

The Internship Survival Guide

2010-06-05T15:40:00.000+05:30

I have been interning at a manufacturing firm for (*hold your breath*) almost an entire year (*release your breath*) now. I know that usually internships are not much longer than 2-3 months, so before you starting jumping to any conclusions, let me assure you that the duration of my internship is purely due to the course structure at my college - and NOT due to any indiscretions on my part!! Now that misconceptions have been cleared, lets move on.

If you haven't yet undergone an internship (you most probably will.. soon) let me explain what it entails. An internship is when an innocent individual - usually a college undergraduate - (a.k.a 'the Intern') goes and works for a company who can get away with paying him a very small salary or often nothing because he hasn't graduated yet. It's basically just working to make someone rich and getting nothing in return - the modern equivalent of slavery, except that it is totally legal (credit Urbandictionary for this definition). Alternatively, an Intern is someone who is hired to do menial monotonous work that you couldn't pay people people to do long term because they would quit or eat a .45 bullet. So they hire some naive college grad to do it until they give up , quit, or eat a .45 bullet.

Internship is one interesting roller coaster ride. For some it can provide a singularly thrilling time while for others it can be most mortifying. But from my 11 months of experience as an intern, I have found that you can (*hold breath again*) survive internship unscathed and actually have a good time (*release breath*) if you can follow these simple ground rules.

1. Keep your aims high but be realistic: Most interns start their internships with high hopes and aspirations and usually end up disillusioned and disgruntled when they find those dreams inevitably crushed mercilessly by the corporate world. It is easy to have your aims lowered by the monotony of office work but never forget the reason you are there in the first place. Don't be naive, but be realistic with what you expect to gain from the experience.

2. Know that every office is a political minefield: Politics happens at every office. Deal with it! You will ignore it at your own peril. While some times office politics resembles grownfolks pulling each others hair like toddlers in kindergarten, it does help to be politically savvy. Never take anyone's words at face value.

3. Map the terrain - know your friends and enemies: Know your stakeholders - people who are interested/ affected by your work - and know who are genuinely willing to help you and who are hiding a dagger behind their backs. You NEED friends at the right places - people who can back you up or bail you out. If you don't have them, then make them!

4. Be sociable: Be sociable at work. Don't sit in a corner trying to fly under the radar. You do not wan't to hinder your chances of being hired by acting like a zombie. Most times kust having technical skills is not enough, learn to work with (annoying) people.

5. Send your ego on a vacation: You might have been the most popular/successful person at college having done a load of projects, but that counts for nothing at office. You are nothing but an intern (slave) at the workplace, so be prepared to be treated like one. Do not expect anything special.

6. Think out of the box, Be different: You NEED to maintain a good impression. Do something different (but not stupid) to stand out and to showoff your (better) qualities to your superiors. Convince them that you are indeed special. Impression does count - just like in college.

7. Nobody likes a crybaby: In college, you do an assignment and you get graded for it - its straightforward. But when you are an intern, getting credit is a lot more convoluted. People will trample all over you and finally take credit for all your labour, be prepared for it. You need to be smart to gain credit, but being a crybaby or a loudmouth is not the way to gain it.

If you have got any other tips for surviving an internship, do share in the comments section. Cheers.

The Yellow Muncher turns 30!!

2010-05-22T09:10:00.000+05:30

One of the downsides about living in the 21st century is that every other day is a "special" day. The calender is filled to the brim with festivals, special days (Mothers day/ Fathers day/ Earth day), days of remembrance, anniversaries of important people/institutions and the like, crowding out your own personal special days (birthdays of family members/friends etc). You can blame it on mass commercialization, the rise of the internet, or even peoples impulsive need to be narcissistic, but when there are too many special days, the days cease to be so special. After all when you can safely bet that something significant has happened on pretty much every day of the year, how can that day become more special than the next day? But i digress..

The point I was trying to make is that if someone asked you the question, 'what is special about May 22nd?', there would be a hundred different answers. For the historically inclined, it is the day Alexander the Great defeated King Darius III of Persia in the battle of the Granicus. For the quizzing heads, it is the National Maritime Day in the USA and the Republic Day in Sri Lanka. For the ecologically sensitive, it is the World Biodiversity Day. For the Darwin worshipers, it is the day the HMS Beagle started on its first voyage.

But one thing most of us wouldn't have said (me included) is that it is the birthday of Pac Man!! Thankfully Google took it upon itself to remind us of the day by featuring the game in the first-ever playable doodle on its home page. In place of the regular google logo, there is a modified and fully playable version of PacMan complete with audio! It is set to be there till sunday (I made a score of 4260 in my first attempt) . Why all the fuss about an arcade game you ask? Well, the simple answer is that PacMan is no ordinary game.
Originally released as Puck Man in Japan on this day in 1980, PacMan is one of the most iconic arcade games ever released. PacMan has transcended language, geography and politics around the world to become arguably the most popular cultural export of Japan. Such has been the game's social impact that it is even featured at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. The reason for PacMan's iconic stature is not because of its antiquity (Space Invaders and other shooters were already in arcades before PacMan arrived). PacMan was the first game to create a new genre and appeal to both genders - arcades before the arrival of PacMan were the exclusive haunt of guys shooting at aliens. But there is something still deeper to PacMan's success which you wont understand unless you have played the game. There is something riveting in the yellow muncher munching on little white dots while being chased around a maze by the four cute ghosts (Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde). Long before the arrival of twitter and facebook, PacMan perfected the art of dragging people away from their work for hours on end!

Happy Birthday PacMan! You are a legend! :D

My Interview Experience : MDI

2010-04-22T21:25:00.000+05:30

This is a continuation of my previous post: How MBA - A Prelude
If you are a newbie w.r.t Indian B schools, you might want to read that!

So finally, without any further ado, here is what happened at my GD/PI for MDI. Er, Im writing this down almost a month after the interview happened - so I blame my brain for any inconsistencies in the chronological order - but I digress!

The interview happened at the Catering College in Mumbai. There were 60 of us called in the morning session, and we were already divided into 5 panels of 12 each before we arrived there. To my surprise and genuine shock, I found that 7 people in my panel had the same percentile score as mine in CAT! MDI had apparently called us in the order of our CAT scores (it was the second day of interviews in Mumbai). After registration, we were herded off to separate halls for the Group Discussion. 2 students and 1 'judge-jury-executioner' type faculty didnt turn up at the start of the GD (the missing faculty joined us 10 minutes later but the students were nowhere to be found). Our topic for the GD was something about the justification for use of force in international relations. We were given 5 minutes to think and 15 minutes to talk/shout at each other. At a few times, the GD did transform into a fish market, but overall it was a decent one -though a few people were intent on deviating from the topic. I was able to contribute meaningfully, and I felt satisfied with myself after the GD.

We were then made to wait for our turn outside the hall for the interview - I was number 10 (and the second last person to go in). I had to wait for more than 2 hours to get to my turn. The 2 panelists for the interview were the same ones who were there for the GD. One of them (first panelist - FP) did the bulk of the questioning while the other one (second panelist - SP) seemed tired and disinterested. When I went in only FP was inside - SP came after a couple of minutes. The whole interview lasted about 15 minutes.

Me: Good morning sir! (I was wondering where the other guy went)
FP: Good morning, take a seat (he seemed to be in a dilemma whether to wait for SP before beginning the interview. He started scanning through my personal details form - submitted during the registration)
FP: (After 2 minutes, he finally made up his mind to start the interview without SP) So, what is everybody saying?
Me: (Confused) Sir??!!
FP: What is everybody saying about their interviews?
Me: (I prefer to focus on myself and rarely bother about how others fare in their interviews - needless distraction IMO. Wanted to say this, but somehow I didnt want to sermonize right at the start of the interview) Well, most of them are saying that the interviews are going on very well, and that the interviewers are very cool!
FP: (Looks at me in mock horror, as if he was insulted) Is it? But we are trying to scare everyone over here! Lets see how cool you think we are.
Me: Erm.. Yes sir! (What else could I say? I just realized that I shot myself in the foot. The guy had just decided to take a stress interview,where the entire motive is to destroy your self-confidence)
FP: (With a look of glee) OK, so you're from BITS Pilani [my college], who was G.D. Birla?
Me: (Thats your big question??) He was the founder of our college.
FP: (Looking like a hungry predator) Who is your present chancellor?
Me: (Easy :-) ) Its Mr. K.M Birla, sir. (By this time I was starting to get [over]confident about the interview due to all the easy questions)
FP: OK, so how is he related to Mr. G.D. Birla?
Me: (Very quickly, without thinking.. ) He is G.D. Birla's grandson sir!!
FP: (Before I realized I was wrong) Really? You seem to be telling us new things here! We learnt that...
Me: (Had to step in before he could do anymore damage) I'm sorry sir, he is not his grandson. er.. (In the tension, I forgot the exact relationship) I dont remember exactly but I know that he is 2 generations after G.D. Birla!!
FP: I want to know the exact relation. Do you know it or not?
Me: (nervously) Sir, 'I think' he was his nephew sir.. Oh no.. 'I think' he is his G.D. Birla's brother's grandson!
FP: (Gave me a big speech, on taking a stand, and about the folly of guesswork et al)
SP: (Wanted to join in on the fun..) Tell me what was G.D. Birla's role in the Indian freedom movement?
Me: (Blank!.. I knew that he was an industrialist, but freedom fighter??) Sir, he was a great industrialist and..
SP: (this guy was in a hurry to have his lunch.. ) I didnt ask about that, tell me about his role in the freedom struggle!
Me: (trying to deflect the topic) Sir, during World War II, BITS was used as a foundry for making ammunition (just heard rumours about this when in college, not sure if it was true)
SP: (calling my bluff) I didn't ask about the World War, I asked about the freedom movement. Atleast tell me about G.D Birla's companies.
Me: (by now, I had lost all hopes in the interview. Very uncertainly, I told him some companies but it turned out that some of those companies were in the Aditya Birla Group - a rival conglomerate)
FP: You are telling us new stuff here.. I think those companies are in another group.
Me: Y-Yes s-sir!
FP: Atleast tell me about the Aditya Birla Group
Me: (totally deflated, again blurted out some more companies, but apparently a few of them are no longer in that group now)
FP: (Victoriously.. ) You are wrong! You are from Hyderabad, so share with us your views about the Telangana agitation (it was in the news for a couple of weeks)
Me: (I had prepared myself for this question before, so I told them without any problems. FP attempted to make a few PJ's while SP did some cross questioning regarding the history of the agitation to make sure that I knew what I was talking about)
FP: I'll ask you a few questions about 'your' city - Hyderabad ..
(He asked me about the founder of the city - which I answered correctly, but incorrectly told that he was a Nizam (a dynasty). He gave me an earful for telling the wrong dynasty. He then asked me about the SalarJung museum - which I answered correctly, but again incorrectly told him that SalarJung was a king (apparently, he was a minister). He again gave me an earful about not knowing enough about my native place)

They asked me some more questions in that 15 minutes, but these were the main ones in which i shot myself in the foot royally. They understood pretty early that I wasn't very strong on Indian history (to my surprise!) and like sharks going for the kill, almost every question they asked me was about historical figures/events. Hopefully you've got a few tips about how NOT to attempt an interiew. Cheers :)

How MBA - A Prelude!

2010-04-11T18:20:00.002+05:30

As I mentioned in my previous blogpost, I was recently in Mumbai to attend the Group Discussion & Personal Interview round for admission into MDI, Gurgaon. For those who are unaware, MDI (Management Development Institute) is one of the better B-schools in India, and arguably one of the most sought after for its programmes (just after the IIM's). It was also one of my biggest remaining hopes for doing an MBA this year after none of the IIM's deemed my CAT score (98.61 percentile) to be enough for me to have a crack at admission - (am still bitter about not getting a single call from the IIM's).

Anyway, that interview experience was unpleasant - to put it mildly - so I thought I needed to blog about it so that somebody can know what (not) to do in an MBA interview. But while I was writing down my interview experience, I digressed and the blog got too long to be published in a single post - I'm a stickler when it comes to writing brief blogs. So here is the first part of the blog where I get to show off some gyan/knowledge about the MBA admission process. Till late last year I had no clue about all of this (pathetic level of general awareness), but its amazing how easy it is to act like an expert ;). If you want to do an MBA in one of the 1000 odd Indian B Schools, this is what you got to do;

Do some research before you decide which B schools you want to apply (unless you are very desperate, it makes no sense to apply to all of them). It helps to be picky!
Apply for the corresponding Entrance Exams - they are dime-a-dozen (CAT/XAT/MAT/SNAP/FMS/IIFT etc). The application forms are insanely long!
Speed up your math skills to light speed! Most of these exams can be solved by school kids; the only catch being the atrociously less amount of time given (case in point: FMS exam - 200 questions in 120 mins!!!).
Relax, HOPE and PRAY that you get some interview calls. (I wonder if even the B school faculty themselves understand the weird criteria they set for sending out call letters - how your performance in high school defines your caliber as a future manager is beyond me)
Prepare an Application Essay/Resume and get the plethora of certificates and reference letters ready (IMO this is the easiest step)
Practice and improve on your "Fish Market Shouting Skills" (really comes in handy during the unruly Group Discussions)
Attend the Group Discussion/Activity/Essay Writing sessions and convince the Interview panel that you absolutely "deserve" to do a MBA
Relax and wait for the results - nothing more you can do. If you do not make it into a B school, there is always next year..

Next Post: My MDI Interview Experience.

Experiences from March & Mumbai

2010-04-02T08:00:00.004+05:30

Most of you might have noticed that I have taken a pretty long time to update this blog. So here's what has happened in the past one month (almost). As some of you might be knowing, the results of the "prestigious" CAT exam - for which almost 300,000 poor souls toiled (well, atleast most of them did!!!) to write way back at the end of '09 - were released at the beginning of last month (March '10). Despite the best efforts of Prometric [a.k.a the people who spectacularly [mis]conducted the exam] to play a pathetic game of hide-and-seek with the test takers by constantly delaying the results, I was actually looking forward to them with nervous excitement. As it turned out, my mental state in the past month kept fluctuating from elation [getting a decent score of 98.61 percentile in the exam] to dejection [my application being systematically rejected by every IIM (Indian Institute of Management)] to moderated elation [realizing that all was not lost, when I finally got a call from MDI (Management Development Institute) , a college almost as good as the IIMs]. With the group discussion/ personal interview rounds for MDI admission being scheduled on 29th March in the city of Mumbai, most of my time in the last month was spent tying to learn how to shout in fish market environments, while making myself an "expert" pundit on all kinds of real world news.

So, I found myself making my first ever trip to Mumbai - the second most populous city in the world - a place I had long been meaning to visit. Here are some of the lessons learnt from that trip :-

Always try to book a direct train - no matter what you think, journeying those extra miles with luggage is a royal pain.
While traveling alone in the Indian Railways, always try to avoid the side berths - you unavoidably become an easy target for hawkers, beggars and hijras (eunuchs) alike.
Trying to engage in a meaningful conversation with fellow passengers is much easier said than done.
The legendary congestion in Mumbai local trains is overhyped - they are no worse than Hyderabad city buses at rush hour.
For some reason 3 wheeler auto rickshaws simply refuse to go into the heart of the city - only 4 wheeled taxis are allowed in those parts!! Thankfully the taxi drivers are extremely well mannered.
Mumbai roads - atleast the roads I saw - are actually surprisingly well paved (when compared with other urban Indian roads).
Searching for a mobile phone store in Santa Cruz (a place in Mumbai) is like searching for a needle in a field of haystacks - had to keep searching for 2 Km before I found one!
Shivaji Park - the legendary playground in Mumbai - looks like a giant dustbowl. It actually looks a lot like Hyderabad's Gymkhana grounds.
Cricket is insanely popular in Mumbai - kids were playing on the railway tracks and congested streets at even 2 in the afternoon.
Mumbai's summer weather - or the weather at any coastal city - is awful. Yes, i will always love the hinterlands more.
I have seen flyovers meant for vehicles and trains but only in Mumbai have I seen flyovers for people (skywalks) - impressive!
The Bandra-Worli sea link (pictured above) looks in every way like Mumbai's answer to the Golden Gate Bridge! Simply the most majestic sea bridge I have ever seen.

PS: Im going to Mumbai again tonight for another interview. Will post experiences and pics later :) Cheers..

Spare the teacher, Spoil the child?

2010-03-07T08:50:00.001+05:30

So what do you do when students fail at their exams? Do you have a relook at the difficulty level of the exams? Do you evaluate the reasons why the students seem disinterested in their subjects? Do you decide to work with the families of the kids to cajole them into working hard? Or will you, like the school board of a certain Rhode Island school, decide to pass the blame onto the teachers and fire them all??!!

Thats right... 93 people (including classroom teachers, reading specialists, guidance counselors, physical education teachers, the school psychologist, the principal and assistant principals) now find themselves out of work, because incredibly, the school board of Central Falls High School decided to hold them 'accountable' for the declining test scores at the school!!! Their only crime was that they happened teach at a school in one of America's smallest and poorest cities, where a large number of students were not performing well in their tests. The tipping point came when the teachers refused to go along with a plan being 'imposed' by the superintendent to increase the workload of the teachers, without any extra pay. According to the new plan, the teachers were supposed to work 25 minutes longer every day, eat lunch with the students and help with tutoring. They were also supposed to submit to more detailed evaluations, go to weekly after school planning sessions with the other teachers of the school, and have a two week training session during the summer!!

Now, this is one of the most stupid and myopic decisions I have ever seen. Punishing all the teachers for the students bad performance, sets a horrendous precedent and doesnt really solve the problem of low scores at the school. As it is, the teachers were already doing their best to help children while being forced to teach in overcrowded and under-funded classrooms. While teachers obviously play a great part in moulding a child's life, it is naive to hold them responsible (in this manner) for how the kid turns out. I believe, an equal, if not greater, responsibility lies with the parents of the kids. Who is going to fire the parents for not spending enough time with their kids? As one retired teacher reacted, the school board needs to ask itself, who's at fault for the bad scores - the teachers in the classroom, the students who don't apply themselves, parents who don't check on their children, or the the school district, superintendent and board itself, which directs and manages the teachers and is responsible for the education of the students. It's not just teachers that are involved or responsible for the situation.

It is extremely naive of the school board to expect teachers to work like 'substitute parents' in the lives of their students. Teachers are human beings and not robots - some might not be as committed or gifted at teaching as the others. Every school will have some great teachers and some not so great ones. But even the not so great teachers help the students in rising above the challenges faced in life. Teaching is one of the most underpaid and undervalued professions there is, and teachers should be treated with respect for all the work that they put in. The decision of the school board to punish the teachers is most unfortunate.

The Twitter Connundrum

2010-02-26T18:10:00.000+05:30

Is the person who joins twitter a twit? What explains this sudden urge to inform the world what you had for dinner? Why would you subject friends and colleagues to the daily minutiae of your life?... These were the questions put forward by Dilip Bobb, in India Today magazine's new year special. Unless you have been living in an underground cave in some remote corner of the world or have just woken up from a two year long (cyber) hibernation - for which you have my greatest respect -, chances are that you have heard about twitter!! And if you have heard about twitter, chances are that you have already checked it out and formed an opinion on the 140 character micro-blogging service.

Reading the various points of view about twitter on the internet, you might think that twitter is either the next big thing/phenomenon of the internet, or a self-obsessed, ego-massaging, narcissistic social network. Despite the trainload of views surfacing about twitter since its creation at a brainstorming session in 2006, it still remains largely misunderstood. However, the mind boggling growth of the site (it is now growing at a rate of .. - hold your breath - .. 1382%) has ensured that while we may love it or hate it, we just cant ignore it!!

The main gripe that people seem to have about twitter is that it is a self-promoting tool, used for telling the world about things like 'I, me, myself, this is what I do, what I eat, what I'm wearing and where I'm going to be tonight'. Some people have gone so far as to say that tweets are 'nothing more than shouts into the darkness hoping someone is listening'. But aren't all social networks like facebook, myspace, orkut etc., narcissistic by nature? Aren't all tabloids - whose front pages publish nothing but what some XYZ celebrity had for breakfast - narcissistic by nature too?? We are living in an age where reality shows - which readily grant everyone who is anyone their 15 minutes of fame - are the most watched on television. So it is natural that some people might use twitter to advertise to the world what they are doing.

Twitter is not all about self glorification. In a study conducted by Pearl Analytics on twitter, the researchers concluded that while 40.55% of the tweets (twitter messages) they coded were pointless babble, the majority of tweets (49.85%) were either actual conversations or sharing of information. Twitter, or any other micro blogging service (yes, twitter is not the only one!!) for that matter, can only be used the way you want to use it. Some people might use it for following the celebrities they idolize, and some might use it for self-promotion and/or babbling, but as social networking researcher Danah Boyd says, the vast majority of Twitter users are there to maintain social relations, keep up with friends and acquaintances, and otherwise connect. As i have personally found out, twitter is a awesome way to meet new people, and is (imho) the best social networking tool around.

Return of the Chai-Coffee!!

2010-02-19T21:45:00.013+05:30

Its been well over 6 months now since I wrote a proper blog post and perhaps almost 9 months (gosh! has it really been that long??) since I last wrote a serious blog properly.. For some totally inexplicable reasons, I honestly feared that I had lost my writing mojo!! But in retrospect, the huge changes in adjusting from an incredibly awesome college life with 24X7 free internet access to a borderline monotonous corporate life - spending 9 hours in a monstrous buidling (a.k.a 'the office') was definitely a huge shock to my system - with almost no internet connectivity (except for the GPRS on my phone), was a probably big blog-enthusiasm-killer.. The fact that I was preparing for the hyper-competitive CAT exam (for admission into the exalted IIM's)in addition to a slew of other entrance tests for MBA programs during this time probably didnt help either.. It really is a sad state of affairs when the only viable connection outlet a person has to the whole wide world is his twitter account, but I digress!!

An awful lot has happened on this planet in these last 9 months, including, most notably, the comical - if not farcial - decision of the Nobel Committee to 'present' the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama, the untimely death of the legend - who I never really understood - that is Michael Jackson, the end of the noughties decade, the disastrously tragical Haiti earthquake, and even more recently, the latest entrant to the annoying fish market of social networking - Google Buzz!! It has been a pretty intense 9 months, but I digress again!!!

Anyway, having (hopefully) regained my writing mojo after overhauling the jinxed old template of this blog (which I secretly blame for my lack of regular posts), this blogger is back!! Back to torment and entertain you with rants over anything and perhaps mostly everything going on in this planet of ours.. After the embarrasing flop that the Chai-Coffee 2.0 blog relaunch turned out to be, I hereby humbly present to you, 'chai-coffee 3.0' - its snippier, snappier and er.. just plain better.. ;) .. Im hoping its a case of once bitten, twice shy.. Looking forward to regular blogging very soon.. Cheers!

PS: The template is still very much a "work in progress".. Inconvenience is regretted :)

Chai-Coffee 3.0.. The pre-relaunch post!

2010-02-07T20:23:00.002+05:30

This is a test post... The Template is still a work in progress.. Constructive Criticism is badly needed :P ..

Just another tag!!!

2009-09-25T19:17:00.007+05:30

Well, I've done it.. I've successfully applied for CAT'09 after many false starts (the application form was more confusing than i expected).. Will be writing that exam on 30th November.. With CAT preparation and other things taking up my time, I haven't been able to blog as much as I'd like to.. But as I hate seeing the same post on the top of the blog for almost a month, Ive decided to fish through my tags and respond to one - so here goes (this one is more personal!) .. (Oh and special thanks to Rads for the tag :) )

1. What is your current obsession?
music, tweeting, football and my Nokia smartphone :)
2. What are you wearing today?
the usual... - tee-shirt + jeans combo (can there really be anything else??)
3. What’s for dinner?
no idea!! got to decide which restaurant to go to (missing home food :-( )
4. What’s the last thing you bought?
a packet of fruit-break (really yummy :-) )
5. What are you listening to right now?
'Already Home' by Thousand Foot Krutch (TFK) .. Amazing song!!
6. What do you think about the person who tagged you?
An amazing and special person, and also a great friend.. Rads
7. If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you like it to be?
Hyderabad (my home city rocks) :)
8. What are your must-have pieces for summer?
er... hmm.. well.. do i really care about such stuff? Besides, summer is sooo far away!
9. If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go?
Stamford Bridge, London, England :)
10. Which language do you want to learn?
Spanish
11. What’s your favourite quote?
Whatever you do, give your best!!
12. Who do you want to meet right now?
er... i dont know!
13. What is your favourite colour?
Green / Blue / Fluorescent? (or any combination will do)
14. What is your favourite piece of clothing in your own closet?
Well.. Clothes are clothes..
15. What is your dream job?
Astronaut!!
16. What’s your favourite magazine?
Chip or Digit magazine (i guess)... Get a lot of "free" computer games with it :)
17. If you had $100 now, what would you spend it on?
A Les Paul guitar!.. An i-phone wouldn't be bad either...
18. What do you consider a fashion faux pas?
Really not much into fashion.. But I guess.. er.. Well, I don't really know
19. Who are your style icons?
None..
20. What kind of haircut do you prefer?
Maybe this question is not meant for me.. I mean there is only one kind of haircut, isn't it?
21. What are you going to do after this?
Dinner at some restaurant
22. What are your favourite movies?
any action/sci-fi/adventure/thriller type is great :)
24. What are three cosmetic/makeup/perfume products that you can't live without?
!!!!!!!!!!! (now why on earth did you tag me for this question rads???)
23. What inspires you?
Great music
24. What do you do when you “have nothing to wear” (even though your closet’s packed)?
Never, ever, ever, ever experienced that feeling, and never, ever, ever will in future too
25. Coffee or tea?
50-50.. Maybe coffee right now..
26. What do you do when you are feeling low or terribly depressed?
Play my guitar or listen to music
27. What is the meaning of your name?
Samuel means 'called by God' (a Bible name) and Pradeep means 'glowing light' (tried my best to translate there!!)
28. Which other blogs you love visiting?
All the blogs in my Blogroll
29. Favorite Dessert/Sweet?
Fruit Salad with Vanilla ice-cream
30. Favorite Season ?
Winter anytime!!!
31. If I come to your house now, what would u cook for me?
Well, considering my culinary skills, don't expect anything more than plain maggi noodles :)
32. What's your favorite cartoon character?
Tom from (Tom n Jerry) and Johnny Quest (well.. from Johnny Quest, duh)
33. My question: why did you respond to this tag? :P

Rules for those who are tagged (I didn't frame them):
Respond and rework – answer these questions on your blog, replace one question that you dislike with a question of your own, and add one more question to the list. Then tag eight or ten other new set of people.

Behold the tagged ones:

Vyazz, Dheeraj Bhai, Stillness/Tranquility :), Reva, Visa, Kaddu, Josyula

"International" Blogger's Award!!!

2009-08-05T10:37:00.008+05:30

While I've been away busy preparing for the changes in my life (er.. and also busy merrily sleeping and being lazy), I've been very lucky to bag a few awards :) .. Now, an award shows that you are in some way special to the person who has presented it to you, and that your writing/blogging is appreciated. When I first started regular blogging back the end of January this year, I never thought that I'd make friends like that so soon.. Must say I've been very fortunate in that regard.. Anyway, here is one of the awards Ive been presented by Rads, and I'm proud to pass it on to other special bloggers :) There were some rules for passing on this one!

Rules:
1. Link the person who tagged you.
2. Copy the image above, the rules and the questionnaire in this post.
3. Post this in one or all of your blogs.
4. Answer the four questions following these Rules.
5. Recruit at least seven (7) friends on your Blog Roll by sharing this with them.
6. Come back to BLoGGiSTa iNFo CoRNeR (PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE THIS LINK) at http://bloggistame.blogspot.com and leave the URL of your Post in order for you/your Blog to be added to the Master List.
7. Have Fun!

Questions & Your Answers:
1. The person who tagged you: Rads (Radhika)
2. His/her site's title and url: Rads Blog-a-zine (http://rads-blogazine.blogspot.com/)
3. Date when you were tagged: July 8th '09
4. Persons you tagged: Ninad, Visa, Sharkey, Dheeraj, Vyas, Stillness Speaks, Ronnie, Rads, Dexter, Kadambari, Reva, Pushkar, VB,

Embarassed and Remorseful!!!

2009-08-01T17:52:00.004+05:30

Argh, this is so sad to write!!! So embarassing!! The reboot of the blog malfunctioned disastrously with the blog stubbornly refusing to come out of its comatose state. (Hey, its totally the blog's fault, Im just a poor blog owner :P)

Anyway, I could spend hours writing about how bad i feel about not being able to update the blog in the past month - coz i really feel bad - but that would be pointless really. I dont think I will ever attempt a relaunch of the blog ever again!! Once burnt, twice shy right.. There has been a lot of change in my life in the last few months - started an internship at Elecon Engineering in Anand, Gujarat (India) (where we have a 6 day work week!!) and also enrolled at T.I.M.E baroda (coaching centre) to train for the famed Common Aptitute Test (CAT) to get into the IIM's on sundays. With so much going, it took time to get adjusted. Am writing this post to get the remorse at neglecting the blog out of my system. Will be back to regular updates pretty soon!

Signing out (for now) - Sammy

Reboot: Chai-Coffee 2.0

2009-06-03T09:10:00.004+05:30

Well it has been more than 5 months since i regularly started posting on this blog. Its been absolutely awesome to have my own space on the net to keep ranting. In hindsight though, being in college was one of the main reasons I was able to regularly post on the blog. Freely available 24 hour internet, coupled with an absolute lack of other entertainment options (there is nothing much to see and do in Pilani other than the BITS campus) in addition to the monstrously hot summer weather, contrived to keep me online all the time. It is amazing to see how much one can blog when exiled to a remote corner of the world with no scope for entertainment (other than friends - obviously).

But now, after I've come back home to Hyderabad, there has been so much to do and so many ways to have fun. Its like there has been a sudden explosion in the fun things-to-do list. Especially as I'm going to stay here only for a month before my internship starts, Im trying to make the most of perhaps the last few weeks of my student life (darn, that sounds so gloomy!). So in the midst of having all this fun, blogging has taken a temporary backseat for the past one month. One thing the vacation allowed me to do, however, was to take a critical looks at the blog and think about ways to improve it. The first thing that struck me was the template. So after some searching and much experimenting, I have finally changed the template (yeay!). The template is still a work in progress, so please chip in with your suggestions, bouquets and brickbats. I'd be grateful for that :). Hopefully you will see better posts in the new chai-coffee blog.

Welcome to the new, relaunched, "chai-coffee 2.0".

Time to ban Exit Polls?

2009-05-21T14:20:00.006+05:30

WARNING: This post is a result of the author being traumatized by the coverage of the Indian elections on TV

After yet another historic election for the Indian parliament, one group of people have, once again, been left humiliated and embarrassed. No, I'm not talking about the politicians who lost their elections. It is the breed of modern political astrologers who are also called psephologists. (Psephology is the branch of political science, which deals with the study and statistical analysis of elections). In plain english, psephologists are those people who relentlessly try to predict the results of elections by using "scientific" exit polls - but still regularly predict the wrong verdict with amazing accuracy. They are a news channel's best friend and the news viewer's worst enemies. Because of their predictions, news hungry TV channels can spend entire days discussing pointless permutations and combinations about who will come to power, only to discover that their predictions had been wrong all along. That gives them an excuse to waste more of our time analysing what went wrong with the exit poll.

Exit polls are at best glorified guesses and at worst pointless predictions. This is very true in a country like India, because of the scale and diversity of the population - huge differences in income, age, languages, religion, caste and cultural differences across states and regions. Add to this cauldron the number of different political parties and groupings, and you will understand why it is almost impossible for any sample of voters to give an accurate indication of the actual voting trends. While talking about exit polls, Rajdeep Sardesai - editor of CNN-IBN (which got the closest exit prediction to the actual results) - wrote in his blog about the difficulty of predicting an Indian election, saying that Indian elections are no longer a single election, but possibly 543 elections being played out at the same time, with almost every constituency having its own unique set of issues and individuals to deal with. Take Mumbai for instance. If in North Mumbai, the absentee MP Govinda has been an issue in itself for voters, in the neighbouring north-west constituency, slum rehabilitation is a major concern. While a section of South Mumbai goes into cataclysms over 26/11 (terrorist attacks), another part of the same constituency is worried about unsafe old buildings. When it is impossible to safely predict a trend for a single city, predicting a national elections becomes as easy as finding a needle in a billion haystacks, especially when there are such sharp variations within every constituency.

The main problem with exit polls is that they are inherently flawed. The interviewer gets an opinion only from those willing to respond, and at most times the interview is conducted in a hurry to cover as many voters as possible. Because of this, the results often tend to be wrongly biased to a particular party. In the 2004 elections, the NDA was forecast to get atleast 250 seats, but in the end it got only 180 seats. After 5 years, the situation is no different. For the 2009 elections, most exit polls foresaw that the UPA would win 190 seats, but the UPA ended up winning 260 seats! With errors of almost 25% to even 50%, the whole point of having an exit poll needs to be seriously re-examined, if news channels and their psephologists are to retain any credibility with the Indian public. Smaller countries like New Zealand and Singapore have already wisely banned exit polls. Indian exit polls might be another debacle short of an outright ban!

Writing on the wall??

2009-05-08T08:27:00.011+05:30

Things are rarely just crazy enough to work, but they're frequently just crazy enough to fail hilariously.

The concept of e-book readers replacing paper books has been there for a while now, every time some or the other company tries very hard to market their product finding some initial success and then fading into obscurity. The main problem of course has been that a book remains a physical object, ink on paper with a cover and a presence in the world, while an e-book is just another bag of bits, but some times i guess a bag of bits is all that one needs. Personally speaking, with a book I need to find the right position on my bed to read it, often end up straining my neck but with an e book i guess those troubles of finding the right way to read a book while on bed are gone......but with a book that is made of paper we get a sense of where we are, shuffle pages, make my comments by the side lines, draw funny pictures on the border and even show off my collection to my friends. A book made of paper adds immersive engagement that cant be distracted... for all I know the once the e-books are commercially successful there will be adds poping up every now and then.

If I were to be unbiased, I'd say all those arguments were of a child like purist unwilling to change with time. The convenience offered by an e-book is very high I cant imagine reading a newspaper on a crowded bus or metro witout being jabbed in the elbow, pages collapsing onto the floor or my book getting damaged. There is another added advantage that one could probably throw the torch light away when reading a scary novel in the dark, keeping your hands free to indulge in some chocolate or any other delicacy. Some people say that newspapers are an absolute waste of resources as it ultimately goes into the trash bin(of course in our country we just use it as wrapping material or make bags out of them), but if one plans to use the electronic form instead of a good old news paper I guess he has to be extra careful not to leave it just lying around and risk loosing thousands of bucks instead of a few that cost a real newspaper. And one good thing about this cost factor is that, you can leave your paper behind for some one else to read, but one would've to be a Bill Gates to do it with a electronic version.

The first e-book reader ever made was Rocketbook, it was heavy clumsy and the screen allegedly used to flash every time you turned a page. They evolved a lot from the primitive form to the stage where the e-book readers use an "e-ink" that create bubbles of e-ink by pushing ink-like particles around under screens. The latest in the e-book readers are from Amazon and Sony and they seem to be doing good commercially. And I wonder will this be the last of the good old books?

The Cheap Obsession!

2009-05-01T00:07:00.009+05:30

We Indians seem to have an obsession with cheap things. We want everything to be cheap (if not free). We provide cheap labour to the world (ex: construction workers in Dubai, plantation workers in Fiji). India provides cheap options for outsourcing which enable western businesses to save millions of dollars. India is also home to the cheapest car in the world (Tata Nano). Even launching a satellite into space is the cheapest from an Indian rocket (PSLV). To an extent, this obsession with everything cheap makes sense as almost half of the country is still relatively poor. However, the problem with focussing too much on saving money is that it often leads to a compromise on quality. In the end, this obsession with cheapness can end up hurting us more than we expect!

Take the case of the 'cheap laptop' fiasco. When MIT Media Lab founder, Nicholas Negroponte, started his One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project promising 100-dollar laptops to children in the developing world, trials were held in India, where the OLPC was a hit with the students. However the government flung the offer right back, claiming that India could produce its own cheap laptop. Amid much fanfare, it was announced that this "OLPC killing" laptop will be much cheaper (only $10 !!) while having features like 2GB of storage, WiFi and Ethernet. Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) were roped in to develop this incredible laptop, named the "Sakshat". In the end, the $10 Sakshat turned out to be a big flop. It was actually not a laptop at all, but a glorified pen drive. It did not have either a display screen or a keyboard. All it could do was store (and apparently also print) educational material, and connect to some resources on the internet. However to use the Sakshat, a normal computer was still needed. All that talk about making affordable computers turned out to be grossly misleading hype.

The government has shot itself in the foot by obsessing over creating the cheapest laptop in the world. This week, the government had to accept that the making a better and cheaper laptop was impossible and ordered 250,000 OLPC laptops for Indian kids. If only common sense had prevailed, precious time and money would have been saved. While the mission of the OLPC was to help kids in developing countries keep up with kids in the developed world - who grow up with computers - by providing affordable computing, the mission of the Sakshat was to score brownie points and prove that a cheaper laptop can be created by India. That, in addition to the obsession with cheapness, has damaged the credibility of the government. Will this unhealthy obsession ever end?

PS: My exams are starting from tomorrow.. Till they get over (May13th), the blog posts will be smaller than usual.

Smoking Games!

2009-04-21T10:23:00.007+05:30

Guess what is turning out to be a major head-ache for the US military chiefs. Terrrorism? "War" in Iraq? The situation in Pakistan? Nah.. It is "Tobacco Smoking"!! In the United States, smoking is twice as widespread among the military than the civilian population. For soldiers, apart from the normal health effects, smoking leads to a decrease in night vision, slower injury recovery time, and poorer endurance . The United States Department of Defence (DoD) already has a website dedicated to reducing the number of smokers in the military. Despite its best efforts to scare soldiers into quitting - with messages like "smoking makes you stink. You can't hide from enemy forces if they can smell you a block away!" - nothing seems to be working as the number of smokers in the U.S military has been steadily increasing since 2002.

So, in an effort to combat smoking among soldiers, the DoD is paying US$ 3.7 million to researchers in Houston, for cutting edge technology to help soldiers stop smoking - its a video game!!! For this game, the DoD has tied up with game publisher Radiant Creative Inc - which has already created an anti-smoking game for the youth customizable to age, gender, ethnic background and tobacco use called "Escape With Your Life". In that game, players create avatars and then they have to escape with their lives from inside a "scary" hospital. To escape and earn points, players must go through different rooms – from radiology to accounting – where they get tips and learn the physical, financial and environmental costs of smoking. In a study, interestingly, more than half of the 239 teenage smokers reported quitting after playing the game. How effective a modified version of this game will be in scaring battle-hardened soldiers away from smoking is still debatable. While video games do influence kids, can they actually affect the psyche of soldiers? The game creators however, are confident that soldiers will be hooked to the game and will kick smoking in droves. They are planning to have it ready for testing at Fort Hood in Texas by 2011, and mass produce it by 2013.

I sincerely advise the US DoD to read this blog (Smokeless Smokes) and use the mentioned gadget. It would be a lot cheaper than spending millions (their economy is already facing the brunt of the recession) on an untested video game which will be released only by 2013!! Oh, and they can please pay me about a million for helping them save 3.7 million.. That would be real nice :-)

(PS: Cartoon from cartoonstock.com)

Thank You!!!

2009-04-17T00:15:00.011+05:30

I never write personal stuff in this blog . But on the occasion of “Blog Reader Appreciation Day 2009” I’m making an exception and writing a personal post to thank everyone who made this blog possible.

Though I started this blog in July 2008, I stopped very soon, because my blog didn’t get listed in google search (yes, I was that naïve) and I wasn’t getting any comments (desperate). The turnaround happened this January, when Dexter talked with me in college and encouraged me to restart blogging. At that time, another of my friends, Swaroop, was already having a successful self-hosted blog on movies and he was making good money, introduced me to Google Analytics. I wrote my 1st post of the year and through analytics, I saw that 4 people had read my blog that day. The next day 3 more people read it. Just seeing people read the blog was exhilarating enough for me to regularly update the blog every alternate day. 12 posts and a month later, I got my 1st comment from an anonymous guy on a post I wrote on Terrorism in Pakistan. After that, TnT, Sharkey and Sharkey’s mysterious fan (don’t know who he/she is) started regularly commenting on the blog. These guys really saved the blog as I was about to give up due to the lack of feedback (comments). TnT deserves special mention, as he has this amazing knack of making a discussion lively with his “special” comments like this one (sometimes ordinary posts seem good because of his comments). The 4 of us kept having great discussions here about things like suicides and even the identity of Sharkey’s mysterious fan.

The next big leap happened when I joined Indiblogger and made good friends (and relationships blossomed through twitter). Interacting with people like Pushkar[medscholar08] and Kaddu[kadambariyer] (kept helping me with adding widgets in the blog) kept motivating me to improve the blog. Vyazz was the first person whose blog I started following because of the unique perspective he gives. He has been supportive with his comments ever since. Reva [lafemmereva] was the first girl to comment on the blog, and needless to say, she improved the status of the blog among my friends immediately (for some reason guys seem to take notice only when a girl shows up). She was also the first person to add my blog to her blogroll. Niraja has been my harshest critic, scanning every mistake I make in a post (she scared me into double checking the research for every blogpost since). Rads, Visa and Aditya too have chipped in with their comments.

Once again a huge thank you to everyone who has commented on this blog and everyone who has been reading regularly. Thank you Dex, TnT, Sharkey, Reva, Niraja, Pushkar, Rads, Kaddu, Vyazz, Yogs, Visa, Aditya, Stillness Speaks, Todays Writer, Leno, and every1 else.

When Mikeyy played Twitter!

2009-04-14T13:20:00.006+05:30

DISCLAIMER: The following blog post talks about the virus attack that twitter (the social networking site, which this author is hooked onto) suffered recently. If you are someone who has never tweeted on twitter before, it is very likely that you will find this post as interesting as garbage! If you haven't yet joined twitter, this author seriously implores with you to join in, as twitter is the best way to make new friends and keep in touch with them (it is even famously called 'the poor man's email').. Seriously guys, if you are not on twitter you area definitely missing out on something huge!!! :D

The last weekend was remarkable. During that time, the popular microblogging site - twitter - was repeatedly held under siege by a worm, which was created by a 17 year old out of boredom! The first attack started on saturday (11th April) with an outbreak of self-promoting bogus tweets pointing to a twitter's rival site Stalkdaily from 4 accounts. Users who viewed these accounts got infected and their accounts sent more spam tweets to infect their followers. The second wave of attacks contained the phrase "Mikeyy" and the third and fourth waves referred to removing the Mikeyy worm. In the final two waves of attacks, the worm sent out tweets like "4th gen #mikeyy worm on the loose, click here to protect yourself" which fooled users into clicking on infected links to further spread the virus.

Michael Mooney, the 17-year-old student who owned up to creating the worm, said that his intention was only to promote his website and help others realize the vulnerabilities in twitter. He also said that he didn't expect the worm to spread as fast as it did. The uniqueness of this worm is that it is Operating System independent while other worms are bound to specific O.S's (Windows virus attacks only Windows systems while a Mac virus attacks only Apple systems). Also the worm doesn't need ot be installed on a computer to affect it as simply 'viewing' an infected profile is enough.

Thankfully, the attacks this time created more of a nuisance than any real damage. No sensitive information of users like passwords, contact numbers etc. were stolen. The same cannot be said for future attacks as Social Networking websites have emerged as the ideal soft targets for hackers to play havoc on. Twitter itself has grown to such an extent that today there are lots of celebrities and respected companies giving regular tweets on it. Links given by them are blindly clicked by fans because of their trust. Now just imagine if their accounts are hacked into and malicious links posted. It would make spreading worms on the net so much more easier. Mikeyy has at the very least given other hackers new ideas to spread their terror on the internet. This is not the first time Twitter has been compromised. Just last month, users were bombarded with tweets being sent from compromised accounts trying to drive traffic to a pornographic website called ChatWebCamFree. Before crooks take advantage of such flaws, Twitter should really start treating its script flaws more seriously, and we need to be more wary.

IPL: Anti-national?

2009-04-10T00:52:00.002+05:30

Sometimes court cases can be so absurd!!!

It is now well known that the Indian Premier League (a cricket league) had to be shifted away from India this year - either because stubborn cricket officials with over-inflated egos failed to realize that minting money is not the most important thing is the world, or (for those on the other side of the fence) an equally stubborn government failed to realize that holding a multi-billion dollar sports event is more important than the safe conduct of elections for the largest democracy in the world. Though most of us didn’t like missing out on the IPL – the first edition was a huge hit, with sold out crowds regularly filling cricket stadiums to either watch the cricket or the imported cheerleaders, or perhaps both – we accepted that we were powerless to do anything about it (after all the IPL is a private company which can’t be swayed by holding hunger strikes a.k.a the Gandhian Way). So even though it will be weird to watch an Indian Premier League held in South Africa, we reconciled ourselves to the facts and let things be. The only people still whining about it were politicians, but then, since when did we take what politicians say seriously?

But two Delhi residents decided that enough is enough and promptly filed a case in the Supreme Court of India to prevent the IPL from being played anywhere outside the country! Now, here is where things get weird. In their affidavit, the duo asked the court to give this matter topmost priority as “the issue concerns national pride and reputation of the country”, also adding that “shifting of the IPL to a foreign country was an anti-national act and demeaning for every citizen's self respect”. Finally they said that was a “huge business loss” for India. Now, telling that the issue concerns national pride was extreme enough, but come on, was it an anti-national act?? Was it really demeaning for Indian self respect?? I just can’t understand what point these guys are trying to prove here. Did they really think that shifting the IPL was anti-national or is this their wierd way of trying to get their own 15 seconds of fame?

Thankfully, the Court had its priorities right, and it declined to hurry the hearing of this “important” case (There are hundreds of real cases pending already in the court). So atleast for now, the IPL can go ahead in South Africa without any legal hassles. The case has been scheduled to be heard on April 20th. Should be interesting to see how this one pans out.

Chocolate Power!!!

2009-04-06T20:58:00.009+05:30

The news just keeps getting better! Chocolate lovers of the world, its time to rejoice again! After convincing scientists that it keeps the heart healthy, has anti-cancer benefits, and helps in supressing cough and diarrhoea, it has now been found that eating chocolate is good for your math!! If ever there was a time in human history to be a chocolate lover, now might be it.

According to researchers at Northumbria University, students who gorge on chocolate when revising for exams will do them well. Chocolate helps to perform mentally challenging tasks. When volunteers were given a hot cocoa (chocolate) drink - having 5 bars of chocolate - the speed and accuracy of their math abilities simply shot up! They even didn't show any sign of tiredness even after an hour of continuous math! Chocolate has chemicals called flavnols which increase blood flow to the brain, making complicated tasks easy. Researchers have cautioned that while eating large amounts of chocolate is bad and can cause weight gain, when taken in moderate quantities, it is very beneficial for your health. So while chocolate won't make you a math genius, it will definitely assist your skills.

The study also shows that people who eat dark chocolate gain the most from it. Those who develop a passion for dark chocolate, find the sweet one less delicious. As chocolate is a complex food with over 300 compounds and chemicals in each bite, according to professionals, to really enjoy and appreciate dark chocolate, we need to take our own sweet time tasting it. Professional chocolate tasters have a system for tasting chocolate that includes assessing the appearance, smell, feel and taste of each piece. Using this system, anyone can become a dark chocolate lover within 5 minutes.

Well, let me just recap all the health benefits of chocolate (just to feel good :-) )

Tastes good
Lowers blood pressure (and relaxes the heart)
Lowers cholesterol
Stimulates endorphins (gives pleasure)
Containts serotonin (anti-depressant)
Contains theobromine (stimulates the brain)
Contains caffeine (keeps us alert)
Anti-oxidants (prevents aging)
Supresses cough
Helps combat diarrhea and regain lost appetite
Helps in math!!!

So, the next time someone tells you chocolate is bad, you know that isn't true. And do add chocolate to your chai and coffee... Cheers!

Back Ache : blame your boss!

2009-04-01T09:51:00.007+05:30

DISCLAIMER: This blog post is not another typical April Fool's joke! The contents are totally true and are based on real and factual research.

One of the most widespread non-fatal health problems today is back ache / back pain. In the United States about 9 out of 10 adults experience back pain at some point in their life, and 5 out of 10 'working adults' have back pain every year. It is the single largest complaint among working professionals - that wasn't a huge surprise now, was it?

Researchers have found a scientific connection between working professionals and back aches. Initially, the obvious reason for back pain was thought to be bad posture of the professionals compounded by sitting in front of a computer all day. But even after most organizations invested in buying more ergonomic chairs which support their employees spines in the right places, the number complaints of back aches still didn't reduce. So when scientists at the University of Queensland started researching to find out the root cause of this irritating problem, the culprit that they found was not bad posture!

According to this research, back aches are more closely related to psychological factors than physical! They found that found that people who are unhappy with their job and those who live alone are more likely to suffer from back pain and also take a lot longer to recover. Also working in a high-demand but low-control office environment (or dealing with unhelpful superiors) may actually cause back pain! In other words, having a unhelpful boss can actually cause your back pain!! In the survey conducted in New Zealand, most suffering from back pain were found to be women who live alone and work for unsupportive bosses. Another surprising discovery of this study is that researchers claim that they can now predict the duration of recovery of patients (from back problems) by just studying the psychological and social factors in their lives!

So, if you are suffering from a recurring back problem, the best way to recover from it is to not let work superiors get under you skin, or else take a different job which has more helpful bosses. Perhaps the saying, a bad job is a pain in the neck should be changed to a pain in the back! At the very least you get to have one more reason to hate your boss!

Chinese Cyber Terror

2009-03-29T19:06:00.008+05:30

Cyber Terrorists have struck again! A report by Information Warfare Monitor (IWM) investigators, has revealed that more than 1,295 computers in 103 countries belonging to governments, embassies, banks and news organisations have been attacked by hackers over the last two years. All these attacks seem to have originated completely in China! So is China on a secret cyber war with the rest of the world? Or is it an unknown rogue hacker organisation acting on its own? The number of countries attacked and their location shows that these attacks must have had atleast some amount of government help. The attacks have been focussed on the governments of South Asian and Southeast Asian countries - which are in China's strategic neighbourhood.

This shadowy organization's (named GhostNet by IWM) operation is the most extensive remote spying operation uncovered in the world. The computers attacked have been exclusively of high ranking officials with access to sensitive information like diplomats, military attachés, private assistants, secretaries to Prime Ministers and journalists. The capabilities of GhostNet are pretty scary. According to IWM, GhostNet in the past 2 years, removed documents from these computers, silently triggered web cameras and activated and logged audio inputs! IWM uncovered this operation when it started investigating complaints of cyber attacks on Tibetan exile community in India!

According to the research, GhostNet directs infected computers to download a Trojan known as Ghost Rat that allows attackers to gain complete, real-time control. This trojan - controlled from internet accounts located at Hainan in China - then sends emails to specific targets with attached documents which contain the malware. Once compromised, the computer is under the control of GhostNet controllers who continue to invade and monitor more than a dozen new computers a week. The report further says that it is most likely that this operation is neither the first nor the only one of its kind. It is safe to assume that other countries like the United States and Russia have similar cyber espionage efforts.

In an increasingly computer connected world, these attacks have the potential to do actual harm. Computer viruses have already attacked and been successful in shutting down certain non-essential systems in nuclear power plants. We need to be wary as unlike Die Hard 4.0, we may not have a Bruce Willis to save us in the real world.

Earth vs Human Achievement?

2009-03-27T23:24:00.007+05:30

Today - 28th March - has a special hour. From 8:30PM to 9:30 PM (in every timezone), people, organizations and governments are going to switch off their lights in support of the 3rd annual "Earth Hour". If you are in the minority who haven't already heard about this campaign, the Earth Hour is a campaign to make people voluntarily switch off their lights in support of the environment. It started in 2007 in Australia, as a joint initiative of Sydney Morning Herald and WWF Australia. Following the success of the 1st Earth Hour, 34 more countries and 400 cities from around the world joined Australia on this effort for the 2nd year in 2008.

The entire concept of switching off lights for 1 hour may seem to do little to address the monumental problem of climate change as the energy saved is small and the time period is small (1 hour out of 8760 hours a year). During Earth Hour 2008, Dubai saved 2% electricity, Toronto saved 9% electricity and the best result was from Christchurch (New Zealand) with a 13% drop in electricity. However, this event has powerful symbolic value. Having entire cities, organizations and landmarks turn off their lights for one hour, focuses the attention of the common man towards the seriousness of climate change. Earth Hour 2008 helped in increasing awareness towards the environment by 5% (Zogby survey)! Considering that this is a single event, 5% is a huge increase in awareness.

In 2009, Earth Hour has got a new significance. As world leaders meet in Copenhagen in December to come up with an alternative to the failed Kyoto protocol, the organizers of Earth Hour plan to use it to pressurise the world's leaders into doing something real at this summit. One billion people around the world are being encouraged to 'vote for the Earth' by switching off their lights and showing world leaders what to do.

On the other hand, during the same hour in 2009, critics at Competitive Enterprise Institute, are celebrating the time as 'Human Achievement Hour'. Participants in this hour are asked to celebrate the achievements of humanity by eating dinner at restaurants, seeing a film, driving around, keeping the heat on at home, and most importantly switch on every light. Their idea is to celebrate electricity without which human achievement wouldn't have been possible. A senior CEI official said, “Those who wish to celebrate Earth Hour should sit in the dark, turn off the heat, and breathe as little as possible.”

So, what hour are you going to celebrate today? The Earth Hour or Human Achievement Hour? I hope it will be the former.

Water Water Everywhere?

2009-03-22T17:24:00.007+05:30

...Water, water, every where; Nor any drop to drink... - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Coleridge)

Coleridge's poem is more true today than ever before. Hands up, how many of us were aware that today (22nd March) is World Water Day? Are we aware of the very real water crisis haunting the entire world? Are we aware that yesterday more than 3,500 kids died because of of lack of water (U.N estimate)? Doomsday, when it comes, won't be because of nuclear weapons from 'rouge states' like Iran and North Korea, or even terrorists playing around with their toys. It is more likely to be because of scarcity of water. It is ironic that though our rock is covered by so much water, we are still facing a water crisis.

But what is the world seriously doing to counter this crisis? Most times the media has ignored this issue (not as important as kissing celebrities eh). The few times the crisis has been highlighted, it has not been shown to be as serious as it actually is. We need to be shocked out of inaction to tackle this crisis, because if this inaction continues, panic will surely mount due to shortage of water. People will keep going deeper and deeper to tap the sinking water table and bleed it dry. Rivers and lakes that depend on it will perish. Finally we will be left with salty sea water, which is extremely costly to desalinate and make it good enough to drink.

Water has always been important for human existence. All ancient civilizations have been found near rivers. Our cities are near water; we bathe and play in water; we perform our daily chores with water; and we survive because of water. But now, we may have to fight for water. The potential for conflict is much more than theoretical. There are already tensions between Turkey, Syria and Iraq over the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt have been threatening each other over the Nile. According to the UN, water scarcity is among the prime reasons behind the deadly wars in Sudan’s Darfur region. In the Middle East, water is seen as a resource that has strategic value. Amidst tensions between the nations over it, water has been included in almost all peace deals that have either been proposed or signed in recent years. Even within India, states have been bickering over water.

The next you look at a dripping tap, please do your bit. We cant continue in blissful ignorance for much longer. The situation is much more serious than it looks. Spread the word. Happy World Water Day everyone.

My nightmare!

2009-03-20T17:01:00.004+05:30

I know it has been too long since my last post. Well, one of the reasons is the stupidly cramped up schedule that I have had for the last week in my college (5 evaluation components since my last post). Im really beginning to hate the system here, but I digress. The other reason is that Ive seen this very scary cartoon on the net. They say that a picture speaks a 1000 words and I really really hope that I will not end up like that blogger. This cartoon has been giving me nightmares :P .. So, the blame for my cyber inactivity falls squarely on the creator of that cartoon and not on me.. I appeal to kind hearted souls to help me cope with this nightmare.. PS: My schedule has cleared up again, next post tomorrow.. Cheers

Operation Good Mood - Berlin!

2009-03-15T13:18:00.007+05:30

Of all the odd news that I have heard in my relatively short life, this one takes the cake! As the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall approaches, the German capital has appointed 4000 citizens to be "good mood" ambassadors. No, that wasn't a typo, the city actually appointed 'good mood' ambassadors!

Apparently Berliners are detested in their own country for being boring and grumpy, and are affectionately called "Berlin Snouts" (translated) by the others. In an effort to get rid of that tag, the city authorities are on a massive image overhaul, spending over 2,00,000 pounds(US$ 2,80,000) for the noble purpose of making Berlin a bright and happy-moody city. The plan of the city is to make the ambassadors hand out colourful cards with 'provocative' phrases like "What do you think you're looking at?" and "Do I look like an information desk?" in order to make fun of the stereotypical grumpy Berliner image. They are meant to teach the citizens that it is possible to be courteous and friendly on a day-to-day basis.

Train and bus drivers, police officers and other public officials have been designated as good mood ambassadors and will be expected to be jolly and helpful at all times (Whatever happened to the freedom of expression?). I feel sad for those souls who have been pitchforked into being good mood ambassadors. Just how are they supposed to be happy all day? They might as well have bought some cute, happy looking robots for the job. At best this initiative of Berlin will be a good social experiment into the effects of training people to have a good mood all the time. Should be good fun to see how this works out.

The Malaise of Ragging

2009-03-11T11:22:00.006+05:30

On the day of Holi (festival of colours), a sad news has shocked India. A 19 year old medical student, Aman Kachroo, died from severe head injuries after being ragged (hazed) by 4 college seniors. What is baffling is the inaction of the warden and superintendent even after a written complaints by Kachroo. What on earth were they waiting for? Their negligence caused his death.

Ragging (literally 'to tease') was originally supposed to be a set of activities undertaken by the seniors to break the ice with the juniors who have been suddenly thrown into a new environment. But now it seems to have evolved into something totally violent and a means for the seniors to take out their frustrations on the freshers. This has become a national disease. In the last one year: in Orissa, students were asked embarassing questions, and any answer was responded with a slap; In MP, hostel students were pulled out in the middle of the night and beaten up; In West Bengal, students were made to stand naked in the scorching sun in full view of the entire camspus; In Kerela, a 17 year old girl was even raped in the name of ragging! It was so severe that 62 students were forced to flee their hostel in Andhra Pradesh. There have been 11 deaths and 10 suicide attempts in the last 7 years because of ragging in India.

One of the main problems with ragging in India, is that its severity is not understood. 9 in 10 people you meet on the street would defend ragging, calling it as necessary social interaction. The problem is in the definitions. If ragging is just interaction (in which both sides contribute), its perfectly fine. But if bullying is called ragging - as it is today - it is plain wrong. A clear distinction must be made between ragging and bullying. When ragging becomes bullying, it crosses all lines of decency. Also contrary to popular belief, ragging rarely leads to a close knit hostel life. It separates students from each other, as in most cases, it is done on regional lines (Keralites rag only Keralites etc). So in effect, there is a mentality of us vs them created, and this leads to misunderstanding of students from other cultures in the same college.

In research done in India by the anti-ragging body CURE, it was found that 62% of the ragging was physical while 20% was sexual ragging and 13% was physical and sexual. Only in 5% of the cases, ragging was found to be verbal. All this inspite of ragging being outlawed in India in 2001. To stop ragging (of the bullying kind) the college authorities need to be responsible. In my college, the incidence of severe ragging has come down a lot (compared to my 1st year) because of vigilant college authorities. Hopefully soon ragging will again become what it was supposed to be instead of what it is right now.

So you think you can swim!

2009-03-09T16:21:00.010+05:30

Mermaids are mythical creatures that have long graced kids fairy tales like 'Peter Pan' and 'the Little Mermaid'. Now thanks to technology, real humans can look and act like mermaids(or mermen as the case may be)!! Inventor Ted Ciamillo has created a monofin for deep sea diving called the 'Lunocet', modeled on a dolphin's tail. When the fin is attached to the custom aluminum foot plate, the diver looks almost like a merman/mermaid.

Lunocet though is not just about looks. It delivers an amazing performance in allowing the diver to swim at high speeds almost effortlessly. Lunocet users are said to have reached about 8 mph (13kmph), which is nearly twice as fast as Olympic Gold Medal swimmer Michael Phelps at his fastest. This invention - made from carbon fiber and fiberglass - is very lightweight (a measely 1.1 kg) and not a burden to carry around. Although we might never be as fast as dolphins (54kmph) under the water, this invention promises to enable even normal swimmers to beat Olympic times.

CAT scans of dolphins' tails were used to make the Lunocet. Predictably, all these advances haven't come cheap. Lunocet is on sale at a hefty US $1800. So, if you are a diving fan loaded with lots of cash, this is definitely the toy for you. We might soon have a future where Lunocet wearing divers going on swim tours around the world's oceans might be the perfect vacation. If you are not so fortunate, join with me in admiring these humans who look and swim like fish with the aid of fancy gadgets. Cheers!

Beware: Love Scams

2009-03-06T23:58:00.003+05:30

Beware all men! There are scammers out there trying to get your personal information and even your money through fake love relationships. More than 9,000 men have been scammed (and left with empty wallets and broken hearts) in the past 6 months. Some reports say that now, atleast 30% of the profiles on some dating websites are scammer profiles. They are now attacking users on social networking sites also (even the non-dating kind).

I realised the extent of these scams, when I digged through the net after getting a scam mail 2 days ago from someone I never met (This wasn't categorized as spam by gmail!). It started with a message to my 'socialspark' (blog network) account saying that my blog was amazing, and asking me to send that person a mail as she wanted to know me more. As this was the first time someone who I didn't know appreciated my blog on that network, I sent a short mail thanking for the compliment. Then came this mail

My Dearest Sammy,
How is your day my dear? Mine is a little bit cold over here in Dakar Senegal. My name is Tata Konan I'm 23 years, from Ivory Coast in West Africa. I am 5' 7" tall, Fair in complexion Single (never married before) I am presently residing in the refugee camp here in Dakar Senegal as a result of the civil war that was fought in my country. My late father Dr.Herbert Konan was the managing director of Konan's ventures (Ltd) and he was the personal adviser to the former head of state before the rebels attacked our house one early morning and killed my mother and my father in cold blood. It was only me that is alive now and I managed to make my way to a nearby country Senegal where i am living now in a refugee camp,and this computer is belongs to a Reverend that has a church here in the camp. My hobbies are reading, cooking, cinema, movies, dancing and fond of little kids. I would like to know more about you.your likes and dislikes, hobbies and what you are doing presently. I will tell you more about myself in my next mail.Attached here is my photo, hope you will like it. Hoping to hear from you soonest.

Yours Tata.

Believable pics of a pretty girl (not supermodel gorgeous but just pretty) were attached. Not the type of mail a blog admirer would send, is it? After searching the net for quite some time about what happened to her father, I found a link where someone else got the same mail (same height, same story) from a Sofia Konan! Apparently, these scammers are very patient. Some men were made to believe that they were talking with a real African girl for upto 6 months, and then -when they trusted that girl - were finally trapped into losing their money.

In other variations, the scammer asks the victim to send money for essential purposes: living or travel expenses, medical treatment, visa costs or bribes to free unjustly imprisoned family members. They often claim emergency circumstances, hoping that the intended victim will send money quickly and without careful consideration. There are more than 3000 such scammer profiles. To protect yourself from such scams, here are some links:
Scam Watch, CFR, Scam List

Armageddon 2.0

2009-03-05T19:43:00.004+05:30

In the middle of all the big news stories this week, one event has largely been ignored. Our very own earth had a extremely close encounter with an asteroid. On the afternoon of 2nd March, this rock (named 2009 DD45 by astronomers) crossed the earth's orbit very close to our atmosphere. The gap was just about 1/5th of the distance between the earth and the moon (0.00047 Astronomical Units). Had it been more lower, our outermost communication satellites would have smashed into pieces. It was a cosmic near miss.

Though asteroid was a small one (about 200 feet long), its impact would have been very bad. Had it hit a city, that city would have been destroyed. Had it hit the ocean it would have caused a tsunami that would have destroyed coastlines. A similar sized asteroid hit Tunguska, Siberia in 1908 with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima sized atomic bombs, flattening 80 million trees over an area of 2,000 square km.

The worrying part of the news is that this rock was detected only 2 days before it passed by the earth. By the time the two Australian chaps detected DD 95 on Feb 28th, it was too late to do anything about it. Next time, if some asteroid like this come and actually hits us, a 2 day warning will leave us with no options but to sit and watch the fireworks. Unfortunately Hollywood movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact, where astronauts leap into a spaceship loaded with an asteroid-killing bomb to keep us safe are still just dreams. We need more than a 2 day period to protect our cities (A bigger asteroid is needed to completely make humans extinct - An asteroid 2.5 miles wide is supposed to have caused a killed the dinosaurs when it hit the Yucatan (Central Ameria) 65 million years ago).

NASA does have a program tracking objects which can potentially crash into the earth. But the problem is that this program can effectively track only the Yucatan sized asteroids. The other city/country killing asteroids are too small to be detected and warned about. In October 2008, when a tiny asteroid actually crashed in the Sudanese desert, scientists warned us only 6 hours before the actual crash (Thankfully most the asteroid burned up and there wasn't much damage) We definitely need to spend more money to detect these space bombs than on our petty wars.

Chaos in Pakistan

2009-03-04T10:08:00.005+05:30

Its been one full day after the barbaric and savage attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team by terrorists in Pakistan. Enough time has passed for the incident to sink into our consciousness, and it is time to take a better look at what happened without getting carried away by emotions. As an Indian, I would be lying if I said that my first reaction wasn't a smug sense of poetic justice. While I felt bad for the lives lost, the fact that terrorist outfits -nurtured by the Pakistani military to dismember India- are now hitting back at their creators gave me a feeling of justice. I felt like calling up the generals who encouraged these outfits and shouting at them the proverb 'you reap what you sow' as these outfits have been killing Indians for almost two decades.

But then, this incident is not about the enemity that some sections in Pakistan have with India. It is about terrorists with their own misguided agendas, targeting sportsmen who had come to their country as guests. This is the first time since the 1972 Munich Olympics that athletes have been directly targeted. While body count may be low by recent standards, what this represents is much bigger. Cricket is the national passion of Pakistan. It is something which unites all people of that country. And with this attack, the prospects for cricket in Pakistan have been signed a death warrant. With no proper uniting force (anti-India sentiment cannot be a uniting force) and the continuing political feuds between the main parties, the country will slip further into chaos and anarchy. At this rate, a new coup by the military to get the country 'in their control' cannot be ruled out.

Also, the fact that none of the terrorists were killed or atleast captured puts the security forces in a bad light. How they managed to escape after a 20 minute confrontation is shocking. Normally when any attack happens the first thing a security force does is to cordon off the area to prevent escape. The escape shows that basic security practices were not followed. The precision of the attack, shows the scale of informatin the terrorists had. Though Sri Lankan team started for the stadium 5 minutes ahead of schedule, the terrorists managed to ambush them at a popular square of the city and escape without any casualities. After losing ground to the Taliban in rural Swat, this incident in urban Lahore shows just how much of the country is under the control the the government.

The reaction of the Pakistani government is very unfortunate. The Interior Minister, has given a statement that the attackers had come from outside the country! This was the same guy who flip flopped his statements about the Mumbai terror attacks, staunchly denying that they had come from Pakistan despite all the evidence screaming in the contrary. The man looks like he is adept at living in denial. Terrorists, trained by Pakistan based groups have long been attacking Pakistan in the past (Lal Masjid, Benazir Bhutto, etc.). The man should have realized by now that trying to deflect attention from his failure as the Interior Minister doesn't solve anything.

Regardless of the attitude of the government and millitary, Pakistan does need our sorrow and support. Only with a stable Pakistan can India, South Asia and the world breathe a bit more freely.

Smokeless Smokes

2009-03-02T08:03:00.004+05:30

When countries around the world started banning smoking in public places, many thought that the cigarette and tobacco industry would go up in smoke. With no other option smokers either had to withdraw from their habit (for their own good) or be forced to run to smaller sanctuaries to continue receiving their nicotine highs. However, all those hopes seem to be premature as technology is giving somking a new lease of life.

A Chinese company has patented the worlds first "electronic" cigarette. It is touted to feel like a cigarette, look like a cigarette but not be bad for your health. These battery powered devices provide doses of nicotine mists directly to the lungs (the marketed time is 7 seconds). The vapor is supposed to give the physical sensation of smoking tobacco. An LED glows red while using the device - to show that it is being smoked - and white puffs are generated to complete the illusion. The cigarette is supposedly tobacco-free and propylene glycol is used to make the smoke look real. Because the smoking ban is only against tobacco cigarettes, smokers can openly use these new toys anywhere they like. Their batteries can be recharged through a portable USB device.

The manufacturer of these cigarettes went to great lengths to advertise these devices as the best way to stop smoking tobacco. But some marketer might have overdone it by falsely citing the approval of the World Health Organization. WHOs official stand is, "no rigorous, peer-reviewed studies have been conducted showing that the electronic cigarette is a safe and effective nicotine replacement therapy". It also says that replacement therapies, such as skin patches, inhalers, and nasal sprays, have been proven safe to use based on clinical trials and scientific tests, unlike the e-cigarettes.

The question remains. E-cigarettes may help smokers evade the ban, but do they also help them evade the health consequences of smoking or give the habit up altogether? As it is not exactly a cigarette and not a drug, this product is free from strenuous testing that they require. It is distributed with little more than an easily obtainable general hygiene certificate. Until it is proven beyond doubt that it is safe, it will be premature to hype this toy up. If the claims are verified and are acceptable to smokers, the potential health benefits are huge.

Goodbye Somnath

2009-02-27T22:38:00.005+05:30

Somnath Chatterjee, the speaker of the Lok Sabha (Indian Parliament), has announced his retirement from active politics. He may look like an overgrown teddy bear with a baritone but I've immense respect for this man, and I can't let him go without a mini-tribute.

Somnath, originally a lawyer, joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 1968. In 1971, he was nominated to contest an interim election caused by the death of his father. Since then, he has had an incredible political journey, winning the Lok Sabha election 10 times with huge margins. He was the leader of the CPI(M) in the Lok Sabha from 1989 to 2004. In recognition of his contributions to the parliament, he was conferred the “Outstanding Parliamentarian Award” in 1996. 'Chatter'jee ended his career, head held high as the speaker of the 14th Lok Sabha.

As presiding officer of the 14th Lok Sabha, which had its low points including expulsion of 10 MPs and parliamentarians flashing wads of currency notes during the trust vote, Chatterjee has done a admirable job. During his regime, no serious allegation (except, of course, by Mamata Banerjee) has been levelled against him by the opposition. Infact the only complaint was that he talked much more than any of the previous speakers (but shouldn't a speaker speak). Chatterjee earned the distinction of ‘the headmaster' and once during a debate, a charged-up leader of opposition, L.K Advani, remarked, "I don't mind interruptions from them (the Left) but I don't want interruptions from the chair".

On Chatterjee's initiative, a 24hour Lok Sabha Television Channel (unique in the world), was started to telecast the proceedings of debates (or lack of) in the Parliament to the entire nation. The hope was that our leaders would be more civilized atleast when they realize that the nation is watching their actions. He also started a Parliamentary Museum showcasing India’s democratic heritage for future generations. Also, he initiated a lecture series for the MP's to keep them informed on topics like children, development, conservation etc. Despite his laurels, Somnath has been a humble man. When he entered the speaker's residence, even the chai,coffee and soap bills were met from the parliament's accounts. He promptly called his officers and said: "I think I can afford my bathroom expenses. And I can also afford a cup of tea for my guests."

Goodbye Somnath. You've been great.

Carbon Trading 101

2009-02-26T17:28:00.004+05:30

After reading yet another article in the newspaper trumpeting Carbon Trading, without actually explaining what it means, I've had enough. Ever since the term was coined, it has become a funky and cool word to use by the media. Sadly, not many people seem to understand what it means. Even Wikipedia has 3 different articles relating to Carbon Trading. After some digging, here's what I found.

According to the Kyoto Treaty - which came into force in 2005 - all countries must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by about 5.2% (compared with their 1990 levels) by 2012, or pay money to those that do. Since Carbon dioxide is one of the chief pollutants -from burning fossil fuels- a Global Carbon Exchange market was started with the aim of making pollution costly and unprofitable. The idea was to force the big polluters to either invest in reducing their emissions or pay a fine to those who are reducing their emissions. The emissions are quantified and traded as carbon credits. In other words, if someone is consuming a quantity of clean air, then that consumer must pay a producer for an equal quantity of clean air.

For example,when a village in Andhra Pradesh, India, saved 147 Metric Tonnes of CO2 over a period of 10 years - based on their usage of bio-diesel extracted from their trees - the World Bank bought those carbon credits to balance the aviation fuel burnt by aircraft carrying Bank officials to a conference. The money was promptly used by the villagers in planting more trees. The benefit of this market, are obvious as it provides an incentive to cut down emissions.

The two main methods of carbon trading are:

Cap-and-trade : Emission are limited (capped) and then traded between countries.
Offsets : Developed countries gain credits for financing projects that reduce emissions in developing countries.

The only problem with the cap-and-trade approach is that it needs a market to set a price for carbon. With the recent recession, carbon prices are plummeting, due to lower industrial activity, making it unprofitable to invest in reduction of emissions. The entire exercise of having global carbon trading will be pointless, if is cheaper to continue polluting. A more innovative approach is sorely needed.

Too much pressure?

2009-02-24T21:24:00.004+05:30

Another student has attempted to commit suicide at the prestigious IIT Kanpur. Fortunately - for a change - the student was rescued before he could go ahead with his plan. He was lying on the railway tracks in a bid to get run over by a train. The police were just in time, to save him. The surprising thing is that this student is not an academic underachiever. He did his Bacherlors degree (B.Tech) at IIT Roorkee, before completing his Masters (M.Tech) in IIT-K, and continuing with research for Ph.D at the same campus.

IIT Kanpur is regarded as one of the best engineering colleges in the country. It has quite deservedly won laurels for the quality of education and research activities. Among its many achievements are a micro-satellite due to be launched soon by ISRO and an anti-collision system for the Indian railways. Despite these, the institute has become a suicide capital among the IITs. There have been 7 succesful suicides from this institute in the last 4 years - the latest being in last month.

Student suicides aren't just restricted to the IITs. According to government figures released in May 08, over 16,000 school and college students in India committed suicide over a 3 year period. More worryingly, the number of students resorting to suicides has been increasing at an alarming 30% in recent years. This clearly exposes flaws in the Indian education system. While Indian schools are gaining recognition for their quality of education (ISB is now ranked 15th among business schools), we should not dismiss these suicides as isolated occurances. Exam related pressure, competition, anxiety and family conditions have been identified as the main causes of suicide among students.

Hiring qualified counselors who can help students cope with the pressure affecting them may be the best way to deal with this situation. Unfortunately, there is a social stigma attached with going to a psychiatrist in India. Going to a mental health doctor for checkups can lead to one being labelled as a 'mental case' and subjected to ridicule. Mental health should not be taken lightly. There is also a need for more psychiatrists, as only about 4,000 such doctors are there in a billion strong nation!

Deals with the Devil

2009-02-22T16:19:00.004+05:30

Pakistan has made a controversial deal with the Taliban, to enforce Islamic Sharia law in the Swat valley, in return for a permanent ceasefire. This is a laughable and unfortunate surrender of a democratic government before terrorists.

What Pakistan is expecting to gain from this deal is anybody's guess. The Pakistani army must be extremely embarrassed at losing ground even after more than a year of intermittent fighting with the terrorists. Just 3,000 Taliban militants have managed to keep 12,000 government troops at bay and terrorize the 1.3 million residents with floggings and burning of schools. The Swat valley area is for all purposes, not under Pakistan's control anymore. In the past 6 months, more than 70% of the Swat Valley has come under the control of the Taliban. Most of the territory is already under the sharia law, enforced by the Taliban.

The officials, in their defense are saying that the truce is necessary to put an end to the suffering of innocent civilians. But the fact remains that with the country under attack, instead of dealing with the terrorists as aggressors, the Pakistan government has abdicated its responsibilities. This deal, at worst, just serves to embolden various other militants in other parts of the country. The Taliban are not the ordinary tribesmen, that the government is trying to portray them as. They are terrorists, who among other things, torch schools which teach girls, and publicly flog people who are not in conformance with their narrow interpretation of Islam.

This surrender by the government is not unprecedented. Previous Pakistani governments in 1990 (under Benazir Bhutto) and 1999 (under Nawaz Sharif), had also attempted to impose the sharia law in all parts of Pakistan. But this is the first time, Pakistan has ceded sovereignity of a part of its territory to extremists. Hopefully, the government will realize its folly and change its approach.

Vizag - new venue for Deccan Chargers

2009-02-20T23:00:00.003+05:30

The port city of Visakhapatnam, has been named as a second venue for the Deccan Chargers, in addition to the existing one at Hyderabad. The ACA-VDCA (Andhra Cricket Association - Visakhapatnam District Cricket Association) stadium, which will host the Deccan Chargers in two of their home games, was built in 2003 and can host 46,000 fans. The pitch is known to be ideal for batting (the highest score recorded was 356/9 by India against Pakistan), so expect lots of excitement at this new venue.

A heart-wrenching tale from Pakistan!

2009-02-20T22:39:00.002+05:30

BBC news is publishing the diary of a school girl from Pakistan's troubled Swat Valley. It is a must read, to see how terror is affecting the daily lives of normal people and families.

Link

Sniffing Cancer Out!

2009-02-19T10:22:00.009+05:30

The nose is a versatile organ. Other than detecting smell, it helps in a sense of direction (dogs) and even air-conditioning (camels). Now an artificial nose which can sniff cancer has been developed by Scientists at Technion IIT (Israel Institute of Technology)!!

It has been discovered that dogs are capable of detecting cancer by sniffing the patient's breath. They can identify the molecules created by a tumor that circulate through patient's blood to the lungs, and leave the body when the patient exhales. However, given that an average human emits many odours, ranging from breath, sweat, pungent food and even urine, there are practical difficulties in training a dog to become a cancer detector. The Israeli scientists were working on an artificial nose, to overcome the problems faced in training cancer-dogs.

The nose developed is reportedly very similar to a dog's olfactory system and can also detect the type of cancer! In clinical trails, breath samples were taken from 40 healthy people and 62 cancer patients (lung, breast, colon, prostate, head and neck cancer) and the success rate for detection was as high as 92%. While testing still needs to be done on a broader sample of population, the achievment of these scientists is definitely amazing.

The race to build an artificial nose (or a bionic nose) has been on for some years now, with researchers from Japan, Sweden, Israel and MIT trying different approaches. It looks like the "dog approach" has been the most promising so far. Kudos to the Israeli scientists, and lets wish them well for many more breakthroughs like this one. For more on this very impressive development click here.

Internet- the new Wild West

2009-02-16T12:35:00.008+05:30

They say history repeats itself. With the rapid spread of the internet, the web seems to resemble the Wild West of the 19th century. Back then, struggling to enforce the law in the expanding American frontier, wanted notices with rewards for the capture of criminals were regularly put out. Today internet giants are resorting to similar tactics to curb the increasingly nasty attacks of viruses, worms, and other malware. Microsoft reportedly has put aside US$ 5 million, for the capture of cyber outlaws who create these malware.

The Conficker worm (a.k.a Downandup/Kido), is just a recent entrant into the long line of viruses harassing Microsoft systems. It has already attacked more than 22 million computers worldwide including hospitals, the French air force, Royal Navy warships and the German millitary! The virus is wreaking so much havoc that Mircosoft has created a task force of over 17 organizations and antivirus providers to deal with the after-effects of this worm. It has also put out a quarter million bounty for the worm's creators.

In 2005, a similar bounty helped in the arrest of a 18 year old German student who created the Sasser Virus. But the same tactics did not help in other cases, as the masterminds behind Blaster, MyDoom and Sobig worms have never been caught. Regardless of if and when the brains behind Conficker are caught, one thing is for sure - the web isn't getting any safer by the day. The new strategy of Internet giants - using money to entice the capture of cyber crooks - only shows their desperation. They are running out of ideas. Safe surfing everyone!

PS: To be safe from Conficker, do not autoplay any USB drive - open it manually(the worm transfers through the autoplay option). Update your windows OS with the latest security fixes. If you are already infected, F Secure has a fix.

Deccan Chargers IPL team announced

2009-02-14T11:29:00.006+05:30

Finally, the team for the Deccan Chargers, which fared poorly in the first edition of the Indian Premier League has been unveiled. In a low key announcement - as has been the norm of the team this season, at odds with the hype generated in the first season - 26 players have been unveiled for the team.

VVS Laxman, has been stipped of captaincy but the most notable exclusion in the team is the explosive Shahid Afridi, who won't be taking part in the IPL because Pakistan has banned its players from playing this season. Also, ex-India allrounder Sanjay Bangar has been dropped after an indifferent first season.

The new entrants are Ryan Harris, a promising all-rounder from Australia. Dwayne Smith - allrounder from West Indies and Fidel Edwards, a pace bowler from West Indies. 5 new domestic players have also been added. M S Bisla is a wicketkeeper for Himachal Pradesh. With his inclusion, the team now has 3 wicketkeepers (Halahar Das is a wicketkeeper for Orissa). T Suman, and Abhinav Kumar have been consistent batsmen for Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy. Jaskarandeep Singh and H S Bansal are fast bowlers from Punjab. On March 7th, it was reported that Syed M. Sohaib, a 22 year old fast bowler from Hyderabad has also been signed up, taking the total number of players in the roster to 27.

THE TEAM

Adam Gilchrist (captain) - Australia
Rohit Sharma (vice captain) - India
V.V.S. Laxman - India
Andrew Symonds - Australia
Herschelle Gibbs - South Africa
Scott Styris - New Zealand
Ryan Harris - Australia
Dwayne Smith - West Indies
Chamara Silva - Sri Lanka
Y. Venugopal Rao - India
N. Arjun Yadav - India
D.B. Ravi Teja - India
Chaminda Vaas - Sri Lanka
Nuwan Zoysa - Sri Lanka
Fidel Edwards - West Indies
R.P. Singh - India
Pragyan Ojha - India
D. Kalyankrishna - India
P. Vijay Kumar - India
Halahar Das - India
Sarvesh Kumar - India
H.S. Bansal - India
Jaskarandeep Singh - india
Abhinav Kumar - India
T. Suman - India
Manvinder Singh Bisla - India
Syed M. Sohaib - India

The team will be coached by Darren Lehmann, who will be assisted by Mike Young,(fielding coach) Kanwaljit Singh(asst. coach), Steve Smith (trainer) and Sean Slater (physio)

India's next Prime Minister - the grand jigsaw - II

2009-02-12T10:03:00.006+05:30

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. - Ambrose Bierce

This is the second in a series of blog posts, looking at the various individuals who are in the running to be the Prime Minister of the world's largest democracy. Despite India having a multi-party system with over 132 political parties, there are 3 main fronts/alliances which have formed. Each of these fronts is anchored by one party, and the other parties conveniently jump from one front to another as and when an opportunity strikes. While the first post covered the Congress led UPA, the present post deals with the BJP led NDA.

The Contenders: National Democratic Alliance

L.K. Advani [Age = 81] (party: BJP) - "the desperate"
This octagenarian former Deputy PM, has recently turned net-savvy and launched a website - something new for Indian politics -in a bid to connect with the youth and make himself acceptable. The former firebrand has reinvented his public image and turned into a moderate. After being in politics for 69 years this might be his last shot at the PM's chair and he seems desperate to get it right. He is the prime ministerial candidate for the BJP, but as always in Indian politics, you can never be sure till its over. If his coalition fails to get the required numbers, it will be interesting to see if the other alliance partners will be comfortable with him running the country - previously he was pushed to be the number 2, despite his seniority, because allies were uncomfortable with his hardline stance. That will be the true test of the successs of his makeover.

B.S.Shekhawat [Age = 85](party:BJP) - "the oldie"
This former Vice President, threw his hat into the ring and signalled his intentions for the top job recently. His contention was that he is the seniormost leader in the BJP and hence should be given the honour of leading the country. In a nation where the average life expectancy for men is 67 years, one wonders if the octagenarian leader knows when to retire. In all probability, his bid to be Prime Minister might end up as an amusing sidenote on the road to elections 2009.

Narendra Modi [Age = 58](party:BJP) - "the posterboy"
The current Chief Minister of Gujarat, has publicly distanced himself from the race to be PM. But there is an intense clamour for him, by people in his party who feel that Mr. Advani is too old to connect with a nation where most of the electorate is below 35. He has the right contacts in the business world also, with tycoons such as Anil Ambani (Reliance) and Sunil Mittal (Airtel) rooting for him. His only hurdle, if he decides to join the race, is his acceptability. After officiating over Gujarat during the infamous communal riots of 2002, almost all parties are wary of endorsing him as the PM while the riots are still in public memory.

India's next Prime Minister - the grand jigsaw - I

2009-02-09T10:21:00.014+05:30

Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions - Albert Einstein

To be the Prime Minister of India is literally a 1 in a billion chance. It means being the leader of more than 1/6th of humanity. 14 persons have occupied the PM's chair in India, and all things point to the possibility of a 15 person joining the list by the end of this year, when elections are due. With the way politics are in India at the moment, it can be excruciatingly difficult to predict who that person will be. With a multi-party system to represent a nation where 1,600 languages are spoken and numerous cultures are present, the elections in recent times, have rarely given a definitive verdict. Here is an attempt to evaluate the prospects of the various hopefuls.

Since there are simply too many parties and contenders to cover in one blog post, I will be posting in three stages - each stage covering the three broad fronts/coalitions in contention. This post evaluates the ruling coalition's (UPA) contenders, while the next two will deal with the opposition NDA and Left Front/Third Front (UNPA) hopefuls respectively

The Contenders: UNITED PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE

Dr. Manmohan Singh [Age = 76] (party:Congress) - "the incumbent"
The present Prime Minister of India was the surprise choice to be PM after the last elections. He has got a good, clean(corruption free) image, and with his health back on track after the recent surgery, he will most likely continue IF his coalition can get the required votes. However he is unacceptable to the Left Front - a bloc of communist parties - after courting their enemy (USA). Unfortunately for him, his coalition might most likely need the Left Fronts support

Pranab Mukherjee [Age = 73] (party: Congress) - "the workhorse"
The present External Affairs minister, is undoubtedly, the workhorse of the ruling coalition. He is their multi-tasker, firefighter, and strategiser. Heading numerous committees, he is the jack of all trades. More importantly, he is more acceptable to the Left Front than the present PM. Unfortuantely for him, this politival maverick is not as trusted by in his own colleagues, and party president to be the top man - case: he wasnt made deputy PM when the PM was sick.

Sharad Pawar [Age = 68] (party: Nationalist Congress Party) - the satrap
The present agriculture minister is an extremely powerful regional satrap. After leaving the Congress to start his own policital party, he has steadily built up great relations with the right people across the political spectrum. If both the main national parties INC and BJP manage to do poorly, he has enough clout to be an acceptable PM leading all the other regional parties.

Rahul Gandhi [Age = 38] (party: Congress) - "the novice"
The scion of the powerful Nehru-Gandhi family in Indian politics has publicly distanced himself from any speculation to be the next PM. However, there is such an intense clamour for this Harvard educated ex-consultant - to be made the PM by his own party that one cannot rule hin out of contention. They hope that he can connect with the youth of the nation.

S. K. Shinde [Age = 67] (party: Congress) - "the darkhorse"
The quiet spoken Shinde, has many things going for him. He has the implicit trust of his party colleagues, and is an acceptable face for all the allies in the ruling coalition. He has a corruption free, nice guy image. He is a dalit, and can turn out to be the perfect leader to foil the caste based plans of Mayawati - another powerful dalit leader from the third front. If the UPA needs the support of the Left - as is likely - the current PM will not be favoured by the left, and Shinde might end up being the most acceptable face for all the allies.

Tim Wright - IPL Deccan Chargers' mistake?

2009-02-07T09:54:00.016+05:30

In the end, it was a good show. The auction for the signing of new players for the second season of the Indian Premier League took just over 2 hours to complete. Though not as long as the monstrously long first auction, the auction had its moments.

That Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Flintoff and the Aussie-slayer JP Duminy would be the 'hot' buys was always expected. (Pietersen and Flintoff bagged US$ 1.55 million, while Duminy went for just under a million dollars). The unexepected was the US $ 650,000 for the relatively unheard of Tyron Henderson (South Africa). Tyron was a consistent performer in the twenty 20 cup in England, but splurging more than half a million for a 34 year old player seems to defy logic. The story of the auction,however was how a young man from Bangladesh, with a base price of $50,000, is laughing his way to the bank with an cheque 12 times that amount! There is no other way to explain Mahrafe Mortaza's jackpot other than the fact that he is extremely marketable for the Kolkata franchise - whose ambition is to build a fan base in the neighbouring country.

THE MISTAKE!
But in the middle of all this money changing hands, one story has gone almost unnoticed. It is that of the struggling, wooden spoon franchise of the inaugrual IPL, the Hyderabad Deccan Chargers and its new CEO, Englishman Tim Wright. The Chargers had the most explosive line-up in the first edition of the IPL, after buying big hitters with bigger reputations (Adam Gillchrist, Andrew Symons, Herschelle Gibbs, Shahid Afridi etc). With so many superstars in the team, the team was billed to be the favourite to win the top prize. However, the team ended up as the flop of the first season, winning just 2 out of 14 games and losing all 7 home games!

In a hasty reaction, the owners of the team appointed a new CEO, Tim Wright barely a week after the completion of the first season. Wright was the senior vice president of the sport marketing company IMG, with over 17 years of experience. He was brought to turn around the fortunes of a superstar team. The appointment seemed great at first with Wright singing all the right tunes, and professionally handling the various crises that happened in the team including sacking of the captian, VVS Laxman.

But on 6th Feb, when he was supposed to be at the ball room of a resort in Goa, India, for the auction, Wright went missing. News started filtering around that the CEO of the struggling franchise had left the country, and was no longer with it. Later on it became clear that he had committed serious violations of Foreign ers Registration Act (FRA) and was avoiding the country fearing police interrogation. It also became clear that these offences were committed a long time ago and he was fully aware of the proceedings against him. Now, it might be too early to judge the impact Wright had on the franchise, but abdicating his responsibility when the franchise needed him the most just as the new season is building up, doesn't give a good testimony about the man. If Tim was aware of the proceedings, and innocent, why didn't he clear his name first, knowing his importance at this stage to the team? If guilty, why did he take up the assignment, knowing that he would be prosecuted sooner or later?

Overall, its a good reminder for the teams, not to take hasty decisions. When people are appointed to positions of responsibility, it shouldn't be based on their professional expertise alone. Their characters should also be examined. This is something that is overlooked today, in the competitive world. If for all positions of authority; alongwith expertise and experience, moral character is considered, the world - not just sports - would be better off.

IPL auction 2.0 : The Preview

2009-02-04T08:41:00.006+05:30

It was one day - a day that shook the cricketing world.. A day that arguably lived up to its unprecedented hype and perhaps even exceeded it. On a day towards the end of February 2008 AD, a few ultra super rich 'franchise' owners spent over US $42 million on about 80 individuals who happen to play a bat and ball team sport that originated in southern England. Of course that money was small change to these owners (before the present economic recession) who had already splurged a collective whopping US $723.59 million to buy their teams.

It was an auction unprecedented in India. It was the first Indian Premier League auction for players in the first edition of its league. Well, if you haven't heard about this league till now, you must have been living on another planet or must be of the view that cricket is the name of an annoying insect!

The first auction generated a lot of buzz and reactions. Some saw it as the degeneration of cricket into a money sport like football/soccer. Some saw it as the answer to popularize the sport (which 1/3rd of the world was watching) and spread it to the new world (America). Some even went to the extent of comparing the auction to the auctioning of slaves in earlier times - though slaves were never paid so much and adored like this. In the end the auction was a huge success, as all the money that changed hands generated enough publicity to successfully rake interest in the inaugural Indian Premier League.

The second auction for this league is scheduled for day after tomorrow (Feb 6th). But, with the recession biting into the coffers of all the owners, it is hard to expect bidding to reach the levels of the first auction. The one month trading window, already had owners acting like misers with not a single player being bought. All the action that happened during the transfer window was a few player swaps, with no money flying around. Also, while the first auction had cricketing superstars up for grabs, the present one has cricketing babies and a few English gentlemen.

Ask any music artist, and he will say that the sophomore effort to a successful album is always the hardest. So, after offering such high excitement in the first edition, the present auction will have a hard ask to follow. Already the number of players in the auction has reduced from 113 to 43, due to a host of reasons including politics in Pakistan. Also with each of the 8 teams having a limit of 10 foreign players in their roster, the action will decidedly be more muted. The present list has 15 Australians, 7 Englishmen, 5 South Africans, 5 Carribeans, 4 Sri Lankans, 4 Bangladeshis and 3 New Zealanders. According to one franchise manager, in the best case scenario, 16 players will be bought by all the franchises combined. Here's wishing them all the best.

Virus - what is thy name?

2009-02-01T15:33:00.010+05:30

What's in a name? Does it just define an identity, or is it something deeper? In 1594, Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, said,

What's in a name? that which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet

Today poor old computer viruses are facing an identity crisis! The reason? They have too many names!!! Antivirus companies, are the ones who christen the viruses with names, for the purpose of identification. With a new antivirus company coming up every month - or even sooner -, in a bid to gain bragging rights to be the 'first' to detect and cure a virus, they are named with their own fancy names. Forget the confused computer users, I bet the even the poor viruses are confused about their identity [:P].

Take the example of the Fuclip virus - which spreads as an attachment to emails with news headlines as the subject lines which downloads additional security threats. The poor thing is called

Fuclip by ESET antivirus
Downloader.AYDY by Authentium antivirus
Small.DAM by F-Secure and Kaspersky antivirus'
Pecoan by CA antivirus
Tibs by Grisoft antivirus
BAI!M by McAfee antivirus
Nuwar by Microsoft antivirus
Alanchum by Panda antivirus
Peacomm by Symantec antivirus
DBX by Avira antivirus

Phew! I got tired after searching just these 10 antivirus companies, and I'm sure the list is much larger, taking into account the hundreds of antivirus softwares I don't know yet. Now, I know that it might be too much to ask all the antivirus companies to come together, hurt their egoes, and work on guidelines to properly name these pests. But atleast can't we expect the bigger companies to be magnanimous enough to do that?

Any war is doomed, if the creedo 'know thy enemy' is not followed. So, if the war against malware is to be won (assuming the companies are serious about it), a universal name, or atleast a comprehensive database where all the names of a virus are enumerated, makes eminent sense. Unfortunately the CME project (Common Malware Enumeration) which set out to do just that has been inactive since January 2007. Hope that someday the dream of unified virus naming will come alive.

New Additions

2009-01-29T10:21:00.003+05:30

Just added a few cool gadgets.
Apart from the standard google search and wiki search, there are a few great ones. Especially love the NASA Image of the day gadget at the bottom of the page! Its one of my dreams to one day go into outer space on a spaceship..sic ... Till the day I get to do that, gazing at the NASA images will have to suffice for me.
And Newsmap is amazing. You just click on any country in the world and you get all the news relating to that country. Got to admire the creators of these gadgets.
Plus there is also an online version of one of my favourite games... Dodgeball!!
Have fun. :-)

Virus Alert: a blueprint to get rid of the gphone virus

2009-01-28T10:41:00.009+05:30

Ah, Computer viruses, the bane of peaceful computing. They always seem to attack when you least expect them and leave you worried sick. Till recently, the only two ways to deal with such a cyber catastrophe for me, was to scan the computer with my trusty, updated nod32 antivirus and hope for the cure, or in the worst case, format the computer and lose all my precious music, pics, videos, docs and the like. However with the latest attack on my laptop, I found the third way of manually deleting the virus. Here it goes.

Virus Stats:
Names : gphone (a.k.a) imaut.e (a.k.a) sohanad.t
Type : IM Worm
Detected on : December 23, 2008*
Attacks on : Windows XP and Vista
Nuisance level : High (undetected by Antivirus software)
Method of attack : Through IM clients such as (Gtalk and Y!Messenger) and pen drives
Symptoms :

Cheesy messages with a link (to googlepages) being sent to all your messenger contacts from you without your knowledge.
Duplicate folders of a small size (~260KB) being created in all folders of an infected drive
Disabling of Windows Task Manager (cntrl+alt+del) and Registry Editor (regedit)
Home page of Internet Explorer is changed to a malicious link
Extremely slow computer performance

Prevention tactics :

Do NOT click on any unsolicited link which you get from your contacts in gtalk or Yahoo Messenger. (check with them if they are really sending the link before clicking)
Do NOT double click on duplicate folders (A folder with the same name as the parent folder.. for example a folder called 'docs' inside the 'docs' folder) in a pen drive as they are disguised virus files. You can easily spot they difference as their size will be extremely small (around 260KB).
Install a spyware detector like Spyware Doctor to regularly scan for malware (Antivirus programs cant detect this virus)
Install a system tweaker like Tune Up Utilities to check and fix your registry from potentially fatal errors.

Now if unfortunately you have the virus, the cure:

Disconnect your internet connection to prevent the virus from being able to spread itself in the network by sending messages to your contacts.
Use the Process Manager in 'Tune Up' or 'Glaxy Utilities' to delete the "gphone.exe" process
Go to Windows Search (Run > Search) and search the entire computer for ".exe" files that are less than 270KB and shift delete all the duplicate folders which appear (usually they are 262KB). Remember to include hidden folders in your search.
Use a properly updated spyware scanner, (like spyware doctor) to search the registry for corrupted entries by the virus.
Use the Registry Editor to manually search for the infected registries and delete them (registry editing is very dangerous, make sure you do NOT delete the wrong registries) . For the corrupted registries you can edit them by right clicking on the entry, clicking on "edit" and removing the text "gphone.exe" from the registry entry
Go to Internet Options in Control Panel, and change the home page of Internet Explorer back to blank. Also add the virus link to restricted sites.
Go to Task Scheduler in Control Panel, and delete the entry "At 9 am.... ".. This is the entry which enables the virus to reinstall itself everyday even after removing it. Until you remove this entry, the virus will continue to reappear.
Scan the whole computer for one last time
Restart.

and you are free!! :-)

PS: If there are any other/better software for registry cleaning and system maintenance do inform me.. I use Tune Up and Spyware Doctor

Salute to the Republic!

2009-01-27T01:38:00.005+05:30

It is the republic day, and as usual, nationalistic (and sometimes jingoistic fervor) reaches it peak during these times. While going through the plethora of articles and editorials, Ive found one gem. I'm posting some snippets here, Read on..

"The Indian Republic is now a mature 59-year-old. Whether it is a world power in the making or just a large subcontinental State with global power pretensions is a moot question. What is beyond dispute is that India, home to more than one-sixth of the human race, continues to punch far below its weight. Internationally, it is a rule-taker, not a rule-maker.

Among India’s strengths is that it has a long, historical record of being a great power and of playing a mainstream, cooperative role in international relations. In 1820, at the advent of the Industrial Revolution, India and China alone made up nearly half of the world income. But by the time India emerged as a republic, its share of global GDP had shrunk to a mere 3.8 per cent.

Another one of India’s strengths is that it symbolises unity in diversity. It is the most diverse country in the world. Indeed, it is more linguistically, ethnically and religiously diverse than the whole of Europe.......

A third strength is that democracy remains India’s greatest asset. India is the only real democracy in the vast contiguous arc from Jordan to Singapore.....

... wedged in an arc of failing or authoritarian States that seek, in different ways, to unravel its multi-ethnic, pluralistic character, India faces serious threats from virtually all directions.... India manifests a triple deficit in key aspects of national power — a leadership deficit, a strategic foresight deficit, and a national-security planning deficit. Nothing illustrates this better than the manner in which it has handled the unparalleled Pakistani scripted amphibious terrorist assaults on its commercial capital two months ago.....

The best description of today’s India comes from its tourism ad campaign’s themes, including its ‘Incredible India’ slogan... Although the authoritative Grimmitt report of the Congressional Research Service lists India as the world’s No. 1 arms importer during the 2000-2007 period, this ‘incredible’ country has seen its military strength actually erode in the face of such a shopping binge, to the extent that its officials openly doubt that it has the capability to decisively defeat a near-bankrupt Pakistan... "

And in conclusion..

"India is incredible in every sense. As if to underscore that, the slogan in the current multi-million-dollar international campaign has an exclamation mark instead of a capital ‘I’ in India. The blunt truth is that India cannot be understood through plain logic. With its spiritual heritage, India transcends earthly reasoning and rationality. Still, if it wishes to be a world power playing a role commensurate with its size, it will have to transform itself from an incredible to credible India."

For the entire article, the link is - http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=HomePage&id=b51befc5-2886-4bf4-bf88-bf65b76d6841&&Headline=Incredulous+!ndia

India's schedule at Beijing Olympics 2008.

2008-08-11T16:32:00.007+05:30

India's schedule at Beijing Olympics 2008.

For the latest medal count, go to http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/INF/GL/95A/GL0000000.shtml

Date	Event	Athletes
	Archery
	Men’s individual starts	Mangal Singh Champia
	Women’s individual starts	Bombayala Devi
	Women’s team starts	Dola Banerjee, V Pranitha, B Devi
	Badminton
	Men’s Singles start	Anup Sridhar
	Women’s Singles start	Saina Nehwal
Aug-09	Boxing
	Middleweight 75 kg starts	Vijender
	Light Heavyweight 81 kg starts	Dinesh Kumar
	Judo
	Women’s 48 kg	Khumujam Tombi Devi
	Rowing
	Men’s Single Sculls heats	Bajranglal Takhar
	Sailing
	Heavyweight Dinghy-Finn starts	Nachhatar Singh Johal
	Shooting
	Men’s 10 m Air Pistol	Samresh Jung
	Women’s 10 m Air Rifle	Avneet Kaur Sidhu
	Men’s Trap qualifiers	Manavjit Singh Sandhu
		Mansher Singh
	Swimming
	Men’s 100 m Breast Stroke heats	Sandeep Sejwal
	Archery
	Women’s team medal matches
	Rowing
	Men’s Lightweight Double Sculls heats	Devender Kumar
		Manjeet Singh
Aug-10	Shooting
Aug-10	Men’s Trap Final
	Swimming
	Men’s 200 m Freestyle heats	Virdhawal Khade
	Tennis
	Women’s Singles start	Sania Mirza
	Women’s Doubles start	Sania Mirza and Sunitha Rao
	Men’s Doubles start	Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi
	Boxing
	Featherweight 57 kg starts	Anthresh Lalit Lakra
Aug-11	Shooting
	Men’s 10 m Air Rifle	Abhinav Bindra
		Gagan Narang
	Swimming
	Men’s 100 m Breast Stroke finals
	Men’s 200 m Butterfly heats	Rehan Poncha
	Boxing
	Flyweight 51 kg starts	Jitender Kumar
	Bantamweight 54 kg starts	Akhil Kumar
Aug-12	Shooting
Aug-12	Men’s Double Trap	Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore
	Swimming
	Men’s 200 m Freestyle final
	Men’s 100 m Freestyle heats	Virdhawal Khade
	Men’s 200 m Breast Stroke heats	Sandeep Sejwal
Aug-13	Swimming
Aug-13	Men’s 200 m Butterfly final
	Weight Lifting
	69 kg women	Monika Devi
	Archery
	Women’s individual medal matches
	Judo
	Women’s 78 kg	Divya
	Shooting
	Women’s 50 m Rifle 3 Positions	Anjali Bhagwat
Aug-14	Swimming
	Men’s 100 m Freestyle final
	Men’s 200 m Breast Stroke final
	Men’s 50 m Freestyle heats	Virdhawal Khade
	Men’s 100 m Butterfly heats	Ankur Poseria
	Tennis
	Men’s Doubles Semifinals
	Archery
	Men’s individual medal matches
Aug-15	Athletics
	Women’s 10,000 m	Preeja Sreedharan
	Women’s Heptathlon starts	J.J. Shobha
		Susmita Singha Roy
		Pramila Aiyappa
	Women’s Discuss Throw qualifiers	Harwant Kaur
		Krishna Poonia
	Tennis
	Men’s Doubles Bronze Medal Play off
	Athletics
	Women’s Heptathlon ends
	Men’s Discuss Throw qualifiers	Vikas Gowda
	Women’s 400 m heats	Manjit Kaur
		Mandeep Kaur
	Badminton
	Men’s Singles Bronze Medal Play off
	Women’s Singles Bronze Medal Play off
	Women’s Singles Final
	Rowing
	Men’s Single Sculls final
Aug-16	Swimming
	Men’s 50 m freestyle final
	Men’s 100 m Butterfly final
	Tennis
	Women’s Singles Bronze Medal Play off
	Women’s Singles final
	Women’s Doubles Bronze Medal play off
	Men’s Doubles final
	Sailing
	Heavyweight Dinghy-Finn ends
	Athletics
	Men’s 10,000 m	Surendra Singh
	Women’s 400 m Semifinals
	Badminton
	Men’s final
Aug-17	Rowing
Aug-17	Men’s Lightweight Double Sculls final
	Shooting
	Men’s 50 m Rifle 3 Positions	Sanjeev Rajput
	Tennis
	Women’s Doubles final
	Athletics
	Women’s Discuss Throw final
	Men’s Triple Jump qualifiers	Renjith Maheswary
Aug-18	Boxing
	Bantamweight Quarterfinals
	Featherweight Quarterfinals
	Table Tennis
	Women’s Singles start	Neha Agarwal
	Athletics
	Men’s Discuss Throw final
	Women’s 400 m final
	Women’s Long Jump qualifiers	Anju Bobby George
Aug-19	Boxing
Aug-19	Light Heavyweight Quarterfinals
	Table Tennis
	Men’s Singles start	Achanta Sharath Kamal
	Wrestling
	Men’s Freestyle 60 kg	Yogeshwar Dutt
Aug-20	Boxing
	Flyweight Quarterfinals
	Middleweight Quarterfinals
	Wrestling
	Men’s Freestyle 66 kg	Sushil Kumar
Aug-21	Athletics
Aug-21	Men’s Triple Jump final
	Wrestling
	Men’s Freestyle 120 kg	Rajiv Tomar
	Athletics
	Women’s Long Jump final
	Women’s 4x400 m relay heats	Chitra, Pooyamma, Mandeep, Sini, Geetha
Aug-22	Boxing
Aug-22	All categories Semifinals
	Table Tennis
	Women’s Singles Medal matches
	Athletics
	Women’s 4x400 m relay final
Aug-23	Boxing
	Flyweight 51 kg final
	Featherweight 57 kg final
	Middleweight 75 kg final
	Table Tennis
	Men’s Singles Medal matches
Aug-24	Boxing
	Bantamweight 54 kg final
	Light Heavyweight 81 kg final

A Wiki Rant!

2008-07-27T21:56:00.005+05:30

Quote <Khetri Nagar is a town in Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan in India. It is part of Shekhawati region. It is known for its Copper Project. Khetri is a real cool town. Well, actually much of the township is government-owned since there is a public Limited company over there.> Unquote

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khetri

Unconventional, isn't it? Ive had the chance to go to Khetri and visit its famous fort a few months back. As the fort was in ruins, as an avid history buff my interest in that place became naturally piqued. So I decided to find out more about its history. And like most common netizens of today, I went to check the ever 'reliable' source of knowledge, Wikipedia.

Wikipedia today represents one of the greatest projects (greatest - atleast in my lifetime) to advance human knowledge through collective compilation. While for the most part, its quality is surprisingly good - for a project of its nature - while covering the big topics, its quality dips considerably in the lesser visited topics. The wiki about Khetri fort in Rajasthan is a case in point. It presents a biased view of a relatively important historical fort in an unprofessional, amateurish manner.

While this - the reliability of wikipedia - may seem to be unimportant and at best cause a few chuckles due to its format of presentation, it should cause consternation when we consider that in today's busy world, most people take the information put up on wikipedia at face value to be true and beyond doubt. Infact some of my friends swear by the quality of that hallowed encyclopedia. The fact is that it is only as reliable as the contributor of a particular article.

In such a context, it is important for us first to realise and understand that while information on the internet is very helpful for researchers and laypeople alike, it cannot be taken at face value at all. And secondly, we need to create a more efficient mechanism by which amateurish collaborators are not allowed to post on such online websites. Until that happens, a project like wikipedia, in my opinion, can never take the place of the good old conventional encyclopedia.

Just my two paisa of thoughts :) ..

-Sammy

PS: For some pics of Khetri fort, go to
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28100346@N03/sets/72157606346536703/

Flickr

2008-07-25T09:22:00.001+05:30

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.