Under Transition

Moving my blog to the new Blogger Beta, so just hang on till I set things up properly

I am India

Awesome video! Make sure your speakers are on as well. Link here

Pepsi - Yeh Devta maange more

All this hoopla surrounding Gods drinking milk has given me an idea. Let’s face it, whether you believe in surface tension or divine consumption, milk is running down the drains and milkmen are running to the banks. The cola companies need to change their marketing strategy and I am assuming its not going to be very hard to spread the word that Lord Ganesh loves Pepsi or Coke. Think about it, if someone thinks their God drinks colas then they will too and if that does not happen, then at least in the process lots of cola would have gone down the same path as the milk and sales will go through the roof.

Preview of new KDE start menu

This is a link to a preview of the proposed new KDE start menu, Looks kick ass!

Happy B'day Chennai and Nandan the working man

Today Chennai turned 368! Yeah!!! and yours truly completed one year as an engineer.

Firefox Crop Circle

Check this out. While you are there, also check out the other cool things those guys have done. Even though I use Opera most of the time these days, Firefox still rocks!

Thanks to Paddy for the link. Coming to think of it, an appropriate person to have gotten a link from about work done in crops ;) What say?

The x86 days

Yesterday(2/8/6), today(3/8/6) and tomorrow(4/8/6) are the x86 days :) Found a post on /.
Reminds me of the 1st computer we had at home a "fast" 486DX2 @ 66Mhz with a "massive" 4 MB of RAM and a "humongous" 520 MB hard disk and a video card that could do only 256 colours.
Ah.. Those were the days. Life was simple and DOS ruled and Dangerous Dave kicked ass and that CGA racing game was my favourite pastime.

QFI Open Quiz on July 30

The 2nd edition of the QFI Open Quiz will be held on 30th July. Here are the details

Date: 30th of July 2006 (Sunday)
Schedule: Prelims - 9:30 a.m. and Finals - 11:00 a.m.
Team size: Maximum of 3 members
Venue: "Sri Venkata Auditorium"
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
37/39, East Mada Street
Mylapore, Chennai – 04

So just grab a couple of friends and enjoy. Will be loads of fun considering Vinod and Goach are the quizmasters.

Read the full announcement here.

YouOS

This has to be the coolest thing I've seen in years, check it out - it's an web operating system. Click on try a demo and check it out. It's brilliant

More info here

Bolti Bandh

The Indian government has blocked access to typepad and blogspot blogs

Bloggers against censorship wiki
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Bloggers_Against_Censorship
This has lots of useful info about using RTI and lists of bloggers protesting and ways to work around the gag

Slashdot entry: India joins China in censoring websites
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/07/17/1732209.shtml

Sites carrying the story
http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jul/17blog.htm
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/07/17/report_indian_gov_bl.html

Ways to by pass the ban (courtesy Kiruba’s blog)
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Bypassing_The_Ban

Bloggers collective is having a discussion on this
http://groups.google.com/group/BloggersCollective

Best part is I am able post to blogspot as blogger.com is not blocked! But I cannot see my own blogposts!!!! (Access via http://www.pkblogs.com/ works from office)

Wordpress, livejournal have not been blocked
I thought we became a free country in 1947

It's so sad that the country touting itself to be the world's technology destination does not have Free Speech

Seriously what kind of bozos are running this country anyway???? It's been done to tackle terrorist elements apparently and may not be a permanent blockade

Zizou head butting Materazzi flash game

:D Check this out. You are Zizou and you get to "butt f***" [sic] Materazzi. Just keep head butting him till you get a red card!

World E Book fair

Free Access to the public from July 4th to August 4th, in celebration of Project Gutenberg's 35th Birthday

Happy reading!

Link here

When boredom strikes

I was hajaar bored yesterday, and as I was using my computer and had booted my new Open SuSE 10.1(arguably the best non-commercial GNU/Linux distribution currently) I decided to play some Tetris clones. I prefer to use the K Desktop Environment (KDE) which IMHO is the best GUI ever. So I played the 3 available ones that come with the default KDE Games package in turn. Here are some screen shots taken with KSnapShot

KSirtet which is a very conventional clone of the evergreen game.


KSmileTris in which one can match smilies and other things and also has a very irritating sound scheme which is very useful for irritating others at home ;)



KFoulEggs is a clone of a Japanese game called PuyoPuyo


If you are wondering what the P is with the wolf thingy is at the bottom right of the pic above, its a part of the On Screen Display (that got captured in the screen shot) of AmaroK (Quite simply the best music player!!) telling me that the playlist has finished playing.

Dunno what it is about Tetris like games that one never gets bored of them

Steven Hilton's software war map

Taken from here
Read the slashdot discussion here

Chennai Bloggers Meet on June 24

There is a bloggers meet on 24th June at Ascendas Tech Park at 3:00pm.
Courtesy Sagaro. His site has a FAQ. You can find that here

Truly beautiful

I am no fan of football but what Argentina did today has made me one. Oh yes, now I know why it is called the beautiful game. It was amazing. I am not even going to try to put in words, but I had to record this moment in my blog

Worst job in the world

Been watching a bit of the world cup lately, even though I am no lover of football (yet) and have come to realise that the worst job in the world has to be being a steward at the world cup matches watching the crowd, instead of the game. Must be terrible for these guys. They'll be like "I was at the game, so I did not get to see it, how was it mate?" sheesh. Why would you do such a job anyway?

Where in the world is your B School?

This post is a collection of 3 instances of Geographic brilliance, what can I say except that I wonder if these people ever played Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego

Courtesy Goach, players: unfortunate Goach, and Narendra Modi’s best friend
Goach and X where were talking about IIM Ahmedabad and something about the availability of non-veggie food and stuff. Well, anyway, X says that one will get good Andhra food there. The statement in itself is not what this part is about, it’s the reply to this question “Why do you say that?” “Ahmedabad is in Andhra Pradesh”

Courtesy Goach again, players: Shrik and Dhoni’s best friend
Shrik who is going to XLRI Jamshedpur in a couple of days time tells Y that he is going to XLRI Jamshedpur. Y asks “Why do you want to go to Bangalore to study what’s wrong with Chennai?”

And if you thought that these things don’t happen to your’s truly, don’t despair.
I had a copy of Sports Star which has an ad for TIME (the coaching institute). So this guy, lets call him Z, has a good look at it and evinces interest in going for coaching. The ad has a table which lists how many of their students made it to the various IIMs. So Z points to IIMK and asks me
“K is Kolkata?”
“No, Kozhikode”.
“C is Calicut?”
“No, Calcutta”
Then Z closes the tabloid and gives is back to me.

I still do not know how I did not laugh at that time, my self control is better that I think or I must have been in a state of shock

Talking about funny things, check this out.

Dante's Inferno Hell Test

Saw this at Shrik's and had to take it, fact that I was very vetti at that time helped.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	High

You approach Satan's wretched city where you behold a wide plain surrounded by iron walls. Before you are fields full of distress and torment terrible. Burning tombs are littered about the landscape. Inside these flaming sepulchers suffer the heretics, failing to believe in God and the afterlife, who make themselves audible by doleful sighs. You will join the wicked that lie here, and will be offered no respite. The three infernal Furies stained with blood, with limbs of women and hair of serpents, dwell in this circle of Hell.

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

Google hopping

Found some tools Google has to offer but stuff I didn't know about

Gapminder
Google spreadsheets

Windows Vista Beta review at Tom's Hardware

Tom's Hardware has an extensive review of Windows Vista. I'm reading it while typing this. Here is the slashdot post about the review.

Will probably post later about what I think, (not that it matters!)

Bringer of rain

Someone said that if I left office at the normal working hours instead of staying late like I usually do then it would rain. Now you know whom to thank for the good weather :-)

A missing page and a desultory post

I've not blogged for a while. (Duh! There I go again saying the most obvious things! and then making exclamatory statements) So what have I been up to in the time I've not been contributing to increase the data content of the blogosphere? Well…. umh , now let’s see. I’ve got to rack my brains to figure out what I’ve up to. See that’s what not blogging does. It leaves me with only my memory of the things that happened, with no way to relive them. Well it’s not like I blog that very much about personal stuff but it kind of gives a reference to hook on to. It’s like the past few months is a missing page in the book of the life of Nandan Saha

This Sunday I saw this awesome movie called Shaolin Soccer on Hungama TV in Hindi. It’s by Stephen Chow the guy behind Kung-Fu Hustle Well since I’ve given the IMDB link I am not gonna tell what the movie is about since you might as well read it from IMDB. All I want to say is that it was bloody hilarious! Truly enjoyed myself.

Read The Curious Incident of the dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon recently. It’s a brilliant book. It starts out being a mystery about a dead dog and turn out to be this amazingly poignant tale. I recommend it very highly.

At this point I stopped writing for a whole day because I really did not know how to proceed with this post. Why didn’t I just stop?! Coz it’ been a while since I blogged and the 1st post after the nth hibernation is not going to have only 3 paragraphs

Isn’t it irritating that MSWord™ does not recognize blog as a valid word? Just added it to the dictionary.

While making coffee now I realized that the container that keeps chocolate powder in the pantry that I use at work is labeled “Choco” while earlier it was labeled “Chocolate”. That makes me wonder if all the guys who like chocolate are now punctual.

Cribs

Scene: Dining hall of a software company
Actors: Yours truly, X, Y
X and yours truly were having lunch when X spots Y waiting in line for food. X it seems is seeing Y after a while and wants to tell him that he will tell Y what ever is on X's mind via email. But X cannot tell Y about the email without shouting a bit and attracting attention to himself. So what does X do. He SMSes Y that he will email Y later and get his message across.

******o0o******

Scene: Staff bus of a software company
Actors: Yours truly, Lady on phone
Yours truly after a day of work is thanking his stars that his bus does not have a radio so he doesn't have to listen to a screaming RJ and thinks he can actually relax. Seated behind is a lady who has discovered that incoming calls are free and that she is better at telling a sad story than Ekta Kapoor and actually proceeds to transfer her sorrows through out the journey leaving yours truly to wonder why cell phone networks always fail to fail at such times.

******o0o******

Scene: Yours truly watching an idiot on the idiot box
Actors: Yours truly, idiot, idiot box
Yours truly decides to watch just for a few minutes “Super Sale” on STAR One because he likes to torture himself once in a while. Saajid Khan the host asks this question “Which is the next leap year” Answer from the roll over contestant (who's won more money in an hour than your's truly makes in a year) “2006”

******o0o******

Scene: A software company
Actors: Yours truly, Z(yours truly's friend)
Yours truly and Z working for the same company get to meet each other probably once a month or so and have exchanges over email and SMS leaving yours truly wondering what one has to do to have a tête-à-tête. Conversation where art thou?

Version 2.02

Knowing that you guys must be shocked to find me blogging again, I have decided to write a FAQ about this 1st post of a refurbished, restarted blog. So wiping away the cobwebs of inactivity presenting the FAQ about Interior monoBlog v2.02

Q1. So Nandan you are actually alive?!!!!!!!!!!
A1: Er… Yes

Q2. No seriously. Is it really you????
A2: Ya Its me

Q3: We must be dreaming. Tell us again. It’s THE Nandan Saha
A3: Again, It’s THE Nandan Saha

Q4: So why did you stop blogging?
A4: I didn’t stop per se. Lets call it a momentary lapse of writer’s flow

Q5:”Momentary lapse of writer’s flow” WTF is that
A6: I could explain again but it would take me 4 months to demonstrate

Q6: Ok Forget it. So what’s new?
A6: Template template template template template

Q7: Are you becoming colour blind?
A7: Why?

Q8: Template template template template
A8: #$%$@#$^^&$#$%

Q9: So can we at least now expect some good writing?
A9: Oh sure. There are lots of very good blogs around

Q10: Do you plan on blogging more frequently than last time
A10: I’ve planned. Let’s see how it pans out

Ok let’s stop this. This is very boring. Hope you get the idea. Interior monoBlog is back. Better, Frequenter, Smarter, Funnier, Seriouser and …..er……

Let me know what you think(Read as Comment darned readers)

Hopefully I’ll keep this going and give you guys something good to read

Coming Back Soon

This blog is currently under renovation. Will be back in under a week. Be back then!!!