Monthly Archive for May, 2006

Ubuntu linux for newbies

Published on May 28, 2006 in General stuff. 0 Comments

We had installed Ubuntu months ago, but I never had a chance to use it. To be frank, I refrained from using it . Today, Balaji has gone out and here I am in his machine with Ubuntu loaded up. I wanted to test a few of the basic internet applications. Ubuntu comes with default firefox browser for faster and smoother browsing experience. As a Linux newbie, I did not want to try out much and just wanted to get a feel of it.

Apart from Firefox, I tried evolution mail client and I was absorbed with it. It even had an option to configure MS Echange servers. I usually connect to my office exchange through VPN but in this case, evolution had an option to synchronise mails using MS Outlook Web Access. Gosh! It is amazing. I like it.

I have a few hitches with gaim and right now, I am working on it. Once I get it powered up, hope that it will also dance to my tunes.

I am planning to build myself a new powerful desktop and Ubuntu is going to be my regular OS. Frankly, I have fallen to pingu-pimping.

Word power made easy

Published on May 23, 2006 in English and how to. 4 Comments

I used to have good word power when I was in college. I carried my Oxfod dictionary where ever I went to keep up with the world of words and their meanings. I succeeded in mastering a lot of words. I used to pester my friends by making them ask me questions from dictionary. In a way, I enjoyed it. It also helped me to learn a lot of new words and earned me good name among my college mates. Guys who were giving up GRE or TOEFL sought my advice on how to improve word power. News spread and I became a hit among the guys and girls. This increased the vigour and I learnt a lot of new words day by day. All this stopped one day and somehow, the urge to learn decreased. I do learn new words now a days. But it happens seldom. I am planning to get back into form. Increasing my word power is my next agenda. I have summarised a few tips to improve my word power. These tips worked for me.
Tips to increase word power in english

Buy a good English dictionary. I would refer a Oxford Advance learner’s Dictionary (OALD)
Start reading Newspapers with dictionary on your side for referring. I will suggest “The Hindu” if you are in India.
Refrain from books which boast of increasing word power.
Read books and novels of good standards so that you will get used with the usage of the words.
For pronounciation, watch BBC World.

Follow your own style and improve your word power skills.

P.S. :-

one’s knowledge of words is also denoted by the word Vocabulary. So, when someone asks “how good are you in vocab?”, they denote the wordpower one possess in the particular language.

“Manja Saara” – the Golden colured snake

Published on May 22, 2006 in Humor, Just for Jolly, places to go and Travel. 17 Comments

Last week, I was in kerala for a colleague’s wedding. It was my first visit to the coconut paradise. I was gob-smacked by the scenic beauty of the state. After the marriage in Palghat, I and Sabaree (my colleague) headed to Ottapalam. Ottapalam is a small town with great views of the nature. After visiting Sabaree’s relatives there, we headed down to Guruvayur. On our way, I asked, our driver-cum-guide, Mr.Velayudham (aka) Aiyaapan to stop the car to attend nature’s call number one. I was running towards the bush and there Sabaree spotted the yellow snake. It is called by the name “manja saara” in tamil. It was around 6ft in length and golden in colour. forgetting the urgency to pee, I clicked the scene with my Konica Minolta film SLR. I was 3-4 ft from her. It was truly the biggest snake I have ever seen in my entire life.

This incident reminds me a couple of things people always say when they speak about snakes.

“paambu padam edukkum”. In my case, I took the picture of the snake.

“paamba partha onnukku vandhudum”. whereas, “naan onnukku adikkum pothu paamba paarthen”.

The highlight was when Velayudham asked me to pee somewhere inside the bush as the snake was sitting comfortably outside. I never wanted to gamble and forgot my venture of peeing in the woods.

BSNL offers Unlimited Broadband for Rs.900 per month

Published on May 6, 2006 in Computers and Internet. 2 Comments

Now BSNL offers unlimited broadband services for Rs.900 per month from May 1 2006. It got my attention as I am one of the users of Data One broadband services offerred by BSNL. It is a happy and great news. I expected this to happen a few months before.

I checked with Data One customer service at 1800-424-1600 and confirmed the same with them. But, I really hate BSNL’s way of changing plans for existing customers. A lady at the call centre informed me that change of plans can be done only after filing a form with the local telephone exchange. Moreover, the plan change will come into effect only by the next billing cycle. And the irony is that India’s largest broadband service provider does not have a web portal for switching plans. Typical government business practices.

Whatever, I am happy that they have brought the sought over change at last. Here is the advertisement from BSNL’s site.

FavIcon from Pictures for websites

Published on May 4, 2006 in blog, coding, how to and Internet. 2 Comments

I was curious to see a lot of websites with FavIcons in the address bar and also in the favorites toolbar. I wanted create a FavIcon for my website with a decent picture of mine. Googling favicon creator fetched me a lot of results. The first result helped me to accomplish my task.
The tutorial on how to create FavIcon from Pictures is really easy and clear. They even help us to test it online. After all, easy tutorials like these will help a lot of dumb webmasters like me to learn a bit.

A Guide to Satyam Cinema’s online Ticket booking

Published on May 4, 2006 in Chennai, how to, movies and places to go. 10 Comments

I thought I could write up a user guide for booking tickets online in Satyam cinemas Chennai. The easy steps are listed below.

Open up Satyam cinemas’ online booking site.
Select number of tickets, day, the name of the movie and the price according to the class.
click book tickets
Login with the member account if you have one. If not you can create one in a few steps.
After logging in, use your credit card to purchase the tickets.
Note down the order number or print out the order page.
You are done with the online booking part. As a matter of fact, Satyam charges Rs.5 extra for tickets booked online. When comparing to the hassles of booking tickets by standing in a queue, that too in Chennai’s heat, it should not be a issue.
On the day of the show, you can collect the tickets from the theatre half an hour before the show timings. There is a separate section for internet booking tickets.

Happy booking!

Trisha has a ‘fan’tastic birthday

Published on May 4, 2006 in General stuff. 3 Comments

Got up just now and found that the famous tamil actress Trisha Kannan’s birthday was making the headlines in Chennai chronicle today. Trisha’s fan club has celebrated her birthday in a lavish way yesterday. It was quite unusual for a actress’ fan club celebrating the birthday in a spectacular way. In TamilNadu, it is the heroes and the politicians who make news with their birthdays.
Quoting the news, “The fan club headed by Ms. Jesi, a resident of Chennai, had erected huge hoardings and banners at various vantage points in Chennai to wish Trisha . The hoardings read — Happy Birthday Trisha – Our Dream Angel of South India. The highlight of their four-day long celebration was the pal abhishekam (bathing the hoarding with milk) for Trisha’s picture in front of Kamala theatre on the busy Vadapalani road on Wednesday. They also burnt 1000-ladi fire crackers at all the 12 places where the hoardings were put up”.

I can understand that they want to express their love to their favorite actress. Is this the only way to express their feelings? No, says Jesi. They even organised a luncheon for 100 inmates of the CSI Old Age Home and also for the mentally disabled in Dr. Ravi’s clinic.
I am happy to see that they have done a good deed. But, I cannot digest the act of burning crackers, pal abhishekam and erecting hoardings. These are a mere waste of time and money. I strongly feel that Trisha will neither love these. This leads to a lot of questions now.

Should fans create such a hype during their heroes or hero-ine’s birthdays?
Does the actors and actresses like these activities?
Is this the only way to boost up the image publicly?

Instead of wasting the milk by performing pal abhishekam, it could have been distributed to children in slum who are under healthy due to the lack of milk. The money spent on building hoardings could very well have been used for constructing schools or a public library. Think Chennai, Think!
P.S.:- I am a fan of Trisha. But I don’t indulge in any sorts of frenzy fan following activities mentioned above.

Customise Bloglines blogrolls in WordPress

Published on May 3, 2006 in blog, coding and Internet. Closed

I use bloglines as my feed reader. I am quite comfortable with it because it is online and so I don’t have to worry about missing any of the feeds, as I am used to read blogs both at office and home. My blogroll in bloglines can be shared publicly and there is an option to mark certain feeds as private so that they are not shown public.

I was pondering all day today on how to customise bloglines blogroll in my weblog. I could not figure it out as it required expertise in php and css. Oops! I am not an expert in any of these though. As always, I turned towards Balaji and he came to the rescue. He took a few hours and coded up my bloglines blogrolls seen in the sidebar. It has come out well. Everytime, I add or remove a feed in bloglines, the blogroll displayed in my weblog is going to pick it up and update it automatically. Good job man! Thanks a lot!

If anyone is looking out for code, mail me at karthickdotraghavanatyahoodotcom.