Archive for the 'General stuff' Category

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Daddhimaan Returns

Published on July 21, 2006 in General stuff, humanity, life and people. 3 Comments

Balaji calls me a daddhi in tamil. It means I am a lazy goose. Am I really? To be frank, I am one. With mom falling ill and Balaji griping about his woes, now I realize that I am doing justice to the salutation (daddhi).

A few years back, I was not this lazy and I used to do some household chores. I remember washing my own clothes, mopping the floor, helping mom in cleaning the house. At least, I was taking care of my activities. That lessened the burden on mom. Believe me, she is one clean bug. She wants everything at home to be neat and clean. As always, I am the one who gets blamed for all the dirt. Yeah! I will say 90% of the dirt accumulated was through me.
After joining a call center , I was not mentally and physically prepared to do household chores. One hard reason was that I was sleeping when everyone was awake. I slept around twelve hours a day. But my job demanded that kind of rest.

I quit call center and started feeling the sun’s heat after a very long time. At least now I see people during day time. But the laziness bug has bitten me so hard that I am behaving the same way. Last week was really terrible. I think I have expected more out of Balaji. Now I feel how hard it is when people who baby feed you are not present.

Oh man! SHould not I start working on these?

I have started mopping the floor,washing my clothes. I don’t want to bother mom or anyone by being idle. Let us see, how far I succeed.

P.S. :- Gayu calls me Kutchimaan. (Inspired from Shakthimaan, as I am tall and lank resembling a kutchi which means stick). Now that I am a daddhi, daddhimaan will suit me better.

Quality never compromises with money – Deccan Chronicle vs The Hindu

Published on July 16, 2006 in General stuff, Internet, news and people. 9 Comments

Started the day today with Deccan chronicles’s e-paper. Thumbing through the pages, I was in for a shock when I reached the supllementary (chennai chronicle). It had an article on how cine stars are pestered by over-enthusiastic fans and how they should tackle them. It related certain incidences where cine stars are bugged by some of their own fans. Excerpts from certain stars were also given. Arya’s (an upcoming tamil actor) views shocked me. I am quoting tha daily’s exact words here.
Arya feels that Kollywood is a far safer industry than Bollywood. “Compared to the kind of mafia threats that Bollywood stars face, the Tamil film industry is much more peaceful. Take the case of Martina Hinges who was stabbed by her fan. Her career is ruined. A situation like Suriya’s is critical and sensitive and it is definitely unwarranted. We as stars try and satisfy our fans to a large extent, but they expect us to talk to them whenev er they want and always be nice and approachable. When we don’t due to work pressure, they tend to resort to such means, which is ridiculous,” he says. ”

Is it not Monika Seles who was stabbed on her back by a die-hard Stefi Graf fan?

I am not sure whose negligence this could be. Is it DC’s or Arya’s ? Deccan chronicle has made it a habit of committing mistakes often. I am thinking of switching back to “The Hindu“.

“Quality never compromises with money“. It is true. For one rupee, you cannot expect quality.

Mosquito catcher zapper

Published on July 2, 2006 in General stuff, Humor, Just for Jolly and people. 0 Comments

Call him a techie!

Call him a web-master!

Call him a good friend!

Call him whatever you want. Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby announce the one and only champion of mosquito catching. It is Balaji. As a way of appreciation, let us all visit his blog thrice a week. Believe me or not, I witnesses him using a small lamp with a banish or a good-night mat at its top. He used to improvise it and kill a lot of mosquitoes then.

I don’t know why he is so much against this poor insect. Balaji, any specific reasons?
Now that dad has got him a tennis-bat-like mosquito catcher, he has started hitting them like Pete Samprass. Gosh! I will try to post the photo of him with this mosquito catching device. It is highly sophiticated that he charges it daily. If I ever lose a job what am I going to do next? Balaji! you don’t have to fear much. With Chennai becoming the mosquito breeding factory, you have a bright career ahead.

P.S.:- When I mean “the one and only” – he is the only participant in the competition of mosquito catching.

My experience with the Video iPod

Published on June 12, 2006 in Computers, Gadget, General stuff, music and pastime. 8 Comments

I got a new iPod video yesterday and I am really amazed at the sound and picture quality. This is a gift to me from my sister and brother-in-law. Thanks guys! I owe you a lot.
I have a few video song DVDs and I wished that I could load them up in my iPod easily. A search on the internet found me Videora iPod converter. I would say that it is the best video converter software I have ever used. It is so simple to use and it simply works the way I want it to be. IPod plays only a few file formats and Videora easily converts .vob files to .mp4 files in minutes. After converting the files to mp4 format, I fired up iTunes and loaded all the videos into my iPod. The clarity and sound synchronisation was amazing. I am really hooked up with the videos videora churns out.
I would not prefer to use ITunes for mp3 songs as it locks up the songs once they are into the iPod. A quick search on the internet fetched me yamipod. The only freeware for songs management in iPod using a PC. Spent a few minutes with yamipod and got myself familiar into creating playlists and loading up all my mp3 collection. No more worries about music getting locked in iPod. Yamipod has both the option to copy music into and from iPod without locking up the music. And moreover, it simply works in z PC. All my praise goes to Tomas , the guy who coded this small application. Kudos Tomas!

As I wanted to do more with my iPod than music and video , I worked a bit to integrate my google calendar and tada! did it . Downloaded all my calendars from google into the calendars folder in iPod. Now I have the FIFA Worldcup 2006 schedule , ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 Schedule , my office shift schedule etc;
A few more hours on the internet taught me to use the notes feature in iPod. I stumbled upon a site which hosts free iPod eBooks. A few clicks got the ebooks like How to Speak and Write Correctly by Joseph Devlin , The World War and What was Behind It by Louis P. Benezet (86) into my iPod. The one feature I have yet to dig is the photos. I hope to work on it by tomorrow morning.

Overall, I will say that iPod video is really a awesome product with extra feture other than music and video. Only thing is that, people should know how to and where to find hacks and resources for it.

My new tamil blog – தினம் ஒரு குறள்

Published on June 4, 2006 in General stuff. 7 Comments

I have started my own tamil blog தினம் ஒரு குறள். Do check it and let me know how it has come out.

Skype offers free calls to any phone in US

Published on June 1, 2006 in General stuff. 0 Comments

Good news for those who reside in the USA. Skype, the well known free PC to PC VOIP calls provider is now offering free calls to any land line or mobile phones in the US. Skype free calls US But, the offer is till the end of this year. Whatever, who would want to spend a penny when they can call a real telephone number for free with skype? For the rest of the souls residing outside US, Skype does not offer this but the calls to the toll-free numbers in the US still remains free. A day is soon going to come when all the people throw out their mobiles and buy a Skype smart phone which will work out of internet. No more numbers to call. Just pick up your skype phone and dial your buddy’s name. No more roaming charges, all the world is yours. Get your bum around a wireless hotspot and start skyping. This will be even more great when every part of the world has free wireless internet connectivity.

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.

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.