The Nub

What they do to lure the common man

2009-07-01T22:36:00.002+05:30

The government reduced petrol prices by around 5 bucks before the election. And now, just after they got elected again, price is up!

The Place Where Things Happen(ed?)

2009-06-02T00:29:00.008+05:30

Basaveshwara Nagar Coffee Day brings back some memories.

Sub, gecko, sid and I gathered around the coffee table sipping on some nice beverages.

While it was fun, I couldn't help think - in a couple of months, sub and gecko will be heading off to different countries to fulfill their academic dreams, and sid will be busy brooding over medical books (so thick that they can be used as murder weapons, or as bullet proofing material, chopping board etc,) and cutting open people, operating on penises and what not...
while yours truly will be hopelessly lonely for at least the next couple of years!
*shudder*

The Parallal

2009-02-26T00:13:00.008+05:30

Last week, on a seemingly ordinary monday, GK and I noticed this sign board (the one with a P inscribed in a circle inscribed in a rectangle) while returning from a 2nd hand book store in Church Street. Nothing out of the ordinary. At first, we laughed at it, GK blogged it. I thought some people simply cannot spell, and Bangaloreans cannot parallel park, but only perpendicular park. But something didn't seem right with the above reasoning. After spending countless sleepless nights over this issue, I came up with a theory - a very plausible one!

The painters of the parking sign board came from a parallel univese where parallel is spelt with an 'a' instead of 'e'. OK, so they are from a PARALLAL universe.

Next, the car owners from another parallel (PARALLAL for the above mentioned painters) universe where parallel (PARALLAL) is Perpendicular.

Wait I'm confused.... err... so... they come from a perpendicular universe? ... and our universe is the point of intersection of a set of orthogonal universes? But they are parallel, right?

Brain short circuit. Time to sleep!

The Devil's Desktop?

2009-02-01T10:14:00.005+05:30

A friend asked, "if kde 4.2 was supposed to be the second coming of the christ, why don't we see rave reviews of it everywhere?"

I have an explanation:

It's the beast!!! ;-)

Start Pedaling

2009-01-08T23:17:00.002+05:30

With all these oil company employees and truckers on strike, it's the perfect time to blow the cobwebs off your first two wheelers.

Yes, that's right, get that good old cycle out of the attic and start cycling! Now!

My First Long!

2009-01-01T01:15:00.006+05:30

Date ~ 30/12/2008
home - itpl ~ 30
itpl - channapattana ~ 117
channapattana - home ~ 77
TOTAL - 224Km

Four days ago my body suddenly decided to mend its sleep cycle and I've been sleeping at "night" and waking up at around 4 am (cool, eh?).

It was a boring early morning. Had to do fix that. Subba had just returned from a spiritual conf and wasn't having any fun at the office. What do two bored buggers do? They decide meet up for lunch and go half way to mysore to meet another bored bugger arriving from the other side.

subba & i (b'lore) >>> Coffee Day (c'pattana/maddur) <<< gk (mysore)

Subba showed me the NICE road. My flying machine touched 112Kmph (personal best). I never ever dreamt that such an empty road existed in bangalore. It was a bikers dream road except for the toll gates were we had to lighten our wallets for burning rubber on their tarmac and a small unfinished stretch which made us lose our way and go round and round and round, but eventually rejoin the smooth tarmac.

This road eventually joined mysore road and we were off to beat time as we had promised gk that we'll be there by 5 pm, but ended up 30 minutes late in the end. Sorry Gecko!

Apart from the NICE road, nothing was significant on the way to maddur.

Because of gk's confusion about which coffee day, we had to head back around 5km!
Fed ourselves some delicious cake and samosa with hot coffee.

Then, all of a sudden gecko changed colours (pale whitish) - he had scared himself to death for misplacing his bike key! Time flew by, things cooled down, gecko regained his colours, the sun set, and stars took over the night sky. It was time to part. There was a slight problem. Unlike gecko, we didn't have sweaters or jacket to shield ourselves from the biting cold weather! Still, subba and i set out undaunted into the night to return home 70km from this town.

On the way back, we were up for a surprise. Our orange flying machine needed some fuel, but the greedy fuel pump had cleared out their stock and closed down as there were rumours of price drops. Fear slowly started to grip us as we zoomed past empty fuel pumps one after the other. We were scared about having to walk and push the unicorn half way. Fortunately, luck was on our side and we found a friendly fuel pump who hadn't run out of petrol! Eventually we realised that the "out-of-stock-fuel-pumps phenomenon" was restricted to channapattana.

The rest of the journey was not so eventful apart from the usual clueless buggers crossing the roads almost missing getting hit by a speeding vehicle. This made us wonder about the purpose of their life - was it to just squished to death in the middle of the road like bugs on windshield? - how did they survive this long? - does god really exist and care for them? Big questions, no answers! :-o
We drove at a decent speeds (60-70kmph) even with the biting cold. Every time we passed a truck or lorry, we thanked it for the warmth instead of cursing it for the dirty smoke. Eventually i kinda became numb to the cold. It bothered me no more (Prolly subba was not that comfortable).
There was one more exception to the uneventful journey. We slightly lost track of the road at NICE road - mysore road intersection because of all the construction work and the darkness. They change roads almost every other month! Weird city i live in.

The rest of the rest of the journey was the usual inner roads of bangalore - so many potholes, dried up lakes and ponds in the middle of the road. (Suddenly made me remember why our city cannot afford to have a batman - it's the roads and traffic! No chance in hell he can drive his batmobile here without squishing a lot of bystanders to a bloody death, or batman falling into a ditch. ;) )

Finally made it back home after dropping subba at his place. I was expecting to feel like a battered soldier with back pain and sore muscles, cough and cold and all that crazy stuff, wondering if the drive was a complete waste of time, fuel and energy. Nah, I surprised myself! It was simply a splendid biking experience, one that i enjoyed thoroughly.

I WANT MORE!

PS: Happy New Year!

That 70's song came back to life!

2008-11-23T23:50:00.002+05:30

Video Killed the Radio Star (Live)

firefox mac pdf plugin

2008-10-11T11:58:00.003+05:30

http://code.google.com/p/firefox-mac-pdf/

Firefox 3 doesn't come with a pdf plugin on osx. This one just works!

Our Dumb World

2008-10-10T15:55:00.004+05:30

I recently watched "The Onion Movie". So I went to The Onion's website and look what I found - A fantastic atlas of our planet by The Onion (Our Dumb World).

Some descriptions are spot on. For instance,

INDIA (please hold off while we die of malaria)
Mixed by rising poverty levels, polluted groundwater that threatens the lives of millions, and a rapid crumbling infrastructure, the nation of India has every intention of addressing these problems just as soon as it finished telling Midwesterners how to install Windows XP on their home computer.

(PS: Zoom in the map for city-level descriptions ;) and check out Sri Lanka, Mumbai )

Top 10 Wrong Placed Ads

2008-07-25T20:27:00.001+05:30

http://www.bspcn.com/2008/07/22/top-10-wrong-placed-ads/

(Thanks Prash)

Song of the day

2008-04-12T23:01:00.002+05:30

This lifted my mood up. It might lift yours too!

Lily Frost - Who Am I?

faster than c

2008-01-05T04:26:00.001+05:30

http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2007/12/faster-than-c.html

*chuckle*

A new year, a new perspective

2008-01-01T00:06:00.000+05:30

2008 is here!!!

Looking back (which I haven't done much of late), a lot has been accomplished, a lot left undone, and a lot of new dreams and aims.

The last month has been a real struggle trying to manage between work, family, personal stuff and studies. I think it ended up as a pretty ugly mess with none of them getting enough attention! This has prompted me to change my lifestyle. I've realised that even though my desk and room are organised well, my life isn't! It's terrible! One tiny event not going as planned can screw up my daily schedule in a real bad way. So, I've been looking into how others manage their lives, and how that can help me.

For starters, I'm diving into the GTD stuff (yeah... David Allen's book :-) ); getting out of home daily (a 30 minute morning walk should give me the necessary change of environment); trying to plan my day in a way that'd absorb the negative events so that they don't ruin the whole day; proper prioritisation of tasks; being prepared beforehand (especially for studies); and much more.

Anyway....

Happy New Year!!!! :-)

नव वर्ष की शुभकामनाए!!!

ಹೊಸ ವರ್ಷದ ಶುಭಾಶಯಗಳು!!!

God Nytt År!!!

Video of the day

2007-10-11T18:14:00.000+05:30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYuqoKxRhMg

Watch it!

Edit: Google took the video down! (T video was about how it would be if Al Gore would be the president of USA! ;-) )

Fly Cheap! Fly Safe!

2007-07-21T07:37:00.000+05:30

The best way to live through a disaster in the sky? Move to the back of the Airbus. It's safer in there!

Engineering and Star Trek

2007-05-18T11:12:00.000+05:30

I really liked the "Science vs Engineering" part.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Engineering.html

OOPS!

2007-05-12T21:44:00.000+05:30

http://poetry.rotten.com/suzuki/

one more year in the nub's journey

2007-04-17T00:17:00.000+05:30

One more year has passed since my arrival in this world!

A lot has been achieved, a lot left undone. I expect more fun coming my way :-)

Happy Your Day!

2007-04-01T20:19:00.000+05:30

Happy Fools' Day!!!

Coffee! Coffee! Coffee!

2007-02-07T05:24:00.000+05:30

It WORKS!

I mean... it finally worked!

2 cups of awesome hot coffee and I couldn't sleep. I finally managed to get some decent stuff done at work though :-)

Here's my recipe to pull an allnighter:
Ingredients:
1 cup caffeine kick
1 cup cafe latte
friends

Instructions:
* Meet friends at Cafe Coffee Day for an evening coffee
* Sip on caffeine kick while watching friends fight over the larger piece of chocolate cake (ssshhh don't tell them about that second cup of coffee you can't stop thinking about)
* Watch the sore loser walk away trying to make up a reason to get out because (s)he didn't have it her/his way
* Cheat and order another cup of coffee.. this time.. lets get that yummy cafe latte
* Enjoy that warm mug of cafe latte while everyone gets ready to leave
* Go Home! (pay the bill before that of course... you don't want to waste the caffeine-generated-energy trying to escape from a police chase because you ran away from the shop without paying)

You will spend the night like a squirrel on a sugar high.
Enjoy!

Crazy and Hazy

2007-01-10T13:32:00.001+05:30

I wake up to the warm sunlight of dawn and the smell of fresh air. There I am sipping a mug of my favourite hot black coffee, sitting in front of a 24" imac checking for mail and the day's schedule. Then I step out to the balcony and enjoy the fresh and pure air. There is greenery all around me. Then I take a mountain bike for a ride around the place and my daily dose of exercise. A stroll in the surrounding woods freshened me up. Oh what a beautiful day!
And then all of a sudden.. I wake up to the ringing sound of my alarm.
With the freshness still in my head, it takes a few moments for me to realise that it was a dream, but what a dream. Now I sit in front of my 15" CRT, check for mails and plans, head out for my daily walk in the freshly polluted morning air....

Just how wonderful it would be to live in a country-side house, away from all the city hustle-bustle with fresh and clean air all around, with loads of greenery for miles around you. I just hope it will turn into a reality.. some day.. may be.

In other stuff, belated New Year wishes to all my fellow Martians!!!

PS: If anyone wants to help me realise that dream, you can start by sending me that 24" iMac ;-)

The Zoo

2006-11-20T00:19:00.000+05:30

Me,

my boss(Morten),

with some

elephants at the Bannerghatta National Park.

I'm slacking

2006-10-28T10:22:00.000+05:30

SOS
Yes! I think I'm losing control over myself. I sleep at 2 or 3AM, wake up at 10 or 11AM. All day seems dull and I always have a feeling of being tired. By the time I feel better, its already evening/night. I've tried coffee, and pepsi in vain. The boring dull rainy weather or the electric company isn't doing any good either.
With productivity dropping to a pretty low level of late, I seem to be failing myself.

Anyone have some suggestions on improving my situation?

On another note, Morten got me a new spare keyboard for the time being. So all my 1337ness is gone :-| RIP Samsung 4500p. You will always remain in my heart.

the b0rked keyboard

2006-10-23T09:15:00.000+05:30

Yesterday was a rea11y fucked up day.
First, my water bott1e fa11s and spi11s water a11 over the kbd. (Yeah.. among many, the char between k and ; is not working). Many keys dont work. Some need to be s1apped to work, and some need to be hammered to work. I know thats bad.. I a1so know that i shou1dnt drink water near comp :|
This is just the traier. The rea1 fi1m is coming up.
consequences! consequences! consequences! ...
I was c1eaning up stuff on maito`s comp. and it a11 happened in \etc (yeah.. forward s1ash stopped working overnight). I typed an rm *~ in that fo1der.. but NO.. ~ is a key that needs a hammer job to be pressed. Ofcourse i rea1ised it only after typing and hitting the return key. Damn these stupid fast computers with fast harddisks! (1ets b1ame techno1ogy a bit.. i fee1 bad taking a11 the b1ame). Yes everything was gone in an instant. Spent hours reinsta11ing packages (yes.. with the same keyboard.. you can imagine how it fee1s to type `ls`) and fixing config fi1es. And dear maito was doing his best to keep ca1m. After hours of toi1, it was done. We rebooted and everything was back to 1ife.

So, thanks maito for your patience and be1ief in me.

Resu1t of the scary adventure:
I so1emn1y swear never to drink anything near the computer again.

I`m off now, most1y with Morten hunting for a good keyboard to suceed the throne of the now borked Samsung SDM 4500P (i`11 a1ways 1ove you dear!)

PS: With this borked kbd came a 1itt1e 1337ness. ;)

BOSE rocks

2006-10-20T00:24:00.000+05:30

The title must be sufficient to express my thoughts about BOSE. Morten and I went to the BOSE Store on M.G.Road. I was just stunned at the quality of sound those tiny speakers produce! Ofcourse it costs a lot, but its worth every single penny. Morten bought a Bose TriPort headphone for his bro. May be I too will get it.. some day.. if I ever make that much money :/