I think India should collect all the money that they are giving to Bhindra(who is anyway so well-off that all this is pocket change) and instead use it to buy Michael Phelps.

Then at least we have a guarantee that India will win 3-4 Golds each event.

Indian Sports sucks...  The system sucks.

LJ has decided to show me their homepage in a white theme with Ruski text written all over. What gives?

Whether Firefox saves or does something more than that, I wouldn't know, but it is definitely a blessing. I was browsing some sites and the power went off. I hibernated the comp and let the sessions running and the windows open. After about an hour my dad was putting on the comp and the moment the comp came on, the power went off again.

Unfortunately this time the Inverter was off as some heavy wattage appliance was being used and the comp went off. I didn't have the slightest clue as to which windows were open and which sites I was browsing. But I definitely knew that I was in the middle of something quite interesting. Now, I don't know which windows were open, but at least Firefox kept a tab(or tabs: excuse the pun) of the sites I was browsing and when I opened Firefox the next time all my open sessions were restored.

Often such things have happened and I have been saved quite a lot of frustration thanks to Firefox. This time I thought I should blog about it and express my gratitude to Mozilla for this wonderful feature.

Visit here -> blogs.prashu.com

Q: Is Alien singluar or plural
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A: Singular, because you are talking about A lien.

Fatty(as V calls it) after a much needed shower. :D

At one point of time, pairs of these used to frequent the surroundings of my house in the mornings. Since a neighbour built their house, these guys have stopped coming. Here is one of them that came recently. Was eating a huge big fat worm too... :)

... in music of course. :P

ESPNSTAR have decided to redo their website and it totally sucks. Navigation is a nightmare and it takes too long to load the pages. I dont know what got into them. Nuts. I have to look for alternate websites to get my dose of sports information.

You know what would be a really really really good feature?



A favourites or bookmark feature on Wikipedia.

The other day I was watching a program about animals brains or something like that. The way in which the brains of the animals were developed. Two things struck me during that show.

1) They kept calling the Goose as Goosey. Is that how the west calls the goose? goosey goosey gander types?
2) The damn producers should be shot and Nat Geo should be sued. What wrong with those people for heavens sake. They were trying to show how underdeveloped a goose's brain is. The goose while nesting its eggs, takes care that nothing rolls out of the nest and keeps pulling back everything into the nest with its bill. However, it cannot recognize an egg from any other round object. It cannot recognize a round object from a square object. It cannot even recognize a white egg from any other brightly coloured object. All that is fine, but how did they go on to show this?

First they put a white ball next to the nest. That was ok. Nex they put a Red chennapatna type doll next to the nest. Fine accepted that too. Subsequently they put a cube with sharp edges next to the nest. They even put a glass bulb next to the nest. The poor goosey kept getting out of its nest and kept pulling back each of those object into its nest and kept sitting on it to hatch it. Imagine the cube's edges poking the soft underside of the goose. Forget that. Imagine what would have happened if the bulb broke and shredded the underside of the goose. What if they actual eggs broke because of these stupid objects in the nest. Seriously, these program people sometime show a total lack of any sense or even respect for the creatures.

Just shoot em producers I say.

Some questions first.

1) Which IDE do you use to develop your Java or C++ or C# code?

I suppose 90% would use Eclipse or Netbeans or Visual Studio. A few would be using some other freeware IDE. But how many of you use Notepad?
I remember when I started learning Java, I used to do it in Notepad. Of course C++ coding was done in TurboC++ but how different was that editor from Notepad?

2) Those that do use non-Notepad-ish IDEs. How many of you know, for a given method, all the returning parameters, method arguments and the polymoorphic behaviours? For that matter, how many of you even know all the methods that are available on a particular class?

Again, less than 10% of those who use an IDE would actually be knowing these details. Since the IDE always fills up the data and supports you with the autocompletion features, one really doesnt bother remembering the parameters of a method.

Yes, you would argue that when the IDE helps you out, then why should you bother remembering stuff. Well, I remember the days when I used to program in Java and C-papa and I used to always know the available classes and methods and parameters. I used to be a ready reference for anyone who had a problem with some functionality not working. I used to pull out methods and parameters from my head and ask if those were being passed correctly and so on. These days, I need to be in front of the code and I have to keep checking the APIs and keep googling for the usage of a method. Not liking it at all.

The downfall started actually with Java. Java was such a vast language with so many libraries that it was not insanely possible to remember all the classes and methods. Things got further complicated when I lost touch with the languages. Since I started working exclusively on ABAP, I have not written any Java or C code and I have lost touch with these languages. I realized this during the recent Google Code Jam. Of course, I am happy that my algorithm and problem solving skills are still intact and I was able to decipher the logic of most of the problems. But where I lost time during the competition was in opening up multiple firefox tabs and googling each and every statement usage. Also there are so many new libraries are there that simplying repetitive coding and improve performance too with standardized logic. Since I lost touch with these languages, I lost touch with improvements coming up in these languages too.

I need to keep learning and I need to keep using what I am learning so that I remain in touch. Now how do I do that?

Nice.... my flickr seems to have run out of space and wants me to upgrade. I thought they had only a monthly limit, but looks like now they have an overall limit. Time to say goodbye to flickr. I have my own photo hosting site and I will maintian my albums there. I used to use flickr only for posting to LJ, which I will now do through imageshack. Alvida... Adios... Shoooo...

I suddenly realized my phone clock was running a few minutes slow and I wanted to fix it. I wanted to check the current atomic time and synch my phone with that. While I kept trying different search terms and didnt get a good result, I chumma tried 'current time' and voila. Google gave me the current time in Bangalore, India and I have synched my phone clock with that. I thought if it was pulling the time from my desktop, since the desktop was in sync with the search result, but it was not so. I changed the desktop time and did a search again and google still showed the accurate time. Fun. :)

Interesting fact... Maybe the best way to die would be through a drug OD. No suffering, no nothing... you just let it go when you are at the peak of excitement. Akin to how people say that you must retire from your game when you are in your best form.

It turns out that the Indian cricket team is displeased with Sri Lanka and have lodged a complaint with ICC. If reports are to be believed, the Indian team have complained that Sri Lanka have fielded a woman cricketer in the Men's team.

ICC is investigating into the inclusion of 'Mahela' Jayawardene in the Sri Lankan Squad.

:P
Heard on 9XM channel through dad and presented to you in my own words.

Step 1) Read this article on Yahoo -> http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080728/wr_nm/internet_search_dc -> Former google engineers start new search engine.

Step 2) Go to the site -> http://www.cuil.com/ -> Impressed with the simple clean black page and the typeface of the site name.

Step 3) Click on 'About Cuil' -> http://www.cuil.com/info/ -> Get a page not found error


Edit: Tried the about page again and got a dirty looking, unstyled page of text. I guess they are working on that page. Guys, the about should be the first page that you ready before you launch your site. People would want to know who the hell you are before they spend too much time on your site.

Just finished watching Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. One of the first things that I did since the serial bomb blast in B'lore.
Decent movie, Enjoyed the comedy at the end. Was a little dragging in the middle stages but I liked the Rathore part at the end where the brothers meet up. Worth a watch. :)

Dammit... I am getting ever so impressed with the Income Tax e-filing system in India. It simply rocks. This year I filled my tax returns and mom's tax returns, each in 10 minutes flat. The utility may look complex and irritating, but its so so so simple. Sooper cool.

Thinking about it, the current govt. has to be lauded for this effort. The simplicity to the tax return filing system(started off since last year), the amazing turn over that Laloo brought to the Indian Railways. There are a lot of stuff that the UPA has done progressively. I am impressed. :)