Indian Journalism

This is my third post of the day. Very unusual. Even I am a little tipped about it! However that should be an excuse to post something which really bothers me isn't it?

I came across few snaps taken from the well known hindi news channel "Aj Taak". Any one who can read hindi will be able see the topics that are being discussed out there. The entire absurdity of the topics astonish me.

I am pretty much sure that it is one of the top three hindi news channels of India. Rahul Gandhi having puri-sabji, Cat stuck on roof top, Bachchan catching cold, Police commissioner's dog getting lost - are these the topics hindi-speaking people of India want to watch at prime time? What really is going on?

Few cool Videos on Sportsmanship

Although I have not mentioned this yet in any of my earlier posts, I am really fond of the youtube videos. A thought passed my mind that why don't I share some of my collections now and then? I guess that they will not be the worst posts on the world you know! :)

So here we go, introducing a few cool sports videos on shaanspeaks.blogspot.com




This one was captured in a club football match.


This one is really good :) The wicked cyclist really got a deserving thrashing from one of the observers.

Cheers!

A Time For Nostalgia

Last week I was hoping that next week the stress level at work will be a little manageable. I do the same this week as well. Alas! Nothing is going down hill as far as the stress level is concerned. Its getting more and more horrible.. Working Saturdays are like an usual thing now. I guess this will be life from now on.

Today I complete 24 months at Wipro. Yahoo! :) The meek, docile, nerdy kid from the lazy town of Durgapur has survived two years in the big bad corporate world! That's a reason for celebration ain't it? I guess what makes me feel really good is that I had put some honest efforts behind the job. What satisfies me is that finally, I can sense a "coming-of-age" of myself. As I had told in some of my previous posts, the mind is a lot less perplexed now :) KGEC made me come out of my closet and start taking life head on. The fight started there, the results are coming in Bangalore.

Looking back at the past couple of years, I feel so lucky to have worked with some the most talented and awesome colleagues in the world. I feel so lucky to be working under some of the most honest and encouraging managers at Wipro. I don't think it will be correct to take any names here. As they say, the best gratitude you can show someone is to live your life with the qualities and values they teach you. I will try and do the same. Thanks a lot guys!!

The day is very nostalgic. I could not help preventing myself from going back to the old times. It all started last night actually. Some one reminded me about the days of past.. Was it coincidence that u start getting nostalgic on the most appropriate days? Fate? Who knows?

One more thing happened today what makes me feel very proud. Good ol Sndp is finally doing his MBA :) I think he will read this post. Pat your back on my behalf mate! :) As "Fatboy Slim" will say, "You have come a long way Baby"!!

Being Good feels damn GOOD!

Monday Morning Blues..

Monday morning. Bad morning. Infact very bad morning. On monday morning you bed become a magnet, and you are all of a sudden made of Iron! The bed pulls you, refuses to let go of you.. Only a scary pg mate sleeping alongside you makes you say "what the Hell" and you finally get up. (That guy anyway was screaming whole night, he was blubbering all night.. I came to know later that it was the effect of watching "Sin City". Too bad.. I dint know it would screw both of our nights.. )

Not this monday morning. This morning was different. It was bad. In a different way. I woke with my hands and feet cold. My throat aching and my head banging as if there has been 100 drummers inside.




Damn.. I hope this is not another viral attack. I told myself. I decided to skip office. Decided to work from home instead. I had no options. Cant afford to go to office. Not in this state.

I visited the local homeopath med centre. I like homeopath. I understand there are some credibility questions on it. But it suits me. I somehow always react better to homeopathy. It is working this time too.. touch wood.


The whole day was a mix of watching movies, downloading music, chatting with friends.. all to cheer myself up! Hey before I forget.. I got 40GB of damn good movies from Den2! Ohh Boy! They are quite a collection. The movies range from "To Kill A Mockingbird" to "Syriana". This will take care of the next 4 months' weekends :-)



Took some pictures too of my room! These are snaps of how they look like when no one is there in it :-) Its ugly, its haphazard, and I LOOOOOVE IT!!!! :D

All beer and no work makes a guy.. whatever..

I write this blog in full drunk state. Another experimentation. Yaah.. I have never tried bloggin in drunk state. Gosh.. this feels strangely beautiful :)

Me, Dits and Subham headed for the Enigma tonight. We lost count of the pitchers we consumed :P Strangely we managed not to go too much overboard! Hmm.. we r growing up after all..(if being unemotional is "growing up" in your dictionary that is). I wish I could post some photos of our escapade tonite.. but I dont see the K750i around.. Damn whr did Shuvam keep it? :(

Perfect time, perfect state to propose.. Gimme a gal who will listen to my nonsense !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The post-Friday-da-13th post :)

I am feeling a little relaxed today. If you are wondering anything about the blog title, read the first line. It was a grueling week to come out of. My tryst with LTE seems to be quite an interesting one. It was only numbers and variables that I was thinking last week :) Spec number 331, 413, 300.. u name it! Oh boy! Before you realize you find yourself surrounded by piles of printouts.. And then there are notes. Notes on the walls of my cube, on my desk.. Yaah.. good times are coming back in work!

I really relish these kind of stuffs. First there is the challenge of working on some technology you have absolutely no idea about. I dont know what is OFDMA, I dont know much about distributed architecture. I have never worked on RRC flows. All these times I was the OAM/Platform guy, who deals with alarm managements, device initialization. Now I will be working on the call flows. Interesting!

We got a new name in the ODC last week. We are being called "LTTEs" :)

More on LTE and the LTTEs later..

So how was friday the 13th? I was at my usual nervous self. Keeping my fingers crossed.. hoping that the day goes on smoothly.. The day was in fact quite good for me ! The presentations and discussions went on smoothly at office. Health was okayish.. there was a little cold, but that was nothing unmanageable :)

Looking forward to Enigma tonight! Bring on the beer and the buddies !!!!

Apple iPhone is 3G-ed!! And hey! its cheaper too!!

Today morning as I turned my machine on and surfed for my daily dose of news, I was hit by this piece: "Apple has gone 3G." Any e-paper/e-gine you open, this news will be there in the front page :) People really love Apple!



And why not? For a change they are one company which always manages to surprise the consumer with their new products. It all started with the iPod and they have not looked back since then. Someday I will post about the "Mac OS X Leopard". Windows Vista developers should go for internship in Apple. If you watch a Mac Desktop running on this OS, I bet your jaws will literally drop. I don't know with material the screen is made with, but its an absolute viewing pleasure. The graphics are any day miles ahead of the Vista graphics, and in case you are wondering, there is apparently NO driver worries.



If you are spending a lazy Sunday afternoon and have no dates, movies to catch up with, take a chance and visit the nearest apple store. You will be stunned




Coming back to main topic .. Apple iPhone is now 3G. So what does it mean to us? Umm not much actually :) assuming that you are from India. For starters we don't even have a decent EDGE network here. And going by the dilly-dallying of Govt on 3G spectrum allocation, I don't see 3G being rolled out here at least till mid 09. However, its the reduction of pricing that attracts me :)

The 8GB model is $199.. wow! that's $200 less. Mr. Jobs, can we have a price-slice in the older version too? Vodaphone is rolling it out in India soon :)


There are other interesting additions in the phone.. sorry iPhone that catches your attention. First of all, they have introduced GPS navigator system in the device. Also, there are a slew of nifty apps in the phone, too! The following are the ones that I noticed:
1. Contact Search
2. iWork document support - for ppt files, not sure whether you can actually edit files though
3. bulk delete/move
4. saving images from an email
5. scientific calculator - this one was due. I have a P990i and I curse the developers every other day for not putting a scientific calculator on it. Come on, that's a bare minimum on a PDA!



Whats cool about this app is.. the moment you turn the device to landscape, the calculator becomes scientific !!

6. parental controls
7. added languages
8. various input types - they are basically giving character recognition via drawing to the device. But hey! where's the stylus dude? Hmm..


The iPhone2.0 rolls out on 11th July 2008.

My Picasa Album - Nilgiri Trip ( May08)

Last may we visited the beautiful Nilgiri region - Ooty, Coonor and its neighboring regions. I am Embedding a slideshow of the album here. Enjoy :)

View Album

Get your own

The Week ahead

Damn its already 11 in the night.. This weekend went fast.. Argh! I hate 1 day weekends.

Last week in entity was horrible, frustrating. It was "as-bad-it-can-get" type. From un-surities about how the project is going to work out, billing issues, to the regular frustrations of impossible deadlines set by the management. Just when one thought that it could not get any worse there was some shameful HR issue involving one of my colleagues.. Boy! it was "BackStabbing" at its best.. Incidents like this make u feel like vomiting.

I decided to turn out to office on Saturday. For a change, it would be good to do some studies alone.. I thought. However, it turned out to be no less horrible day.. All day I went through the spine chillin LTE specs, hoping to figure out how the message flows needs to be worked for the call and data flows.. Here I was, amidst a sea of information, desperately trying to make a way out of it. I was supposed to catch the 6pm bus and hit The Enigma at Kormangala.. As it turned out, I left at 9 p.m. The body clock had already given up (cummon its Saturday.. I am used to sleeping for 10-15hr/day on weekends.. lol)

Anyways I slept tight today :) Caught up with friends on gtalk - that relieves a lot of stress. Comin week is going to be stressful again. The LTE S1-AP kicks off.. Its going to be one hell of a stormy ride. Yet to figure out the control and user plane segregation.. C++, the language I fear the most will be encountered again.


O mu God, I forgot to look into the SCTP apis.. Damn I hate this..

Lets go to sleep :)

Blogging is in the air

I was catchin up with the latest developments in the blogosphere. Its really catchin up 'BIG' time in Idia with AB speaking his "time table" out on the net. Even Aamir Khan has finally let go of his dignity and callin SRK names. Funny ! U gotta admit that the blog was really funny. I laughed all the way thru it.. ok ok, folks I dnt quite like SRK's brand of movies, but no, it was not affecting my sense of humor.. umm,, not by more than 10% Promise!

On a second thought may be Aamir could have made that post and the remarks a little more subtle. They were infact crude. I understand that in bloggin u are allowed to open your heart out but then.. I mean you are Aamir man! people will be cued up to your blogs with reverence. Reamrks like those does not really leave a good taste in the mouth.

AB's blog is good. Its really good. Amitabhji's father was a renowned person from hindi literature world. His prowess shows in AB's writin as well. No nonsense, unapologetic writing.. On 2nd thought, his latest blog starts with some apologies :)

Hmm so the restart of my own blog also coincided with these two events in the Indian blogging world ! Hope the bubble lasts. I really want to regularly follow some things in my life.. Blogging is one of them.. Its an amazing medium..

Exactly 5 months after..

5 months have gone by since my last post. India left the shores of Australia with their heads held high. But then Bhajji has let himself down with slap-gate row. Hopefully he will return as a better man, and as a better sportsperson. The IPL has changed the way domestic cricket will operate.. for better or for worse? well thats something we need to wait and watch.

My personal life was going through a lots of ups and downs during these 5 months. Difficult to summarize them in the scope of a single post.. may be sometimes in future I will be flashing back on them.

The main reason for me staying away from blogging in the last 5 months was that during these period I was regularly going home at 10pm. Staying in office and writing a blog was well.. not such a exciting thing for me to do. Last week I got myself a wireless net connection. Weekends were getting more and more boring.. I thought that I may be busy with some good ol' net surfing :) In any case I have not been making new friends for a while now!

So, you can say that restart of blogging is a side effect of me taking a net connection at home. Hopefully I will be able to post somethings on a weekly basis at the worst.

The RSS thing is pretty cool isn't it? And so is the Safari browser!! Wow man.. look what Apple is doing to the personal desktop world. If I buy a computer (desktop) again it will definitely be a Mac. Safari is visibly faster than IE while opening pages, has some fundooh graphics/animations, the inbuilt RSS reader R.O.C.K.S, allows you to resize the text boxes and well, it has in-built spell checker, too! It doesn't get any better than this. One nagging issue is the absence of a few plug-ins that you have grown used to with IE, like the flash player plug-in. The safari page at Apple.com has the reqd sw.

So using a Safari actually 'inspired' me to have a rss link burned for my blogs :) That just added a fuel to this 'restart of blogging' thing :) Gave a lil 'make-over' to the look-and-feel part of it also.

On final thoughts, I am also giving a makeover to my Orkut, Picasa and Linked-In profiles :) As they say, when it rains, it pours!!