Waves

hi!! dudes n duddetes,

I’m very happy today. the reason?? deepavali was excellent and this special deepavali will be in the archives for many many years to come.

During this deepavali, i met some of my school friends who were with me during the good as well as the bad times, extending their warmth when i needed the most. I visited most of their houses & believe me…..i didnt have lunch yesterday, because to all the houses we went, we were served with delicious delicacies that include gulab jamun, ribbon bakkoda, om podi etc. Ofcourse we gulped everything 😉 & what made them special was that every piece was home-made.

Back in the evening, we all met again at my place. This time, all of the things we did in the evening was shot in my friend’s handycam. We then burst a little crackers, ate a lot of sweets again & shot some more…..

On the whole, this deepavali was just great, not because of crackers or the new dress or anything else. It was just about friendship. By the end of the day, i wished no end to this day…..but all things must come to an end.

I know very well that this writing may not express so much i feel, but the feeling of the bond was excellent. If u are reading this blog & if you had experienced something similar in your life, kindly share it…….

Awaiting next deepavali…….bye!!~~

hi!!

Shopping in rain is a great experience, especially when all routes from ashok nagar to tnagar is flooded. Just on the spur of the moment myself and 1 of my friends decided to go shopping for deepavali because of 2 reasons.

1. TNagar wouldn’t be crowded today.
2. We can go splash..splash.. in rain water all the way to tnagar.

Nothing to stop us, we made our way to the shopping hub of chennai. As expected, there was nothing in sight expect some 2 or 3 autorichshaws & some die-hard shoppers who were in the same mind set as me ;-). In most places, we waded & literally swam across in knee deep water. The rain had started coming down heavily, thankfully i was covered….

Going thro’ the waters, the fastest mode of transport was the newspaperwalla tricycle and walking. After enjoying for more than an hours walk, we reached a place called duraisamy subway, the main link between Tnagar and the western side of the city. The subway was 95% submerged in H2O…..

Gosh!!! what a site it was to see a diesel auto half submerged in the subway. Water had already started to seep in thro’ the door & the driver was struggling. But anyway, we had to move. So we took a snap of that in my friend’s mobile & left for Tnagar. It was 5 minutes away & we were beginning to sense victory because the Pothys logo was visible. After another 15 mins of wading, we managed to reach Mount Everest (Tnagar)…

After shopping in Pothys, RmKV & Saravana Stores, we started heading back. Having tea & some hot bajjis, we saw yet another incident at the same subway. This time it was a van. Despite all the warnings of not to enter the subway, he entered the subway in full speed. He also reached the middle of it & the van stopped all of a sudden & didnt start. Watching all that, we smiled to ourselves thinking how much of a chennaite he was, “Born to break rules” even though it meant good to him.

The water that was knee deep had another grown another 10cm in the 3 hrs we shopped & started wetting my pants through the rain coat. We bundled all our clothes in 2 huge bags that we got from the shop & started floating the bags. What was the need to carry it when we were finding it difficult even to walk comfortably?? Splashing ofcourse was fun. 🙂

Another hour later, we reached home & received a sound thrashing…..yea, both of us :)). With a cup of piping hot chocolate, we narrated all our shopping experience. The 5th grade guy i told about here burst out laughing when i told him how a wave of water splashed on us when a jeep was trying to make it across the road.

On the whole, the shopping we did was something that i cant forget. This is the first time ever in my lifetime, i had shopped sooooo comfortably, dat too in Tnagar. Just for the sake, we went to Tnagar again today & my gracious God!! look at the crowd outside Saravana Stores. You would go mad just at the site of it.

Signing off now!! bye!!~~

hi!! this is a continuation of the previous blog…myself & one of my friends Ram had a chat about our memories & ofcourse most of it was filled with how we played DOS games. You can read that post here. That post is a bit long.

Here are some links where you can find your favourite DOS games.

1. DOS Games Archive
2. DOS Games Online

Some games are not supported on 32-bit platforms. To run them, you can download dosbox from sourceforge.net.

bye!!~~

hi!!

This blog is about some good old memories that had been and will be with me…..

First off, my darling sunny. How many of you have used bajaj sunny. Well, we were one of the first buyers here & its been with us for the past 10 years & ya….. its still running. Some 3 days ago, i was compelled to take that vehicle out for a nearby store. & what a surprise it gave me when it started after 2 kicks. Great!!! bike oops! moped or scooter whatever…

Even today, its giving a mileage of 30kmpl & it travels at a speed of 50kmph after some struggle with the accelerator. My dad wanted to sell it last month. But i stopped saying that after another 10 years, it will become an antique & bike lovers will come after it… 😉

Second, comes my age old computer….not this 1 ofcourse!! I got my first computer during 9th grade summer holidays & what a superb configuration it had.
1. 1GB of HDD.
2. 8MB RAM.
3. A 31/2 floppy drive
4. A 51/4 floppy drive …. yes i got one with my old comp!!!
5. No cdrom drive or multimedia.

Floppy drive was considered to be the most modern thing ever at that time & we used to buy DOS games in at a rate of Rs.100. Games such Dangerous Dave & Prince of Persia 1 were the most popular with us at that time. Later, after around 6 months, we upgraded our system to 32MB RAM, got a 32X cdrom drive with a multimedia set. The first cdrom game that i played was RoadRash, followed by Motoracer 2, NFS 2 and Claw. They still remain the favourites primarily because they dont use much of system resource & they are simply great!!!

Still later, that same old system ran Windows 98 & we used to be very content with playing all the games mentioned above, all in 1GB & 32 MB RAM.

Third, its the magazine Tinkle. I cant just forget the days when myself & my brother used to wait for the newspaper boy who used to deliver it. Then as usual every fortnight morning, begins the fight as to who should read it first. Thanks to Uncle Anant Pai (Tinkle Editor) who made such a superb magazine.

Its very difficult to write for kids & i realised it when i read tinkle sometime back. There was a recipe to make ice-cream & there were instructions such as, “Take help from an adult for this” and “Be careful with knife” etc…

There are ofcourse lots of memories but i will reserve them for another post.

Till then, bye n take care……

hi!!

With my dataone broadband connection wrecking havoc all around, i found it too difficult to cope up with dialup :-(. But something is better than nothing ;), so i was sticking around with it & thought of some things that i had not done for the past 1 week or so.

After broadband, checking mail was part of my routine – morning once, evening once & night once, like breakfast, lunch and dinner. Now checking mail using dialup even once is becoming a nightmare. Second one was updating my blog. I was horrified by the thought that i hadnt updated it since the last 2 weeks. Third one is even worse, didnt read more than 3 dozen of offline messages that i receive. boooohoooo!!

Its sickening in dialup to see a google search webpage load at the “speed of light” for 2 minutes at 563 bytes/second. The speed also varies from 563 bytes to a blinding speed of 1.5 kbps. As far as downloads, 1 mb downloading for 5 mins 30 secs tears my nerves apart.

So, all i do is put a webpage for loading in the browser and go for a cup of coffee or choclate & come back to see to my heart-felt satisfaction, the webpage has half-loaded……..as i press ESC in frustration.

And as expected, this page too is still loading, as the rest of the posts contemplate whether to appear or not…

bye!!~~ anyone reading this post, plz wish me good luck. Thanks in advance.

hi!! Microsoft has given some very cool online courses for free[1]. Check them out and make sure you make use maximum use of them. Most of these free courses are available for download also. To view them after download, u need the Offline Player.

1. ASP.NET – http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/learn/asptraining/
2. Visual Studio 2005 (Whidbey) – https://www.microsoftelearning.com/visualstudio2005/
3. SQL Server 2005 (Yukon) – https://www.microsoftelearning.com/sqlserver2005/

Note:
1. The courses are free only for a limited period.
2. For optimum performance use IE6.0 SP1 with 1024*768 resolution.

bye!!~~

hey!! guyz, Google has started blogging. Its been around for quite sometime & its right here on blogger. This is the link http://googleblog.blogspot.com

Check it out.

hi!!

Right next door to my house, there is a small guy doing his 5th grade. Since, we know him right when he was born, he used to be very free with our family. When i came from college yesterday, he immediately came running to my house, sat by my side & told me a very BIG secret !!!!!

Guess what it was??? His parents had bought him a brand new computer (pretty decent configuration) & he was excited about it because he could play “car race” (still NFS 2) & “bike race” (Roadrash). Other than this, what excited me was that he told me how to open “MS Paint” from the start menu & before that switching on the UPS, then pressing the blue button (boot button) near the small opening…… (floppy drive). All my tiredness completely vanished when i heard those words from a kid who had learnt all these just by watching the system assembler work at his home the previous day (quite amazing right?? atleast i think so).

So, without even changing, i went with him next door & asked him to show me a demo of creating a drawing because i didnt know how to do that. By seeing the interest he showed towards this, i thought i should teach him some more in MS Paint. Then i told him how to use brush, change some colours, save his work & reopen his work etc.

But, what really amazed him was, when the desktop background was changed & kept on asking me, to know how it was done. Since his dad had hidden the games from the start menu, he told me that the game was hidden somewhere in the computer & was pestering me to find it for him. As they had also listened to some songs the previous day, he asked how to do the same (he liked the Vijay starrer Ghilli very much). And do u know how he found it!!!!! He clicked on start, programs & instead on clicking on NFS2, he clicked Windows Media Player (a little unsteady with mouse). You should have seen the brighter than the sun smile on his face…..a sense of achievement began to envelope him & shouted Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! with so much ecstacy that bought his mom running from the kitchen :)).

Coming back home, i feel his quest to know more touched me deeply & rang a bell in my mind, that told me to be a MASTER of 1 trade & jack of others.

Right now, he is sitting besides me, tugging at my left hand, to show him how to open the white screen (notepad) so that he could type something & i keep smiling as i have a tough time finishing this blog…..

hi!! here is a major security threat in IE. Using jes a line of javascript or vbscript, u can retrieve text from clipboard. And using technology such as AJAX, it is possible to send it to the server without page refresh i.e. user willnt know that some communication has happened between his sys & the server. 1 e.g. where AJAX is used is wen u sign up for a new mail account at gmail or yahoo. It gives u a button to check whether the user id u selected is available or not & the result is almost instantaneous without the whole page refreshing.

Btw, i read abt this somewhere around 2 weeks ago, but i understood the threat & its severeness when i was reading Sudar’s blog yesterday. Thanks 2 u sudar!!

Click on the links to get more information, a demo and a possible(not fool-proof) way to get rid of this problem.

1 more thing, this problem occurs only in internet explorer and i feel its mainly because of the extensive support of activeX controls. if u have some thoughts 2 share, dont hesitate to post a comment.

hey!! ne1 out there using dataone like me???

well, v hava reason 2 b unhappy ‘cos they r giving only 1GB download/upload per month. But there is 1 small reason to be a “lil” happy. 2 AM to 8 AM is free for unlimited usage. To take advantage of this, i created a scheduled task to start downloading using Download Acclerator Plus (DAP) at 2:10 AM & shutdown the system after download completes or at 7:55 AM, whichever occurs first. Ok, heres the procedure to do that. I did this WinXP home and DAP version 7.2.
1. Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Scheduled Tasks.
2. Click next & select a program from the list or click “Browse” button to select ur own. I selected DAP frm the list.
3. Type a name & choose an option from the 1ce given. I chose daily.
4. Give a start time. As for this, give it as “2:10 AM” & select a start date.
5. Enter ur user name & password.
6. If u wan something else 2 b configured tick off the chk box & say “Finish”.

Now, u gotta config DAP to start downloading at 2:10 AM. Other download managers vil surely a similar feature.

1. Fire DAP frm Start->Programs->Download Accelerator Plus->Download Accelerator
2. Goto Options->Preferences.
3. Select “Scheduler” from the left side menu & select the chk box
4. Tick the chk box dat says “Start scheduler at…” & select “Daily” & give the time of starting. If u want give the time at which the scheduler has to stop.
5. Select the options from “After scheduled downloads stopped/finished”.
6. Click “Apply” & say “Close”.

Dats!! it u can now close DAP, leave ur comp on & happily go 2 sleep……Today i have scheduled for 2 downloads from channel9. The 1st 1 is here & the 2nd is here, if u want to c them. They both promise 2 b gud. bye!! n have a gud day…. 😉

Update: Read through Part 2 also.