Examophobia

Today is final year Math exam. The final paper of the whole 4 years. I woke up late in the morning to find out I haven't been preparing well. I depended on the first few hours of the final day to top up myself with formulas, but then, I got up stinkingly late.

I have a bus to catch in few minutes. The gap between the exams were way too much, such that I even forgot if I still used the college bus. If it was the public bus, I am in a much messier situation.

I had to get ready very quickly. Taking bath is "not" mandatory during exams. Got out of the bed, brushed in 3 secs, washed my face, finished my morning routine and was searching for some pressed cloths. None were in my cupboard. My brother was still asleep. Searched his cupboard to find a neatly pressed t-shirt. Pulled out a jean(who presses them anyways) from my cupboard and got ready.

Now I have this bus situation to solve. But I anyway called my friend who goes to college by car. He was the one almost responsible for this situation. Me and this friend of mine had a race on how many Movies we could finish watching "before" the exams are over.

When he reached, I was pretty sure he lost the movie race. But he was decently prepared for the exam. I was in a state of panic. Its a hour ride to the college. I made him tell what ever things he had prepared. Getting taught by someone is more effective than reading yourself, especially, just before writing the exam. This as well did not make much difference. He was a bad teacher and I was a very bad listener!

We reached the college. Many noticed I hadn't taken bath that day, assuming I did not waste a single minute. Only I know how badly I had prepared. No arrears, except for the final paper. Damn! Who will hire me now?! Apart from these, there were many other things running in my mind. Including the "horse head" scene from The Godfather, "Say what" scene from Pulp fiction, the office scene from Fight Club etc.

We are now sitting in the exam room. To make things worse, we had the toughest invigilator known to me, my mom!

Thats when I realized I was sleeping my ass off, in the middle of Sunday! Dreams can be lethal!

We never had a Math paper after first year. I did not travel in college bus after first year. We were never allowed to bring bikes or cars to college nor wear t-shirts. And I never used to watch that many movies during college days. Most importantly, I never use to miss my bath :) Missed my bus a plenty times though! Even though many facts weren't right, the feeling about the exams were.

Waking up after making a fool of myself in my dream, I realized I left my shoes in the terrace with the rain pouring in! I had asked my mom to wake me up if it rains, which she conveniently forgot.

It was while picking up the shoes I realized what a nightmare the exams used to be. If not for these stupid exams, I would love to go to college again!

p.s:

I was thinking about the title for this post and came up with Examophobia. When I googled about it, there really is a wiki for it :)

Blue Crossed...

I always had a high value for Blue Cross of India, till tonight. What most of our area people had watched few minutes back, was not totally un-Indian way of dealing with animals, but it was totally inhumane.

One cow had escaped from its herd and ran straight in to my neighboring apartment. About 15 boys ranging from 7 to 20yr old came hunting for the cow, equipped with stones and ropes. Why stones? you may ask. The cow was supposedly caught from some forest, possibly for slaughter and it ran away from its certain death to finally get caught. They wanted the cow dead or alive and when they took it, its was some where in-between both. That answers why the stones.

Seeing a large crowd, the cow was naturally terrified and was attacking what ever it saw, including the neighbors gate. Seeing the terrified cow, the boys got terrified and attacked the cow. My dad, to some extent controlled them from both terrifying the cow and attacking it, till they caught it of course.

After some 30 minutes of drama, they finally caught the cow. But the cow did not want to give up. It was jumping its ass off. To control the jumping cow, the boys used all the ropes they had and tied every movable part of the cow. They in-fact bundled it in such a way that they can courier it to some other place. It was no more like a living thing, it was more of a parcel.

It was now I decided to call the Blue Cross, supposedly the only Animal lovers of our Country. I knew it was already late, but I also knew they had to wait for some transport to take back their hunt, which kind of bought me some time.

Blue Cross had two numbers in their site, which I tried repeatedly for few minutes. Finally one person answered the call. I explained him the situation. After hearing the whole story, he said, I will have to call the police station. I was really shocked. I then asked him what for you guys are there. For which he said, they only help animals that are hurt(and that too if the owner is around). What the hell do they call the animal which is tied up like a bundled heap of leather? I finally yelled at him and replaced the receiver.

Meanwhile their transport arrived to pick up their hunt and they left as a happy bunch. Humans cannot curb their love for meat, but there are many civilized way of feeding their desire. Are we civilized? asks Blue Cross. Are you worth your salt, asks me back to them.

p.s: Lesson learnt is, if something like this ever happens again, call the nearest Police station(never got through 100 though) and register a complaint. But I can be sure of one thing. The cops will arrive just in time to question you, not to save the animal from its fate. That's how fast they can act.

On a typical rainy day in Chennai...

Like any other day, I woke up around 5.30 in the morning. There was a light drizzle. Again like any other day, I got myself ready to hit the gym. The light drizzle transformed itself to a mild rain. And, the rain to heavy rain by around 7 a.m. Cursing myself for not owning a car(I always told myself, owning a car in Chennai is like owning a Ship in Rajastan...no point!), I waited for the rain to stop, at least till I reach the gym. Ten minutes is all I need to reach the gym.

Loosing all my hope, called up my partner and told I wont be making it on time and asked him to carry on. Suddenly the rain almost came to a screeching halt. There was still a mild drizzle. But I can still make it to gym with my Jerkin on. It was still drizzling and I was rushing my way down to gym. I was almost half way through, the wrath of rain was upon me again. It was like rain missed to see me for five odd minutes or...or rain laid a perfect "trap" for me and I fell hard on it with my face first!

I was now totally drenched in rain. Jerkin on me was not of much help. I had no option to head back home. Rain won the first round! I told myself, I should not let rain win the second round. Which is, on my way to Office. There are two ways to prevent this. One is the easy way. Take the day off. Other is wait for the rain to stop and head to office.

I was already considering the easy way out. I still had few pages left on the book I was reading. A rainy day is perfect for the thrilling climax. And, there are quite a few movies, waiting for me to watch! Now came the reality, banging my head like a bolt! I have this call today. Not today of all days. I really have to be in Office. Then I said to myself, "cancel the damn call"....then again I can't, its yesterdays call!! I then realized, any day, its a bad idea to postpone a call!

Before I made up my mind, it stopped raining. It was not even drizzling. Sun was peaking out. There is now the second option, the only option. Escaping the rain is the ulterior motto! So had a quick bath and a quicker breakfast and left for office.

It was long since I have started to office by 9 am. I assumed the roads will be jam packed. To my surprise, it wasn't that bad....till I reached Guindy! I could see the densely packed vehicles before even reaching the Kathipara junction. My bad, I should have taken the Saidapet route. Again, always the other side is greener. It took 20 odd minutes to reach the other end of the bridge.

By now, it was like its going to start all over again! Clouds gathered. It got cold again. It became evident its going to start pouring any minute now. I thought, its always a loosing game with rain! I almost reached office, when it started to drizzle again. This time, I knew I could make it to office without getting too wet. It drizzled for few minutes and it stopped. This time for good. But the time I reached office, it as sunny all over again.

After reaching my desk, I realized, So much for the rain that shows up once in a blue moon! I felt really bad for trying to escape the rain. I wish it rains more here in Chennai. Any day, pouring rain is always better than scorching sun!

Railway Gate

Few days back, I happened to pass through Pallavaram Railway level crossing. While returning back, the gate was closed, obviously because few trains were suppose to pass through. I agree its kind of a lengthy wait(like around 15 minutes). But to my surprise, only two of us in two wheelers(along with many four wheelers) were waiting for the gate to open. Others just used the gap between the gate to pass through.

If the gap between the gate was sufficient enough for cars to pass through, I guess there wouldn't be any cars waiting for the signal either. And if we notice the ones passing through the Railway crossing, most were well educated(probably software engineers), family guys picking up their kids from school, college students and women with small kids in their hands. Many others were crossing while talking in their mobile or head set in their ears. Some even braved the trains seconds before the train sped its way through the tracks.

One thing that beats me is, whats the big hurry? What are we gaining by saving that 15 minutes of our lives through actually risking it? Nothing! But we Indians still do it.

One of my friend met with an accident trying to cross a Railway level crossing few months back. He got knocked down by the train and left with multiple fractures in his shoulder and arms. Hes almost recovered now after three months of rest(which includes one month of total bed rest). He probably tried to save 15 minutes and lost 3 months of his life(leave alone the monetary loss) .

Many unfortunate(or should I say fortunate?) people end up loosing their life, like one of my relatives. He got ran over by the train and he was just in his twenties when this happened!

Even though the number of accidents in the Railway crossing is way too less compared to the accidents happening on roads, its probably one of the stupidest ways to die!

One day, the driver of the cab I had taken told, "this is India and it will never change", when we saw few reckless drivings and signal jumping. Probably, India with people having such a mentality will never ever change. We just will have to live through it.

Auto Replay for YouTube: Firefox Addon

YouTube definitely is an awesome site with good usability and stuff. One thing that i really miss(ed) was a simple "auto replay button". I for once got really needy of such a feature and even tweeted about it. One of my friend in twitter asked me to try writing an add-on for the same and here it is.


Why is such a feature even needed?

Some like me, when stumbled upon an awesome song(like Handlebars by Flobots or Viva la Vida by Coldplay), would really want to hear it more than once. And in YouTube without an Auto replay button, its really a pain.

I had bookmarked the YouTube Chromeless JavaScript API reference long time back that came real handy today. I was able to finish the add-on in no time with these simple APIs.

Install your copy from here. As always, report any bugs/issues here. Feature requests are always welcome!

ps: You don't need a mozilla account anymore to install the experimental add-ons. You just need to check the "Let me install this experimental add-on" checkbox and carry on with your installation.

Update 0.0.4: Added options to choose the portion of the video to be auto replayed. [Recommended install]

Worst weekend ever!

Saturday(24/1/09) last week was one of the worst days in the recent past! As usual i woke up around 5.30 in the morning. Since i had donated blood on Friday, i was thinking of skipping gym that day. I was browsing and chatting with my friends for sometime. After i got really bored, i started to gym by 8.00 am. I reached there by 8.10am . I went inside and had just signed the register, the watchman came rushing telling there has been an accident. An auto driver, who tried to avoid a crossing cycle, accidentally/unconsciously throttled in to the gym parking area. More than 4 bikes and a car were damaged. My bike being the first one to be hit, was lying in a bad shape.

This being the first major accident to my bike, i was sure i could get a decent claim from the insurance and did not loose my cool. Me and my friend lifted the bike to see the damage. The petrol tank and the doom were badly damaged. Tail light area has been totally wiped off. And the handle bar was bent. Not sure about the fork.

After seeing the condition of the bike, we went to see the other bikes. Other bikes did not suffer the same fate. All of them lost their tail lamps though. But the car suffered a major damage. The left side of the bumper was badly damaged.

Why did the auto driver speed?

As per his statement, he was late to pickup school children. He wasn't speeding much, but the cycle fellow who crossed the road in the wrong time confused him. He tried to avoid the cycle(which he did not!), he changed the lane and throttled his way through the parked vehicles.

Session with Police

We were left with no option but to lodge a police complaint. The Gym officials filed a complaint and the police officials came after 20 minutes to the spot. They did their usual inquiry with the concern people and asked us to come to the station to file a written complaint with the required documents(RC book, Insurance and License) and their photo copies.

We, with the documents, went to the police station by 10.00 am. The police station was indescribable. It was worse than it looked in the Tamil movies. It was no better than any-other government office, with an exception of jail cells with prisoners in it.

Sub Inspector registered a case and filed a FIR(First Information Report) by 10.45 am. FIR in two and a half hours is rapid fast in Indian terms! We were actually happy that we could get the FIR in such a short time frame. But the actual problem started only after the FIR is filed. The SI wanted photo copies of the FIR for each one of us so that he can personally seal and sign it. Before heading out to take the copies, he handed us another FIR report, of different accident and wanted photo copies of this document too! They always forget that they are government servants and make people their servants!

Grudgingly me along with my friend(Muthu, who accompanied me) went to the nearest shop(around half a mile away from the police station). We had a light breakfast while the copies were getting ready and headed back to the station.

Session in RTO

The head Constable now wanted us to be in the RTO office with our vehicles by 1pm so that the RT Officer would inspect the damages. We initially thought its a 10 minutes work(as claimed by the constable) and went there well in advance by 12.30pm. The Constable told he would be there before we reach the place but he was nowhere to be seen. He had given us his mobile number and we called him every 15 minutes to pressure him come to the Office. But the trick did not affect him even a bit. He reached the RTO by 2.30pm. We were already furious.

I went to him and asked what the hell took him this long....instead of answering me, he handed me a form and asked for 10 photo copies of the same. I was already furious after waiting this long for this man to show up and now he coolly asks for 10 copies of form for 3 of us! After giving him a cold stare, i grudgingly went to the nearest shop to take the photo copies. After bringing him the photo copies, he asked me to fill the form myself(it was suppose to be filled by the SI..not even by the constable). I filled the form for myself and the others who came along with me. He had a official government seal with him. He stamped the forms and signed it himself(again, suppose to be signed by the SI).

Now its our turn to wait for the RTO! We actually thought we were waiting for the RTO for him to inspect the damages. Only after waiting for an hour or so, the constable told we were waiting for a brake inspection. Why the hell do they need a brake inspection for a bike that's been in an accident when parked??!! The constable told its the procedure and we had no option but to wait for the punctual RTO to come and inspect the vehicles! By waiting in the RTO office, i mean, waiting in the road. We were not allowed to move away either, because, if the RTO comes while we were away, he will not give us a second chance that day. We will have to come again another day to get the clearance! By 3.45pm the car owner got really pissed and left the place after giving nice dose to the constable.

The RTO came by 4.00pm and started doing his job right away. His top priorities were the cars and there was a C-Class Benz and a Honda city parked for inspection. We meanwhile called the car owner and asked him to come right away. But for his bad luck, he came 10 minutes late and he was asked to come again today(27/01/09)!

He inspected my bike. It took less than 3 minutes for him to see the damages, collect the documents and check the brake. He test drives only cars. Bikes are not his interest. So we had to drive the bike and show him the brakes are fine! For a 3 minutes job, i had to wait for nearly 5 hours staring at the open road, shouting at the constable and waiting for this RTO.

Why did the constable wait along with us?

He wanted his share of bribe! He had earlier asked us to pay 200rs each for this work to be done. He already collected the money from the car owner prior to the RTO mess. Now hes due to collect the money from me and the other person. Unfortunately the other person(the Gym manager) had an outdated Insurance document. So he anyway had to pay a hefty fine of 1000rs to the RTO plus this bribe money!

In India, even if you have all your documents and with no fault of yours, you are forced to pay the bribe money for the officials to do their "job". The bribe is the motivation factor for the constable to wait along with us. I finally paid him 50 bucks for no fault of mine. He did not have mind to settle for no less than 100 bucks. He said he need to pay the RTO too. I asked him why the heck should i bother about someone wanting to bribe an irresponsible RTO. And told him i am giving him this 50 bucks compromising my principles. He was not happy at all and left cursing me.

Some positive effects in this day

• If i had been a minute late, i could have been badly hurt by the speeding auto.
• My insurance expires on 24/01/2009 midnight. Technically i am covered by my earlier insurance(though i had renewed it last week itself)
• One big lesson learnt. You dont need an FIR for insurance claim less than 10000Rs.
• Learnt another lesson on tackling such situations. Have enough dough. Have all the documents. Prepare to waste the entire day(and few more hours on the following days till you get the bike back). Finally loose your senses and be patient!

After the messy session in RTO, i went to the service station, filled the documents and left home along with my friend(Muthu), who stayed with me all the way through the grueling day! By the time i reached home, it was already 6.30pm, the whole day wasted!. It took me almost 10hrs to settle the things for no fault of mine and the auto driver, coolly left the police station in less than 2hrs after his relatives bailed him out!

Lesson learnt: If you are to be screwed, you get screwed what so ever!

Knights: Firefox(Game) Extension

I had a plan in my mind to create Firefox Extensions using few games i had developed during(and after) my college days. Most of them were developed in Flash, so porting them as Firefox extensions aren't a tough task.

The addon is present here.

What is Knights?

Knights is a simple game in which you move the lone Knight in a chess board(in usual 'L' positions) and try to cover most squares. You cannot undo any move. The high-score is stored so that you can try beat yourself.

Is this a new game?

No. Few years back, one of my friends had installed a similar game in his system and it was quite interesting. At that time, i was actually exploring Flash. So i thought why not try to develop this in Flash and finally succeeded developing it after quite a bit of struggle.

I originally had developed this game more than 5 years back. It had too many frames(screens). I had to fine tune few things to make it look good as an extension. I used the same XUL(most of it) that i used in my previous addon and changed few colors to suit the flash content.

Like my previous addons, this one is also under experimental addons. You will need an account to install your copy. Install the addon from here.

After installation(and browser restart), a small Knight symbol will be added in the status bar. Clicking on it will open the Chessboard for you to play on.

Please report any broken feature, bugs and feature requests here.

Happy Playing!!

Strays...

Indian roads are full of automobiles, people, garbage and strays(i am not sure about the first two). One cannot travel even few meters without spotting a stray. Neither the government nor the people tend bother about this issue. Our people have gotten used to such roads filled with strays and garbage.

What is the reason for lots of strays in our roads?

Initially government did not have any policies on stray animals. The strays later kept multiplying and left the government in a situation where a policy/decision to be made on it. They later decided to catch the strays(dogs mostly) and send them to slaughter house. Is this a good solution? A BIG NO!

We should have stopped the growth of strays in the first place through some birth control programs. Its unfair to kill those animals for our mistake of letting them grow in infinite numbers. At-least now we should have had some birth control and adoption program so that the problem is eradicated in next couple years. But our government chose a simple way. Kill them all!

What are the problems faced due to Strays?

Strays pose several problems to the road users. I myself ran in to a dog the other night and had a pretty good fall. Cows are let to sleep in the road sides(sometimes in the middle of the road) during nights posing serious risks for night riders. Dogs stray the streets. Even though they bark away the strangers to the streets during night time, they too pose good amount of danger to the commuters.

Once, after a long day in the office, i took a office cab back home. I got down in a common spot from where the car had to take a diversion to drop off other guys. I had to walk about a mile to reach home. The streets had no lights and were filled with stray dogs. I looked funny with a big raincoat and bigger shoulder bag on me. The dogs went mad and were barking at me. Luckily they did not go madder and bite me as i did not try to run!

Today while i was traveling to my office, a cute-little-well-fed puppy trying to cross the road(the ever busy tnagar-saidapet junction) and got caught up in the traffic. Luckily there was no way one could speed in tat road. Luckily (to my surprise), all the vehicles stopped and waited till the puppy to cross. But there is no way the puppy could cross the road as it had a two feet median in the middle.

It was just standing right in the middle of the road helplessly starring at us. As most of the vehicles were cars, rest mere spectators and i was the closest person the to puppy, i had to stop my bike and help the dog cross the road. Being a small puppy it ran off to the other side of the road after seeing me coming. But again tried to cross the road when i was about to start the bike. I again had to put my bike on stands and this time, some how managed to get hold of the puppy and passed it to the other person standing on the other side of the road. Traffic was affected for at-least 10 minutes. Even though things went on pretty smooth today for the puppy, the dog might not get lucky everyday! Lots and lots of dogs are killed in the Indian roads daily.

Even though blue cross(and other organizations) do their part of saving these animals, we have to give a lending hand to such organizations and help them perform better. Adopting a stray is not an ugly thing to do. It is in-fact one of the proudest thing to do. Many people think its a shame to adopt a stray. They instead want imported well-bred-dogs to show off their status. By doing so(adopting), we can save many stray animals and get stray free roads.

Update:
A vet approaches HC to implement Birth Control on Strays. More here.

Movies of 2008 thats already in IMDB top250 movies list

Year 2008 was a great year for movies. Hollywood saw many incredible movies. Not every year lots of movies make it to IMDB top 250 movies list. Of hundreds of movies that got released this year, nine of them are now in top 250 movie list.



I feel lucky to have seen most of the movies in the list. Each of the movies are special in its own way. The Dark Knight, the second installment of Chris Nolans Batman Begins, opened with a bang. It saw its way through the top movies list and was sitting in the numero uno position for some time. With due respect to The Godfather and Shawshank Redemption, The Dark Kight is now in the fourth position.

This year saw one of the most awesome animation movies of all time: Wall-E. Wall-E, a movie about a Robot which is left back in the earth to look after the junks, is now in 34th position.

Slumdog Millionaire, Gran Torino, The Wrestler, The Curious case of Benjamin Button and Milk got released just this month, yet didnt restrict themselves from finding a spot in top 250 movie list. Iron man was in the top 250 list till December, before these movies hit the big screens!

Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle(of Trainspotting fame), is a movie showcasing the dirtier(yet terrorizing and true) face of India. Danny Boyle's brilliant direction, along with A.R.Rahman's magical BGM, takes this movie ahead of many other movies that deals with such a subject.

The Wrestler, a movie about an ageing Wrestler, played by Mickey Rourke('Sir' Eddie Cook), is the most emotional movie in the list. Being a great fan of both Mickey Rourke and Darren Aronofsky, i am expecting this movie to climb up the ranks.

Lets hope 2009 too sees a great list of grand movies! Wishing you all a happy New Year!!

Search engine plugin for Firefox.

Last night i was browsing through some recipes in opensourcefood.com. The site has a massive database for all kinds of recipes. One thing that came to my mind was to write an extension for this site. But they did not have any API to query through their database. So i ended up writing a search plugin for the site.

Click on the images for the installation page.





Writing a search engine plugin is one of the easiest thing to do in Firefox. It was so easy that i just had to change the icons and search url for the other search engine plugins i wrote. I finally wrote search plugin for ToonDoo(which too has a massive collection of toons and no API yet!) and ZohoShare.

Here is a simple document on creating search engine plugin for your site. Here is a site for creating base64 enocoded string from your input file(icons for your search plugin should be a base64 encoded string of your actual icon file).

Calvin and Hobbes: Firefox Extension

Like most people out there, i am also a big fan of Calvin and Hobbes strips. I had earlier written a iGoogle gadget that displays Calvin and Hobbes strip of the day. I wanted to convert this gadget to a Firefox extension for a long time. Couple days back(10/24), i was struck in my office due to rains and crazy traffic. That is when i decided to finish off this extension.


Here is the addon link. This is my second Firefox extension. This is also under experimental addons currently. You will need an account to install your copy.

After installation, a small Calvin icon will be added in the status bar. When ever you are bored, you can click on it to see the Calvin and Hobbes strip of the day in a small pop-up in the same window. Links are provided in the top to view the previous strips too.

This is the first bare-bone version of the extension, so may have few bugs and usability issues. As always, report any bugs/issues here. Feature requests are always welcome!

Update 1:
1. New Icons for navigation added.
2. First Strip and Random Strip links added.

Update 2:
1. Date Chooser added.
2. Firefox 3.1beta2 supported.

Update 3:
1. Favorite button added.
2. Users can now choose either favorite mode or default mode to navigate through the strips.

Update 4[1.0.3]:
1. Firefox 3.1beta2 UI issues fixed.
2. Opening the image in new tab(instead of new window) is done.
3. Minor navigation and tooltip issues fixed.

Announcement:
Addon is now Public. Many thanks to the reviewer(Zadkiel M).
You dont need an account to install this addon anymore!

Long awaited due...

As usual, i left from my office around 7.30pm. It was just starting to drizzle. I convinced myself that the rain will not be heavy, and started for my house. I was not even a kilometer away from my office, it started to rain little heavily. My bikes battery gave up, so no honking or proper lights.

I still managed to drive in the pouring rain, hoping to get home and have some good dinner :). I was about four kilometers away from my office(still around 11 kms to reach home), not knowing that i would be getting my long awaited due, i took a left turn to catch the Guindy main road(as the road ahead was jammed as usual).

I would have traveled about few hundred meters, there came a dog, wanting to cross the road. Neither did the dog saw me coming, nor did i(due to low battery/light story). I spotted the dog only a few feet away from me. It was standing clueless right in front of me. I tried my best to avoid the dog, but the dog still did not miss my wheels, resulting in a skid, dragging myself for quite a distance.

The road i took is not jammed because of a reason. The reason being, it had no roads on most of the stretch!! Puzzled at what just happened, i stood up and searched for the dog that foiled this attack on me :). The poor dog was still under the bike! I lifted the bike to free the dog. It ran off the second i lifted the bike(luckily it did not bite me!). The moment i lifted the bike, few people started to gather. I never liked being in a spotlight, that too when am looking like an idiot!. So, i started the bike and sped away.

After going quite far from the scene, i checked on myself. My hands were bleeding, so as my knee. I checked on my mobile, luckily it was alright! My pant was torn near the kneecap, and i was all dirty! I had no other choice but to go home in this state. I still had about 11 kilometers to travel. I was little worried on how my parents would take it when i reach home.

At that point of time, i did not feel any pain of any great deal. So i started home again. After around a kilometer, i began to feel the pain and it was growing on me exponentially. I had to tell myself that it has not yet reached the unbearable stage and went on. I now spotted a medical shop. Suddenly a scene from Bourne Ultimatum, where the hero gets medicine from a medial shop to treat his injuries, came to my mind :). I stopped there and got a bottle of Savlon and cleaned the wounds in my hands. I could not reach the wounds in my legs, so left home that way.

I finally reached home after about 1hr of traveling after the accident. My parents looked a bit shocked. Took a good bath after cleaning the wounds. Sprayed Old Spice(my fav. for bleeding wounds) on the wounds. Was about to have dinner(after-all, all this started because of the good dinner!), there came my dad. He insisted me to go to a doctor to take a TT shot.

We went to the doctor, took the shot, bought the medicines she prescribed and headed home. Finally had the dinner with peace in my mind :).

Having been cruising the Chennai roads for 4 odd years, this is my first big accident. I never had a fall that resulted in bleeding joints! It sure is a long awaited due. Had it not been my helmet, this could have been even worse. My helmet bares 3 deep big scratches on the part covering my jaw. Its still spooky to think that my jaw had to take those scratches!!

India Times Shopping woes

I saw an almost attractive offer in Times of India paper. The offer was for a chord-less telephone with caller-id, which costs Rs. 1999+180 delivery charge. Without having any second thoughts, we called up and booked for the phone.

We received the phone after 10 days of booking. At first look, the phone looked alright. There is one rule about this "home delivered products", there is always some hidden damages! We checked again to see charger adapter broken and caller-id not working.

We placed a replacement order. Packing back the product is bit of a pain. We had to take a printout of complaint letter too to place it in the box(yeah, tele-shopping, atleast in India Times, is not for computer illiterates!). The product was collected from our house in a days time. The replaced product was received in next 10 days.

This time we were not able to spot any damages. It was almost perfect. But the caller-id was still not working! This was suppose to be a caller-id phone. And caller-id cannot be faulty in both the deliveries. Suspecting false product delivery, we called up the customer support again, and they were not able to solve the problem themselves. They inturn gave the vendor customer care number.

We called up the phones vendor and notified him about the issue. After hearing his reply, we were a bit shocked. All he said was, we need to purchase an extra equipment(which will burn another 300 bucks from our pocket) for the caller-id to work! This was suppose to be a caller-id phone and no where in the Times of India advertisement it is mentioned that we need to buy this device. Being pissed and cheated, we called up the India time support again and asked them to take back the product.

We had to place a refund order for this, which we did. The product was taken from our house the very next day and was promised the refund within 7 days of receipt of the product. Ten days passed, no refund was sent. We called up the support yet again and they promised(again) the refund will be dispatched within ten days.

After a long wait, i received the below mail from India times support. (Issues quoted in red)

Dear $order.userFirstName userLastName [suppose to be my name, instead its some variable name]

We wish to inform you that we have processed refund against
Order No.: $order.orderNumber sub order number
$suborder.subOrderNumber $suborder.itemName [suppose to be my order and sub order numbers]

.................
.............
.................

With Warm Regards
Customer Service

Seeing the pathetic condition of their support, i decided to shoot a mail back to them to tell these issues. I had to use their grievances page. I drafted the content and sent it. At first try, the session got expired! I did not loose hope, started a fresh session, and sent it again. This time, i got the following error!

Exception occured: java.io.FileNotFoundException: http://ecomm.indiatimes.com/EncryptionUtility.jsp?TN=322696&Key=20&Op=1

The jsp file for some validation was missing in their server!! Do they atleast care to test these things? I pretty much know they dont test the products they send to their customers. They could have atleast tested the products they and their customers use.

I would never buy any products again from India Times Shopping. A lesson well learnt, again!

A day without a honk..

As I had to give my bikes battery for recharging, i was left with no choice to travel a day in the bike without the battery in it. By saying that, there is no way i could use by bikes horn, till the battery is ready. Earlier i thought, its not a big deal driving in Chennai without hoking off. But now i realized its really a tough task.

With roads blessed with jay walkers, unruly drivers, right-in-the-middle-of-the-road cyclers, jump-out-as-you-like bus takers, its close to impossible to drive in Chennai without honking. Its almost like driving without breaks. But as i said, i was left with no other choice, i had to take my bike.

Earlier i tried to take a bus, and it took me around two and a half hour to reach my office(just around 15 kms and in the bike it takes around 45 mins in peak hours)! So these days taking bus is not even an option for me(either take the bike or stay home :) is the policy).

While driving to office, i had no big problems driving without hoking. Except for few cases, like bikers who travel at less than 20 kmph(generally with a mobile in their hand), auto drivers who turn their vehicle as they wish, drives who hate using indicators, people who dont honk in turnings(hey dont look at me, i did not have a choice) and children.

Children are the main issue in the above list. While auto drivers are more unpredictable than most children, we still have to be careful driving behind children. The up-sides of driving without honking is you cannot drive faster or do rash driving in this hectic Chennai traffic and ofcourse, you wont contribute to the noise pollution(at-least for that day).

All in all, it wasn't really a terrible experience. I feel its a good practice to have a no-horn day once in a month or fortnight.

ZohoCreator 3.0 Release Video

ZohoCreator rolled out their 3.0 version few days back. The highlight of the release was their release video. The Comic Video showcasing the features/power of ZohoCreator using cartoon characters was really awesome. Embedding the same below.



ZohoCreator fans can rate the video here.

Cool songs in recent times

Recently i stumbled upon a cool song from FloBots called Handlebars in a radio. I haven't heard about the band called FloBots till i chanced upon this powerful song recently. Having loved this song so much, wanting to hear again, digged YouTube to find the song here . No wonder the song got over 10 million clicks and over 76,000 comments within a span of just 5 months! Below is the song.



Another song which caught my attention was Viva La Vida by Cold Play. The song is really awesome and will linger in your ears even after the song is over :). I must tell, i had become a fan of Cold Play after this song. Below is the song.



A song that truly needs a mention is, So What, by Pink. Yeah you read it right, Pink is back and the song rocks! Here is the song, below is the embedded video.




Few others that are really good are,

• Ne-Yo - So Sick,
• Christina Aguilera - Keeps getting better,
• Katy Perry - Hot and Cold,
• Leona Lewis - Bleeding Love,
  
• Secondhand Serenade - Fall for you,
• Danity Kane - Damaged,
• Rihanna - Disturbia,
• The Middle - Jimmy Eat World
  

More to come soon....

Type in your local language - Firefox Extension

Ever wanted to chat in Tamil(or any other Indian Languages) from Zoho Chat or Gmail Chat? I have been longing to do so ever since i saw this feature in Orkut.

Google recently released their Language API, which include Translation and Transliteration APIs. Using their Transliteration API, we can convert any English text to native language(Ex: Tamil can be changed to தமிழ்) on the fly(like in Orkut). This feature is really useful while we chat or post comments.

Of-course we cannot expect every site we use to integrate this feature...but we can anytime build an extension in Firefox to fulfill our requirements. So one fine day i sat down and started writing a GreaseMonkey script...which happened to work in Firefox-2 and failed to work in Firefox-3. Dejected by the output, started porting the code as an extension, which worked fine in FF3 after a couple sleepless nights!


Here is the Firefox Extension i wrote to get the Transliteration feature plugged in to sites like Zoho Mail and GMail. As the extension is currently under Experimental category, you will need an account to install the extension. IE users please excuse :)

Currently the extension can transliterate the texts in 'textarea' alone. Hopefully will extend this feature to editable iframes very soon.

The extension is still in early stages, so bugs are common :). Please share your thoughts and report any bugs you face here.

Update 1: Version 1.0.3: Lots of bug fixes, Preference box with default language, text box support based on user preference

Update 2: Verion 1.0.4: Performance and issue fixes. Recommended Install.

Update 3: Verion 1.0.5: Textarea/textbox style corruption issue fixed. Recommended Install.

Update 4: Addon is now Public!! You dont need an account anymore to install your copy!

Update 5: I am(was) lobbying hard to get the latest version of the addon reviewed. Will try harder when I get more time. Till then please use the experimental version from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-transliteration-formerl/versions/?page=1#version-1.9

Firefox 3.0 Experience

The much hyped Firefox 3.0 was released yesterday(Jun 17th). I too wanted a copy installed in my work PC which incidentally is a Linux Box. I have never installed Firefox in my Linux box in a single attempt! Anyhow, i successfully installed a copy in my PC after struggling with it for some time.


Some of the good features i noted about Firefox 3.0 are,

• A lot faster than Firefox 2.0
• Smart location bar(which was frustating factor initially...simply rocks now)
  
• Fonts looks smoother
  
• Taggable bookmarks
• Smart Bookmarks(Which lists Most visited sites and recently bookmarked pages)
  
• Offline support!
• Integrated Anti-virus(off-course for windows alone)
• Enhanced Add-on manager and download manager
  
• Integrated Feed reader
• Cool password manager(No more ugly save password dialog)
• Better session and crash manager.

Well, every product has its ups and downs. All we hope is lesser downs on products we use :). Some of the downsides of Firefox 3.0 are,

• Crashed a couple of times in first one hour
• Native look-and-feel. This totally sucks in Linux(but looks good in Mac). If i have to make it look better in my Linux Box, i have to tweak my Linux UI Manager. Even current themes dont solve the problem fully!
• Partially lost my toolbar bookmarks(was able to recover it from my older version though).
• Higher(yet adjustable) memory usage(noticed only in Linux box)
• Most of the addons installed on the earlier version is yet to get compatible with Firefox 3.0
• Will kill you with proxy username/password dialogs if u dont click 'Ok' button on time. My firefox once opened 100+ of those dialogs!
• Ugly border appears on all text boxes while typing on it.(happens in linux, not sure in windows)
  
• Had real time to get it run in my Linux box

The smart location bar that Firefox 3.0 sports was really one of the frustrating factor initially. But the bottom line was, it needed some time to adapt with our browsing habits. Firefox brings up sites list as we type in the location bar. Earlier, it was done with a simple starts-with check(if u type goo, firefox brings up www.google.com in the top of the list). But in Smart location bar, if we type goo, it will bring up reader.google.com if you used to visit reader.google.com quite often than google.com. i.e. the sites are ordered based on the visits.

One downside of Smart location bar is, it takes the title of the site we have visited in to consideration(which means, if you have often visited gmail many times and try to type mail.yahoo.com, gmail will be listed first).

On the whole, Firefox 3.0 is far better and lot faster than its earlier version(though it needs few improvements). Its sure to give IE(and other browsers) a run for the money!

p.s:

A little insight on how to run firefox in Linux successfully if you ever get the below error
Error: in guard: symbol required but got: Error: fatal: looped fatal error

This was the error which made me go bonkers while installing Firefox 3 in my Linux box(Mandriva 2008). After a lot of googling, I found out that the issue was due to the UIM(ver: 1.4.6) installed in my machine. To run Firefox, there were just 2 options left. I either have to install the latest(1.5.1) version of UIM or uninstall UIM from the machine. 1.5.1 version of UIM is not available for Mandriva 2008, so i had to uninstall UIM(which actually is not useful for me) through drakconf to kick-start Firefox in my machine .

10000 B.C(2008): Review

I have a special inclination towards prehistoric movies. 10000B.C is one such movie directed by Roland Emmerich. Being the director of great movies like The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day and The Patriot, i expected this movie also to be in the same lines. But 10000BC proved to be one big utter waste to time.

10000BC revolves around the life of a young Mammoth hunter named D'Leh. For some funny reasons our prehistoric hero and his tribe mates could speak English real fine. A young girl(Evelot) whose tribe was ransacked by another dangerous tribe called "Demon Tribe" comes to D'Leh's tribe and its 'love at first site' for D'Leh (because there was no other girls in his tribe).

D'Leh's father used to be the tribes leader once. He ran away from the tribe when D'Leh was young creating a bad impression among his tribe members. This incident made the other kids brand D'Leh as "Son of a coward". Time for the current tribe leader to pass on his throne to the next bravest person had come. One who brings down the 'Lead Bull'(Mammoth) will be termed as the bravest and hence the next leader. D'Leh somehow manages to bring the lead bull down and gets the throne and the girl(Evelot).

The very next day, the demon tribes hunters come to D'Leh's place and takes many of the tribes as slaves with them. Evelot is one among them. Rest of the story deals with how D'Leh saves Evelot and other slaves from the demon tribe people.

I, basically wanted to watch this movie for the below reasons.

• Roland Emmerich(who eventually did not live up to his expectations)
• Saber tooth(which actually came only in 2 scenes)
• CGI(the only thing thats good in this movie, but for the Saber tooth parts)
  

But the storyline turns out to be a ditto of Apacalyto with the mixture of few parts from Path Finder, told using the narrative style of 300. The only difference between the climax of 300 and 10000BC is D'Leh did not miss his target!. I could recommend this movie to one who haven't seen the above movies(coz, this is a 3-in-1 movie).

The director even got most of the historic details (like Pyramids in 10000BC, English medium barbarians , mammoths in desert) wrong. Bottom line is, 10000BC is watchable once if one has the ability to watch movies with their brains switched off!

Time to become a vegie

I have been a non-vegetarian(even though not a hard core meat eater) for most of my life now. I am(again) trying to be a vegetarian from now on. I had given a couple of tries previously, but never could keep up to it. One way or the other i end up eating meat(usually happens in the very next treat).

This time i hope to keep my oath as long as possible. The only problem being a vegetarian is the parties! The restaurants don't have much of a choice for vegetarians. Its same old potatoes and mushrooms all i can think off. The waiters come to take orders only after he finishes off with non-veg guys. The orders come late. "It really sucks to be a vegetarian" is what i would feel when i see vegetarians trying to figure out what to eat.

I personally have teased many of my vegetarian friends for eating carrots and greens like a cow :). I am now in the receiving side. There are two things i cant live without(previously there was 3 including fish). They are Eggs and Movies :). I dont think i can sustain without eating eggs. So i have included eggs in the vegetarian basket.

Many of my friends ask why would i ever think of changing to a vegetarian?. I really don't know the exact reason. One reason is my parents are staunch vegetarians. They don't entertain non-vegetarian foods in our house(though they let me eat what ever i want). So cooking meat in our house is ruled out completely. Restaurants are not maintaining the hygiene factor. I have heard many of my non-vegetarian friends telling, non-veg is best ate when cooked in ones house. I agree on that. More over, every restaurant i have been since today, the food is either soaked in oil or tastes bland. So by avoiding non-veg in restaurants, i am actually avoiding non-veg fully :).

And the other more important reason is the animal slaughters involved. Many ask, "will the animal killings stop just because you stop eating meat?". My answer is 'no'. But I am at-least taking a step to stop it and I can be least assured that no animal is killed for the sake of feeding me!

Those who want to become a vegetarian, here's couple links

• http://www.giveusahome.co.uk/articles/vegetarianism.htm
• http://zenhabits.net/2007/08/how-to-become-a-vegetarian-the-easy-way/

Hope things go well and i stay as a vegetarian for rest of my life.

p.s: I am posting this as a blog just to remember the day i became a vegetarian. My previous attempts failed just because i don't remember since how long i have kept my oath, and will end up eating non-veg food the very next day to start all over again....the recursion never stopped till today :)