Why not?

Love this ad from MS

<a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=533e05d2-9f12-4a86-bdda-efd0455fcd36" target="_new" title="Kylie">Video: Kylie</a>

Oram Po - a light hearted treat

Got to watch this tamil movie yesterday night with a couple of friends. Totally agree with The Hindu review of the film here.

http://www.hindu.com/cp/2007/12/07/stories/2007120750030200.htm

Definitely a fun filled package for hard-core chennai lovers :)

Awesome. Someone to really look upto

http://origin.barackobama.com/tv/

Software that makes my day

As a software engineer for the past 4-5 years, computers have been my best friends. I just felt like listing the software/web-applications that really make my life everyday.

If you are a newbie to the world of computers and are looking for a very handy toolset to start off with, u will find the list below useful.

Feel free to pour out your suggestions on as well in the comments.

Here goes my list

Operating system - I should say that I am still in love with Windows XP SP2/3. This rock solid OS is really the best one around today as well. I do own a Mac running 'Leopard' as well but I guess XP is the one I would suggest for general users. I haven't upgraded to Vista yet. Hence, I can't really comment much on it. But from my talks with friends who have Vista, Vista does a neat job as well - so either XP or Vista should be good. For a web or open-source developer, Mac OS X would be my suggestion because of its fantastic support for such development. Or if you wanna go for open-source, Ubuntu is my choice (http://www.ubuntu.com/). It's one of those Linux distributions that is a breeze to install and also work with on a day-to-day basis with a really powerful package management tool that just pulverises the issues with dependency management of packages. Common tasks like connecting with networks and installing hardware drivers are also made easier in this version.
Email - Gmail ( http://mail.google.com) is the one that I prefer over all other alternatives today. It really neat, professional and responsive interface and the godly 'thread' feature just blows away other competitors.
Media - Video - VLC player ( http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ ) is the winner here. Extremely light. Very easy keyboard shortcuts and support for almost every format make it the first choice.
Media - Audio - I do not use an audio player on the PC often since I have an iPod. I must say that I haven't found a really good PC audio player so far. Please let me know if you fell in love with any.
Office productivity - MS Office 2007 with its Ribbon interface ranks top-notch here.
Messenger - Gtalk is what I use almost all the time. Really light interface. For other protocols, Pidgin (http://www.pidgin.im/) is pretty neat. It enables one to have all the umpteen protocols under one light application - ICQ, MSN, Yahoo and Gtalk. For a Mac, Adium X is just one beautiful piece of software. (http://www.adiumx.com/)
Web Browser - Firefox is my favorite on a PC. Safari/Camino on a Mac are good ones.
Search - The search bar (Google search engine behind) in Firefox works like a charm here with auto-complete suggestions and obviously high on relevance.
Editor (mainly for developers) - Vim is my favorite here where it be PC or Mac.
Blogging - You obviously know this! Blogger of course. (http://www.blogger.com) But I guess there are quite a few alternatives that are good as well like LiveJournal. Not sure about the paid (value-added) services available around though.
RSS feeds - Google reader is pretty neat here. (http://reader.google.com)
Social networking - Wow, how could I forget this. As of today, Facebook with its re-designed interface with plentiful AJAX support ranks #1 (http://www.facebook.com)
Professional networking - Linked-in is a gem of a service in this space. True to its purpose is what I would say about this service. (http://www.linkedin.com/)
Photo management - Picasa is the best one I've seen so far in this space (http://picasa.google.com/)

There are quite a few more areas where I still do not have enough information to suggest a software/service on like - maps, news feeds etc. Hope to add them later on here.

HP touchsmart PC

Watch the second video from the list especially. Awesome!

Corrs - Joy of Life

Thanks to Anand (http://anandps.blogspot.com/) for introducing me to this.

'Tum Ho To' from Rock On - Don't miss it

Awesome talk on design

I love this world!

Thanks to Discovery for showing how I feel about this planet! :)

Another very different piece I found at YouTube

The first scene is kinda pretty shocking but it sets the pace for the rest of the movie.

More about this film:
http://www.robmeyerfilms.com/aquarium/home.html

Flex'ing my muscles a bit ;)

Hey people,

This weekend was dedicated a bit to learning about Flex - the programming model to the flash runtime environment exposed by Adobe. This is a great step towards bringing on the not-so-artistic guys into programming Flash apps. Did I say "programming" flash apps? Yup, ppl. It's true that Action script has been around in Flash for some time but the Adobe Flash interface with umpteen features used to scare me off at my earlier attempts ;).

I got really interested when I saw one of the applications that Adobe had built using Flex.
https://buzzword.acrobat.com/ (screenshot above)

I must say that this was one of the most beautiful calligraphy I have seen in a rendering engine inside a browser. It was smooth and flowed beautifully. Loved it!

Flex was refreshing! Got my first AJAX driven app running within about 1/2 hour of installing Flex. Awesome! It just involved a few "good old" :) xml files in the vim editor and a batch script to compile the same.

For beginners, the "Getting Started" app is a great way to learn the ropes - http://learn.adobe.com/wiki/display/Flex/Getting+Started

There is one small setting change which I had to do to get my .swf running. Basically, for security reasons, the Flash Player does not allow random swfs (ones that you dont trust) to access the Internet. The following links help one to configure the flash player to trust the .swf files that you want.

Happyness

Come long weekends and it's time for introspection.

This time it's been -
"what does it take to be 'happy' at the end of every day?"

Several coke bottles and walks later, it's down to 3 simple things - nothing else - just these 3.

Learn to let go
Be true to yourself
As Nike puts it,"Just do it"

Let me go ahead and elucidate the 3 principles:

Learn to let go

Learn to pull yourself out from stuff that normally have a tendency to make you focus on stuff that does not really matter. For example, "Work" is from 10 to 6 (9 to 5 is kinda tough for the new gen ;) ). Just learn to pull yourself out from it at 6. That is the single most important thing which will spell magic for other things.

Be true to yourself

This one's simple. This is how it goes: Never try to cheat yourself into believing something that you truly don't. If you are afraid of something, agree with yourself that you are. You will then find ways to overcome it.

As Nike puts it, "Just do it"

When you feel like doing something, just go ahead and do it. Whether it is go forward and tell someone you love that you like him/her (or) it is to tell your boss that your current workload is high. Whatever be it, big or small, just do it. Don't bother about the results of these actions. The fact that you did what you wanted to will give you the satisfaction and happ'y'ness you desire.

This post tries to list out 3 very simple rules that I have set about for myself. Am a person who tests out a variety of principles and loves to understand the changes and the impact they have in my life. These 3 are the culmination of nearly 5 years of trying to understand what satisfies oneself. Hope these are useful to you as well.

Signing off,
Hemanth

Beautiful piece of filming

This one brought my interests in film-making back!

Online advertising

Hi everyone,

Have started exploring a bit around the online advertising industry lately. Being a developer on the AdCenter team in Microsoft, thought I would start understanding the industry that we serve. Over the coming months, I plan to jot down my learnings about this industry on my blog here. Let's get started.

--------

Have always been searching for a good primer on "Online Advertising". This was one really nice set of articles that I found on the topic.

http://www.liesdamnedlies.com/online_advertising_business_101.html

Every article on online advertising talk about quite a few acronyms like CPC, CPA. Wikipedia had a neat definition of the most common ones. Archiving a link to it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_advertising#Purchasing_variations

This post by Scott Howe (VP and General Manager, Advertiser & Publisher Solutions Group (APS), Microsoft) is a real good one for those looking to understand how to understand and use ad networks to much better benefit.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/6915.asp

Movable type installation on Mac OS X Leopard

This is kinda a follow up on the previous article. Tried my hand at setting Movable type up at my home as well on my Mac. (running Leopard).

The set of instructions for windows pretty much worked except for a few changes again. Have archived those pointers for reference.

1) There are no perl addons as such available with Xampp for mac os x. But, the xampp installation itself has perl with some basic modules packaged in it.

2) Also, the developer package for xampp also had to be download for building some of the required perl modules (download location - http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-macosx.html#849)

3) The mysql installation included in xampp is configured to expect the include files at /xamppfiles/include. So I just copied the include folder from the developer package to that folder. (Copying the entire developer package for some reason messed up my xampp setup - that is why I had to selectively copy)

4) The DBD::mysql perl module has to be installed on the perl installation used by Movable Type.. Movable Type on my machine was using the base perl installation from my Mac (at /usr/bin/perl) as against the perl installation on xampp (this can be confirmed from the data that is dumped at http://localhost/cgi-bin/mt-check.cgi

Confirm the perl installation you are installing the modules to is the same as the one used by Movable type. Here are the steps to install the mysql perl module.

Type
> perl -MCPAN -e shell
Choose 'yes' for automatic CPAN configuration if this is the first time. Automatic configuration worked fine for me.

Now in the CPAN shell, type
> install Bundle::DBD::mysql

That downloads and installs the correct versions of the perl module and its dependencies from the internet.

Once that is done, just ensure that the DBD::mysql module shows up as installed at http://localhost/cgi-bin/mt-check.cgi If yes, then proceed with the Movable type installation.

Movable type installation on windows

Have been meddling around with a blog management software (Movable Type) for the past few weeks. Finally got it running on my windows box after quite a bit of struggle. The problem was in finding the right set of tools/instructions to get it up.

Finally found a good set of instructions at this site http://emptybottle.org/glass/2007/08/installing_movable_type_4_on_xampp.php

I have archived some pointers against the above instructions for reference.

Here they are:

1) The latest version of XAMPP has some issues with the perl addon. When the Movable type installation is started, perl (5.10) crashes with a dll not found error. Had to revert to an older version of XAMPP which was compatible with Perl 5.8 (I used 1.6.0) (Download location - http://sourceforge.net/projects/xampp)

2) Download location for the perl addon (I used 5.8) - http://sourceforge.net/projects/xampp . Choose download -> browse all files -> windows add-ons)

3) Go to http://localhost/security/xamppsecurity.php and setup a password for your MySql database in the Xampp installation .

4) Then go to http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ . Login as root with the password you specified in the previous step. Go inside and create a new database .

5) mt-config.cgi that I used:
CGIPath http://localhost/cgi-bin/mt/
StaticWebPath http://localhost/mt-static
##### MYSQL #####
ObjectDriver DBI::mysql
Database [database name from point 4]
DBUser root
DBPassword [database password from point 3]
DBHost localhost

Smiles that make your day!

Could be that I have been experiencing this daily all through my life but been oblivious to it for so long; but, better late than never as they put it.

Was really wondering about people in India. We probably expect the well educated to be ones cultured and polite mannered. But just as an observation, from my brief journey from home to office - which involves a walk from my house to the auto-stand, a brief 5 min auto-ride and then a short walk from the office gate to my cubicle - guess who were the most-cultured, friendly and respectful people I met?

No chocolates for the correct guess :). It was the watchman, the auto-walahs and the office boys. Most of them had nothing to gain from giving a broad wide smile to me as I passed along but they did. Every one of them .. a wavy good morning from the watchman, a jolly hello from the auto-walah and a well-mannered and warm greeting from the waiter at the idli counter at office ...
in fact, just so happened that at a blind corner in the office, I met kinda head along with an office boy. We just missed butting into each other. The office boy was really hysterical and kept continuously blurting out, "sorry, sorry sir .. really sorry". I was surprised. It was in no way any fault of his. I had to really pat him on the back and tell him "kya bhaiyya, kiske liye sorry? " [since am not "yet" aware of the local tongue here .. my broken hindi "what brother! sorry for what? " is the best way to communicate around] athough I have "received a bulb" several times (this phrase in chennai college tamil means "to be embarrassed in a silly fashion") from the office boy who might reply my native tongue (tamil that is) ;)

Many a times, the people whom we kinda take for granted in our lives are probably those who add the most value to it. Am sure every one of those warm hearted smiles did a lot of make life a great one for me today and every other day.

Flight of a lifetime

This article was written on request by my cousin Deepa (who just finished her 10th grade) about her observations on her first flight experience. I was just amazed by the maturity in her thinking. Wanted to share it with all of you. Here it goes :

FLIGHT OF A LIFETIME

A journey by air is an enriching experience. There are numerous instances of parallelism between a plane journey and the journey of life in general and of a career in particular. Every physical aspect of the plane journey brings to light a deeper, symbolic aspect of life.

First the plane moves slowly over the ground until it reaches the clear runway. At this point, it neither sees nor is seen by the world. Similarly, the beginning of a venture does not show us the destination in its true colours. We must not lose heart and move forward patiently.

At the right time, the plane gathers speed and takes off. In the same way, anyone who perseveres eventually takes off in life. While taking off, the noise made by the engine increases and the plane is inclined at an angle,causing discomfort to the passengers. A drop in atmospheric pressure may also cause ear-ache. All these stand for the trials and tribulations everyone must face, in one way or the other, on the way to the top. Moreover, the horizon disappears into a haze. Likewise, There is no clear demarcation between low and high, Between failure and success. A lot depends on people's perception.

Once the plane reaches its optimum height, the going becomes smoother. Similarly, on reaching the optimum height in life, the hurdles appear to lessen and a sort of uniformity sets in. However, along with the pleasures of success, the risks of failure are also proportionately magnified, just as the impact of a fall becomes more profound as we scale greater heights in a plane. One of the perks of being a celebrity! Also, the skies pose their share of obstacles in the form of clouds, gales or other weather-associated hazards. Likewise, there will be minor hitches in every success story. The heights of fame and success breed negative emotions like envy and even hatred. Controversies are a part and parcel of the lives of celebrities. It is imperative to remember that like the clouds, all rough patches in life shall come to pass.

Another binding factor between a flight and life is our perception of it's speed. While looking down from above, the world seems to crawl at a snail's pace, whereas in reality, the plane is whizzing by at a phenomenal speed. In the same way, while the successful phase of life is on, it appears as though the phase stretches on infinitely before us, but in fact, it is short -lived.

Finally comes the destination. Before the plane takes off, all that is known about the destination is what is heard or seen virtually. In the same way, we cannot have a real picture of our destination at the start of the journey. Once at the top the wide world is spread before our eyes. But the higher we go, the less detail is visible. It is important to have gathered sufficient knowledge beforehand to be able to recognise the destination with the minimal features visible from above in order to guide the plane or ourselves safaly to it.

Further, a plane journey reminds us that we eventually have to land. Just like taking off, landing will be a rough patch too. It will be especially difficult to come back to the ground for good after experiencing the splendour and exhilaration of heights, which would have taken us to new heights as a person. The summit within lies in accepting this basic principle of human nature - transcience. With this maturity, we can keep the landing too gradual and smooth and return to our roots with grace.

Perhaps the most relevant point of parallelism between a journey by plane and life is the risk involved. It cannot be otherwise. Like alternative landing sites for planes, we too need to keep alternative options in life so that if things come crashing down, we still have straws to clutch on to. Just as a plane journey is controlled by a control panel, so too is our life by the divine power, whom we call God. As passengers need to have faith on the control panel, we too need to have faith on God to successfully go through the journey of life. Where there is faith there is no fear.

In addition, passengers need to be aware of safety measures to respond effectively in case of any untoward situation. The more the passengers are in touch with the control panel, the more safe and secure they will feel. Likewise, we need to keep in touch with God for a sense of security and well-being.

The following quotation would be an appropriate conclusion:

"Success is a journey, not a destination."

Ramblings of an idle mind

Came home early today; feels like I have a lifetime ahead to make a place in the history of this world. Wondering what that would take. What would basically shape the future of mankind in the next century?

Two streams of thought/action seem to be vitally important:

Artificial Intelligence vs. Genetics &
Social Entrepreneurship

You might wonder why on earth did I pick these two from all that I could chose from. Where did - Media, Information, Global warming, the Web x.x, the threat of nuclear wars, human rights violations, health hazards all go?

Confused me as well in the first place. But then, I realized that the above two might pretty much capture the future of the world for many centuries to come.

Let's take Artificial Intelligence(A.I.) vs. Genetics first. Today, the advancement of the human race in terms of technology is actually fast forwarding the evolution of a new consciousness. A consciousness that might outlast mankind itself.

Set's us thinking - by the unified theory - was the human race eventually designed to be replaced by a consciousness that did not suffer the same deficiencies as us? Our weaknesses against diseases, against hunger, against age might eventually prove very costly. I guess you might have an inkling of understanding on where Genetics comes into the picture. Genetics is the solution that the 'civilized' world is looking at for all the problems that are listed above. Putting a 'stopper on death' is probably the catch-word here.

The coming years will define which of the two fields survives.

Ah .. time for the second one, Social Entrepreneurship (let's call it S.E.E from now on).. here we go ..

Today's the world's focus seems to be on comfort at one's finger tips - the explosion of ideas and companies centered around taking advantage of the pandora's box opened by the Web.

But what we are missing here is that - all this seems to be centered at less than 1/6th of the world's population - the same part that is already well to do in terms of basic necessities - in fact, the same part already has enough beyond the basic necessities. And yet, the focus is on keeping them busy "consuming". 'Consumer' is the name of the game here.

The need of the hour is the birth of Social Entrepreneurs (let's call them S.E.E.R.S ;) ) who enlighten the world as to the grave situation and re-align their thinking on what's important. These are the people, the messiahs that the world needs today. People who really care.

Huh! .. Just woke up, was really surprised to see what I had written above ;) .. Anyways, am really hungry now and want to watch a movie ..

What's the website for Pizza hut? ;)