Happy Diwali !!

Wishing each one of you a very happy and prosperous deepawali. May this year brings you lots and lots of happiness in life and fulfill all your dreams.

Above is Rangoli, we made at office.

Enjoy !!

October 27, 2008 | Filed Under india | 3 Comments

Google Treasure Hunt puzzle 3

Two days back google posted that they will be posting 3 puzzle for google treasure hunt soon.

This week’s puzzle is set to be released on Tuesday, May 27 at 10 a.m. PDT.

PDT is 7 hours behind UTC, so its around 10 PM, 27th May in India.
So the 3rd puzzle is live now. I have given it a try and submitted my answer, I think (!) it should be correct.
This time question is related to networking. You have to find the path followed by a packet given its destination and routing table for the network.

The nodes are hosts on the network, and the lines between them are links. A packet is sent out from host O with a destination of 46.44.187.63. Which nodes does the packet pass through on its way to the destination?

To refresh your concepts read (Routing tables, On wikipedia). If you got the idea, then it shouldn’t be difficult. Intuitively also you should be able to find your way through routing table. Give It a try..and but you will only get to know your answer status after 23hrs from now.
Previous Puzzles:

Puzzle 1 (Robot in a maze) : Find it here
Puzzle 2 (getting lines from specific files in zip archive) : Find it here

May 27, 2008 | Filed Under computers | 6 Comments

Evolution of a blogger

It has been almost 3 year, When I started blogging. Looking back to see how my blogging style has changed, change in content of blog post or change in my motivation for blogging to sum up how I am evolved as a blogger. First I’ll tell you how my reasoning behind blogging has changed:

Why do I Blog ?

Because I wanted to blog, seeing so many on internet.
Then as catalog of stuff I’m doing, for me and may be for others to know.
And with time it changed to showcasing what I like, what I’m doing, sharing tips and then taking readers opinion, discussing with them. (at leasts thats the aim)

In all above cases common things can be to pass time and share experience plus along with we are (I am) also always looking for recognition and admiration.

And about change in my blog content:

May 2005, Posted some pictures, wanted to avoid much writing.
June 2005, Just write about your projects, so that you don’t have to dwell for blog content.
November 2005, You try to write some good posts(Solving Rubik’s Cube, Speed up firefox) but you end with posts like Unnatural laws whose content is generally a email forward or similar.
February 2006, You try your best looking for good content to post but most of post were result of “submit to blog” button on digg.
July 2006, Most of blog post consists of linking to stories of others blogs or quoting parts of posts from other blogs.
September 2006, Now blog posts are mixture of posts from above categories.
January 2007, Now You are improving with some good posts (sharing knowledge firefox: about pages). Also tried covering some events in IITB (Techfest 2007: Feeding the Fish, Creative Commons, India launched on 26th Jan at IIT Bombay)
Then there is also a time when you stop blogging for some time (for me this hibernation period was from May 2007 to Nov 2007)
Decemeber 2008, January 2008: You are trying to get back in form and you want to write good posts now)
February 2008, Some good posts which includes what new you tried Adobe AIR: Web to Desktop, Trying hands on Google gadgets) or tips you want to share(Google movie search tricks).
Now I feel, I have a good enough blog which people (atleast some) want to read. And I’m always ready to try, explore new things and share with my viewers and always waiting for there feedback. (Check my posts for this month)

In all these time periods you will always have some good posts and some just blog posts.

Share with your motivation behind blogging and how you pick up content for your blog. I’m not a good writer (I try to share mostly technical, geeky stuff through my blog) so any suggestion/feedback to writing style are always welcome.

May 20, 2008 | Filed Under blog, listing | 3 Comments

Google movie search tricks

I found this interesting article about search tricks for movie lovers. Try some sample searches:

Movie Reviews: movie:American Gangster
Discover movies: http://www.google.com/movies
http://www.google.co.in/movies (for India)
director: The Incredibles

Interesting thing is country specific google movie domains are also tracking movie theaters, multiplexes in each city for listing of movies and their timings. And you can sort them according to movie popularity and theater distance from your address. that’s pretty cool.. !!
Read more for more search tricks: 5 Most Fantastic Movie Search Tricks With Google

February 25, 2008 | Filed Under entertainment, listing | 1 Comment

Elephanta Caves

Yesterday I visited Elephanta Caves which are beautifully carved shiv temples out of solid rock mountain. These caves dates back to 5-7 century A.D. You can reach there by a ferry from Gate Way of India, Bombay. The ferry ride was awesome with beautiful view of sea, Gate way of India, Taj hotel and mountains along with refreshing and cool breeze.

For more pics check my picasa album

February 10, 2008 | Filed Under image, india | 1 Comment

Inovation in India/IITs

I read this interesting article by Bernard on State of Inovation in India. I agree with him that lot have changed (improved) but still we have yet to see Google/Microsoft from here(IITs). As he mentioned one of the main reason is playing things safe.

The fundamental issue in India is the risk/reward equation. It is simply too easy for a young developer in India to get paid a lot by an outsourcing firm; then enjoy being headhunted every year for more money.

One more issue is difference between IITs and Stanford providing inovation to world. Important difference in giving good startups is because lack of implementation of ideas here in IITs. In IITs atleast some good projects (Mtech & Btech projects) are worth transforming into good business opportunities but they die as you pass out from there or after its being graded. I will agreed with comment made by Amit that

There are many socio economic reasons why young people in India hesitate to implement an innovative idea. Current trend of high paying jobs in MNCs will make entrepreneurship ever lesser attractive… especially in software.

January 2, 2008 | Filed Under india, tech, web | Leave a Comment

India To Offer Free Broadband by 2009

Economic Times: Broadband to go free in 2 yrs
Economic Times: Broadband initiatives: Speed it up

The government proposes to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed broadband connectivity by 2009, through the state-owned telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL. While consumers would cheer, the move holds the potential to kill the telecom business as we know it.

Read disscussion regarding this on Slashdot.

April 28, 2007 | Filed Under india, news, web | 2 Comments

Double century of posts : A comic break

I found this Best of Blaugh through webyantra. So enjoy…

Here are the other webcomics that i love:

My collection of dilbert comics: Dilbert, IIT and Linux
Related Posts:
Great Amul Ads !
Damned funny Unix humor

April 24, 2007 | Filed Under blog, humor, listing, web | Leave a Comment

India leads Asia billionaire club

“India has the most number of billionaires in Asia with a total wealth of $191bn between them, according to Forbes magazine. With 36 billionaires, India has overtaken Japan’s 24 billionaires, after two decades of Japan topping the Asian rich list.”

Forbes’ 2007 ranking of worlds richest.

Lakshmi Mittal, 56, is the fifth richest person in the world, according to the magazine. The other Indians in the list include Mukesh and Anil Ambani of Reliance, Wipro chief Azim Premji, Bharti Group chairman Sunil Mittal and Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla.

Check who made it to list from India (Asia)

Also check The World’s Billionaires

March 10, 2007 | Filed Under india, listing, news | Leave a Comment

Open source is key to reaching 500 million Indian children

An interesting article by Mark Rais on role of open source in making education available to the large youth population of india. And a greta initiative by CII-Shiksha.

To support more than 650,000 villages and one half billion youths who need education, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) created a nonprofit organization called Shiksha India in 2001. One of Shiksha’s primary initiatives was the creation of a collaborative online Web portal, which the president of India launched in a formal ceremony last month. The new e-learning and collaboration portal uses open source technology such as Moodle, Drupal, and MediaWiki.

In my opinion the reason behind its success can be attributed to mainly: its free of cost availabilty which is big issue in regard to country like India, where population(half billion) which need attention is much higher and money involved if proprietary softwares are being used. And other important aspect which article mentions is in the ability to customize and provide products in local languages (including Hindi and Tamil) along with chosing most suited among vast available resources.
Another important issue which can be solved with open source is large scale piracy, currently software piracy laws are not so strict in india but still piracy is a getting a major issue.

“The bad side is that with so much available, a newcomer to OSS is bound to get confused about what to use.” He says this is often exacerbated due to some projects being fixated on proving that their product is best.

Other than that at present, their are linux distributons like Ubuntu, which is quite user friendly and its available in many flavours. Also earlier there has also been efforts in shifting towards linux and other open source mediums like :
LIC opts for Linux
Taking Free Software to the Farmers and Fields of India
Kerala logs Microsoft out

Linux.com : Open source is key to reaching 500 million Indian children
Program Details for Shiksha India

February 26, 2007 | Filed Under india, linux | Leave a Comment