Who is wise? He that learns from everyone.
Who is powerful? He that governs his passions.
Who is rich? He that is content.
Who is that? Nobody.— Benjamin Franklin
Month: April 2006
Can you answer this?
Yahoo! India launches http://in.answers.yahoo.com.
So can you answer these questions?
- Did I do a bad job of raising my son?
- How can we say that we’re alive?
- When I get off at Bangalore aiport, how much will the elephant ride to my hotel cost?
- Why do dogs eat cat feces??? How do you stop this behavior?
- Does anyone want to give me a million dollors?
- What do we do while we’re dead?
- Why do you think Yahoo started this forum? — the first reply says “P.S. I have personal proof that the creators of Yahoo are the ones who really killed JFK (they also got Jimmy Hoffa)”
- i want gf?
- How to become an animal in your next life?
Be sure to read the answers as well.
How to use Vim with Firefox
If you’re a Vim user like me, you would’ve wished many a time that you could use Vim to edit text in Firefox. Too bad, the Mozex extension doesn’t work anymore.
Thanks to Samuel Wright, I have now discovered another way to achieve the same – using the ViewSourceWith extension.
I have put up the set of steps on my wiki on how to use Vim to edit text in Firefox. The wiki page is no longer available. Please refer the Official ViewSourceWith FAQ instead.
Note : This works only for plain text entries. It will not work for rich text formatting options such as GMail or Yahoo! Mail compose page.
Marathon postponed
The Bangalore Marathon has been postponed from May 14 to September, 2006.
This is so disappointing.
I had not participated in last year’s marathon because I wasn’t fit for it, but I had made up my mind to participate this year. So, I’ve been training with a couple of friends. Our plan was to prepare for the half marathon.
Today morning, I ran 21 km in 2.5 hours, the second time in the past month, and it felt great. Too bad, I have to wait till September to run in the actual marathon.
Yahoo! Bangalore Hack Day
We had our first “hack day” at work today. The idea is simple – you get one full day (starting from 00:01 hours) to hack on your own original idea and you have to present it at 4 in the afternoon to your whole office. At the end, a set of judges award the more interesting hacks, that could potentially turn into features added to an existing product, or full products by themselves. The main thing is, of course, that you get to work on your own idea, and have a blast at it.
Malaysia Day 2
19th March, 2006, Sunday
The second day morning, I got up early but I was not in time for sunrise, I went out for a walk alone anyway, and got to see a lazy Kuala Lumpur waking up.
I strolled for about half an hour and went quite a distance, but I was able to come back to the hotel easily because the roads are in a neat grid and you know when you’re making a square and coming back to the starting point.
Today was the day of the Sepang 2006 race. The plan was to leave in the morning itself so that we avoid traffic jams later on. We had to wait a long time for the other members to come out of their rooms. This is one of the main disadvantages of package tours, a single person can inconvenience a bus-ful of people. On the other hand, the advantage is that transportation costs works out way cheaper…
Ex-Yahoos start up
Himanshu Nautiyal, Ruban Phukan and Rajesh Warrier – three ex-yahoos from Bangalore, who now call themselves as RHR Networks Pvt. Ltd, seem to be dabbling in quite a number of things :
- PixRat – Bookmark and Tag Photos from the Web (it got techcrunched recently)
- GlogBlog – Bangalore Classifieds
- Bixee – Search Jobs from all Job Sites
- QuestionBank – Job Interview Questions and Answers
It’s great to see these guys doing a Bangalore startup!
Mark of respect?
A legend is no more. Dr. Rajkumar was the defining person in the Kannada film industry. I remember his old black and white Kannada movies, especially the ones where he plays the CID investigator… those were such wonderful movies, they had a real story, amazing acting and such pleasant simple songs.
No Kannadiga can ever forget the famous words of “Huttidare Kannadanada Huttabeku” sung by Dr. Rajkumar.
The best thing about Dr. Rajkumar was that he was a simple-minded big-hearted person, always wishing good for the people. I can almost hear him say “devaru vaLLedu maaDali” (Let God take good care of you) in his distinctive and captivating voice.
But that comes to something that bothers me – why do his so-called fans burn jeeps and smash showrooms?
(Background : Yahoo! has shifted my group from M G Road to a space borrowed from Aztec, next to our EGL office, near Ring Road in Domlur.)
Today, I could see the smoke from the Domlur flyover being burnt and the flyover wasn’t even complete yet. Just now, my colleague who’s still working in office tells me that the newly inaugurated sony showroom, next to the Dell office, has been smashed.
Again, how does all this mark your respect for this great person? Rajkumar would never have incited anyone to violence. He would’ve been a sad man if he saw what was going on.
Update : Pradeep says it a lot better than I do.
Malaysia Day 1
Finally, I’m getting around to writing about my Malaysia trip…
About six months ago, my cousins and myself had been to Talkad to show the beach to the youngest of the cousins (< 10 years old), and during the journey, I planted the idea of watching a Formula 1 Grand Prix, live, in my cousin’s head. He said that Malaysia was a good place because the Sepang circuit has seats from where you can see a good part (almost 70%) of the circuit. 5 months later, my cousin calls me up and he says there’s a package tour being planned for Malaysia revolving around the Sepang Grand Prix and the cost seemed good. I just said yes without even thinking. It’s the same package that was advertised on Indiatimes, and it was organized by a company called the Desimators.
18th March, 2006, Saturday
Our flight was at midnight and we entered the Bangalore international airport at around 9.30. What a mess! I mean we have shamiana cloth covering the walls, boring nondescript checkin counters which look like they’ll fall off any moment, and hardly any place to sit considering the number of people in the airport at that time. I never thought it would be this bad.
Anyway, we travelled by Malaysian Airlines and reached KL (Kuala Lumpur) at 7.30 am local time (there’s a time difference of 2.5 hours between India and Malaysia). The plane trip… I think I’ve had more comfortable seats in the buses I have travelled during treks.
As soon as I entered KLIA, the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, my jaw dropped. This is (supposedly) the third largest airport in the world and it was very posh. There were 5 levels and each exit had proper road connectivity. We had to take a bullet tram to reach the other end of the airport to collect the baggage.
