Saw this on the 49th street subway station in NYC:
Its one of the more interesting advertisements I have seen in the City.
– Suramya
October 9, 2006
October 6, 2006
Dinner in New York
Went out for dinner in New York yesterday with Surabhi, Vinit, Vivek, Meghna, Aarti and Madhur at this great restaurant called Cafe Habana located in Soho. Its a small place and If you go by the looks alone you will most likely walk away to eat at some of the better looking places around it, but that would be a big mistake as the food here is awesome and the service is really good. Too many times I have eaten at a place where the food is great but the waiters looked and acted like they were in a funeral. In contrast the waitress over here were friendly, cheerful and helpful.
The place is really busy so expect a wait when you show up. On weekdays its not that bad, though on weekends however the wait is a lot longer. One thing to keep in mind is that the larger your group is the longer your wait is, so don’t show up with a group of 15. The max I would take to this place would by 8 -9 people, any more than that would be a bit difficult so fit in quickly.
The corn over here is to die for and the rest of the food is also very good and filling. They play some really nice upbeat music so the atmosphere is very lively. The best part is that the place is not that expensive either.
If you are ever in the area check it out. You won’t regret it.
– Suramya
October 5, 2006
LibraryThing: Catalog your books online
Found this interesting service that allows you to catalog your books online. Then based on the books in your library it connects people with the same books and comes up with suggestions for what to read next. It gives you the ability to include your books in your blog, and create feeds etc.
The only downside is that its free service only allows you to catalog upto 200 books, to catalog more books you need to pay a $10 for a year price.
Check it out :LibraryThing
– Suramya
October 4, 2006
Bought I Dream of Jeannie DVD today
Today I bought the Second Season of I dream of Jeannie on DVD. I love the show and have been looking for it for a long time. Unfortunately they don’t seem to have released the rest of the seasons yet (Season 3 onwards). They should. Its a great show, a bit silly at times and still good for laughs.
I first watched this show in India where it had been translated in hindi. Surprisingly the translation was pretty good and the voice over wasn’t bad, unlike bewitched or some of the other shows where the voice overs were horrible. But I think I like the english version better as some of the jokes didn’t translate that well.
Well I am off to enjoy I Dream of Jeannie now… Will post more later.
– Suramya
October 3, 2006
Dying with your Passwords
Interesting post about problems that can be caused when a person dies without sharing their passwords. I have posted about this earlier over here
The main issue I have with sharing passwords is privacy, do I really want people to be able to access my data when I am dead?
Lets say I share my password with someone with instructions to only use it when I am dead, how can I be sure that one they they won’t get bored and start going through my emails/documents… Before you say anything, yes I have a low opinion of everyones honesty (including mine). I wouldn’t want to be the one that someone decides to share a password with.
Another issue is that I change my passwords constantly and at any given time I have ~ 5-6 (Probably more) different passwords in use. I have a hard time memorizing them so I expect others will have a harder time and since no one wants to memorize anymore useless data they will probably write it down somewhere. Now if their system gets compromised my data is also at risk because they wrote the passwords down which is not cool.
One of the solutions people suggested was to use a dead mans switch. Basically in that case if you don’t do something for X no of days your info/password is sent to someone. Its an interesting idea but the problem with this approach is that; what if I don’t log on to the system for X days because I got busy or forgot or was on vacation. It would still send out the data to everyone because I didn’t log on. I guess in the future we can have a device that can monitor a person’s heart beat or brainwaves and then when all activity stops it opens up the information but for now we are stuck with a manual process.
When I am dead people can feel free to go through my documents and most of my computer files. The stuff I don’t mind sharing is already unencrypted but the stuff thats encrypted has been encrypted for a reason. If I wanted to share it, it would have been unencrypted. The same goes for my email. I can think of no reason why someone would want to go through my emails when I am dead and no I don’t think I will get murdered with the one clue to identify the killer in my email.
What are your thoughts about this? Do you have a dead mans switch or something that will open your data to everyone when you die? If so why? If not, are you planning to?
Source: Schneier on Security: Dying with your Passwords
– Suramya
October 1, 2006
2 years and counting
Well, its 1st Oct again and its been 2 years that I have been maintaining this blog. Over the past two years I have realized the following things:
* Blogs are a good way for people who you don’t regularly interact with a way to keep up with whats going on in your life. You have no idea how many people told me that they regularly visit my blog to keep up with my life..
* Blogs allow you to present your thoughts to the public and have a good discussion on topics that you feel strongly about.
* Blogs are like a online archive of your life, a few years down the line you can come back and revisit old memories.
* Good Blogs are hard to maintain. 🙂 Yup its true, so many times I think about posting something but then decide that its not good enough or I don’t have enough time to make a good post. People who post regularly on their blogs have a great amount of dedication.
If you have been following the blog from the beginning you will probably have noticed that in the beginning I had a post almost every day then it sort of tapered down and recently I haven’t been posting at all. Its all to do with inspiration and time/desire/energy to post. I think I got tired of maintaining a blog, but now I think I will resume again. Lets see…
And if you actually read all that then thanks for being a dedicated reader and for visiting my site.
– Suramya
September 29, 2006
Some Site/Software updates
Here’s a brief update on the various portions of suramya.com and various projects I have been working on:
- mirror.suramya.com has been temporarily shut down till I fix some issues with it
- Found a bug in photo gallery that causes it to display photos in random order when viewing individual photos. Am working on a fix for this.
- Gimpshop package for Debian had an issue and I need to recreate it on my system. Will probably do it over the weekend.
- email2IM and IM2email projects haven’t been worked on for a while but since I got a few requests asking about their status I will be updating them. Have a lot of cool ideas for stuff to add to them, lets see how much time I get to work on it.
- gWiFi is on hold till further notice. Have to rebuild it from scratch to incorporate the new stuff the updated API’s offer and thats going to take time. Don’t know when I will get to it
- Have sorted through a lot of photos over the past few days, will be uploading them to the photo gallery over the next few days.
Well this is all for now. Will post more later.
– Suramya
September 17, 2006
Niagra Falls Trip photos posted
Posted some of the photos taken during my trip to Niagara falls last weekend. Will post the remaining when I get them from Aarti and Amit:
– Suramya
September 13, 2006
Updated the photogallery after a long time
Today I went through my image folder and sorted it out properly, so now I can actually find photos I am looking for without searching in multiple locations (My desktop, laptop and website).
Once I was done with that I uploaded the following photos to the photogallery:
Still have a lot more pics to post. Will do that when I get some more free time.
– Suramya
September 4, 2006
Experiences on my flight to the US
As promised here’s a brief writeup on my flight to the US and what I saw during it…
This time I flew in Business class on Aeroflot because due to the late date tickets in Business class in Aeroflot were cheaper that tickets in Economy class on other airlines. So mom and dad dropped me at the airport at ~ 1 am, and I walked up to the check-in desk where this one guy asked me if I was a business class passenger and when I told him yes, he told me to follow him and really speeded up my checking by letting me bypass the queue. Then I got the pass for the first class lounge in Delhi which was nice. They have complementary food and drinks over there so I had a couple of sandwiches and then after waiting for a while went through security and waited for the flight to board. They changed the departure gate a couple of times but then they finally let us board.
The flight was ok, as they didn’t have any in flight entertainment for some reason. So I listened to music and read my book. The best part of that flight was the meals. While in the economy class they give you a weird looking/tasting meal, in the Business class they literally give you a Five course meal and the service was awesome. Basically as soon as I sat down I was offered champagne with unlimited refills. I had a glass and then switched to orange juice and I drank a lot of it. Basically anytime during the meal if my glass was empty they would refill it without my asking.
Landed in Moscow and had a 5 hour halt over there.. Moscow airport has this weird rule that they only give you access to the Business class lounge two hours before the flight so since I had about 5 hours to kill I spent 3 hours roaming around the airport and reading a book and when I finally got access to the lounge I was hungry again so had sandwiches and juice. They had a cyber cafe also but the internet connection was down for some reason.
Then I boarded on the flight to NY on time and we departed pretty much on time. The service again was awesome and this time they even had in-flight entertainment. The thing was that they didn’t have the standard LCD displays mounted on the back of the seat, they gave out these portable players which had the movies/stuff stored on it so you could lie down and still watch the movies. I saw V for Vendetta. The seats recline to ~20-30 degrees from the floor and are flat so it was easy to sleep. They even had power sockets where I could plug in my laptop and work on it.
I arrived on time in NY and since I was in business class I missed most of the rush at the immigration and customs. Surprisingly even my bags arrived on time and without getting lost. In total it took me less than 35 mins from the time I got off the plane to the time I was out of the airport.
It was an interesting trip, and if the tickets didn’t cost so much I would fly business class again. But prob not Aeroflot.
Well this is all for now. Will write more later.
– Suramya