Saw this one when driving into the parking at Great India Place Mall in Noida. Found it funny.
– Suramya
November 5, 2008
November 4, 2008
Open Library
OpenLibrary is a really cool site that has just been launched in collaboration with Boston Public Library, Internet Archive and OpenLibrary.org.
Basically it is allows you to search for a public domain book on OpenLibrary.org and, if the book hasn’t been scanned yet and is available at the Boston Public Library, the system gives you an option to request the book to be scanned. Once you confirm your request someone from Boston Library will scan the book and within 3-5 days you will receive an email follow-up with a link to the newly-digitized copy, complete with PDF, online flip book, full text and more.
I personally think that this is a great idea and allows knowledge to be shared across the world and not limited to people who can physically access the Boston Library. Its too much right now to expect non-public domain books to be available in the service but I think a sort of pay per download scheme or something similar would be a great addition to the service in the near future.
Check it out over here: Open Library
Thanks to ‘Jimmy O’Regan’ for the heads up.
– Suramya
November 3, 2008
Feeling lazy
Just realized that I haven’t uploaded new pics/stuff to my site since Jan. Ouch.
I blame it on lazyness and a new job. Plus having lots of good books to read 🙂
I do have a lot of pics that I want to upload but… I wish someone would go through the 7.2 GB of photos I have and update the photogallery on the site.
I also want to update the layout of the site. I think its about time I changed the theme of the site…
Lets see when I get the chance to update the site.
– Suramya
November 1, 2008
Feel cheated right now…
Feel pretty cheated right now… In all the sci-fi and fantasy books if a person falls sick suddenly and stays down for a week then when they get better they usually end up with some sort of power like super strength, physic powers etc… So far I haven’t found any new powers after the fever…
Telekinesis : Nope. Either the pen is stuck to the desk or I don’t have telekinesis… 🙁
Mind reading : Nope. Unless no one around me thinks at all (A definite possibility given the way people
drive here)
Ability to fly : Nope. Don’t think if jumping off the bed didn’t work that I should try the roof
Super speed : Nope. Did manage to walk into the door when trying to super speed….
Magic : Nope. Unless my magic power is to sleep a lot…
Super Brains : Not sure… I mean I am smart enough already, how would I know if I got smarter :p
Invisibility : Nope. Though I am not going to try walking around naked anytime soon.
Ah well. Maybe the powers are still developing. Going to keep testing for other super powers. Will let you know if I find anything (maybe… )
– Suramya
October 19, 2008
My Weekend
As I posted earlier this weekend was a very hectic weekend. I have caught a viral infection (I think) with the associated high fever and complete body ache. I have been functioning by taking a Paracetamol every 8-12 hours to get rid of the fever.
On Sunday it was Tarini’s birthday but she was celebrating it on Saturday so I drove to Gurgoan. I left here at about 7:15 pm and it took me almost 2 hours to get there. So much for there being less traffic over the weekends. Was there till about almost 2 am and got home at 3:30 am. It was a very fun evening. Caught up with friends and basically just hung out.
The drive there and back was painful and if we weren’t such close friends I would have canceled without any doubt.
Sunday I spent working after taking regular doses of paracetamol. Lets hope tomorrow will be better.
October 17, 2008
Think I am coming down with something
My Back hurts, my eye hurts, my feet hurt. Actually let me put it this way, pretty much every muscle in my body is hurting right now and I feel feverish. This had to happen just before the weekend. *groan*. Taking a hot shower followed by paracetamol helped.
To top it all I get to work tomorrow so that we get two days off for diwali instead of one day which is great. But working over the weekend is painful.
My wireless card is still not working but the IT guy is supposed to come today to take a look at the laptop and increase the RAM on the system.
I got my new desk at home and am very happy with it. It looks nice and is very comfortable to work on.
well this is all for now. Will post more later.
– Suramya
October 14, 2008
Want a collection you can always use? Pirate it.
Funny but true:
I have always hated DRM protected files. I need the option to do whatever I want with something I paid for where ever I want to.
I have personally been hit by DRM once. I bought a book from one of the online retailers and it was a protected PRC file. I downloaded their reader when I bought the book and read it. Then I had to format my system and didn’t bother to install the reader software. Now after about a year I wanted to read the book again but couldn’t. For some reason my account on the site was deleted and the reader won’t let me open the book without logging into the site. So I am stuck with a file that I can’t use even though I paid for it.
Thankfully I had initially taken a screen shot of every page of the book because I intended to convert it to html and I still had those files on my system so I ended up converting them to text and finally to html.
So in order to use something I had paid for I had to pirate it… Go figure…
I will stick with DRM free books/music in the meantime.
Image Source: http://xkcd.com/488/
– Suramya
October 13, 2008
Laptop woes
I think I am cursed this year in regards to laptops.
In the past 6 months I have gone through 4 laptops. 1st was my old laptop then I used my Dad’s laptop for a while till I switched jobs and my company gave me a really cool laptop. It then turned out that it wasn’t powerful enough for my job so I got another laptop.
This one was one of the special edition laptops with a ‘designer’ cover (To me it looked like the cover was scratched) Other than the looks the laptop was really nice and it worked great. However a couple of weeks ago the cooling fan developed an issue and started making a lot of noise. At first it wasn’t that bad but in the last few days it got to the point that it sounded like a cement grinder working overtime.
So I gave it back to be fixed and I was given another laptop as getting it fixed would take time. Now this one is a great laptop with only a small problem. The wireless card doesn’t work… 🙁 At home its not an issue because I prefer to be connected using the LAN but at work its a pain because I can’t walk around the office with the laptop when I need to show something to anyone. At first I thought that the issue was with a setting in Linux but then I had to boot into Windows to use GotoMeeting and I noticed that the card didn’t work over there also.
Now the guy is coming over tomorrow to look at the system. I hope he fixes it and that I won’t be given another new laptop. Its a pain to install/upgrade the OS again and then customize the look and feel.
Here’s to hoping for the best.
– Suramya
September 28, 2008
New Delhi Bomb blasts and the security theater surrounding it
I am sure most of you have heard about the bomb blasts that occurred in Delhi earlier this month causing massive damage and loss both in terms of life and property. One of the areas that was hit by the blasts was Connaught place (CP) and obviously after the blasts happened security has been tight around these areas to try to prevent another such incident from happening.
I was in CP this weekend meeting with friends for lunch, we were walking about CP when we got the craving for an icecream so we found one of the road side vendors and purchased ice-creams. Now we had to throw the wrappers but couldn’t find a dust-bin (garbage can) next to the guy so we asked him where the garbage can was. His reply was that after the bomb blasts the cops have banned people from keeping garbage cans… (The bombs were hidden in the cans) We had to throw the wrappers in a pile of garbage that was stinking pretty badly under the upturned garbage cans.
At first I thought he was joking, then we confirmed it with another vendor. He said that they are not even allowing people to keep small cardboard boxes next to their carts to collect thrash. They all had to dump it on the ground. I can’t understand the logic behind this. Yes they hid it in a thrash can this time, next time they might hide it in a waterbottle, or in a backpack.
All they were succeeding in doing was create a mess. I don’t know if the terrorists will attack again but an attack by diseases is almost certain if this keeps going on for long…
This is what I call security theater. There is no appreciable gain in security but it looks and sounds like the cops are doing something.
– Suramya
September 26, 2008
China space mission article hits Web before launch
This is funny:
A news story describing a successful launch of China’s long-awaited space mission and including detailed dialogue between astronauts launched on the Internet Thursday, hours before the rocket had even left the ground.
I guess this shows the reliability of the Chinese media. 😉
Source: Yahoo! News