Fill in the following blank with “Yes” or “No”
a) ______ , I don’t have a BRAIN .
Who said English is easy ?
– Suramya
February 17, 2008
February 15, 2008
Reporters Without borders organizing a virtual protest against net censorship
Reporters Without Borders will hold the first International Day against Cyber-Censorship in exactly one month from now. You can take part in the first worldwide, live cyber-demo that will begin at 11 a.m. (Paris time) on 12 March and go on for 24 hours.
Come and demonstrate in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square or chant slogans in
support of Internet freedom in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. Everyone
will be able to create an avatar, choose a message and brandish it in one of
the countries that are “Internet enemies.” You can protest for 24 hours and
turn the Internet into a way to put pressure on the cyber-censors.
I will be taking part. You should too.
Source: Newswire.ca
Reporters Without Borders Website: http://www.rsf.org/
– Suramya
February 12, 2008
Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet
The Regular Expressions cheat sheet is designed to be printed on an A4 sheet of paper and live by a designer or developer’s desk, to make life a bit easier.
Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet
Check out this post for a description of what is on the cheat sheet.
– Suramya
Tired after attending multiple weddings in a single day.
Yesterday was a ‘fun’ day. I got to attend three weddings on the same day. The day started off with me, mom and dad driving almost to Gurguan to give Bhaat at my cousin’s place. It took us almost 1 1/2 to get there thanks to the traffic and we got there about 12:00 pm. The function took till about 2 pm and once we were done we left to attend another wedding clear across town near Gaziabad. It took us a bit more than a hour to get to that wedding. Had lunch over there then left for the second wedding which was another hour’s drive from this place. Got there at 4:30 pm and stayed till 5:30.
Then we drove back home to rest and change so that we could drive back to Gurguan for the third wedding. Unfortunately (or fortunately) by this time the mild cold I had been nursing for the past day had blown up into a major cold with a slight fever so I got out of attending the third wedding. I am sort of glad about that. Mom and dad were there till 5 am. If I had gone for the wedding I know I would have fallen sick big time.
As it is, my head hurts and my eyes keep watering. Though I am feeling a lot better than yesterday after a full day of rest.
Well this is all for now. I am going to go listen to some music now. Will write more later.
– Suramya
February 6, 2008
February 5, 2008
Went to the bookfair today
Went to the International book fair being held in Pragati Maidan, Delhi. It is a huge setup with stalls setup in ~17 halls. I visited about 7-8 of them before leaving for the day. I was not wearing the most comfortable shoes so my feet were killing me.
Bought 7 books for Rs. 490. Which is a little more than the price of a new paper back (~Rs 300 – 350) Will definitely go there again. The fair will go on till the 10th so I still have some time. This time though I will wear sneakers. The best part was since I went on a weekday not a lot of people were there so I got to talk to a lot of the stall staff and they helped me locate some really good stuff.
Also got the addresses and locations for a couple of the shops which had the best books and now after the show is over I will visit them and see if I can get some good deals/stuff there.
Well this is all for now. I am off to enjoy my bounty 🙂
– Suramya
January 30, 2008
Another interesting advertisement
Saw this one at the IndiJoe’s (or is it IndeJoe’s) restaurant in Bangalore when I went there for dinner. It made me laugh.
– Suramya
January 29, 2008
Open Source Software lists
Open Source Living has a great list of the various Open Source Software’s (OSS) that are available out there on the web.
It addresses one of the biggest problems with the OSS: the lack of knowledge about the various alternatives that are available. It is classified into various subsections like “Graphics & Photo”, Video, Audio etc. With a great listing. It is being migrated to another CMS (Content Management System) so while thats going on the creator is not making any additions to the site.
The advantage of OSS is that its free to try and its free to use. 🙂 So instead of spending big money on proprietary software check out OSS . You just might find something that you like and save a few bucks.
In an earlier post I had talked about various Open Source Project Management software. Found this post that reviews the various Project planner software. Check it out if you are looking for a Project Management software:
– Suramya
January 27, 2008
Reading a dying art? Thoughts on the Kindle and random ramblings
Steve Jobs was in news a few days ago for his comment stating that Kindle will fail because Americans don’t read anymore. Well.. If that was true it would cause a decline in sales but as Jobs apparently forgot there are a lot of other countries in the world and some of them contain people who do read a lot. Even if 1% of the world wide population bought the Kindle it would make it a smashing success. Which if I remember correctly Kindle is.
The other point is that the people who do read, read a lot. I have been a member of the Book forum the past few days and most of the members over there are people who read atleast a book a week, some like me read a book a day. Just to give you an idea of what quantities of books I am talking about here’s an example: since 26th Nov 2007 I have read 74 novels. This doesn’t include the comics & magazines that I have read. and there are other people who read like this at this forum.
I know that some of the kids nowadays think that reading books is not cool. But you only have to see the line of people waiting to purchase the latest Harry Potter book to see the number of people who do read. Whatever else I may say about the hype for Harry Potter it has made kids interested in reading. So no I don’t think reading is a dying art. I usually do my level best to encourage kids to read and my favorite gift (both to give and receive) is a book.
Though I am not a fan of the Kindle system. Its is a DRM laden system that could have been a lot better without it. I would rather get a PDA and use that to read books as I don’t see the point of buying a device just for reading books and have another device for your general computing needs. I would much rather have one device that does both. On that front I finally found a good e-book reader software for my phone. The screen size is small but it is sufficient to read a book one para at a time which is perfect for when I am stuck somewhere without a book to read and need to pass time. Mostly when I am stuck in traffic or waiting for someone.
Ok, its late at night and I am tired so I will stop rambling now…
– Suramya
January 17, 2008
Projity releases OpenProj ver 1.0
Version 1.0 of OpenProj (which is a software that I have talked about before) was released earlier this week. This is a big step for the Open Source world as its the first formal release of one of the few competitors of MS Project (That can match it in features).
According to the information I received OpenProj has had over 25,000 downloads in the first two days after its launch. That means a lot of people are planning to use it or are atleast willing to try it out. Infoworld did a detailed review of the Beta version product last year and they mostly had good things to say about it. Now that new version is out we should be seeing another review from them shortly.
As most of the readers of this blog already know, I prefer using Open Source applications. That way I know what I am installing on my system and I get to install/use software without having to pirate it, or paying through my nose for it. Hence my recommendation that if you use MS project you should give OpenProj a try.
That being said; I haven’t installed OpenProj on my system yet nor am I planning to and no Its not because I don’t like the software but rather because I have no need for a project management software. So I don’t want it taking up disk space on my system. But if I ever need a project management software I know where to look.
You can download OpenProj ver 1.0 from their source forge page. More information on it is available here.
– Suramya