Saturday, January 21, 2006

Penguin story


Did you know that you can buy Penguins as a pet :) ???
Check out - http://www.penguinwarehouse.com/

I never knew Penguins were called as Man's Best Friend. When did they change that from a dog? :-)

Whats interesting is a couple actually bought a inflatable swimming pool and put it right in the middle of their first floor house so that their pet penguin can live there. It turned out later that the Penguins store is a hoax and they had to do away with the pool. Its really a funny read.

Read their story here: http://www.betterthanyourboyfriend.com/?p=89

Imagine taking your Pet Penguin for an evening walk on the road. I am sure thats one way to get yourself on the papers next day. I know of a friend who has a pet squirrel but pet penguins is really the heights :-)

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Conversations with a Friend

Vels says:
Remember I told u
Vels says:
that every idea i come up with, somebody has already done it...
Tweety says:
ya
Tweety says:
:-)
Vels says:
I was writing pages for a new product idea
Vels says:
and i realised that there is a microsoft product for that already
Vels says:
Ever Heard of Microsoft Customer Care Framework ???
Vels says:
http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/solutions/ccf.mspx
Vels says:
The whole thing is my idea and someone has done it already
Vels says:
I think I should have been born a couple of years earlier
Tweety says:
now that you are seeing the trend...may be you should sit
and analyse whats going on with you

Tweety says:
may be u r suffering from some unknown syndrome

Vels says:
whatever it is, it is good.
Tweety says:
he he
Vels says:
At least my thinking is in the right direction
Vels says:
jus tht its coming a bit slow
Tweety says:
no no, wat i am saying is

Tweety says:
may be u r suffering from a syndrome where u read
something on the net and then your brain completely forgets that you already
read it...and makes you think that you invented it

Vels says:
ohh
Vels says:
Thanks for telling me. Let me check up with a doc.

Learning about my Car

I have been driving my cute Hyundai Santro car (non-yellow :-) ) for little more than a year now and I still havent learnt about all the features in my car.

For the past couple of months, my back left door suddenly got jammed and it couldnt be opened from inside and somebody had to open it from outside. Pciture this, Everytime I drive out with friends, I had to run around like a driver from the driver seat to open the back door.

Well finally yesterday when I opened the back door to place my bag, I accidentally saw a small sticker stuck near the door hinge saying -' Child lock' and has a small mechanical switch.

Some smart ass has played with it and put that switch to 'ON'. AAARGH... I want to kill that guy. I have a very strong feeling it must be some girl though, trying to take revenge on me.

At least the good news is, I found that my Car has a Child lock mechanism. Cool ;-)
[P.S: Any comments with the following words would be deleted: 'Lol' or 'Hehehe' or 'You didnt know that']

Picture Perfect snap


I have started clicking a lot of snaps off late especially after I got my new Canon Digicam PS 510(Thanks to Tweety for smuggling it from US ;-)) and most often the problem I face is when taking a group snap. Its just impossible to get everyone smiling and having their eyes open and posing properly in one go, so I click 2-3 snaps to make sure at least one of them come out properly but believe me it just doesnt help. At least one person would mess up.

I always wished of a way to somehow merge all the snaps and get the best group shot.

Thanks to Microsoft Research groups latest tool GroupShot, this is now possible.

Here is the link:
http://research.microsoft.com/projects/GroupShot/

Chk out these screenshots:
http://research.microsoft.com/projects/GroupShot/GroupShotHelp.htm

You can merge and even remove the unnecessary background that might have come in one of the snaps.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Make a Million Bucks on the Net


I have always wondered the ways in which people make money on the internet. This particular site totally stunned me - http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

A 21 year old college kid who didnt have enough money to pay his college fees decided to start this site and make a million bucks and guess what, he has really made it. His idea is simple, the cost of 1 pixel is $1 and there are million pixels on the page and you can buy them and put any image u want on a 10 * 10 pixel square with a link. Infact his last 1000 pixels are being auctioned through ebay and the current rate is around $152 per pixel :-)

I am really amazed Why would someone go and pay money for such a thing ??? Its one of those things that you would never understand. Sometimes people do crazy things for crazy ideas.

Monday, January 16, 2006

"Coupling" - Successor to "Friends" series

If you are Friends lover, you would most probably like Coupling also.

Coupling is a UK based comedy show about 6 friends (3 guys and 3 gals). On an average Men and Women think about sex every 6 seconds, shorten that to every second and you have got "Coupling" :-)

It has been banned by US TV stations because of its sexual content :-) [Well I am surprised its not banned in India !!!]

Monday nights at 10 pm in Star World. Dont miss it !!!


Chk out - http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/coupling/

-Vels

Sunday, January 08, 2006

The Fallen Tomato Cart

A very good article by Subroto Bagchi (CEO, MindTree Consulting) …

I pass through this very intersection every morning with so much ease. Today, the pace is skewed. There is a sense of disarray as motorists try to push past each other through the traffic light. The light here always tests their agility because if you miss the green, you have to wait for another three minutes before it lets you go past again. Those three minutes become eternity for an otherwise time-insensitive nation on the move. Today, there is a sense of chaos here. People are honking, skirting each other and rushing past. I look out of my window to seek the reason. It is not difficult to find because it is lying strewn all over the place.
A tomato seller's cart has overturned. There are tomatoes everywhere and the rushing motorists are making pulp of it. The man is trying to get his cart back on its four rickety wheels and a few passersby are picking up what they can in an attempt to save him total loss. Though symbolic in the larger scheme of things, it is not a substantive gesture. His business for the day is over.

The way this man's economics works is very simple. There is a money lender who lends him money for just one day, at an interest rate of Rs 10 per day per Rs 100 lent. With the money, he wakes up at 4 am to go to the wholesale market for vegetables. He returns, pushing his cart a good five miles, and by 7 am when the locality wakes up, he is ready to sell his day's merchandise. By the end of the morning, some of it remains unsold. This his wife sells by the afternoon and takes home the remainder, which becomes part of his meal. With the day's proceeds, he returns the interest to the money lender and goes back to the routine the next day. If he does not sell for a day, his chain breaks.
Where does he go from here? He goes back to the money lender, raises capital at an even more penal interest and gets back on his feet. This is not the only time that destiny has upset his tomato cart. This happens to him at least six times every year. Once he returned with a loaded cart of ripe tomatoes and it rained heavily for the next three days. No one came to the market and his stock rotted in front of his own eyes. Another time, instead of the weather, it was a political rally that snowballed into a confrontation between two rival groups and the locality closed down. And he is not alone in this game of extraneous factors that seize not only his business but also his life. He sees this happen to the "gol-gappa" seller, the peanut seller and the "vada pao" seller all the time. When their product does not sell, it just turns soggy. Sometimes they eat some of it. But how much of that stuff can you eat by yourself ? So, they just give away some and there is always that one time when they have to simply throw it away.

Away from the street-vendor selling perishable commodity with little or no life support system, the corporate world is an altogether different place. Here we have some of the most educated people in the country. We don the best garbs. We do not have to push carts; our carts push us. We have our salary, perquisites, bonuses, stock options, gratuities, pensions and our medical insurance and the group accident benefit schemes. Yet, all the while, we worry about our risks and think about our professional insecurity. We wonder, what would happen if the company shifted offices to another city? What would happen if the department closed down? What would happen if you were to take maternity leave and the temporary substitute delivered better work than you did? What would happen if the product line you are dealing with simply failed? In any of those eventualities, the worst that could happen would still be a lot less than having to see your cartful of tomatoes getting pulped under the screeching wheels of absolute strangers who have nothing personal against you.

All too often we exaggerate our risks. We keep justifying our professional concerns till they trap us in their vicious downward spiral. Devoid of education, sophisticated reasoning and any financial safety net, the man with the cart is often able to deal with life much better than many of us. Is it time to look out of the window, into the eyes of that man to ask him, where does he get it from? In his simple stoicism, is probably, our lost resilience?