thiya.blog

thiya.blog has moved to the base website!

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 08:02:00 +0000

thiya.blog has moved to the root URL, thiya.net and will be accessible there now on. I have migrated the blogging application to WordPress and am in the process of porting all the old posts to Wordpress.

Please continue to view my blog at thiya.net and I apologise for any inconvenience caused. This blog will be eventually replaced and removed and hence I request you to update your bookmarks too!

Thank you!!

Even aliens prefer firefox! :-P

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 14:46:00 +0000

I came across this page which shows a Crop Circle that some Oregon State University students and some local firefox fans from Dallas have created sometime in August this year! This crop circle is visible from space and Google Earth has also picked it up!! Find it out on Google Maps here!

Coimbatore!! Here I come!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 14:12:00 +0000

Atlast I am starting to my home after more than a month!! :-) Will be boarding a bus to take me to Coimbatore by tomorrow morning!! I am coming there to attend a wedding of one of the best staff who had taught me back at College!! Feeling great!!!! :-)

This is hilarious!

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 11:38:00 +0000

Check out this faux website that talks about apparently "MS Firefox" and a takeover of Firefox by Microsoft!! Its hilarous.. Though News sites talk about the site disappearing, Its still there!! Check it out here and here.

Here's an excerpt:

MSFirefox 2007's new TakeOver(TM) technology protects the Windows Kernel by automatically recognizing all McAfee and Symantec programs as viruses. Downloading has never been safer.

He he he! I dont know how this guy(or gal) is still staying online!

Dont bother searching for Nemo

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 08:54:00 +0000

If current trends continue, Its curtains for sea-fish by 2050 according to research performed by leading researchers and published in the journal Science.

There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study.

Fishing bans and other regulations that prevent over-fishing are the only things that can prevent this decline. But there are a lot of other factors, including political, that is preventing this from happening.

Protecting stocks demands the political will to act on scientific advice - something which Boris Worm finds lacking in Europe, where politicians have ignored recommendations to halt the iconic North Sea cod fishery year after year. Without a ban, scientists fear the North Sea stocks could follow the Grand Banks cod of eastern Canada into apparently terminal decline. "I'm just amazed, it's very irrational," he said. "You have scientific consensus and nothing moves. It's a sad example; and what happened in Canada should be such a warning, because now it's collapsed it's not coming back."

From The BBC.

Orkut improves functionality!

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 13:47:00 +0000

Though I had openly voiced my dislike towards Orkut's unintended non-functionality, Orkut has finally given in to feedback from users I guess to include a "Reply" feature in each scrap! I had personally given this feedback quite a while ago and I guess a lot of others had done the same too!!

Now this is cool! You dont have to waste a lot of time just to reply to a 'scrap'! Just click on "reply" at the bottom of a scrap you have received to open up a "Reply-box"!

Pretty cool! :-) Now it isnt a pain to reply to scraps!

Firefox 2 has been released!!

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 10:35:00 +0000

The Award Winning Browser just got re-incarnated! Spell Checking is a cool feature that has been added in addition to the loads of other features like Tabbed Browsing, Pop-up blocker etc!!

Download and check it out for yourself if you still havent tried it out!

Portable Anonymous Browsing

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 12:04:00 +0000

Download Torpark and browse the internet anonymously by connecting via the TOR Network. Your true IP address is not displayed to the server.

Its based on the portable version of Firefox and can be run from a USB Drive without any traces of installation on the system where you intend to run it on. Regarding privacy at the exit servers, I could not come up with information on that at the site. Except that the Creator, Steve Topletz supports privacy!

And yeah, its free. :-) Download it from here.

Lazy

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 11:29:00 +0000

That is precisely what I am. Its been close to a month in the Corporate World. I am getting a grip on the way of life here. Kinda settled down for the time being. I have not yet been fully incorporated into the project that I have been assigned to, a lot of training sessions are still going on, but I strangely felt lazy to update my blog even though I had quite some free time left. Lethargy is having me for lunch.

I have settled down at my residence with more than two months having passed since I came out of the confines of my house, my parents, my sister and my(unofficial) kitten. Had to buy supplies that had gotten over. Finally I am beginning to know that maintaining a house is really no easy task. Hats off to you mom(and a little, to you sis!).

One thing I have noted is that I am beginning to find people familiar even if I have never met them before in my life! When I was in school, I could place anybody I had met before at the location I had met them, the circumstances etc. But as time passed by and I made more contacts and moved to more places, College, Small organisations etc., I am beginning to face difficulties in ascertaining the initial meetings that I may have had with people. And one strange off-shoot to this is finding people familiar!! Whew!!

I bought a TVS Bike to carry me along the roads of Bangalore, my First love (Bike only! Dont scream Maddy!)which is still at home, with my dad having taken over its control.

Other than that, I am still the same guy, albeit a bit more lazier than what I was. :-/

PS:- Now, after beginning to 'work', I really appreciate people like Jax, Mahendran, Kishore and all the others who maintain great blogs even with all the work that may come across their way!

Enlightenment

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 06:51:00 +0000

Two days earlier, I went home from work, The previous night I had washed all my clothes and hung them up to dry, on the second floor. All the clothes were dry, but a gap broke the peaceful row of clothes on the clothesline where a very good shirt was. I assumed my friend would have taken it and kept it inside.

It was only yesterday evening it dawned to me that the shirt will not be found in my premises again. It was stolen! It was a good-looking shirt and I was flustered. When I told this incident to my friend who has been residing here at Bangalore for quite some time, his reply was

"Welcome to Bangalore!!" :-/

Life @ Bangalore

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 08:08:00 +0000

No.. That's not an incomplete email address.. :-P

Now that I have started working, the things that need to be worked out are my day to day activities! My part-time Masters programme in Computer Science and Engineering will be beginning shortly and the only day I'll be free(thankfully) is Sunday! But, come Sunday and I take the form of a ghastly human washing machine, Washing all my clothes that I had worn the previous week which takes away the better part of the day. Aaargh! I have contacted a maid who was willing to take up the washing job shortly, So I'll be having time to spend around with other activities like Programming and Music!

I am planning to take up guitar classes though I have to fully settle down here at Bangalore! It has always been my dream of being able to play the guitar, if not the likes of the greats, atleast something that is pleasing to the ear on rainy days. I learnt to play the trumpet and the cornet during my stint at my school's music troupe. I'll try to find some good maestro here!

Right now, I have to decide on the right career path that I'll have to take to pursue my interests, and generalising that is something that I dread. I have to decide on what exactly I have to do in order to be where I belong.

Time can tell.

Coimbatore was better!

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 15:01:00 +0000

In some ways, I feel Coimbatore is a lot better when compared to Bangalore. But the reassuring thing is, there are quite a lot of people who are willing to help! Lost your way, ask someone! If you ask a few people, chances are highly likely that you would come across a person speaking your own language in addition to the regulars like Hindi and English! And people help us out by giving complete directions! I know this is quite contradictory to my previous post, :-P But almost six out of ten people I ask for directions are either new to the place or have directions only to reach their own places!! Ha ha ha! :-)

Another crazy thing which I guess is improving is that the place names are not written in English in the buses that ply around Bangalore, leave alone for the 'Volvo' buses. But the situation is improving with ordinary buses getting those stylish LED displays!

So, gotta start for home! Tata for now..

All roads lead to roam

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 13:16:00 +0000

Without a bike and without proper directions, its walk walk walk all the way criss-crossing small parts of Bangalore!!!

Its been quite a while since I got my hands on an internet enabled system and the time to access my blog! Life without internet is getting on my nerves!

I landed here at Bangalore on the 16th of June and have been going through the phase of change.. I am so homesick that I want to go back home.. Its like all of this is just a small vacation and that I would be going back home soon, but the fact remains that I have finally become a professional and I have to get used to living alone. Yeah, with friends.. But the atmosphere that existed at home no longer exists. I am almost getting done with the formal induction at the company I have joined. Yet to get some hands on experience though.

So, thats it for now.. Am living in a rented apartment with one of my friends along for company. I dont have a clue of where I'll be posted after my training. It would be three cheers if it is somewhere near the place where I stay! Lets hope for the best!!

WARNING: Disgusting stuff ahead!
There's one disgusting thing I do not like about the place here at Bangalore. People spit almost on all possible places! I mean all!! I was in this well-known hotel as part of my induction and people had spat on the corners of the AC conference hall.. Aaaaah! You need to watch your step when you are walking on the road to avoid well.. Lets leave this for now...

I am literally going crazy without Internet. I am planning to get a broadband connection as soon as my location is finalised and I am sure of the place where I stay. Until then, its just those stolen moments every now and then when I take the slightest opportunity to post an entry, as I did now! :-)

Two days and counting

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:38:00 +0000

I'll be on my way to Bangalore in two days. I have begun to think over the various things that I would have overlooked or taken for granted back here at HOME!!

There are quite a lot of things that I can think off! I have to wash my own clothes, sweep the house, clean everything, get food ready. I cant expect to wake up in the middle of the night and expect something to be there to gobble if something wasnt kept ready already in cold storage! I have never thought of all of this when I am at home. But now, that I have to let go of these luxuries and begin my new life there, I must rethink everything! Get ready for come-what-may!

Staying away from home for the first time, I must get through this difficult time without any kind of home-sickness on the long run. The time has come for me to fly, to be free, to be more responsible. There is a 'first time' for everything and I hope this would be filled with happy moments!

Free E-books

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 19:27:00 +0000

R. Prabhu brought to my notice about the World Ebook Fair that is giving free access of its ebooks to the public from July 4th to August 4th, on occasion of Project Gutenberg's 35th Birthday!

Project Gutenberg is the oldest producer of free ebooks on the Internet. There are quite a lot of free ebooks that can be downloaded from there. Visit www.worldebookfair.com to download them! Enjoy! Support them too!

To the moon and back

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 18:29:00 +0000

Well, it almost seemed like one!

I was on an offhand trip to Bangalore last Tuesday! I left by the Intercity and after a what-seemed-like-a-never-ending journey, finally reached Bangalore! The main reason for me to go there for such a short trip was to get accustomed a bit to the locality where I'll stay at, so as to make my next arrival with dad a bit easier and also to carry some heavy stuff here. My friend Ashakir caught me at the station, took me home, had a late dinner and slept nicely!

The next day, he left for college and me being alone, started on foot to explore. I kept looking for landmarks as I trudged on, after a point of no return, I guessed I was almost a semi-circle from the place where I started and decided to make it a full normal circle! And without knowing what I had in store, trotted off again and finally, I guessed right and reached the place, by now my legs were aching real bad. I got myself a phone number for use at Bangalore and went back home and slept after a small dinner.

My friend came back later than he was supposed to and we started hastily to his Uncle's place where he was to pick some stuff, He was coming with me on the way back! We just made it on time to the station to catch the 10:05 Kurla Express when we realised that the train was delayed by over seven hours and was expected to arrive by 4:55 AM. This due to the incessant rains at Mumbai, the starting point of this train! After a few thoughts, we decided to go back to his uncle's place and watch Portugal vs France. But considering the places we roamed earlier, it was tiring and both of us were dozing in no time

Then we woke up around 3:30 AM, got ready and came back to the Railway Station, and to our dismay, noted that the train would arrive at 6:25 AM. We waited in the lounge, along with some others. The time was updated again and the train arrived at last at 6:45. We boarded it and it started around 7:30AM. Whew! I reached Coimbatore at 2:30 PM.

Home sweet home at last!

Today, I went shopping in the evening and got myself some formals, something which I dont possess now! Gave it to a good tailor and my tummy has grown too, I need to exercise! I have a little more that a week to start for the next state of my life. To take up my job! Boy ain't I excited!

High School Reunion!

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 17:18:00 +0000

Thankfully, we ended our high school reunion as originally planned on a high note! Though some guys boycotted the event with no reason at all, who cares anyway, they have lost a valuable opportunity to be with their pals from yester years. It is very unlikely for anybody to take the efforts that I, Prashanth and Arjun took to conduct this wonderful party. So, even if they are willing to come next year, it may not happen, God forbid!! If only I am in Coimbatore next time around, I would do my best to bring everybody together as I always do! The responsibility has fallen on my shoulders, whether I like it or not. And I'm not complaining!

We had ordered for more plates at the buffet at Hotel Mangala International than there were people present and ended up paying close to a thousand bucks more by pooling all what we had! Luckily we had some money to spare. Many idiots who had promised to come didnt turn up! :-( And our efforts to contact them at the last moment turned on deaf ears.

We had a blast of a time, a wholesome dinner, lots of laughs and we all took a lot more photographs than last year. Then after everything was over and each one had spoken a bit, a guy said "Ok, lets start!", But all the other guys were still seated, wondering what to do and it appeared they were reluctant to leave.. I'll miss all you guys.. Altogether, we had a nice time together and went home with memories to share! Hope we do a similar party next year...

The Weird Side of me!

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 19:24:00 +0000

I was tagged by Mahen, who has written some weird facts about him.
Now I have to write six properties or acts of me that might seem strange and weird to others! So here we go!!

My mom still hand-feeds me if I am at home!
I cry easily when I miss someone. I think this is weird for a guy! Never seen other guys cry
If I find something amusing or funny, I laugh out loud almost instantaneously!! I dont seem to have any control over my laughter!! I remember one moment in my class when the whole class was silent and I burst out laughing loud and everyone turned and stared at me.. I just reduced my laughter sheepishly and turned red! :-D
I'll keep staring and meddling my mobile even if I do not receive anything!! I just keep doing something on it.. Go in and out of menu items... Drives my best friend mad!
I am terribly afraid of trains, I dont mind travelling in them, but when a train starts moving on the platform, I get very anxious whether or not I am travelling on the train! My knees start shaking, my heart starts racing!! If I have come to see off a person.. I ask them to stand on the train and speak, so that if the train starts, atleast they can go with it! Ha ha! I cant figure out why, maybe it was because of an incident in my childhood when my dad hopped aboard a railway engine on the platform and the driver blew the horn, I was 4 years old or so, but my intelligent pals of those years had told me that once the train blows the whistle, it would start and I was afraid of losing my dad!! That has probably manifested into this phobia now!
I start drawing and scribbling on any paper that is near me if I sit still for sometime, or especially if something boring is dragged on in class. I try sketching figures and shapes, and usually write the word "Google" again and again in a particular style, something I cant explain, Maybe I am using the search engine a little too much!

For my turn, I am tagging Persian Humour and Dee. Others are also welcome to write about your weird facts. :-)

My blog featured in a newspaper article!!

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 19:57:00 +0000

My blog was featured in a Tamil article on blogging and related information in a supplementary page of the Dhinathanthi!! The screen shot of the article is given below,

It reads

Kovaiyai saerndha kaloori maanavar oruvar http://www.thiya.net/blog endra paeril oru blog uruvaki irukirar. Adhil kadandha ayendhu varudangalaga dhinamdhorum thanadhu yennangalai padhivu seidhu varigirar. Atthudan nanbargalin karithukalai arinthukollavum dhinandhorum pudhiya pudhiya seidhigalai veli idugirai.

Which in English literally means

A College student from Coimbatore has created a blog under the name http://www.thiya.net/blog . In that, for the past five years, he has been updating the blog with his thoughts on a daily basis. In addition to that, he posts new items everyday to get to know the opinions of his friends.

Thanks to Thiyagaraj (not me!) for including me in his article. Thanks to Balamuralie and Siva Parkavi who brought the article to my notice! :-)

The only thing I would like to add is, I haven't had this blog for five years, I had a few starts and ends.. But I only started blogging on a regular basis from early 2004 under the guise of Thiyagaraj's Jottings. I moved to blogger sometime in 2004 too, but then after a few ups and downs, I have started to blog here from mid 2005, which is indeed powered by blogger. Thank you for reading people!

Spooky!

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 18:58:00 +0000

I was reading Xavier's post on What would you be if you weren't in the Information Technology Services Industry?

This set me up thinking. I had been thinking of many ways to drum up money over the days. One was freelancing in web design, something which I am already doing. Another was serving advertisements on pages, and some more were software development, corporate profile designing etc. Now i have begun to notice that all of these are in the IT field and I have never thought of any other revenue generator other than IT!!

Phew!! This set me thinking! I can try my hand at selling stuff, since I talk well, but it will surely take more than that!! I can write something for publications if they are willing to publish and pay me as well.. ;-) I can start my own laundry business!! Hmmm...

I am out of ideas!
So, I am putting the same question as Xavier put in..
What would you be??

Easy million!

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 19:46:00 +0000

I came across The Million Dollar Webpage again today. It is a totally novel concept of selling pixels to advertisers over a guaranteed five year period and perhaps more which helped the founder of the site, Alex Tew to pay his way through college.

It is kind of interesting to see so many small images advertising and automatically incites us to click on the whacky ones! Looks cluttered, but he's sold out!! At 1$ per pixel, he's already made a cool million!!

I have also come across many copy-cat sites similar to this which aren't popular. On the internet, if one guy (or gal) comes up with an idea, all the others try to ape the same and try to acheive success, sometimes ruining the original business too.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So I think any copy-cat sites will only have pure comedy value, whereas mine possibly has a bit of comedy PLUS some actual pull in terms of advertising dollars (I will be able to afford swanky socks, they will only get to buy crappy ones probably! They could have my old ones, if they like).

Alex Tew in his site's FAQ to the question Are you worried about copy-cats/rip-offs? :-)

Got an original idea? You might just make a million out of it! Good luck!

Orkut sucks!

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 17:36:00 +0000

Orkut is a good community website alright, but the functionality sucks in a whole variety of ways. There's something called the Scrapbook, which is as the name suggests, Scrap.

It is something which you can write notes and other stuff and post it for others to see and others can write in your scrapbook too, but of late, it has become a convention of sorts to 'scrap someone' as it is called and then, the reply has to be 'scrapped' in the scrapbook of the person initiating the conversation!!

Crap!!

Small messages are good, but people who I believe either do not have any work to do or Google is paying them to scrap, they just start chatting right in the scrapbooks. There is absolutely no privacy, anybody and everybody can track what you are talking with one another. Replying is another pain if you follow the convention of replying in the scrapbook of the person who initiates the conversation. There is no "Reply" option. You have to Click on the person's name, migrate to the person's profile, click on his scrapbook and then scrap!! Crap again!! And there is no way to easily track what you are talking about if a person is late to reply and your original message drowns under newer messages!!

The community feature is another pain. Yeah, Anybody can create communities, but there is no way to search for posts within a community which is not very good news. In a large number of support related communities and other similar communities, people ask you to 'search' for posts before posting a similar one.. And with over a 1000 posts and an even larger number of replies, it isnt easy work and we'll be better off asking someone directly instead of through the community and being at the receiving end of the Orkut Experts who can somehow search for entries magically(as they ask you to do).

Orkut is good at networking friends and having contacts, but other than that, it sucks bigtime. I do occasionally hangout there, but everything for courtesy's sake to reply to people who 'scrap' me and to prevent myself from going to the dumps by not replying to friend requests. Eventually.

Searching for a place to live!

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 18:04:00 +0000

My friend Vignesh set off on a quest to find us a decent place to live in that wouldn't be too far from our workplace at Bangalore. Due to some illogical reasons, I was unable to accompany him to the same. He went to a few places and was almost contented with a house which had a small hall and two small bedrooms. This would be more than enough for the two of us, but he wasn't contented and set off again.

He hasn't had any luck today and is on his way back. Think I'll have to go with him the second time and see if the previous house I was talking about is still available and maybe finalise the deal. I need a place to stay and I need it soon.

People from Bangalore, Any peaceful-residential locality-near Bannergetta road at Bangalore? Hope I am not asking for too much.. :-D

Create mobile picture messages to be sent through SMS easily!!

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 18:46:00 +0000

I came across this nifty utility for converting conventional image files to the OTA format to be sent as picture messages using your mobile phone. The source code and the binary for the same can be found at The Code Project. Since zipped files are only available for download to registered users(free) of the Code Project, I am uploading it to my own server for your convenience, Instructions to use follow below.

The source code and binary available here were developed by Alireza Naghizadeh and are available for free download here. All copyrights for the below two files rest with Alireza Naghizadeh.

OTA Converter Source 5.79 KB
OTA Converter Binary 4.58 KB
(Ready to Use, Requires .NET framework, WinXP ready)

The interface is very minimalist with only one option as shown below,

All you have to do is, drag your black and white image of dimensions 72 pixels Width X 28 pixels Height (The standard size of SMS Picture messages) into this tiny window, Here you can see that I have dragged a small logo into the utility.

Works best when the image is 72px by 28px and in the .bmp format and has only black or white pixels. You can draw using MSPaint too.

When you click on Convert, it'll prompt you with a dialog box to store the resulting file as an OTA picture file with the .ota extension occupying 256 bytes. You can transfer these .ota files to your mobile and then sms your friends with your custom picture messages messages!!

This application is not good at converting grayscale images, but you can create bitmap images having only black and white and use this to convert to the .ota format.

You can also get hundreds of preview images of picture messages online which you can convert to the .ota format without paying a penny! ;-) ;-)

Some cool free preview images can be found at the Moby Project. Just save all the pictures that you like from the site, download the OTA Converter Binary, Drag your selected pics into the application, convert it to the .ota format, transfer to your mobile and message your friends! Save money by not paying premium rates for direct mobile downloads! Enjoy!

Monopoly sucks

noreply@blogger.com (Thiya) — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 18:49:00 +0000

With the Football World Cup fever at its peak, I consider myself lucky that my Cable TV provider, SCV, has decided to air ESPN on which the matches are shown live. For over two years, some channels were not provided here at Coimbatore since they were pay channels and not everyone was willing to pay for it. And with the absence of Set-top boxes, we cannot individually ask for the channels to be provided as there was no way for custom downlinks.

I lost two years of Formula 1. Two full seasons since Star Sports, the official broadcaster wasn't provided here. I wasn't interested to follow the happenings online as the thrill of watching a live race is absent. :-(

Ofcourse, it was my mistake of not going in for a Direct-to-home connection like Dish TV.

But anyways, as of now, they are temporarily providing ESPN and I can watch the football matches. Peace. And my dad has announced that we'll be going in for a DTH connection soon. :-D Sadly I'll be far away..