micro blogging and macro narration

Twitter everywhere. I am really a fan of twitter. It's a remarkable way to bring bloggers *together and am surprised to see it everywhere. I could also see media companies promoting twitter apps in their set top box.

But i don't know why but for some reason i am not able to tweet much even though i like the way it takes the message to the people. I remember myself and Joseph were discussing about one such idea exactly a year before(when we never heard of twitter, or say it was not so popular) and we even kept a name for it, life blog. The word life is because, the whole intension of the platform is to narrate the life

So when did this micro blogging idea came into picture ? Is it an easy way to bring in mobile users to blog ? I feel mobile web would bring in lot of changes to the way blogs are read or say conceived. Narration !! Interesting who knows, we may even have a twitter feed running in our personal blog site sometime, Soon !

Another interesting analysis about twitter. It has enormous content nerrated by souls in this world and at times it becomes less manageable. So does it gets shaped up like how a macro blog (or blog) gets shaped? The word *shape has a deeper meaning in the world of expression, esp. in the world of blogs. I believe the regular blogs gives the author a tool to shape up information than it is with the micro blog. Tweets are some sort of expressions carried out in a *timeline. Small time !! I call it small time because it's the very old nature of west to live every moment and gauging every second. I do not find anything wrong in this conception of "every second" living unless you carry a long size mini notes with you to remember.

It's really nice to see what people narrate in the little time slots. Mostly it's like communicating in pieces. Exactly like a asynchronous telephone conversation. Say telegram sort. It's a gram basically. This little concept drags many people towards it. Say for example, how you felt when you saw you exam result, how you learnt cooking you favourite dish etc.., These things may not shape up to something big, but it has it's own beauty and essence.

drive alone

I must say, it's an experience of life time.
Attended Sudharsan wedding at Coimbatore somewhere near peelamedu. I am meeting Sudharsan after a very long gap of around 7 years. And i was happy to see him as a bride groom (and later with the broom :) ). I was more happy to eat kerala pappadam and meals post knot.

Around 12:15 pm (ideal start time in my opinion), cloud covered, very cool breeze, Nil traffic, fruit juice, a wonderful car to drive, ar.rehman songs, good road and of course tank full petrol. What else do we need for a perfect 500kms journey.

It would have been nice if friends were there with me, but no worries this is quite a different experience.

I hit the avanasi road by around 12:15 pm and crosses avanasi by around 1:00 pm. I drove slowly to avoid pot holes. But given that 45 Min's is pretty quick. I was a little confused whether to start with the radio or with music CD player. I choose to pick radio since i do not get signal after a certain distance. Suryan FM is quite an exception. It has a pretty broad coverage. One thing i understood, in Coimbatore based radio plays, there is less talking and more music. If you take Chennai it's exact opposite. And i could hear good ilayaraja songs which was a perfect match to the mood.

Time i reached mettur it started raining and i got the chance to stand near the mettur dam and take a snap in the rain. People were running around, but i was patient enough to cover my cam with a towel for the snap.

Then i moved towards toppur which is a little climb. It's a forest area and it rained very heavily. But it was manageable. Thanks to the defogger. I had to put the wiper on full speed to get a glimpse of the road. I thought of stopping the car in middle but the stop lights is never seen by the lorry drivers. So that was little risky i though and managed to reach the toppur town.

Took the mysterious left turn (sundar knows about this turn better). I call it mysterious because once in the same route i rushed following a race and was surprised to see a sharp turn to meet the Bangalore highway. Sundar was horrified looking at the turn and how i managed to control. So i joined the wonderful Bangalore highway around 4:00 pm. I took lot of time near mettur to take snaps and for tea, biscuit etc..

So, hunger strike and i stopped at ananda bhavan in the highway which is located somewhere in the mid of toppur and dharmapuri. It is quite a nice place with garden, children play area etc.., I went to the self service counter since i did not have much time to spend there. I was alone !! :)
So... to my surprise i got hot pongal with 3 chutneys and sambar. It taste delicious. But i always fear pongal because it may make you feel drousy and it;s not the perfect feeling to have when you drive at 120km/hr. Seriously not advisable.

So, to avoid any mishap i wash my face well and told to myself not to feel sleepy. That worked out pretty well ! I always think this way.. if you practice commanding yourself (explicitly / implicitly) you tend to remember and take serious steps. May not be applicable for majority though.

So... Then i headed towards krishnagiri and reached by around 6:00 pm.. Again the road was beautiful and full of flowers planted in the divider !! Took the right turn at krishnagiri and headed towards Chennai. The route which i really love and test all my speeding skills. But this time i was exact opposite. I never wanted to rush and wanted to note down the towns.

By around 7:00 pm i got little bored driving in rain and wanted to stop. And more over i was very hungry by that time. And if i eat well, then again i cannot drive properly. So planned to make a halt. I wanted to try out some cheaper lodges to save money but that was not so safe my friend in vellur advices. So as per his advice i took a costly stay at Mount Paradise (somewhere near the third vellore over bridge). These bridges in vellur are pretty tricky. If you get down the wrong bridge to take the serice lane, most of the times you need to take a big U turn to get to the right track. Esp. at night times, the city is very lonely and not so fun to be.

Then, at mount Paradise.. had a very nice dinner (it was pouring outside) in the hotel ad headed to the room. I could not get any sleep (even though i had AC + 2 pillows + Rug). I switch on the tv to watch star cricket. Botham was batting, i started to get sleep. Thank you botham and English cricketers esp.

Next day morning i picked my vellur friend and hit the road to Chennai. It rained pretty heavily. Reached home in 2 hours and packed my bag for the office trip !

the busy act

Had tough time last one month dealing with the job hunt and finally landed in the new place. I could not sit and write even a sentence. Thanks to my mom who came back from Hyderabad to help me at the toughest times (job switching and running around stuffs).

I bought airtel digital tv connection just to see kamalhassan's 50th year of cinema celebrations "clearly". The local cable operator is little annoyed though because the number of connections are coming down. People are ready to spend when they get better picture clarity with the digital system. But i would say that these digital systems have long way to go. Esp. the Live services like booking for movie on demand etc. And airtel is new in the market considering tata sky and dish tv.

I would love to buy/upgrade (buy vs upgrade would be an interesting game) the record and play system and interested to see how airtel competes with tata sky plus. It's been 6 lazy months since i hit the gym and i am very much geared to do that. I found one descent gym near my house which is Air cooled and has pretty good space to workout including floor exercises. Hopefully i continue the workout this time without any hiccups and manage the satan inside which usually comes up with a tail long excuses.

And this post is to just wake myself and start on with some healthy lifestyle. Sort of self prepared tonic.

update: Airtel is giving me real tough time. No signals received + Customer care system is down + Website is briken. Worst service.

Local operator wins !!

break is taken and not offered

I just dont know how kids manage now-a-days. Esp people who face the toil of choosing a career course post +2 or say junior college. 16 years of struggle oops. I feel they just need a break atleast before choosing the major. My personal experience, i never struggle to choose the major because i was left with very few courses. That was again because i only wanted to do it in a premier institute.

There are some exception ofcourse. I have seen people who aspire to become doctor from their early stages of life. They even play with the doctor set (Ahh i hate that, as I had to appear as a nurse in a fancy dress competition. I dream t posing like a macho man). Anyways those were real funny days.

So coming to the point, how do you really find *that* real interest somewhere very deep inside yourself before you choose the course. I just had this thought when i was traveling between Munnar and Coimbatore. I even told the idea to my friend and he had a very deep sleep post hearing me.

Why not people just take a year break and go on vacation through out the country post +2 or junior college? Why dont they work for few months like doing service in ashram, family business or say just to take survey about your interest of choice. I dont call this as a year gap in your career, but a year gained to really understand where your primary strength is.

But this takes real guts to study with your junior and more than that making your parents understand about this wiered idea. Well, if someone had told me this idea when i was 16, i would have definitely given a thought.

And more than anything else i would like to see my parents reacting to ideas like this. Jai Hind.

remembering project gnome access

Wow.. Those were the excellent times. I believe the best idea to get back confidence in life is to think about the past. Especially the college days. I had the best time with Ranga.

It was exactly 5 years before we were sitting in front of our HOD to discuss about our final year project. Before that a brief rollback. We had to do our final semester project in a company and we had no other papers to write for the semester. Getting through the viva / presentation was not a serious affair though. We both wanted to do a worthy project and so we decided to try for project at Novell. We got the approval from the company to do the project but we had to do it from college. The whole philosophy of Opensource is to work in a widely spread team wherein you don't have any sort of formal introduction to fellow people. We call each other by nick.

The problem about doing this project is that we needed few ports to be opened for IRC and CVS. IRC is a chat central where both of our projects are discussed and CVS is the source repository. So you know how much difficult it is to convince the head and at same time convince the administrators of the college proxy server. The worst thing was that we came to know that Mr. Head and Mr.Admin were never in common terms for anything happening there. It was a shock to us.

We somehow wanted to do this project and we know that it's not easy to get the nod. Nightmare was that i had to explain Mr.Head about computer networks. Oops forget it. Ranga was also in deep dhyan. Everyone by that time had already got acceptance for their projects. Even we could have tried somewhere else but we never felt like taking a step back.

So our plan was to first convince our admin. Mr. admin is not an easy guy to tackle. Dude is quite talented but at the same time he is not easy. So how do we convince him to get the ports open ? After careful inquiry we found that Mr.admin is working on Solaris for a long time. There you go.. To my delight he was also learning Linux and preparing for the certification. You know how it was in the transition period when many Solaris guys were after Linux for better jobs. So i had little bulb glowing. I asked Ranga to accompany me to the admin room. I have seen this guy before at college so i can identify him. Ranga was still thinking what i was going to do. Even i was little apprehensive.

I just entered into his room and gave him his due respect. Hi sir... It appeared as though no one has addressed him with Sir before. So he was mildly startled. But that word came out of my mouth with true respect. I introduced myself as a Redhat Linux Certified Engineer (i had recently cleared the exam) and told him that i am in need of help. I said "you are the only person who can help me". The guy sort of cooled down immediately (at least i felt so).

I just told him the truth. I believe it's better to speak truth at crisis. Wow... may be this is my next post. Ok.. back to the college, He listen to me carefully and i ended up saying "you are the only person here who can really understand how important this project is and how important your help will be to decide my project". Thank god, Mr.admin was convinced. I should tell you, he is a very nice person by heart. May be he just has a surgery recently !

So guess what ? He just asked me where your problem exactly is. With me or someone else ? I told him clearly that if you trust me i shall make the best use of the facility and not misuse at any case and also told him about convincing Mr.Head. To my amazement he just started walking towards the HOD room. Ranga was little worried and i was horrified about thinking the outcome. Well he marched into the room and directly looked at Mr.Head face to face, Eye to eye. It was complete silence. There he goes... "If you permit me i shall give them access to our network resource in a controlled and safe manner so that they can work on this special project". Wow.... what a communication. This is what i call communication without complexity / complications. Mr.Head had to decide. I don't know what ran in his mind (rather what all did not run) he replied, "if it's no issue for you to perform this special case then i don't have any problem". Wow, ranga and me could not control our happiness. It was as if we have completed our project and got best project award.

Even now ranga used to discuss how we solved this complex issue. It was mainly about communication. Thank god, thank Mr.Head and big thanks to Mr.Admin. I think we then celebrated at hotel arunachalas with roti and our favorite kadai paneer.

achieving it

It's little weird idea. But cant help it.

It uses simple computer programming constructs like for, foreach, if, while, else, break and continue. It's about following your aim/dreams. I call 'it'

if I have a mind, I will be marching towards it,

else I would be marching towards it without mind.

while I am marching and if I am forced to go back, I shall not mind to break out of it,

for the reason I will start over for it all again.

for each mile stone reached,

continue and break not unless it is to continue all over again for it.

Well, this might look crazy but i felt desperate to try one after watching the movie Dead poets society.

On the auto mode

I drive from home to office and i use to pass one huge fly-over which is built recently. It's kind of tricky turn that i need to make somewhere over the fly-over to take the right road when i reach ground. I used to miss the turn and just go straight when i am thinking something and not concentrating on the traffic.

But it's quite common among drivers to be on this auto mode i.e not concentrating on the route for the reason that they are used to it quite well. It;s somewhere in the memory we have a special agent trained to navigate us automatically. People call it practice though.

I have been on several complex routes but i am quite easy to adapt to this auto mode or route navigation. But not this time with the crazy fly-over (or crazy me). I am using this route past 1 month and i fail the turn at least 1ce in a week. It's not pain though, to rejoin the right road even when i miss. But it's strange why auto mode doesn't work well for me in this case.

My analysis / reasoning

1. Is it because there is not much pain when i miss the turn

2. my mind is full of thoughts when i reach the flyover

3. no prominent sign board near the turn

4. vasthu errors (do we have this complex calculation for fly-overs too... !!)

5. i have some genes problem