Abhinav's Blogography ...

Last Post here

2004-08-08T16:22:00.000+05:30

Variety is the spice of life .. or so they say. Which is why I am moving to a new blog at livejournal (lj for short).

Twisted

2004-07-28T02:37:00.000+05:30

Currently reading a book of short stories, twisted by Jeffrey Deaver. It contains quite a few stories, all with an eponymous ending. Most of them have to do with crimes related to extra marital affairs - which makes one wonder how much energy people spend in cheating, getting cheated upon in turn, and then getting caught avenging themselves! Like one of my friends was mentioning today, Shaadi ka laddoo - Khayee to pachhtaye, Na khaaye to bhi pacchtaye (Mail me if you want a translation into English).

During the weekend, completed The Last Juror by John Grisham. This is, by far the most mediocre of his books whch have read, one which just kept rambling like an overused chewing gum, devoid of any action. In fact, it would not be wrong to say that the book was boring,e specially from an author who has penned classics like Partner, The Runaway Jury, Rainmaker, The Firm..to name a few.

Weekend movies

2004-07-24T03:32:00.000+05:30

On a nice Friday evening (or, to be more precise, Saturday Morning), I utilized my time in watching two great movies.

The first one, titled The Usual Suspects is about a bunch of gangsters who are forced together in a police lineup, and go on from there. The movie, which started out with sequences that left not an iota of doubt as to where the bollywood flick kaante was inspired from, made me shed all my hypnagogic tendencies and delve deep into the gripping drama. With spectacular performances by Kevin Spacy et. al., teamed with excellent screenplay and a gripping storyline, this is undoubtedly a must watch movie. In fact, the plot is such that it will need more than a single time to realize what actually happens.

The second movie for the night turned out to be another gem. The Shawshank Redemption written by the legendary Stephen King (of the x-files fame). This is a story about a guy who is charged with the murder of his wife and her lover, and his life in prison, where his unconventional attitude in the stark face of atrocities enable him to achieve his desires. This film takes one through a range of emotions from hope to despair, and the suspense is broken only in the fag end of the movie.

All in all, two great movies which should be on the must-watch list of everyone.

Btw, yes, the time for this post is in IST ;)

2004-07-20T20:20:00.000+05:30

Visit this site for a heart-rending story.

Pulp Fiction

2004-07-17T04:00:00.000+05:30

Watched the Quentin Tarantino Classic Pulp Fiction.

Having seen Kill Bill earlier, there was a strong sense of deja-vu as far as the screenplay was concerned. Feelings of action and suspense were omnipotenet, right till the last scene. Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman, John Travolta, Samuel Jackson - all veterans of hollywood, packed quite a punch.

All in all, a good entertainer. Wonder where I could get the soundtrack from?

Perl Tip: Replace across multiple files

2004-07-16T16:24:00.000+05:30

Say you want to replace xxx with yyy across multiple files

perl -pi -e 's/xxx/yyy/g' files

Great work from MS guys ;)

2004-07-13T12:20:00.000+05:30

Listen to this spoof of American Pie.

Did you know?

2004-07-07T11:03:00.000+05:30

If you have more than one tab open in mozilla firefox 0.9, you can open more by double-clicking on some free space in the tabs area.

Better than using ctrl-t in some cases :)

Are you a geek?

2004-07-02T22:51:00.000+05:30

Take the Geek Test to find out if you are one !

Be forewarned .. it is a bit long.

My score was just enough to certify me as a geek..which is not much, just 1 step above the lowest :(

Like they say, there's miles to go before I sleep .. problem is, the time to sleep come closer day by day ;)

How Tax Cuts Work

2004-07-02T20:20:00.000+05:30

You've heard the cry in the past "It's just a tax cut for the rich!",
and it is accepted as fact. But what does that really mean?

The following explanation may help.

Suppose that every day, 10 men go out for dinner. The bill for all 10
comes to $100. They decided to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes,
and it went like this:

* The first four men (the poorest) paid nothing.
* The fifth paid $1.
* The sixth $3.
* The seventh $7.
* The eighth $12.
* The ninth $18.
* The tenth man (the richest) paid $59.

All 10 were quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner
said: "Since you are all such good customers, I'm going to reduce the
cost of your daily meal by $20." So now dinner for the 10 only cost $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

The first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But
how should the other six, the paying customers, divvy up the $20
windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share"?

They realised that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted
that from everybody's share, then the fifth and sixth men would each end
up being paid to eat. The restaurateur suggested reducing each man's
bill by roughly the same percentage, thus:

* The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).
* The sixth paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving).
* The seventh paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving).
* The eighth paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving).
* The ninth paid $14 instead of £18 (22% saving).
* The tenth paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving).

Each of the six was better off, and the first four continued to eat for
free, but outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their
savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed
to the tenth man "but he got $10!" "That's right," exclaimed the fifth
man. "I only saved a dollar too. It's unfair that he got ten times more
than me!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when
I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get
anything at all. The system exploits the poor!" The nine men surrounded
the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for dinner. The nine sat
down and ate without him, but when they came to pay the bill, they
discovered that they didn't have enough money between all of them for
even half of it.

That, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our
tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most
benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being
wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore. There are
lots of good restaurants in Monaco and the Caribbean(tax saving havens)

With thanks to David R. Kamerschen, Professor of Economics, University
of Georgia.

Doxygen - A code documentation tool

2004-06-23T21:14:00.000+05:30

While scouting for some pointers on multi platform code documentation systems, I came across Doxygen.

This is a code documentation system (much like Sun's Javadoc) which supports a bevy of languages - C++ ,C , Javam Objective-C, IDL, and to some extent PHP, C#, and D (yes, that is a language:) ).

It is also available in the Redhat (now Fedora) distros... A must have for any reasonably complex project.

All of Us

2004-06-23T13:43:00.000+05:30

Created a new Team Blog All of Us. This is for my friends who want to keep in touch bt do not have messenger access. (Of course, ppl who do are welcome too :) ).

The first person to demand this was Anirban .. and since Akshatha is the other person I am aware of who has copious free time to waste on blogs (she visits mine), she's in it too.

If you wanna be a part of it, just drop a mail to one of us :)

The week that was

2004-06-19T02:36:00.000+05:30

Completed the Linux Admin course today. Five days of playing around with linux - compiling the kernel, configuring the network, knowing about nfs/samba etc.

Also got to know about this great System Administration tool called webmin, Using this tool, one can do all the system administration tasks on a linux system remotely, through a web interface!. Creating partitions, setting up LVM, Clustering - its all there.

Linux Administration

2004-06-16T22:53:00.000+05:30

Am attending this course on linux administration. It's a week long, full time course at work nd am pretty much wrapped in it. Provides a whole lot of insight into the Linux system.

Today was day 3, with 2 more days to go...

Blogging is NOT a waste of time, after all

2004-06-12T21:09:00.000+05:30

For ppl who thing blogging is a waste of time, this link provides some useful insight.

Whew.. I already feel a LOT less guilty ;)

XML: Elements or Attributes?

2004-06-12T21:03:00.000+05:30

What with increased activity in XML for me recently, there was really a bit of dilemma regarding the perennial element vs attribute question. This is a pretty good article discussing the whole thing.

Gmail allowed me to invite ppl

2004-06-12T20:58:00.000+05:30

gmail allowed me to invite 3 ppl .. (in addition to 2 it allowed earlier)..

Have already used 2 of the invites..still one left in case any one's interested ;)

Yahoo Messenger hits a 6 !

2004-05-31T15:55:00.000+05:30

Yahoo recently released ym 6 .. Old Wine in new bottle, with "audibles", "avataars" etc.. But they come for a price ...RAM..lots of it ..

Written in flash (as a reliable source told me), it consumes a whopping 57MB of RAM on my P4 .. Maybe it does so since I have 1Gig, so I could not notice a performance decrease ...

The Secret Source of Google's Power

2004-05-11T20:55:00.000+05:30

An excellent article on google's pwerful computing machinery which drives its offerings (including gmail) can be found
here.

Gmail - Gmail is different. Here's what you need to know.

2004-04-27T19:27:00.000+05:30

Gmail finally invited me to have an account with them :)

unfortunately .. abhinav@gmail.com was taken already .. so my current id is abhinavmodi at gmail dot com

Competition to gmail... ?

2004-04-27T19:20:00.000+05:30

These guys say they provide !GB mail storage ...

Firefox...

2004-04-23T14:16:00.000+05:30

Installed Mozilla Firefox .. looks neat !

Also intalled an extension rss feeder which can be integrated with firefox. More reviews on that later ..

gmail and blogger

2004-04-23T11:40:00.000+05:30

Blogger and gmail seem to have a collaboration wherein blogger.com users get a sneak invite to gmail.

I didnt get one because of missing out on posting :(

well, serves me right ...

Long time no see...

2004-02-24T22:15:00.000+05:30

Its been almost a month since I posted..That's too damn big an interval to not update your blog... :(

Just shows how big an procrastinator I am ..

neways, a lot happened during the past month or so ... The high points being

1. Family visiting me at Hyderabad
2. All of us going to Srisailam
3. Valentine's day ... ;) (More about this later... :) )
4. Sudden visit to Tirupati

Guess I'll just back-post when I get time ... :)
There is at least one of my close friends who avidly reads this crap I write ... (Guess she must be having as much time to waste as me .. ;) ..Here's one of her comments (Which prompted me to leave all else and post right now! :)

The missing movie ..

2004-01-29T22:48:00.000+05:30

The movie I missed was "Enter the Dragon" starring Bruce Lee .. :)

Whew .. That takes a great load off my mind :)

Weekend Workout

2004-01-27T19:34:00.000+05:30

Saw the following movies on an extended weekend .. More abt them later :)

Started on Saturday Night - Saw one movie
Sunday - As far as I can remember, 3 ..
Monday - Thought I wont see any, but saw 2 , i guess :)

1. Point Break
2. North by North West
3. Murder By Death
4. Space Cowboys
5. Jerry McGuire
6. Die Hard

I'm missing a flick or two...need to do something abt my memory :( :(

Pretty Busy these days

2004-01-20T21:00:00.000+05:30

No time for my beloved blog .. :( :(

Isn't it nice when things just work?

2004-01-16T09:42:00.000+05:30

This is probably one of the greatest advertisements of all times : The New Honda Accord Cog commercial.

What is more surprising is that the ad is all real - actually shot as such, and not trick photography !

I am googled ! :) (and yahooed too .. )

2004-01-14T23:04:00.000+05:30

Finally .. Searching for Abhinav Modi on google or yahoo brings up this site .. :) :)

Blogging - Where do we draw the line ?

2004-01-11T20:10:00.000+05:30

Here's a great post on the dilemna faced by people in deciding what to blog and what not ..

Publicity ..

2004-01-11T14:39:00.000+05:30

Added a blogchalk to this blog. Hopefully it will be picked up in a few weeks ..

Watched Jhankar Beats for the 2nd (or was it the 3rd ?) time- The movie with Sanjay Suri, Juhi Chawla, Rahul Bose, Rinkie Khanna .. and a guest appearance by Helen - this was yesterday (or to be more precise, today morning at 12:00 AM )

oops !!..i forgot to mention shayan munshi and riya sen were also there .. :)

Back to my blog ..

2004-01-10T02:33:00.000+05:30

Posting after 3 days ..

actually its just two ..

Missed Thursday due to a conf call and leaving early. My roomies were surprised to see that I left office at the early hour of 9:00 PM .. but the reason was a lotta goodies to eat had come over from home, Kolkata ..

Likewise, Friday has extended into today (Saturday), and Im still at Office at the arguably ungodly hour of 2:17 AM .. will probably leave for home by the 3:00 home drop ..

Listening to a nice collection of songs by Kishore Kumar ..

CHALTE CHALTE - CHALTE CHALTE
CHHOOKAR MERE MAN KO - YAARANA
DIL KYA KARE - JULIE
HAMEN TUMSE PYAR KITNA - KUDRAT
HUM BEWAFA - SHALIMAR
KASME VAADE - KASME VAADE
KISKA RASTA DEKHE - JOSHILA
KYA KABAR KYA PATA SAHEB
PAL PAL DIL KE PAAS - BLACKMAIL
PYAR MANGA HAI TUMI SE - COLLEGE GIRL
SAGAR KINARE - SAAGAR
TERE MERE MILAN KI YEH RAINA - ABHIMAAN

XML

2004-01-07T22:15:00.000+05:30

Another item added to my list of things to do ...

Need to learn XML and XSLT. Should be interesting ..

Know a bit of it, but to quote a famous poet (You should know who if you are reading my blog carefully ! )
Miles to go before I sleep ...

A Nice verse

2004-01-06T18:06:00.000+05:30

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I have always been inspired by these words from Robert Frost's poem. Liked them so much that they were a standard part of my conclusion pages for college project reports :)
Get the full poem here.

Work in earnest ..

2004-01-05T17:00:00.000+05:30

With every one back from vacations, time to start work again ..not that it stopped for me in the 1st place .. :)

Using the word earnest in the title triggered memories of a hilarious play by Oscar Wilde .. The Importance of Being Earnest . This is one of his classic works, and a play which all comedy aficionados must read.

It is surprising that the same author who has written this has also written the serious novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

In Office Again :)

2004-01-04T13:44:00.000+05:30

. . :)

Lots to do ...

In Office

2004-01-03T12:30:00.000+05:30

Back to work on Saturday :)

Last week being very hectic and me not feeling well, a bit of work has piled up. Got to finish it by today.

Started working on Winrunner. Seems a bit of a pain, to start with. When compared with the ease of programming in Perl (the other language being used frequently by me), Winrunner has a steep learning curve and is a bit slow.

In fact, I'm writing this post while one of the test cases is running in background :)

Coming to Office on a Saturday may not be appealing to everyone., but it is a nice experience. In fact, I'm thinking of making one of my new Year Resolutions (of the not-to-be-broken type) to come to office regularly on weekends :)

Still need to come up with a full list of resolutions. Hope to do it by tomorrow.

All about Oracle IDC

2004-01-02T21:23:00.000+05:30

Came across a decent article about Oracle IDC here.

Happy New year.. :)

2004-01-01T22:22:00.000+05:30

New Year started with a lot of phone calls. This was followed by spending the day with Syamala .. Had lunch at Mischief, which is Suniel Shetty's restaurant in MPM Mall..Good food, nice ambience, and reasonable.

Unexpected call ..

2003-12-31T14:15:00.000+05:30

Got a pleasant surpsie when my long lost friend Syamala called up :). She's is Hyd, so will meet her tomorrow ...

Plans for New Year

2003-12-31T09:14:00.000+05:30

Thinking of going to Dhola-ri-Dhani for the new year. Thats what happens when you dont have a couple :) .

Nothing to say .................

2003-12-30T12:11:00.000+05:30

Just a regular day with nothing much happening. Still feeling tired after the journey :(

Back to Hyderabad

2003-12-29T10:04:00.000+05:30

Reached Hyderabad in morning after a literally back breaking journey. Sitting in the last seat of a bus for 12 hours is enough of a roller coaster ride.

Time up !

2003-12-28T21:07:00.000+05:30

Day 2 in Bangalore whizzed past....Had invited a few friends for lunch. This was followed by a visit to ashu's place. Then, after a cup of coffee at woody's - it was time to board the bus back to hyderabad

Nice Movie, Actually

2003-12-27T22:58:00.000+05:30

Today being my 20-sometihng bday, went to a movie in the afternoon, called Love, Actually. Was a nice. light romantic christmas comedy with a whole lotta love stories .. :)

This was followed by a few walks up and down the lifeline of Bangalore - Brigade Road, where else...:)

Moving around bangalore is more painful when compared to hyderabad. For one thing the roads in hyderabad are wider. Hence, traffic snarls are non existent - at least in the areas I move around ..Srinagar Colony, Hitec City .. Compared to this, Bangalore has a lot ot traffic jams as well as stops.

btw ..went back and saw Munnabhai MBBS for the 3rd time !!! (This time on vcd)

Day 1 in Bangalore

2003-12-27T10:26:00.000+05:30

Reached Bangalore in the morning around 9. Trust Indian railways to be late...

Bangalore reailway station has a new eatout place called comesum. Was good, but a bit costly, what with 25 bucks for a Masala Dosa !

On a break .....

2003-12-26T17:10:00.000+05:30

Leaving for Bangalore now ..will go by train round abouts 7.

Hope to be back by Monday morning ...

Munnabhai MBBS

2003-12-26T10:27:00.000+05:30

Watched the movie Munnabhai MBBS for the 2nd time... on 25th.

The fact that I can see it once more indicates that it is a good movie..no .. great movie

Being Twenty-Something

2003-12-24T23:05:00.000+05:30

Got this fwd message today...

Seemed like a pretty long mail to read..but did read it completely. It is worth a glance ..

"Being Twenty-Something"

They call it the "Quarter-life Crisis." It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don't recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren't really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job... and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you.

Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn't. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you know that you aren't a bad person.

One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap.

Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.

You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself... and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out

Yes.. It does end pretty abruptly ....

Happy Birthday ..!!

2003-12-24T10:26:00.000+05:30

Today is the bday of a couple of my friends ..

Divya celebrates her 20-something bday today..She's in Bangalore right now, working at ivega.

Wish her a happy bday and gr8 day(s) ahead :)

Rajesh, who is also a great cook, also has his bday today...Best wishes to him too.

I'm On ... !!

2003-12-23T21:39:00.000+05:30

Finally, after months (years ... ?? ) of procrastinating, my serious effort towards establishing my presence online begins ....!

A giant leap for (a certain) man, a small step for mankind .... ? :) ( Sincere Apologies to Neil Armstrong ..)

Still to come .... my web page :)