Shopping on the Web...

Today, I was reading an article on Windows 7 on indiatimes. An ad showed up on the website indicating (Nikon) Digi Cams are available starting Rs 5800/-. Sounds interesting, so I clicked on it...

The click took me to the camera section of the seller website but the first page showed lots of Kodak and Canon cameras.

Where is that Nikon of the Ad? So I checked on the checkbox on the left to see Nikon only section and here's what I got -

Lesson Learnt (Again) -

1. WYSIWYG rarely works in the Adv+shopping world.

2. Indiatimes needs to catch up on Google Chrome.

My suggestion to Indiatimes - You may want to put a "* conditions apply" tag on those ads.

Go Green!

I see many "Go Green" campaigns running around me these days, be it the ads on TV and Radio or initiatives at work. I have consciously done a few things to abide by the advices given in these campaigns - 

Cut down on the number of print outs

While I was on a small time assignment in the US, I did not configure printer at all. This led me to request a friend of mine to take the printout of my return tickets for me! Recently, at work, they change the print server configuration and I have survived so far without configuring it. 

Switch off the car at signals

My inner self reminds me to switch off the car at the signals but I fail to do so many times when it is hot outside and the car AC is on and all the other vehicles which are not switched off, puff out smoke clouds into my car. 

Take public transport for commuting 

Recently the municipal body started monsoon preparations in my locality and they have blocked and dug one side of a very busy road near our house to complete a drainage construction work which is on for over an year now. Interestingly, during the recent elections, when people raised this issue with the campaigning politicians, the politician asked them to talk about the problems of the nation (and forget about these tiny winy problems which will take their own course to disappear). 

Anyways, the road block prompted me to think about taking public transport instead of driving to the office. This is a very recent initiative and I hope I manage to continue this for some time. Car pooling is another nice idea but I find it very difficult to match my work timings with those of others. I will have to learn it probably because taking public transport is not a very encouraging experience so far. We will see!

Taking stairs instead of Elevators

I do this sometime but not always. Laziness prevails mostly! But I seriously dislike those set of elevators which do not have a software to schedule them together. I have got such sets at my apartment. Most of the residents when they want to use the elevator, they will happily push the switches for both of them and wait for both to come to their floor while they are definitely going to use only one. Big time energy waste!

Hope this little post of mine encourages a few other folks to do better than me...

For now GO GREEN!

In US...

This is my first visit to the US and past 6 weeks have been a nice experience. I have these many things to write about, not sure if my schedule here will allow me to write on them - 

1) The Journey to the US

2) Driving in US

3) Snowfall

4) Sight Seeing

One good thing about the place where I am staying here is that I wake up every morning with this view outside the window -

It doesn't snow every morning here. And sleep with this view outside my window -

The Gateway Arch has been my prime subject in photographs so far. And I guess I would be uploading various photos of it if I manage to post all my blogs I mentioned above. 

When I was starting from India, my friend told me about this and it still struck me when I landed here in the downtown of St Louis. You feel like there is some curfew imposed in the city. There are very less people on the street. All you see is cars (if at all). It can also be due to the cold weather. In this city, I guess this phenomena is especially true with the downtown because we could see decent population moving around when we went to the Malls in midtown or further away. 

That's it for now. 

Formula 1 Drama!

Luck!

Drama!

Nail biting finish!

Climax - Anti-Climax!

Fantastic!

Unbelievable!

I have been trying to think about words which can describe today's F1-2008 finale@Interlagos. I started watching Tennis when Boris Becker's won the 1985 Wimbledon at the age of 17. I started following Formula1 keenly when I noticed blogs@my office and newspapers mentioning a young rookie doing podium finishes race after race in 2007 season. I actually became a fan of Hamilton right from the moment I saw him (a rookie!) holding Kimi all thru the race right from the beginning which Alonso won with McLaren 1-2. Prior to that my interests in Tennis or Formula1 was limited to newspaper sports columns.

Today I think I am sold to formula1. I uttered a thousand swear words to Kubica when I saw him doing those maneuvers between Vettel and Hamilton. I also for a moment believed like the Ferrari team that my favourite Racer has lost the title again till I heard Karun Chandhok shouting at the top of his voice that Timo Glock slowed down and Lewis Hamilton is fifth. The lady-luck turned her back on Hamilton last year while she has smiled on him this year. Scores are level! He has won this year's championship when it "sounded" like the whole world was against him. He can make a fresh start next season and please please please make less mistakes. But for the mistakes he would have been a champion by leaps and bounds in both 2007 and 2008 seasons, but a "no-mistakes-life" is impossible for mere mortals. Championship goes to the guy who makes least number of unforced errors.

Stories will come in pouring about those 30sec when it all happened but those 30sec were the most dramatic ones which people will remember for some time to come. If I say "long time to come" then it will undermine the fun that this game brings into the life of spectators and the players. Looking forward to the next season right away!

Fedora...

I used to use Fedora till I fell for Ubuntu sometimes back. I have never been loyal to any particular Linux distro till I started using Ubuntu a year or two back. That instinct of "switching distros" was probably on a high yesterday and I thought I should check how is Fedora doing these days. I checked Fedora website, currently Fedora 9 is available. Let's download the DVD so I went for the torrent way. I noticed that some 700 seeds were available and some 250+ users were downloading Fedora 9 with me. I was amazed and I thought probably Fedora 9 was released recently. So I checked the schedule. Some more amazement for me, Fedora 9 was released on May 13 this year. And Fedora 10 is just a month away. Hmmm, I am totally out of touch and it seems Fedora is quite popular. But I cancelled the download and will wait for Fedora 10 to get released. The Ubuntu upgrade is just a day away anyway!

I am really very interested now in checking the torrent data on Fedora 10 release day!

~Mks

BIAL Visit...

Last Saturday, we went to the Bangalore International Airport. I have uploaded some of the photographs from that visit at my flickr site. While we were there waiting for our guest to come, we noticed a huge group of school kids visiting the airport that day. All their teachers did is to divide them in two different groups. One group stood near the departure terminal and the second group near the arrival terminal. We were sitting close to the arrival terminal. 

These kids were having fun. And they have their unique ways of having fun. Whenever some foreigner (especially white skin) was coming out of the Arrival terminal, all the kids would in chorus say a Big "Hi" to them. I am sure those guests would not have expected such huge welcome when they land India. Not sure what all their teachers showed to them that day, soon our guest arrived and we left the airport. There is one good area though to watch the happenings on the runway etc next to the departure terminal. 

One can climb on top of those small sand deposits which are thrown carelessly in that area and watch the inside of the airport for free. 

Rumours...

During the recent Bangalore Bomb blasts last Friday, I was tracking the happenings at various places on the web. One such update caught my eyes, I was a little late in doing the print screen but still I managed to get a fading view of what I want to show here (inside red enclosure below) -















The text is - "Guys hate to break this, but info from sources well placed whom I cannot reveal : 5 more blasts to happen in Bangalore".

A very serious rumour, I gathered this at around 7pm in the evening while all the Bangalore blasts happened in the afternoon. I still remember we were getting news of two more blasts that day which didn't happen - one in Iskon temple and another somewhere near Hebbal on the new Airport road.