SEO

I just checked my hits and noticed some interesting stuff. I never expected someone searching for happening places to party in lonavala to land here. A search for "biggest party in the universe" too would bring you here.

And I thought H2G2 was a cult. Afterall Google bombing isnt that difficult !!

Lallan #2

Disclaimer : No Bihari Paanwalas or South indians were harmed while writing this particular blog post.

Do you want to know what this foolchand chamiya is? After some reasearch and attracting loads of weird looks from equal number of paanwalas one of our special correspondent here found out that -
Its a paan which is used like an aphrodisiac and finds its place by that famous glass of milk the heroine brings the hero in Bollywood movies and you know when !!

Another mind boggling trivia - this came up during a argument of highly IM'ish nature about South indians Vs Maharashtrians/Gujrathis.

Name ten south indian freedom fighters

Tough isnt it?

Lallan Panwala !!

Taken enroute Rohida on Golden quadrilateral. Lallan's speciality is a pan called Foolchand Chamiya !!

Lallan
Originally uploaded by hemantaaa

Mulshi and the Biggest Party in the Universe !!

Saturday 26th November

Thought would trek this saturday, although ended up in bed till 3.00 in the afternoon. I cooked the spoiler myself on Friday [ Read - A rather late Friday night beer session at Pandey's ]. The saturday series of events included a massive headache, rather late lunch at garden court with some beer and tasty prawns/surmai. A surprise encounter with an ex-PICTian classmate who was getting married the next day in Pune. Followed by a Hinjewadi phase 3 exploration instead of the planned drive to Lonavala. Planned to go-cart at Mundhwa , dropped in at Pandey's place for some time in Baner on the way to Mundhwa. He tried to get us in for the biggest party in the universe1 which we politely turned down and headed towards Mundhwa. Much to the our annoyment finding that the place called first-cart had been closed down.
Concluded with a cocktail dinner at Riverview.

1 - A party described by Douglas Adams in his Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy and our term for a friend's RAVE party at a farmhouse on Solapur Road happening on the same day.

Sunday 27th November

Got up late [ again ], much around the same time. Thanked god for not attending the biggest party in the universe. The memories of the headache on Saturday due to my deeds on Friday night were still fresh. Decided to drive to Mulshi. Picked up some beer on the way.
Music : Floyd, Metallica, GNR, and assorted !!
Concluded with some beer and food at Oasis.

Alok and to the right you can see Dhanno

Mulshi.........
The *blue* whale out there !!

KV Shoots

Skepticism #1102 Google and Riya !!

Skepticism #1102 - Google and CIA Riya

The guys at google have done it again. I just came across Riya as one of the top searched keywords on technorati. Now since nothing remotely Indian except the IIPM has earned that honor since I know and the whole Ashmit Patel - Riya sen episode was quite old by now I got curious and found that, these guys have plans to buy the face recognition software company Riya. Name Riya comes from the fact that the CEO is a desi. On the face of it nothing scary about this for a layman, but I found interesting apprehensive post here about this whole episode.

The excerpt [ Yeah yeah..copy paste ..saved you some mouse clicks ]

Go to riya.com. Look at what they do. Now think. Google knows who and what I search for. They know all the email I’ve ever communicated. They have a pretty good idea where I live. I’m not sure I’m totally happy about them being able to pick me out of a photo as well!
……
…….
Say, if you had a set of “faces” linked to email address of people who you had a fair idea were living in an area, wouldn’t it be something to set up a camera outside a shop. Then you could send email to every person who went into the shop that day.
Hang on though. What if looked alike to someone else, someone who just really pissed someone off? What if someone (maliciously) tagged me as someone other than who I was. Oh it goes on!

Sometimes its good to analyze the darker side as well I guess. Technology as good as its intended purpose !!

Geek Thing #1103

A slashdot thread about a Wimax mobility card deployed by an australian ISP. Hilarious !!

Aussie :

As an Aussie, I'm sick of seeing submissions on Slashdot from other Australians that hype the Australian angle to every story. This is typical Australian insecurity. Since we are isolated down here at the opposite end of the world to the USA and Europe, most Australians see a need to shout "Don't forget about us!!" constantly, as if to remind the world that we are still here.

If this technology was being trialled by an ISP in any other country, the story would primarily be about the technology, maybe with a note about where it was being trialled. But since this is being trialled in Australia first, the headline and summary hype up the Australian angle. Hopefully one day us Australians will be secure enough that we can stop constantly worrying about what everyone else thinks about us.

Non-Aussie :

You aussies have computers?!

Aussie [ Geek first ] :
Yeah, but we run into problems, because the endianness switches once you are south of the equator.

On the plus side, it allows us to run MacOS on our AMD/Intel beige boxes.

A proud aussie pitches in -

Yes we do, do you Americans have brains?

...

More replies..

Non-Aussie :

(My deepest apologies, but I can't pass up the opportunity)

I think the submission only makes such a big deal out of it because it must have been really tough to develop this while fighting off dingos and kangaroos and crocodiles and throwing boomerangs around and playing didgeridoos.

Americans outnumber aussies

Non-Aussie :

throwing boomerangs around

if you throw a boomerang and it doesn't come back,
what do you call it?

.

.

.

a stick

I love that joke. Ya, I know, I need help :-)

Skepticism #1101 - Google and CIA

Found this article on eetimes today.To cut the long story short the fact is that CIA has an investment arm called In-Q-Tel whose mission is to deliver cutting edge technologies in market to the CIA. Something fishy here. You'll be amazed at the kind of companies those guys have funded. Go check that list out at their website.

Google:
One can see Keyhole's name in the CIA elite club. Again there is this big debate about the pictures of military bases avaible through google earth.

And now the most interesting part - Keyhole was recently bought over by google. Find the details here. There is also a big fight about the google cookies, find it here.



Do you think Sergey Brin is a cross dresser ?

Conversation #1101

Disclaimer: If you are another teeny weeny self proclaimed feminist bitch, read at your own risk. Now that you are past the warning sign post you cant accuse me of being a MCP or something like that.

So here goes an interesting piece of conversation -

Venue: Apache - FC Road
Participants: Yours truely, Pandey, Kesari, Pnaik and a "Offshored to Japs" friend of "some aquaintance". [ Yeah whats this guy doing here, I wanted to ask the same ]. { I hate excess baggage, but this was a surprise item }. Anyways lets call him Mr_Know_it_all.

Menu: French fries, Chicken Sandwitches, Beer
Music: Pearl Jam, Metallica, Linkin Park, System of a down, etcetera
Mood: Drunk

Mr_Know_it_all: I have bose speakers, I have blah...i bought it in Singapore for blah $.
I have Bose headphones, I plug them to my blah....[ ass ]
--- SNIP ---

Mood: Bored

Me: I read somewhere that Japanese females these days dont want to get married.
Mr_Know_it_all: Yeah its a big issue out there.
Me: I guess its because japanese men have small dicks
Mr_Know_it_all: [ Acting smart ] How do you know?
Me: Ohh I saw it in porns
Mr_Know_it_all: But japanese chicks are tight down there
Me: Ohh ok, I didnt know that
Mr_Know_it_all: And russian chicks are so amazing in bed
Me: Russian chicks? huuum, thats weird.
Mr_Know_it_all: No russians are good man, you should get married to one. I can tell you a website. blah blah blah.
Me: Huh, you talking about brides.ru? what are you? A pimp or something
Pandey: Exactly.

Geek Thing #1102

When people ask me stupid questions like why did I buy Maruti [ Esteem ].
An Eakta Kapoor style explanation could be:

I wanted to buy a car which had "ma" at the start and "ti" to end it and a "r" somewhere. That left me with two options -
Maserati & Maruti.
Since I couldnt afford the former one, I went with the later.

Geek Thing #1101

Posted by Picasa

Found - ~(1%2B-sqrt(5))*(2**-1) on Slashdot commenting about Vim 6.4 release.
Image from John Dierdorf's home page.

Temptation #1101

The urge to guzzle a pint while you are leaving for the day when :

You have had consumed ample the day before, and havent caught sleep.


Alcoholism is a dependency on alcohol characterized by craving (a strong need to drink), loss of control (being unable to stop drinking despite a desire to do so), physical dependence and withdrawal symptoms, and tolerance (increasing difficulty of becoming drunk).

[ From Wikipedia ]

Aaargh #1101

[1] Downloading a >= 700MB file on P2P network to discover you already had it.
[2] Loosing a download in Emule due to insufficient diskspace / power outage.

Specimen #1102

This is interesting. I got it from one of the victims. [ So dont make any assumptions about the IQs of people I work with, I dont work *there* ]. Reflects some serious aspects of corporate email ethics. [ Bit of formatting done, although you can notice the email writing skills of the involved people ]. God save this country !!

----- Original Message -----

From: Specimen #1102

To: Potential_Specimens; BirdBrain Bitch ; all@whatever.com

Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 4:33 PM

Subject: cosmic attack


Tonight by 12.30 am cosmo rays from Mars enter into our atmosphere. You are reqested to SWITCH OFF your mobile during that time .This is a request by NASA through BBC . Pls Forward it to all

Thanks & Regards,
Specimen #1102

----- Original Message -----
From: BirdBrain Bitch [mailto:xxxxxxxx@mahindrabt.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 4:49 PM
To: Specimen #1102 ; Potential_Specimens ; all@whatever.com

Subject: Re: cosmic attack



hey everyone is interested in knowing details abt it .......plz send soon!!

questions:



1. why r rays cmg frm mars?

2. wht time do they stop cmg??

3. y affecting only mobiles?

4. will it affect all sorts of phones: GSM/WLL?

5. ne delay due to rain?

plz answer these first we'll follow the next round of questions later!!!


Thanks and Regards,


BirdBrain Bitch
Babylon, ICE
O2(U.K) -MBT

Tel : +91 20 560xxxxx Extn : xxxx
>From UK : 0845 xxx xxxx Extn : xxxx

----- Original Message -----
From: The_Guy_Who_Fights_The_Scum [ I like this guy ]
To: 'Specimen #1102 ' ; Potential_Specimens; BirdBrain Bitch
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 9:59 AM
Subject: RE: cosmic attack


Hi,

This is official spokesperson for the cosmic rays issue

Here are the answers



As India is an overpopulated country Mars is overly populated with rays.. so they(rays) migrate to earth every time a mail like this is circulated
They stop coming as soon as you forward the mail.
They affect only mobiles because it is written in the mail.
It affects only the cell phones of ppl who don’t pay their monthly bill..(no worry for ppl with prepaid connection)
Instead they come really fast in rains as they skid on the rain water
I hope this answers your questions

If you have more questions you are most welcome



Thanks

XXXX

Senior scientist , NASA

Specimen #1101

Subject - FW: It is not a five star hotel. IT IS A CALL CENTER

-|-
-|-
-|-

A chain of embedded outlook messages. I hate these intertwined forwards, they just seem to be circulating around since the big bang. The campus is INFOSYS Mysore centre. Who gave this son of a gun this bright idea that its a call centre,

When you yourselves are a disgruntled employee of some second tier call centre, because you dont deserve more than that as is apparent from such bandwidth hogging emails, and expect more than what you deserve, when your job profile involves bugging people with bullshit offers of personal loans and free credit cards, when you have that weird bhaiya accent..this is what you can do at best...

Forward those stupid emails...!!