Shyam's Blog

Olympics 2008 ended. News - Kho Kho and Kabaddi to be introduced in 2012 so that India can win couple more golds! ;) Just kidding

Getting up late on weekends makes the weekend short! By the time we are up for something, it is already afternoon. Half of the day is over. After finishing the event/plan, the day is over. May be, I will plan to get up early (not too too early) and see how it feels. What do you recommend? Have you faced the same feeling that weekends run so fast?

Why do athletes from 100s of nations have to participate in an event they don't even make a mark? Seeing the medals tally, Olympics purely is a fight between two powers - USA and China. As of today, China has 35 Gold, USA has 19 (as per this website ) . The third place in the list is Russia with 7 Gold. So much of planning is done for each of the 4-yearly event that it really is a global project to support it. Talking about the stories of this year's Beijing 2008 Olympics, it has created front page news - be it human rights issue or the grand opening ceremony. China won in hosting this Olympics and also becoming the #1 in the medals list. I think that China had a word or two to prove to the world - 'They are no behind any country'. Also, deep inside, I do ask myself - "Is it worth spending all the money and having this event every 4 years just to see two countries fight for supremacy?" On the contrary, I wish to see many more countries raise and win more to g

Home laptop which was in coma for the past 4 days was given a new brain today! I had to change the hard drive - it is like putting a new empty brain to the already existing body. What will happen to the old brain now? The old brain has lots of useful information which has to be recovered. I have bought a hard disk enclosure which can be use to plug that crashed disk to any computer via USB. The first try today didn't work though. Have to try differently next time. This hard disk crash has a moral story - do not keep your hard disk un-partitioned. I had not done any partition and when a crash like this happens, there is no way one could install other OS to other working partition.

Our home laptop is in coma for the past 2 days. It doesn't boot at all :( . Just when it stopped responding, I called customer support. After couple of attempts to reboot the system, the support guy suggested me to order a "recovery CD". This CD is $19.99 and to get it in 2 days, shipping is $21.00. Hope I get the CD today and the problem gets resolved without any hassle.

"Ragalaunch" was sung today as an experiment. It was named so because I had the counts to start the piece while recording. I usually do this because I am the one and only one handling the recording equipment and at the same time meddling microphone and keyboard. There are three Ragas in this piece - first is Valachi, next comes Todi followed by Hamsanadha. I ended by coming back to Valachi. The music for this is a simple Yamaha Salsa accompaniment. You can listen to this piece here. Or download it from here .

Saina won her first round in Badminton 21-9, 21-8. Virender Kumar won the first round in Men's 75 Kg (Middle weight) boxing. Bajranglal Takshar qualified for Quarter Final in Rowing.

Linking my older post on Web based OS, here is what I found today. eyeOS - is a Web based OS. Good thing about this - it is an Open Source! Below is the screenshot of my eyeOS desktop! I was able to upload a mp3 file (which you can see on my desktop) and by clicking on that file, a player opened up to start the song.

It was indeed a good Sunday to make and eat Chakli, KOdbaLe. My wife and I did this joint venture for the first time. It was 7:00pm and my taste buds were eager to eat Chakli. I started the mixing and my wife joined me in frying them. After eating Chukli, it was an instant decision to try KOdbaLe. We checked for recipe online and found one which was simple. After few minutes into mixing the dough, we went for customer support (mom). With web-cam and voice chat, we completed the process successfully. Our on-call support told us to add one ingredient (hurigadle) which we didn't have in our mix. Also, she suggested to use dry red chilies instead of ready-made chili powder. We had already added chili powder. Adding this extra red chilies made the dough really hot. Our customer support stayed with us on the line for the rest of the procedure to walk us through without any hurdles. In the end, they were tasty, crispy and satisfying!

My mind is running over an endless thought - to come up with something which will be something "new". I am not worried about the product or the end result. I am thinking is an Engineer. Typically, an Engineer is the one who gathers pieces of the existing technology and designs a product which will make a difference. Also, I believe it is not an Engineer's priority to 'invent' or 'discover' something from equation/formula or science. Is there anything you have in mind for me so that I can satisfy my above quest?