Software bugs, IT disasters and failures that had cost a lot…click here to read.
China’s Three Gorges Dam
Check out the news article from NGC about the three gorges dam in china…supposed to be the world’s biggest dam is now causing landslides and cracks threatening the nearby residents.
Goal movie – First day evening show
I heard that Goal movie was supposed to be released on november 23rd…so was checking for pvr tickets from 22nd itself but still the booking was not open and even in the coming movies list goal was not displayed…so I thought the release was postponed……but today I was just chekcing pvr website in the evening at around 4 PM and guess wht tickets were still available….so without wasting anytime I booked a ticket for myself and after 5 mins checked the site again to book for my friend but it was housefull by then…….I was really lucky to get the ticket for the friday show 🙂 .
Anyways now coming to the movie…..Ithe movie was really gud……I liked it………a gud movie after the hopeless saawariya & om shanti om. There are no similarities between chak de and goal…..both of them are gud in their own way…….I found one or two loopholes in the movie but afterall it can’t be 100% perfect 😀 . The story is all about saving the southall united football club. Arshad Warsi’s acting was good……a different role from the one he had in munnabhai….even john abraham and boman irani were gud…….the second part of the movie was much better than the first half….especially the ending was too gud. The first half is all about forming the team……john who was initally in an english team ultimately joins the southall team after he was not selected for the league matches as he was not an english guy.
I was expecting tht definitely there would be some racism related stuff and that was all the movie about….the goras (english) trying to show their superiority over asians….aah this was one movie where it was not only about being indian but they were talking abt india, pakistan and bangladesh together….so the movie was basically goras vs. south-asians 🙂 .The last match is the highlight in the movie. One more reason why I liked the movie was there were no useless songs just to drag the movie…all the ones were according to the situation or just background songs. And finally coming to bipasha’s role, she had nothing much to do……..
On the whole the movie is worth watching…….again a gud sports related movie tht can be a hit.
Funny video
Click here to watch the video….check out the extra shots 🙂 .
Another one here.
Basketball
Just started playing basketball daily in the evening…..I am a beginner…I never played basketball b4. Its a gud break after the day’s work. Lets see how long will I continue playing 🙂 . First day it was fine but now after 3 days, my hands n legs started paining :( but still i won’t give up 🙂 😀 . Anyways thts only temporary and will be fine soon. Thts all for now…….will keep updating on this.
Bangalore- The Silicon Valley of India
Bangalore is said to be “The silicon valley of India”, the IT hub , cosmopolitan city and what not. Statistics reveal that there are about half a million software engineers in bangalore. The real estate prices are sky-rocketed, cost of living has increased, there are big big malls coming up at every corner……but this is all just one side of the coin. Does bangalore really qualify to be the silicon valley of India? Can the infrastructure over here support for it? A simple example reveals the real situation…..these days a broadband internet connection has become the basic need and that too in a city like bangalore with so many software professionals, atleast it must be treated as a basic need. But the fact is that one must be really lucky to get a connection here. The irony is that there are still many places in bangalore where there are no broadband providers (maybe bsnl is an exception to this…but one needs to have a phone connection to get bsnl broadband) and ppl still have to use the internet connection thru cable network like sify, hathway, etc.
Now getting a bsnl broadband connection is not going to be tht easy as initially we need to wait for a landline connection and then only if there are ports available in that area (for which the probability is really really low) we can get a connection…and wherever the private players are there, the ports are already full 😀 . With so many software ppl here why can’t the companies upgrade their infrastructure. My woes started like this-
I stay on airport road, supposed to be a decent place in bangalore. Initially I applied for an airtel connection and I was told they would get back to me with the feasibility report within 3 days. And they did come back to me promptly and said we cannot provide the connection. Then I turned to tata indicom (though I know their service is hopeless, I was left with no other option). These guys also promised to get back in 3 days and gave me a reference number. And after 3 days when I called them,  the call centre guy just raised a new complaint and gave me a new complaint number and asked me to wait for 3 more days. Then after 3 more days I got another complaint number and this way atlast I was left out with a ref num and 3 complaint numbers but no progress in the connection. Then atlast I had to go for a realiance data card. Now after a month I got a mail from tata indicom saying that we cannot provide you the service in that area right now.
So, this is wht the state of infrastructure is in bangalore. I don’t think it is really greedy to expect a broadband connection. Ok…lets leave getting a broadband connection… but expecting to get a normal lan cable (cat5 cable) should not be a problem. But you know even that is not an easy thing in bangalore. My friend got a new reliance broadband connection yesterday. We wanted to use a linksys router so that both of us can work in parallel. So, we set out to buy an ethernet cable. But to our surprise, we had to go almost 5 km to find a shop that sells it. That too we could find that shop after parking our bike and walking for almost a kilometer near the place. Some of the ppl did not even understand wht we were asking for. So, this is the plight of silicon valley of india.
Is it only about a broadband connection or an ethernet cable?? No…thts not the end, ask anyone staying in bangalore abt the traffic situation here, abt the pollution, the cost of living, the real estate prices, the house rents, auto fares….the list will go on. This place used to be a quiet pensioner’s paradise but right now its no where nearer to a paradise.
I think some serious thought has to be given to the situation in bangalore or else the days are not far where it might just become the garbage valley of india.
Overall experience in barcamp5
This was my first ever barcamp. Initially I didn’t even knew what it was all about. I came to know about this through a friend of mine who had already attend this in delhi.
My overall experience was good. What I felt was that this would be more useful for people with startups or those who are planning for one. It would definitely help them build their links and also talk about their own startups. I am not sure if the main barcamps always have entrepreneurship as one of their main areas of focus. It might be that this time as it was in IIMB maybe the focus was more towards entrepreneurship.
On the whole I like the idea of barcamps and would definitely look forward to attend more. If possible maybe I would even attend the headstart event in IISC Bangalore in jan.
Barcamp5 Updates: Startups
By the time I entered the room the discussion had already started. The presenter was advising the ppl over there about not having a start-up (tht was anyway his gimmick to attract everyone’s attention 😎 😀 ).
Anyways the guy later explained the reason for making such a statement. He already had two startups n because of his bad financial planning he had to abort both of his projects. Right now he is doing finance course related to entreprenuership in IIMB. The discussion then turned towards the financial aspects of startups. Discussion turned towards angel funding in india. Some of the names that came up were band of angels, N S Raghavan (N S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) ), etc.
People were talking about innovation in getting the funding as well like going for a barter system, playing with credit, etc. One of the guys over there suggested reading a book called bootstrappingbible a pdf document available from changethis.com. Also its here only for the first time I heard about mapunity.in a startup that is incubated in IIMB. These mapunity guys are trying to survive on their own without any VC funding.
Anyways on the whole, I got to know some new things after attending this session.
By the way, I had downloaded the bootstrappingbible document. Will write about it in another post once I complete reading it.
Barcamp5 Updates: Headstart
This session was talking about helping startups to grow. Basically they were introducing kickstart , a start-up for start-ups 🙂 .They are going to have an event in IISC Bangalore from Jan 18th to 20th, 2008. The event is called headstart which is going to be a technology and product showcase event. This event is mainly for startups and some VC’s are also invited in the event.
But as the session progressed it seemed to be a debate between headstart and proto. So, came out of the session and went to attend.
The things that I learned were about events like proto, headstart, etc. Maybe they would be helpful to me once I have a start-up of my own 😀 🙂 .
Barcamp5 Updates: Personal reputation management
This was the first session that I attended in barcamp5. Was supposed to discuss mainly about managing our personal reputation online.
The highlights of the session are as follows:
- People generally look at the top three results on the search page when they search about a person on google.
- Showed some statistics wherein how our online personal reputation would matter…especially job market in US
- Suggestions given by them are to try to reduce the page rank of the pages which talk about our negative aspects.
- Points that I learned in this regard were like, creating google alerts, link our personal webpage to those with positive reviews on us, being active in LinkedIn, going for press releases in PR web, creating a google page, having an active profile in facebook & myspace as they do appear in the search results, making use of flickr,etc.
On the whole the guys were not able to satisfy the audience. I was expecting something more out of the session. Anyways after the session, we went for lunch and the updates on the next sessions can be seen in the next posts.