My Thoughts !

Finally the rumours came true. After much hype, Google released its IM Client. As with the other Google products, it has cool, simple and easy to use interface. The exe file size and the memory foot print are very smaller. With no file transfer, no skins, no font selection, no smileys etc, it doesn't make much sense to move to this immediately. How good is Google Talk, if we can't talk? They have a VoIP implementation too. Although you can call & talk only to other Google Talk people, my guess would be that they will announce a premium service, where you can call the PSTN network too.

On another track, I just discovered that you can send mails from your Gmail id, as if you are sending from another id. This feature is very useful for me. I've subscribed to some groups thru my Yahoo id. Whenever I need to send any mails, I need to use Yahoo! Mail. Now that I've registered my Yahoo id with Gmail, I can send mails from Gmail itself, with my Yahoo id in the From column. Further you can specify Gmail id in the Reply-To field, so that the replies will be delivered to Gmail and you can start communicating with those individuals from Gmail id itself. Cool huh? Click here for more info.

This picture was taken when I went to Kodaikanal last weekend. Taken with my Canon K2. Looking at the tall tree, I thought it would be nice combination for me to stand near it. And to get the perspective, I've used wide angle and gave the camera to Bala. He was almost lying on the ground to take this picture. The result is good except for a little under exposure.

In a previous post I was talking about my teammate who met with an accident. An update on him. He has recovered from the injuries. Once in a while, for few seconds he has little disturbances in the way he does things but then recovers immediately. He has not yet back to work. Will be back soon.

Whenever I look at accidents like these, I generally reduce my average & max speed. In a week or so, I'll forget about the accident and will be back to my "normal" speed. I just recovered from that accident and today I got the news that my another friend met with an accident.

It had happened on last saturday night and none of us knew about it. I went to the hospital to meet him. He didn't remember exactly what happened. With his left over memories and people who saw the incident, here is what happened. Our man was travelling in the Koturpuram road towards Cancer Institute. It was around 9 PM and he was driving a little fast - as usual. Near the signal he didn't notice the tree that was in the middle of the road. (Yes, during the road expansion, they didn't cut down the trees, and they are on the middle of the road) When he noticed it, it was a little late. He couldn't completely avoid it. He turned to the left but still hit the tree. He had severe injuries in the right side of the body. His shoulder bone was misplaced and the doctors are waiting for the swelling to reduce to do an operation. His left wrist had a fracture and another fracture in the right leg. Luckily he always wears a helmet and so no major injuries in his head. Despite the helmet, he had a big wound in his forehead. Due to the pain killers, he is sleeping most of the day. His aunt was also there when I went and she was asking me to advise him to go slowly. He said, "athai, enaku seripu varuthu aana serika kuda mudiyala. ivan enna vida vegama povan, ivan enaku advice pannanuma?" His aunt then started advicing me. I know, at least till he come back to office, I'll be driving slowly. Then? wrrroooooommmm. Again till either someone or me meets an accident. Pray for my friend and the people on the road.

I've created another blog. Apart from the news, nothing much to be said here.

As a matter of fact, I do spam a lot of inboxes in my office. Most of them are either forwards or links. I've never created any such forward text/presentation/word document. I don't understand how people have time, patience and creativity to create them. Now these kind of forwards are spamming our inboxes in our mobile too. Recently I got a forward message. Here it is: "Today is world stealing day. So tell me one thing which you would like to steal from me. Send this to everyone to get surprised replies & your reply is a must".
I'm not sure of whether such a day called stealing day exists, but I'm sure it was not on that day (its after all, my birthday!!!) I thought for a while and forwarded it to my friends. I did get lot of replies. Along with the normal replies (your purse, your credit card, blah, blah), I did get some interesting replies. Here they are (with my comments in brackets):

(*) Bold and Brain (Ah! So I'm brainy?)
(*) Nothing is there in you to steal except your heart (Are you sure its not stolen yet? ;-) )
(*) Varifying Trait (No comments on this one)
(*) Your computer with internet connection (Ok. Given the situation in office, now I'm really afraid you might!)
(*) Thangalin uyarntha knowledge (appa naan nijamalume brainy than. hee, hee, hee)
(*) Your cell (So that I won't spam your inbox?)
(*) Your salary (Believe me, its not worth of it)
(*) Politics (Maddy, What is the meaning of the word?)
(*) Your gal friend (Thank god! I'm saved now)

Which is the only metropolitan city in the south?
Which is the most traditional cultured city of all the metros of our country?
Which metropolitan city has the lowest crime rate?
Which city has the second longest beach in world?
Which city in India currently has the highest growth rate of IT? (Don't think of Bangalore, its all saturated there. The question is about growth rate)
Which city is preferred by most of the automobile manufactures across the world to set up a manufacturing unit?
... < add any number of your favourite questions that praises Chennai>

If you are answering Chennai for all the above questions with a proud face, and expecting much more questions like that, you are probably a Chennai-ite. Anything good you hear about this city, you would be glad to add in more points. And whenever people like me talk about the patheticness of this kuvampatti, you would mostly say 'hey dude. You don't know about this city. Its a wonderful place to live'. Don't you? Now here is a must-read book for you: 'Chennai Latte - A Madras Brew'.

Since 2002, Madras Musings carried a humor column 'A-Musings' which was written by Ranjitha & the cartoon by Biswajit. The column discussed about the events and situations of the Chennai city. This book is a compilation of a part of work for this column.

Right from the mosquitoes to traffic to climate to water problem, this book deals all the issues that we face in our day-to-day life in Chennai. With a little humor added in the text, added with a cartoon for every issue, you would realise what Chennai life is really all about, in a lighter way. Com 'on dear Chennai-ite. You say 'its THE city to live', but when was the last time you parked your bike in Spencers without hassle or when was the last time you found a road that is not digged up? Face the reality. I'm sure that it won't make you to pack your bags and find a job in Coimbatore, but sure, you won't say again that 'Chennai is a wonderful place to live'. Don't worry, occasionaly this book talks about the positive side too :-) (I hear someone there yelling 'kaapi')

No matter whether you are a chennai-ite or not, grab a copy of this book. Its a good read.

Didn't post a photo for a two months and so here you go. This was taken with my Dad's Electro 35, when we went for a North India tour during my MCA. The actual one is a color photograph and I made it B&W with Picasa. B&W photos sometimes create a good mode, which can't be created with color photos. As a news, one good thing the blogger.com guys did was to eliminate the need of Hello to post pictures. Thanks Guys. Now I don't have to install a different software just to post pictures :-)

One more year! Let me turn back and see what have I accomplished. There nothing much happened in my personal life. Same old house, same old roomies, same old regular doings and still single. Official life was good. Despite the usual fights with the onsite, designed and shipped a product successfully, which was actually thought as impossible. Now joined a new team and shifted to T.Nagar office. Well. Thats it. One more year has passed and here comes an another birthday saying that you are older by one more year. Most of the new teamies ask me, 'What is your age? hmmmm, 25? 26?'. My answer? I quote from one of my fav songs: '18, till I die'.

I first met Ani when she joined iView team. I was with ASG team then and as Ravi was with iView. I used to have lunch with that team and so I met on her first day of her job itself. She had joined as a fresher from Anna University. I was told that she had received some color belt in karate. Still with a little boldness left in my mind, I demanded her an ice cream as a joining treat. She looked at me and said, 'tharen Prakash'. Not sure of whether it was an ice cream or a demo of her karate talents, I nodded my head. After I joined iView, I learnt that she is not only good in karate, but in few others too. She is a swimming champion; she remembers every song in tamil movies; she can reproduce the entire dialogs of all the comedy scenes with the same expressions; she can drive a bike in the ECR along with us to mayajaal; she is the one who can make the loudest whistle sound and finally she is the second best cook in our team (without me telling my name, obviously you know who will be the best) ;-)

Wondering why all of a sudden Ani came into my blog? She invited us to her native this weekend and we went there. It was such a wonderful experience. Forget about the funny happenings and silly teasing and the night rounding in the township in search of a tea at 1.30 AM. This blog is all about the places we visited in Neiveli. Now, over to Neiveli.

Neiveli is a township by the lignite corporation. Its wonderful in many ways. The whole township is well planned with neat and straight roads. People pay an ignorable amount as rent, cable tv fees and electric power. They can stay as long as they are employed in there. Once they got retired or terminated or they quit, they have to vacate the place and some other employee will move in. The net result is that the population of the town remains almost stable. Its a peaceful life there.

Apart from township, we visited two places. One is the thermal power station and the other is the mines. We could go into the furnace, the generator and to the control room too. While they were explaining about the functionalities with the software, I was wondering, what language might have been used?, If I'm to create a library for those strange looking controls, what will be the challenges I face, etc. hmmmm. can't help. After all thats what I do for my living. All these happened in the fourth floor. He had completed explaining the process of creating the electricity with the heat, I thought overall, its a good knowledge gaining experience. We headed for the lift. This time, it was a different lift. I noticed that it was showing 1st floor. I was telling our guys that the indicator was wrong. The lift operator with a smile said, "You are wrong. For this lift, this is the first floor". huh? what the heck? So are we going to the ground floor now? No. We are going to the 7th floor, which is the highest in this thermal power station. And it was around 75 meters. Almost thrice the height of my tnagar office and it says we are in the 7th floor! We were taken to some view point and while walking somebody screamed 'Don't look down!!!'. Everybody looked down and almost everybody screamed 'Don't look down!!!'. We were walking on a small path which actually connects two towers and we were walking on a grill and there is nothing between the floor and us. After that everybody was walking different. It was funny to watch. Esp. Venki. He was so scared. Gals were teasing him to wear a chudithar. Me and Mike went near him and jumped on the grill that we were walking. He was scared to death. Then after the enjoying the view from such a height, we were prepared to go down. This time, we stopped at around 35 meters height. We were taken to the place where a conveyer belt carried all the lignite for the furnace. With conveyer belts on both sides and a very steep elevation, we started walking down. It was a little tough to walk as there is no steps and just the elevated floor. After 10 mins of walk we reached the bottom. We went a little far and looked at the path we came down. It was really breath-taking. After that we went and looked at the cooling towers and the 400 kva switch that puts the electrical energy into the grid. We were not allowed to take photograph, but still managed to take one standing outside. Will post it later.

The next day first we went to a lake. It was an artificial lake and used to separate water & ash. The water which is used in furnace will contain lot of ash and can't be used with that contents. So they pump the water into this lake. The ash gets sedimented and the water is collected from the other side. The color of the water and the ash created a wonderful scene. I took a picture with Ani's camera, which I'll be posting later. From there we went to the mines. There are actually two mines and we went to the second. We were stopped at the main gates and then shifted to an NLC bus. We were taken into the mines. While we were going, we passed a place called 'crawler yard', where giant sized machines were repaired and maintained. The wheels were almost 6 feet height! hmmmmm. Mining requires this kind of large machines I thought. Few more minutes travel and a sudden turn in the road, we had a view of the mines. Its an open mine and they have digged 80 - 100 meters from the ground level. The area of the digged place was around 1200 hectares !!! And those giant machines which we saw a few minutes back were looking very tiny near the digging machines, which are bigger than several "sky scrapers" in chennai. The whole thing was looking something like the "star ship troopers" coming alive and you are going into an alien space where machines are working. In another 10 mins we were at the bottom most portion of the mine. It should be around 80 meters from the ground level. Each machine there digs around 30,000 tonnes of material everyday!!! We then went near one of the machines which was digging and saw how much of land is cut every second with that. It was really an amazing experience. And those 'giant' ones with wheels taller than me, are merely used to push off the left overs. Now big is just a relative term !!


We had fun, ate good food, enjoyed a lot and had a rich experience - one 80 meters above the ground and the other 80 meters below the ground. We all should thank Ani for giving this to us. Ani, but still you owe me one ice cream that you promised :-)