Sourabh’s blog

You have got it right, how would Dada be feeling after being stripped of captaincy title? Amidst all the politicts going in the BCCI for all the wrong reasons, I feel Ganguly is made a real mock in the Media. This for sure would be something real hard to digest for Dada himself- Injury, Poor form, Dropped from Captaincy for 2 ODI series, Retirement questions. His lean patch has become to long and obvious now, that every other News Channel has something to say continuously about the tough road of Dada to the Indian team again and the new problems that keep falling on him. If that was not enough, now he is in a do-or-die situation in the upcoming domestic Duleep Trophy match to perform well. I cant possibly imagine what would be his state of affairs if he fails in the same, his ODI career would for sure take a back-seat for along time.

Atleast dada has some positives when the chips are down, test captaincy priveleges are preserved atleast till the next test series. I guess dada himself would be very thankful to God himself that he scored a century in the game against Zimbabwe.

I cant possibly imagine to what extent the politics in BCCI and Selection process too. Why was the team for first two ODIs supposed to be declared on 14th October and dadas fitness test to be conducted on 17th October? Why again have 15 player squad in a home series instead of the normal 14? So its for sure they wanted dada out of first two games, dunno whether it was to cover up for his poor form and to give a reason of injury for his absence in the squad or it was really done on merit keeping the injury in mind. All taken into consideration, I cant deny there is atleast *some* politics going on in the BCCI. And this time dada doesnt even have Dalmiya’s support.

All in all its a lose-lose situation for Ganguly IMO, if he doesnt fire in Duleep trophy, his ODI career takes a back seat, India wins the Srilanka and South Africa series under Dravids captaincy - Ganguly again doesnt have anything in his favor, if India loses - Ganguly may have some hope to get his captaincy cap back again.

I for sure wouldnt like to step in his shoes. Its definately the toughest time in his career where he needs to prove his credibility as a batsman. I hope the best for Indian cricket.

PS: These views popped up in my after landing at a site called www.ihateganguly.com while surfing. Do check it out, quite a nice place if you are in a anti-ganguly mood. Nice collection of jokes if you take them on a lighter note.

Its been quite a while being away from the blogging business. Finally it feels great to have some free time and get some much needed rest. Had been down with fever the whole week before the exams. Now since the exams have ended, I feel much better and relaxed, more importantly from the fact that i have fared well in the tests this times, fared even better to the best of my expectations !!

Just after the exams, I was off to Lamington Road with a friend to get a new rig for him. Owing to budget constraints he had to be satisfied with a modest AMD 64 2800+, Asus K8V-MX with 256MB RAM , a BENQ Combo Drive , 80Gb hdd and the keyboard, mouse and the speakers all within 17k INR except the monitor.

Quite a tiring day but I have just got enough in me to continue till mid-night watching some TV and getting back in touch with friends after a week or so in the IMs.

Just a couple of days break due to the weekends and the second innings of the Sem-3 starts.

Looking forward to enjoy the next couple of days. Fingers Crossed.

Yeah! Our very own beloved Mario turned 20 yesterday. All of us have fond memories of the gaming character, and more importantly many like me have grown up playing Mario on our much beloved Video games. The Mario series of games have been the best selling franchise in gaming history with over 180,000,000 units of games sold featuring mario and some 100 instalments, be they platform adventures, puzzle games, or sport spin-offs. Eventhough, Mario made his debut in Donkey Kong ( 1981) Nintendo, had pronounced yesterday that 13th September as the Official Mario’s Birthday.

Happy Birthday once again and yeah! Did I forget to pull Mario’s leg - You are no longer a teen :))

Its been quite a while, since I posted the last post in my blog. I can’t figure out whether its my laziness, college studies and hectic schedule or just a way of life. But that doesn’t rule out the fact that I am quite lazy and ignorant too. Its almost a month now that Wordpress, the blogging software used for this blog, has a new update in the form of 1.5.2 and I still haven’t upgraded to it. Let alone updating, I havent even backed up the database and blog ever since I have continued the blog on www.sourabh.net and my new webhost. Now I guess its high time for me to start working on these things. A backup is on its way in the late night or tommorow. Hopefully the Wordpress 1.5.2 Upgrade too pretty soon. Anyways, keeping aside all these lesser things and getting back to a lil more blogging right away. Fingers Crossed :)>-

Well what can I now say? I don’t think stupid goofups made by people ever leave me. If the Indiatimes laptop at a price of INR 4,000 /- seemed absurd, right now it seems to be a goofup from my ISP-Tata Indicom Broadband. Being a subcriber for a 64k Unlimited Connection and enjoying better speeds than even the ‘mere broadband-256 kbps’ as specified by the TRAI, I don’t have anything to compain. What started as a normal day with an early start at 7am, I first saw my download speeds shoot up by leaps and bounds. Seeing my download speeds go to as high as 110 kBps contantly, I quickly decided to download some files from some other servers to check whether everything is allrite. The same speeds seemed to follow me. Being still reluctant to believe that God has been so gracious on me, I ran a few Connection Speed test to check the same.

Here is a screenshot of the Speed Test.

Download Speeds With Emule Running in the Background

Lookover:

I dont have much to crib about Tata Broadband if I enjoy this speed for a longer time. The only thing I now hope is that this speed doesnt go away anytime soon. I am still unaware of the fact whether its really a goof-up from my ISP side or they have upgraded to a better plan for all 64k connections, whatever the case is ‘ ~~I am loving it~~‘

This for me has really been a good Saturday or a weekend so to speak. Now lets see how long does the honeymoon actually lasts.

Theres no doubt in anyone’s mind that games are addictive. Easy availability of games, access to online resources, gadgets, cheaper games- be it legitimate or pirated copies only make the gamoshpere bigger. The problem arises when gaming becomes an obsession. Gaming sessions turn out to be so addictive that people forget their daily life and get immersed in gaming as if its THE thing in life. Such things have been rampant offlate in major parts of Asia and more importantly China, Taiwan and South Korea in particular. That only makes me think about the possble situation in India after we get through this phase of transition in both Internet Connection Speeds and more bigger gaming crowd in the future. As a result, incidents such as these should be well taken note of, to avoid such issues in India.

Cases:

A couple of weeks back, the incident which caused this whole issue of online gaming in limelight was when a 28-year-old South Korean, who apparently quit his job just to play more games ( ? ), began a life threatening and rather shocking gaming sessions which almost lasted 50 hrs which later on became a cause for losing his life. So immersed was he that heonly left his online simulation gaming to go to the bathroom and to take short naps on a makeshift bed. And now if u think that was a one of a kind incident or the man was a freak, theres another incident which happened some time ago in Korea where in it was not one, but both the parents having gross negligence on their daughter. The mother and father of the victim had gone to a nearby Internet cafe, deeply immersed in playing Blizzard’s massively multiplayer World of Warcraft online, returned home only to find their infant 4 month old daughter dead from suffocation.

Measures Taken:

Owing to such cases, just like our Indian Government would be forced to in the Parliamentary sessions, The Chinese Govt. have already decided to implement a system where in the no. of hours of gaming of a particular gamer are recorded. “The system reduces the ability level of a player’s online game character if the game is played beyond the three-hour limit. Basically, play more than three hours and the system cuts a game character’s ability by half. Play more than five hours and the system reduces a game character’s ability to the lowest level possible.” A three hour online game play is what has been implemented to curb the no. of incidents arising out of the same.

Lookover:

As always, legal legistation against a particular thing doesnt necessarily help in curbing the wrong. Moreover, it serves as a notice to people who havent already indulged in the same and gives them a free license to try these things. Same thing is what I feel would happen with such legislations. Are such restrictions going to have any regulation over the no. of hours gamers play online? Certainly not. Such is the nature of the Internet, there are loopholes in everything in this virtual world. Mutliple game accounts and connection to servers via proxy to cheat their original identity to name a few.

Personally, I dont think any amount of legistation on these thing would affect anyone. Its not what the world does about the issues prevalent in the society but its the rational behaviour of each individual which would help address this issue. Hope there are no such issues to be seen in India any time soon, I can only imagine the whole ga-ga in the media, the newspapers and the parliament which would go on..hehe..Fingers crossed so that these are not a sign of the things to come in the future.

After all the speculations and rumours that had been going around in the tech-world about Google entering the IM arena, its not too much of a surprise when Google entered this sphere of the Internet early this morning. Many would agree like me that this was on the cards and always bound to happen some time in the near future. Over the last one year, Google has really come of age with its new, revolutionary and vast range of services like a whooping free 2Gb of email space through Gmail, maps, shopping information, news, desktop search, and now IM and VoIP. And more aptly the service has been named Google Talk.

Brief Lookup:

The installation file of the Google Talk is a mere 900 Kb and can be downloaded from here. The new IM is based on the Jabber/XMPP protocol. Currently the new IM has native support only for Windows users. But since its based on the Jabber/XMPP protocol- GAIM, Trillian, iChat, Adium and Psi can be used to connect to the new network. However the Voice chat services would for now be natively only for the Windows users. The Gmail Id and Password are used to sign in the the Google Talk Beta.

Installation and Interface:

The installtion of Google Talk doesnt take anything more than a few seconds. The OS supported are from Win2k onwards as a result those stuck with Windows 98 wouldn’t be fortunate enough to try this new Instant Manager. The Google Talk beta interface is very clean, sleek and appealing for starters. The very first thing that I noticed with the Interface was it wasnt bloated with features and advertisements. The interface has no ads, stock ticker, news info, weather info, even links to allied Google services. The Messenger in its first beta installment is pretty much low on features and provides only text/voice chat services. Google Talk beta does not include emoticons (unlike Yahoo and MSN Messenger), video or file transfer support, conference and smileys as yet.

Here is a pic depicting the actual messenger Contact List. The Inbox, Settings and the Help tabs are seen at the top-right of the messenger window. The Add Friend tab is seen at the bottom right. The Whole color combination is the same typical Google style as seen in their search engine and other sites. Sadly the links in the Status cannot be linked to actually open the webpages as seen in the Y!M. You can also find a Search Contacts tab in here.

This is the status side bar seen to change the status. Besides the common status messages you can have custom status and other two features as seen below.

The in-comming voice calls and the actual voice chat menu showing the speaker and microphone volumes are as seen below.

Now lets talk about the actual Message window. Its a plain, simple and tiny little square window. It seriously lacks the feature to show whether the particular person is online or not. When you get a couple of messages to gether the message windows stack together and adjoint themselves.

The add a new contact to your list and approval to add are quite simple too.

Settings:

Lots of controls and settings can be found in the settings box. Here you can add people to your blocked list so they will not be able to contact you via Google Talk beta. You can also choose if you want Google Talk beta to launch at Windows startup or not, manage notifications (such as new Gmail email), and save your recent chat history. Due to the presence of an inbuily Gmail notifier which checks for new mails you no longer need the same and it gets uninstalled if you had it installed previously during the installtion.

Tweaks/Hidden features:

At first glace, the IM from the search engine biggie seemed to be plain same text mode and soon to be monotonous in looks due to no text formatting. However as yet, I have found *TEXT* to be displayed in bold as TEXT and _TEXT_ to be displayed as TEXT. So atleast there are ways to get Bold and Italics in our messages. I am quite sure that there may be many other hidden features which are not quite apparent to change the font color/enable smileys, and other formatting but only time will let them unreveal themselves. Or mebbe the following versions to this beta . would feature them.

Final Words:

So is Google Talk, Just another IM client? Probably yes in my opinion as of now. Lets accept that there is nothing great in it which sets it apart from other IM/VoIP Services. Apart from undistorted voice chats on a 64kbps connection there isnt anything to crib about. But the status and legacy which Google enjoys, no one can have second thoughts about the fact that ‘ Whatever they touch, would turn into Gold’ due to the kind of fan-following it enjoys. There is no doubt that if Google wants they can surely come up with a Instant Messenger client that can very well challenge the likes of Yahoo, Msn and AOL counterparts. Other thing to be looked out is, Whether its gonna be the same old story with the Google Messenger too - ‘ The Forever Beta’ strategy. To end it on a positive note, I would be very happy if the subsequent (ofcourse beta :p ) versions have smileys, Conference support, File transfers and I wont for sure not mind google ads, as they would benefit both the people using messenger and ofcouse Google. Only time will tell what we have in store and whats the possible future of Instant Messengers.

I have read about a couple of news articles in the newspapers which focussed of the plans of some directors to remake the old classics from Bollywood. It was only today that I saw on Star News, that there aint only a couple of them, in plans for remake but quite a few actually. To name a few which i recollect- Sholay by Ram Gopal Verma, DON by Farhan Akhtar, Umrao Jaan by J.P. Dutta , Sahab Biwi aur Ghulam and if I am not mistaken a couple more. Remake of old classics isnt something new to both Bollywood and Hollywood, but the way we Indians do it is quite amusing for my likings. I have nothing against directors who plan remakes of old classics coz each director has his own style to present the story and the movie overall.

The way the Indians jump to a new formula for successful movies is what strikes me the most. Just like the time when all of a sudden we had 3 or 4 Bhagat Singh movies releasing at round about the same time. What explanation can be given? Has the Bollywood all of a sudden been inspired by Bhagat Singh back then or its just a rat race. Same thing has been the trend with the current remake of old blockbusters. It just appears to me as if one director plans to do something, others follow their trail. Its sad to see that Bollywood movies rely on a particular formula for a movie to be a hit. Even I would like to see the remake of these movies, in a new, happening way to suit the viewers of present generation. But I am very skeptical in these remakes if they arrive at the same time. This just shows the lack of belief which film makers now have in their scripts and have no option other than to remake the old movies. Hope we get a refreshing change in the Indian Cinema.

For the starters, this was first of a kind meet where we met fellow members from the Digit forums which we were long part of. The scheduled of the meet was long slated to happen but due to the torrential rains and some other reasons, it kept on postponing. Finally everyone decided to have the meet on the 21st August itself.

Just when I had agreed for the meet, it was only the next day I realized that we had out extra Concrete Technology practicals in college. So what started as a obvious ‘Yes, any day of the week’ attitude for the approval of the Mumbai meet, it soon turned to a ‘ Sorry, there’s always a next time’ disapproval. So I was all-set to skip the meet and be a part next time when the same happened in future. So on the scheduled day- Sunday all set to go for my College, Half of the pracs had been completed by 1′o clock in the noon and we were given a break for 1 hr. At that point of time, it was only 1 hr for the Mumbai meet. I just don’t know how it happened, what struck me in my mind, I felt that I should not skip the meet knowing very well of the consequences. Making a obnoxious reason to the incharge lab-assistant of a bad stomach, headed straight to the Mac Donalds- CST, venue of the Mumbai meet. Boarded the local train from Matunga to CST, rushing my way through - managed to reach my immediate destination with 5 mins to spare.

What happened at the meet was hilarious to start with, I guess i was the second one to arrive there. And within no time there were 4 guys looking at their watches, Mac’s entry gate having no clue that the persons we were waiting for were right in front of us. All my plans of pretending as babumuchala or someone ( coz i had pulled out of the meet earlier) backfired. In the end, came Deep to save the day for us. It was quite fun to meet fellow digit members personally rathen than checking their posts in the forums or chatting in the Y!M.
For the first hour we din order anything and mebbe that made the waiter come over to us personally to take our orders. Anyways we din mind coz we were in no hurry. After our small munching at the Mac, went to the Hanging Garden and spend an hour or so there and returned back home.

Here are some of the pics we took. Starting with the one with the names of people etched at the bottom. I am the one in the Blue stripped tshirt.

No one can deny the increasing number of blogs worldwide. If records are to be believed, there is one new blog created every second. In an effort to account for even more simpler and convenient way to blog, all this is now possible with a new toolbar for MS Word.

Google/Blogger Launches Blogger For Word Toolbar

In an effort to reduce the amount of step between writing and publishing your latest blog entry, Google/Blogger has developed a new toolbar that was designed to do just that.

It was revealed in a post on the Google blog that bloggers who use Google’s blog service and Microsoft Word in order to write their latest posts now have a toolbar that will reduce the amount of work required to post an entry written in MS Word: the Blogger for Word toolbar.

What makes this tool so attractive to those who like to ensure their copy is properly spelled and punctuated is the ability to push the “Publish” button on the toolbar and see their work actually posted on their blog. Not only can users publish their word document, the toolbar also allows users to select the “Save As Draft” button to save their work for a later date. Users can also edit their previous 15 posts by selecting the Open Post option. This opens the selected entry in Word, allowing you to make the necessary changes.

As with most Google-based products, the Blogger for Word toolbar is free to download. All that’s required to run the utility is Windows XP, a Blogger account, Word 2000 or higher. To download the Blogger for Word toolbar, visit here. You can also read their FAQ if you need further information.

Source: WebProNews