Destroy evil forces with your votes

Yadaa Yadaa hi Dharmasya
Glanirbhavati Bharata
Abhyuttanam Adharmasya
Tadaatmaanam Srujamyaham

Paritranaya Sadhunaam
Vinaashaya ch Dushkritaam
Dharmasansthapanarthaya
Sambhavami Yuge Yuge

IIT graduates - we're proud of you.

This is weird...

Go visit the miserable failure, preferably in Mozilla Firefoz or Opera, and check out the favicon for that site. I know, I know, it's supposed to be the coat of arms of the country and all, but the favicon size makes it look like a slightly piggish-looking bull...

HAHAHAHAHAHAA ROTFLMFAO

Going through some geek blogs, and came across the funniest blonde joke in the world. Ever! (Although us desis might want to call it a Sardarji joke, it really can't be carried off...)

Almost there now

Now that I've discovered how to use my HOSTS file effectively, this probably means curtains for Firefox. Opera is smaller, faster, and generally (I think) looks nicer. Oh yeah, and and I can use it for 5 hours at a stretch without my system complaining.

Non-stop fun

Try the Indian Railways 'Vox Populi' link - guaranteed entertainment for hours.

Sample this

Feedback number 16

Remote Address : Armando D'Souza Date : 2- 1-2006 Time : 11::16::10
Server Name : Armando D'Souza
User Name : Armando D'Souza
Email Address : _______________
Status : Read
Comments :-
To,
The Manager,
Indian Railways,

Wish you all a happy new year 2006.

There in train no proper sanitation.No proper door are locked in toilet and not working properly the toilet flashing.

So.Please do come forward to make better improvement in latest world humanity.
Thanking you.
Armando.

Coping with data loss

Only two words: you can't.

This is, of course, assuming you were full of bravado and kept putting off taking regular backups. If you don't belong to this category, and nonchalantly whip out your backup media and restore everything with the click of a mouse, please curl up in a corner and die somewhere. You're not helping the non-backup-taking people at all. And yep, this goes without saying, but I'll say it anyways - wipe that smug look off your face.

One word of advice to non-backup-taking people - never play around with partitions on your HD 'just because you feel like it'. The consequences may not be very pretty.

If you should choose to disregard aforementioned advice, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES USE THE WINDOWS DISK MANAGER WHILE ON WINDOWS XP!!

It is NOT meant to be a tool to fiddle around with partitions with data still on them. Use a real partition manager, like Symantec [erstwhile PowerQuest] PartitionMagic or Acronis Disk Director Suite. Of course, these cost money, but you can never put a price on data. [Okay, maybe you can, but I digress...] You could also use the Ranish doodad or Terabyte's BootItNG, or what the hey, even FIPS.

I used Windows Disk Manager exactly once. All I did was delete an ext2 partition (which incidentally STILL shows up as "Unknown Filesystem" - and WinXP came out MUCH MUCH later than, say, Slackware 8.0. I wonder when Microsoft will grow up and accept that competition exists and it's good to get along...) and quit the tool. The next thing I notice - My Computer no longer displays my MP3, Movie and My Documents partitions. That's 55 GB of data gone. Just like that.

After experiencing that sinking feeling for about 15 minutes and just sitting there on the verge of tears, I decide to try out an Acronis demo, and sure enough, it tells me my partition table's gone pear-shaped, and even helpfully restores it, and the partitions, along with all the data. Only, itturns out to be not-so-helpful later, when it politely informs me that the demo does only that - demo the capabilities of the full product.

That was the closest I came to blowing US Dollars 50 on software.

Googling (googlying?) around in a rather defeatist manner leads me to TestDisk, which I will continue to revere for as long as I live. In spite of its clunky fdisk-like interface, it not only set right my partition table and let me embrace my not-too-long-lost-but-all-too-precious data, it also did it in a way that PartitionMagic does NOT get anal about!

I did cry this time - tears of joy.

Never has any software made me feel so happy. When I can afford to make random donations for the sake of free software, I will do so first and foremost to the makers of TestDisk. And then to Ubuntu, but that's a different blog post altogether...

Shock #2

Finding out that a colleague of yours in an I.T company - with at least 5 years experience in the I.T industry - actually thinks the Olympics started sometime in the early 1980s, and that all the continents weren't discovered until late into the 20th century.

Some might say this is pardonable. Okay, I grant that. But when the same person refers to Googly, that's not too funny...

Codemonkeys takes on an entirely new meaning :-/

Shock #1

Finding out that a classmate of yours - while doing Information Technology in college - believes processors can be exchanged on CDs, needs a half-hour walkthrough on cut/copy-paste and has no clue what WinAmp is.

Actually, once you get over the initial shock, it's kinda funny...

Radio Ga-Ga

I think I already gave this title to a post some time back, but what the hey...

One of the downsides to having such easy access to the T.V and live broadcasts of sporting events, is not that radio commentary has been killed, but that it is being subjected to the verbal equivalent of medieval torture tools.

And by medieval torture tools, I mean the radio commentators. The Hindi commentators are the most insipid of all. While they spare us the lame attempts at trying to sound exciting, they also ensure that they leave no leaf unturned in going to the exact opposite extreme.

Sample this - commentary when Irfan Pathan was out bolwed by Murali yesterday:

Murali comes in to Pathan, bowls an offbreak. It bounces more than normal, and Pathan turns it round the corner for a single.
Pathan is out bowled by Murali between ihs legs off the bat. Good ball by Murali.

and that's that. Says something happens, then says something else happened, all in the same breath, same monotone. If I weren't paying attention to the words, I definitely would not have known that a wicket just fell.

But there are times when you wish you just had some doodad with which ti record radio stuff instantly..English commentary by Milind Wagle today morning, when Sri Lanka starts off their innings needing a target of 509:

Sri Lanka faces a very difficult challenge indeed. As tall as a T.V tower. Even as tall as the Eiffel Tower. Almost a Mount Everest to scale. In fact, take anything that's really tall, and this task is as tall as that.

I kid you not, this is exactly what he said. Decent commentator he is, but gets his feet all tangled up in the jumprope sometimes...

UGH!

I never realized just how used I am to the Gmail interface. It smacked me like a Mack truck between the eyes when I see today they'd changed "Move To Trash" to "Delete".

Why oh why?!

Oh, and it also sucks that Microsoft Word doesn't accept :wq as a valid method of saving a document and exiting the editor. Sharp ones may point out that MS Word is not an editor, but a word processor. To these I say - go jump in a well.