Category Archives: General

Anything and everything that doesn’t fit into the other sections

Adrian Sutil: I love Chicken Tikka and Metallica!

Posted on by
Reply

To begin with, a very happy new year to all of you. I’m late, but it’s better late than never.

Coming to the topic, I have never rooted for the under dog in Formula One before, that is, until Adrian Sutil came along. The Force India driver is one of the few drivers I like in the politics rocked sport.

A professional racing driver who wants to be a stuntman sometime in the future, Adrian Sutil is a big fan of Metallica and Indian food. Quote, “I love Indian food especially chicken tikka and chicken jalfrezi. I absolutely love gulab jamuns and yes, naan is yummy”. And even though he hasn’t actually won a race yet, the mere fact that he took the VJM02, a much inferior car compared to the McLaren and Brawn cars that dominated 2009, and raced it to 4th position in the Italian Grand Prix; or the second place in the German Grand Prix (that was eventually lost to Raikonnen thanks to a crash the Finn caused), definitely proves that he has potential.

The simple, yet outspoken guy that he is, I haven’t ever read an interview of Sutil like this one that the Times of India published yesterday. I thought it required a mention on my blog, given that Sutil has spoken so candidly about his life and his thoughts about almost everything. Give it a read. If you’re short of time, you might want to skip to the second page.

Come 2010, I’m sure things will turn around better for the German. An exciting season ahead with all the new teams, regulations, and of course, the return of the F1 Legend – Michael Schumacher. I can’t wait for it to start.

The Real Story Behind sk1d.com

Posted on by
3

As you all know, @hnprashanth and myself recently launched sk1d.com, a “personal” URL shortening service. What most of you do not know is the real story behind sk1d.com.

As URL shortening got more and more competitive after the explosion of micro-blogging service Twitter, we depended more on more on Tr.im, one of the leading URL shorteners that also offered statistics. Early Monday morning though, Tr.im closed down service. This was all fine and dandy. There are other services like 3.ly, u.nu, and bit.ly (with statistics). The only problem was, Prashanth was using Tr.im as sort of a URL shortener + bookmark service to keep tab of links he shared and liked, in spite of me repeatedly telling him not to. With Tr.im closed down, his collection of links is, well, dead. Lesson learnt.

After all the taunts and teasing, he was looking for a new bookmark service. Delicious was my obvious first suggestion, followed by a tongue-in-cheek comment about setting up a URL shortener on our server. But, he actually took it up as a suggestion and in a few minutes (~10 minutes to be precise), with the help of urlShort (open source URL shortener), I created sk1d.com.

skid_logo

Sk1d.com wasn’t even supposed to be launched to the public. It was sort of supposed to be our little repository of links. I was supposed to password-protect the site too, but one little tweet and to our surprise, people actually started using the service (and liking it too).

We pretty much realise that the service will mostly be used by our friends, but that’s fine with us. Sk1d.com wasn’t even intended for public release, let alone financial gains or traffic. It also means that without the burden on the server, sk1d.com will probably by all means, live longer.

Wanna Try It?

World’s Longest Highway – 25,000 KMs

Posted on by
2

Was stumbling Wikipedia when I came across the Pan-American Highway. It’s been officially recognized as the world’s longest motorable road, spanning an insane 25,000 kilometers!

longest_highway

I did the math, and in the end, if you use a car with a 15kmpl average mileage, you’ll require about 1666 litres of petrol, and around Rs. 83,000 for the cost of petrol (w/o taking wear and tear into consideration). Anyone up for a road trip?

The Great “Kick Ass” Bowling Tweetup

Posted on by
2

The Great "Kick Ass" Bowling Tweetup by Santosh GS.Yes, I’ve been enjoying a lot all these days. Weddings, parties, movie outings, and most importantly – tweetups!

I’m pretty sure all of you already know what a tweetup is. If not, JFGI. We Bangalore folks love our tweetups, ’cause we sure do know how to have a kick ass time (oops, does that qualify as a pun?).

The last tweetup (on Saturday, 30th May) was at Amoeba Bowling, Church Street. This was our first #bowlingtweetup (useless Twitter hash tag). The Bangalore tweeps, consisiting of @fagunbhavasar, @hnprashanth, @dkris, @tsuvik, @viralsachde, @santoshp and myself played two games, enjoying each one thoroughly. Of course, it would have been a lot more fun it only @fagunbhavasar had not won both by a landslide (128+ and 100+, WTF? :( ). Besides the bowling, we had a lot of fun looking everywhere else (rather, at everybody else), which for us guys, proved completely distracting, but enjoyable at the same time. (Err.. *hint*: birds, bird watching, you get the point?)

We visited Indian Coffee House (ICH) too. The new location on Church Street is small, but they still have the same coffee and brilliant ‘cutlets’. I’d recommend it to anybody coming to visit Bangalore.

Ah.. Good ol’ Bangalore. Awesome fun. Follow me on Twitter, and I’ll tweet when you can join us next time. Open invite. :-)

Oh, by the way, there’s a fun photo scheduled for blog post tomorrow. You might want to subscribe by feed or by email. ;-)

BSNL EVDO Data Plans and Tariff

Posted on by
3

Had just been to the BSNL office to enquire about the EVDO service. Here are the tariffs:

On Rent:

  • Security Deposit: Rs.1000
  • Activation: Rs.500
  • Monthly Rental: Rs.200 + Rs.550
  • Bandwidth: Unlimited Usage (speed more than 512 kbps and upto 2.4 Mbps)
  • Total: Rs.750+taxes.

     

    On Purchase:

  • Payment: Rs.3000
  • Activation: Rs.500
  • Monthly Rental: Rs.550
  • Bandwidth: Unlimited Usage (speed more than 512 kbps and upto 2.4 Mbps)
  • Total: Rs.550+taxes

     

    Of course, this is the rate of the plans in Bangalore, Karnataka.

    The plans sound very good. I’m not sure I’m ready to change from DataOne to EVDO. With BSNL Data One, users have to pay Rs.750 for 256kbps unlimited and Rs.1350 for 512kbps unlimited, but with EVDO you get unlimited at upto 2.4Mbps for Rs.550. Then again, it depends a lot on the strength of the signal. On an average, people report at least 1Mbps speeds.

    What do you think? Go with BSNL EVDO or stick to BSNL DataOne?

    • Google’s Internet Bus On 50 Day Tour of Karnataka

    Posted on by
    Reply

    Google India today announced that its ‘Internet Bus’ will now be touring Karnataka on a campaign focusing on four themes – information, communication, entertainment and education.

    The video driven content will showcase how even with basic knowledge of the Internet people can make their everyday lives simpler. The content will also provide familiarization on using services like search, email, social networking, online maps and mobile. All this information will be available in English and Kannada. The bus will be starting its journey from Bangalore and will travel through 15 towns in the next 50 days. This campaign is aimed at people with limited knowledge and exposure to the Internet and the experience has been designed to create awareness of the benefits of this powerful medium.

    Users across India will be able to follow the bus through its journey, see pictures and videos and join online communities by visiting http://www.google.co.in/internetbus.  
    "Tamil Nadu was a big learning for us and it was inspiring to see that people wanted to know about the internet and share their needs with us. This experience has reinforced our belief that awareness is the key challenge in the growth of the Internet in India and we are excited about bringing this campaign to yet another state. In this phase besides popular services like email, search and videos, we will be focusing on how mobile phones can be used to access useful local information even without data plans. Access to the Internet in local languages will continue to be a focus area,” said Dr. Prasad Ram, Head of Google R&D, India. [via PC World]

    Airtel to stop Airtel Online (NOP) Unlimited GPRS plan from May 5th

    Posted on by
    42

    It’s time to say buh-bye to Airtel’s once loved Airtel Online or Net Over Phone (NOP) unlimited GPRS data plan. Airtel has announced that they will be switching over from the unlimited GPRS plan to the pay as you use Airtel Live! and Mobile Office plans.

    From May 5th, Airtel will switch existing NOP customers over to a 30paise/50KB plan, in what can only be described as ‘INSANE’.

    New subscribers can send an SMS “VBC ACTV” to the toll free number 222. (Some report activating the service by dialing *567# or by sending an SMS “AGPRS” to 56789.)

    As an Airtel Online subscriber ever since I switched to Airtel, I have to say that I am extremely disappointed at Airtel.

    First, it was the ‘no more daily 100 free sms’ notice. Then the Re.1 daily rental for the College Plan (although they reacivated the free sms plan). And now cancelling the unlimited GPRS plan. Yes Airtel, you definitely know how to dig your own grave.

    [via HNP @ Tech Bangalore]