Santosh G.S.

Deterministic Chaos of A Random Geek

  • Home
  • Archives
  • Contact
  • Links
  • Orkut Goodies
  • Recently Watched Movies

The Real Story Behind sk1d.com

Posted by Santosh on Tuesday, August 11th 2009   

Digg it

Bookmark it

Stumble it

Email to friend

11
Aug

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?

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds

Filed under: General, Tech     Tags: Fun, sk1d, Twitter
3 Comments   

Finally, A (Wild) Bucket List That I Can Actually Finish

Posted by Santosh on Tuesday, August 11th 2009   

Digg it

Bookmark it

Stumble it

Email to friend

11
Aug

bucket_listA bucket list! Aha! Something that I wanted to pen down since watching The Bucket List way back in 2008. So without further ado, here is my wild list of stuff that I want to do before I die, (in no particular order):

  1. Be the CEO of my own company. (current status: in the works already)
  2. Live far away from the city. Probably a nice little village on the outskirts of Bangalore.
  3. Splurge on all the latest gadgets I can lay my crappy hands on, just once. (technology jumps a mile each month, so no point splurging over and over)
  4. Build a sound-proof room. (for various naughty reasons)
  5. Drive at 200+kmph, with the windows down and my head out, doggy style. lol
  6. Bungee jump. (lets keep it realistic, I doubt I’ll ever be jumping out of an airplane)
  7. Create something (anything) that I would have usually bought from a store instead.
  8. Get a damn tattoo. Even a small one will do.
  9. Attend Rock in Rio \m/.
  10. And while I’m there, visit “Christ the Redeemer” and perhaps Peru (Machu Picchu :D;).
  11. Slap a wild bull on its arse, TWICE! (like in the movie Wild Hogs)
  12. Eat a live squid. (yes, people actually do this!)
  13. Break a guy’s nose. (oh c’mon, you’ve seen it so many times in the movies. Just once I would love to do it! Volunteers anyone?)
  14. Try and watch all Star Wars movies in a day. (Wow, there’s _actually_ another nut like me. And thanks to him for the image for this post.)
  15. Add some more stuff to this list.

Stuff that should have been on the list, a.k.a. the ones that I’ve already completed:

  1. Paintball. (yay! never expected it to come to Bangalore _ever_. Read here.)
  2. Get stoned. (disclaimer: if you’re family, this never happened!!)
  3. Get involved in a street fight. (if you know me well, then you know that this just _had_ to have happened to me)
  4. Smash an electronic gadget (preferably a mobile phone) to pieces. (props to my friend C.S., who wanted a reason to buy a new mobile phone.)

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds

Filed under: Myself, Rants     Tags: Santosh, to-do
1 Comment   

World’s Longest Highway – 25,000 KMs

Posted by Santosh on Monday, August 10th 2009   

Digg it

Bookmark it

Stumble it

Email to friend

10
Aug

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?

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds

Filed under: General, Uncategorized     
2 Comments   

Bangalore Paintball Tweetup – Lots of Fun (and Pain)

Posted by Santosh on Wednesday, July 8th 2009   

Digg it

Bookmark it

Stumble it

Email to friend

8
Jul

indian_paintball_leagueTweetups in Bangalore have been getting not only better, but more common. This edition of Bangalore Tweetup, hash tagged #paintballtweetup, was organized in less than a couple of days, but it was loads of fun. The venue – Indian Paintball League (ironically called IPL), located off Sarjapura Road. …click here to read more

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds

Filed under: General     Tags: Bangalore, counter strike, Twitter
4 Comments   

[How To] Batch Convert PNG to JPEG Using Photoshop CS2

Posted by Santosh on Wednesday, July 8th 2009   

Digg it

Bookmark it

Stumble it

Email to friend

8
Jul

photoshop_sgsLately I’ve been finding myself manually converting PNG files to JPEGs. It can get quite tedious and frankly, boring. I downloaded a couple of apps that could automate the process, but each of them had their quirks. They would either watermark the finished image or limit me to trying them out for a finite number of days. I had to resort to manually editing them using MS Paint, and then saving them as JPEG files. The quality was bad, all thanks to the disastrous MS Paint. So I set out to find a way to convert them using Photoshop. What I ended up was writing my own Action for Photoshop CS2. …click here to read more

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribes to our rss feeds

Filed under: Tech     Tags: how-to, iPod
3 Comments   
Newer Entries »
« Older Entries
feeds
Subscribe to our article via RSS
Subscribe by email (free)

Advertisments

1 2

Want to put your ad banner here, contact me.

  • Recent Entries
  • Recent Comment
  • Most Comment
  • Trip to Gokarna Om Beach
  • Adrian Sutil: I love Chicken Tikka and Metallica!
  • …And The Beginning Of A New One
  • The End of a Chapter..
  • Randomness FTW!
  • The Real Story Behind sk1d.com
  • Finally, A (Wild) Bucket List That I Can Actually Finish
  • World’s Longest Highway – 25,000 KMs
  • Bangalore Paintball Tweetup – Lots of Fun (and Pain)
  • [How To] Batch Convert PNG to JPEG Using Photoshop CS2
  • Budget Consciou… in My trip to Mangalore
  • Santosh in Airtel to stop Airtel Online (NOP) …
  • arpita in Airtel to stop Airtel Online (NOP) …
  • M.K. Vijay Bhus… in New Apple iPhone 3GS Probable Relea…
  • Karthik in Brothers In Arms: Earned In Blood M…
  • zawngek in Expected Price of Airtel and Vodafo…
  • *Rajesh in Expected Price of Airtel and Vodafo…
  • priya in The Real Story Behind sk1d.com
  • Santosh in The End of a Chapter..
  • Sagar in New Apple iPhone 3GS Probable Relea…
  • Airtel to stop Airtel Online (NOP) Unlimited GPRS plan from May 5th (38)
  • Expected Price of Airtel and Vodafone iPhone in India (31)
  • My trip to Mangalore (23)
  • Book Your Airtel iPhone 3G (15)
  • Def Leppard concert in Bangalore - October 17th, 2008 [Cancelled] (14)
  • My To-Buy List (12)
  • Sony MDR-XD200 Headphones Review (11)
  • iPhone 3G Price in India to be Rs.31,000? (11)
  • The Fruits of My Blogging... (10)
  • Tagged (10)

Search

Categories

  • Uncategorized (7)
  • General (42)
    • News (1)
  • Humour (12)
  • Rants (7)
  • Myself (15)
  • Reviews (7)
  • gaming (1)
  • Apple (2)
  • Music (4)
  • Tech (3)
  • Randomness (1)
  • SIT (1)
  • Travels (1)

Subscribe

  • technorati add aol netvibes rojo myyahoo modern freedictionary subrss chicklet plusmo newsburst ngsub wwgthis subscribes

Archives

  • February 2010 (1)
  • January 2010 (1)
  • August 2009 (6)
  • July 2009 (2)
  • June 2009 (4)
  • May 2009 (4)
  • April 2009 (5)
  • September 2008 (3)
  • August 2008 (7)
  • July 2008 (6)
  • June 2008 (11)
  • May 2008 (4)

Pages

  • Archives
  • Contact
  • Links
  • Orkut Goodies
    • Graphical Testimonials
    • Graphical Testimonials – 2
    • New Year Wishes
    • Profile Goodies
    • Testimonials
    • Textual Testimonials
  • Recently Watched Movies

Links

  • Go64now - 64-bit software downloads
  • HarmlessGeek - Teh Harmless Geek – Articles to help everybody
  • Santosh – MicroMe - Me on Tumblr
  • SathyaBhat – Mr. Nice Guy - Website of Mr. Nice Guy aka (!!) Sathyajith Bhat. :P

Browse Our Tag Archives

Airtel Apple Bangalore BitTorrent BSNL Comics Complaints counter strike DataOne EVDO f1 Fun Fusion Lounge gaming Garfield Google how-to Humour I-go-crazy-at-night iPhone iPod Kannada linux Metallica mods Music n70 Nokia Randomness Rants Rental Reviews Santosh SIT sk1d symbian Tariff themes to-do Travels Tumkur Twitter windows

©2009 Santosh G.S.

Santosh