After a long time, I decided that I needed to press the reset button on my feeds list. Mostly because I had too many blogs that I was tracking and ended up not reading everyone of them, negating any and all advantages that using feed readers would have anyway.

One major benefit of doing this that I found was rediscovering TED.com, an amazing website that provides some really interesting stuff to listen, read and watch on the web as opposed to the degradation of the “celebs” that most other sites that provide entertainment provide.

If you haven’t been on TED.com ever before, I suggest that you do so as soon as you are done reading my site

Driving on the roads of Hyderabad was never a fun experience. The fact that as infrastructure changes so do the annoyances that are a part and parcel of driving in Hyderabad is a subject for a lot of research that I am sure some behavioral sciences student should undertake on their path to suicide.

What really irks me about the traffic in this city can basically be boiled down to two simple points:

1. Idiots talking on their cell-phone while driving/ riding.
2. Idiots who do not know the usage of the high beam and constantly try to die and kill at the same time by driving without any discipline and in high speed while talking on their cell phones

But this would not be any different that any other blog’s rant on the same subject if I didn’t add some violence and brutal methods to subvert these practices now, would I?

Well, here it goes: For the idiots talking on their cell-phones, the answer is quite simple - Get traffic policemen to carry packets of hands-free devices (the simple ear piece) for most popular models of cell phones and as and when the idiot is caught, the policeman/ police woman not only charges them for violation of the law, but also forces the idiot to buy an earpiece for twice the normal amount. As a way to ensure that this method works, the policeman gets to keep 75% of the money involved (god knows most of them are underpaid) with every charge as personal income and the idiot gets a receipt for the purchased item (of course).

For the second annoyance, I personally am contemplating carrying a sling or a “swingable” chain that I can swing and cause damage to the offending vehicle.

Any other ideas that anyone reading this blog might have, are of course more than welcome in the comments

Dethklok!! dethklok! dethklok!!!

Metalocalypse is an excellent animated series from Adult Swim that chronicles the ravages and musical shenanigans of the ultra-uber-metal-death-sick death metal band ever - Dethklok!!!! which comprises of band members:

Singer: Nathan Explosion,
Drummer: Pickles,
Lead: Skwisgaar Skwigelf
Bassist: William Murderface,
Guitars: Toki Wartooth

Metalocalypse takes you through the band making an album underwater called Murmurder, Dethklok awakening a death troll in Finland, William Murderface’s Birthday among many many other monumental episodes in history as the illuminati-style group called the Tribunal tries to thwart the band by calling in experts like “military pharmaceutical psychotropic drug manufacturers”, “celebrity depression specialists” or various psychopaths that attempt to infiltrate the group.

An amazingly funny series that is a must watch!!

Yes, I haven’t been updating this space for some time now. Yes, I have been lazy. It has been one of those spells of boredom interspersed with procrastination that cause me to deviate from my set routines and purpose in life and thus, I don’t blog. There has been a lot that I should have blogged about: my trip to a lovely coastal town called Murud-Janjira, the nice people I met there, the ridiculous bus “service” that is Jabbar Travels, reviewing a movie called Taaren Zameen Par (Stars on the Earth (sic.)), reviewing an amazing restaurant called Little Italy, etc., etc.

I don’t promise to cover all of these in the coming weeks but I am going to try.

What I want to tell you is that I am listening to an amazing band called Gorguts! If you are even slightly into extreme music and don’t mind a little growl-scream with your music, take a listen to Gorguts to listen to some of the most amazing riffs, tempo changes and out and out musical brilliance that is Gorguts (try the Obscura Album!).

Till the next post then!

I finally went ahead and did it. Worked with my dad. He is a trainer (leadership, teamwork, etc.) and had a rather large and important client who needed a team building workshop. Told me to help him with the whole thing and I did, and let me tell you it was awesome! Working with your parent wherever possible is something that I hope everyone does, simply because of the sheer exponential learning and surge of confidence you get from the experience.

The program that we did was spread over three days. We had conciously decided to make it a no presentation, no classroom lecture training. Instead we had games that simulated real world learnings in a very non-descript and fun atmosphere. What is different about our program is that unlike a lot of the other programs out there, these games are neither extremely challenging physically nor are they classroom based strategy sessions.

The major challenges for me were creating the environment, getting 26 total strangers who were older than me and more technically capable than me to respect me and trust me. These things come naturally to my father who had total command over the audience as soon as he started. To me, however, this was a first

What this also means is that I will be taking up more of these programs as and when they come with my father and can easily say that I am really confident in taking these up now.

So personal pat-on-the-back for me

Now as most of you may know, I am more of a rock/ metal person, but after a long long time, I re-heard Public Enemy’s “It Takes A Nation of Millions to Keep Me Down”.

This album is absolutely amazing! Now I admit that I actually went and heard PE only after I had first heard their collaboration with Anthrax, but man! This is one amazing album! The mixes are killer, the lyrics are real old school hip hop - about real world issues and not about money and women as most of the rappers/ hip-hop artists nowadays seem to make albums about! In case you have never heard the group, I seriously think you need to take a listen to this album.

Just wanted to make a quick and happy announcement that my new site: Linuxophile is ready and up now. I shall be constantly updating all Linux related news, tips and other cool stuff out there from now on, although I probably won’t be able to resist the temptation of posting a couple of them out here from time to time

So here we go: http://www.linuxophile.com/ for all your Linux related needs

Do let me know what you like or not like about the site, what can be improved, etc.

For those of us who are interested in and follow cricket like a religion, or like the rest of the Indian population, I found an interesting quiz over at Amaltas‘ website. Go have a dekko at the quiz, well thought out and quick too

Cricket Quiz

Another thing is, if you are interested in web programming and have heard of Django, a python based web framework that totally “kicks arse”, Amaltas has a really cool article about using Yahoo BBAuth with Django, something that I now notice has never been covered in so much detail anywhere else …

This, I believe, is the two billionth photograph uploaded on Flickr …