Chennai showing its true colors

After a loooong time I decided to visit chennai, mostly because my bro was leaving for singapore… The weekend I spent there was simply fabulous.. I mean .. i hated chennai from the bottom of my heart.. avid chennai lovers please note that i used the past tense.

This time I got to see what Chennai as a metro was all about, and I was simply blown away -> The nightlife is great. I spent more time in areas of the city I haven’t been to before. I remember people saying that chennai grows on you.. now I am at least ready to believe it.

Of course the climate is still unbearable.

The Dark Knight Returns

This is what happened this weekend. A friend came to se Hyderabad…and on offer as a tourist attraction was the Dark Knight in IMAX and it was worth watching it again a second time. This is definitely one thing that is in favour of Hyderabad. Apart from IMAX I also managed to finally finish my bottle of Tequila.

Flyin on the information highway

This is referring to my internet connection. Its a 2Mbps connection.. and these days I am getting most of it. The provider is Beam Cable Systems in Hyderabad. Of course I had to suffer for the connection to be initially set up.. but once that was done.. there have been no complaints.. I always able to connect on demand..not like before (ie. last year) where the internet wouldn’t work if there was a power failure. The download limit on my package is 2.8GB which will get over pretty fast..but 2Mbps.. definitely worth it.. besides larger packages are available.

Now I hope I am not pushing my luck by writing this (as in touch wood).

The rain and power cycle of india

There is always a state of no power, i.e. no electricity.

When it rains it is more than likely that the power will go. And when there is no rain .. there is the excuse that that there is no water in the dams which again leads to load shedding.. This year Mumbai has 6 hours load shedding  per day.

So what will be the ideal situation where there are no power cuts? A week with no power disruption of any kind would be a sign that there is hope after all… Metros are not counted

A good weekend

For the past couple of weeks, ever since coming back to Hyderabad.. I reached the conclusion that this city is not for me anymore.. Nothing to do.. n most friends have relocated. But there is something in Hyderabad that cities like Chennai, Bangalore and recently Mumbai can only dream of – IMAX. So it came as no surprise that when The Dark Knight was released in IMAX that I had to see it and it was well worth it. Considering that I am in Hyderabad it may not even be that big a deal that I watched the movie in IMAX, hw bout people coming in from other cities, in this case Chennai n Bangalore (will never get used to Bengaluru) to see it? Well that would be my bro n Johnny.

Needless to say.. anybody who has googled The Dark Knight will have already read awesome reviews about it – and its true .. the movie is AWESOME… watch it…and if possible try for IMAX.

The rest of the weekend was good…but at the end of the weekend ..it only reinforced my feeling that the city is not for me… Possible new places of interest are Bangalore and Frankfurt

Finally back online

After being back in India for nearly 3 Weeks I finally got my Internet@home working again, thanks Beam Cable. I must say that the speeds which I get from Beam Cable Systems are pretty decent (I’m supposed to have a 2Mbps connection but am not getting that speed), it has a download limit of 2.8GB. They have also updated system a bit so that the internet continues to work even without power (earlier I knew when there was a power cut in Madhapur since it wud affect my internet connection in Kondapur). I should also mention that getting the connection took a while, 2 weeks of nonstop calling, but now that I finally have it… its definitely worth it.

High on the News update list is that my Laptop konked again….3 months after getting my first problem on my laptop (where wifi n display were not working) fixed http://twohomes.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/post-warranty-problems-compaq-presario-v3000/ i get a repeat performance with just the display, I immediatly thought of this as an excuse to upgrade to a new laptop.. No worries though ..this time around when i walked into the HP service station the guys knew exactly wat the problem was without even having to talk bout stupid stuff like reinstalling my OS. I wonder how many Incidents of Compaq v3000 display problems they have faced in the last few months? This time around it also became more obvious that the problem was overheating related since area near the power button went very hot.  Anyway.. they are in the process of fixing it or rather – replacing the motherboard.

Checkin in from Dubai

Its been a while since I posted.. i guess i got lazy or busy.. Anyway my onsite trip to Germany has finally come to a close. Right nw I am in Dubai International waiting for my connecting flight to Hyderabad. The last 11 months were simply awesome… to say the least!!

My return trip wasn’t so good so far.. had an overweight problem of around 20kilos… stuff tends to pile up after u’ve been onsite for 11months (its 20 kg overweight even though i left some stuff back in germany.. including my inline skates n xbox). Also DBX wasn’t so enticing this time around.. nothing to buy.. nothing interesting to look at.. so i spent my time in star books reading NEXT which i purchased 3 months ago.

Luckily I’ ve had plenty of time to mentally prepare myself for my return since I was supposed to be back last week. But how I will adjust in the initial days is anybodys guess…my current state of mind is..homesick.. for germany

Things ranking pretty high on my todo list on reachin hyd is to get a net connection again.. since personal internet in office is pretty mucch useless from what i’ ve heard. Yet to upload a lot of Photos..

Looking for a Reason to switch to Linux?

How about this:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/29/linux-becomes-only-os-to-escape-pwn-2-own-unscathed/

Anime Marathon

That is what I was doing this weekend, instead of going around the city in the cold weather. After reading this blog the other day http://theaveragelife.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/saber-rider-and-the-star-sheriffs/ I decided to visit my childhood cartoon favourites, the ones I used to see when I was in Germany.

At the top of my list were Galaxy Rangers, Rock n Cop and Saber Riders. After watching a few episodes I realised that although I still like cartoons by taste has shifted a bit in terms of Artwork – thank you Animax. Animax hooked me to Getbackers, Samurai X and Full Metal Alchemist all of which have interesting art (except during the funny scenes). After coming here I’ve been using my bandwidth to watch the episodes which I have missed out on in Animax.

Anyway, this entry is about my weekend activity which was 50 episodes of Mobile Suit Gundam Seed over the weekend . The idea of watching an anime with robots lead me to search google for popular animes and I ended up watching episode 1 & 2 of Gundam Seed – and boy did I get hooked, mainly to the artwork, the story is similar to Mobile Suit Gundam which they already showed on Animax (and the artworked of which sucked majorly). So on Fri n Sat nite I was up till 4am just watchin one episode after another. The good thing about Gundam Seed: Art work, nice looking characters (anime style), somewhat adult themes (this cartoon even has a censored version), nice robots, good story. The bad: too much time spent on recaps.

Now that I completed watching all episodes I already set on my next target which is Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny .

As far as I can tell the best sites to watch online videos are veoh.com & imeem.com

Also downloaded Smallville season 1 & 2 after seeing the price of just one Season in Saturn.

With great power comes great responsibility…

This is not regarding Spider-Man, this entry is regarding Linux. You can do a whole lot more in Linux than you can in Windows (such as opening the terminal and typing stuff in which you barely understand).

Who uses the command prompt in Windows anymore, other than to find the I.P. address? In Linux you can use it to install stuff, modify files…and to copy code from the web and paste it in the terminal, since you don’t know its GUI alternative. After doing that kind of stuff for a while you actually think that you know something, which is the beginning of your downfall.

I had/have a problem with sound on my laptop in order to fix it I did something which resulted in my XServer not working anymore. Some brilliant guy on a forum asked me how I did that since both are completely unrelated, beats me, must be a talent. Of course I did not know that there was a problem with X-Server, I instead opted for the easiest solution which I could think of (OS Reinstall), only I remembered the trouble I had in getting my Wifi to work in the first place, so I opted to searching the Forums with my mobile (thank god for the wifi on it). These days I am active in the Linux Mint and Ubuntu forums, always ready to post new problems

I seriously wonder whether I had this many problems on windows or that it was so long ago that I don’t remember. In windows, if there was a problem I generally just restart (and lose all data in the process), since the system basically hangs. Linux refuses to hang…too bad I don’t know how to use the terminal so well.

Current status: Sound still not working, GUI needs to be enabled manually via the terminal. And instead of 4 virtual desktops I only got two, not that I mind, but it also means that instead of a cube I get a rotating disc.

With great power comes great responsibility… its true… in the case of linux it gives you more options to mess up your system. However the satisfaction you get after solving a problem is simply great, only thing it doesn’t last too long since the next problem is just around the corner.