US Conducting Business these Days

It's a slow day in a little East Texas town. The sun is beating down, and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.....

On this particular day a rich tourist from back east is driving through town. He stops at the motel and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night..

As soon as the man walks upstairs, the owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.

The guy at the Farmer's Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her "services" on credit.

The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.

The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, picks up the $100 bill, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.

No one produced anything. No one earned anything.

However, the whole town is now out of debt and now looks to the future with a lot more optimism..

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government is conducting business today.

Road Trip - Konkan Beaches Day 2

The first day of the trip, read this

Day 1, we still continue driving towards Sawantwadi around 3.30 pm from Karde and we know we cannot make it to Sawantwadi that night decide to stop at a small town called Lanja (लांजा). Had a good dinner and luckily found a very cheap place for Rs. 280/- only in a lodge and luckily they are dog friendly. Kasper was enjoying the whole new experience of new place and was relieving himself at every possible stone and tyre. We get up early next day and start our trip towards Sawantwadi after good breakfast.
Distance between Dapoli to Sawantwadi -  378.0 km
The roads were again full of cars and ghats and trucks and Mr. Gautam was in full mood to reach Sawantwadi in 4 hours which should take generally 6 hours. Going up and down the ghat was super fun the view were awesome. As we were in hurry to meet up our friend at Sawantwadi we did not stop inbetween.
We meet our friend at Sawantwadi and head towards Tarkarli which is our main destination. Take a turn from Kudal towards Tarkarli which is around 30 Kms and the roads are awesome, we pass through a river and it looks like backwaters of Kerala totally serene.
Note: ST Buses from Sawantwadi, Kolhapur, Sindhudurgh run regularly to Tarkarli and Devbaug. Also Rickshaw from Kudal station to Tarkarli takes Rs. 300+
Tarkarli is just a small 2 way road nothing fancy and nothing big. You will see a big parking lot next to MTDC, we parked our car and went to the beach and we were in awe all clean and neat. After running around and swimming on the beach we were all hungry and wanted something to eat. Whats better to eat then the Malwan Cuisine in Malwan. We go to a small hotel and sit down where the food was cooked after we decide on what to eat. Food does take a lot of time to come but it was nice real home food.
Note: One can do Snorkeling for Rs. 250 per person for 30 minutes and dolphin watching for Rs. 1000 for 10 people max.
After lunch we went to see Devbagh on the way we had a tyre puncture luckily for electrical jack the car tyre were changed in quick time.
We move towards Devbagh, the roads got narrower and narrower, if two cars came from opposite direction both have to get off road. But the end was awesome we reached after sunset but it was a beauty. Tarkarli river and sea joining each other is a sight to see. After lazying around for few hours we head back to find a place to stay in already overcrowded Tarkarli.
After running around and lots of calling we get a place to stay in Hotel Visawa because someone had canceled their visit (lucky us!). Rooms for Rs. 1000 was not bad considering there was TV, hot water and big room for 3 human and one dog. Also the best part was private beach where one can go for a walk.
Note: Tarkarli is a safe beach so you can indulge yourself in a good midnight walk.
After all the traveling we go to sleep!
For photos click here

Twitter for Dummies - Not All you want to know...

I use twitter in office like millions others do and some of them who don't understand what is it ask me lots of questions....and by this I am inspired to write my FAQ and few details about twitter and its features which millions of blogger's must have written about. Anyways I have to increase the number of post so here it comes....mind you it is not complete just a few of those which I can explain :)

Twitter: Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. (first line in Wikipedia)

Tweets: Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. In simple sentence, write down anything in 140 words and person who follows you will see it on his timeline.

Handle: Handle is a username which you create similar to GTalk, Yahoo IM, etc etc. Some put in real name and some do come with awesome alter ego handle.

Tweeple: People on twitter are called Tweeple

Followers: It is similar to being friend with someone on facebook. Well similar not same, here if you follow someone they can see your tweets. But the other person cannot see your tweet because he is not following you.







Timeline: This is again similar to Facebook wall where you will see tweets of Tweeples whom you are following.

RT (ReTweet): This is done when you like someones tweet on your timeline and want to show it to your  friend. It is bit simple, "@XYZ says twitter is awesome" and you agree with it and want to share with your group followers you just RT it and it will show as "RT: @XYZ says Twitter is awesome"and this can continue over and over again.





DM (Direct Message): This is an interesting feature of Twitter, you cannot DM who is not following you and vice versa. So to have a private chat you have to follow each other.

List: It is bit confusing for the new user but if you want to see your favorite tweeples in one page just add them to your List which you can name anything and click on it you will see what they have tweeted about. It is like a mini-follow list.

Hashtag (#tag): This works as a subject line and things which can be put together. The best use of it was when it rained heavily in Mumbai and people wanted to know the exact situation about Mumbai Rains, tweeples at the start or end of the tweet would just type #mumbairains which others can search and know about it instead of typing Mumbai or Rains which can give lots of info.

Reply: You can reply to another tweeple tweet by just using @username, this will be seen by the tweeple and he can reply you back. But make sure when you use @username other tweeple who follow you and other tweeple can see the tweet. So there is no privacy.

And you will always say, twitter is so difficult to understand and don't know what is going on. You say these things because you are on twitter web which is the last thing you should do. There are gazzillions of apps for desktop, MAC, mobile and iPhone that you would not want to go on twitter website to tweet. You just download one of those apps and you are on twitter.

Desktop App:
Destroy Twitter
TweetDeck
Seesmic Desktop
PeopleBrowsr

MAC Apps:
MAC Lounge
Nambu
Tweetie
TwitterPod

Mobile/iPhone Apps:
Snaptu
Gravity
Dabr

ICICI website Revamped

One of the biggest bank in India has revamped their website ICICIBank.com have a look here

The most hillarious part of it is the scrolling text which is displayed with profile photos of ICICI Bank users stating, love the new look and i like ICICI bank.

I mean what do they want to state here, first of all user are not allowed to upload photos on the website and then we see this. Phunny aint it...but one thing is sure they do have good web presence overall.

NASSCOM Gaming Summit 2009 – Tour Diary

An article by my colleague Arjun Nair about our trip to Hyderabad 2009 GDC

The year 2009 will be remembered in the history books of Indian game developers as NASCCOM finally blessed the gaming industry with its very own “GDC-like” event to be held every year henceforth.
The NASSCOM Gaming Summit 2009 (which I’ll refer to as NGS09 henceforth because life’s too short) aimed to bring game developers across India (and some from abroad) under one roof where they could exchange ideas, stories on game dev, case studies, visiting cards and generally show off their development talents.

Here are the highlights of the event:
•    We got off our plane at 8 in the morning at Hyderabad Airport - a stunning piece of architecture that manages to make Mumbai Airport look like a Dharavi slum. It made for a great first impression at the very least!

•    Ernest Adams, legendary game designer, set the tone and mood of the conference by both being frank and witty. I was surprised to see that his presentation consisted almost entirely of text – so much for the theory that successful people use eye-pleasing presentations to engage the audience! Obviously, Adams hasn’t heard of it.

•    It was refreshing to see developers giving case studies that were both honest and in-depth. This is precisely the kind of exchange that Indian developers need in order to grow and learn. Games like Pahelika, Hanuman and Gajini were covered by their respective developers and its quite interesting to see the different approaches and thinking taken by them in the development of the games.

•    When FX Labs were concluding their presentation on Gajini, which consisted entirely of “Things that went right”, someone asked them, “What about things that went wrong?”. Imran Khan, VP, FX Labs said, “Can’t think of anything that went wrong”. That should be a first in game development! Anyone who’s played the game care to comment? ;)

•    During the BioShock (the 2d and 3d mobile games) presentation, VLC media player managed to crash spectacularly during playback of the video of the 3d game and hung the laptop. A surprising number of people recorded this event on their phone cameras for posterity. Sanity was restored by the combination of the good ol’ “three fingered salute”, Task Manager and Kill Process method.  I suppose that’s one way of grabbing audience attention!

•    The most number of laughs (arguably) in the conference were elicited when Purnima , in the course of her presentation, showed off a video (taken in the IG office) demonstrating developer ignorance about the Game Design Document. She went around the office asking people, “What is a GDD?” and the responses were hilarious! If you haven’t seen the video yet and need a good laugh, do yourself a service and ask Purnima for the video.

•    A note on food and drinks at the venue: The non-veg, esp. lamb gosht was fantastic but I have it on good authority that the vegetarian food wasn’t up to the mark. A good thing I’m non-vegetarian then eh? Also, I had probably the best Tiramisu (a sweet pudding in case you didn’t know – I didn’t!) ever! Apparently there were a beer party in the evening at 6 but unfortunately, I can’t comment on how that went since we had a plane to catch. You could say though that everyone left the event in “high spirits” in more ways than one.

Nitish Kumar - Business Reformer of the Year

Was watching TV yesterday morning when on Times Now News Channel ET Awards was on and Nitish Kumar CM of State of Bihar got the award of Business Reformer of the Year...please do watch the video and how he is wooing the Businessmen to come to Bihar. And also taking a potshot at Pranab Mukherjee

Parents Mentality

I am very lucky to have my parents who have now understood the finer things in life and at which winning is not everything. I am taking up this topic just for one reason...how winning is important to parents which might not be so much for their kids.

Aunt from US: Hey you look tired?
Me: Yes
AFUS: Why?
Me: Was playing cricket for four hours.
AFUS: Ohh! nice! so did you win?
Me: Yes...(i wanted to say..i really don't care if I win or lose all I did was had fun.)

Yes, yes I don't have kids and don't know much about it though no formal studies on that but basic nature is...why are parents so sucked up on did you win or not?

The questions should be Did you enjoy your game? or Did you learn something new?

Here they are emphasizing all about winning and losing in a cricket match which is played in a ground with guys who just want to have fun on a weekend.

Another interesting story which I heard was this in a Parents and kids counseling room:

Counselor: So tell me what would you like your kids to become?
Parent 1: Engineer
Parent 2: Doctor
Parent 3: CA
kept on going till the last one.
Counselor: mmm interesting...so no one wants their kid to become a well behaved and helpful human being....

Look at all the things which we do today is run a rat race even which we win we are still a rat...quoted by someone which I don't remember. Parents compare ohh look at XYZ he has gone to US and you are still here...the kid would just think and say see what Mr. Nandan Nilenkani or Mr. Sunil Mittal has done and you are still here.

So to all the parents out there..I know it is a big bad world out there but if you constantly remind your kid about it surely they will be shit scared to go out there and enjoy instead just run around.

Five Point Someone Vs 3 Idiots

There has being a fight going off between the writer of Five Point Someone (FPS) Chetan Bhagat and 3 Idiots team Vidhu Vinod Chopra mainly due to the reason that there was no credit given to the book in the movie.

After rave reviews, I go for my first film of the year 2010 and it turned out to be super duper awesome experience in which people were clapping and whistling at times when the characters said some awesome dialogue or some scene which actually touched the heart (that is Raju Hirani special).

Having read Chetan Bhagat book long time back but still was one of my favorite due to the style of his writing and he went downhill after that (sorry but true).

The story is not same as the book but the overall characters and plot was similar to the book but things inside it were totally not in the book. Sorry CB you should have atleast got Inspired by CB book FPS but not the full movie credit coz there was nothing else same.

But I must say Raju Hirani pulled off another masterpiece and loved every minute of it.