Upgraded

After almost more than 6 months, I atlast found the time to go buy a new "Wetern Digital 160 GB Hard disk".

I already have a 80GB HDD. I had to now configure this to be the master drive and add the new HDD as a slave. It was fun doing it myself. Before I went to the vendor, i read this nice blog post and got some information on how the jumpers have to be set for different configurations of the HDD. While purchasing the disk, I asked the vendor to explain me about the jumpers. He was kind enough to explain me that Western Digital comes with 5 possible settings and not 4, as is the case with Seagate. That was some knowledge. The various jumper positions were very clearly written on the Hard Disk itself. So it definately made things a bit easier.

Came home and opened up the computer box, and took around 15 minutes to actually fix the hard disk into a proper slot. Then, I had to just connect 2 chords, one for the bus, and the other probably power [ not quite sure ]. Thats it, 20 minutes, and I had the HDD installed in my machine !!!

Now, I had to format this new hard disk. There, started my search for a disk partitioning tool for windows partitions. I primarily wanted to use the second disk as a back up disk and for my video editing sessions, and so it had to have a primary Windows partition with ofcourse enough spare space for all the various Linux versions i am planning to install and fill up the 160 GB space :D

While "googling" i came across this very well articulated cool solution about partitioning on Linux. Ofcourse, it didnt help me a lot, but was very good information none the less. It struck me that i could perhaps create a windows partition from my Linux partition !!! Well, i tried it and then realised that i could not format it :-( Also, it was recommended to always format the partition with the native OS. So, i didnt venture much into this.

I downloaded a trial demo version of Paritition Magic, and after spending an hour on downloading and installing and configuring my hard disk parittiions with it, when i clicked the option that actually would write the new configuration on the hard disk, it gave me a very innocent popup message which read something like ... "This is only a demo version. Please install a paid version to perform this operation." I was like, oh no, it really said "demo" version ... AAArrrgggghhhh X-(

After some more googling, i found this very good article that taught me to use the disk partitioning tool already present on Windows XP to create partitions on my new HDD. I was contemplating on buying a new software for partitioning and thanks to this article, i saved getting fooled.

Now, my machine is more fatter :-) upgraded and ready to go .......

Merry Christmas to you all !!!

Blog This !

Playing around with digg.com i really found it interesting to just click a single button and say "Blog This", for any digged article that i licked. But, soon digging became monotonous and less interesting for me.

And today, after scrapping off my .mozilla directory [ ofcourse, after taking backups !!! ], and restarting firefox 2, I was able to atlast install the cool, firefox 2 themes, like "MacFox II", and add my google notebook extension , and by the same time came across "Google toolbar". A new release for firefox on Linux has happened recently.

Ofcourse, the common thing between the last 2 paragraphs is "Blog This" :-). Yup, google toolbar now has a "Blog This" button, which you can click, and it opens up your blogger home page [ after having 2 sign in twice because my blog is moved to Beta blogger .. how dumb of these guys to have not taken this into consideration. Hopefully, they should have this fixed soon. ]. And then i need to click on "New Posts" and then enter the story that i want.

Damn, this is so uncool of google to do this. First, they ask you to have a single login account for all their services and then they dont seem to be seamlessly working among themselves :-( ... Guess, size really matters. The earlier slimmer google team had better integration among the products compared to the fat team now. I have started believing on the saying that "Your products are as integrated as your teams". Heard a lot about this in my previous company, but i only seem to be realising it now when i see things not working well integrated from google.

I would have preferred something on the similar lines to "google notebook". You visit a site, select the text you want in your blog, and click "Blog This" and you are taken directly to the composer window of your blog with the selected text including the link to the original article already typed. Hope to see this coming soon ...

Another good thing about this google toolbar in the "Bookmark". Now you can keep your bookmarks centralised with your google login id. Few points to improve on this as well ... Guess, this is a new product from google, and so can be pardoned for now. But, would really like to see an import option. Also, the google toolbar doesnt seem to be having the "bookmark this page" button as is suggested in the toolbar features page.

Integrating diversified teams is really a daunting task :-)

Small Contribution

It felt very nice to read this article today in the papers. I was also part of this program. It was actually through this program that i got an opportunity to give a small lecture at PESIT on socket programming.

I joined this program only as a backup plan and was lucky enough to get a chance to interact with the students and share some gyan with them. I came to know about the enormity of this project only later on when we were all invited for the lunch party. This program has no direct links between the student and company. In the sense that, there is no compulsion on the students to join the company or take internship through this program. Its purely a knowledge sharing activity completely done by volunteers. I was surprised to know that, one of the faculty members on this program was actually a student of this program a couple of years ago and voluntered to contribute just because he knew how helpful this program was for him and wanted to help his college juniors in bridging the gap between the college curriculum and the industry expectation.

Yes, it was a pity to know that these students who have broadband in their college campuses and have access to all the opensource courseware from MIT, Stanford, Harvard and google were not familiar with Socket Prgramming. !!! I had this impression that the curriculum has changed a lot since the days we studied in college and that the students were more knowledgable than us. But, only after visiting the college i figured out that it was only the non-curriculum activities where the knowledge was more, in things like, mobile usage, internet fun surfing, video games. Well, yeah, college days are for having fun, but with the study system that we have in India, colleges just end up being that, "a place for having fun" and nothing much. There is hardly any scope for good technical discussions and innovations.

Hopefully, with more such voluntary activities, we should be able to improve the relationship between the industry and college. I feel that unless the tests conducted in college are not more innovative and practical and more near to the reality, there wont be much improvement in the current situation. It would be really great to live in a day when the colleges would be a place for seeding new ideas, and breaking new grounds for the industry to then jump in and materialise these innovations.

Double Centuries

Wow !! What a wonderful week of cricket.

I was really impressed by the inspired batting of the England team after being beaten up so horribly in the opening test match. The first innings score of 551 was really a great score considering the debacle they had in the first test match. Of particular importance was the beautifully paced double century of Collingwood. I was lucky to watch him play on the second day and was really impressed with the ease with which he played. He was patiently waiting for the bad deliveries and punishing the Aussie bowlers very severely for them. He really showed a lot of character and confidence in his batting. I really liked the way he came forward to Micheal Clark and lofted the ball straight over the bowler's head to score his 200th run with a boundary. He was really pumped up and truly deserved his double century. Well, one bowler who got most of the flak was Brett Lee, and it was so nice to see Brett Lee walk up to Collingwood and congratulate him on his double century. Its very rare to see such sporting spirit. It makes it even more better when such things happen in a bitterly fought battle.

Kevin Peterson had a big contribution to Coolingwood's double century. I saw the highlights of the day and could see how they both shared the responsibility of breaking the backs of the Aussie bowlers, with Glenn McGrath having his worst bowling score ever, 107/0. They took turns in scoring boundaries. When Kevin was on fire, Paul would give him strike and just watch his partner score the runs. And when Kevin was tired, and that was like after scoring 3 to 5 boundaries, Paul would take over the charge and start scoring the boundaries and now it was Kevin's turn to just stand at the non-striker's end and watch. A very good demonstration of how partnerships are built in cricket.

And as England were losing the Ashes yet again to a completely wonderful turn over of a sure shot drawn match to the incredible Aussies, thanks to a fighting century from Micheal Clarke and the magician called Shane Warne, the Pakistani great, Mohammad Yousuf, was breaking records. In their test match against the West Indies, Yousuf, scored another century in the second innings, his 9th century this year !!! He broke the 1970 record set by Vivian Richards of 1710 runs in a calendar year, by scoring 1788 runs this year at 99.33 average. This man is one great stylish batsmen who is in his peak of his form. Wonderful to watch when he starts hitting the ball well, and a very very tough nut to crack when he has his foot dug up well on the crease. Many call him a master strokesman. It certainly was a great week for cricket.

The name's Bond ... James Bond

"How would you like to have your martini, sir ? Shaken or stirred ?" "Who the hell cares !!"

Hearing that from a James Bond movie is something going against conventional wisdom. Well, it still was in a James Bond movie, and these were the dialogues that made it clear that Bond, a man with his usual courteous mannerisms and self possession of the shaken martini was still in his formative days.

This weekend, after a very long time got a chance to watch a movie in the theatres. "Casino Royale" was definately a great movie to be watched in the theaters. What made it worth watching was the beautiful camera work during the fight sequences and chases and the beautiful locales, shot on a perfectly clear day.

All this month, thanks to Star Movies, we have been spending every night watching all the James Bond movies. Its a treat to watch these movies. Not for the plot, but for the superb acting, and the technically sound and innovative villians. There is one striking similarity in all the James Bond movies though. Well, ofcourse there are lots of similarities shown ;-) ... but I was talking more of the similarities of how Bond spoils the innovations of the villians. In almost all the movies, they show Bond to not be a very technically inclined person. But he is techno-savvy none the less. Always using the latest gadgets at the precise time. But, what strikes me most is that, no matter how innovative the villians be, all their works are spoilt by a very small snag that is thrown in by Bond. Like, a very small fire somewhere in the control room, or break some valve with a hammer and create a leak that destroys everything. Its these small things that make the desctruction even more better :-) .. Just goes to prove Murphy that when anything can go wrong it definately will :p

This movie was based on the first novel written by Ian Fleming, and it shows how circumstances make Bond such a ruthless secret agent 007 and get the license to kill. It was refreshing to watch Daniel Craig as the Bond. Pierce Brosnan was getting really old, and had lost his charm for this role. Infact, i dont think he was anywhere near the great Sean Connery and Roger More's portrayal of Bond, except in his first movie Golden Eye. Daniel has a fresh look, and well built to depict the impact in the fights.

For most of the length of the movie, I was on the edge of the seat with the lovely sound track accompanying the chase and fight scenes. The first chase scene where the guy just keeps jumping and hopping like an iRobot :D, is definately commendable. The camera work here was just superb. Showing the height of the cantilever and the jumps in the buildings were just breath taking. Ofcourse, there must have been some camera tricks here, but it looked very nice. Also, the fight on the staircase was good. A bit brutal, but then that was the point :-)

I did miss Q, and the cars in this movie, but then it was the era in which James was not yet 007. One particular scene that i liked was the small car chase they showed in the night. Hadnt seen such a scene earlier. They showed 3 cars zooming down a lovely valley along some curved road in the dark and you could see only the flash lights of the cars as they moved. It really looked very nice and cool.

And ofcourse, the beautiful scenaries in Venice, especially the last scene where they show that solitary house on the banks of a river under the clear blue sky was just so pretty. And thats when the old injured man asks, who are you .. and our new Daniel Craig is shown in customary trim suit with a cheeky smile saying the golden words, "the name's Bond ... James Bond"

A century before lunch: Lara's theme

A century before lunch: Lara's theme Brian Charles Lara equalled Sunil Manohar Gavaskar's achievement of 34 Test centuries and was just one short of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar's record of 35 on the Multan morning of November 21.... Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/515130.cms

Good old friends

Had a great time this weekend on 4th November when i met RatnaPrasad, Girish and KP Rajesh. RatnaPrasad, whom we lovingly call RP, came down to Bangalore from Pune. He had some work with the RTO here and also was getting desperate to lose as many matches as he could in TT against his arch rivals, his own students :p.

I went to KP's house and from there we both went in KP's car in the evening through the weekend, hustle-free roads of Indiranagar and Koramangala to Girish's house in HSR layout. Girish stays in a very posh, colorful, colony like apartments with his wife, in a flat he bought about 4 years ago. There are lots of recreation facilities in his apartment premises including lawn tennis court, badminton court, swimming pool, gymnasium and ofcourse an auditorium converted into a TT room.

Met my earlier manager Nagarathna there after many years. I was interacting with RP after atleast 3 years now !!! Was nice to hear about his new adventures. After delving into fields like, "understanding a person while reading his hand-writing", carpentory, he has now moved into reading about history. He is currently reading the history of Maharashtra. I have asked him to blog about his new discoveries and i am sure it will be great to read about his findings, in his very own structured calm way.

After chit-chatting and getting mesmerised about all the old utilities and softwares we all were involved with, we went out to check out the recreation area. Infact, that was one of the prime reasons for all of us to come together. It was raining a lot that evening and it eventually meant that we could not play lawn tennis. We decided on playing TT, the one sport where we all four were damn good at. Infact, it was Ratna Prasad who taught me the discipline of playing TT. And it was Girish who taught me how to smash the ball and still get a point for it :)

We played for around 2 hours, with each one playing atleast 15 to 20 singles matches. Was very refreshing and tiring too !! It was great playing the defensive game against Girish, and i even succeeded in winning a rally where he was smashing and i was defending. Its a rare sight to watch Girish lose such a rally ;) ... RP was at his usual best. For the first half, he was just watching each of us play and open up all our cards, and then in the later half, he started giving back and defending for all the techniques that we were using. KP was chopping and spinning the ball all round the table.

I did have a great run in the beginning winning against all of them for quite some time, but later on I started running out of luck and the others started playing better . Then started the actual fun. The scoring was getting more competetive and it was bringing out the best in each of us. The rallies were getting longer and we were all enjoying the matches more and more. Finally, fatigue overtook us, except Girish, who played continously 6 games!!! 3 with RP and then 3 with me, and he was the winner, as usual. A very memorable and refreshnig weekend, none the less.

GNOME 2.16

Quote of the Day - Josh Billings - "Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there."

Well, you really need to stick on this one till the end to get some good results. Garnome is a user customizable build of GNOME packages. So, you need to download the gnome sources, compile them, install them and then execute them to run your own version of GNOME. This way you can customise the products that you want to be built [ though there is really very less scope of doing this, just because of any dependency failures. ]. But this is definately the best way to get a hands-on on the latest, stable GNOME release. I did this last month for GNOME 2.16

I have SuSE Linux 10.1 running on my desktop, with all the developer packages installed from the CD. Garnome sources are available for download at http://www.gnome.org/projects/garnome/ . After downloading the sources, read through the README quite well and follow the steps at this link http://www.gnome.org/projects/garnome/docs.html very diligently.

The steps are just too simple. After untarring your sources, modify gar.conf.mk file with your build area and install area path. Though, going by the defaults is less painful. Then go to the desktop directory and execute, "make paranoid-install".

During this process, I found that i had to install the following packages on my desktop.

aspell-devel-0.60.3-20
openldap2-devel-2.3.19-18
cyrus-sasl-devel-2.1.21-18
ImageMagick-devel-6.2.5-16.5
libwmf-devel-0.2.8.2-110.5
python-gdbm-2.4-14
Pyrex-0.9.3.1-1
pyrex-0.9.3-5
python-devel-2.4.2-18

Thankfully, these were easily available from rpmbone and google.com :)

I did face another very strange problem though. My proxy server had blocked some of the gnome servers and so i had to make garnome look into some other servers, and most of the time ended up downloading the sources myself. Garnome actually automatically downloads the dependency sources for you and compiles it. This is where my proxy caused me problems. So, i had to download the tar.gz for the sources, and copy them to the "<dependency-package-name>/download/". This way, the makefile would be fooled that it downloaded the tar.gz and directly go ahead untarring it.

This took me around 2 weeks of time to complete, with all the other official work taking away most of my time :p. Then, came the day when garnome finished compiling all the 150+ modules, and I was ready to execute my own GNOME 2.16 binaries. Please make sure that you read all the instructions very carefully for this. You can very easily screw up your existing desktop, if you dont take proper backups of your configuration files. I had to kill avahi, dbus and sometimes even go to single user mode and then run startx to see garnome running for me. Ofcourse, a reboot should take care of all such problems.

But, the worst part is that, after taking so many pains, I did not see any new UI changes between the GNOME 2.12 that i had by default from SuSE to the new GNOME 2.16 that i built now. Hopefully, I should be able to see new changes for GNOME 2.18 :)

Zero Inbox

43folders.com is something i came across to figure out how one could improve his productivity at work. It isnt the one stop shop for all your problems but definately is a good place to start off trying to figure out how other people are solving the same problems you are facing.

One such solution i found was labelled "Zero Inbox". It didnt ring a bell when i read the title, but once I read through the article I figured out that I really was wasting a lot of time in checking and answering mails. Just by going through all the mails as the first thing in the morning, I was spending a lot of time in sorting out the mails that needed my immediate attention.

The approach given in "Zero Inbox" does sound a bit too scary at first, but once you try it out, you will realise that you hardly spend any more time than is needed with your mail client.

The idea proposed is very simple. Always make sure that you have "Zero" mails in your Inbox. Yeah, I know, "that's scary" :). And where do you move the ones you already have in the Inbox ? Well, for that you create 3 simple folders and move the mails accordingly into those folders. These 3 folders are "Archive", "Action" and "On Hold".

Archive : This would contain all the mails just for keep a track record of things going on now, and you dont necessarily have to read these mails more than once. Usually the FYI type mails and the current project status mails fall into this category. As days passed on I realised that i do get some mails which are more personal to me, like the salary reciept mails. I decided to move these under another archive folder called "Personal". Doing this is fine, as long as you dont create so many subfodlers that you end up wasting time in deciding which folder a mail should go. Just having 2 folders, archive for work related stuff, and another archive for personal stuff should do.

Action : This would contain all the mails to which you "have" to reply today. Something like a list of "to do" items for you for today. Ofcourse, another good thing that you should follow while deciding on the mails that go into this folder is to reply them "right now" or "later" ? One good practise that people follow is to immediately reply back to the mails that take less than 2 minutes to type. Some people use the approach of batch processing. First thing you do is sort out the mails into these 3 magic folders, and get back to the work in hand. Then, in another batch, after sometime, come back to your mailbox and reply to as many mails as you can from this folder. There is yet another school of thought that says that "dont check your mails first thing in the morning" :) .. I'll leave this as food for thought :p

On Hold : This would contain all the mails that you will need for quick access in the coming days, may be for one week from now. Things like, a mail to fill up some feedback form in the next 2 days.

Ofcourse, one more important thing that you should do while moving the messages into "Action" and "On Hold" folder is to mark these mails as "unread". That way you know the number of mails that need your attention. And once you are done with the work for a given mail, you should move it to "Trash" or "Archive" as the case may be.

Sounds quite simple and easy ? Well, the toughest part is to keep yourself disciplined to follow this religiously and actually take action on the mail items in these folders .. If you are game for it, then give it a shot for a week, and you might actually find yourself left with lots of free time :)

Code Search

Found this article and tried a search for libevolution-exchange .. It actually found the result from inside a tar.bz file !!!

Truly awesome :-)

Wonder how people get such innovative ideas !!!

Excuse me, Sir !!!

Today, I had a great chance to teach some students at PESIT college in Bangalore. I got a wonderful opportunity to teach Socket Programming to a group of 10, 7th Semester Engineering students. I had a tough time preparing the content to be spoken there. Luckily the slides were in place but werent much useful as a study material since they only had some place holders and no long sentences in them. Dug up some old links and took a lot of help from friends and spent a couple of hours studying late night as if it were my exam in the morning. Reminded me about all those night outs we had in college time :-)

I had a cab booked to pick me up from home, and was half an hour before time at the college. College was buzzing with activity and it felt like it was already 12 in the noon. Checked the watch and it was just 9 !!! No wonder, I feel so lonely in office when i reach there at 9 ;-)

Unfortunately, "my students" had to attend some written test for a company that had come to their campus and most of them could not make it. There were close to 25 who were expected and only 10 turned up. The class kick started very well. To break the ice, I asked them all to write a simple C program to open a text file and print the first and the last 5 characters in it. Was planning to use this in the later half of the session, but it just flew out of my mind later in the day.

Observed the approach and some practises they were following and used these observations to explain them the necessity of writing meaningful variable names, having good coding styles, spending good time on designing their code, to make note and understand the assumptions that go with every single piece of code that is written in this world, blah blah ...

Spent another 45 minutes talking about the overall reasons for having socket programming and giving them a broad level picture of why and what of socket programming. Was actually surprised to know that none of them had ever tried their hands at socket programming !!! It just blew away all the preparation that i had done assuming that these guys would be all experts in socket programming already and would want to learn about some real life examples and pitfalls in socket programming. But, had to change the strategy and concentrate more on giving the theory and talk a lot about the philosophy behind socket programming.

After listening to me patiently for close to 90 minutes, we had a small tea break, and later on resumed the session by writing a small client that would connect to "www.google.com " and print whether the connection was a success or a failure. While testing this client, we figured out that the proxy for the LAN in the lab was down and we had to abundon this program.

I moved onto server side programming and explained them about it. By then, it was already more than 150 minutes since they were bearing me speak. And I realised that they started percieving not to be speaking about socket programming but rather uttering some english sentences which just bounced back the moment they reached anywhere near their ears. I didnt feel like torturing them anymore and we called it a day at around 1 in the noon.

They were so courteous to me that they arranged me some lunch and were insisting on addressing me as "Sir", no matter what I say, and I stopped resisting it and started enjoying it. :D

Andre Agassi's career in pictures

Highs and lows from Andre Agassi's 20-year career ... Relive the moments of the legend ...

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Reception on Bannerghatta Road

Last Friday I had been to the wedding reception of Sudhakar and Shwetha in a hall on Bannerghatta Road. Both Sudhakar and Shwetha are working in my team and moreover they sit in adjacent cubicles, saying "Hiiiiiii" to eachother ;-)

The reception was great and we had a very lavish dinner. Reaching the hall from M.G.Road was one horrendous experience though. I had only heard about this pathetic traffic jams on the Bannerghatta road around the Dairy circle. But this was the first time that I had the privilege of being stuck up in this killer traffic on my bike. There were only 3 occassions which lasted for miniscule seconds, that my bike was on third and fourth gear in the total 6 km stretch that took me 30 minutes to cover !!! That was some ride ....

The road is so narrow that hardly 2 cars can go side by side, and you find 3 cars fighting to get ahead along with some very rashly driven busses. And ofcourse, you will find bikes almost in any place where there is a little bit of space available. It looks like as if all the people living in Bannerghatta road had to go to the center of the city for work and are returning back to their homes at the same time. There are plenty of shops on this road, including granite shops to hardware shops to bakeries and almost anything needed is available. Its a messy market place that doesnt help the traffic at all.

As if this was not enough, there are "HUGE" buildings each hosting nothing less than 2000 employees. These are huge multinationals like IBM, Oracle, Bharti and such. With so many people coming to work in these offices, there definately will be a traffic problem when they all travel at the same time. But the government seems to have lost its civic sense and has started allocating more and more space to other much BIGGER buildings to be constructed on this cramped up road. I was shocked to see the monstrous Covansys buildings. Its so huge, it looks like a townships with atleast 10 HUGE buildings !!! They definately can accommodate close to 50K people. With the traffic already reaching such alarming state, I wonder how this poor road will be able to handle another 50K people tredding on it.

Whats happening to the government here ? Dont they see this road being misused ? All IT companies in the same road. What logic is that ? I can understand if these were some diamond companies which would need them all to be near the quarries. Why cant they have these companies moved to another location ? Cant they stop allowing new buildings to be constructed on this road ? There is just no way the road can be expanded. Which means there is a limit to the number of vehicles it can handle, and seeing the number of vehicles there, I am pretty sure that it has already crossed this limit. But, as has been the case always .. all governments are only "reactive" .. they wait for a calamity to happen to fix the problems .. "proactive" solutions are just meant to be read in the books ...

Tap Guitar Video: Justin King's "Untitled Project"

Amazing guitar work !!! ... Looks like he is not playing the guitar but actually make the guitar dance on his finger tips ... perfect syncronization ...


>>>>>>>>
Via Wired: "Before the YouTube, I had no idea that there even was such as thing as "tap guitar," as performed by Justin King. It makes me never want to play guitar again." The clip contains some extraordinary guitar work by the musician from Eugene, Oregon.
>>>>>>>>

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Workrave

Have you ever worked on your comp for so long relentlessly that you started experiencing pains in your knuckles and fingers or wrists or neck ? Beware, this is a very good symptom of RSI. One of my roommates had this very bad habit of sinking into his seat with legs stretched out and crossed, bending his back. This caused him pain in his lower back and ankles. This is another very good symptom of RSI.

RSI can be called as the bane of computers. The only good thing about RSI is that it can be avoided but it needs very regular and disciplined attention of yourself. Frequent breaks, small walks, lots of water to drink, moving your limbs, all these so called "exercises" should be mandated at regular intervals to prevent RSI.

I searched for a lot of timer/alarm applets that could help me in maintaining these mandatory breaks, but none were useful. In last week's edition of Deccan Herald, I came across this killer app called "WorkRave" which does exactly what I was looking for.

Fortunately its available on Linux too. It is a very simple app that examines your key strokes and mouse movements and tabulates the time you spend using your keyboard and mouse with breaks not more than 5 seconds. It accumulates the time you spend using the input devices of your comp. The only problem is that it doesn't include the time you spend reading on the web :) . which I think is fine to ignore.

Based on these usage time data, it forces you to take micro-breaks of 20 seconds, after every 10 minutes of computer usage. It also forces you to take a "rest-break" of 5 minutes after every 30 minutes of computer usage. The best part of this calculation is that it accumulates the time spent on the computer and not just the bare real-time intervals like the ordinary timers/alarms. The duration of these breaks and the interval between these breaks is also configurable though I would suggest not to change these defaults drastically.

I have been using this for a week now and I am surprised to see how fast time flies while working on the comp. Another good statistic this app gives is the total time spent in a day on the comp. I was shocked to see that I was spending only 55 - 60 % of my time at office on the computer !!! That's something like I spent around 4 hours on the computer in the 8 hours that I spend in office. Just compare this percentage to that of the guy sitting at the bank teller counter ? ;-) Ofcourse, you can include another hour for time spent on reading things on the browser and some code, but that too isn't a very great figure to look at.

You like it or not, if you are using computers at your work, you better start using this app. Try it out and you too will be surprised at the things that you will discover about yourself :-)

Organizations

[ This is my 100 th blog !!! :-) ... and its been 25 months since I started blogging, thats a cool average of 4 posts per month, thanks to the World Cup coverage :p ]

There are so many stages in the life of an organization, well atleast for a software organization. I have been lucky to have worked in most of the stages and these stages can easily be categorised into 3 stages viz., start-ups, growth companies and the bloated companies. Ofcourse, this classification is only for the product companies and not the services industry.

If you happen to be part of a startup at the early stages of your career, you should consider yourself really lucky. There is definately nothing more motivating than the passion that is exhibited in a start-up. A small group of people, somewhere around 10 to 30, which would have eventually started off by a smaller group of friends or commoners, would comprise a start-up. There is usually a single product that is the core aim of all the people involved, and the majority of them are into developing it as programmers. Some of the people here would be involved in doing multiple tasks, like hiring, taking care of the financials, promoting the software, and every other nitty gritty job that the rest expect to be present when they come to work. There is very focussed effort on the single product which is their bread earner, and everybody is very passionate and motivated towards achieving that goal. You need to be very hard working and most importantly, dream about your software to be shining in glory in the coming future. The challenge here is to prove your concepts as early as possible and earn the funds. Then stand up to the expectations and deliver.

The growth companies are usually 5 to 10 times the size of the start-ups. With people ranging from 200 to 500 in number. These usually have a very good array of products which are sold very much in relation to eachother. They have dedicated divisions for each type of work, including sales, marketing, finance, HR, and ofcourse the developer work-force, with fewer managers. The hierarchy of managers is very minimal. Though the main intention is to earn more revenue, more focus is given on acquiring more market share as well. Products are improved to attract more users and the developers and managers are more technically inclined. Its usually the VPs, and the CXOs who are more worried about the company financials. There are a very less number of people who cater to the "business" aspects that govering the company. The challenge here is to make sure you start growing into the right market segments keeping into mind the future direction of the company. The products need to grow towards the needs of these segments. Understanding this and aligning the team towards these concepts is the challenge.

The bloated companies are a complete contrast to the earlier 2. These are companies that just dont have a huge array of products but rather, a whole suite of products that pertain to various market segments, called verticals. Its a completely different ball game here with the competetion getting tougher and the deals getting bigger. There is a lot of emphasis given to the business aspects of the company. Product development and growth are driven by the business [ read as revenue ] needs to a large extent. The hierarchy of managers is quite large, and is based on the business requirements. Each manager heading a particular business segment and each business segment more or less working as a "growth company" in itself. The challenges are high but of a different nature compared to the earlier 2 categories. Here the challenges are more related to consolidation, both within the organization and to the outside world, making sure that there are no competetive products from the same company !!!

Each category of organizations have their own challenges and one needs to learn to have their focus set right based on the kind of organization they work for. Though the daily work done by a given job position might be the same in all the three categories, its the means by which those visions are reached that differentiate these organizations. These are just some of my personal thoughts on the things that I have seen in the years that I have spent in this industry.

Blood Donation Camp

Kodagu Farmer, originally uploaded by Sarfraaz.

This weekend was a very tiring and exhausting time !!!

I had been on a trek to Kumara Parvatha with another 15 of my friends. I had never been with such a huge crowd and was expecting lots of fun. We all gathered at 11 in the night at the City Bus Stand to catch a bus to Somwarpet. We reached there early Saturday morning and after breakfast, took another bus to Pushpagiri, the place where we were supposed to start our walk. The plan was to reach one Bhattara mane [ which means, the "cook's house" in Kannada ] by evening. Rest there for the night and trek to the peak the next day and return back.

So, by around 9 am in the morning we started our walk towards Bhattara Mane, which was 20 kms away. There was a light drizzle, which we expected to increase a lot as the day progressed. All of us took a long plastic cover to cover ourselves and our back packs. None of us even dreamt how useful this piece of plastic cover would be later in the day. We followed a tar road for some distance and then a jeep track and treaded for almost 2 hours till we reached a stream. This stream was the starting point for the forest. We had to cross through this stream with knee deep fast flowing water.

As soon as we set foot on the soil after this stream, we were all very delightfully greeted by the blood sucking leeches !!! The forest had just begun. It was very dark with hardly any sunlight reaching us down through the thick forest. It was a uphill road, and the gradient slowly started increasing, and within no time, we found ourselves walking up a 45 degree gradient. It was to be like this and more steep as we walked further. We did have some small streams to pass through which were a good source of cold, chill, pure, sweet drinking water. The worst part was that, we could not take a breather anywhere on this path, since the moment we stop, the leeches very obediently stuck to our shoes and legs and started feasting on us. So, the only place we could have some respite was in the stream. This would eventually make our shoes wet, which in turn was an invitation to the leeches. But, we had no other way to survive in this place and we took this chance.

We kept on walking this uphill road for a total of 3 hours when we reached a rocky area. We all stopped here at around 2 pm and the first thing we did was to check the leeches we had on us. There were leeches on almost everybody. I too had some on my shoes and legs and removed the ones that I could see. I was sure that there still were some leeches up my leg where I could not see and didn't want to remove them for the simple reason that I would bleed more and spoil my jeans. This turned out to be a very bad decision for which I had to pay a very high price later on. Some of my friends had leeches on their back and their shirts were all red in blood. Some new comers were so scared just by the sight of this that they even planned to call up the military folks to bring some helicopter so that they could be rescued by air from this place.

Soon after lunch, we continued our trek. We were greeted with a beautiful misty open land with grass all over. It was one hell of a beautiful sight. Worth all the pain we suffered to reach this divine place. The air was so cool, fresh and we could feel ourselves walking in the clouds. The visibility was reduced to just 10 feet now. Very very beautiful !!! A breath taking place to be in. From here started the downhill path. After about 30 minutes of walk, we were tested with some very heavy rains. The rain started increasing in speed and we could feel the rain drops actually hitting us like pointed swords !!! Thanks to the plastic covers that we had bought earlier in the day, we could atleast cover our faces and limbs and also save our bags from getting a lot wet. This was the most painful part of the trek. We could not see any further than about 15 to 20 feet ahead, and just had to put our foot forward on the path we saw, which usually was the path taken by the water, and we eventually ended up walking along the water down the hill. This made it more tough, with most of us skidding down and we had to put a lot of strength and control our balance with our thighs and knees. The heavy bags on our backs were not helping. After walking like this for close to 3 and half hours, we at last reached the destined Bhattara Mane !! Oh, what a relief it was to see some human habitation and the house !! Uuuuufffffff....

We were lucky enough to reach this place before sunset. After reaching Bhattara Mane we started de-leeching [ a new term, that means to remove off all the leeches you have been carrying along the path :p ]. I had close to 14 leeches on me !!! A new world record for myself. Never had so many on me ever. And my legs were all red !!! With blood flowing all over. I took half an hour to clean up all the blood but it never stopped oozing out. Oh, what an unsolicited "Blood donation Camp" had I ventured into !!! :-) The leeches made merry on my legs and sucked a lot of my blood. Later on in the night we had our dinner and everybody just crashed for the night. I had a very innovative night dress :-) A plastic bag to cover both my bleeding legs, so that the blood doesn't spill on the bedding, and newspapers stuck on the wounds to help them dry faster. No amount of cotton on the wounds was sufficient as it would get wet in blood and fall off eventually. [ Sorry, if this was all so yucky to read :p ]

Next day morning, was one of the most pleasant mornings I have ever woken up to. Lovely mist all around us and a hot cup of tea in your hand. Just fantastic !!! Luckily, my wounds had almost dried up and I was able to walk a bit. The climate was cool and nice, and not very chill and it wasn't raining either. So, that made it even more beautiful. Unfortunately, the forest officials refused to permit us to go to the peak, because of the rains, and we had to trek back the same day without going to the peak. From Bhattara Mane, we figured out that the trek we had treaded the other day was about 20 kms and we had climbed almost 1800 feet high !!! That was really something great for us. We now had to trek further down towards Kukke Subramanya which was 5 kms down the hill through another forest !! I was praying that I don't get any more leeches. But, smelling the wounds on my legs, they were attracted even more and I had another 10 more of them sucking on me. A new record of almost quarter century of leeches in one single trek !!!

Climbing down was more painful the second day. I was almost dehydrated and couldn't stop anywhere to drink water because of the leeches. We didn't even have any streams on this path. It was very tiring and exhausting to say the least. I was so fedup of walking down the hill, that even if they had staircases down that track I couldn't climb down them !!! My thighs and knees had gone through a great ordeal and they badly needed lots of rest. It was such a relief to enter the town, and find so many people around. And was even more reliving to know that there were no more leeches on the roads :) We rested the whole day there as it rained a lot in the evening and we got our much needed rest. Later in the night we took a bus back to Bangalore as planned.

It was only when I reached Bangalore and was getting down the staircase of my house that I realised how much my walking style had changed. Half way through the stairs I found myself getting down side ways, as if I am still walking down a mountainous path :-) ... Long live Kumara Parvata !!!

Mussskurale

Express yourself, originally uploaded by Sarfraaz.

There are so many TV channels now a days, that the viewer despises even a single second that he has to spend watching an ad on TV. The moment an ad flashes on the screen, there goes the remote with the channel surfing in full speed. The surfing doesnt stop on any channel that has ads going on at that instant, and only after scanning all your favourite and second favourite channels and still failing to find a channel without ads, does one return back, hopefully, to the same channel where he started his surfing.

In such a competetive environment, it really is a herculean task to make an ad that not only succeeds in capturing the attention of the viewer, but also gives away the right image and purpose of the product. Think more into it and you will realise how much of creative effort is spent into ads, and the amount of creative energy that gets wasted just because there are so many channels to watch. One can have an endless debate if the huge number of channels is rather a boon or a bane to the advertising industry.

In these tough times, I found one ad that intrigued me to watch its full length [ I guess, its about 3 to 4 minutes long ], and brought a smile on my face and in the end even succeeded in giving me the proper message of the product. Its the "Happydent White", Muskurale ad. The concept, the picturisation are just perfect for the promotion of the product. I watched it twice or thrice to get the full length meaning of this ad, and praise the innovative ideas in this ad. The most fundo shot is the one with 2 guys sitting on the sides of the car with bright white sparkling teeth as headlights !!! You wont realize that there are actual people sitting on the car unless you watch it carefully. You can even find guys in the chandlier and under water, showing off their sparkling white teeth and lighting up the whole place and city. Perfect rendition of the product qualities.

One more ad that I liked, more for the way they promoted the ad itself, and not for the ad was the Cadbury's "Miss Palampur" ad. Showing Amitabh dressing up well to go and meet Miss Palampur and not telling anything more, was a very good preview for the ad. This definately left a lot of things untold and I am sure had the viewer captured. Initially I thought this was some new TV serial ad and was excited that Amitabh would be back in another TV serial. But, when they actually showed the full ad it was fun. The whole village gathers at Amitabh's house, all dressed up to meet and impress "Miss Palampur", and when an old granny asks where the newly crowned queen is, we get to see a cow coming out of the house wearing the "Miss Palampur" gown :p Funny promotion of the ad, though it doesnt really match the product.

Another good ad is the HSBC ad, where a young girl buys a used/torn/worn-out jeans for the rugged look of it. But when she brings that home, her mom misunderstands it to be torn, and gets down to stitch the jeans. This very nicely shows the concept of people having 2 perspectives for the same object. A very good way of promoting the same group of HSBC products that cater to a varied interests of people.

So, the next time you think of switching channels, spare a moment for the enormous amount of creative effort that is spent in making these great ads, well atleast the few great ads.

Human Computation

Thanks to Ben's post , I found this very interesting Google Tech Talk. Enjoy it !!! Google TechTalks July 26, 2006 Luis von Ahn is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also received his Ph.D. in 2005. Previously, Luis obtained a B.S. in mathematics from Duke University in 2000. He is the recipient of a Microsoft Research Fellowship. ABSTRACT Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This talk introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving such problems focus on improving software. I advocate a novel approach: constructively channel human brainpower using computer games. For example, the ESP Game, described in this talk, is an enjoyable online game -- many people play over 40 hours a week -- and when people play, they help label images on the Web with descriptive keywords. These keywords can be used to significantly improve the accuracy of image search. People play the game not because they want to help, but because they enjoy it. I describe other examples of "games with a purpose": Peekaboom, which helps determine the location of objects in images, and Verbosity, which collects common-sense knowledge. I also explain a general approach for constructing games with a purpose.

My Blog !!!

My Blog !!!, originally uploaded by Sarfraaz.

Wow !!! Just been a day since I posted my previous blog about how I was inspired by the blog of a 12 year old girl to use Google in a much better way. And today, while checking the visitors visiting my blog using Google Analytics, I found a reference to Google Blogs !!! I immediately went to Google Blogs and found my [ previous ] post being linked as the first link there !!! I couldnt resist myself from taking a screenshot of that and posting it here :-)

I hope to recieve more visitors here now :-) Its always a good feeling when you know that there are people who actually read what you write :-)

Inspiring ...

Last week, while going through some blogs I came across this blog on Google Blogs which was very interesting to read.

I liked Chiles' article there and found it inspiring enough to use Google in a still better way. I liked the way this 12 year old girl has described her usage of Google. I even learnt some more new things from her site :-) ... Definately, learning is a never ending process !!!

One good thing was to get the weather of your city. Just type in "weather bangalore" to get to know the present temperature and also the forecast for the coming 5 days. Infact, I found it is even more helpful in combination with firefox since by typing those words in the url finder, firefox directly takes you to the "I'm feeling lucky" site found by Google. Saves me one more click :-)

Another very helpful one, which I use a lot, is "define: typethewordyoudontunderstand". This takes you to all the references of the usage and meanings of this word. I extended this to fit into the firefox features. I dont like typing long words. So, i wanted a shortcut for "define", something like "def". I first did a search for "define: hello". Then saved the link in the url finder. Created a new bookmark, gave it a name and pasted this link for this bookmark. Later on, I removed all the extra info at the end of this URL, and just leaving the following part ... "http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+hello". Then, replaced "hello" with "%s", [ and yeah you can replace %3A+ with a simple ':' too ]. So, the final url looked something like, "http://www.google.com/search?q=define:%s" Then, I gave this bookmark a keyword like "def", and save this bookmark. Then onwards, in firefox I just have to type "def thewordidontunderstand" and it takes me directly to the page with the meanings for this word. Thanks Chiles :-)

I have been using Google notebook too, but it seriously lacks an auto-save feature :-( which is so helpful as in the GMail drafts. Looks like the team working on Google Notebook, never used GMail drafts as notes ;-) and didnt realise the value of having an autosave feature, which even the Google Spreadsheets have !!! Oh yeah, I used Google spreadsheets for keeping a tab on the team scores and statistics for the football World Cup. It is a bit slow, but great none-the-less. I now use it for keeping a tab on my petrol expenses :p. Planning to expand its scope to monthly expenditure chart sheet. The best benefit of these online tools, is that I dont have to carry the copies of these docs when I need to modify them at home and at work.

Another inspiration, was to use Google Analytics to figure out the amount of crowd actually visiting by blog :D I created an account for myself there and updated my blog with the javascript that counts the visitors. Within 10 days of this analyser being enabled, I am some very interesting information gathered. In the past 10 days, I have had 20 visitors visiting my blog, with the highest visits in a single day being 5 and that was on the previous Saturday, 21st. 50% of the visitors are new, and 50% of them have revisited my site. Thats something to cheer about :-)

Another interesting statistic is the names of the places from where people have visited my blog. I have had people visiting from Bangalore, New Delhi, West Hills [ US ], Winnetka [ US ], Mountain View [ US ], Mumbai and even El Recreo, a place in Peru, South America !!! This really is some amazing statistic and if I could relate these visits to money, I am sure I can do a very good market survey of my blog, and find out its monetary value :D

Bingo !!! It works !!!

Clouds, originally uploaded by Sarfraaz.

After figuring out that there was not a single application that i had to depend on Windows for, I decided to move to a dual boot machine with SuSE 10.1 installed on a new partition. Surprise !!! Surprise !!! SuSE 10.1 was hanging at install time, when i was selecting my own set of packages that I wanted to install. It would fail while calculating the package dependencies, and the machine would hang up for 30 minutes [ well i gave up after 30 minutes and rebooted ]. Thats when it struck me that it was actually the low RAM that i had on my machine that was causing this problem. After upgrading to 512MB RAM, installation was just a piece of cake and all was up and running fine.

The first thing that i wanted to do was connect to a Solaris machine and run workshop to study some class graphs in the code. I telnet to a remote host [ yeah, its a secure internal network, so we are still on telnet ], export DISPLAY to my local machine, and start workshop, and i get ...

Could not connect to display ip:0.0

I tried shutting down the firewall assuming it was some security restriction, and it still failed. Changed the file permissions for some XAuth files and subdirectories and it still didnt work !!! Atleast 10 pairs of eyes saw the problem and all tried the same old xhost + thing and restart X, xfs, and almost everything starting with x :D It still did not budge. I had spent almost 4 weeks booting between windows and Linux alternately every week, using Windows only when it was really necessary to launch some X windows from other remote machines.

Well, the reason was quite simple. We were all fixing it in the wrong place. After some googling by one of my friends, who assumed that I was on KDE, i found saw some light at the end of the long tunnel. I was on GNOME. I tried figuring out the similar things for GNOME and i hit upon the solution.

I had to modify gdm.conf [ well .. it will be somewhere under /etc, do a find on your distro ], and enable a value "DisableTCP=false" and then also set the "Port=177". These 2 changes, and i was able to launch X windows from remote machines on my local desktop and I was on top of the world feeling as if I had solved the world's most difficult problem :D [ well, in a way, it was so for my small world ]

For the convenience of others, here is the unified diff of the original and modified gdm.org files.

diff -u /etc/opt/gnome/gdm/gdm.conf.org /etc/opt/gnome/gdm/gdm.conf
--- /etc/opt/gnome/gdm/gdm.conf.org
+++ /etc/opt/gnome/gdm/gdm.conf
@@ -202,7 +202,7 @@
# Note: Anytime we find a -query or -indirect on the command line we do
# not add a "-nolisten tcp", as then the query just wouldn't work, so
# this setting only affects truly local sessions.
-#DisallowTCP=true
+DisallowTCP=false
# By default never place cookies if we "detect" NFS. We detect NFS
# by detecting "root-squashing". It seems bad practice to place
# cookies on things that go over the network by default and thus we
@@ -247,7 +247,7 @@
# Better keep this low.
#PingIntervalSeconds=15
# The port. 177 is the standard port so better keep it that way
-#Port=177
+Port=177
# Willing script, none is shipped, X11's one is used by default. If
# none is present we'll send hostname system id. But if you supply
# something here, the output of this script will be sent as status of

A Memorable World Cup

I will remember this World Cup for more reasons than one. Its been one of those rare tournaments where i have had the chance of watching more than 90% of the matches, even after they were broadcast at such ridiculous times for us to watch here in India.

The road in Bandipur, originally uploaded by Sarfraaz.

There have been a lot of ups and downs as the tournament progressed, but it certainly was entertaining. Arent sports meant to be entertaining, anyway ? ;)

The number of goals scored in the tournament itself shows how exciting the matches were. Out of the 147 goals that were scored, 120 of them came in the 48 group matches. An average of more than 2 goals per game. Who wouldnt enjoy that ? And to accompany you as the match progressed, we had a great team of commentators. John Helm, was one whom i admired the most. His comments were realistic and on the fly. Just listening to him speak added more fun to the game, with his very nice small snippets spewed out at moments when the players took some rest doing some dull passes. One lovely comment i rememeber from him was in the match between England and Portugal when the cameras showed Scolari and Ericksson in 2 consecutive frames. He brought in the contrast in their faces by saying that, one looked like a expectant grandpa running up and down the hospital corridor, and the other looked so calm and focussed like he is solving a very sophisticated puzzle. We all had a great laugh listening to those comments. Fortunately, for all the matches aired at 12:30 in the night, we had John to listen to, and it made sure that we didnt doze off.

The referees had to bear the brunt of all the fury in this tournament. Not sure if the rules had been made strict on purpose to avoid any mishaps, but the way the freekicks were given, and the ease with which the referees brought out their Yellow and Red cards was astonishing. It was even more bad, when the referee would make a crucial error in judgement and stop a fast paced attack, or give a wrong foul, and change the course of the match. So much of the game rests on the alertness and the ability of the referee to take proper decisions. And to make matters worse, we have players faking the fouls and fooling the already tensed referees. Its really tough to have the players playing with so much of adrenaline rushing up, and still expect a fair game.

Argentina was my favourite team, and they really played great. The team was full of young blood and what i liked most about this team was that they played as a single unit. They had class, and they took the passes with so much ease and accuracy, that made it even more great to watch them play. It was really sad to see them lose in the Quarters, and i almost lost all interest in this tournament. But then, i saw the French rising well from the dumps. They had a pathetic World Cup the previous time, and were being haunted by the old memories this time around too. But a rejuvenated team, which started scoring goals and beliving in themselves lifted up their game. Henry was playing so good, like the way he plays for Arsenal. And Zidane, the recipient of the Golden Ball, this year, was at his best. I even heard my friends, who were watching Zidane for the first time, [ and some didnt even know how his name was spelt :p ] speak great about him.

Ronaldhino, the World Football Player of the Year, was the biggest flop off this World Cup. Along with him were Rooney, who had so much of hype surrounding his inclusion into the English team after recovering from that ankle fracture and Ronaldo, the big fat guy from Brazil. He really seemed to be out his class. There were only flashes of the great Ronaldo we are so used to see, and it really disappointed all. One man whom the whole world would be pitying the most has to be Frank Lampard. Boy, what a tournament he had !!! He had close to 35 shots on goal, the highest for any player, including one from the penalty kick, and he still failed to score a single goal !!! Luck was never on his side, and i felt very bad for this man, who was coming to the World Cup finals on a great high from Chelsea, after missing the previous World Cup. I was thinking of him as the black horse of England who would score those crucial goals for England. But it wasnt to be so.

Instead it was Gerard who made the difference to England. He scored very important goals, usually the deciding goals, and hit them with great strength. Another fighter i saw in this World Cup was Ronaldo, from Portugal. He moved with electifying speed and made a lot of valiant attempts at scoring great goals for Portugal. Lahm of Germany was another find of this tournament. His early opening goal set the stage for all high scoring matches. He is a pure left flank player, playing left footed, and was nice to see a left footed player after a long time. Schevchenko, from Ukraine, was another promising player. He was the most awaited player of this tourney to show his talent, after being picked up by Chelsea even before the start of the World Cup. He definately lived up to the expectations, but couldnt pull his team beyond the Quarters.

This has been a long pending post of mine, and i was burried with so many meetings and stuff at work that I atlast had to be poked to complete this and write the other promised and more interesting posts. Hope i become regular and have posts being published at a more regular interval.

A Cracking Finale ...

Roses, originally uploaded by Sarfraaz.

I have never seen such a well fought final in any sport till now. The World Cup 2006 final between France and Italy was exhilarating, to say the least. History repeated itself, and after qualifying to the finals, once in every 12 years since 1970, and winning every alternate time they qualify, the Italian Azzuries won the World Champoinship with some great fight and sheer grit.

It was a very strange start to the proceedings of the match, as in the very second minute, Thiery Henry had an accidental collision with an Italian player suffering a head injury which almost fainted him off !!! And, as has been the case since the first match of this World Cup, with goals being scored within the first 10 minutes, French were given a penalty kick in the 7th minute for a foul on Balouda. Zidane shot the penalty with great calmness and confidence, that seemed to have pushed the ball just behind the goaline after striking the top of the goalpost, completely fooling Buffon on the ground. Only a man of Zindane's caliber could have taken the penalty with so much audacity.

An early goal lifted up the spirits of the players, and we were destined to see some great football all through the match, well almost for 110 minutes !!! Italy fired back soon with a well directed header in the 19th minute to level the scores. From then on, Italy took the back seat and started doing what they were best at, defending the ball. France had the majority of the possession and played some great short passing games, but could hardly break the strong Italian defense.

Henry had his moments too. He added pace to the French attack and in combination with their new find Ribery, was playing very well, something I have not seen Henry do that often for France. It was good to see this aggression in him for France. I had not seen Italy so closely in this world cup, but they showed some great defending football and truly deserved being in the final. The whole of France tried all possible attacks, and Henry even got a break into the Italian defense a couple of times, but could not beat Buffon, the great Italian goalkeeper. He was guarding the Italian goal like a commander-in-chief.

There was hardly anything to choose between the 2 teams. The match was destined to reach extra time. In the extra time, France showed some signs of breaking the Italian defense, with Ribery getting the closest to the Italian goal, even beating Buffon, only to see himself being replaced by his coach !!! Even Henry, probably with tired legs, was replaced and it was all left to Zidane to show some magic. Zidane got his chance to show his greatness in the starting moments of the second half of extra time, when he was unmarked and headed a perfectly delivered ball, but only to see Buffon brilliantly pushing it above the goalpost to safety. That moment changed the entire match, and France had lost it.

The way in which France emerged in this World Cup was worth appreciating. There was utter chaos in the initial matches with infighting among players [ witnessed on the ground ]. One good goal from Viera in the group stages added confidence into the players, and France got a back door entry into the knockout stage. They made great use of this chance, playing very good football, beating the World Cup holders Brazil, and the rising Portugal. With Italy in the finals, they tried every trick in their book, but could not break the strong Italian defense.

Just for this sheer will of holding onto the goal, and going into the penalty kicks with so much confidence, the match definitely belonged to Italy. All the 8 penalty kicks were perfectly taken, no mistake what-so-ever, except that the result of one penalty kick was unfortunately not in France's favour, that sealed the match for Italy. Italy, playing a completely defensive game, truly deserved the World Cup, for they did not concede a single goal in this whole tournament. Well, the only 2 goals they ever conceded was one from the penalty by zidane and the other being a self goal, both of which cannot be considered as a lapse in their defense.

There was one outrageous moment in the match though, when Zidane for reasons only he can answer , headed straight into the chest of Materazzi, and was shown a red card, marring his departure from the World arena with lots of unanswered questions. May be it was the frustration of not converting the golden chance he had to head the goal into the Italian defense, with probably some unruly comments from Materazzi that provoked him to do something so outrageous. We will probably never know. But nothing can be taken away from the brilliance of this man, especially the great agility and panache with which he played the matches in this World Cup, for which he was given the Golden Ball, although in quite controversial circumstances.

At the end of the day, it was the Azzuries who reigned supreme and were deservedly crowned the World Champions, the 4th time in their 6 appearances in the finals, next only to Brazil, who have 5 crowns. It might have been yellow all the way in this tournament, but for the coming 4 years its gonna be BLUE that will rule the football all over the world ....

Consolation Prize

Sunset Shot, originally uploaded by Sarfraaz.


A hat-trick, well almost a hat-trick, by Schweinsteiger, gave the third place for Germany for beating Portugal 3 - 1. It was a very interesting match, and no one could believe that this was just a consolation match. The match was played with all its sincerity, and it was a very good match to watch. Portugal started off very well and had the ball possession for most of the time. But, as in the earlier match, they couldn't convert their devastating attacks into goals. Ronaldo, was moving with pulsating speed to reach the 18 yard box only to find his ball getting lost to the German defense.

This was probably the last match for the King Khan, i mean Oliver Kahn. The 40 year old veteran, was given the first chance of this World Cup, and probably his last appearance for Germany in a World Cup fixture. There were so many cheers for this great player of Germany that everytime the ball reached his hands, the whole stadium would go into cheers and you could feel the love the Germans have for this great man. There was a huge portrait of him covering the full expanse of a bridge that shows the magnanimous presence of this player in Germany. He did make a lot of brilliant saves and showed that age could not do anything for this man's skills.

Another man reaching the end of his career for his country was Luis Figo. He was infact called out of his retirement to come and play for his country. And, it was justifiable that the only goal the Portuguese actually scored in this match, was from a ball perfectly delivered by Figo. It was indeed a consolation goal, but a goal none the less. The Portuguese had given everything they had, and with Deco and Ronaldino playing great football in tandem, made great progresses in reaching the German defense and even breaching it a few times, only to find Kahn standing as the Great Wall of Germany between Portugal and the goalpost.

But the day definitely belonged to one person, Schweinsteiger of Germany. He took the ball all on his own, and beat the goalkeeper of Portugal to score the first goal for Germany in the second half of this match. Within 5 minutes of that, he scored another goal from a free kick, which the Portuguese were guilty of giving way too many of those near their D, and it was left to Schweinsteiger, to take full advantage of it with his heavy and powerful shot, which took the deflection of a diving Portuguese defender to get into the goal. The third goal was the most exciting to watch. It was so cleanly hit and with so much confidence that it was destined to reach the goal from the moment it was struck by Schweinsteiger. It was a very beautiful curving shot that found the far end of the goalpost beating, Ricardo, the great goal saver of Portugal in the Quarters.

The match ended with the third prize being distributed to the Germans, and the man of the hour, Klinsman was all cheered up by the crowd for taking his team so far into this tournament when just 11% of the Germans hoped them to even reach the Finals at the start of the tourney.

Tonite, is the battle of blues, the Azzuries and the Les Blues. And lets hope the best team wins, and we get to watch another exciting and thrilling match to feast upon for the coming days ....

Crashing Dreams

Its always the same !!! The moment the knockout round starts, its the sad feeling of a good team being eliminated that lingers more than the euphoria of a team winning and moving ahead in the tournament.

This was very evident in the Germany v/s Italy Semifinal match. Germany had a great run in this tournament. Just the statistics that a local survey of Germans at the start of the tournament had predicted that only 11% of them expect Germany to win the cup, goes to show that this German team had surpassed all the expectations. It was quite evident from the nature of their game that they had the self belief to win the tournament. Their attacking football along with their strong as ever defense, sent shivers down the spine of the opponents. And, with a tactic of beating the opposition in the early 15 minutes of the match taking advantage of the home support and the nervousness of the opposition, they had made great progress and were favourites to beat the Italians in the semi final, and break the jinx of Germany never winning a world cup match against Italy.

The match started at a superb pace, and there was hardly a moment when you could have the luxury of relaxing on the chair while you watched the game. Both the team's strikers and their defense were immaculate. There were very few occasions that the ball actually reached into the 18 yard box which shows a lot about the defense of both the teams. The world's most costliest goalkeeper, Buffon of Italy, did have to make some good saves, and he really was stuck to his task.

It was mainly in the extra time, that Italians increased their tempo, and started attacking more fiercely. Germans had never lost a game on penalties, and Italians had never won a game on penalties. And this piece of history was taken very seriously by the Italians, and in the 118th minute of the match, Fabio Grasso smashed a brilliant left footed shot curling past Ballack and the German goalkeeper, Lehmann to crash the dreams of the home crowd and scoring a goal for Italy. In the remaining 2 minutes, anything could have happened. The Germans started soon on a counter attack, but had to lose possession of the ball to some very good defending by the Italians. The Italians launched another counter attack and Del Piero had only a single German defender and the goal keeper to beat before he struck the final nail in the coffin, and crash the Germans out of the tournament. It was a moment of so near, yet so far for the German spectators who disbelievingly saw their team lose to the gritty Italians. The Azzuries were through to their 6th appearance in the World Cup final, staking claim for their 4th World Cup title.

The second semifinal between France and Portugal was a complete contrast to the first match. It certainly crashed my dreams of a good fighting match :)

The previous 2 matches of Portugal in this tournament had been marred by some very ugly scenes, and there was caution all around in both the camps as the match started well, and we got the first free kick only in the 5th minute of the match !!! Which meant the teams were not fouling a lot. Ronaldo, accompanied with Deco, who was back after missing the Quarter final match on 2 yellow cards, played some inspiring football. Ronaldo's pace and Maniche's strike were very impressive to watch, and it did create some fears in the French defense, especially their goalkeeper, Barthez, who seemed to be the weakest link in the French defense.

A tackle on Henry in the 18 yard box, saw the referee give a penalty kick for France, which Zidane obligingly took with great pleasure to score the solitary goal of the match. It was surprising that the French didn't try to attack more and sit on the laurels of this solitary goal, defending it. Fortunately for them, the Portuguese lacked the final sting in the attack, and couldn't convert any of their good advances into sizable shots.

The match was boring to say the least, and I hope the French do not relax like this in the finals, when they meet the mighty Italians, who have 10 of their players scoring goals in this tournament !!!

After today's Third place playoff match between Germany and Portugal, it will be just one more match left for this wonderful tournament to close down. Its already getting so boring these days, with so less football matches to watch in a week, and after this Sunday, we wont have any good competitive matches for another month before the English Premier League starts in August. Hopefully, we get to relive the good matches of this tournament in this month itself.

I am expecting an entertaining match in the finals tomorrow, with Henry playing some fast football and Zidane giving great breaks to make France win the World Cup for the second time in the history of the tournament, and present it to their great Zizu ...

VidhanaSoudha

VidhanaSoudha, originally uploaded by Sarfraaz.

Hurray !!!

This beautiful pic has been viewed 200 times on my photostream where I have people visiting 3900 times till date !!! :-) The highest number of views for a pic in my stream. Ofcourse, there are 5 more other pics which have been viewed more than 100 times, and there is a tough fight going on for who would be the leader in having the most number of visits :D

Dethroned

One single lapse of concentration by the renowned defender Roberto Carlos, saw Henry all clear to score the winning goal to dethrone Brazil of their Championship Crown.

It was a completely new and rejuvenated French team, playing as a single unit. You could sense the purpose of winning in this team. Brazil never seemed to be in place for the match. The first half was good enough, but I was expecting Brazil to improve in the second half. The man of the match, Zinadine Zidane was just impeccable. After being sent off for a match, he seemed to have bounced back with vengeance now. He when clubbed with Henry, became a formidable pair. After many many matches, I saw Henry actually trying to go fetch the ball and move ahead with his deadly pace which was lacking for almost all the world cup matches I saw him playing. This match, I actually saw the Henry we so often see playing for Arsenal. And what a match he chose to come to his normal form !!!

Brazil were not taking the initiatives in the first half, and were pushed further back when Henry scored that goal, delivered to him by the beautiful free kick taken by Zizu. Brazilian players never seemed to be in the right place at the right time. Infact, they hardly were seen in the 18 yard box of the French. It might look like some good defending by the France, but I think it was mostly some very poor game by Brazil that cost them the match. It was very sad to see Ronaldo "diving" 3 times to fool the referee for a penalty kick. Brazil were getting that desperate !!! It showed the lack of confidence they had in themselves. And France now seems to be the only team that has always beating Brazil in the World Champsionships.

I am really surprised by the rise of France in this World Cup. This encouraging rise by the French can definately inspire them to atleast stake their claim on the Golden trophy. I see a lot of resemblance in this French team and the Aussie team we saw in the 1999 Cricket World Cup. That Aussie team had a wading captain in Steve Waugh, and the whole team wanted to gift the world cup to him. I see the same rise and passion in the Frence players for theyir beloved captain Zizu. It wouldnt be a surprise if Zizu actually lifts the coveted trophy. But a lot of this depends on their rivals Portugal ...

Playing without the game maker Deco, and an ailing Ronaldo, who had come back from a knee injury, Portugal gave a great fight to the strong England team. The match surprisingly was evenly poised, though i expected it to be a easy walk through by the English. Portugal, playing their first quarter finals, with Scolari being their manager had a great history in their favour. Scolari had been the nemesis to English team in the previous 2 encounters, one in the previous World Cup with Brazil, and the other with Portugal in the Euro Cup, knocking out England in both the instances. The tally now just increased to 3 !!!

Oh, what a tournament Frank Lampard has had !!! He has had more than 30 attempts on the goal, with atleast 10 definately being really strong and easy ones, and he has yet failed to convert them into a goal, including the final penalty kick chance he had against Portugal. It must have been so devastating for this best England player of 2005 !!!

Even after Rooney was sent off controversially, the match didn't lose its pace. Neither did the weight tilt towards Portugal, who were playing with 11 players, and was really surprising that they still failed to score a goal. This says a lot about the defense of England. But unfortunately, they couldn't score a goal, with both Beckham, being substituted for injury, Rooney, being sent off, and Owen not playing with injury. Gerrard, Lenon and Lampard tried all they could and still couldn't score a goal.

Ricardo, the man for Portugal, was what made the difference for these 2 teams. His 3 great saves, landed Portugal into the semis against France. It didn't really look like Portugal were playing better football than England, but it was the goalkeeper, Ricardo that made all the difference when it really mattered.

Its gonna be a very good match between France and Portugal, with the last 2 matches of Portugal being marred with controversies. Hopefully, there shouldn't be any such controversy this time around, and we get to see a good battle.

Its so amazing that all the 4 teams that i predicted to reach the semis are knocked out !!! Well, I guess I am really bad at predictions :p From the teams that have made it to the semis, Germany, Italy, Portugal and France, I expect to see a Germany v/s France final with France beating the home team in their own capital.