My Local God

[ctsy - Panasonic ]

With Sun frying up every inch of traffic, I rushed home and imprisoned my self.

Complete surrender to my saviour. Im forgetting all my plans for the weekend.

All those people, out of Chennai. Here's news : Chennai is Burning like Hell

Bitty Browser - Cuty !

Take a look. This is not a Picture. Would you be impressed, if this was a Browser. Its a small Browser within your browser window.

Just Click on Open URL, and give any Web or RSS URL. And your page opens up within this browser. How good is that ??


[ctsy - Bitty Browser ]

Today is Friday the 13th. What a deadly combination.

The President of India

I did this strange thing today morning. I started visiting the NIC sites. Browsing through Various Government Departments, this is where i landed in.



I never thought a site so beautiful and informative was even there. Tons of information, loads of photos, audio and video about the Rashtrapathi Bhavan, and the Rashtrapathi himself. With History on due and the Vision Documents on hand, the Site is completely balanced, in giving you information what you look for. You could even mail the President through a form in the site.

Its a JSP Page, and yet works best with Internet Explorer. Take a Peek here.


[All Picture Ctsy - PresidentsOfIndia ]

Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam is our Presidents full name. He got 30 Doctorates from different Universities.

My, My, My ! Thats why he is a President, and im just another guy.

Firefox has released a Critical Update. Ensure you have Firefox 1.0.4

Yahoo ! has created a news set of eMoticons. They are ABSOLUTELTY COOL.
Check it out ! I like the "Hold On, Im on a Call" emoticon.

Next Level Gaming

The Gaming industry has been on Nitro Boost. PS2 and XBoxes have been sold even in chennai. There are a few PS2 rental play stations in chennai too. I was only wondering the growth.

Take a look at this, new level gaming. Introducing the Real Virtual Car.


[ctsy - BoingBoing ]

You see a person driving a car in a stadium (probably a F1 race track). But only the Stadium part is wrong. The car is Standing still, but the LCD Screen shows animations of the Game. So, he is virtually in a race track, but physically in a car like this.


[ctsy - BoingBoing ]

Virtual Reality, Gentlemen. Beautiful gaming experience.
I wish i play NFS Underground in this car.

PCs for 10,000

**Google is Blogrolling, mates**. And it reads quite some sites, and most of all it reads Yahoo! Search Blog.
Check it out ! www.Google.com/googleblog is now changed to googleblog.blogspot.com, just like everyone else hold their blog on Blogger.

More News. Blogger was down today morning. So all our Blogspot sites were not reached. Dont really know what happened.

Hot News : PCs for Rs. 10,000/-. An ultra-compact desktop computer priced at Rs 10,000 was unveiled by Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, at New Delhi. Whats more, it is mobile, free to use anywhere desktop. Mobilis, sporting a 7.4 inch VGA LCD screen and several innovative features, including a six-hour battery life, is a state-of-the-art product for users who demand the freedom to work anywhere, anytime.

Read it more on "The Hindu", here

I dont really know, if it is a good sign of bringing down the prices of PCs. Actually, there's nothing like bringin down the prices of PCs.

Have you ever wondered, when in 7 years Hamam's Price has gone up from Rs. 7 to Rs. 11. Thats a growth of about 150 %. But the PC that was costing 45,000 is 19,000. Thats approximately a DOWNFALL of 250 %.

That clearly shows you Two very important things.
1) Iam really weak in Maths.
2) The Price reduction did not come down because of increasing Consumption.

It is only that, even if PCs prices come down (if thats what you call it), there is always a PC costing 45,000. And very clearly thats got more better feature.

The Arguement may be, it is enough to have necessary features. But is that really enough ??
Human minds are ready to accept what is enough, Only they dont know the boundary of enough, so they keep expecting. (I have already warned you, im becoming a philosopher !!).

Whats your stand on this ? Do you really see PCs prices going down, or do you see Lower end PCs getting cheaper, becaus of the introduction of High End PCs (It may sound as if both mean the same..but trust me they dont).

"என் இனிய தமிழ் ப்ளாகர்கேள"
thanks to Adengappa for this new Tamil Unicode tool that allows us to Publish Tamil on Blogs.

Give it a try here

Tomato Sauce and Tony Blair

The following is an article on the link provided by BoingBoing.

"A NEW chilli sauce goes on sale today that is so hot it could KILL.

Ultra-concentrated “16 Million Reserve” is the hottest science can make. The sauce is 30 times hotter than the spiciest pepper and 8,000 times more fiery than Tabasco. Diners must sign a disclaimer recommending “protective gloves and eye wear” — but even sweating testers in safety gear were blinded by tears for 30 minutes.

Just 999 bottles of it are on sale at £105 each.

Medical experts fear it could kill asthmatics or hospitalise a user who touches a sensitive part of the body afterwards. Creator Blair Lazar, 35, specialises in “extreme food” in New Jersey, US.
After trying it, he said: “It’s like having your tongue hit with a hammer. Man, it hurt.” The sauce is named after its score on the chilli heat measure, the Scoville Unit. "

Off-beat, Avyukta hits 4000 today. The last 1000 came on really fast.

Tony Blair becomes the Prime Minister of The Great Britain for the Third Time in a row. Dont you think it is something wonderful. Bush did not come to Presidentship for the second time with Grace... but Tony Blair has. What sort of belief would the country have for the man, that it trusts its Governance to him for the third time in a row.

Hats-off to Tony Blair. The Silent Worker.

www.keerthivasan.com launched
its got nothing interesting yet, except a good flash layout.

Manathil Urudhi Vendum

The most respected man in my mental territory - Mahakavi Barathiyar.

Starting monday with his poem, nothing is much better as this.
I have highlighted, the lines I take for myself. These three lines, and i can succeed.


[ctsy - Barathiyar Kavithaigal]

Have a nice week ahead of you.

Gods Own Machine

The All new Mercedes Benz M-Class. Wanna Test ride ?


[ctsy - MB - USA ]

Its not as impressive as Honda Activa, so ill stick to it. (oh my Gawd !)

Perspective Vision

I am a regular browser of cartoon sites, and few of them amuse me with beautiful thoughts. take a look at this one.


[ctsy - CartoonStock - KES series by Kevin Smith ]

Picophone - Good Try

Ironies are the part of life (im becoming a philosopher, day by day, phew !). I only remember Anbe Sivam's conversation between Kamal and r.Madhavan.

r. Madhavan - "even if we are ready to pay, we dont get facilities. Thats India for you !!!"
kamal - "as long as you people think, that you can pay whatever, and get whatever, THAT WILL BE INDIA FOR YOU ".

Good one, huh ! The point is, we have high speed connections, and yet we dont have a very satisfying software to have Voice Chat. Many times i think "Voice Chat is an equivalently costly to Telephone calls, only it makes us think its cheap". Reason, in voice chat - we assume it is cheaper, so we talk for a very long time, even though we do not have anything to talk about. And that virtually brings the cost closer to brief telephone calls.

But last week, me and my uncle discovered a better way of communication. PICOPHONE.


[ctsy - Vitez ]

It is a Amazingly Small application, that helps you dial an IP and talk to remote, in a much much Clear way. The audio would be Crystal Clear. Main reason being, there is no Audio Server in between. Picophone existed long back, but then, only now i got Broadband.

Get more information and Downloads here

BTW, did you know, my mom started a Blog.. she said if you could blog, then any one could
Check it out, here

Indian Technology goes proud

Read the Business article on the

Thiagarajan's trail-blazing invention!

[ctsy - Rediff In ]

makes us proud.

Speed Up the Web

Minds are always greedy. Arent they. Even though you have High speed Internet connection, you would prefer web pages getting downloaded even faster. To say, you want other pages getting downloaded at the speed of Google returning the search results. Have you ever imagined that way ?

Well, even if you have not, please accept Googles next beta product - Google Web Accelerator - GWA.

This gets installed on your browser (IE and Firefox 1.0+, nice to see more on Firefox) and chaches the pages you see, and later on refering pages, gives you chached + current information on the page. Also sometimes does the Pre-fetch of pages, so that the moment you type the URL, the desired page zaps up at hilarious speed.


[ctsy - Google Labs ]

Unfortunately, im not able to experience that, as even after installing this one, i dont seem to find any significant difference. I guess this would be a product with quite some bugs, as some of them already showed up. Let me wait and see the results.

We need to give some time for every good thing to happen.

Hitachi DZ-MV730A Camcorder (aka) Wow !

Hitachi DZ-MV730A DVD Handycam Camcorder - you know why its a wow. It burns DVD, what you see via viewfinder. It records directly onto a DVD-R.

Thats approximately $870. (hold on, im counting....).

(ok, im done.. I cant buy it,.).


[ctsy - Hitachi dvdcam ]

I have wondered if buying a Handycam would be wiser than buying a Digicam (Still). Im more amused by Still images, than boring and wierd home videos asking people to smile and "Say Something" talks. I admit, it would be of gerat use, and a treasure rather at some occassions. But for most of them, i guess a Digicam would do.

BTW, people who want this DVD Cam, here is the specification.

• Recording format: DVD-RAM / DVD-R
• Imaging device: 680K Pixel CCD
• Recording mode: 16:9 widescreen recording for both DVD-RAM and DVD-R discs
• Zoom: 16x optical / 240x digital zoom
• LCD: 2.5 inch LCD monitor can operate as a light
• Analog conversion: External AV input for recording analog sources to DVD
• Video recording: DVD-RAM: approximately 40-120 minutes of MPEG-2. DVD-R: approximately 20-60 minutes of MPEG video
• Digital Still Photos: DVD-RAM: records nearly 2,000 JPEG 640 x 480 resolution. DVD-R: approximately 220 JPEG images 640 x 480 resolutions
• Image stabilization: Yes, electronic image stabilizer for video
• Low light shooting: 0.3 lux in low light mode
• Focus: Auto and manual focus
• White balance: Auto and manual white balance
• Exposure: Auto and manual exposure
• Viewfinder: .2 inch color viewfinder
• Dimensions (H x W x D): 3 3/8 x 2 x 4 13/16 inches
• Weight with battery: Approximately 1 pound 2 ounces
• Supplied accessories: 700ML 1hr battery, AC adapter / charger, special S-video and composite AV cable, shoulder strap, lens cap

Tell me if you buy one !

Mile sur mera tumhara

Forget A. R. Rahman's Vande Mataram. Forget Lata Mangeshkar's Vande Mataram. "Mile Sur Mera Tumhara... To Sur Bane Hamara" composed by the great Bhimshen Joshi, a masterpiece lost in time, is perhaps the best of songs in national integration genre. I would say this was the best footage ever aired by our good old Doordharshan. I wonder what's stopping them from airing it nowadays. I stumbled upon this link on the web. Some cool desi grads from MIT have composed their own version of this national integration song. Well, this was sung in every official language of India. Now, thats true national integration- A. R. Rahman's Vande Mataram has only a few components to it... Song was shot in Rajasthan and Kerala, and composer and technical team were from Tamil Nadu. Well, this beautiful version is shot all over India with all Indian languages!

Doordharshan could do a revival of national integration theme by airing this song again. I don't think the original version is available anywhere on the net. However, the cool MIT Indian grads have composed their own version for Deepavali celebrations. Just check this out...
http://web.mit.edu/anoop/www/msur/msurscreen.mpg

A low end version of the same is available on this page:
http://www.mit.edu/~kapoor/mile_sur_small.wmv

If anyone has any contacts with DD, I would request them to make efforts to air the original song again! DD could pull off some popularity ratings with the current political scenario, heh, heh, heh...

The DaVinci Key

The world is waiting for Dan Brown's next-up. "The Solomon Key" is almost a sequel of The DaVinci Code (shortly called TDVC). Brown says that the cover Illustration of TDVC is the key for his next book - The Solomon Key. The book again features "Robert Langdon" a professor from the Harvard University. The Langdon charater is the trump card for Dan Brown, as he does this act of overriding emotions on the user, using the thoughts of Langdon.

What I mean is, superimposing the thoughts of Robert Langdon in a way that it becomes our thought, and the story moves fast. Thats been Dan Browns key, all the way to success. The Solomon Key is expected to release February 2006. This book is on the Freemasons, that means a lot of American leaders are in trouble. Well, Conspiracy is my favourite topic. I wish Dan Brown was in Chennai and wrote stories about DMK and ADMK. I also wish Dan Brown wrote about Netaji and Nehru.



[ctsy - Amazon ]

There's already a book on the speculations of the "Solomon Key". It is called the Davinci in America, by Greg Taylor. Will give it a read and let you know whats it all about.