I’m a huge fan of Sports/GT-Racing genre of games. Recently Codemasters had released their newest game, GRID, and I’d downloaded the demo version of GRID couple of days ago and decided to check it out.

And yes the visual presentation just blew me away! Everything looks gorgeous, from the menu screens which are alive in 3D, to the loading screens which, instead of the usual flat progress bar, show your accomplishments in your career.

Everyone here at office is bored and jobless, and a lot of stuff is being shared on IPMessenger. Here’s one of the things which was shared.
Seems it was downloaded from Atom Films over here, directed by Alan Becker

For the bandwidth conscious - its a 4mb file.

So I was having a nice talk with Harshad a while ago on IM, and he asked me a question no one had EVAR asked.

I’ll let the log do the talking.

(11:07:16 PM) simpleharshad: how many photos you have
(11:07:22 PM) simpleharshad: ??
(11:07:31 PM) simpleharshad: i have seen you in two diff. photos
(11:07:34 PM) Sathya: hmmm No idea :-??
(11:07:47 PM) Sathya: check my orkut, facebook and flickr albums
(11:07:47 PM) simpleharshad: you look totally diff
(11:07:47 PM) simpleharshad: 😕
(11:07:50 PM) Sathya: HAHAHAAHA
(11:08:01 PM) Sathya: which phots you refer to ?
(11:08:19 PM) simpleharshad: the picture you have on stumble and one on twitter

I get a lot of forwards, I mean a lot. Most of them I just delete, since they aren’t worth keeping. The good ones I forward. This one is the better of the entire lot of forwards that I’ve gotten. It’s old, I know but still good.

Top 10 most stupid questions people usually ask in obvious situations

1. At the movies:
   When you meet acquaintances/ friends.. .
   Stupid Question:- Hey, what are you doing here?

Answer:- Dont u know, I sell tickets in black over here…

2. In the bus:
   A heavy lady wearing pointed high-heeled shoes steps on your feet…
   Stupid Question:- Sorry, did that hurt?

Answer:- No, not at all, I’m on local anesthesia.. …why don’t you
try again.

3. At a funeral:
   One of the teary-eyed people ask…
   Stupid Question:- Why, why him, of all people.

Answer:- Why? Would it rather have been you?

4. At a restaurant: When you ask the waiter
   Stupid Question:-
   Is the “Butter Paneer Masala” good??

Answer:- No, its terrible and made of adulterated cement. We
occassionaly also spit in it.

5. At a family get-together:
   When some distant aunt meets you after years
   Stupid Question:-Munna, Chickoo, you’ve become so big.

Answer:- Well you haven’t particularly shrunk yourself.

First up: A confession. I’m not a cricket fan. I hardly ever watch it. Tests or ODI’s, it doesn’t matter, I’d probably watch an over or two, and then just flip channels. Over the past couple of weeks, IPL has been a huge event here in India, and a new source of entertainment for Indians - I mean, never have we had anything like this - Stars owning teams, Franchises, foreign superstars, previously never thought of players playing together and oh yes, cheerleaders. Even with huge hype of IPL Twenty20 cricket, I’d never seen a single match here in Chennai - mainly because of CAS which meas that all the “goody” channels are available on a subscription basis, and since I stay in a lodge these aren’t available to me.

Well, I’m pretty sure most of you are heavy GMail users. For me GMail is my primary mail service now, with my domain-based mail running on Google Apps. As good as a service GMail is I find certain things annoying - such as the the way it defaults to top posting instead of bottom posting! And of course the default interface is a bit bland. That’s where Better GMail comes in. Better GMail is a collection of Greasemonkey userscripts all rolled into 1 neat Firefox addon!

Some of the features Better GMail has include

• Support for themes
• Saved searches
• Keyboard macros
• HTML signatures
• Bottom posting instead of top posting
• Attachment icons indicating file types
• Unread mail count in tabs

I hang out couple of tech forums while I’m free - gives me a general idea of what hardware configuration is more or less “standard”, and one of the worst mistakes I’ve been people doing is that they COMPLETELY ignore the PSU(or SMPS, as it’s often known). I mean we’re talking about Quad Core processors, 8800GT graphics cards, hard drives in RAID and what not, only to get a cheap local, generic 500W/600W PSU, thinking the higher the wattage, the better it is for them. The problem is that these can’t deliver the current required for these high-end components, neither are they reliable or efficient - the components inside are of the worst quality.