Arjunaru Villu

Tonight, while coming back from office, my iPod played Arjunaru Villu song from Gilli. That's one of the songs that I love for a few reasons and hate for a few other reasons. I love it because it reminds me of the experience I had in the movie hall when I was watching it. We planned to go to that movie about an hour before the show time. My mom never lets us go for a night show cinema. But I was in Madurai then, so I didn't have to get my parents' permission to go to the movie. We went to the theater by bus. (oh, I love those city buses!) Since it was a Dharani's movie, I didn't expect much from the movie. The first half of the movie was very good. Generally I don't like songs in movies, except for a few songs. I really enjoyed Arjunaru Villu song in the movie. After the interval, maybe because my expectation had grown then, the movie felt crappy. Speaking of that song, I like it because of Vidya Sagar's work on it. The tune, choice of the singer, composition, everything just fits together beautifully. But the lyrics is awful. I especially hate the lines எதிரியைக் கொல்லு இமயத்தை வெல்லு and ஏறு முன்னேறு, இது கரையே இல்லாக் காட்டாறு. (The latter one seems completely illogical -- how can there be a river without banks? Even if such a river exists, we won't call it a river.) Besides all that, I love to drive with that song playing. It's a wonderful experience. Thanks Vidya Sagar!

Spam fighting

I know, using hacks is a Bad Thing. But sometimes hack is required. When no clean solution exists, like every other programmer, I use some hacks at least to remain sane. For instance, JobsAhead keeps annoying me all the time with their spam. There is an "unsubscribe" link in the spams they send, but god only knows where on their UI you have to click to get rid of their spam. So I just changed the contact email in my JobsAhead profile to nosuchidiotexists@yahoo.gmail.com. I expect this will block one source of spam. But you know about the job consultants here? They just don't care who you are, what crap (so-called immediate opening at an MNC) they send to you, etc. All they have is a huge pile of email addresses, and they keep spamming everyone all the time. I have a Gmail filter[*] that removes all those crap from my inbox. OK, so here's my advice to you, if you are serious about your email: do not ever let these job consultants know your email address. They will spam you to death. If you want to use any job search service, create a new email address and use that. As soon as your job search is over, you can get rid of that email address without worrying about our beloved job consultants spamming you. TTFN * This is my Gmail filter, if you are interested: Filter criteria: subject:(opening OR openings OR immediate OR interview OR interviews OR requirement OR requirements OR walk-in OR "walk in" OR walkin OR (opportunity job) OR "urgent position" OR "urgent positions") Actions: Apply label "jobspam?" and skip inbox.

When I bought my Palm Treo 650 about a year and a half ago, I was sooo glad that I bought it for a really cheap price. It was my first international trip. I was in our Silicon Valley office for the new-joinee training. I don't know if I learned enough stuff during the trip; but I definitely bought quite a lot of stuff. In addition to buying electronics for me, I also bought plenty of shirts, a lot of stuff from Google Store for me, my friends, Pascal, etc. Only when I had to pack all the stuff I realized how much stuff I had bought. After starting to use the Treo, I started liking it more and more. It's no-nonsense UI, ease of use, build quality, battery life, quality of the touchscreen, integration with my beloved Linux computer made me happy. Those who believe "reality is far from ideal" are correct. The phone has its own glitches. But you know, it was far better than the Nokia 7710 I was using. A few months back I got tired of big phones. Wanted to get a phone which I can use to make calls, with no fancy features. I settled for a Nokia 5200, which is a pretty low-end phone with Bluetooth support. I could not use it for more than a month. Nokia's UI made me grumpy. Even when I fondly used my Nokia 3120 and had great love for Nokia phones, I hated their UI. (quick question: what is the average number of keypresses you need, to do anything on a Nokia phone?) And a few other minor usability issues. So I switched back to my Treo. Last week I was bitten seriously by Treo's infamous "ghost jack" problem. I decided to change my phone and started looking for a good phone. I didn't want to buy some really good phones for personal reasons, including iPhone (no thrid-party apps), HTC Touch or S710 (yucky Windoze mobile OS). And I already have an aversion towards Motorola's and Nokia's. Syncing with a Linux computer is something that is not support by almost all the phones. So decision made: be happy with the Treo until some superstar company releases an Android phone.

MSify

<shameless plug> After living on my laptop for about a year, my Sify Broadband client has found a new home in Google Code. For the lack of a better name, I am just calling it MSify, and it's available at http://code.google.com/p/msify. If you use Sify Broadband on a Linux computer, try it out. Feedback, bug reports, feature requests are always welcome. </shameless plug>

Suddenly I have a question. About me. Am I a hypocrite? May be. Or may be not. I brag all the time that I respect others. Well, until now I believed that I had respect for others. Now, I am not very sure if I can still say the same thing about me. I use all kind of swear words. Most of the times I don't mean those words when I use them. But, I really do get pissed off when I see some incompetently developed software (which I have to use for some reason). In several posts of this blog, I have complained that some random software developer did something stupid to make me unhappy. One of my colleagues asked me a few days back: "Is there any software that you really like?" when I was cursing Adobe Reader for it's stupid behaviour on the print dialogue. I hate Hyderabad mainly because all the time I have something to complain about the people of Hyderabad. What do this all mean? Do I have no respect for people whom I don't see face-to-face? Am I a hypocrite when I say "I have respect for other people"? Possibly. If you have spent some time with me and you think you have something to say about me/this post, please write back. Oh yes, I encourage you to be brutally honest.