Mind’s Mind

Had been to the “India International - Motor Show 2007″ on Friday - 11th Feb 2007. I was there when the curtains of the show were about to drop. Atleast 30% of the stalls were already shut by the time I was there (around 7 PM). I was expecting a lot of crowd for the show since the Entry was Free but was surprised that there only were a hand full (may be because it was closing time).

Anyways, this is what I managed to witness in the show :

1. A Ford Endeavor stretched to a Limo. Needless to say, a good chunk of crowd thronged around the Limo waiting for a chance to get into it. The interiors weren’t that special. Just that they had a TV and some living room stuff apart from some pretty ordinary seating fixtures.

Now, to the cost of it : Rs.35 Lakhs (including the showroom price of Endeavor which I believe is around 15 Lakhs). In my personal view point, it is definitely not worth it. Check pics.

2. The second biggest attraction was the Battery operated Two wheelers. Costs around Rs.20-27,000 based on the model. Max speed of 30 KMs. Charging for 6-7 Hrs can get you upto 40-50 Kms. The 6-7 Hrs charging consumes 1 Unit of power. There is a “cycle-like” model which can be pedalled in case of a drained battery. Check pics.

3. Apart from these two, there were stalls from Mitsubishi Co., the Tatas and Maruthi.. No Hyundai was indeed a surprise..

4. Other stalls showcased automotive equipments, Sun films (from Garware), Car maintenance items and such..

Overall a little disappointing.. but what more can you expect for a Free Entry show in Chennai Trade Center ??

Lycos has come up with a long pending upgrade of their mail service. They have revamped their first generation user interface, though not as impressive as one would expect.

An important highlight of this upgrade is the fact that they have increased the mail box size to 3 GB (yes, THREE GB). That puts them in front of GMail and Yahoo. But when it comes to the user experience, still miles to go I think.

When people in Rediff and Yahoo are thinking about offering a Desktop mail client look alikes, Lycos has stuck with the yesteryear webmail layout (nothing good or bad about this as long as the user experience is good). Next important thing I checked out was their “Mail Composer”. No auto-complete/suggest for filling up addresses from the Address book. You have to scroll (vertically) to reach the “Attach” link to attach files. A simple usecase to prove that more to be done to enhance user experience.

The Ad banner is still on top of all (above the mail listings)… all the more irritating.. I think Yahoo has pushed it to the right side corner in their new look client (still in Beta). Pretty much unintrusive I would say.

With all these -ves, 3 GB offering alone doesn’t seem all that enticing.. In my opinion, Lycos still has work to do to upset the likes of Yahoo and others..

Just a couple of days back, I wrote about how “Sathyam Cinemas Rocks” but it is unfortunate that I write today about how they shocked me (yesterday). I had then booked a couple of tickets online, for the evening show on Saturday. The movie was scheduled to be screened in Studio-5. But yesterday, I got a call from them around 10 PM (what a time to call a customer). With due apologies, the guy told me that they have changed the movie screening time (to afternoon show) and the theatre (Six Degrees) and asked me if I would be interested to have my tickets booked to the revised scheduled or have the tickets cancelled with refund.

I opted to cancel the tickets and it was definitely a disappointment !

I had to drop one of my relatives at the Airport yesterday and here are some observations/facts as I did that.

As I was approaching the airport (around 50 Mts. before taking the right turn from the GST road to the airport entrance), I saw a lot of cars parked to the left of the road. My guess was, they just wanted to avoid the “exorbitant” parking charge levied inside. And there was a pretty much conclusive evidence that this could just be the reason as I went on to park my car. The already high-priced parking charge has been hiked further (from Rs.50/- to Rs.60/-). I feel this is an unfair sum (they maintain it quite OK but still).

Next, for the first time, I bought a visitor’s ticket to enter into the airport lounge. With that ticket, you are allowed to move in around 10 meters from the entrance and that is it !! And the price of that ticket is again Rs.60/-. May be this is intentionally priced so, to avoid traffic.

And one final thing I noted was a shop (named Balaji if I remember) selling a Dosa for Rs.40/-. May be nothing wrong with the price (after all we have Saravana Bhavan selling dosas for Rs80/-) but given the size of the Dosa, it is definitely not worth that money (to give you a metric, Dosa was smaller than the Dosa served in our canteen).

What are the charges like in other Metro airports ? Is it even worse or better ?

I am sure some of you would have tried this by now. For the unknown, Sathyam Cinemas has introduced a website named http://thecinema.in (a few months back) through which you can book your tickets Online using a credit card.

Good thing about this service is, the tickets will not be door delivered (which means you needn’t have anyone staying home waiting for the tickets to arrive). The tickets can be collected straight from a special counter (named “The Window̶ in the theatre premises just before the movie. You need to quote the order number and show the credit card which you used to buy the tickets.

This is service at its best. And what more, they seem to have brought in a added feature to this service (which was not there during the initial days of the service as far as I know). When you book your tickets, you can also place orders for the snacks that should be served to you during the interval. And this is even better. All you need to do is WATCH THE MOVIE

This blog post is dedicated to our One and Only T. Rajendar. He definitely has a separate identity. Be it his appearance, cinema, politics or any other activity, he impresses one way or the other. And guess what, he hails from Mayildauthurai town (near Kumbakkonam) which happens to be my native as well.. So all the more happy writing about him.

My Father’s flashback goes back to his teen age when he had spotted TR a lot of times roaming around Tea stalls (aimless ??). Who ever knew, TR was going to be as successful as he is today.

I personally enjoy listening to his dialogues (a TR trademark !!). Fun Unlimited !! No, I am not ridiculing TR or his dialogues/films. Films are afterall there to entertain the audience (one way or the other) and he is nothing less to Vijayakanth or Ramarajan who in my opinion have more entertainment value than other heroes. And if someone can write story, handle screenplay, write dialogues, present music and direct a movie which eventually proves to be a HIT, deserves credit ! (I have heard that during one period of time, he gave a few hit films consecutively)

A multi-faceted personality he is, did not spare politics either (his parties name is LDMK - Latchiya Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam). If I am right, he got elected as an MP once. His political speeches are entertaining as well but with no thought or substance. Aah, he has got one of those energetic throats. Can shout for hours together. Believe me, it is definitely tough to orate at such length without substance.

Karunanidhi used TR to campaign for DMK in the recently concluded elections. TR campaigned full-time for DMK and what did he get in return ? A simbu (his son) film in Sun TV on sunday evening and even as I write this blog, KTV is screening someother TR film.

(Read in Tanglish)

Solli adicha adhu WARu

Sollaleye adicha adhu TRu

Tried a TR trademark but failed for sure. No match to him !

This is no cricketing subject !

One thing that caught my attention a few days back when I came across a centenarian (a woman) was the gender ratio in such centenarians. Most of the centenarians I have come across are women. Why would this be the case ? Got a little curious to find out the facts and figures behind this scenario. Found this interesting article :

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/10.01/WhyWomenLiveLon.html

An excerpt from the above article :

Now onto some thought process, do you think it is possible (but for some genetic reasons) by some means to increase life expectancy or longevity in men ?

Today, I had a chance to watch the highlights of the match between Australia and Bangaldesh which was held in England (not sure which ground) as part of the tri-nation series in the near past. And as many of you might know, Bangladesh won the match by 5 wickets (with 4 balls to spare).

I am watching Bangladesh play after a long long time (dates back to a period when Akram Khan or someone was the captain of the side). I was thoroughly surprised and impressed by their performance. Ashraful scored a brilliant century ( I term it as brilliant for two main reasons : 1. He scored it against a world class attack, 2. Some of the strokes he played, both orthodox and unorthodox, were a treat to watch).

One striking point about this match was their approach : very very positive till the end and seemed to be very committed. They seem to have matured by the day. They needed 140 odd in 19 odd overs I guess and they still managed to win (mind you, Australia played all their strength - No B-team )! Wow !

Currently, Australia are touring Bangladesh and heard that they are given a good competition here too.

May be we can expect a couple of upsets in the coming world cup ! Well done Bangladesh !

Chanced upon this website while searching for some weird NoClassDefFoundError messages that I encountered during my work with Tomcat. You may find this useful when you are getting started to work with/debug some well known third party applications which has a lot of library (jar) files (ex. J2EE app server, Tomcat etc).

Jarhoo

One irk though is that it expects you to login to use the service !

From what I have observed so far, Raina is definitely a talented Cricketer. He seems to be unperturbed about the situation at which he comes to bat and plays with a lot of positive energy (athleticism in the field is another big plus). He surely has the timing and the power to backup his skill.

But one thing I thought was not required at this point of time is his comparison with Tendulkar. Not that he shouldn’t be but lets take a wild guess at what all might follow :

1. Raina opens the innings (we can as well test this given Shewag’s current form)

2. Demigod status

and may be a few more ..

One immediate thing I would like to see is Raina play, test cricket. He definitely has the technique and I feel he can deliver it for India in that form of the game too.

With Raina, Ganguly’s chances fades !!!