50

Yes. My 50th blog. Its nice to be this far, so soon. When I started off writing blogs I didn't think I would get so involved in this. All I wanted was to shift my focus from TV to something else. well, it worked. Writing blogs was the easy part, everything just fell in. If at all I spent extra time, it would be for the images and widgets. As like the title, all my blogs were written based on the way I see things. I plan to continue the same way. Thanks to all, and for your comments keeping this blog lively. Just keep reading. Its been so far so good and I hope to keep this momentum going until I find something else more fascinating to relax!

Go Green

Everyone talks going green, well, here's few things that might help...

Ten Tips to Save Energy (and Money) in Your Home

A whopping 46 percent of home energy use is, umm, energy loss! In other words, no productive energy use at all! Here are simple ways of reversing this, mostly by changes of habit.

Thanks to climatecrisis.net and The Home Energy Diet (New Society Publishers, 2005), for many of the carbon savings figures.

1. Each degree you turn down the heat saves 3 percent of heating costs, while each degree you raise the temperature of your air conditioner saves 3-4 percent of cooling costs. By changing the temperature by 2 degrees all year, you can save about 2,000 pounds of C02 a year.

2. Cook with a slow cooker or a toaster oven (or even a solar oven!) to reduce electrical use from kitchen appliances. For a meal that requires one hour to cook in an electric oven, and which uses 2.7 pounds of C02, a crockpot uses 0.9 pounds of C02 for seven hours, a toaster oven takes 1.3 pounds of C02 for 50 minutes, and a microwave only 0.5 pounds of C02 for 15 minutes of cooking. A solar cooker requires NO C02!

3. Switch to a laptop instead of using a desktop computer and cut three-quarters off your electrical use. Turn off the laptop at the end of the day.

4. Switch to cold water washing and save 80 percent on energy used for laundry and save an estimated $60 a year. Hang dry your clothes instead of using the dryer and save 700 pounds of C02 a year.

5. Plug anything that can be powered by a remote control or that has a power cube transformer (little black box) into a power strip, and turn it off, and/or unplug, when not in use. (Power cubes are 60-80 percent inefficient.)

6. Turn off the lights when you aren’t using them and reduce your direct lighting energy use by 45 percent. Stop using heat-producing halogen lamps (they can also be fire hazards). Install occupancy or motion sensors on outdoor lights.

7. Switch to compact fluorescent from regular incandescent bulbs and use 60 percent less energy per bulb and save 300 pounds of C02 a year.

8. Wrap your water heater in an insulation blanket and save 1,000 pounds of C02 a year. Insulate your hot water pipes.

9. Use public transportation whenever possible, carpool, shop locally, and ideally switch to a hybrid or energy-efficient car (if you haven’t already).

10. Keep your tires inflated to improve gas mileage by 3 percent. Every gallon you save also saves 20 pounds of C02 emissions.

source: care2.com

Drive One...Will you!

Ford made a profit of $100M this quarter. that's interesting. but more interesting is the recent ford tv ad "Drive One", which says ford equals toyota in quality!!!. check out this article forddriveone
Well, the question is, whether this will work. especially among us, indians and asians, for majority of whom, the term quality is synonymous to Japanese product. for most of asians, its either Honda, Toyota or Nissan, very few it's Mitsubishi... this new ad might work well with the American people, but to us and asians in general i don't think it would make a slightest difference to opt for ford and to Drive One...

around the world...

I wonder, why I was searching online, going crazy trying to download English songs, when my colleague sitting few cubicles away had more songs than i have heard of. All it required was an external hard drive and a USB cable. sometimes you learn again that things that you need might be in your proximity and all it need is to rise up and ask, but of course to the right people...

Super 5

There are few things I wish they would get rid off in tamil movies... (leave alone other languages, that list would take quite a while...)

5. Songs that pop from somewhere for no reason...
(except movies in which, only the song is good...)


4. Scenes, Dialogues that reflect 1960's
(old titles, remix songs, same old story... atleast come up with your own dialogues for crying out loud...)

3. Sentiments
(mother, sister, the latest father... wooo...that still leaves a lot of relations for these people....)

2. Punch dialogues
(intolerable... do they hear what they say.)

1. Storyless movie with a worst screenplay, combined with senseless scenes and worthless dialogues... like a full package
(man...I can't forget the movie "time")

IT would never get better.

No. I am not referring to Information Technology. Its the Income Tax department in India. I think there needs to be a different kind of Income tax raid. This one should be people getting into Income tax department and conducting a raid to see how many of the returns they haven't refunded to the people. I still haven't got my 2004-05 tax refund. who knows, how many pending cases are there in this department. It took me just one hour to complete my tax returns here in US and the debit or credit of the tax refunds are done automatically. I got to tell you, I don't think such departments in India are going to get any better even if we are talking about India being in the list of developed country in 2050, which in my view is hypothetical and would require a major overhaul of the entire system in India including us.

fortune enough!

On the 2008 fortune 500 list, fortune as again Walmart came in at no.1. Exxon came in at second. What's interesting is texas had 56 of the fortune 500 companies and was second next to New york with 57 companies. More interesting is that houston had 22 of the fortune 500, second next to new york city. thats impressive. whatever media or people call, walmart somehow pulls it off!

Cast your wallet!

The total money raised for the 2008 US presidential compaign by all the candidates put together till 21-Apr-2008 according to CNN report is $776,718,080 ($776 Million) that's INR 3,101,43,52,934. There's still 4 more months for the Democratic convention at Denver and 6 more months for the election. On one end, we talk about economy, expenditure, toll on middle class, on other end, almost a Billion dollar is being spent on compaign alone. lobbyist have a major take on this. one way or other each candidate would have to owe to those lobbyists once they are elected. how would you expect these candidates to do something good for the middle class. By the way, what they are up to. Power!. Being called as the most powerful person in the world!.I guess these candidates are no different from Indian politicians when it comes to elections!.

Check out this site opensecrets.org for some interesting informations about US elections and candidates!

It doesn't really matter for this sport....

I guess, it doesn't matter whether its ICC or IPL, people really don't care. I was watching the highlights of the recent IPL matches, the crowd is unbelievable. the only thing that matters as always is good entertainment. as long as they are able to provide that, any version of this sport is going to be a success. this is nothing new. its like county cricket in England.

If IPL becomes a hit, which from the initial few matches, looks like it is, will bring in more international players and be a great treat to those millions of cricket watchers, who now have a chance to watch more cricket and can associate themselves to a particular team.

With the teams owned by celebrities, there won't be anything short of media attention and advertisement for this version of cricket.

demand vs supply

The demand for renting apartments in chennai are skyrocketing and people are willing to pay more than what the owners ask for. my parents were telling me that one of our neighbour in chennai had a tenant moving out and even before they moved out, there were huge demands for the apartment and people were willing to pay more than other just to get the apartment. thats the same with buying new apartments. the more they build, the quick they sell, no matter how pricy they are. that's inflation best explained.

fun!

Animator Vs Animation!

Adiós

Woodlands Drive In, Cathedral Road, Chennai. Its a famous landmark in chennai. Those from chennai would know that. After my college, when I moved to chennai for work, me and my friends used to go to this drive in hotel. It used to be hangout place some time. though i was not so crazy about the food there, we liked to go out there.

I still remember singer P.B.Srinivas, sitting in the next table writing something. We never talked to him. most of them working there were old, maybe they were working there for a very long time. This should be hard on them. Once I told my friend "I'm surprised how none of the politicians haven't had an eye on this".

Recently I was reading Hindu and was surprised to see that government has taken over the place and have shut down the hotel. that's bad. these politicians, they jus' can't stop! can they?

take it easy....

The names of most of the women in India end either with "a" or "i". I know some of you might be thinking "room pottu yosippano" appadinnu...

How to name it?...its mystery to me!

If I have to meet a film music composer one day, my first question would be " How do you compose a song", I mean how do you come up with a tune.

I am not sure how many music composers are well versed with ragas, if that is the basis for composing a tune. Even if ragas are the basis for composing tunes, then how about those hundreds of carnatic singers who know these ragas at the tip of their tongue. shouldn't they be able to come up with numerous tunes and compositions.

Well, there could be one argument that they sing compositions rendered by thiagarajar, dikshitar and others. But they spend their whole life trying to master in ragas and to identify, differentiate and sing in different ragas. the other argument could be that they could, but they don't, which i don't completely agree with. Do all music directors know all ragas? I don't think so. Then how can they come up with 10 different tunes for one single song.

There are musicians who have more audio CD's and cassettes than the music store itself and that they pick few tunes from each and make a fusion. leave those people out of this. they don't belong to this category, though that by itself is a talent!

Sometimes when I hear movie composers say, that all music are from sa-re-ga-ma-pa-tha-ni, I would go like, what?

Can it be only god's gift like what rahman says. I don't agree in total. may be you are talented by birth, but that alone cannot produce hundreds and thousands of songs.

Once I tried to come up with some tune just to see how difficult it is. I was lost after a few minutes. leave alone the computers, softwares, cd's, cassettes, there should be a systematic way for composition of tunes. Is it a method or an art or skill or gift?

Gold is Old

With the rising gold prices, its going to be tough on middle class.

Do Something!

Having following up with the latest Hogenakkal issue, I was thinking what the hell these politicians do. those sitting at the central seems to be completely useless. Then we have the best position in India. Termed as first citizen, I don't think they do atleast what the last citizen do for a living. President of India. by the way I know the current president is a female and her name ends with patil, I forgot her first name... I started off with smitha patil, but then realized she was an actress. then I had to google it to see that her first name is Pratheeba... who is she by the way?... I know the post is dummy, but atleast don't show that way.

When I googled, I found out that the vice president is Mohammad Hamid Ansari!!!

I don't know what any of our early presidents have done something that is remarkable. Abdul Kalam is considered as one of the best presidents we had. If maintaining the mogul garden in rashtrapathi bhavan is what is achievement is as president, then we might as well be called as first citizen. most of us maintain our houses lot well than that.

The lowest level employee in a company is asked to do special projects in addition to their work. some are even asked to find new business, participate in cross functional teams. If this is the case for a young graduate, with so much experience behind them and sitting in the highest position in the country, shouldn't they be doing something.

There are so many common issues in the country, from interlinking rivers, infrastructure development, education, global warming,.. you could go on and on... how difficult it is for a person at such a high post to start initiating one of these projects and organize and push things... if you can't do this, then I don't understand what else would they be able to do...Atleast develop and promote sports other than cricket. How difficult would that be.

Please don't talk about dreaming big, if you can't at the highest office bring few things to reality.

If you have to choose one... contd....

Scenario 1:

On a single lane, a car going in front of yours is unbelievably slower than the speed limits, you are honking him to go faster.

Scenario 2:

On a single lane, you are going at the speed limit and the car behind you is coming at incredibly fast, he is honking at you to go faster.

which is worse?

If you have to choose one

If you get 10% discount on a product and end up paying the rest of 90% and the dealer gets 90% of your money by offering a discount of 10%, who is wiser?

One has the ability to foresee future needs, think, innovate and create new products but does not have the ability to market it to the consumer, another has the ability to sell the product to the consumer, but has no capability to innovate or create a new product. who is smarter?

Person 'A' likes whatever he gets, Person 'B' gets whatever he likes. who is better?

Kya!

You go to a friends house or gather around fellow indians and start having a conversation and find yourself, you are no different than your non-indian colleagues. Most tamil speaking people can visualize this scenario. you have to speak in English with your indian friends who don't speak tamil, if you don't know hindi.

If you had gone to north india, you might have experienced, when you look at the buses or any sign boards, those letters look no different that this matrix image.

Except for all states, we were the only state which opposed hindi.

Whatever be the intensions those days when DMK banned hindi, it sure is costing a lot to all tamilians. you and I have to learn tamil compulsory but dayanidhi and anbumani might speak hindi . I wouldn't be surprised if their grandkids don't even know tamil.

You can't blame those politicians. that's how they make their living. the same political party who banned tamil and the same politician who was the forerunner in that movement, would name his channel as SUN TV and people wouldn't dare to ask a question. I wonder if SUN is tamil in karunanidhi's dictionary!