Like any other software company, we had the team outing today ( my actual team is very small here.. but I come under a bigger team within the company ) which was karting at speedzone followed by dinner. I’m amazed by the quality of SpeedZone. The track is really big and the karts have 13 horsepower engines instead of the 7 horsepower ones that you find elsewhere. Since the karts were powerful, it did not matter if I raced with a person who was 30kg’s lighter them I am .Surprisingly I made it to the finals and I managed to…

Jeremy‘s written an excellent piece on how people forget the ‘beta’ label on products. Traditionally we are familiar with beta software which we could install on our machine and try out the product before it went live.. and usually there was a gap of couple of months between a beta and the final launch of a product. With Internet services the same cycle continued, but some companies choose to stay in the ‘beta’ mode for longer then usual.. and the company leading the pack is Google. Almost all google products other then search have the ‘beta’ stamp on them. But…

Hellmuth ConzMeister of Photography Couple of weeks ago, I woke up one morning and decided I’ll learn the good-ol-fashioned film photography. From developing negatives to printing pictures and rest of the works in the dark room. Then I met Hellmuth Conz. Originally from Germany, he teaches photography for living in Bangalore. I signed up for the advanced course which includes dark room development and working with lighting etc. I completed the darkroom course last week(Only black&white) and now I can’t wait to shoot in film. Its amazing all the things you can do in the darkroom to your image.. and…

Did you hear the one about the programmer who outsourced his own job? A pseudonymous poster on slashdot wrote, “About a year ago I hired a developer in India to do my job. I pay him $12,000 to do the job I get paid $67,000 for. He’s happy to have the work. I’m happy that I only have to work 90 minutes a day, talking code. My employer thinks I’m telecommuting. Now I’m considering getting a second job and doing the same thing.” From This months Wired issue The Noodle cup is too hilarious.

Late evening yesterday with sun hitting her face on one side.

Lot of friends attrition lately. My good friends ashwinb and puttu left for their MS to USA this week (Good luck guys). My late night pool partner krishi quit yahoo yesterday. He is joining IISc later this month. My batchmates at work Nandu and (who can forget him) have moved to the sunnyvale office this month and tejaswi quit to pursue his Mtech at IIT. These folks pretty much make up the last bunch of people who have joined yahoo along with me straight out of college. Good luck for all you fine folks.

Except for the not-so-nice train journey, the trip was pretty good. I had to take a 4 hour stink of shit on the railway platform, sleepless night thanks to all the people snoring loud around me and the lack of people to talk to as everyone around me spoke only bengali. Decided to fly back and I’ve decided not to make any more long distance train journeys. Met all the “good” relatives with whom you can actually have a decent time and not the ones who annoy you like shit. Ate all the yummy home made sweets and visited all…

Leaving for Vizag tomorrow on a 4 day trip to attend a family function. I am visiting my home town after almost 2 years and hopefully this time it will be less sweaty. Once you spend couple of years in bangalore, you just don’t feel like staying anywhere else in India. I for one sweat a lot and its a nightmare for me when I visit coastal areas. Also the one-way train journey to Vizag is close to 20 hours (atleast I can catch up on all the half read my books I have lying around) The bright side is…

http://in.news.yahoo.com/040701/43/2epu5.html Scores of gay rights activists marched in Delhi on Thursday demanding the removal of a colonial law which makes homosexuality illegal. Shouting slogans and waving banners, dozens of gays, lesbians and transvestites walked around the Jantar Mantar observatory demanding a change in section 377 in the Indian Penal Code. The section bans homosexual activity, calling it “against the order of nature” and makes it punishable by a fine and a prison sentence up to 10 years. … Passers-by stopped to look at the group demonstrating in favour of gay rights just four days after a similar march drew wide…

Looks like Gmail is having a tough time catching up with loads of new users (It was expected). I currently get the following error when I hit gmail. Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We’re sorry for the inconvenience. Hey, at least they have a sense of humor. Their Ad system seems to work quite well. In an email to someone, I called the person a ‘Fatty’ and google showed him 3 ads about weight loss programs right next to the email. Also Userfriendly.org is on gmail theme this week.