Under Progress....

Tired of talking... :|

All Are Welcome

To

Carte Blanche

and my

Multimedia Info Desk.

PS: All set. Waiting for the inauguration.

Complete Power

Carte Blanche literally means just that - Complete Power. What would you do if you were given complete power - control - over the config files, source code and all that could be controlled?
We people would hack away, happily forever. :)

Switch to GNU/Linux. Experience Carte Blanche.

PS: I'm now sitting at my Multimedia Info Desk at Carte Blanche venue with all fun and fan fare. Finished 95% of work. Took a break just now. Will be updating the status throughout the day. :)

Past and Future

Things I did in past fortnight

• Organised the event Industry defined project in Asymptote.
• Helped in organising the events Bottle rocketry and Air show in Asymptote.
• Won Mech quiz in Asymptote.
• Attended math workshop in Kurukshetra.(loved V.S. Sunder's Knot theory lecture. Will post on that soon.)
• Working towards Carte-Blanche.(Half completed)

For the next week

• Finish the Carte Blanche work. It is scheduled on coming Saturday. I'm doing the multimedia section. I will focus on VLC, Mplayer, Camstream, Amarok and Audacity. (All are welcome to the event!)
  
• Select engine for my aircraft(for the design project)

PS: See my medium term goals in the next post.

Happy New Year Folks...!

Wish you a very happy

2009

Where are our youngsters going?

I used to believe that the present generation, at least the educated part of it, will come out of the closed mindedness of the caste, religion etc. It turns out that I’m dead wrong. One hour ago I stumbled upon this Orkut community called “The youngsters of [caste name]”. The members are not some semi-literate people who work in obscure data entry company with connectivity. They are well placed professionals, alumni and students (both gender, equally) of top professional(?) colleges including my own (this is how I stumbled upon.) The supposedly toppers of the higher secondary education (?!) of Tamil Nadu.

There was this thread in the forum:

What should do to prevent our community ppl from marryin outside our caste? (Sic)

And one gem I found in that discussion:

There are less no. of girls in our caste than boys. This should be tackled to prevent dilution of our caste.

I was like WTF? Dilution of what? I searched for other castes and sure I found communities with pretty much the same kind of membership for all the caste names that I knew (Though it numbered to only 10, including mine, I’m sure other castes too had communities).
I lost my faith. Completely.

PS: This is a rant. Excuse my grammar.
PPS: Should I be happy that these people condemn female infanticides at least?

Email Santa

There are some letters mailed to Santa kept at this website. They are funny and sometimes witty to read. Though there are a lot of them written by little children, my favorite one is written by a 40 year old boy.

I could sure use some ideas about what to get my wife. Has she sent you a list of suggestions?

And this one reminded me of my little sister's young days.

As my brother has been a very, very, very bad boy I would like you to send someone to torture him. Maybe a chunk of coal too. Bring my parents some neat stuff and the bill.

Seasons greetings to you all...

கார்த்திகை

These pictures were taken during karthigai in my sister's house. Apart from cropping I didn't do anything else. I should learn to touch up the photos using GIMP soon.

The Meaning of Akilan

Yesterday, someone came to this blog through a Google search for meaning of akilan.(saw in my statcounter analysis)
Quite frankly I don't know what I should feel. Anyway, for the enlightenment of the uninformed souls, I state the meaning of my name, Akilan, here.

Akilam(அகிலம்) means all, universe, world and the like. Akilan means one who is owner of these. Basically it boils down to mean ruler of the world.^[1]

Pity is that I’m not a ruler of even a village... :(

[1] Madras University Tamil lexicon.

Viagra Like

Today in the joke of the day gadget(iGoogle) I saw the list of  Viagra like drugs that would be very useful in life. one such drug is

COMPLIMENTRA: In clinical trials, 82% of middle-aged men noticed that their wives had a new hairstyle. Currently being tested to see if its effects extend to noticing new clothing.

These two had me in splits(emphasis mine):

ANTI-AGRA: Promises the exact opposite effect of Viagra. Currently undergoing clinical trials on U.S. Senators.

LIAGRA: This drug helps men lie more successfully when asked about their sexual affairs. Will be available in Regular, Grand Jury and Political Strength versions.

Ha ha ha...

Stealing Credits

There was this international conference conducted last month by a well known society in the field. Eighteen papers were sent to that from the concerned department of my college. They were authored by various students and faculty members. But invariably 13 papers mentioned one particular person as a co-author. Can you imagine that person’s intelligence given this info? Can Einstein be a match? The reality is that that particular person is the HOD of that department. When i saw this info in my college site i was dumbfounded. None can save Indian education system.

பூ

பூ - ஓர் அழகான காதல் கவிதை!

முதல் முறையாக தமிழ் படத்தில் ஒரு பெண் நடித்திருக்கிறார். கதாபாத்திரமாகவே வாழ்ந்திருக்கிறார் என்பதே சரி. பார்வதியின் முக பாவனைகள் அத்தனை அழகு! இயக்குனர் சசிக்கு பாராட்டுகள்.