Monday, September 24, 2007

Young Guns of India took a sure shot



I happened to watch a full cricket match, after long time. Thanks to the concept of Twenty 20 matches. They are very interesting, since it is short duration and very aggressive. The young team of India well fit in the 20-20 concept to blast the rest of the world and clinched the trophy. The secret of India's winning are "no-fear cricket" and "keep cool head, whatever happens" attitude. This is something anyone should take from the Indian cricket team that player 20-20.
One more nice outcome from the recent matches is that, all the Indians had hope again on the team. This united everyone, irrespective of ideologies, religion, etc.,and wish for a single goal, ie Indian team to win. In some time, the 1dayers shall also vanish like the test cricket, and 20-20 will stabilize with something "25-25".

Sunday, September 16, 2007

BOSS linux


BOSS - Not the Shivaji's "Bachelor of Social Service".
I just came across this new BOSS. It is "Bharat Operating System Solutions" Linux distribution by CDAC, Chennai. CDAC is Indian government controlled software development organisation. BOSS has lot of special packages in regional languages. Currently its fully functional versions are in Hindi and Tamil (latest completely localized tamil version of BOSS 2.0). CDAC's ultimate goal is to have in all the 22 indian offcial languages. BOSS also comes in live CDs. And all this for free ! Got to try out when I get free time space. www.bosslinux.in

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Inspiring Oration by Vineet Nayar


Today we had annual business meet in HCL. This was the second time, I had an opportunity to hear from Vineet Nayyar, President of our company, HCL Technologies Ltd., The previous time was one year ago. We were a crowd of leads and managers gathered at St John's auditorium.
The speech given by Vineet was so much inspiring and thought provoking that it made me a fan of Vineet, so did for most of the HCLites. The talk were not completely focussed on Business strategies alone. It was personality centric too. I got a lot of points to improve myself and evolve myself to innovate.
The concept of Focus, Lead, Dominate that he introduced 1 year before, can be applicable for any industry and market. First we got to focus on our goal, try to Lead the market, and dominate in space.
If we are working in a group, say we are playing a match, say a loosing side, one should be a Transformer, so as to act as a catalyst and boost for the teams comeback and victory.
I always liked aggressive leaders like Nethaji Subash. I like Vineet's aggressive spirit too. The concept that we have to deliver more value rather than volume, holds good in any of our day to day activities, even in personal life.
The attitude of approaching a customer was explained well. When u see a customer, do not try to sell the stuff u already did, or do not show the solutions, instead speak to him understand his pain, his problem and then try to sell the cure.
Vineet encouraged that its ok to make mistakes, infact we should be courageous to do something and make mistakes, but learn from them. If something you did and it suceeded, try to analyse what unique point made the success.
For all those aspiring guys like me, Vineet's philosophy are practical, very doable, and inspiring !

Monday, September 10, 2007

Idly



Idly had been one of my favourtite dishes, since child hood. Last week end, My mom served Idly with Malli chutney at home. My favourite combination too.. It was Amazing.. Thought of writing something about this delicious food.
Idly came from Thamizh phrase "Ittu Ali", which means "prepare and serve". It contains rice and grams at right proportion, so as to give carbs:protein in a right ratio. Its not prepared by boiling or heating or frying.. It is steam cooked. This makes it so soft and most importantly hygienic. Usually taken as breakfast.. There are various types of idlies, based on what chutney is taken as side dish.. like Malli chutney idly, podi idly, thengai chutney idly, thakkali chutney idly, sambar idly, mor-idly, off late, beer idly ;)

Have fun tasting this delicious breakfast that was invented by our ancestors !

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Ambulance coming... Act Responsibly

I had been to Chennai last week end. I was goin with my friend in his bike in the Mount road. We were near Saidapet on the Mount road. The road was filled with vehicles and suddenly sound of an ambulance aproaching, attracted everyones attention. It was an Ambulance from Hindu Mission Hospital.
My friend moved the bike to the right extreme of the road. So did the other 2 wheelers. To my surprise, everyone gave the way. A guy in Honda City car was in the left end of the road. Without thinking anything, he went in to one of the cut roads to give the way for ambulance. A Tata sumo tried to climb its two wheels on the platform. The ambulance went passed us without trouble. Then the traffic police guy at the next signal stopped vehicles in other directions to allow this ambulance.
I was impressed to see how people were so responsible for the Ambulance. They gave way at any cost. Asked abt this, My friend told that this scene happens many a times in mount road. Hats off to everyone who give way for Ambulance and respect the people in utter emergency.

Installed Ubuntu

I wanted to install a linux OS in my laptop (pet name cyberayya). Cyberayya had single partition 100GB in C:. I know it is foolish to have such arrangement, but, thats what CircuitCity gave me, when I bought it.
I tried to resize the partition and install Ubuntu in the newer partition.
I chose Partition magic for that. Some website offered a free download of it. I did not notice that it had a disclaimer "Demo version. Non functional". Literally, it was a demo with GUI and the actual resizing did not happen.
Then started searching for some free tools. My friend suggested the Gnome partition tool (gaprted). I downloaded from gparted.org. Created a live CD and then tried to resize using it. But unfortunately it did not recognize the NTFS file system, which housed 100 GB.
I somehow managed to get a copy of partition magic from the neighbourhood software installer. The resize operation in PM failed with error 983. Later I learnt from Web that it is due to the errors in the hard drive. I used chkdsk \R utility in windows XP to check the disk. This command will even fix the errors if any in disk. Then I retried the resize of Partition magic. Bingo. It worked and resized the partition.
Then installed the Ubuntu OS. Currently using Ubuntu for all the day to day computer activities. I shall blog more abt Ubuntu later. For now, Ubuntu rocks !