Feb 25th, 2005 by kannanmr. HOT! Bangkok is really hot, I mean it literally. At 4am in the morning, the temperature was like 2pm in Chennai! Thankfully, all cabs have air conditioners. Because of the recent Tsunami, Bangkok has lost some of its tourists, I heard. It doesn’t look like that. You find foreigners everywhere.
Though, I had no plans for buying any electronics items, I ended up buying a MP3 player and couple of DVDs. Pantip Plaza, the mecca for electronics, will surely tempt anyone in to buying things they never wanted to buy. It is a five storey mall, with umpteen shops selling the same things, at different prices. If you are lucky & patient, you will find the cheapest price in one of these stores, but still the highest price quoted will be lower than the lowest price outside 
I picked up a 512MB MP3 player for 3100 Bahts. This is Rs.3500 or so. I was pretty satisfied with the deal. Unfortunately, it was shortlived, as I soon found the same model being sold for 2900 Baht in the next shop!!
Continue reading “Real hot Bangkok!!” »
Posted in: Personal.
Tagged: bangalore · bangkok · dvds · f2f · Meeting · Piracy · Travel
Feb 1st, 2005 by kannanmr. It is pretty difficult to shake off certain habits, downloading from Internet is one such thing. I am sure many will agree with this. It doesn’t matter what you download, be it movies, documents or whatever… many people download stuff just for the sake of having/owning it. The knowledge that you have so much data at your disposal can make you verrrry happy & feel “knowledgeable“! The amount of information (or simply, stuff!) out there is so vast that what you can get is only limited by your pipe’s capacity! In my country, that is the bottleneck. The broadband boom is yet to happen, so you can’t get an unlimited 3Mbps or 6Mbps line, unless you are related to Ambani or Dhariwal. Unfortunately, I am not! I decided to check out the HTTP tunneling solutions out there. There are only a few programs available for tunneling through HTTP Proxies, like Socks2HTTP, HTTPort, GNU http tunnel (Here is an implementation in Java), McGyver’s HTTP Tunnel & HTTPTunnel NG. If you are wondering what this tunneling stuff is, click here. Continue reading “How irritating can be a HTTP Proxy??” »
Posted in: Technology.
Tagged: Broadband · Corporate-Intranet · HowTo · HTTP · HTTP-Tunneling · Piracy · Tunnel
Jan 4th, 2005 by kannanmr. I came back from my movie-less vacation last week only to be greeted by my “movies-to-watch” queue, overflowing with 23 films. What a way to start my work week!! I started off with Ocean’s 12, which was a major disappointment. Ocean’s 11 was so impressive, I was eagerly waiting for the sequel to come out, to see Mr.Ocean pull off one more of that “oh-not-possible-at-all” jobs, but the movie is a huge let down. The plot is so weak. No “wow! cool” ideas this time. No action scenes. Ahhhh!! The only consolation is Brad Pitt. He is his usual charming self. This movie is actually Ocean’s 2 or something like that, certainly not Ocean’s 12!!
When I started watching National Treasure, I expected it to be one of those boring, “shoot-at-everyone” kind of movie. I was happy that I was wrong. Storyline is simple: Treasure hunting. Ben Gates (Nicolas Cage) is searching for the treasure-of-treasures hidden by FreeMasons. He follows a trail of clues, ends up stealing the original “Declaration of Independence”, fights goonies & finally, finds the treasure (What else!?)…Cage was good, adding a witty comment here & there, but I liked Justin Bartha (“Riley”) more!! This is a good movie, providing solid entertainment. Do see this (if you like these kinda movies, that is!). Continue reading “[Movie] MoviezzzZZ!” »
Posted in: Movies.
Tagged: English-Movies · Movies · National Treasure · Reviews · The Grudge
Dec 12th, 2004 by kannanmr. Benny, one of my favorites (!?) from 29A has got a day job. He was hired by Zoner Antivirus team (Czhech). This has become such an issue, which I don’t understand at all. The argument against hiring virii coders is that the employers will lose credibility as their software is developed by an ex-malicious code developer. WTH? We have a saying in my country, which, to paraphrase, says “Only a thief can *find* another thief”…True, isn’t it? An ex-virii coder knows the tricks of the trade, he understands how his former-peers think, how they try to find vulnerabilities and how their polymorphic engines tick! This is crucial information, IMO.
If a security firm is not hiring a seasoned hacker, it is akin to a country’s intelligence agency refusing information from an opponent’s intelligence agent! Antivirus companies say that the skills needed for writing security software is completely different from that needed for writing malicious code. This may be true in some cases, but I cannot accept the statement as such. C’mon, if I know how to exploit a vulnerability, surely you can make use of that knowledge to fix that vulnerability, in the first place, right?? You write your software, give it to the fellow, whose job is to crack it somehow….He will be pretty effective at it than a 10 man testing team & a Quality assurance expert!! It all boils down to how you make use of the talent, IMHO. Anyhow, congrats & all the best, Benny!
Posted in: Code, Computers, Technology.
Tagged: antivirus · companies · Piracy · virus
Dec 12th, 2004 by kannanmr. If you are still using Kazaa, Morpheus or one of those old, obsolete software, I have news for you….wake up, things have changed!! eDonkey n/w was the coolest one, till sometime back, not anymore. It still is the best source for complete CDs, though. eMule, an open source client for edonkey network, is still one of the most downloaded programs off sourceforge. The main advantage of eDonkey network is, it provides quality CD dumps, while Kazaa & Gnutella (most of the time) provide you only the rips. Rips include only the bare minimum that is needed for running the software, while a CD image, obviously, allows you to make an exact copy of the original CD Mind that, many of the things available in these networks are illegal. But, because of its P2P nature, it is pretty difficult to shut down these networks, unlike Napster which was inherently non-p2p and so was easy to shut down. The original Gnutella network doesn’t have good content, but gnutella2 seems to be good.
The latest *hot* thing is BitTorrent. Torrent network doesn’t have Continue reading “P2P software” »
Posted in: Computers, Movies, Technology.
Tagged: edonkey · P2P · Torrent
Dec 3rd, 2004 by kannanmr. Here are some of the macro-mode shots I took with my Canon Powershot A80. Since I am totally new new to these, I chose not to fiddle with the manual controls. All these pictures were taken in Portrait setting, with Macro-Mode on.
Click on the picture to see it in 1024 x 768.
Some more details:
Horizontal/Vertical Resoultion: 180/180 (dpi)
Bit Depth : 24
sRGB color representation
Shutter speed: 1/40sec
Lens Aperture: F/2.8
Focal: 8mm
Metering mode: Pattern (If I change this to Center weighted average, will I get more clear pics?)
Exposure compensation: 0 step.
Posted in: Personal, Photography.
Tagged: a80 · camera · Canon · macro_mode · powershot
Nov 25th, 2004 by kannanmr. 
I know this film is quite old now, but still, when I saw this again in DVD, I felt the same awe/confusion I felt when I watched it 2 years back!! This film can easily win a top-10 position in the most complex films ever made.
WARNING: If you haven’t seen the film yet, go see it now and then read this. This post is just a big spoiler.
All the mystery/suspense movies you have seen so far, most probably, had the story unfolding in a linear fashion, right? Like, he found his wife dead, got some clues, solves one clue and finds a fellow/object. From there he goes to the next clue blah blah blah, right? This film shatters that normal (!?) way of story-telling. Actually, this film’s beginning is its end. Confused? Don’t be, because there is still more to come Leonard Shelby is an Insurance agent. One fine day, his wife gets molested & killed by two men. He shoots one of them, a masked one, but the other one hits him with something hard. Leonard (Lenny) looses the ability to persist short-term memories because of this. Cops think that there was only one fellow; their version is something like, Lenny found a masked person molesting his wife and when that fellow hit Lenny on the head, he shot him. They don’t believe Lenny’s version of 2 men. Lenny remembers everything that happened right up to that incident, but nothing persists in his memory bank after that blow to his head. He knows his wife’s molester is still out there somewhere. He wants revenge, he decides to go after some John G, who he believes killed his wife. But how do you find someone, let alone kill him, when you keep forgetting things that happened 10 minutes back?! He comes up with an ingenious solution – keeping notes & taking pictures. He has seen one of his clients, Sammy, suffering from a similar disorder. Lenny believes that by repeating things/facts, he can condition his mind to recognize them. He uses a Polaroid to take pictures of persons/places he wants to remember. He writes notes to himself on back of those photographs. He also keeps a detailed map, putting all these photographs in to a macro perspective, to know where everything fits. However, notes and pictures can be lost! So, he tatoos all important facts about his wife’s killer in his body!! Since there is no memory of what he did 10 minutes back, he is vulnerable to exploitation by people who take advantage of his condition. Can he trust anyone? Can he find the killer on his own? These are the questions you get reading the story of a normal suspense thriller, but not here! This film totally produces a completely different set of questions. Continue reading “[Movie] Memento” »
Posted in: Movies.
Tagged: English-Movies · Reviews · story_telling
Nov 23rd, 2004 by kannanmr. Here are some things that caught my attention lately. Since I don’t think these things deserve separate posts, here we go.
1) First, this Science-based story by Jeyamohan. I didn’t know Jeyamohan writes these kinda stories too!! The basic story is about how different our Siddha Medicinal system is from Alopathy and how the system that we practise now is not the true Siddha. I got to know (learnt!?) a lot of things. Interesting read. But, after having read the story, I feel as if I went through a dense medical journal (“Siddha for dummies” !?)
2) When I was looking for some interesting blogs to read (as if I didn’t have enuf already!) I stumbled on Sriram Krishnan’s blog, He is a student (Wow!) in Chennai, a nerd & more importantly, has excellent coding skills! Good to see such motivated talents. He is really in to search technologies. Though, directly not related to my current work, I got kinda motivated reading all his articles. No denying that his “How to write a search engine in 16 hours” post brought back sweet memories of how I had only an evening to make our OS, which we did as our final year project, understand Tamil Good old days. I doubt I enjoyed doing anything so strenuous lately. Professional life, for sure, takes out that enthusiasm and, sometimes, that curiosity to learn more, out of you. This is my personal opinion, of course. Let’s hope Sriram doesn’t feel like me after 5 yrs of being in the field. Microsoft/Google, if you are looking for a talent, with enuf enthusiasm/motivation & technical know-how, you’ve got the right candidate here!
PS: Rama/Prem, this fellow is good, do have a look at his postings.
3) Latest *big* thing (& here’s a going-to-be-a-big-thing! 
) in Gollywood: Dhanush got married to Aishwarya, super-star’s daughter.
Don’t you think Rajini looks more like one of those ADMK ministers?? I can’t believe this is the same person who attacked Jeyalalitha so ferocioulsy back in 1996!! Continue reading “Tidbits” »
Posted in: Miscellaneous.
Tagged: blogs · chennai · marriage · Reviews · Tidbits
Nov 16th, 2004 by kannanmr. I haven’t totally recovered from my last ETAD (Embarassing, Totally Annihilating Defeat). If you remember, I bought CM 10 + White Belt + Black Belt to try to drown myself, but alas, it looks like I need more. So, today I went ahead and took a 3 months subscription to Chess Today. Chess Today(CT) is a daily newsletter, delievered to your mailbox as a PDF, with interviews/annotated games/puzzles et al. It is published by GM Baburin. I am hoping to see some good annotations for the ongoing Russian Superfinals games in CT as well as BlackBelt. Mig or Baburin? Lets see whose annotations I understand more
Posted in: Chess.
Tagged: Chess · Chess-ninja · Chess-Today · Defeat · Embarassing
Nov 15th, 2004 by kannanmr. I was on a long vacation last week, enjoying not only playing with my brother’s daughter, but also preparing to watch Russian Super finals How can anyone miss this one (even if that means missing a 2 yrs cutie’s smile)!?
Russian heavy weights, Kasparov, Kramnik & Karpov usually do not play in their national championship, which, by the way, is one of the strongest events! In Russia, literally, you can find an IM-strength player in every house. It is a known thing that a Russian Candidate master is as strong as a FIDE IM. With its abundant Chess talent and more importantly, the excellent ambience which nurtures this Chess talent, it should not come as a surprise that Russia is the dominant Chess playing country. Russian Chess Federation head, Zhukov, announced last year that the winners of the 57th Russian championship @ St.Petersburg and Tomsk , along with top 7 Russian GMs (Kasparov, Kramnik, Svidler, Morozevich, Bareev, Karpov & Grischuk) would play in a super-final, finding a single Russian champion!
Kramnik & Karpov pulled out. The former producing a Doctor’s letter saying he needs 2-3 months rest before any serious play and why the latter pulled out is still a mystery. To make a guess, I’d say Karpov would be at the bottom of the points table in this strong tournament if he played and he knew that If you think Kramnik’s producing a doctor certificate reminds you of how we used to produce a proof for taking sick leave, back in the school, you are not alone! Continue reading “Russian Super Finals Rd 1” »
Posted in: Chess.
Tagged: Bareev · Chess · Dreev · Epishin · Grischuk · Kasparov · Morozevich · Motylev · Russian-Super-Final · Svidler · Timofeev · Tournament · Tseshkovsky
