Twitter - more than microblogging

Hello Folks. Looong time since I have blogged and read one. Feeling lazy more often :). Anyway, I am blogging again and wanted to write about the new (from fame perspective) socializing service, Twitter.

Couple of months back when I started using Twitter, I was so impressed that I recommended the service to one of my friends. I would regret for doing this in 2 minutes, because this is what he said when we were chatting:

"read on the net

Twitter is an incomprehensible, pathetic tool used by self-centered, insecure individuals that believe the world actually cared about their every move :P".

The first thing that came to my mind was how much I liked smileys (very sarcastic or :P).

The next thing I thought was that could have been the only website on earth to have said that about Twitter. But then I saw this video. Most of you would have seen this video by now:

This video was just one perspective of the social service. The first time I used this service I was instantly impressed. My perspective was it was more of "Leave the crap out" social service. Twitter does one thing best and that is to allow users to post 140 bytes of information each time.

More than microblogging, it was becoming a potential tool for something else: Real Time Search. Twitter understood this at a very early stage. A quick FYI: Evan Williams is the CEO of Twitter. He was the one behind Blogger, the tool I am using to write this blog. They concentrated on improving search and now its greatly improved and readily available for all users on their home page. Anything new happening around the world can be first seen or heard on Twitter. After using it for around 3 months I have found lot of things faster than others. Some examples:

1. Google wave

2. Bumptop

3. Linkin park's "New Divide"

4. Nadal out of French Open

5. How many people are excited about Palm Pre

All these are trending topics on Twitter. No other website had the power like this ever before. It also acts as a broadcasting tool. Many celebrities, large firms, reporters, news channels post latest updates via Twitter.

Some time back Gtalk introduced "Share what you listen" by allowing users to share the name of the song they were listening. It was obvious what Google came up with using that information: Top Songs list called Music Trends. Now just expand it from "Music" to "Everything". One word: "Awesome".

Take a look at the Usage section in Wikipedia and decide for yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Usage

Enjoy!

What else to blog

Hello everyone. Its been quite sometime since I have blogged. I have started to appreciate the greatness of weekends. I have turned into one of those guys waiting for friday evenings. Well it does not happen all the time but some weeks I just can't wait for weekends to come. So when weekend does come I just don't want to do anything. You know what I am saying right. I just want to listen to some music, sleep and eat. NY weather also has been helping in this matter for quite some time now :) . So the only thing useful and interesting I can do, sitting on my bed, is blog. But whenever I go to Blogspot.com->New Post->Blinking cursor I can't think of anything to share and after sometime I get bored by the blinking cursor.

I am not a economist to blog about the economy and curse Wall Street. If I do write about it, the only thing the readers will take away from it is me crying out loud 'Save the goddamn economy'.
I am not a traveler to blog about beauty of nature and post pictures of all the places I have been.
I am not a writer to blog about 'How to write a good blog'.
Well then I ask myself 'Who am I?". That's when I start to feel hungry and eat some maggi (noodles). Don't start judging :) . I am not who you think I am. I am something. I will let you know soon..

Did you guys know that there is a website out there that helps you in coming up with ideas to blog? The website is www.plinky.com. The website name might be a little suspicious. But its legit guys. When you sign up for it, they send you an email every week with a one liner for you to come up with something to write. The last thing I got in my email was this:

What's the worst way you've ever dumped or been dumped by someone?

Breakups are never easy. How did you or your significant other make it even worse?

The next thing I did was I immediately got myself unsubscribed from the service and starting playing super mario on my PC.

There are two solutions:
1. I start writing short stories as gilmananda.
2. I always wanted to write about my school days and college days, showing a ray of hope to all those day scholars out there that they can have equal or more fun than hostelers.

The problem with the second solution is its too hard to express some of the funny experiences in writing. You will have maximum fun only if its visually expressed. But I am trying my level best to start writing about it.

So I hope you guys will also start blogging more often because that's the only thing that keeps me going during weekends... (big pause)..... well super mario too...(big pause)... sleeping too..(big pause)... movies too. Alright... blogging is ONE OF THE THINGS that keeps me going on weekends...

Until next time see you all and have a great weekend.

aerotravelphobia - Fear of flight travel

When I was in India I had predominately been a train guy. I loved the train, esp. the ones with a cafeteria compartment.
Last week I had to cancel my trip to California. So I had all the time in the world to recollect some of my flight experiences. Believe it or not, every single one of them has been bad. I couldn't believe myself. So I reiterated all my flight travel experience and I was right. All bad. So I decided to re-live these experiences with you guys. After reading my story you will end up with one of these reactions .. "ayo pavam" or in English "Poor guy..." or you'll go "Idiot!" or "This is ridiculous" or just have a good laugh. Here goes.

Destination: Mumbai
Travelling alone: Yes
Was scared: Ofcourse

One evening madhavan calls "Machan... there seems to be a Bharath Petroleum scholarship for students who are going to study oversees. Apply soon". I obviously went "Super...". I ended up applying and also got the interview call. I read the interview call letter and sighed "Oh Shit!". The interview was in Mumbai and in like two weeks time. There was no train tickets left. That's when it all started. I was flying for the first time in my life to the Financial capital of India.
I was at the Coimbatore airport ready to board the flight and I thought to myself "Wow! This is not as bad as I thought." They had TV screens that clearly provided details of flight departures, announced warnings regarding flight timings. I arrived at Mumbai airport without any hassle. I stayed in a hotel for the night and next morning I went to the venue where the interview was conducted. As usual the interview didn't go that well. Apparently people are not convinced when you tell them " I want to be technically sound and be able to design and build good,reliable software" as your short term goal. Anyway, they asked us to stay for lunch. I thought "Lets get it over with". I also thought it might be a good idea to call and confirm if my return flight was on time.
Well, you guessed it, the flight was canceled. My heart started beating faster. The options given by support person "You can either reschedule the flight for tomorrow or you can get a refund". Doesn't sound bad does it? Here was my situation: It was Sunday and I had around Rs.50 left in my account. I had around Rs. 200 with me. I had no money to afford another night stay. I was basically doomed. I immediately took a taxi to the airport. Current situation: Rs. 50 left in my pocket. I was in the wrong terminal. So I was walking to the correct terminal, when an auto rickshaw stopped and asked me "Terminal B?" I replied "Yes". He asked me to get in. I got in and reached Terminal B. I said "Thank you" to the auto rickshaw guy and started walking towards Go Air ticket counter. I actually thought he was giving me a lift for free :) . The auto rickshaw fellow shouted "Whow whow...". I was startled. He said "pachas rupaya". Fifty Rupees. He was about to charge towards me and I lacked impromptu public negotiation skills. So I gave him fifty rupees. Realizing now, How dumb was I? Current situation: Rs. 0 left in my pocket. I started arguing with the Go Air ticket agent for a refund. She said "The refund will go the ticket agency through which you booked". I told her "If I don't get the refund right now, I want you guys to book a hotel so I can stay. She immediately contacted her boss and decided to refund the money and told me that there is a Jet airways flight leaving in half an hour. I rushed to Terminal A, got the ticket and had Rs. 20 left. I called my parents with that money and boarded the flight and was in Coimbatore three hours later. "Phew!"

Destination: USA
Travelling alone: Yes
Was scared: Yes

I could probably dedicate one full blog for all the stupid things I did during this flight. But for now, I going to start from Frankfurt. Current Situation: I am in Frankfurt waiting for my flight to Philadelphia and from there to my final destination, Syracuse. I reached Phili without any issues. But there was one problem. My next flight was departing in half an hour from Terminal F. I was in Terminal A. I had to pick two huge check-in suitcases, dragged them through security clearance and threw them in some random conveyor belt and started running. You might be thinking "Why he is running. He can always get on the next flight to syracuse." Well, I was not aware of this fact. I thought if I missed the flight, I had to buy new tickets. "Ignorance is bliss". This time I lost a few kilos because of that. Anyway, I am still running and finally found out that I had to take a bus to reach Terminal F. I was now certain that I was going to miss the flight. Fortunately, the flight was delayed by half an hour and I was able to board the flight and reached Syracuse safely. But in two hours a mysterious dark toned voice in my head would warn me "This is just the beginning".
My future roommates arrived in the next flight. We all waited for two hours for my check-in baggages. It never arrived. Remember the voice. Two days later, I went to Syracuse airport with another friend of mine to pick up his friend. I checked in the baggage lost area and found one of my baggage. I asked the person in charge "What happened to my other luggage?" She replied "We don't know. That is why we didn't deliver this to your address". I was sitting, disappointed. Thats when the strangest thing happened. I saw someone dragging my other suitcase in front of me. I was shocked. I told my friend "Machi... my other suitcase". He said "Alright.. alright.. lets follow him". We started following him. We cautiously maintained our distance. But the person was heading straight to the Baggage lost area to return my suitcase. I asked him "How come you have my suitcase?". He replied "My sister took it without noticing it. Sorry about that". I was so overwhelmed with joy. This time a voice in "tears of joy" tone spoke in my head "Dude... do you know what is in that bag? 4 kilos of Adayar Ananda Bhavan stuff, 5 kilos of Grand Sweets stuff, 10 kilos of home made stuff. What is your sister trying to do? Kill me!". Well, I didn't repeat that to him. I just replied "No problem". The end.

Destination: NYC.
Travelling alone: No
Was scared: Nah...

This time I was travelling to NYC for my internship interview. Everything went fine.
Time: 1 PM.
I asked "Dude... How did your interview go."
My friend replied "Not so good... The interviewer was a desi guy. He ripped me apart with all sorts of questions".
I replied "Don't worry dude... you will get it." I continued "Someone called me during the interview man. I was shit scared". Another friend replied "Oh.. you got the call too. Its from Delta Airlines. Our flight is delayed by 2 hours. Its departing at 9 PM."
I was surprised. "So what do you guys want to do. We have lot of time."
Someone replied "We can go to Grand Central. There is a samosa place in the station". There was a unanimous "Okay" and we started. Everything went according to plan, the flight too. Sense the tone?.
Time: 7:30 PM Location: JFK Airport
Flight attendant looked skeptic and said "This flight already departed to Syracuse at 7 PM". I replied in shock "Can you please say that again?". The mysterious dark toned voice was about to kick in. I asked my friend "Dude... who called you regarding the delay?". My friend replied "It was an automated voice". I obviously went "wtf?".
We told the Delta airline guys and they were ready to give us a place to stay for the night and we can reschedule for a flight leaving tomorrow. But some people had to attend an important class next day. The next day was Saturday. Who attends classes on Saturdays. "Dude.. you have a class on Saturday?". My friend just nods his head in sadness. That's when the "Street smart" guy enters. FYI, he was one among us who had come to NYC for the same interview. When I say "street smart" I don't mean the phrase. He was actually street smart. He knew his ways through NY city.
His plan:
To take the air train from JFK to train station. From there go to the city (34th Street). Take a Greyhound bus to Syracuse. Reach syracuse at 6 AM next day.
Actually, his plan worked. We were able to board the last bus to syracuse at 12 AM and reached at around 7 AM. After I got all settled in and was having a cup of coffee, the MDT voice kicked in again "You are cursed".

That's it fellows. I think my air travel experience is still cursed and during early last year I developed symptoms of aerotravelphobia which include:
1. Excessive naming on Suitcases.
2. Completely avoiding check-in luggage if possible
3. Reaching airport 3 hours before departure (even for domestic flights)
4. Checking the status of the flight every 5 mins on the day of travel

So people who are travelling, have a safe, painless flight. For people who are not..good for you.
Enjoy!

PS: aerotravelphobia is not a real word. I just made that up :)

Saturdays and Sundays

Saturdays and Sundays... If you ask me are better than vacation. I was just thinking today that I dont do much during weekends nowadays as I used to back in India. So I started recollecting all the fond memories I had about these two brilliant days.. So here is my story..

When I was an undergrad, I used to be a day scholar. So I was subjected to all rules directly or indirectly put forth by my Mother. One among them is getting up in the morning. During weekdays, I usually got up at 6:30 in the morning. Even though I got up this early, I missed the first class most of the time. I have no idea how that happened. Anyway, On friday evenings, usually lots of friends come over to my house and we usually ended up chit-chatting or in our words "manga". Among them, Hari usually crashed at my place for the night as he used to be a hosteler.

Okay, my saturday starts something like this,

"Dae.. eilthuru ra... papamma vanthutanga paru..." My mom used to whisper in my ears... Papamma was our  house maid. Really nice lady, very old and she was always right on time. I used to sleep on a floor on a mat. My mom wanted no one to disturb papamma when she was doing her job. Ofcourse, I was a disturbance because I was sleeping on the floor and she couldn't clean it.

"Enna amma... its saturday... 8 u mani than achu..." I murmerd like a drunk who had a really bad hang over... "Dae... eilthuru..." My mom was persistant... I eventually got up. After scratching my eyes and trying to get a feel of early morning, I saw Hari was still sleeping. I was so angry. "Amma.... avan mattum thungituirukan... enna nakkala... avan thungituiruthana mattum vetta clean panna pudiyuma..." I told my mom in the kitchen. She finished the conversation by her winning line "Athan eilthuruchutalla.. aparram enna..". When I crossed the bedroom, I sighed at Hari and thougth to myself.."lucky #@$@#%".

But thats it. Getting up early in the morning and arguing with my Mom was the maximum activity that I had on saturday morning. I am not a big fan of playing cricket (one big reason being I am a crappy player and whenever we went to play, I preferred keeping wickets or umpiring) which is what everyone played. So I spent most afternoon playing games on my PC, mainly NFS. But I had Madhavan and his brother Sharanyan for company in playing NFS. I usually burned most of the games from them. Whenever I went to their house, Sharanyan would be many levels ahead of me in NFS. So I once asked him "Eppadi ra.. ivolavu levels mudhicha ivolavu sikrama?. 24 hours valadraya?". Sharanyan always replied "Ofcourse not". I tackled "Oh... I know.. you have a better computer"... Madhavan's reactions would be "ahh.." and then would start laughing... which revealed that I was lying my ass off....

Saturday evenings are typical.. Myself and Hari eating Gobi from a food cart on street or in tamil "Kaiyanthi". I still have not found anything that I could eat outside and enjoy as much as I enjoyed eating Gobi. I dont know how they do it.. but its too damn good.

My sunday goes something like this:

On Sunday mornings, I am not forced to get up in the morning because papamma comes only at 11 AM. So saturday night.. before sleeping I usually think to myself... "Ahh.. Tomorrow is sunday... I am not getting up until 11 AM or 12 PM". One random sunday morning at 8 AM, TV shouts "Lalitha Jewellery in 'Patukkku Pattu' ". Okay..Lets rewind a little bit. Saturday nights I usually end up sleeping in the hall watching TV. Okay.. we are back. I got up and saw my father operating the remote. He greeted "Good morning!". I replied sarcastically "Suppper morning..."

Patukku pattu program was telecasted only during a short period during my college days.. I guess during my first year of college. But then the program stopped telecasting. I said "Finally freedom". Another sunday morning..  conversations from TV "unga ponna pathi solunga..." Mom of the girl replied "Romba nalla ponnu... bank la valapakkra.. Mouglaya gothram..". At the same time in my dreams a Blonde chick comes towards me, shakes my hand and says "Hi. I am Mouglaya gothram... Thula rasi"..  I replied in shock "What the hell!" and thats when I woke up. Conversations from TV continues.. "Thula rasi..". This time the TV program name was "Mangalyam" or something close to that. I dont remember correctly. This program was like a live BharathMatrimony.com. I asked my father, suprised, "Yarukaga intha program pakuringa? Enaku ippo therinche aganum". My father laughs in response. When I was brushing , it hits me.. "Was there a blonde girl in my dreams?Oh god.. Mangalyam sucks".

After that I read the news paper. For some reason I like the Sunday sections of The Hindu. In the kitchen, my Mom was cooking something really good for lunch. Okay... the deal with Sunday lunches is my Mom cooks one of the following:

- vengaya sambar, molagu rasam, potato curry or

- Bisibelabath, potato curry, raita or

- Vethha kolambu, vendakka curry.

Brilliant menus. Brilliant food. One of the things that brightens my Sundays which I really really miss these days. In between news paper reading and eating lunch, I never missed one program.. "Lion dates Top 10 Movies". When you watch this program long enough, you will start realizing that the anchor says these cool phrased tamil sentences eventually to conclude that the movie is crappy.

I actually dont remember what I did Sunday afternoons. Probably playing games.

Thats my Saturday and Sunday story back in India guys. I wish I could be more active (this is something I lacked even in India :) ) and do something fun during weekends these days.

Enjoy your weekends guys. Could easily end up being your most memorable times.

UPDATE: The name of the program was not Mangalyam. It was Kalyana Maalai. Thanks to Arun R for mentioning it.

What is life without crappy movies...

crap.py mov.ie [krap.ee mōō'vē]

1. A movie with an attractive actress and a famous actor trying to do things that is unimaginable in the real world that makes you say 'what a crap' after around one and half hours.

Examples: The Happening, The Peacemakers, Miami Vice

My latest was The Peacemakers. It was so typical. The only motivation for me was Nicole Kidman. But she also turned out be someone who has a job title which is hard to remember and runs around with the actor (in this case its George Clooney) and finally ends up stopping the detonation of a nuclear war head at the last second and eventually ends up saving the world. And oh ya... you guessed it... after they are fully recovered the guy get a medal and they both end up dating. The poster says it all...

[caption id="attachment_24" align="alignnone" width="209" caption="You have no idea how thrilling this film is :) ..."][/caption]

But if you ask me... Crappy movies are part of everyone's life. Its hard to avoid them. Probably fifteen years back the probability of someone watching a crappy movie is more because its hard to get a review before you end up watching it in the theater. But nowadays... there is no excuse.. If you are watching a crappy movie.. its purely your fault :). You wanted to watch it simply to find out how crappy it was. I still remember the last time I watched a movie like that on the big screen. This time it was with my friends. We all knew that the movie was so crappy that we had some fun reading the reviews. Yet we ended up watching the movie. After an hour or so everyone started saying 'What the hell! Nothings happening'. You guessed it again... the name of the movie is 'The Happening'. I am not exaggerating here. Nothing actually happened in the movie.

But for me crappy movies still ranks above Cleaning the house and Cooking anytime.

One thing I have noticed is crappy movies are so much fun when you watch it with friends who are ready to mock it from start to end.  There was this one time, we were all getting geared up for a movie because the tagline  read 'If the sun dies, so do we'. OOOOOOO... thats ...[big pause]... interesting. This time the movie was not all bad. It was almost on the edge but still bearable because it was not happening on earth and the genre was Sci-Fi. But we still ended up mocking (mostly by my friends) so bad that we missed couple of important scenes in the film and ended up getting confused at the end. The name of this movie was 'Sunshine' and the Danny Boyle was the director. Note: Good directors also create crappy movies.

So if at all you badly want to watch a crappy movie.. try to watch it with your friends. You will end up having some fun.

I am ending my weekend by watching another movie.. this time a good one..

Happy watching movies everyone.... Enjoy!

Virtual Haircut

Hello there.
This is going to be a small one. I just couldn't resist this.
Check this out:
Virtual Haircut
One of the most amazing things I have heard so far. It might get scary too :) .

Enjoy the audio!

Catch ya later.

Discovering interesting websites

I love exploring new websites. As technology keeps improving the quality of the websites improves drastically. I am going to the share some of the websites and tools that I usually use to discover new websites.

StumbleUpon - No doubt. This tool surely goes on top of my list. Previously stumble upon can be used only with toolbars installed in browsers. But now you can explore new websites using their website.  You get tons of options. You can stumble videos, pictures, websites, news articles, wikipedia pages, search on specific topics. This tool is also a social network. You can have friends and share links, articles with them.

MakeUseOf.com - Amazing website. Its a shared weblog. It lists some of the rarest websites which will be hard to find in other places. Look out for Cool Websites and Tools section.

DownloadSquad - Another shared weblog. This website focuses more on tech (software) news. Every once is a while it posts articles about interesting website. If you are seeing a website mentioned here, its definitely worth checking out.

Digg - A very interesting website and  the first of its kind. Its allows users to post articles on various categories and allows other users to rank (digg) the article. So based on the rank, you might either see that article on the first page or you might not. Even though this website is famous for articles, there are lots of posts on new websites in the Technology section.

Delicious -  The most famous and most used online bookmarking tool. Since most of the them make their bookmarks public, you should be able to get atleast a dozen matches for whatever you are searching for in this website.  This is a great way to find new websites. I rarely use it as you need to search for getting what you need. I don't know if I have that patience.

I use these websites on daily basis to find something interesting on web.   I knew about these below websites with the help of the ones listed above:

- Mint, Billmonk, Billy - light weight music player, Roxer, Clerkdogs - The most efficient movie recommendation website

Hope this will be useful. Please let me know if I have missed any good website here. See ya around.