Gmail Invites

Just in case you still need a gmail account, go to this site, it has over a million invites available. I don't know why gmail is still not public, when practically anyone can open account in it now.

Tools: Image Viewer

Mirror mirror on the wall,
which is the best image viewer of them all
No two minds about this, its irfanview.

This killer app has everything that a non-graphic professional will ever need in his life. Support for every image format on earth, ability to convert between various image types, resize, resample, crop, batch resize, batch rename, reducing colours (changing to greyscale etc.), scanner support, all this and more packed in a meagre 800 Kb setup. Try opening any large image file, and you will know why this freeware gives any commercial tool like acd see a run for money.

Continuing on my purpose of blog post, I have decided to share information about some of the software tools I use that may be useful to others. This post is the first in this regards, All such posts will have a title starting with "Tools:"

Narain on F1 circuit

I know I am late in announcing this, but that doesn't belittle the feat of this man. This Formula One season would be extra special to me, I wish I could listen to Ashin's comments on this :-)

A lost purpose

So far, most of my posts here have been random ramblings. This makes me think what exactly did I have in mind when I started this blog. Or did I even have anything in mind at all.

The title says it all. I have this philosophy of Preach and Learn (which is slightly different from the learn and preach philosophy). I am usually a very confident guy thinking that everything I say is correct to the fullest extent. So, as per the philosophy, I wanted to share all the knowledge I have. While "Omniscience" is the ultimate goal, the primary purpose of the blog is to share whatever little I know.

However, my confidence has been shaking of late making this blog failing on its purpose. The only posts that I could qualify to an extent in tune with the blog were those few movie reviews I wrote long ago. However, watching just 3 movies in past 3-4 months certainly explains the lack of such reviews of late.

Now, I need to re-group my confidence and wish to give this blog back its lost purpose. I have certain plans, lets see.

Posts that could have been here

This has happened a lot many times* now. I start writing a post, getting lost in between and end up either deleting it or closing the browser by accident.

While I feel sorry about those posts now, this indicate the privacy issues I have been thinking on lately. This blog ,even though it has a limited audience, is a public place and anything I write could be screened by someone to make judgments on my personality. Considering the fact that I am not a good writer, infact never been a writer at any place apart from this, this does makes me feel insecure.
Agreeing with Gullu's Biased Estimator post, I feel that there is a mood associated with blogging. Blogs only reflect this mood of the author and this certainly is not his true identity.

* My blogging frequency is less than 5 posts a month. Hence, if an event happens more than once or twice in 2-3 weeks, that qualifies as a "lot of times" to me.

Love

I have been an observer to lot of love affairs that ended up in a breakup. Everyone seems to convey the message, "Don't get into it or else risk ruining a critical phase of your life". That critical phase when you setup your career, fulfil many personal and professional goals.

I would certainly like to know what was in god's mind when he gave this feeling of love and attraction to humans.

To be on the positive side, it's heartening to see that some of the cases do have a happy ending (actually beginning :) . Once such case is having a happy beginning next month and I wish him happy till the end.

Another round of vacation

Its holiday season in US. And since the software services industry in India caters to US, its holiday time for them too. No wonder my company came up with a brilliant idea of giving this whole week off on the expense of my eligible leaves.
This is good in the sense that I wouldn't have taken this vacation otherwise. And I still get 25 eligible leaves besides these which I feel are pretty much sufficient.
However, this does remind me of the Coolie Valley article once published on the indian software industry.

I doubt that india will ever have a silicon valley. So it will always be a second grade place to work for geeky people like me.

Anways, for now I would stop thinking in these lines and wish everyone Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year. I am off to vacation and will come back in the new year (which someone has said is a rooster year and I am a rooster too. Don't know if that means anything :)