I have been living in a rented house at http://bharathreddyt.wordpress.com/ ever since I introduced myself to an active life on the web-space. For some time now, I had been dreaming of a new home, and that too my own home.

However, when I started living here around an year ago in Nov ‘09, I had fixed a few mile stones for myself. And that I’d invest in a new home only after either:

• I finish publishing 50 posts – I had planned to write at least four posts a month – it should have been on the higher side of 48 posts by now, I managed some 39.

or

• There were more than 20,000 visitors to my blog. The number stands at 22,204 as of today.

The latter is not an achievement on par with what would be had I written 50 posts, but it isn’t any small one either.

Also, though I liked my rented home, its owners would not let me personalize it to my taste beyond a level.

So, I decided to gift my self a brand new plot of land on the web and build my own house.

I bought the land and chose a proven and tested basement, WordPress. A few PHP code fixes and CSS tweaks later I felt sort of cozy in the new home.

I would be making a few changes to the flooring and the furnishing in the weeks to come. Of course all of my previous articles from my rented home http://bharathreddyt.wordpress.com/ would be available here.

I cordially invite you to my new web abode -

www.bharathreddyt.in

Would love to see you there.

Cheers!

Bharath

PS:

I had also tried my hand at photography, and I still have my gallery in a rented room out there at http://photopic.wordpress.com/

Delighted to announce that I have moved to my own domain!

For the latest on this post…I invite you to see this post there.

I attended a community (its called Reddy Seva Samithi, a community service organization) meeting in my home town last weekend. One of the elderly men who is a co-founder of the community, Mr. Lakshma Reddy happens to be an active member of  VHP, yes the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. As a part of his introduction to the activities of VHP in and around the Mahabubnagar district (Andhra Pradesh, India), he talked of this unique initiative called the ‘Vishwa mangala go grama yatra’.

Though it is difficult to exactly translate it to English, here are the meanings of the words — vishwa – universe/universa, mangala – propitious/conferring happiness, go – cow, grama - village, yatra - journey/trip.

The objective of the yatra is to to scientifically explain the masses about the economic value of cow in agriculture and medicine. And more importantly, to create an awareness among people of India about the dwindling cattle population. Cow has ever been considered divine in the Indian culture, but as time passed, cows have merely become a source of revenue. Worse still, once a cow ceases to be productive, it is sent to a Slaughter House.

‘Viswa mangala go grama yatra’ aims at:

1. Saving cattle from slaughter houses.
2. It also aims at improving the situation of farmers across the nation through dairy farming as the cow shelters set up in various locations are not in a position to accommodate all the aged and disabled cattle.
3. Creating a mass memorandum to urge the union government to form a separate ministry for conservation of cattle, to enact laws for the conservation of its indigenous species by preventing artificial insemination from western species.

The yatra is being promoted by Sri Raghavendra Bharati Swami of Ramachandrapur Math. It started on Sep 30, from Kurukshetra in Haryana and covers 20,000 km in 108 days.

There would be upa-yatras (sub yatras) at the district/taluk levels. This unique initiative is being supported by Dr Pranav Pandyaji of Gayatri Parivar, Sri Baba Ramadev, Sri Vidyasagar of Digambar Jain, Mata Amratanandamayee, Sri Dayanand Saraswati Swami, and other eminent persons.

Let us hope this Yatra would bring in the necessary awareness to the country’s masses. We could contribute to the move by saying NO to meat sourced from Slaughter houses.

I exported the all my wordpress posts here using the Tools – export option. I later tried to import all the posts to my new domain (I shall announce soon). The import was only half successful. Pictures that form an integral part of my posts have been skipped.

And in fact there were errors like:

Remote file error: Remote server did not respond.

and

Remote file error: Remote file is incorrect size.

I then tried to debug the import mechanism on  wordpress-2.8.6. I found that there was not much of a problem with it.  The problem was actually with the export mechanism.

Here are my findings:

Post attachments are mentioned in the XML within the <wp:attachment_url> tag. The URL for one such picture attachment was something like:

When I tried to put this URL on the web-browser, it redirected to:

While the latter URL seems to be more direct form of accessing the attachments, the problem could be with resolving the relative URLs in wp_get_attachment_url() of wp-includes/post.php

The work around for now would be to perform a replace-all for wordpress.com/files with files.wordpress.com in the exported XML file. I have made sure that only the <wp:attachment_url> tag has such entries.

Hope this helps.

Delighted to announce that I have moved to my own domain!

For the latest on this post…I invite you to see this post there.

I happened to visit Vizag for the first time last weekend. I was there to attend a friend’s wedding on Sunday night. Arrived at 6AM on Saturday morning at the Vizag railway station after an overnight train journey (Godavari Express). The journey wasn’t too pleasant, thanks to the scrimpy side-upper berth (I got that even though I reserved tickets a month ago!) and to a bunch of noisy NCC kids who occupied most of the compartment.

My friend Sundar (who’s wedding I was to attend, is a native there) picked me up and we drove to the hotel.

It was a very pleasant morning and something assured me that I’m going to like my stay in the city.

To brief a little about the city: Vizag is a coastal city facing the Bay of Bengal. Called “The Jewel of the East Coast”, Vizag is the second biggest city in Andhra Pradesh, India. Its home to the Eastern naval Command and has the only natural harbor on the eastern coast of India. Vizag also houses many heavy industries along with the Vizag Steel Plant, one of the most advanced steel plants in the world.

Well, coming back to me… we arrived at this  Hotel Supreme.Whats special about the hotel is that it faces the Ramakrishna Beach. As providence would give me, my room had this mind blowing view of the beach from the big window.

The beach was so inviting that I could not resist rushing downstairs and taking a walk. Sundar reminded that I should rest and I’d quite some time to see around the city. So I went back and freshened up. Food and hospitality were fairly good at the hotel. But the water in the bathroom seemed freshly pumped straight from the Bay of Bengal. I mean it when I say, it tasted like lime soda!

Sundar had invited quite a few of his colleagues and friends from Chennai. They were not going to come any sooner than 12noon. I was to wait for them at the hotel and waiting was never so good. I had a whole big sea to stare at, right from the window of my hotel room. And added to that was my new camera, I would shoot pictures to my heart’s content through the trip.

Many friends were expected but just three arrived! Heck with these IT guys and their IT jobs. When they signed up, less did they know that they were going to miss visiting Vizag! haha. I was lucky to have secured myself three days off. Well, Sundar sent a car that was to drive us to his home where lunch was arranged. We were to eat and go around the city.

I had dreamt of going to the Araku Valley, some 120Km away (imagine traveling up and down 1500 feet, through around 25 tunnels and staying at an altitude of 600 To 900mt, that’s Araku for you!). But I was soon told that we’d need one complete day at least and we did not have that time! huh! I hugged myself and said, its okay buddy, better luck next time.

Sundar played a good host by arranging for a nice car to travel around. We set out to visit three places – Victory At Sea, Rishikonda beach and Kailasagiri.

Traveling in Vizag city was interesting, thanks to the hilly terrain all over the place. One had to go up and down a hill to go anywhere to somewhere. I thought a bike would be rather better than a car to drive around in this city. Roads seemed dark and neat. Here we were at ‘Victory At Sea’ on RK beach (RK-RamaKrishna). It was the famous Submarine Museum that we were visiting. This was the first time I saw a submarine and I was aghast at the view at this mighty chunk of steel, wondering how was it possible to for this thing to be submerged and come afloat.

The photo collage, clockwise: Front view (notice the 550Kg anchor there?), The analog radio, The lead battery cell, The computer, Me near the rear propellers and the rudder, Torpedo, Provisions room.

The submarine (INS Kursura) was made in 1969 and was decommissioned in 2001. It was very thoughtful of the Indian navy and GVMC (Greater Vizg Municipal Corp.) to have converted it into a museum. Here are some facts that would be of interest:

The submarine can run its engines only when it can stay afloat. And when it has to dive under water, its 500 lead acid batteries (each weighs around 600kg) power it.

It can carry around 22 electrically propelled, sonar guided torpedoes.

The devise you see on the top right corner looks like a cupboard with too many holes, but in fact, it is a computer. It calculates the future position of a target enemy submarine, using speed (estimated from the sonar) and course of  a target (estimated from some gyro compass). This data is fed to a torpedo ready to be fired.

Now isn’t that amazing technology for a submarine made in the 60’s?

We got into the car and headed north of the town towards Rishi Konda beach. A bike ride along the beach road would be THE THING to do on a Saturday evening. Lucky Vizag-ites. After about a 15 minute of drive we reached the most picturesque beach, I had ever seen.

What make Vizag’s beaches more beautiful are the hills and mountains that are so near to the shore. Not many places would be such. Had I seen Gitam University while in my +2, I would not have gone to college anywhere else but Gitam. Studies aside, this college faces the blue waters right on Rishi Konda beach and is surrounded by huge green mountains.

Then we were headed towards the town to go to KailasaGiri. My first thoughts of this place, from its name, were that this would be another of those hills that had a famous temple. I personally never enjoyed visiting temples, they are usually crowded places. But my exacting myth was soon to be disproved. One could go up the hill either by road or there was a more interesting alternative, the rope way.

Obviously, we chose the rope way up and down. The hill is famous as a tourist attraction. One can get a superb view of the Vizag city and the beach right by its side. The view becomes more interesting as the sun sets and the electric bulbs take over the task of lighting the town. The hill offered quite a few good looking views of the town beneath. Lord Siva and Goddess Parvathi seem to be enjoying the cool breeze atop the moon lit hill. That also justified the name – KailasaGiri.

Apart from all that, there was one more interesting scene. It was this statue on one of the pathways such that we could walk under it. But there was a problem, there seemed to be ‘enlightenment’ emanating from just where it shouldn’t be. For those of you who couldn’t catch the point, see the light arranged right in between the statue’s legs.

My Saturday in Vizag ended with a buffet dinner at the Green-park hotel and me retiring to my hotel room by the Rama Krishna beach.

Sunday morning was meant to make us all lazy. I got up at around 8 and looked out of the window. Wow, sun shining bright on the blue waters was inviting. So I rushed through some freshening and breakfast and set out on a walk into the City.

The place where I stayed seemed to be a medical care hub of the city. There were so many hospitals and diagnostic centers surrounding the famous king George hospital. Roads were kept clean in most parts of the city (at least far better than those in Hyderabad), thanks again to GVMC. I walked through and did not realize I reached the Jagadamba center (quite talked of as a business and shopping place) until I saw the Jagadamba theater. Right across was the biggest of the City’s malls, the CMR mall. One thing I do not quite approve of is the fact that there are not many shopping ares in the city. For a tier-2 city and given that there were a lot of industries and riches all around, retail businesses should have caught on already.

As I walked past the Saint Anthony’s church I could hear the Sunday-morning-prayers loud and clear, and of-course in the typical Tenglish accent. I was back to my hotel after an hours walk. I was already thinking of possibilities of my relocating to that place.

We were to attend Sundar’s wedding reception towards the evening and the wedding itself would follow into the night. So I was advised to stay put and rest. So I did.

In the evening, I used my photography skills to their full potential clicking away photos at the wedding.This was one of the most interesting weddings I attended in the recent times. Check out the album if you please.

It was around 4 AM when we returned to the hotel and fell asleep.

Got up early in the morning at around 1130 and found myself alone in the hotel. So I relaxed and rested watching TV, for I couldn’t do much else, alone. I thought Monday mornings are perhaps always like that, whether at office or on a holiday.

The train was at 1700 hours so I checked out at 1600 thinking I would need some time to buy sweets (my roomi back in Hyderabad had warned me that I couldn’t come without them). So I bought an assortment of Halwa at the famous Shivarama Sweets and boarded the train.

It was in deed a trip I would remember for a long time to come. Vizag is a beautiful place.

Here are some more photos of Vizag.

Please leave your comments.

Amidst the incessant rains, floods and the hype about the movie, I went to watch it though it was drizzling in my hometown. Considering the movie was released recently and it being a Friday evening, I anticipated some crowd at the box office. So we reached 20mins before show time. Though the movie sported names of veteran actor Kamal Hassan, and Venkatesh – the all time hit-getter in Andhra, there were not more than a bunch of people buying tickets. By the time the show began, there were less than thirty fellows who shared the theatre hall with us.

Considering the fact that the movie was a remake of ‘A Wednesday’ starring Naseer-Uddin-Shah, Anupam Kher, Jimmy Sheirgill among others, one would anticipate that Eenadu not only matched the finesse of ‘A Wednesday’ but surpassed it in areas where the latter fell short of. But alas, I would not have to think twice to mention that ‘Eenadu’ was a damp squib in all departments of film making.

Cast: Kamal Hassan (The Common Man), Venkatesh (Police Commissioner), Lakshmi (CM’s Chief Secretary), Ganesh Venkatram (Arif), Bharat Reddy(Gautam).

Story: Neeraj Pandey (original for A Wednesday).

Music: Shruthi Hassan (Debut).

Screenplay & Direction: Chakri Toleti.

Story: The plot was more or less the same as that in A Wednesday, but for a few changes that make it native to Hyderabad (Mumbai for ‘A Wednesday’). The story opens with the introduction of a ‘Common Man’ who drops in at the police station to report his missing purse. The story also ends with the police commissioner meeting this common man in person and letting him go after what he has done.

But what disappointed me was the fact that though Kamal and Venkatesh are capable of cutting edge performances, this movie harnessed less than 50% of the grace they could lend to their respective characters.

What was more disappointing?

1. Background score:
   • Shruthi Hassan, who has been hyped lately as one starlet who is multi talented (movie direction, writing, acting, modeling and now music making) could not render much character to Eenadu. This was one area where I thought ‘A Wednesday’ could take improvement. But compared to what was on Eenadu, music on ‘A Wednesday’ was far better.
   • At places, the music felt very immature and inappropriate. For example, near the climax when the commissioner goes out of his office to meet the so called Common Man, the music attempts to glorify the authority of the character and the triumph it just achieved. But it fails miserably.
2. Though it is only a 1.5hr movie, I see that there was a lot of time wasted.
   • For example, the arguments with the Chief Secretary about red tape and –who’s-to-take-the-blame if the situation goes out of hand — discussion.
3. Bringing in irrelevant and unnecessary aspects:
   • I felt that showing people in the government as cowards and that a police commissioner is no more than a glorified watchman was completely unnecessary. This aspect of either character did neither add value not take away any merit from the situation central to the story line.
4. Arif the tough police man:
   • ‘A Wednesday’ depicts Arif as a maverick policeman who cares less for anything else other than his ways of getting things done. The first scene where Arif (Jimmy Sheirgill) is introduced in ‘A Wednesday’ was enough to clearly depict what this fellow was. On the other hand, Arif (Venkatram) in Eenadu was far from convincing. The guy appeared mad.
5. Misses and gaps in the story-telling:
   • Arif chases the fellow who supplies RDX and reaches the address of the buyer only to find that there was none there. We had no idea that the commissioner was fallowing this operation, but Arif calls him up and says ‘There’s none here’. Where?
6. The TV crew has no role to play:
   • ‘A Wednesday’ shows the news reporter as a potential accessory for the perpetrator to follow how his scheme was materializing. So was she shown in Eenadu. What was so unlikely for a TV9 reporter here was the confidence this lady exhibits. Diction especially was poor by any standards.

To sum it up, as a movie goer, I was completely disappointed with Eenadu in all aspects. Kamal Hassan is a fine actor, and so is Naseer. The grace Naseer lends to the character in ‘A Wednesday’ is no where to be seen from Kamal in Eenadu. Anupam Kher did his homework well; he was the closest fit for the role of a commissioner, graceful and authoritative. Venkatesh’s role was rather dramatic and lacked the vigor and command that a Police Commissioner exhibits; or perhaps this was not his cup of tea. If I were to choose, I would put Prakash Raj for the role.

We can give it to Shruthi Hassan because this was her debut as a music director. But in the department that most important for a movie of this kind, Screenplay and Direction, Chakri Toleti has a long way to go. For Eenadu, every thing in this department looked half baked.

Dubbing was patchy; lip sync takes a miss at several places.

Eenadu will disappoint if you have admired ‘A Wednesday’. Eenadu will still disappoint you even if you have not seen ‘A Wednesday’.

Delighted to announce that I have moved to my own domain!

For the latest on this post…I invite you to see this post there.

I was browsing through ARRahman.com and discovered that music for Blue is out. Yeah I’m late, as usual but it took me no time to realize that I’d have to listen to the music right away. As of this writing, I have no idea what this movie BLUE is about. But generally, for me, the movie has not much to do with the music in it, especially in case if it is by ARRahman. This belief came from the fact that there were his numbers that sound heavenly though they came from movies that impressed less; the latest one, Delhi-6 for example. More about ARRahman’s music in a separate post may be; this post intends to review music from BLUE.

Album: Blue – Hindi Movie OST
Music: A R Rahman
Lyrics: Abbas Tyrewala, Mayur puri, Ajit Arora, Sukwinder Singh, Raqueeb Alam
Vocals: Kylie Minogue, Sonu Nigam, Suzanne, Shreya Ghoshal, Sukhwinder Singh, Benny Dayal, Hentry Kuruvilla, Shi Millhouse, Raven Millhouse, Vijay Prakash, Rashid Ali, Blaaze, Raqueeb Alam, Sonu Kakkar, Jaspreet Singh, Neha Kakkar, Dilshad, Udit Narayan, Madhushree, Ujjayinee Roy

The album has seven numbers in all.

1. Chiggy Wiggy- Kylie Minogue, Sonu Nigam & Suzanne; Lyrics: Abbas Tyrewala

A dance number (club probably) with a big name to sport – Kyile Minouge. While I was contemplating what ‘chiggy wiggy’ could mean, the song opens in English. If you have seen Kyile’s videos, you’d know before listening to this number what the expression would be like. But there is a twist in the story (mind you, it’s a Bollywood movie!). Out of nowhere, towards the middle of the song, you get to hear the Punjabi chorus say hoey! Its time for Indianization, enter Sonu Nigam in Hindi. Towards the end, it’s quite a number to dance to at a marriage party.
But I did not find this song any different than the number – ‘zara zara touch me touch me …’ (from the movie Race). That’s that.

2. Aaj Dil – Shreya Ghosal & Sukhwinder Singh; Lyrics: Mayur puri

Does it sound like Sukhwinder sing? Yeah it does. Neither the lyrics nor the tune or the music arrangement seemed to have a purpose. I did not find anything to talk about the song if not calling it just another number on the album.

3. Fiqrana- Vijay Prakash & Shreya Ghosal; Lyrics: Ajit Arora

The opening with the voice (is it called electronic modulating? I’m not sure of the term for this) did not quite sound like Rahman. The chorus gives a feeling of – dhakka laga bukka from Yuva but is far from its brilliance. The music arrangement sounded artificial and electronic. I somehow could not approve of any merit here.

4. Bhoola Tujhe – Rashid Ali; Lyrics: Abbas Tyrewala

I was waiting for this moment…to write about this glorious number. RashidAli – We have heard him sing before(Kabhi Kabhi Aditi & Kahin Toh Hogi Woh from Jaane tu..ya Jaane na) and it sure felt he had one of the best voices that ARRahman introduced to us. The number opens on a mellowing note, marked with simplicity. One doesn’t take much time to realize the sheer élan.
The song is beautiful for several reasons. For one, the mood - someone singing to his khuda (read god) as though they have been closely associated all the while. I would say Rahman has carved himself a niche in rendering grace to such numbers (dil se re, dil gira dafattan, rehna tu, maa tujhe salaam etc). Second reason – the simplicity in music arrangement and instrumentation – stress on the singing and the expression. Wow, I already fell in love with the song. Listened to it over ten times already!

5. Blue Theme – Blaaze, Raqeeb Alam, Sonu Kakkar, Jaspreet Singh, Neha Kakkar & Dilshad; Hindi Lyrics: Raqueeb Alam ; Punjabi Lyrics: Sukwinder Sing

The number starts with the casual – made-over-computer – sound. Though it doesn’t impress to begin with, there are a few elements that catch your attention. The chorus for one (bluooo and buloooo they say). The number might remind us of the Yuva theme again. I have always liked Blaaze as a part of Rahman’s troupe (Saathiya, Yuva, Rang de Basanti, Swades Sivaji, Slumdog Millionaire etc). Not a bad one, but I feel it won’t last long.

6. Rehnuma - Shreya Ghosal &,Sonu Nigam; Lyrics: Abbas Tyrewala

This is supposed to be a soul number. Probably one of those sung as seen at a restaurant. But the mood fades soon as it starts. I could not notice any theme there.:-( Did not interest me except for a few sounds that remind of the ‘James bond’ tune. Nothing more here.

7. Yaar Mila Tha – Udit Narayan, Madhusree, Ujjayinee Roy

This was a good one. Udit Narayan is great as ever. The song opens with a dance number style beat and chorus. Perhaps this is the only number on the album that had chorus that felt fitting. You’d want to follow the lyrics closely so that you won’t miss the story line that the song portrays. It’s a smooth duet I thought.

Over all, the album isn’t the stunning combination of lyrics and music that one would expect from an ARRahman creation. Yet, ‘Bhoola Tujhe’ would be one number from this album I would listen to for a long time to come.

We would have to wait and watch the movie and see what this music means to create on the screen. Meanwhile, checkout their website http://www.bluethefilm.com/

Feel free to post your comments. Thanks for reading.

Delighted to announce that I have moved to my own domain!

For the latest on this post…I invite you to see this post there.

Ever since Microsoft announced the Windows-7 OS, I was curious and so were millions of Windows users. Well I personally did not like the Vista OS for the primary reason that it simply overloaded the PC. A typical Vista installation treacherously occupies 7GB of space on the hard-drive and demands a minimum of 2GB of RAM only to start with. When I bought a laptop last year, it came with a Vista Home Premium OS preloaded. I could literally not use it for more than a month. I felt all of that fuss was unnecessary. I soon setup a dual boot with Windows XP (by far the best OS ever from Microsoft). I’m happy with XP. But the buzz around Windows7 appears more than just hype.

Going with the buzz on the internet about Windows7 since its release in mid June ‘09, the OS seems to have taken in some performance improvements as compared to Vista. Though soon as you install the Windows7, you might feel its not any different from Vista, there seem to be some good advancements. I would list down my findings and comments about ‘How does 7 fare against Vista and XP – a comparison’ in a separate post a little later on as I use the new OS.

Without wasting much time, lets quickly see in a few steps, how to add Windows7 to our existing OS configurations thus setting up a dual boot (in-case you already have Vista or XP alone) or triple boot (in-case you already have a vista and XP dual boot).

As of this writing, Win7 is a beta version and is available for free download on Microsoft.com. If you already have a copy of Windows7 OS on a bootable DVD, you could skip the first two steps.

1. Download an evaluation copy of Windows7:  You could download it here. Evaluation copies are generally .iso files which you can burn on to an empty DVD.
   • At the beginning of the download process, you are presented with an activation key for the OS, Note it down or save the web page for reference.
   • The download page seeks to run an ActiveX control to start the download application. Select a location of your preference and start the download. The copy I downloaded was around 2.55GB and it finished in roughly 5 hours.
2. Create a Windows7 bootable disc: You can use a DVD burning s/w of your choice and burn the downloaded .iso file on to an empty/rewritable DVD. I used Nero express.
3. Do you have a separate HDD partition for the windows7 already? If not create one (of at least 16GB). You could create partition using the disc management tool either from your existing XP or Vista OS.
   • Windows Vista has built-in tools to re size active partitions, but XP does not. XP users can alternatively use a third party tool like Gparted. You could download a copy here. Burn it on to an empty/rewritable CD and boot from it. Please refer to the GParted documentation for instructions.
   • Vista users
     • type ‘diskmgmt.msc’ in the start-search bar. The Disc Management application launches. You could choose to shrink one of the existing active partitions. You could shrink an existing drive by about 20 GB (at least 16GB recommended).
     • Once this is done, you should see unallocated space on the disc. If your existing drive was C: or D:, you would want the new partition to be D: or E: respectively. But this letter would have been currently allotted to the optical drive. So first rename or re-allocate the drive letter of your optical drive(s) to one letter higher (E: or F: respectively).
     • Right click on the new empty partition, click on ‘New simple partition..’. Format the drive to NTFS and label it to D: or E:
     • Lo! we have a brand new partition!
4. Install Windows7: Put the newly created Windows7 installation DVD in the optical drive and reboot the machine. While it is starting, make sure that it boots from the optical drive. If it doesn’t, use the boot setup (for my Dell laptop I’ve to press F12 to launch a boot sequence menu) or set it the boot sequence to DVD and HDD by editing the BIOS settings.

• The Win7 boot application opens up with this screen

• Select the Custom mode. On the screens that come next, you are prompted to choose a drive, choose the newly created partition and continue.
• During the installation, the application prompts for the activation key, enter the key you noted down in step1.

The installation takes around 30-35 minutes and there we have it!

The dual/triple boot is automatically setup ( this is probably the case since win7 is still an evaluation copy) and the boot menu appears similar to this one:

But in case you wanted to customize the boot menu, download this simple utility called EasyBCD here. Install the application and launch it. Choose the ‘Change Settings’ tab. In ‘Global Settings’ section you can change the default OS from the list and the timeout too.

In case you want to edit the text displayed in the boot menu, you could do that from the ‘Entry-Based settings’. I edited both the settings. I chose XP as default, timeout as 10 sec and the list as shown under.

Conclusions:

Apart from the dual boot being setup automatically, I have observed the following:

1. When I boot into Windows7, the OS drive is appears as C:\ while the other drives got renamed. But when I boot into Vista, I see that Vista drive is C:\ and the Win7 drive is D:\. Guess this confusion gets sorted out with the actual version of Win7.

2. I did not need to install any drivers! Yeah that’s true. My Dell XPS M1330 seems to be working right away. Sound, video, wireless etc are installed already. The web-cam did not work yet though, I guess I would have to install its drivers.

I would use Windows7 today-on and update my review on a separate post – ‘How does 7 fare against Vista and XP – a comparison’.

Please comment on how helpful this post has been to you and also on your initial reaction about Windows7.

Thanks for reading.

23-Jul-09. A day I would not forget for a long time to come. You’d remember some of your biggest goof ups well, don’t you?

It was my third(of the 10) speech at Toastmasters today. I messed it up in a very big way. Though the topic had great depth and the concept was to suit the objectives of the third speech, I could not deliver. I was mum and blank and confused on stage. I was in a crisis and I’m out of it losing.

It happens to me sometimes. I go completely short of words, even to express some thing like “I’m hungry”. This was one such occasion.

I could not remember the words I wanted to say – prompts at lack of adequate preparation.

It did not reflect the passion with which I wanted to enact on stage. I could not animate my body, could not modulate my voice. Transition from idea to idea was shaky. There were unnecessary pauses. I could have done most of it well had I completely remembered the sequence of ideas I wanted to present.

All in all, the speech was a mess. I decided to take it up another time. I’m not in a hurry to complete my 10 speeches and apply for the CC (Competent Communicator) certification. The aim I have is to learn how to speak before the audience; Present my point with persuasion and grace, at the same time keeping it fun to listen to. I’ve a long way to go, I realized.

I’m not publishing the speech here yet. Excuse me for that. I’ll update this space after I redo the speech to my satisfaction. Till then, please read my other posts, I’m sure they’re not as dry as this one was till here.

Delighted to announce that I have moved to my own domain!

For the latest on this post…I invite you to see this post there.

Yesterday, I gave my second speech at the Toastmasters Club in my office. Its such a relief that I’ve done it finally. I have been thinking of this ever since I gave my Ice Breaker speech earlier. Honestly, I could not make up my mind with a topic for the speech. Yeah, part of the reason was that I’ve not been reading enough these days.

The topic of the speech was ‘EXPECTATIONS’. On giving a little thought I discovered that all most every thing in life seemed to be based on expectations that we have. Small and big, easy and tough but we have hundreds of them lurking in our heads. Expectations play a major role when it comes to relationships.

Initially when I thought of writing a speech, I felt this was a rather serious topic. I had doubts in my head whether a serious topic like this make sense to the audience. In fact we were conditioned in the last few weeks that speeches should have a bit of humor, it makes the mood lighter and audience would enjoy it.  Anyways, I wrote the speech, I kept the examples simple, I tried to be humorous though.

The duration of the 2nd speech is TM is 5 to 7 minutes. When I practiced for the 1st time, I took 11minutes. Then I edited, practiced again, and then again. It came to about 6.5 minutes. I was okay. I prepared an 8 slide presentation too. What I thought was good about the presentation was that I would not have to rely on it when talking; I could manage well enough if it were not there at all. But the presentation would run in the background and add to the content of my speech.

One more thing,  don’t tell anyone,  I’ve secretively recorded my speech on my phone.

Listen the speech –OR–   Please download Are you Expecting.mp3

You could follow the speech reading the script and the Evaluation follows soon after.

Here comes the script of the speech:

(Slide 1)

Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen. Are you expecting? Madam, are you expecting? Sir, are you?

As a matter of fact, we are all expecting, we have been expecting all through your lives and we would continue to expect.

(Slide 2)

Toast master of the day, fellow toastmasters and my dear guests, today I’m here to discuss about my little theory on ‘EXPECTATION’.

(Slide 3)

Expectation, by definition is a feeling/anticipation that something is about to happen.

Expectations are very powerful. They are a source of so many emotions within us. The affect the way we work, the way we think and talk. They control the very way we exist.

Let’s see an example: Appraisal time, I prepare a perfect self evaluation and think, no doubt about it, my boss is going to have no second thoughts, and he would give me a 5. Okay, at least a 4. But my boss perhaps has different plans altogether. He thinks all that I do is just expected. He gives me a 3. I’m disappointed.

Another example: We expected that we had a meeting room arranged for TM session today. It has been, thanks to the Sergeant at arms, here we’re a happy bunch of people, learning to talk.

When we expect, it’s like we toss a coin. We’re happy if we win, not happy if we lose.

So what now?

(Slide 5)

Let’s delve a little deeper: According to me, expectations can be classified under three broad categories:

1. Expectations from self, and those from others (people, situations etc.)
2. Conscious and sub-conscious.
3. Realistic and Unrealistic.

Lets see these in that sequence.

1. From self and from others:

Usually expectations from one’s own self are pretty simple. For example, I want to be honest. I want to stay healthy and wealthy.
But expectations that we might have from others are complicated and often lead to disappointment. Farmers in India currently are dying to see rains. It rained this time last year; It rained this time three years ago, It did ten years ago; so, it has to rain this year too.That is an expectation that came out of experience and memory.


In case of expectations from people, say for example from friends & family. We expect them to behave in a certain way. You thought that guy was your best friend and when you really needed him he just was not there. Perhaps you expected too much, perhaps he never had never been that committed. It’s only you thought he was. This expectation came from your subconscious.

This brings us the next category of expectations.


2. Conscious and subconscious expectations:

We form conscious expectations when we are fully aware of the situation we are in, our capabilities and the amount of confidence we possess. If you are a shooter, like Rajyavardhan Rathore, you would expect that every bullet you shoot hits the bull’s eye. This would be a conscious expectation from you. You are prepared, you’re aware that 7 out of 10 times you shoot, you succeed. You’re in control of the situation. This is a conscious expectation.

But you send your kid to the exams. You might not have expressed it to anyone that you expect him to score a 95 in every exam he writes; but you generally expect that in your subconscious. You do not know how well prepared your kid is, you do not know if he even likes his subjects. You are not completely aware of the situation. You don’t have control beyond a point, but you still expect. Isn’t that an unrealistic expectation?

So, the next category.


3. Realistic and Unrealistic:

Most consciously formed expectations tend to be realistic.


Now, I’m giving this speech here, if I expect you to understand every bit of what I say, approve of it and appreciate it, how realistic an expectation would it be? How much more unrealistic can I get?

So what’s the bottom line?

We expect subconsciously, uncontrolled, we tend to make unrealistic expectations.

(Slide 6)

What do we do?

Simple! We could get conscious of most of the subconscious expectations we have. How? Easier said than done. Isn’t it?

Say you’re disappointed about something today. I’m sure it is because of an unmet expectation. Think about that expectation. Think about what lead to that expectation. Dig deep you’ll know more related expectations. Make a list of those. Remove the unrealistic ones in the list; I’m sure if you’d feel lot better. And not just that, you’d be prepared to learn from the situation.

(Slide 7)

From all that I said here, expectations seem to be bringing us sorrow. Are all expectations are like that? No. There wouldn’t be hope, goals and ambitions if there were no expectations. Hope is good. Isn’t it? Goals and ambitions are those that drive us in life. In fact we can’t live if we stop expecting, well both ways!

Keep expecting – but do it consciously.

(Slide 8 )

As you might now expect. I end my speech!

Over to you toast master.

————————————————————-

I did not really notice when the Green flag (after 5minutes of talking) was shown. I was shown the yellow flag (means I was 6 minutes through) when I was saying “Now, I’m giving this speech here”. My heart sank, I’d under a minute to conclude. I couldn’t really realize how fast words flew out of my mouth. It was good but I doubted if the audience thought I was too fast. “It was the Red flag (reached 7minute limit) when I was saying “Are all expectations are like that?” I quickly concluded. It was 7 minutes and 7 seconds. I was on the verge of getting disqualified.

Ah it was over. A big sigh of relief came out of me.

I had a mixed bag of feelings after wards.

I did not quite know how well I did, did it make any sense to the audience, did they enjoy listening the least bit? Expectations, you know!

Evaluation:

What was good: I was well prepared. Content was researched and organized. I used a ppt. Good examples. Use of alliterations and a few usage elements. I did not really mumble, I sounded clear.

What was bad: ppt could have had pictures. Transitions between ideas could have been supplemented with appropriate movements (body language). Connotations (might have meant different meanings to many people)

What I thought was bad: Aaghh, 830 words in all, should have been around 600-700. I was nervous (not apparently though). The topic was rather serious. I couldn’t modulate my voice much, especially when I was supposed to sound ‘funny’. The content was lengthy, not allowing room for ease of expression. I looked serious, as ever.

Apart from that, the worst part was that I had 7 long pauses (>3 or 4 seconds). This happened when I tried to recollect what came next.

FILLERS: I’d 10-ah’s  (you can hear from the speech), 1-You know, 3-now. there were 4 repeated words.

I had quite a few leanings: For the next speech, I’ve to prepare better. Less content than this so that I can breathe. I should choose a lighter topic, or audience will hit me. ppts are supposed to add color. I should practice body language. And there’s a lot more, I’ll know as I do more speaking.

If you have read till here, you have a lot of patience. Please leave your comments as to what you felt about the speech (or any aspect of if), your advice is welcome.

Ciao!

Delighted to announce that I have moved to my own domain!

For the latest on this post…I invite you to see this post there.

I just added an RSS feed link to my blog. Guests like you could subscribe to the feeds and they would know of all that I update here, without even visiting the blog’s homepage. Isn’t that interesting? Yeah I too thought so. In addition, I got curious to know how these RSS feeds worked. And I’m sure there are many of us out there who always wondered why the RSS icon appeared on many a web-page today, but never got a chance to find out what it meant really. So, here’s an article that demystifies RSS.

What is it?

Lets start with the abbreviation RSS – Really Simple Syndication. Well, we all quite know what ‘Really’ and ‘Simple’ meant, but what is Syndication? The WordWeb dictionary (my favorite) says:

Syndication – 1) Organizing into or administering as a syndicate. 2) Selling (read Sending) an article for publication to several newspapers or magazines at the same time.

That in all likelihood, made some sense. Did it not? If I publish this post on my blog, would all my RSS feed subscribers receive the article without visiting the blog? Looks like it. Lets explore further.

RSS feed is a standard format of publishing frequently-updated works such as – news articles, blog posts, scraps etc. The content usually circulated via feeds would be excerpts/summaries of new articles, links to new web pages or similar audio/visual media.

Okay! How does it work?

1. Content publishers provide a link or a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier, also called URL) on their websites. For example, the feed URI of my blog looks like this:  http://bharathreddyt.wordpress.com/feed/ and that of a CNN World business page looks like this: http://rss.cnn.com/rss/edition_business.rss

2. A user/subscriber needs an application called a Feed Reader/RSS Reader/Aggregator.
These applications would typically be:

• Web-based: Google Reader/iGoogle, My Yahoo
• Desktop-based:
  • Browsers like Mozilla Firefox, IE;
  • Applications like feedReader, MicrosoftMAX;
  • Email clients like IBM Lotus note, MS Outlook Express etc.
• Mobile-based: Google Mobile RSS reader, feedBurner etc.

3. Subscribers would have to supply a feed URI to the Feed reader. The feed reader would retrieve feed content and display.

So, What big deal?

1. No nonsense: Have you ever subscribed to news letters or updates from sites? Have you faced with problems like spam, viruses, phishing? The story doesn’t end here. When you register for subscriptions, you would have to leave your details of identity and mainly your email ID. This could lead to Identity theft. RSS feeds are a way out. You would not even have to provide your email ID. Its the content publishers that give us the feed link and its your feed reader application that get the feeds to you.

2. Unsubscribe Easily: Say, you’re not interested anymore in receiving updates/news form a certain subscription/source, you’d have to send an ‘unsubscribe’ email. And yet, you’re at the mercy of the sender. In case of an RSS subscription, to unsubscribe, you’d only have to remove the feed’s link from your feed reader. That’s that.

3. Feed reader applications generally have features to sort and group similar feeds. For example, say I subscribe for sports news from three different sites and stock updates from 5 different sites. I would have an option to sort them into two categories, say sports and stocks.

4. What more? Browsers these days have built in feed readers. I’ve seen them on Firefox and IE7. When users click on a feed link on a website, they’re taken to a page that displays the feeds for the site and the user is given an option to choose a feed reader of choice. (See the illustrations section below) The simplest way is to choose to save it as a book mark. A folder is created under bookmarks folder and it has links that the feed intends to circulate.

A Brief History

Started around 1995 by Ramanathan V. Guha, an Indian computer scientist while he was working with Apple. He was one of those who conceived the idea of collecting integrating published data and presenting. He developed RDF (Resource Description Framework) which was then the basis of RSS. After quite some fuss over the ownership of the technology, the copy right is currently owned by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Its maintained by the RSS Advisory Board.

Though the technology of RSS feeds isn’t new – the RSS2.0 version was announced way back in 2002 – the usage became popular only recently. One of the earliest adopters of the RSS feed technology was Mozilla Firefox and it was followed by MS Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Opera and several others.

Illustrations:

When I click on http://bharathreddyt.wordpress.com/feed/, I see a page like this:

After I subscribe to the feed on FireFox, I see a bookmark folder as this:

References:

http://www.whatisrss.com/

http://library.ucsc.edu/science/rss.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_feed

http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79408