Idle/Random/whatever Thoughts of a Demented/Idle/Whatever Mind

Well they came by sea and this has been confirmed by Govt. of India. They killed 100s and I strongly believe that the number given by Govt of Indiais highly deflated one. Great bloggers like Nitin Pai and GreatBong have written at lengths about this carnage(I am sorry for those who call it tragedy). It was nothing more that cold blooded massacre of people in India. The suggestion and thoughts by both these bloggers have been bang on target. But then, this stupid Congress government is not expected to be able to achieve anything. So here are my suggestions(well when everyone has one, why should I not chip in) There are three ways to deal with the situation. 1. Pseudo-Gandhian way -- Take out rally and protest creating havoc for the people who are already suffering at the hands of the government. The candle lights protest as well as going at lengths of giving memorandum to the political brasses all fall in this category. I hail from the city known of late more for protests than a...

Barcamp Bangalore is one of those events which I just wait for. Its a time when I rejuvenate my thought process which is drained thanks to the often hectic work at office. Also this is one place where geeks can feel at home and talk about anything under the sun. Its pretty cool that its not just Tech thats discussed but also other topics close to us, like politics and life. Like most times, the paper wiki was filled completely as soon as it was put up. I actually saw a few people going disappointed with not being able to put up their talk. And like most other times, it started with the intro session for the first timers. This time it was Pradeep BV taking charge and explaining it to the first timers, what barcamp is all about. After that it was realized that one of the four rooms were actually not available for Barcampers. Anyways another great thing that happened was that an Impromptu Sessions paper wiki was put up. Amazingly it too was filled in a matter of minutes, it was put up...

Barcamp Bangalore 7 is here again. Because of the crazy times at work, I have not updated by blog for a long time. I dont know if I will be able to do it in the next few weeks also. But I wish I could. One thing is for sure that I am going to Barcamp and it will be a good time. Startup Saturday is happening at the same place and the same time. Its the very same ppl who were organising Barcamp Bangalore who are behind it. I am still wondering what made them move to a conference like event rather than an unconference. Anyways its for me to find out in the next few days. I am looking forward to a session by @mataal on Process vs Thread. Another one if by Ujjwal on how to chase your dream project while keeping your day job. I am sure a few more interesting things will pop up, as always. Anyways I am also leading a discussion on ELearning and what it hold for us in the future. I hope that I will have some interesting people to talk over it.

Well I have heard enough of microblogging. I dirtied my hands with pownce and then later with twitter. Pownce as I found was more of spam than anything else. On twitter there are so many interesting people, sharing some good ideas and links. But of late its been inundated with chat messages. I think thats one thing that sucks on twitter. You just get inundated with so much of ignorable chat that you want to remove it. Anyways thats a different story. Now what I am trying to do is start up with a twitter account called stupidquestions . What is going to posted on it is, well stupid questions. Some crappy questions and I expect people to come up with some good/smart answers. Now I am not going to read whatever the followers or people I am following are posting. But what I will be doing is that I will respond to all messages for stupidquestions(All messages which start with @stupidquestions). Hoping to get something good going . Do let me know what you think about this experiment of m...

The barcamp movement has taken India  by storm and Bangalore has now become the center of this movement in India. I think it was Barcamp Bangalore where it all started and now its in its 6th edition. I was introduced to it in the 4rth edition. I liked the concept at the very first. It was very clear that everyone is equal. You would be admired based on not what you are but what you deliver. So if someone is talking crap, you can just walk out. True there were a lot of freeloaders out there who came to do nothing actually. I was supposed to be one but then I realized that I too could talk. Well not technical but the I could speak about "How the bloggers are affecting other professionals". I thought this was the beauty of Barcamp. You could discuss anything under the sun. When the next barcamp was being planned and call was made for other to chip in, I decided to go ahead for it. Sadly I could not attend the Barcamp because of personal reasons but I could not attend it. ...

Whats started as a small idea in the last Blogalorean Meet, snowballed into a big one during the mailing group discussions. Finally it was planned that all interested people would meet at Koshy's on a fine Saturday evening. It was 19th of Jan around 4:30 that I entered Koshy's to find five of them there, busy discussing and finalizing how it should be done. I jumped into that whole thing and soon their infectious enthusiasm got into me. After some random bakwas of mine. Then that waiter was like pushing us out. So last round of discussion happened across the street on the footpath. Finally we decided on something which were worded right by Sandil and put up on the Big Bangalore Blogathon . There are still a lot of things to be done for it. I am right now not in Bangalore to be physically involved but will be providing all possible support virtually and ofcourse by blogging during the Blogathon. I hope this event generates a lot of positives. Some of the people working behind th...

I was really buoyed down by the plethora of gurus giving gyaan on blogging and how to make money out of it. I was mislead into all that. But all of late, actually during the christmas to new year period I realised why I was not having all the fun blogging. The result of the leave given by my company during that period was this presentation . Your comments will be appreciated.  The text of it is as follows Classification of Blogs Professional blogging Technical News Corporate blogging http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ http://blogs.adobe.com/ http://www.infosysblogs.com/ http://blog.tatainteractive.com/ http://blogs.sun.com/ Pleasure blogging Personal Column Humor Technical Random Why Pleasure Blogging No Reason at All Just to let out your ideas To share your knowledge Let people know about something Record your ...

It started with the mail from Me :-).... So finally we meet on 8th Sept 07 after a lot of requests falling for the meet day to be shifted from 1st to 8th. Here I went to see that the key organizer, Sanjukta is not there. Oh no she is late... After a quick round of introductions AJ started the meet with what should be in the mailing list. We had a number of views. AJ's suggestions was to have different mailing lists Ramjee suggested that we have a forum Another is that we make rules like Do not publicize your own blog. Make etiquettes to work with mailing list posts. Himanshu's suggestion was to have a number of moderators. Final decision Have an etiquette for mailing list. Make moderators if things go out of hand. Etiquette Only people from the mailing list those who are not having relevant blog. No personal blog...

After two post http://the100rabh.blogspot.com/2007/08/what-would-you-do-if-traditional.html http://the100rabh.blogspot.com/2007/08/i-as-blogger-has-affected-someone.html I finally get to hear what I wanted. The confession of a journalist...NO A 'feature article writer' . Here is what Mrs Priyadarshini Nandy has to say in her post today And btw, I didnt form opinion on what the TEL guys told me.. It was a feature article and not a journalistic piece. I just wrote what they told me.. if you come and tell me that you have fun at work, I don't know why I should'nt believe you - then, I'd have to mistrust everyone.. What a life that would be! This statement makes it clear for everyone each of the points I had made in my first post regarding this. Let me make that once more. Do not trust Mid Day as a reliable source of information. You never know when they are writing a feature article and when a real review. Tata Elxsi made up all those stories. Tata Elxsi does not trea...

Well I had written about the bloggers affecting other professionals . I can now very well add one more group of professionals to the list, the journalists. Yes thats another set of people who were the voice of the people, the fourth pillar of democracy are under serious threat. Had it not happened to me I would not have had got impression of that. Blogging is making the voice of the people heard directly without the the "censorship" by the so called responsible people. I had read something utterly rubbish written about life at my ex-Employer, Tata Elxsi. I just wrote my thoughts about it. Of course I would never trust Mid Day on any news, unless confirmed by some other sources. But this blog post by the journalist(I just realized its Priyadarshini Nandi who did that awesome job for Tata Elxsi), made me realize the power of blogging. Though I am not a supporter of flame blogs(This would be my first and last post with regard to this thing), I had to write this blog. Because i...

Well this is the gist of the talk that I gave at Bar Camp Bangalore 4 or BCB4 . I am sorry I am very late for that but at least I am writing ;-) It does not require some rocket science to say that bloggers are affecting some professionals. Its obvious that butterfly effect will play its role in this world. There are professionals who are really feeling the heat due to the blogging community. Well lets look at things that we, the people read blogs for. Technical Articles Rumours( All kinds) Travel Ideas Reviews The above is definitely not an exhaustive list. I wish you could suggest me some more. So who get affected by the action of the users. The very first professional who get affected are the technical writers for magazines. But then there is always the hard copy that sells. Probably thats the reason why all the magazines are moving online. They all have a online subscriptions. Sure blogging gives people the power to spread information in a more productive manner. Users do not have ...

I had talked about bloggers not being trusted source of information. But its not just the bloggers or the new media which needs trust of its readers. The traditional media too needs it. But the traditional media has to its advantage belief of its reader set to trust mode. But there are several newspapers who are losing their trust each day some readers at a time. The latest one being Mid Day. I am sure that if not anyone else, it has lost my trust. All for this one article which was published on 14th August 2007 on page A21 and A23 in Mid Day, Mumbai. I being a ex-employee of Tata Elxsi know that this whole article is a fairy tale. The fact of the matter is that all the photos are nothing but a shoot just like for some movie. Tata Elxsi does not promote anything that was quoted in the article. It just seems to have come out of fantasy of the writer Priyadarshini Nandy. I having the first hand knowledge and I know the culture and the environment in which people work there. That itself ...

Blog - a - loreans or the Bangalore Bloggers for short. Well thanks to Thejesh that I came to know about it. I thought lets go and give it a try. Lets meet the co-bloggers in Bangalore. Well it was a pleasant surprise to me that so many people. I was expecting some typical geeks to turn up. May be 10 or 15 to the max. But a pleasant surprise to see so many not techies also up there. Just to sum up things there were a couple of things that I was really enthusiastic about after the meet. First the "Web NGO" concept given by Hari. It sounds like a impressive name, but then what do we do. Well best thing is that we can spread the word. More than anything else whats required is information. Blogging in definitely a way to do it. Waiting for more inputs at BCB4 Second was the fact that we decided some of the topics for BCB4. Well more important of the things being "With great power come greater responsibilities" - Thats what is responsible blogging and Tim O...