Soccer kills

3 times during the last 7 days, My heart has been shattered to pieces and this has been the worst week of my life. Each time this happens I tell myself not to watch the game ever again but...

Why do I watch the game? I don't know but when your team looses it really sucks. What sucks more is that you have to attend an early meeting tomorrow and its already 3 AM. And to top it all, next day and for many more days your mates are going to make fun.

I remember when I was a kid, I used to be really passionate about Cricket, used to follow each match that India played. When India lost, it was such a sickening feeling.
Later on, it was reduced to following Sachin, who I passionately follow today as well.

When I met Sanky, he somehow sucked me into this world of soccer fanatics, Earlier I followed football casually watch games here and there. So Sanky, who is an ardent follower of MUFC, talked me into reading more about the club, watching online videos. And before I knew it, I was watching all games. And the more I read/watch the games, the more passionately I follow the club. And the more it kills, when they lose.

Scary place

The place where I live is really a scary place. My friends have pointed the same a number of times, but i always ignored. As they say you dont believe till you see it. So the story is that my friends always advised me to go home early but I always ignored. So, I was returning from office yesterday around 9:30pm and since my flatty wasn't there so i was riding a rickshaw. To kill time, I called a BigV, and we started discussing Indian cricket team's position and Sachin's great innning. And suddenly a bike rushed behind me, I felt a hand trying to snatch my phone. Thank God, I instinctively grabbed my phone harder and the bike rushed past me. It took me couple of moments to realize what has happened. This was my new phone only 1 month old, I was so afraid that I shut the phone down and thanked my stars again. Also I vowed never to talk in a rickshaw again and try to return home as early as possible.
P.S. I am writing this post using my cell that just survived the snatching attempt.

Flexbuilder on Linux

After migrating my desktop to ubuntu, biggest hurdle was of setting up flex builder on it. This was really an ordeal but the good news is that thanks to google, at last its done!!!

I will try to recapture what all I did to achieve this milestone....
1. Get Eclipse Europa, which is pretty easy. One can use later versions of Eclipse as well
2. Download Flex builder for linux (http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flexbuilder_linux.html), again easy step
3. Follow the instructions available at Adobe Labs site (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/flexbuilder_linux/) these are very straight forward.. no issues till now.
4. Everything so far is fun, and flexbuilder is running hooray....

First thing after installation is to set up flex debugger... ooops.. after bit of googling it came down to..
1. Uninstall currently installed flashplayer.
2. Download most recent debug flashplayer for linux form http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html.
3. install the debug player and we are done.

Now comes AIR, how to do this one....
1. I tried to run/debug an AIR application using sfk 3.0.0 as bundled with flex builder ... "This application requires a version of the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) which is no longer supported. Please contact the application author for an updated version."
2. Googled it and I reached http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/flexbuilder_linux/releasenotes.html#air.
3. It asked me to download the latest air sdk from http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=airsdk
4. Followed the instruction as they were word by word... previous error was gone but now you get "flex_sdk_3/bin/adl_lin: 1: Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting ")") "
5. There is a bug on for the same (https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FBE-323)
6. After much googling I resolved the problem by renaming adl and adt to adl_lin and adt_lin and placing it in sdk/3.0.0/bin.

So here are my steps to upgrade AIR SDK
Follow these simple steps to upgrade the SDK used by Flex Builder Linux on your machine:

* Download latest Adobe AIR SDK.
* Go to the sdks/3.0.0/ folder (in the Flex Builder installation directory).
* Delete the "runtimes" folder.
* Extract the latest Adobe AIR SDK and copy its contents into sdks/3.0.0/, overwriting existing files.
* Go to latest AIRSDK bin folder and rename adl and adt as adl_lin and adt_lin, copy these files to sdks/3.0.0/bin/.
* Go to sdks/3.0.0/runtimes/air/ and create a symlink "Linux" pointing to the "linux" folder in the same directory.


At last AIR ran, what a relief. I also encountered air runtime exception "invocation forwarded to primary instance", To resolve this just kill adl process.

Colorful tail

Well I use tail a lot to monitor my jboss logs. On windows/wine I use this great utility 'BareTail' to monitor logs where I can color code tags like Exception, Error, Warning and so on.. This is visually very appealing.
In plain tail command you you actually need to scan the whole log to get to error. So I was looking to color code tail and guess what it is pretty easy to do by using perl.

tail -n 1000 -f file name | perl -pe 's/.*Exception.*/\e[0;31;33m$&\e[0m/g'

This is so cool and this thing goes to .bashrc so now I have baretail like visually appealing tail :)

Moving to Jaunty Jackalope

My upgrade manager was prompting from some time about Ubuntu's new release 9.04. So last week I decide to go ahead and install it. The upgrade process was really smooth and no hard work for me. All the packages were downloaded and I was informed about the my configurations. Bottom line everything was neat.

After the upgrade process, I was told that Upgrade is successful and I need to reboot. So I rebooted the machine. Now comes the twist in the tale, On restart the whole screen garbled out like early 80's DD when there was no signal. There was no login screen nothing just strange color patterns. This was really scary because I did not have any backup and though this is a dual boot machine and I can recover data easily, but just the thought of reverting back to XP and reinstalling ubuntu would be a real pain.

After contemplating for half an hour, I decide to give a shot to ubuntu forums. Within 6 minutes of posting my query(http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1186225), I got the reply and after 30 min of exercise Jaunty Jackalope was up and running on my m/c. What an awesome feeling.

A zillion thanks to ubuntu forums and by god they are quick. You get a response almost instantaneously. Kudos to ubuntu community.

SAD

United lost...

Read this

ngels wrote this
http://surreal-flavors.blogspot.com/2008/12/cry-thy-beloved-city.html

read this.. its really thought provoking.

ngels tagged me...

ngels has tagged me a couple of times.. and I being a serious contender to the prestigious award of "Laziest person on earth" didnt pay any heed :(
But today time has come to answer those question that come with the tag..

What do you do when...

- You see a man (or woman) making a pass (trying to woo/flirt/impress) on a woman (or man) you like?
hahhahaha.... It happens all the time .. and most of the time they succeed as well :(.. So what do it do I curse them and will be frustrated and depressed for some time, and will move on :)


- Someone you like, is not attracted to you?
That happens so very often that I have stopped reacting to it.. I'll just try my luck somewhere else.
Mathematically speaking with each rejection my chances of acceptance are improving but seriously I think probability is failing me in this case :(((

- You are attracted to some one, but both of you are in two different cities?
This sounds like a typical movie story..
Again Hypothetically speaking.. there could be two options.. either I am so attracted that my phone bill and traveling expenses will burn my pocket
or else I will look for other (local) avenues :P

- You are reading a book, and your best friend wants to borrow it and can’t wait for you to finish reading, ‘coz he/she has been looking for it for all their life?
Looking for a book for all their life (and not getting it) .. u must be kidding :)..
But seriously if that book is so important to my friend.. I will give that but now is the crisis situation..
was I really liking the book and cant wait for the book to be returned.. then I will either buy a new copy or arrange for a pdf :P

- You help plan his / her career, and then, they go on to achieve it, leaving you behind, alone...
Well to begin with I am not a good planner, but hypothetically speaking if that ever happened I dont think I will care much... 'coz I dont believe people do such things on purpose and maybe someday they will remember me and return (wow this is philosophical)

- Who am I...
"I am who I am".. (that comes from a movie).. To answer in one line.. I am arbit.. simply I dont know who I am or may be never gave enough thought to the question thought one thing for sure I am very LAZY
I am a movie buff (watched a lot of them of varying genre) who loves to read fantasy books (LOTR, HP, Eragon types) though I read some serious stuff as well (primarily fiction)... Love to play computer games (AOE, WOW, Ceaser the list is big)..
My other interests include physics maths mythology history algos computers ... (all thanks to wiki)
Professionally I am software engg :) and lastly I dont think much and hate taking decisions

- What is the One thing that brings-in-smile-to-your-face/or pisses-you-off quite unexpectedly !?!
brings-in-smile-to-your-face .. there a hell lot of things.. ranging from a PJs to GGs .. but most of all company of friends is most pleasing and satisfying :)
pisses-you-off.. again a variety of things but most of all decision making and UI designing :P

- Insert (and add) a new question(s) / statement(s)...
Question to the Tag Maker...and to the tagged fellows:
(Adding a question is most difficult of all.. and all the time my laziness )
~ You liked a movie very much and you come across a guy/gal who thinks the movie was the worst movie ever.. (This happens with me a lot :P)

and here I tag
Ashish - The Iron Bull

Where are the GOALS

4 matches 1 won 2 draw and 1 lost
2 home 2 away
net goals scored 3
Against -
Newcastle United 1-1(home)
Portsmouth 1-0 (away)
Liverpool 1-2 (away)
Villarreal 0-0 (home)

So where are the goals??
The team which scored most then rest last year has scored just 3 goals in 4 games.. And they are going to Stamford Bridge this weekend. Lets hope that they will break the shackles but there is a small glitch the home team had not lost on home ground for quite some time now
And the red Devils always do the things "The Hard way"
so may be this weekend the home team record will be shattered :)

Long Time No Blog

Its more than a month without new post :(
So Why No blogging for the past 1 month.. The reason I am busy.. really what the hell are you doing? I am playing WOW that's the primary reason.. WOW is one of the best games I have ever played. Its a marvel in every aspect.. firstly amazing graphics and story line. The whole setup is astonishing. Simply the Best (By the way I am a 62 lvl blood elf fire Mage :P also a low level draenei shaman, human warlock and human priest)

Thats not complete story though, I spent 2 weekends at home doing nothing :) what a blissful time that is.
Apart from that watched three really great movies
1. The Dark Knight (watched thrice.. Joker you will never die)
2. Wall -E (Pixar can make anything act earlier it was monsters,cars this time it is robots.. Please send bollywood actors to them)
3. Rock On (One of the most refreshing bollywood movies.. amazing sound track awesome songs.. going to watch it again)

Thats all for now.. will be back soon:)

Crime and punishment

I have been thinking about something lately and just want to share... As a regular habit I read newspaper and all around there are news of crimes.. and I wonder do we really have a better system today as compared to our forefathers to stop crime or rather to stop criminals. As a matter of fact this is highly debatable because I don't know what was the crime rate at that time or is it just the information overflow that makes me aware of all the crimes.. but still let me share my thought..

Well some time back I was reading an article on criminal psychology which argued that punishment can not stop crime rather it just motivates the criminal to evade it.. And the current situation is very much like that only, criminals evade punishments..

So I was thinking If we can design a punishment that can not be evaded and then I thought of GOD, and imagined that our ancestors must have been really intelligent to come up with the concept that If some one commits a crime he would be punished by GOD.. Here I am not arguing whether the GOD exists or not but If somehow this notion of crimes being punished by GOD can be imbibed into everybody.. maybe they will not commit the crime... because they can no longer evade the punishment..

Lastly I wold like to refer to the incidents of humans trying to evade even the divine punishment for sins by bribing priests, holding rituals and so on and so forth.. Though I am not concluding anything but just think if the origin of the concept of GOD is just a plan of our ancestors to design a punishment that nobody can evade ...

TOW All Lost

Sunday was a bad day.. really bad..
Ok before I recollect what was bad about Sunday.. Let me discuss TOW, I got lot all the seasons of friends from a friend. And all the episodes were named like TOW xxxx..
After some time another friend told me that TOW stands for "The One With". so taking a cue from that I named this post as "The One When" All Lost. (I have been watching lot of friends lately)

So the crux is that yesterday was a great weekend for a sports freak like me (F1, Wimbeldon final and Asia Cup final) and naturally I was supporting temas in all of these tournaments but alas all of them lost..

In F1, I was supporting Ferari, but they could not make to the podium.. :( Though the race was really eventful .. lot of spinning (because of rains and wet track) and only 13 drivers could complete the race. First disappointment of the day.. more were to come.

Asia Cup, India did well to restrict Srilanka below 300, but they could have done better, Had RPSingh caught Jayasuriya when he was at 50. But still the target was totally achievable on a flat pitch that saw targets of 300 chased with ease.
India started off in style with Sehwag in a punishing mood and raced to 74/1 in 9 overs. But then SriLanka used their new bowler (branded as new Murali) and one of the most formidable battling line up collapsed like a pack of cards. The best players of spin had no clue and India lost by huge margin. Another disappointment but the worst was yet to come

Wimbeldon, the castle of Roger was at-last conquered by none other than Nadal. What a game it was.. A truly see-saw battle between two great fighters.. But in the end Roger lost and so does BigV (lost a costly bet). This was a total heart break. Roger was not at his level best but then to he gave a fight to Nadal. And to be truthful I dont line the game of Nadal, Though he is the winner but his game is not as classy as that of Roger, rather it is more of hard work running around and just trying to sent back the return (though he has improved a lot in that as well). On the contrary Roger is pure class, only problem with him being his backhand which is not very strong. And Nadal used this deficiency of Roger to the full extent directing every ball to the champ's backhand. In the end Roger lost and I must say he tried extra hard for each point which deserves accolades. But the bottom line remains "Jo Jita wohi Sikandar" and that was the biggest disappointment of Sunday.

PS: Never want a Sunday like this :(

Skype Rocks

On Saturday, I was successful in my quest of connecting to internet from home. Yes!! At last it was done..

So in the evening I was (voice)chatting with Bunsa through gtalk, when suddenly he came up with the idea of a conference.And as per my knowledge gtalk doesnt support that as of now, so he asked me to install skype. And there after we tried to call a lot other friends as well and started the conference. There were around 7 people me, bunsa, chetan, chandan, sahu, pawan, and Kushagra Sir for some time. Tried to call others as well (atuls, ngles and sajan) but they could not join. But anyway .. it was great to talk to old friends. And then bakar started.

Time seem to melt away and It was same as it wud have been 3 years back in campus in any of our rooms. Amazing environment.. we have not changed at all.. Everything was same as was during campus days.. recollecting memories.. talking about anything and everything. It was amazing. We were in conference for more than 4 hrs. The power of true bakar lies in the fact that u never know how much time u have been bakaring for.. And I had a gr8 time.. Awesome

I am looking forward for more of such conferences. :)

And they won..

I read an article on soccernet at the start of Euro, predicting that this might be the "Year of Spain", so very true... This is the year of Spain.. they were the best team of Euro 08, playing sexy football, top class passing with excellent defending.
I think they have the best midfield with likes of Xavi, Iniesta, Seena, Fabregas...
All the matches they played were really exciting with a possible exception of Italian clash (maybe..) They always showed the intent to attack and score. They were the deserving winners.

And as BigV always says "The game of football should win". It was the case in Euro'08.

Campeonato Europeo de Fútbol Fiebre

Well I tried to compile a list of nicknames of all the 16 teams playing in EURO'08.

Germany Die Mannschaft
Spain La Selección / La Furia Roja / La Roja
Turkey Ay-Yıldızlılar
Russia (None) (USSR Red Army)
Portugal Selecção das Quinas
Czech Republic The Locomotive
Switzerland Nati
Austria Wunderteam
France Les Bleus / Les Tricolores
Italy Azzurri
Netherlands Oranje
Romania Tricolorii
Sweden Blågult
Greece The Pirate Ship
Croatia Vatreni
Poland Biało-czerwoni / Orły

From the name it can be deduced I am supporting La Furia Roja.

Chit chat

have not blogged for past 2 weeks..
reasons..
1. Nothing new
2. Busy weekends (went home and gurgaon)
3. Wanted to write about movies.. but none of them were really worth mentioning except four.

So lets go for movies first..
1) The Forbidden Kingdom .. Must watch for all martial arts movie fans. A deadly cmbo of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, with lot of magic and a reasonably good story. (7/10)
2) K-PAX : Great movie. Amazing story, Kevin Spacey rocks... the central theme is similar to "The man from earth", Just that I didn't like the climax.. (7/10)
3) Zinda : OK types movie, rather much hyped.. The first half is good but the second half does not do justice to the expectations of first half.. and I am dying to see the original (Old Boy). (5/10)
4) Robin Hood: Men in Tights .. Absolute TRASH . Don't watch it (1/10)

Busy weekend.. had a trip to Gurgaon.. the return trip was highly eventful..
Took a cab from Sikandarpur to Mehroli.. and the cab which was designed to hold 8 people was actually having 13 people .. More than the plight of the passengers, I was feeling sympathy for the car.
secondly I got a bus from Mehroli to Noida and drove in bus for around 100 min for just Rs 10. Where is inflation..

As for being busy..
Got a new TV (32inches LCD) Thanks to Sharad.. The place I live has been transformed into a neat clean house. Thanks again to Sharad :)

And lastly really goot article on the names of ASCI Characters :P
http://ascii-table.com/pronunciation-guide.php (Must Read)

8 Things Tag

IronBull has Tagged with this 8 thing tag, so here it goes....

8 things I am passionate about...
1) My machine (thats a cliche)
2) Computer Games (AOE)
3) Manchester United
4) Programming
5) Solving Puzzles
6) Cricket
7) My Guitar.
8) Movies/My Movie Collection.

8 things I want to do before I die...
1) Visit NASA
2) Hack a Real system
3) Write a Deadly virus
4) Visit Old Trafford and watch a game there
5) World Trip
6) Watch IMDB 250
7) Learn Gitar
8) Go regularly to gym.

8 things I say often...
1) Bhokal
2) Vahiyat
3) Pappu
4) Shit Man
5) OMG (Janice style)
6) Fuck
7) Dude
8) Mate

8 books I last read
1) Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
2) Foundation's Edge
3) Narnia Series [7 Books]
4) A Time to Kill
5) The road to Gandolfo
6) Introduction to Algorithm by Coreman
7) Head First Servlets & JSP
8) Head First Design patterns

8 songs I could listen to over and over again... (Most difficult of all, the list is pretty big)
1) Hotel California (Eagles)
2) Johnny B. Goode(Chuck Berry)
3) Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
4) Summer Of '69 Lyrics(Bryan Adams)
5) Lemon Tree Lyrics(Fool's Garden)
6) Seven Nation Army (The White Stripes)
7) Bang Bang - My Baby Shot me down (Nancy Sinatra)
8) Complicated (Avril Lavigne)

Movies last Week

Last week watched 5 movies..Started with
The Bank Job (7/10). I love British movies :) The real punch of the movie is that it is based on a true incident. The movie is not in the league of Italian Job or Oceans 11, but still it can bind you for a period of 2 hrs. The movie is at times funny and thrilling with a couple of entangled stories. There is no or rather very little macho man action but still the pace of movie keeps you occupied all the time. Bottom line .. totally watchable.

27 Dresses (6/10). Stereotype romantic comedy. Totally predictable from the word GO! Katherine Heigl the protagonist is cute and acted well Also James Marsden has done a good job and the two central characters have supported each other well (especially during the dance sequence :P). The movie is at times humorous with cheeky lines, bust the best part is the song "Bennie and the Jets".

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (8/10) WOW, I watched this movie with lot of expectations and was not disappointed at all, Narration was kool, Cheeky lines, good humor. Val Kilmer rocks and so does Robert Downey Jr. and Michelle Monaghan. Not as great as pulp fiction but still worth all the time. The movie is fast, thrilling and humorous. Bottom line watch it asap.

The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep (8/10) Kid Movie with amazing CGI, I really loved the movie. The best part of movie is the story telling with incidents of past sprayed all over the movie making it a more relaxing experience more similar to the thought train of normal humans :) Also timely humor which was blended rally well with the story. The next best part was the CGI monster himself/herself. Really a great experience.

Equilibrium (8/10) The action dose of the week, One can study the gun fire trajectory and using mathematics and simulation can improve his killing rate by 120%. Man I love this. If that is so why not teach it to everybody why there is only one who can kill the rest... Anyway the movie is a real treat for action loving junta with really amazing action sequences. The movie is based on some futuristic society developed so that humans have no emotion so that they can not harm each other and so on. Also worth watching is Christian Bale's acting, the slow evolution of emotions on his face as the movie progresses. Bottom line.. Must watch for action loving sci-fi oriented people


PS. Rajasthan Royals won IPL. (Without doubt the Best team of the tournament won).. Waiting for Euro to start

Mumbai Out...

Mumbai Indians.. They started by spending a lot of money and creating a team with was not outstanding by T20 standards.. I was supporting it because GOD was there but alas he played just half of the tournament.
Start of IPL for MI was ominous for two reasons No GOD and Harbhajan Singh as captain.. I don't have any reservations against bhajji but when they have Pollock/ Jayasuriya in their team why go for bhajji. Anyway MI los first 4 of their ties.
Then came the famous slapping incident and bhajji went out.. Pollock became captain and MI improved.. GOD returned and MI won 6 games in a row..
And during the final phase of the tournament they chocked... Lost to Mohali by 1 run, lost to Delhi with 2 balls remaining and then lost to Jaipur on last ball. making it 3 losses in a row..
Had it been once you can call it luck but losing thrice, means you have a habit of choking.. bottom line MI out and deservedly so..

I went to watch game between Delhi and Mumbai .. and the takeaway from the game was FerozShah Kotla Stadium sucks.. They don't even have an electronic score card. For me the whole game can be summed up in 1 equation
Mr X is bowling to Mr Y and the ball is fielded by Mr Z. Most of the time you will not know who X,Y and Z are. Each time you try to guess the batsman might be this or that then try to solve the puzzle looking at the primitive scoreboard, so the game was more of solving Identify the personality and less of cricket..
And lastly management was so very poor, that It took us nearly 30 min to leave our seats and come to the main road. simply pathetic was the arrangements.. Bottom line Cricket is much better a watch at home.

Heroes of Might and Magic V

Recently got hold of Heroes of Might and Magic V, This is a really good strategy based 3-D game, with amazingly good graphics. The game may not be in league of WarCraft in terms of the campaign story but it is not bad either. Right now I am playing those campaigns only and For that I am eagerly waiting for the weekend so that I can play the game for whole day.

The game has this novel concept of time, where a hero can move a particular distance only on a particular day. So the player need to plan each move of the hero and how to pass on resources to him. so this game is a pure strategy game no need to be fast with keyboard.

Also during battle one can control each character completely. be it hero or his army. And they fight in a very civilized manner where each unit is given a turn to hit. and they can hit anybody they like.

So If one thinks he is a true strategist.. he must give it a shot.

P.S. Going to watch delhi take on mumbai on friday. Hoping to see GOD in action...