@rgumental @dvisor

Another one from our B-tech batch losing his bachelor status.. My project partner (a.k.a partner in fraud ) Ibrahim getting married on Jan-6.. He's special in many ways.. -- Only student in perhaps the entire NITC history to have his home nearer than hostel from class.( his home is couple of plots behind Mamachan) -- Even with that proximity , he took a room in hostel with the intention of studying :-) -- He studied quite a bit..And at the end of 4th year, he became an expert in FIFA-2000 :-) . -- NITC Football captain with a rather awesome victory streak in Calicut league :-). -- Now enrolled in M-tech @IITK, he aspires to come back to NITC and join there as a lecturer few years down the lane..I sincerely wish he succeeds in that. ( Hopefully he won't read this post :-) ) His wedding ( or rather reception ) gives me another opportunity to visit NITC Campus..I'm off to Calicut on coming saturday eve... Last time I visited college was in Feb-07 for Raagam .. Heard ...

When do you realize that you are going through a bad patch ? -- When you take a wrong turn at a very familiar traffic junction.. -- When you get problems from the least expected sources.. -- When things which you'll normally do within an hour takes you about one day.. -- You blog when you should be sleeping.. -- When everything that u do hit one roadblock or other.. -- When you forget things that you should be remembering -- When even your cellphone fails ( My motoming is getting switched off automatically once in a while..any pointers to probable reasons?? ) Suggested solutions by various people -- Take a beer :-) ..( New yr party coming up :-) ) -- Be professional..Do one task at a time and be focussed on it.. ( I try to do that ..but in the long run, man is not a machine ) -- Assume nothing is wrong..Do things the way you do ( Thats a good one..but things will go on till one thing or other...

This is a unique place in the road-map of Bangalore ..or even in India.. The unique features of this place .. 1) This is a four-way junction under a flyover and over an under-pass with 8 roads , 2 each in each direction , all one-ways with well visible & working signals..Technically a well-thought about and well-designed traffic plan - an extremely rare piece of engineering in India perhaps .. 2) 90% of the people don't bother about the signals at this place.. Even if the signal is green, you'll have to look to all four directions and then take your vehicle. All are alike i n breaking signals at this place..bike riders, auto-wallahs , bus/car/lorry - drivers and even cyclists. 3) Only place where you can see vehicles taking all possible directions and U-turns simultaneously even if the signal is red . -- See the snap of this place..Taken at a time when there is not much traffic..but you can still see vehicles moving in all directions.. I'll upload another one once I ...

Scott Adams comes back to the IIT topic again..See the latest strip @ http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071210.html ( Link Will be active for about a month ) .. The intern Ashok claims to have learned "Guided Reincarnation & Advanced Shape Shifting " ( Phew !! ) @ IIT .. Some of Dilbert's best IIT linked comic strips can be located @ http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~ajitb/dilbert.html People have varying opinions about this IIT aspect in Dilbert..Some say it is a testimony to the success of the IIT system...Some say he's being sarcastic beyond a limit.. But either way, it is a good stress-reliever :-) .. Ajith

I keep getting this question again & again from various quarters..professors, friends, relatives, acquaintances .. when they hear that I'm studying management.. Recently a lady whom I knew during Pre-degree popped the same question " Why I didnt study Computer science/Technical Stream further ? " .. The reasons are a lot.. I'm describing it in a nutshell below. These views/experiences are extremely personal and if it offends anyone studying technical stream/ Computer science, sorry for that... 1) A good portion of research in Computer Science happens in areas which does not have the potential to do any immediate benefit to human beings..I mean, algorithms, theory of computation, graph theory etc..Even if you theoretically establish something new, it may take generations for it to be of any good use to an average human being... And I'm not that innovative or extra-ordinarily talented to something really path-breaking ... 2) A good amount of thesis work in...

I see a lot of interesting books and DVD's on Amazon's site.. And quite a lot of them are not available in book-stalls in b'lore like Landmark.. How is Amazon's reliability over these online purchases ? I've stayed away from that mode of purchase after an irritating experience with Indiatimes .. And anyday, I'd prefer going to a huge bookstall like Landmark/Crosswords rather than buying online because of that atmosphere.. But, maybe owing to low demand, lot of books & DVD's are not available even in these top-class stores in India.. So, I'm thinking of trying Amazon.. If any of you are regular/one-time customers of amazon, could you please comment here or mail to ajithprasadb - at - gmail.com over their reliability/speed of delivery etc in India.. Thanks Ajith

See how a Wall-street investment banker addresses the queries of Ms. Pretty . Have to appreciate her honesty though :) . Isnt it ? I thought of drawing a2x2 matrix over this..But would be an overkill.. :-) . Ajith

In this age of social-networking , most of us would have got some survey links from friends who are doing their MBA courses.. Now,there is an interesting thing about these surveys..They are not just random questions. An ideal marketing survey is supposed to give you responses using which you should be able to derive some quantitative stats..There is a lot of thought process that goes into ( or, it is supposed to :) ) this question setting phase.. Leaving out the quantitative/marketing side, whenever one is conducting an interview the set of questions that he/she is asking should be ideal.. Often lot of interviews that come in top-notch magazines convey very little information..Infact an interview can be most useful only if the interviewee & interviewer are well prepared..And today, I came across such an interview . Thats a link in which Rashmi Bansal ( founder - jammag.com, IIMA alumnus ) interviews an IITB-IIMB alumnus Vibhor Agarwal , who quit his AT K...

This is about a venture started by two of my seniors ( Jeswin & Hemchand ) of NITC( erstwhile CREC ) - 02 batch. The venture is http://www.skillda.com . Its a professional networking site like Linked In.. However,I think they'll have to progress much to be anywhere near Linked In. If this attains a good critical mass, I guess they can think of selling this to Naukri/Monster etc ( just a personal opinion ) .. Anyway, worth a look right now..They have done the web-interface reasonably well and its pretty fast...Though don't expect much on the job/career front from that now.. But definitely worth a look :-) Another venture owned by my immediate senior Zerin, an IIML passout is http://www.indigoedge.com/ ..This has been there for a while. Interesting Times !!!! Ajith

One of my friends pointed me to these you-tube links of an old Malayalam movie - Devasuram . One of my all-time favorites in Malayalam.. This rekindled lot of memories...I regard the lead character of this movie, Mangalassery Neelakantan played by Mohan Lal as perhaps the most masculine characterization in a malayalam movie ever.. Unlike the superhuman / super-action hero based movies which came after this, Neelakantan / Neelan is a typical character having his own vices ( perhaps a lot of them ) .. And it is these vices & mistakes in his life that adds more than a human touch to the story line.. There is a subtle distinction between masculineness and unrealistic superheros ..And perhaps this is best illustrated by Neelan & Karthikeyan ( the role played by Lal in the sequel to this movie - Ravanaprabhu ) ... Karthikeyan in Ravanaprabhu is portrayed as an invincible super action hero.. But Neelakantan in Devasuram is essentially human.. Yet reckless, brave & intense .. ...

Earlier this week, I got this link from a friend. It tells about an incident where customs authorities seized some containers at Cochin, which were supposed to contain brown paper mix, but actually contained municipal waste from NewYork.. These are a few more subsequent links from other media [1] , [2] and [3] . The third link cites the name of the company which 'exported' this waste as 'Belsun Corp' . I dug in a little bit into this using Google. I couldn't find the any website for this 'Belsun Corp'. However, this link gives details about its operations in NewYork. It seems it has been in operations since 2000 ( How much Garbage would they have 'exported' to India ?? ) . However, the striking thing is that its president seems to be an Indian ( Sanjay Kedia ) .A google search on Sanjay Kedia listed threw even more interesting results . Now, there is no way that we can conclusively establish that the 'infamous' Sanjay Kedia...

Q uoting the ubiquitous Masala news paper - TOI report about Vidya Balan , " does she have anyone special? Nobody. That’s because most of the people I work with are either married or have girlfriends. So I guess I will have to look outside the industry more sincerely, she says." .... Well..by any chance is she lo oking towards software sector :-) ? .. Also read this link too. Quoting TOI again "I've been single for too long:Vidya" ... Tempting ..Isn't it ? PS - I love the way these people report and make masala news :-) PPS - Current music - " Pal pal pal pal ...... " Ajith

Couldn't resist posting about this.. Got a mail in NITC alumni group about the 'code of conduct' published recently in NITC..The document link is this Some quotable quotes from the pdf .. 1. " Students are expected to spend their free time in the Library/Reading Room. They shall not loiter along the verandahs or crowd in front of the offices or the Campus roads. Students should refrain from sitting on places such as parapets, stairs, footpaths etc" -- Sitting in Raj-path & "looking around" used to be one of the favorite time pass of NITC'ians (or CREC'ians ) from long time back itself.. I wonder who's going to enforce this.. Are they going to appoint someone who'll chase out the students from Raj-Path in a typical school master style ? 2. "NITC Campus is a “Smoking free Campus”. " -- I didnt know that :) ..I'm not a smoker, but I really don't find anything wrong in someone smoking within their confines...

This thing came at a moment when I’m nurturing an idea of blog-based media business. And I couldn’t afford to miss this. Too many cooks spoil the broth.. And spoiling is catalyzed when the cooks are individually great, but kind of fiercely independent .. This started with a topic something like this – “Media, for public good or for business“. The first 10 minutes was something like a typical IMS / TIME GD with some individually great speakers, who spoke great from their perspective, but lot divergent from the central theme.. Perhaps an exception was Business World head Jehangir Pocha Not surprisingly, Arnab Goswami of Times-Now, was quite pro-business.. In between Arnab’s speech, I tend to get a doubt whether this is an extempore or a discussion :) . News channels and news media are basically businesses – Not something that I can digest completely -- with morality and ethics in which they should operate. Even his examples of one-off instances of...

Finally I got to operate an iphone.. And man..what a device..No wonder ppl queued up in front of Apple stores to buy this .. The safari browser, video/audio quality, touchpad keyboard, image quality...everything.. all looks too good.. So, my next phone has to be this or Google should come out with their G-phone soon :)

The picture shows my latest collection from Landmark.. Thanks to my team mates for gifting me Landmark coupon as a b'day gift :) . Any opinion / comments about any of these books are welcome.. The books are 1) India after Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha -- Heard lot of good reviews..And I being a history buff couldn't neglect it :) . Supposed to be an authoritative book on Independent India .. 2) The McKinsey Mind by Ethan Rasiel and Paul Friga .. -- Any comments from any MBA grads / students ?? 3) The Mind of a Strategist by Kenichi Ohmae -- Suggested umpteen times by our strat-management professor Rishikesha Krishnan.. When u admire the classes of a teacher so much, its quite natural that u'll end up buying these .. Finally I bought it after the term got over :) 4) Life of Pi by Yann Martel -- I know its quite popular, but haven't had the opportunity to read it yet.. 5) The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli ...

Sponsored Review : Online Casino Blue Book Have you ever wondered why people are addicted to gambling ? When you see James Bond movies like Casino Royale , where people splurge cash like anything , have you wondered whether this level of a gambling really happens ? The answer is a resounding yes... And the site that I'm reviewing has got lot to do with being a gateway to online gambling :) Best things that I liked about this site 1. The simple game explanations.. Baccarat , black jack , poker ..and so on -- When Daniel Craig won Poker in Casino Royale, how many of us truly understood that game ? Hunting for online tutorials is a pain..These people have a nice intro to all those popular casino games.. No matter what people say, I love learning card games .. And whenever I get some free time, I'm going to learn these things.. 2. Online Casino Links -- I don't have money or credit to gamble.. Hence I cannot test those..But they have a seemingl...

I knew my blog is reasonably popular..But I didnt know that its popular enough for web-masters to get their site reviewed through my blog..Sometime ago I signed up in ReviewMe! , partly out of curiosity , partly because I had some free time.. Yesterday, someone placed an offer through ReviewMe!, to review their site through my blog..And the promised amount is 20$ .. ( which is almost equivalent to 800/- Rs ) .. Just curious about this particular site..Has anyone tried ReviewMe! before ? And do they pay as they promise ? Their payment terms promise that once the total amount that they owe us crosses 25$, they will pay..Now for thats just completing this review and scouting for another review through their site...But still skeptical about their payouts..Anybody had any prior experience with this ? Please comment here or mail me if you had any experience with ReviewMe! . Anyway I'm giving a shot..Will be putting up the site review soon.. Ajith

Last week one of my friends was talking to me about the insane levels of stress that the IT professionals go through in their profession...Yes, at times this profession is demanding..and this cubicle life has kind of transformed the friendships and networks that we otherwise build over a glass of beer or a stroll in the park into different domains like Orkut & Facebook, where ppl are more or less doing a kind of virtual interaction.. Ofcourse there are immense benefits for these social networking sites, but then the shift from real life to online life has more or less happened with the Gen-X .. Now how you handle your wellbeing in this online life ? While drawing up plans for your day-today life, realize that you are a human..not a machine..Because if you plan things like 6 - 9 PM movie, 9 - 10 PM Tech design review or something like that, the probability that you screw up the review is very high..Because at the end of the movie, your mind might not be in a comfortable state t...

Caution :- Heavy technology – business related article.. Quite long too.. People who are not interested, please skip .. This is an article which can bring brickbats or bouquets to me some time later :) Over the last few months, blogosphere has been abuzz with news about a mobile phone that Google is about to launch. The frenzy over this so called G-phone has reached such proportions that people have started coming out with imaginary designs of the G-phone.. Being someone who is extremely interested in this search – revenue related Google business or rather g-business, I’ve too joined the group by launching a g-phone blog and hoping to rake in some ad-revenues :) .. However, this post is not just about speculation ..This post is about some facts of the search industry and why does it make sense for Google to get into mobile phone related business . The Search – Revenue Entangle Some people laugh at Google’s pay-per-click policy. And most of us can count usin...

This is a kind of different 'tag' which I came across last month.. Cuckoo is interviewing people based on their blogs..When I signed in for the interview, I thought it was going to be very superficial..But she dug up and read many of my long forgotten blogposts and had questions based on that.. Really when someone spend such time and effort on your blogs, you ought to give as detailed answers as possible.. :) ... Only difference on this tag from my side is that I'm not going to interview you ppl as a continuation of the tag..This requires a lot of time, which unfortunately I dont have ... So, anybody who is interested in having such an interview, please contact Cuckoo herself ... But believe me, you'll enjoy the interview.. So, here it goes.. =================================================== Good Morning Mr. Ajith Prasad. If you don't mind I will call you Ajith. Well, before we start, let me put a few things a little straight to you. As you know I would be taki...

Learning from the past:- " The problem in trying to be perfect or atleast posing to be near-perfect is that one mistake would crush up that entire edifice .. And it would be a pain to recover. " .. Recent Learning:- " The problem in being imperfect is that you might get blamed for mistakes happening around you because of your imperfect nature even-though you are not responsible for it ". Current Mood :- Philosophic & Confused.

An old comedy scene from a mallu-movie in the 1980s... Seldom has Lal acted like this in recent times.. Non-Mallus, please excuse.. Ask your mallu friend to see this and explain it to you.. Mallus , Enjoy!!!!

Have you ever tried going back to your high-school for Independence day celebrations ? I did that today..Was lazing at home for the last couple of days.. So, just thought of going to my School ( N.S.S High School Calicut ) for independence day.. And it was a different experience..Standing near the school assembly,hearing the band set, national anthem etc..Phew...It has been 9 years since I passed out of this institution ( 98 SSLC batch ).. And when you go back to such a place , nostalgia will strike you quite heavy..I go there once in a while,but this trip was special.. Some of the teachers who taught me are still there..One of my classmates is a teacher there now..It was quite nostalgic when teachers recollect the experiences they had with us.. It seems they too miss us sometimes. :) .. There was nothing extraordinary about this school..But yet, it is quite special to me..Its a school which gave me lot of freedom..I remember one of the prime activities during my 9...

An idea which came to my mind around 6 - 7 months ago finally culminated in this => BlogPane . I and my friend Antony Jerome in our spare time worked on this and today we are presenting you a tool to keep in touch with your college alumni and students who are into the blogosphere . Blogpane is a javascript application which fetches the blog URLs of your college alumni and students from a centralized DataBase and presents before you it in a Tree format. Look at the Sidebar of this page and see the 'blog directories' of NITC and IIMK - two colleges which I'm part of.. To know more about blogpane, please visit our homepage ..There is much more to this product than being a simple Javascript application.. Its integrated with RSS ( Not Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, but Really Simple Syndication ) and the benefits are much more.. No hassles like registering on a site or creating usernames or anything like that..Few clicks, you are on a different plane in blogos...

Got this from a friend..I couldnt resist posting it. Its an award winning Indian - Ad for a cause. Don't miss it . Ajith

Taking up a tag after a long time..Now reasons for this 1) The blogger with the most innovative blog-name has tagged me .. 2) Time is 8.30 PM.. I got to wait till 9.00 here...( No..I'm not waiting for any date ) . 3) I want to wake up some ppl who are having some serious writer's block by tagging them :) . 4) Long time I've tried creative writing :) Rules : 1) Put down 8 random / weird / habitual facts about yourself.. 2) Tag eight ppl 3) Ask, bug, coax , bully them into taking up this tag :) There was a similar tag which I took up sometime back ..And I'm putting the first point as a copy paste from that because thats one of the most weird things about me Point 1:) I hate jackfruit like anything.. I can't even stand its smell.. I've tried many times to tide over this.. This smell itself gives vomiting tendencies to me...I dont know why Point 2:) Someway or other, there is an opinion among my cousins that I have lot of girl friends..I ve...

The most awaited gadget of the year / perhaps the decade , hits US markets on this friday - June - 29th at 6 PM . Below is a link to review of apple i-phone from Walter Mossberg. Apple I-phone Review . After seeing the video ( I cannot embed it here..Go to that link and see it ) , my impression is .. " This is really something very good " . I wonder when it'll be available atleast in the grey markets of Delhi and B'lore :) , Not to buy at the first go..but atleast to check it out. ( PS:- Apple's Safari - 3 browser was made available for windows about one month ago.. I tried it out.. Looks kill, but bugs also kills you :) .. It seemed to be a classic example of beauty without brains. ) Ajith

For the last couple of dayz, my gtalk status message has been "Extremely Busy", and believe me, I've been really busy. I don't think I've worked this much in the recent times... On a co-incidental note, I found that many of my friends in gtalk have status messages in a similar sense.. In addition to the usual"very busy" & " do not disturb" messages, some of them read (i) "Making me work is Cruel" (ii) " Not @ all Available " (iii) " Ping only in case of extreme emergencies " (iv) "Work is worship, but sometimes hardship too " (v) " Bugs bugging me too much " -- I notice that the number of people with such status messages have got way too high over the last week.. I know its a crazy thought, but has this 'too-much busy' schedules got to do anything with the increased duration of day-time ?? 3rd week of June has the longest days in an year..And today(June - 21 )...

Following is a video showing a typical new-joinee's first day in Aditi technologies. :) Atleast for enjoying this , how about joining there once ? ( PS:- Another off-track news.. This years IIT JEE topper is looking for a girl friend ..All the eligible single ladies, wanna giv a try ??? ) Ajith

Some people just refuse to change Link1 :- 5 HIV+ students shown door from a school . When will people change ? I feel very bad reading this report.. The stigma associated with HIV casting its shadow upon kids less than 11 years old.. And that too the ostracization coming from educated people from a state supposed to be among the most literate ones in India... Link 2:- Guruvayoor Purification You can play the devotional songs of Yesudas in a temple.. but you cannot allow him inside the temple.. If a child's grand-mother happens to be a Christian, the temple should be purified after the Child's entry to the temple...These are some of the 'rules' @ Guruvayoor. Disgusting to hear such news really.. Though I'm no communist in a classical sense, I'm a great admirer of A.K Gopalan and K . Kelappan for their struggle to throw open the temple gates to people...

This book really kept me engrossed for quite some time..I wanted to read it again before writing a review..But, didnt get enough time or patience to do that... 'Snow' ( Turkish - 'Kar' ,which explains the title of this post) by Orhan Pamuk is a classic.. It deals with different faces of conflict between Islam ( both political and Radical ) and Westernism.. Philosophic at times, yet smooth .. a bit dry in the middle, yet interesting enough to keep us hooked.... Its also a romantic tragedy..It has its own lighter moments, though very few and far in between.. The story is set in the town of 'Kars' in North-Eastern Turkey.. Now, why Turkey becomes the center of such a islamic-western conflict ? Lets go back into a bit of History.. A brief History Turkey was the land of 'Caliphate' or in other worlds, Turkish ( Ottoman ) Sultans were considered to be the religious head of Muslims all over the world..India's 'Khilafat' movement traces its r...

I think I'm thinking a bit too much about my work nowadays.. Yesterday after work, I went to a hotel lost in thought and ordered "2 porotta and a compilation schema ( a technical term used in my work ) " .. I don't know how that word came to me then..The waiter had a puzzled look..Fortunately I realized my mistake and quickly changed it to a veg-curry.. I hope I don't do anything more stupid like this :( :( :( Current mood :- Embarrassed Immediate diagnosis :- I'm just back from a totally drenched up trip from Ooty last weekend ( We went to botanical gardens there and heavy rains started in 10 minutes ) ..So its not a problem with lack of outing.. Maybe I should get a few new books or see some funny movies. Ajith

Dedicated to all bachelors who r bored of hotel food , who live in an utopia dreaming of marrying a girl who knows cooking, who still keep sms recipes from parents,who do a bit of phone-cooking , and to all spinsters who dream of impressing their future hubbies, or even married guys and gals who r still going out to hotels for dinner, see www.pachakam.com ( For the non-mallus, Pachakam is the malayalam word of cooking )... PS:- I dont think I'm gonna improve in this department even after stumbling upon this site as I'm too lazy to invest any time into this now. Maybe if I get a gal who knows cooking, why unnecessarily waste time now ? Or even-if I don't get, we'll learn together :) ... My mother trained me for about two months continuously in cooking , and yet I'm still the same :) PPS:- Experiment at your own risk..I dont have any connection to the pachakam site.. And yeah, I do have a mail forward of some 100 recipes..If anyone wants, I can 4ward that.:) Ajith

A bit late to put this up.. I was @ Vizag as I mentioned in this post on the 'Abhiwarya' wedding day - April 20 , for another marriage and some sightseeing...Vizag , situated on eastern coast of India is the head-quarters of Eastern Naval Command.. Landed there at around 1 PM..The view that u get from the aero plane above Vizag is awesome.. A serpentine coastline abutting several hills, a magnificent four lane beach road , naval and cargo ships...Unfortunately , no photos of that [:(].. We stayed at Rushikonda, about 8 - 10 KM away from the city, in a beach resort.. ( Punnami beach resort ) .. This snap shows the view from the hotel room where we stayed.. Isnt it beautiful ? .. This place is simply awesome. I'd recommend it to anyone.. About the hotel, only the location is good..food is not good, neither the service, despite being a 3-star ( they claim so ) .. Yours truly slipped on the beach sand that got carried to our hotel corridor and had a wound on my lower jaw...