Spear and Nib

Two more things that i did to idle out my time. Inkscape rocks for me so far
                                                         

         

Ancient tried and tested Weapon!!
[ Could not get the overlap of the spears perfect, still Inkscape illiterate!!]



The Nib is mighter than the spear....-Deepak ;-)

Inkscape and me

After getting throughly inspired by Mahesh bhat's art....and also because i was amazed by what he could churn out using free tools, i too tried my luck with inkscape. and  this is the result. I dont know if it worth a dime... to others...but i like my first inkscape creation..

 I will not say that i could understand everything with inkscape, but i could grasp a couple of things here and there, like drawing lines and terms like fill, stroke gradiant....and how you can make rounded rectangles etc etc. But then there is a very long way to go. I am still stuggling to merge diffent strokes ( ex. each of the eye hair patterns is drawn separately)....Let me see how long this interests me :-).

Two more CCM's ( Cost Cutting Measures)

My friend Govind also known as GMW had written a real hilarious post emphasising the measures to cut costs being taken at our company (RAT). Since, I too work for RAT and also know AppuKuttan a.k.a AK who is notorious for having recuited me ( Rumors are that after he recuited me he never got a promotion!!), I wanted to inform you folks about two new measures that AK took after GMW wrote the post.

Eine

The where rumors that AK has been thrown out of his house by his one and only wife, because he could not clean up the garage on a sunday. While we were all sympathizing and trying to help AK by cleaning up his garage which had everything from the first toy that AK had, to the rolling pin used by his wife for various other purposes apart from making chappathis.

   It seems that only when we did this cleaning that AK had a brainwave, ( It is a mystery as to how he can have a brainwave, and our folks are trying to investigate hard....standby for the news ). Next day, the canteen sported a handwritten poster ( remember we have stopped printing....to save trees and costs associated!!)

                                                                           " Garbage Sale"
               There are a lot of used and unused items in the office inventory. These items are no
               more being used by anyone and hence, there shall be an auction to sell these. ....
               blah blah...


Even before i could finish the whole poster ideas started running through my brains ...
The only unused items I was really aware of in the office was the brains of most of our "so called" managers. Are they for sale? Who will buy them ?

thankfully the lower part of the poster clarified a little bit more

               Items for sale :
              1. Tubelights, bulbs --> We are using only candles remember!!
              2. Toilet paper      --> Being indians we should use our ancient methods of
                 answering       nature calls. Also RAT will promote this under the"Connect with our
               Nature" program. However, for visitors coming from other centers we shall provide
                used Newspaper.

"Oh my god...Newspaper...there will be news all over thier xxtt...Jesus.".i gasped. Even then i could not connect to the nature in this rare way...
            
              3. Calculators   --> We will be providing abacuses for those missing the calculators
                 badly.
              4. Toilet taps, sinks etc --> These used items are no more needed due to clause (2)
                 above...so please grab them

I could imagine myself grabbing the toilet taps and sinks after reading the last one....And even before i could get back to my senses, GMW appeared from the door and said, "Hey do you know they have put another notice in the cafeteria below"....

Zwei

GMW on the way to the lower floor of our office, asked me..."Hey tell me do you think we should bid for the toilet paper, maybe we can find a method to use it in our printers!!....". " Why not...How about purchasing all the bulbs too, we can smash them on Appukuttan's head" , and i am sure we can start a game in our Friday Parties...similar to darts !!', I said in frustration....

The notice said that all the telephones will hence be used only as intercoms. To make any call outside the office we were expected to use the coin phone which was put near the entrance of the cafe. I just glanced to see two repairmen fixing a dirty yellow box which looked like a coin phone. The notice also mentioned that this coin phone was unique and would work only with even fifty paise coins. I smirked and said, "GMW, with the salary they give us do they expect us to carry one rupee coins!!. Man thats a lot of money. ". Also, it was written below in bold that people are expected to use voice modulation as often as possible instead of intercom as that would ensure that our voices where always bold and strong!!.

And finally as i moved to the coffee machine i saw that power cable was disconnected, and a paper stuck near a handle which seemed to be a new attachement, which said...

" Move handle to grind beans and get coffee powder. This machine gives only black coffee..."
Note: The above only holds if the user adds coffee beans. Water is provided free of cost until further notification
                                                                                                                        -- Appukuttan

GMW winked and poured some coffee beans which he had managed to flick before Appukuttan got the bright idea, and I moved the handle...Well, This cup of coffee is definitly not everyones

Its a matter of a few letters!!

It was bold and clear "356C KEMPEGOWDA BUS STAND" in front of the bus. The cool Vajra bus had finally increased the font of the text that they display on the LED board which helps the commuters to know the route the bus is planning to take and which stops can they alight off the bus.  However, it was not just the new large font that had grabbed my attention.As the text scrolled i suddenly was shocked to see a new destination which i was unaware of till now :-). It read " ELECTONIC CITY".

For those how have not noticed it yet...Yes, the "R" is missing the word "Electronic City". Though it might have been a bit wierd situation if i had to explain the spelling mistake to someone new in the city, I still was content that there were a few other embedded engineers who were suffering the disease of mispelling words. But then, we all know about the study which showed that people could still interpret a word as long as the first and the last letters were spelled correct,which make "Electonic" == "Electronic". ( Sorry for abuse of the "C" syntax ).

So as lng as u r able to undrstd this line and not plnning to take prt in a spelldown contst it dos nt mattr if u eat a few lettrs...wht say?

ScribeFire - A useful Firefox plugin

The two most versatile tools or let me call it "Software Tool suites" I have come across so far in my  IT career are eclipse and Firefox. The former is a extremely extensible IDE for a multitude of languages and also has features to extend its functionality immensely. The latter is an extremly cool browser which probably will soon become the most widely used browser, especially after the recent security alert sounded by Microsoft.

Though blogging is still very new to me, i tried to explore what are the tools available to ease this experience. And guess what, I found atlest half a dozen tools that are meant to enhance your experience on the internet. I smiled at myself and thought, hey how about if my browser could support this ? I would have a single window to do everything. I tried to search the firefox plugins which could help me with my blogging. ScribeFire is one of the plugins i found and right now i am typing this in the scribefire window.

ScribeFire has a bunch of features likes storing your blogs as drafts so that you can upload them later, read previous blogs, create new categories for your blog and do a lot of formatting etc. F8 is the default hot key for this plugin. You can choose the options page and set your preferences. The setup is one time so you need not bother about keying in your login Id and Password everytime. However, you might not want to do this incase your pc is being used by multiple users, though the settings are profile dependent i believe. Providing links and attaching pictures as painful as a mouse click.

Hence, for those like me who love to have everything packaged into one tool and also are trying the waters of blogging, Scribefire is a very good option.

"CRISIS" - Can we get behind it?

"Crisis", this 6-lettered word never seems to vanish from the life on an average Indian. Though scores of years have passed since the National flag flew over the red fort, yet we still live in a state of uncertainity. In the the early years after independence, we suffered from Food and Financial Crisis. Thanks to the the Green revolution and operation flood, we do not have to depend for our food needs on other countries greatly today.

When our young nation was just about beginning to stand on its own feet, we had to get into war's with our neighbours. India, with its Non-Alignment stand did not buy it any support from western nations. The only thing that follows a war is Economic Crisis. As we struggled with our economy, we some how mananged our industries and slowly started to grow. From Only Ambassadors and Premier Padmini's we started pampering ourselves with Maruthi's.

On our way through the 90's and 2000's India came a long way, but not without its share of problems. Be it the Hindu-Muslim conflict that bled us more than once or the 1993 serial bomb-blasts in Mumbai. We had a security crisis as more and more infiltrations started to happen through our highly porous borders. As power changed hands at the Center, but not as much as an ear was lent to the warnings issued time and again about the defence problems and lack of political support in eradicating illegal inflitration.


The latest crisis being the economic crisis with started in the west and when everyone was about to say that it will not effect us, we find ourselves looking at our plunging sharemarket and wonder if we are really insulated from it. The Terror-Attacks in Mumbai last week shows that we are now facing a new type of crisis and this is the security crisis. A common man no more can be sure that he will be returning home safe because there are a whole bunch of terrorists sitting somewhere planning and plotting to ensure that maximum damage can be caused to human life and property. Though it is quite meaningless to argue what could and should have been done, The question which is worth giving a thought is how long should we continue with this. Is there no end to the common man's perils ? Does living under one or the other crisis a part and parcel of being born in India.

I dont believe that. I trust that we have the right to build our destiny. We are as much to blame for all the crisis as the government or any other agency. If it were not for our turing a blind eye towards these problems they would not have loomed over us as catasthropes...We can get all these crises behind us only if we are willing to do the right things at the right times.....