Delicious Bookmarks

Ever wondered how to keep an online list of all the sites you have bookmarked, so you can access it from anywhere in the Internet?? Well, there is something called "Delicious". Seriously, it is called delicious, and it indeed is!!! I have been using it for some months now, and I find it very very convenient all the time. Next time, I don't need to enter those keywords in Google and search for that great site I visited - I just log in to my free delicious account, and there it is - just a click away!!!

Try it. You can also look into other's public bookmarks. Ok, if you don't know what am I referring to - it simply means that you can categorize all your bookmarks into public and private. Public includes general info sites etc which you don't mind sharing with the whole world, and private.... well, as the name suggests, its "private" and confidential, so that you need to log in with your password to view those... Simple, right?? Yes, it is.... You can also create a network of delicious accounts with your friends, colleagues, to make bookmark sharing even more easier.

You can access my public bookmarks in delicious from here.

Please note: This is not an advertisement or anything. I am just posting a tool which I find useful everyday... Look for posts with tag as "tools" in my blog. I'll be adding new posts every now and then.

First Anniversary at Work

Today marks the completion of 1 year in my company!!! So yay :) !!! I remember I was so excited, like a small kid, when going to office for the first time!!! And, no doubt, I have enjoyed my 1 year here - have learned so many things, made new friends....

So, I can say, I am truly "celebrating work"!!!

My First Date with Canon PowerShot 570 IS

Last monday, I bought a Canon PowerShot 570IS for my parents from U.S. Didn't get time to try it out that much. Today, I took the camera along when I was leaving for lunch. Had gone to "All Stir Fry" (ESquare, Pune). Didn't have too many subjects to shoot, but one photo came out really well (atleast, according to me :) )....

The ceiling was a transparent one, with water flowing over it.

tAg cLoUD foR blOGGer :)

For a few days now, I was searching for some widget / utility for tag clouds. I somehow don't like the label list which is present, by default, in blogger. When I googled for it, I came across one such utility. I then made some changes in the template's html code, and voila!!! I have a tag cloud of my own in my blog!!! Great!!! It took me some time to change the colors etc according to my original template, but that was a mere 5 minutes work...

Its a piece of cake to make the changes. Just follow the instructions mentioned in the webpage. Click here to see the instructions :)

Durga Puja Celebrations in Pune

Durga puja is one thing, every Bengali looks forward to... And I am no exception to that... This year, I had a chance to visit some of the "pujos" in Pune, and believe me, they were wonderful. Here are a couple of pics I had taken last night ("navami").

This photo was taken at Durgotsav celebrations at Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC). I remember this puja from the days I was in school way back in 90s. Combined with cultural events organized by AFMC's own students and teachers, it makes you feel at home.

After AFMC, I visited Koregaon Park. Completely covered in white, the goddess looked radiant. This pujo reminded me of the decorations in Kolkata's pujo pandals....

My trip to Goa earlier this year

This April, I had visited Goa, and had the opportunity to capture its beauty with my camera... These photos are some of those that were taken on the second day of my stay there.

Dona Paula near Panaji. I had last visited it when I was 5 years old, but the place still looks the same. I loved the way the colors of the leaves showed up in the photo.

View from the top at Dona Paula

This is where we had our lunch. The place is called "Sea Pebbles". Lovely sea food.

A view from "Sea Pebbles": Can you see my friend Lijo sitting there???

A yatch on our way to Panaji

Aguada Fort

Lighthouse at Aguada Fort

View from Aguada Fort

Orkut or Facebook?

I have been using Orkut for more than year, and came in touch with loads of friends - infact orkut was the first social-networking site I joined and enjoyed. Simple interface, nothing complicated - you add friends, view his/her profile, scrap/ message them, become their fans, write a testimonial etc etc - I mean how difficult can that be? Now, the limitation on the number of the photographs has also been removed, allowing people to share loads of photographs to the whole Orkut community. There have been loads of improvements every now and then, but the essence of Orkut has remained the same - keep in touch with friends.

Last month, after loads of invitations from loads of my friends to join Facebook, I finally signed-up (I hate those bulk invitations which many sites have - you just need to enter our email and password, and voila!!! It will then automatically send invitations to all your contacts). I was initially a bit skeptical about joining another social-networking site - I already have most of my friends in Orkut, so why join another one??? But, I was curious, why are so many people sending so many invitations to join Facebook??? I agree, it is too popular in US, but not that much here in India - I don't think it is possible to beat the popularity of Orkut in India. Whatever, I finally joined. Its not exactly like Orkut, or to that matter Hi5 or other social networking site. Its different. Ok, you have the usual make friends stuff, but there is something else too -Facebook apps. The great thing about these application is that you can add any number of applications in your profile page, and share them with your friends. There are games, just for fun applications etc etc already available in Facebook. Then, you can even change the position of all these apps in the page, and loads of other stuffs to keep you busy!!! There was one more thing which I liked - here, you can share your albums your friends only - public sharing is also available as an option.

So, what do you prefer, Orkut or Facebook? Frankly speaking, Facebook is different, provides you loads of things to pass your time with, and having many new and interesting features. But again, most of the groups/ networks are US oriented, so its not easy to find an Indian network that easily. Also, most people in Facebook (those I have in my friends list ) already are a part of the Orkut community, which is growing every day. And, somehow, I like the simple way of scrapping people in Orkut (it has become such a familiar interface by now). And. Orkut has been such a helpful tool to keep in touch with old schoolmates. So, I still love Orkut (even though I hate it when it says there is no donut available for me).

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Now playing: James - Alvida - Reprise

Back to the dots

I was getting bored of the plain old blogger template which I was using for the past year... As I was browsing through the existing templates, I came across "dots".

Then I remembered that I had used this when I had created this blog.... So here I am again, back to dots.....

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Now playing: Linkin Park - Leave Out All The Rest

In search for a song.....

Recently, I was listening to only 1 song in a continuous loop (lets say, for 1 whole day)...

I had mentioned somewhere in my earlier post about how enthu I was for watching "Frank Miller's 300". This was mainly because of the breathtaking trailer I happened to watch last year. Apart from the great cinematography, the other great thing was the soundtrack. Didn't know the name of the song that time, but I kept watching the trailer, as the combination of the video and the soundtrack was intoxicating!!! 300 turned out to be "bloody" great movie (apart from some of the "bloody" violent scenes when I kept my eyes shut)... Then, some days back, I got hold of the soundtrack from the movie. I started playing all the songs to search for the particular song I wanted. Unfortunately, I didn't find any thing even faintly resembling the one I wanted. Disappointed (the soundtrack distributor had tricked me into getting an album I wasn't going to listen - the songs were not that great when you just listen to them, it sounds better as a movie background)... Whatever, I was disappointed... But, then I searched for "300 soundtrack" in wikipedia (the great!!!), and this time, I wasn't disappointed. Turns out, the music in the trailer was never included in the OST, as it was composed by a group called "Nine Inch Nails" about 10 years back. But nevertheless, I got the name of the song, did a bit of googling, and was able to download it (god bless the person who had uploaded it to some file sharing site :) ).

BTW, the name of the song is "Just Like You Imagined", and it felt great to listen to it in a loop... Its hard rock, with some great piano in the background.... And this time, even without the video/trailer, it was good....

Some Random Thoughts

It has been more than a year since I started blogging. If you look at the earlier posts, you can see that this blog was created as I was getting bored after my college had finished, and I had nothing much to do for some time. Then, once I started working, gradually I got busy (this was in Nov 06). New place, new friends, new responsibilities.... Now, as I am almost about to complete a year as a working professional, I am trying to recollect how the past year has been for me. In a word - "GREAT"!!!! :)

The biggest problem I have in life is that I just cannot sit idle. I need something to do, something to keep myself busy all the time, maybe work, or maybe some time-consuming pass-time... Things were fine initially, with training and all for the first few months. I was excited.... Then, we got out of our training, and a few months of no work. Fortunately, I was one of the lucky few to be allocated in a project in March, and thats when I really got busy (but, I still manage to post some random article on my blog at that time, something related to the excitement of watching 300 the movie etc etc).

In April, we had a short trip to Goa. It was fun, but it turned out to be a too short visit. I remembered some of the places from my previous visit to Goa (that was way back in 1990, i think). And, I managed to click loads of photos.

I got shifted to a new project in June, and had the opportunity to work with a new team. The work was great, and I had a chance to learn about so many new things, was given new responsibilities.

I got a 30GB iPod video 5th generation (late 2006 model) from the U.S. As, I had mentioned somewhere in my previous post, I always wished to own an iPod. Now, I have one. I bought it in July. I was aware that Apple is going to release the new versions of iPods in Sept, but I didn't mind buying the 5th generation model. Even now, after I have read the reviews of the new classic and the touch , I don't regret buying that. :). I have my whole music collection (worth 16GB of songs) with me in my pocket... What else do I want??? It has now become a faithful companion....

So, here I am, as always, sitting idle on a Saturday morning, wondering what to do next.... BTW, here are some pics I had taken some time back, and I thought of posting them on my blog......

This photo was taken from my hostel room way back in college. I loved the way the photo captures the approaching rains.....

This one was taken on our trip to Sinhgarh fort in Jan 2006. I love taking photos of the setting sun
This one was taken on the Surya Kiran airshow in Suratgarh AirForce Station in Sept 06. I loved the red-planes-on-the-blue-background contrast.
This one was taken on my trip to Goa (I told you, I love taking photos of the setting sun)

Fireworks on display at Corenthian Club, Pune (you can check the video in my previous post)
This photo was taken at dusk. I had disabled flash, and had kept the shutter speed to around 8 sec to get the effect of daylight (just check out the yellow street-lamp visible in the photo)

Fireworks At Display

It had been a long time since I had made this video, and edited it. Recently I created an Youtube account, and decided to upload this video today... This shot was taken on our company's annual day celebrations earlier this year at the Corenthian Club, Pune. And surprisingly, the video turned out to be pretty clear. The sound was not at all clear, considering there was a show going on the stage, and people were shouting and screaming, so decided to add some sort of music instead. The soundtrack is Yanni's "In Your Eyes" (Album: If I Could Tell You).

Just for sharing, I thought of posting it on my blog too.... I am a bit too busy these days to post anything worth on my blog. Hope you like it... Do comment on the video, either here or directly on YouTube.

Dimension is here

Yesterday, I got an opppurtunity to try out the latest offering by the Opera browser team - the "Opera Mini Dimension"(beta)... For those who have no idea about Opera Mini, it is a J2ME based mobile browser, which can be installed on any Java enabled phone, and can be used to access the Internet, provided you have subscribed for GPRS with your service provider. I have been using Opera Mini for around 2 years by now, since its advent, and it has change the way people access net through their cell phones.

Back to Dimension.... It was last month when I heard that the Opera team is coming up with there next version (ver4) of their popular browser, and I registered for their beta distribution.... The wait was long, really long :( - over a month!!!! But, the wait was finally over yesterday, when I got my hands on the new Dimension... Despite a few bugs, which almost every beta product has, it was quite "revolutionary"...

Some features I noticed were:

+ It is possible to get the complete web page as a whole on the mobile screen, and we can zoom in to a particular page.

+ While in zoomed in state, it is possible to do both horizontal as well as vertical scrolling :)

+ When I am tired of the horizontal scrolling, I can directly switch to "fit to width" mode (the classic Opera mini mode), and continue browsing

Some features were missing in this beta version, which I know that they will include in the final release version :

- No RSS feeds

- The server fails to remember the logged in user after some time, so you need to re-login at regular interval

- Was expecting some kind of Flash support, but its missing here too

- Photo blogging is not supported in this version

- Landscape mode of browsing is still missing...

Inspite of all the shortcomings, it was a commendable effort by the dev team to come up with so many interesting features in the new version. Who would not like to have internet access on the move??? :)

Here I am, on a Sunday morning

It has been such a long time I posted anything on my blog, forget about looking at it..... What can I do?? Just couldn't find time :(

Today, as I got up a bit early (its a Sunday, for God's sake), and as I had nothing interesting to do, I wondered, why not update my blog a bit.... I was surprised to see that blogger is out of its beta stage, and even more surprised (though I many of my friends knew that I had predicted it) when I read about Bangladesh scoring a victory over our beloved "men in blue"!!!!

Going to watch 300 today, excited about it - I was dying to watch the movie, after watching the trailer last year (even though I don't like violent movies at all, I am sure I ll be loving this movie). And back to office tomorrow (had to go to office on Saturday too, damn it).

Aahh.... I just remembered, a long while back, I had posted an article about reviews of gadgets etc..... FYI, I now am a proud owner of Nokia 5300 Xpress Music, and, believe me, it rocks!!!! :D

Thats all for now.... Hopefully, I ll keep posting something or the other frequently.... (By the way, again FYI, I am in love with Google's Picasaweb.... do check out the link : www.picasaweb.google.com , it simply rocks too).