Da Vinci Code Quest on Google

Try it yourself here..

Arsenal in Final (Champions League Update)

Villarreal 0 - 0 Arsenal (Arsenal advance 1 - 0 on aggregate)

Jens Lehman saved a penalty kick to preserve Arsenal's 0 - 0 draw against Villarreal and send the Gunners to the Champions League final. Leading 1-0 after the first leg, Arsenal just needed a draw to advance. But Villarreal were given a chance to send the cup tie into extra time when Gael Clichy fouled Jose Mari. But Lehmann was the hero of the day as he made a diving save to deny Riquelme from the penalty spot. The Gunners will now face AC Milan or Barcelona in the final in Paris. And with Thierry Henry and Arsene Wenger, May 17th is going to be Arsenals biggest day at Champions league.

Congratulations to the Gunners!

Today : AC Milan Vs Barcelona (second leg semifinal)

Barcamp Bangalore Rocked !!

Really a great experience attending Barcamp, Bangalore..
Will be posting more soon..

Beer Troubleshooting

45 Kg Trophy !!

Luckly India and pakistan is going to share the trophy. Other wise both dravid and Inzamam-ul-Haq would have felt difficulty in holding the trophy alone.
The DLF cup made world record for the biggest trophy made for any cricket tournement. The sparkling 45 kg trophy is made of gold, silver and diamonds with Jaipur's famous meenakari work around.
The trophy has five players engraved at its base wearing India and Pakistan colours. The bottom has flags of both countries along with logos of the respective boards. The centre has ten golden stumps with a red ball striking them.

Champions League (Update 1)

For those who follow European football and love Barcelona and Arsenal (not Inter milan and Manchester) this is a happy moment. Both Barcelona and Arsenal have won their first leg Champions League semifinals. So one step closer to the final !!
Results:
Arsenal 1 Villarreal 0
AC Milan 0 Barcelona 1

Track Back :
Arsenal and Barca into Champions League semis..

My Childhood Memoirs (Part II)

Doordarshan Days

This post will be nostalgic for those people who used to watch Doordarshan in their childhood days and still remember the old Mile Sur Mera Tumhara and all those Doordarshan programmes. Ya i did. When i get to hear those old song my mind goes back to those days 12-15 years back, when we had only one channel Doordarshan and hardly of 12 hours of telecast per day. The telecast of programme used to start with the RED Doordarshan logo filling the whole television screen. There where programmes like Ramayan, Mahabharath, Circus, Malgudi days, Chitrahaar, Buniyaad, Hum Log, Udaan, Fauji, Surabhi... The news for the hearing impaired, even "Street Hawk" Some of my best childhood programs were.. "Turning Point" and "Bharat Kee Khoj" (with Nehru narrating) and ofcourse how can I forget my best ever ... "Surabhi".. I remember sending those answers to swaal jawab answers in postcard and waiting for sidharth Kak or Renuka sahani to pick my card from those huge heap of postcards. I miss all that !!

Children’s series like Hi-Man, Spiderman, Vikram-Vetaal.

Advertisements of Nirma, Kayam Churen, Rooh Afza, Rasna ( I Love You Rasana!!). lots more

National integration programme like “ek anak aur ekta” cartoon, Mile Sur Mera tumhara.

Some Links here:
Mile Sur Mera Tumhara song : Here
ek anak aur ekta Video : Here
Bharat_Ek_Khoj title song : Here

For Those who don’t know about Doordarshan : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doordarshan

PS: Do any one remember a Chinese/Japanese program, dubbed into Hindi which used to be shown on Doordarshan in the afternoons. A story of a young girl.???

tag : Doordarshan,Ramayan, Mahabharath, Circus, Malgudi days, Chitrahaar, Buniyaad, Hum Log, Udaan, Fauji, Surabhi, Bharat Kee Khoj, renuka sahani,sidharth Kak

Not just a WebNotePad its Netvibes

[Link] www.netvibes.com
For those who dont know about netvibes is, its like they still memorise each and every blog address, open each site one after the other to see if their is any new post. Have you ever thought about what if we could see all these blog post at one time and at one page ?. Ya thats what netvibes helps you in. Not only that, You can see your mails( Pop3, yahoo and Gmail). Place your Del.icio.us links on your page. Not just this, you can do lots more with netvibes. Customize how your page should look. Can even present the contents in a tab format. I just love opening my netvibes page every morning and finding whats new happening.
I am sure even you will get addicted to this..

Also posted at: www.sailink.blogspot.com

Back from home to work

Don't Remember how fast those four days went.... :(

Happy Vishu

For those who dont know about vishu click this Link Here

BarCamp @ Bangalore

Yes, BarCamp the most heard Technical event in the blog circle is going to be conducted at Yahoo! headquarters in Bangalore on 22nd april 2006. I have registered but bit late. My name comes in the list at 154th position. Hope i will be able to attend the unconference as the limit stated was 100 campers.

What is BarCamp ?
(for those who are new to this)
BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees. For more details see this link

History of BarCamp
check out this link to learn the politics behind its inception.

Check out what these newspapers had to say
DNA Network
Economic Times

Official Links
http://barcamp.org/
http://barcamp.org/BarCampBangalore

Rush to add your name and topic to this list .
Also join the mailing list for the discussion.

Lets raise our voice against this reservation policy..

Its really sad that Indian government has become more vote bank friendly then people friendly. The recent reservation policy of the government shows this attitude of our current Indian government. The government is on the path of increasing the reservation for OBC/SC/ST in public department and educational institutions to 50%. Better then me saying about this i want you all to read the article written by one of my friend Abhishek> even my heart says the same :

I guess the hot news now is the govt.'s proposed
reservation bill seeking to add 27% reservation for
OBCs which would lead to the total reservation coming
to nearly 50%.

Now with all due respect to any SCs/STs/OBCs etc. etc.
blah blah out there, in my opinion this is simply
bulls**t! Why don't they increase reservations to 100%
while they're at it? Why do it piece by piece when
they're gonna reach 100% anyway?

I'll tell you why - it's because if this govt.
increases reservations to 100% (and don't think for
one moment it can't), then forthcoming govts. will not
know what to do to get more votes. After all, it's all
about cheap and petty vote-bank politics, nothing
else. All this talk about affirmative action is simply
an eyewash to fool people.

How else do you explain the fact that while all
parties in the parliament can *never* agree on any
issue and lakhs are spent on the tables and chairs
broken everyday in protests by one party or the other,
on this one issue there were *NO* objections by
*anyone*?

Obviously, because no party wants to lose the votes of
the minorities. It's a simple case of "you scratch my
back, and I'll scratch yours".

All I can say is that I'm saddened, bemused and
sickened all at the same time. When merit takes a
back-seat to politics, then India for sure is being
pushed down the abyss of destruction.

'India Shining' is the govt.'s cry. What rubbish! The
shine, if ever there was any, has fast been replaced
by the rust and degradation of avarice and greed.

India is a name to be reckoned with in the Silicon
Valley and all over the world solely due to the best
and brightest of our minds having contributed so much
to the industry. And after years of 'brain drain'
which saw us lose our best minds to the US and others,
there was some amount of 'reverse brain drain'
happening which saw those people return to their
motherland and contribute to the institutions here
that made them what they are today.

But now where is the incentive for any young and
talented person, especially of the General category,
to stay here anymore? No appreciation for hard work or
merit and fighting day after day with literally
thousands and millions for a few seats here and there
in educational institutions. I have myself given exams
where we were all competing like crazy for maybe 5 or
10 seats that were open to us out of the total. Won't
people go crazy in this situation after a while? It
pains me to say it 'cos I love my country, but who
wants to stay in such a place for long?

Even the few available seats are filled by people
through back-door means like bribery, nepotism etc.
What is a normal, average to above-average student
from a poor or middle-class background to do if he
belongs to the General category? If he can't afford to
go abroad and can't get a seat to study here, where
does he go? No wonder we have so many highly qualified
people working as chaprasis and what not. What a
waste!

I have seen with my own eyes my very own classmate
from school walking into IIT Kanpur and joining the
Computer Science BTech course (you all know only top
rankers in JEE get it) just because he was an SC or an
ST. I'm not sure which as I never asked him. In fact,
before he got into IIT, all through school I never
even knew he was an SC/ST. And why should I? I never
treated him any differently from the others. We were
all alike and there was no discrimination. In fact,
his family was distinctly in the higher economic
bracket as his father was a highly paid executive.

Now can someone tell me why this guy needed a seat
reserved for him? Was he discriminated against? Not
that I could tell. Was he poor? No way! Then how come
he got a seat that should have gone to some other
deserving candidate? Don't get me wrong, he probably
did have enough brains to get into some other course
at IIT but certainly not enough to get into the Comp.
Sc. course.

Today's paper says that 60% of IIT students whose
performance is reviewed and who're thrown out (yes! it
does happen in IIT too! Not everyone who gets in is a
genius, mugging can and often does suffice) are
SCs/STs. The tragedy being that deserving candidates
are turned away and such students are allowed in only
for them to be thrown out and seats remaining vacant
at the end! After all, even IIT doesn't want its
placement figures ruined. So better remove beforehand
those students who're useless.

Question - why did they allow those supposedly useless
people to get in in the first place?

This is what happens when you have reservations to the
tune of 50% and more. First it was govt.-aided
educational institutions, soon it might be in private
institutions, schools and even companies (they tried
this recently) too.

Now tell me - if you were told that you would have an
assured seat in school (do you know how tough school
admissions are nowadays?), then in college, then for
PG, then have an assured job - would you study hard?
Where is the incentive? Everything's free so why sweat
it out, right?

Let me clarify one major point here - I am *not at
all* against SCs/STs/OBCs etc. and I'm not totally
against reservation. But it should be MERIT cum MEANS
*ONLY*. If someone's got talent but is from a poor
background and can't pay for his education, by all
means it should be subsidised for him, whichever
caste/creed etc. he belongs to. But there should be
*no blanket reservations* for anybody who brandishes a
caste certificate saying he's an SC or an ST or
whatever.

People laugh and joke about one-room 'colleges' and
'universities' all over India giving degrees in any
and all subjects under the sun. But has anyone thought
of why they've mushroomed and how come they thrive?
It's because as a society we Indians are driven
towards gaining knowledge as a means to improve our
status in life. But if a person even with percentage
marks in the high 90s can't get a college seat in the
good universities like DU etc. (some courses, even
97-98 is not enough!), where will he go? And what of
the 50 and 60 percenters?

Every year the number of school students committing
suicides increases. It's obvious isn't it? They feel
that with their 'ordinary' marks they'll never make it
to any decent college and as they've ruined their
lives anyway, why not end it all. It makes me so sad
to read such news items - each one is a potential gem
lost to the country forever. And why? Because there
aren't enough seats for them. Why? Because of
reservations, of course.

The worst part is, no govt. will have the guts to
decrease reservations, ever. So like I said earlier,
with every govt. the ratio will increase till it
touches 100%.

My final opinion? First, for all prospective parents -
get a fake caste certificate made ASAP for your kid!
He'll appreciate it a lot when he grows up and needs
to go to college or during a job interview!

Second, I wish reservation touches 100% soon, for then
the only way out will be to start reserving seats for
us General category students. So govt., do it quick!

Already there's gonna be a massive shortage of trained
manpower and teachers in India in the IT sector within
a few years. For all it's flaws, China will soon
overtake us in the IT software sector too and we'll be
left licking our wounds yet again.

Great. When Manmohan Singh, an academic himself can
take such stupid decisions, what hope is there from
the rest?

So I ask you all, if you support this cause, then at
the very least raise your voice against this madness.
Write letters to the newspapers or mail them to let
them know how you, the youth and future of this
country, feel. Don't just sit back and think that
someone else will fight your battles for you. And yes,
it does affect you, whether directly or indirectly.

We can make a difference. Let us all shout together so
that the govt.'s foundations shake and totter. let
them know that enough is enough!

I know this was a loooong rant from my side but it was
just something I had to get off my chest. It may be
incoherent at times and not make total sense to you,
but if you read even part of it, you'd have surely got
an idea of what I was talking about. So do let me know
what *you* feel about it all? Do you think I'm right
about something or wrong about something else? What's
*your* opinion ?

For all those who believe that the recent decision of the Govt. regarding 49.5% reservation is unfair and is against the basic tenet of democracy...sign this online petition.

Hope we the citizens of india react to this bill before it is amanted as a law. Wake up my friends..

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Arsenal and Barca into Champions League semis..

Hype, hype, hurray.. Both my favourite Arsenal and Barcelona are into semi finals of champions league.. In the semi-finals later this month, Barcelona will face AC Milan, while Arsenal takes on Villarreal. Hope both will win there semi and i will be lucky to see them in the finals. Thierry Henry's and Ronaldinho's presence in these teams makes these teams my favourite.

Match summary :

Arsenal-Juventus: 0-0
Arsenal’s young guns showed tremendous composure throughout the night as Arsenal moved into the semifinals of the Champions League for the first time with a gritty 0-0 draw at Juventus in Wednesday’s quarter-final, second-leg. The Londoners won the tie 2-0 aggregate triumph to spark off wild celebrations.

Barcelona-Benfica: 2-0
Ronaldinho had a penalty kick saved by Benfica goalkeeper Marcelo Moretto. Well Ronaldinho did ammend his mistake just minutes later when Samuel Eto’o excellent run-n-cross provided Ronaldinho with a simple goal in the 19th minute. Benfica didn’t posed much threat to Barcelona until the 60th minute when Simao failed to score with acre of space. Well that pretty much rounded up Benfica performance that night. Samuel Eto’o scored Barca 2nd goal to seal the game minutes before the final wistle.

Apple "Think different" rare advertisement

Is he a rock star !!

All credit for channel V and MTV for changing the profile of this great revolutionary into a "well known rock star" !! Nowadays the t-shirts with this legendary face on it is considered to be the sort after party wear !! It happened last week when i was talking to a youth wearing that type of T-shirt, But when asked about the face, he suggested me it was one of the legendary rock star of 60's. Yes he was a rock star but never played rock music, but he rocked the world with his revolutionary ideas and ethics. He is Che Guevara. A Doctor by profession but revolutionary by his heart. He was a person who didn’t fight for oneself, but fought for the people around him. Argentine by blood, As a young man studying medicine, Guevara travelled throughout Latin America bringing him into direct contact with the poverty in which many lived. Through these experiences he became convinced that only revolution could remedy the region's economic inequality.
Later, Guevara became a member of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement that seized power in Cuba in 1959. After serving in various important posts in the new government and writing a number of articles and books on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare, Guevara left Cuba in 1965 with the intention of igniting revolutions first in the Congo and then in Bolivia. Guevara died at the hands of the Bolivian Army in La Higuera near Vallegrande on October 9, 1967.
Long live Che Guevara (Not as a rock star but As a revolutionary )

More Links:
http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/guevara01.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara
http://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/index.htm

V for Vendetta (Movie Review)

I cannot believe how many people love this movie. Reading every review along with an average score of 8.1/10 prompted me to see this very exciting film. But this excitement only sustained for the first half an hour of the film. Wachowski brothers' movies are known for its unrealistic but thought provoking story line. Matrix had every ingredient of a Wachowski brothers' story, Matrix trilogy was unrealistic in all aspect but excelled in graphical, story and succeeded in making us think ya this could happen. But V for Vendetta lacked everything except background sound. The story lacked suspense, lacked excitement, lacked colour, lacked life. It was a slow moving art film supposed to be liked by people who like movie because of its complexity. Even though the movie was set in year 2020 the set looks pretty old. And the 75% percent of the movie happens in night, Most of the actors wear black dresses. This makes the movie an absolute colourless and makes the audience sleepy. Our masked hero (Hugo Weaving) never shows his face in the whole movie. We need to appreciate him for accepting this role. When it come to Natalie Portman a full marks for her acting. She gave her best. Totally I would rate this movie 4.5/10.

The story goes like this:
The movie is set in Great Britain in the near future. Under the guise of several terrorist acts, a totalitarian government is elected to Parliament under Chancellor Adam Sutler (John Hurt) to save the country from these terrorists. The only problem is the people must give up a lot of their freedoms for being safe. The government eventually becomes cruel, corrupt, and oppressive to the people. Driven by a personal vendetta, a mysterious individual William Rookwood (Hugo Weaving) comes to the forefront to take up the cause of freedom. He wears a mask of Guy Fawkes to cover his face, and changes his name to only V. V's mission is to kill all the doctors who had tortured him at the detention center, and bring back justice to the country. On November 5, in the process of blowing up his first building, V rescues a young woman, Evey (Natalie Portman), from the secret police. V takes over the TV station and broadcasts a message to the country condemning the oppressors in Parliament. V invites all the people to join him in one year on Guy Fawkes Day to see him complete what Guy Fawkes couldn't, blow up Parliament.

* Sorry for this story spoiler
[* No commands please this is my personal view]