India – though not the land where Cricket was born; has unofficially become the capital of Cricket. This is the land where cricket is closely debated to religion. Cricket is one thing that brings all the people in India together. People here criticize, celebrate, worship cricket and cricketers. We have a lot of cricketing icons in India. I feel proud when my team wins; and I get upset when Team India loses. This is one feeling common to many people here in India, though we have some few people who love the game over the team.

A cricketer in India earns more money than any other in the world. ‘If Cricket is religion, then Sachin is God’, ‘Dada is the best’ are some slogans that keep reverberating in every nook and corner of India. Such is the status of a cricketer. They also suffer a lot in the hands of the public when they fail to deliver. Why not! when there is such a huge following, it is the duty of the leaders to deliver. And if the game is against India, then it is not a game; IT IS WAR.

Each cricketer endorses a brand and earn a lot. Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is one of the largest money making boards in the World. To add to this craze, Indian Premiere League has been started. A move to have large corporations to run business with cricket.

It is more like the English county, but a lot bigger in terms of money. I like the idea of having county like cricket in India, and corporations involved in promoting the game further, but should it mean the players need to be auctioned? A price for the head and skill, won’t that spoil the spirit of the game? What would Gilchirst think about his talent? Is he not a better player than Dhoni or Symonds. Is it not creating inequality between members of the same team.

Why not pay everyone the same amount of money within the teams. Why not distinguish with  the prize money for the winning teams? Won’t that be a better solution to create better cricketers?  Just a thought!

It was on Dec 15 of 2006, when we moved to a new house near the beach in Tiruvanmiyur, Chennai. The house was a two bedroom flat, just enough for a comfortable stay of 5 persons. We were five and the rent was just Rs. 3800/-. It was cheap in that area. But we didn’t have any doubt as it was affordable for us.

Everything was fine about the house. We got settled there. The beach was just two minutes walk from our house. We used to spend our free time, lazing, talking and playing there. We used to leave the house door open all night as most of my room mates working in IT companies reach home late at night. Even we used to walk out alone at nights. It was fine until one of our friends ‘Soms’ joined us. He came into the house on Jan 4 of 2007. Just before coming to the house, in the shifting, he experienced a bike accident.

Everything was fine till one night, as usual I was late from office. I reached home in cab at about 2:30 am. Everyone was asleep. There were some workers doing road repairing work outside our apartments. I came and settled near Sri in our bed room. I feel asleep soon. It should have been about 3-4 am in the morning. I heard a deep voice coming from near our room. I woke up startled and found Sri too listening to the sound. I or Sri didnt have the courage to open the door to the hall. The sound was terrifying. The sound of someone in deep pain, sounding as if someone is shouting in the fear of death. I was trembling inside. Then someone switched on the light of the reception hall.

I and Sri went to see what was making the sound. The sound had ceased by then. There were Darani, Soms and our roommates brother (He had just come that night to stay). It was Soms who had made that sound. Still he was not in his senses. He was just shouting ‘Paambu… Pammbu (Snake… Snake…)’. We searched the entire room and found no snakes. After we gave him a glass of water, he told that he got a dream in which a snake was crawling over his neck and and so he started running around shouting. Our roommate told that he saw Soms running the entire length and breadth of the room shouting in the dark. He had toppled the shoe rack and was running in rounds around the room when we woke up.

I didn’t get a wink of sleep the remaining part of the night. All our neighbours had heard him screaming and they had imagined that we were trying to kill a person. They even gave some weird suggestions for Soms. After this incident, we were extra bit careful about the house. Everyone though we knew it was just a dream could not come out of the shock.

After about a week, Siva was lying in the same place. He could see a white form in the dark. He also added that he tried to getup and he could not. This was our clue. I and Soms decided that we should not be in the house and we shifted to our new house in Kellys. From then on, when someone says something about ghost, I feel a sense of chill run down my veins.

This post is dedicated to the magazine Digit, without which I would surely not developed interests in computers.

Way back in the year 2000, when the magazine was called CHIP, I got to have a look at the magazine in my friend Naseen’s house. He wanted me to read the book. That is where it all started. Love at first sight!

Then I didn’t understand ROM, RAM, sound card, PCI slots, ISA and all these technical jargons. It was CHIP that enlightened me on all these. It increased my interest in computers. It was due to this interests that I started to learn computer hardware and troubleshooting. The articles in the magazine was so nice and easy to understand by a newbie. Also they gave away 2 CD’s (remember then DVD media was not available for computer users and DVD-Writers were a royalty. Even CD Writers burnt at a mere 8x max. The CD’s were titled ‘Mindware’ and ‘Playware’. One dedicated to software and other to entertainment.

I got a second hand P-II (266Mhz) Slot based processor system, running on 256 MB of SDRAM, 8 GB of HDD space, a creative sound blaster card (ISA) and no graphics card in 2001. Then I used to try out all softwares and games (that didn’t require a graphics card) provided in the CD’s in my machine. I was not a subscriber to then. I used to get the magazine out of newspaper stand and my mom used to provide the money. It was Rs.100/- for an issue and special isssues would be sold at Rs.125/-. Now the cost of an issue is Rs.125/-. But a hundred for a month in itself is huge money to spend for a 11th grade guy. My mom gave me the liberty to afford to CHIP and sometimes to DeveloperIQ, PCQuest.

The best part of CHIP was that it was interesting to read. They had reviews on the latest product on market. In the reviews they also explained how things work. Say a review on Sound card will have a box saying how they worked. These things surely boosted my understanding of the various hardware devices. With internet and bandwidth a nightmare and an hour’s browsing at a net cafe costing Rs.50/-, it was easier to read about all these updates in CHIP. Marco D Souza, Karan etc. are some names I still remember from the CHIP Team.

In June 2001, after their third anniversary, CHIP was renamed as Digit. The reason they provided was to break free out of the collaboration with Chip and to cater to a varied technology readers. From then on, the journey of Digit has been smooth. I still enjoy reading the magazine. I subscribed to Digit in 2007, when I joined Cognizant, since I didn’t want to miss out an issue amidst all the work I do.

The changes that I notice between CHIP and Digit are

• The pages have reduced. From 200 to 150.
• A lot of content on how things work have stopped

They still have Agent 001, Diary, DroolMaal and stuff. The Fast Track series is excellent. A good book to start out your journey into the world of computers…. Digit! Atleast it was for me.

I got to read this book as it was prescribed as an English supplementary reader in my secondary school. This is one book I will never forget. The plot is simple. Scarlet Pimpernel resembles Robin Hood.

The title character is the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel, Sir Percy Blackeney’s alter ego. (I see a lot of movies… so this term.). The story is told as a narrative in the voice of Lady Blackeney with the French revolution as the time.

Sir Percy Blackeney is described to be a comical character with little intelligence and bravery. On the other hand, Scarlet Pimpernel is daring rescuer of the masses. The story has Chauvlein as the enemy of Scarlet Pimpernel. He drops a drawing of the red flower scarlet pimpernel whenever he rescues someone.

It is an interesting adventurous read.

ASP.Net validation controls can be used to perform both client side validations. If the page containing a asp.net validation control is rendered in a page with Javascript disabled, the asp.net runtime creates code to automatically perform the validations in the server side.

Server side validations can be invoked using the Page.Validate() method. The status of the validation is set to the Page.IsValid property by the asp.net runtime.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (Page.IsPostBack)
   {
      Page.Validate();
   }
}

1
2
3
4
5

 protected void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (!Page.IsValid) return;
      //Do something if validation passes.
}

This server side validation works on all major browsers. I have tested on IE, FireFox and Netscape.

I got a new mobile yesterday. A Sony Ericsson K770i. Got it in exchange for my old mobile W700i.

Here are the specs:

Business phone, 3.2MP camera, 1GB M2 memory, normal photo flash, cybershot candy bar model.

Also, the weekend was fine with shopping. Went to the spencer mall, got 4 pairs of trousers on a 50% offer from pantaloons.

I have designed custom header for this blog . I have used my favourite color combination, red, black and white.

One should experience and feel the feeling of being single on a Valentine’s day. This year again, I am still single. I have not met my soul mate yet. When the whole lot of your friends are sending you valentine day wishes, you see them going out with their beloved, enjoying the day, exchanging wishes, somewhere something is missing.

I  went to office as usual. I wore ‘White & Pink’ combination (A color that signified nothing on St. Valentine’s day). By the end of the day, I was in tiruvanmiyur to meet my friends. And with sleep the day ended. Nothing eventful happened.

What is that something missing? Why have I not met HER or have I met her and I missed noticing HER? Don’t I want to fall in love? Cupid has once again let me down.

Waiting for these unanswered questions to be answered….

After a lot of hype over what I need to do on my career, I have finally hit upon it.

The thing that was pestering my mind for around a month is finally out. I have decided to follow my passion: computers. To be precise, graphic design, web design and programming.

Watch out for my creations in my future posts.