Updated Google Chrome

Google launched a new version of their web browser, Chrome 3, on 15 September. They say that they have major improvements in the site, so I decided to check it out.

The problem of creative people

The argument placed before us today was roughly this: “If we agree that all tools and resources necessary for the creation of art have already been provided in the universe or rather the earth, then as creative people, what is our job?”
A problem rises in the acceptance of the first assumption itself. Is it really true that all tools and resources necessary for the creation of art are provided to us?

The road to Xavier's

Well finally my worries have been put to rest. On 26th June, I officially became a member of the Xaverian family, a proud student of St. Xavier's college. The road to here was a long one, I had to first pass an admission test with tough GK questions and write essays and articles on given topics.

Then once my name was on the interview list, I had to give an interview where two teachers prodded my interests, my professional and my personal life. After that my name finally appeared in the list of elites who would gain admission.

Think it's the end of the road............
Think again

My life fundas

Well I'm only 18, but I just felt like writing down some things life has taught me. These are based on my experiences with strangers, friends, best friends, relatives, pets, nature and every other thing I saw.

Freebies: A free world

FREEBIES: The way to go



Most people think that Computer software is always expensive
and thus resort to piracy or they buy the software but the world of software is vast and there are a lot of kind hearted people out there who use something
called Open Source Code to make their software. Not only is it free, some of
them have the GNU license which enables users to make corrections and
improvements to the software. You can get almost any type of application that
you use for free. This saves money, if you want to buy, and effort, if you want
to follow that path of piracy. It’s a world of free downloads. I’ll give the
most commonly used applications here.


Music Players: A lot are available. You can download Winamp
5 for playing songs. Windows Media Player, which comes free with Windows
Operating systems, is good, but Microsoft doesn’t allow newer versions of the
player to be installed without having a genuine copy of windows.



URL : www.winamp.com
Media Players: Apart from Windows Media Player, you can
download VLC player, which supports a massive number of video formats, or the K
Lite mega codec pack, which is just as powerful. Both are excellent players and
you can install any of them and forget about installing any other Media player.



VLC Player: www.videolan.org



K Lite Mega Codec Pack: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/k_lite_Mega_Codec_Pack.htm



Web Browsers: Most people use Internet Explorer, which comes
with Windows, not knowing that there are free and better web browsers out
there. You can use Mozilla Firefox. An absolute beauty of a browser that you
can depend upon any time, any place.



Then there’s Apple Safari, which was recently released by
Apple to be compatible with Windows, and is claimed to be the fastest browser
on earth. But it’s still in the beta stage and contains some bugs.



Firefox: www.mozilla.com

Safari: http://www.apple.com/safari/

Dictionary: Wordweb is a great one. It contains a huge
number of word definitions, and is simple and easy to use.

http://wordweb.info/

Emulators: Daemon Tools is a great emulator for using CD
image files. It supports a wide variety of formats. A great choice if you’re a
PC gamer.



http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/download.php

Office applications: If you want something other than MS
Office, which is not freeware, you can opt for Open Office. Completely free and
easily rivals MS Office in performance.



http://download.openoffice.org/index.html



PDF and other readers: Adobe Acrobat reader is the way to go
for PDF files. You can get read lit files with MS reader. Other format readers
can be searched and downloaded for free.

Adobe Acrobat Reader: www.adobe.com/reader
MS Reader: www.microsoft.com/reader

Windows Maintenance:
IOBit Advanced Windows care is a wonderful tool to help you maintain
your copy of windows and keep it free of trouble. It catches spyware and
immunizes the PC against them, optimizes startup and fixes registry errors etc.

http://www.iobit.com/



Antivirus: You can AVG antivirus, or Avast Antivirus. Both
are good and free. Avast also has a boot time scan function.



AVG Free: www.grisoft.com
Avast: www.avast.com



Anti spyware: You can use Lavasoft Ad aware Free. It is
quite good and has a real fast scan speed. Spybot is also a good choice.



Lavasoft Ad Aware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/products/ad_aware_free.php



Spybot: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html



Firewall: Since the Windows Firewall does not check outbound
connections you can use Comodo Free Firewall.



http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/download_firewall.html



Compression software:
7 Zip is open source and a good choice:

http://www.7-zip.org/

Operating Systems: It’s true; you can get an OS absolutely
free. It’s called Ubuntu, but you have to get a bit of practice to get the hang
of this one.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

That’s about it. I’ll make another review if I can think of
anymore.

You can visit www.download.com
for lots of free softwares.

Aila! Its Aila

It has been raining constantly since dawn and its due to a storm named "Aila". At around 11 a friend and I went to a railway station named Shalimar near our house to enjoy the rain. Big mistake! The station is close to the river Ganges and has lots of open spaces, so the wind speed there was more. At first it was just gusts of wind. And then we decided to walk out the overhead shade. And that's when the wind picked up, the raindrops felt like needles on my skin. The water was almost flying horizontally at me. We were soon drenched. Then the wind continued to pick up further; throwing up water from puddles. A signboard on top of the station crashed against the floor, nearly hitting a man. We soon decided to head home, braving the wind and the prickling raindrops. The storm is still raging as I write. Schools have been called off and transport is blocked in Kolkata. Over 50 trees have been uprooted. Let's see how this turns out...

Cheers!

The Three Reasons

I wasn’t planning on writing today. But some events are forcing me to write an entry.

Well for starters, it rained today after a day of hot and sultry weather, bringing a lot of relief.

Secondly, my ISC results will be declared on Wednesday, that’s 20/05/09. So I’m scared shitless. I’ve registered on their website, so they’ll email and SMS the results to me as soon as they come out.

Also, while taking a walk today, I saw a poster of Bandidas, the movie starring Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek. It was ok, except for the fact that it was releasing really late, and it was releasing in a hall named ‘Navabharat’. This hall is famous for two reasons: One, a drain, yes, a drain runs through the middle of this hall.

And two, this hall has a reputation of showing only rejected films and porn, so what a Hollywood film is doing there is beyond me. They’ll be showing the film in Hindi, of course. And I wonder who the heck will go to watch. My best guess is that they thought this film was a lesbian porn movie or something, seeing as how they had written “Do jabaj larkiya” at the bottom of the poster.

Cheers!

Well the CISCE (Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations) declared a few days back that they would release the results of the ICSE and ISC examinations between 18-22 May. Seeing as how I have given the ISC exams this year, that news brought with it, along with worry (I'm not exactly a genius), memories of the result declaration of my class X ICSE results. 

The actual results were declared on the 18th of May, I think. But rumours had started flying about since 14th. I began to get calls late at night asking me to check the CISCE website for details. Many times we'd all rush out of our homes to the nearest cyber cafes with the surest news that the results had been declared, only to realize that it was just a rumour.  One day I got a call, it was the 16th I think, and I was told that the results, would either be declared tomorrow, today, or they had already been released yesterday. That was by far the stupidest rumour I had heard rehading the results. Anyway the results were finally declared on 18th, as posted previously by CISCE on their website.

With the probable dates of declaration being revealed earlier this time, a lot of the useless running around will be avoided, but it also takes away that mix of fear, uncertainty and excitement that the old rumours had brought.

Well the newspapaer finally told of Respite within sight. After temparatures had crossed 40°C eight times in the last ten days, this is the most interesting news in the paper. Of course with the only news being the crap the politicians are cooking up, any news would be more interesting than this. The weather office said that the temparature would possibly decerase within the next 48 hours. However , the discomfort index, which also facotrs in the humidity along with the temparature, would remain the same. So in effect , nothing will change. The politicians and the weatherman are saying much of the same things. Sigh. :(

Nothing of interst happened today. But I'm still posting. The reason  is that I saw a movie today that totally blew me away. Its named "The Shawshank Redemption" and its rated #1 in the IMDB list of top 250 films of all time. It's a classic in my opinion. Go check out the movie yourself, I'm not going to tell you the plot. But its a touching reminder of the strength of the human spirit, of hope and shows that how friendship can start even in the most unlikely of places. A wonderful movie, and it really warmed me up from inside.

Cheers!

Heat

The temperature is killing people here. People are panting after coming from outside, and there's little hope of rain. My competitive is tomorrow. It won't go well and I've decided to take a year off and decide what to do with my life.
Cheers!

Yesterday

Yesterday was nice. Read 'A thousand splendid suns' by Khaled Hosseini and saw 'Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind'
Both of them blew my mind. The book was awesome, a touching tale of loss, oppression and love. I'd recommend it to everyone. The movie was also amazing. I've rarely seen a movie scripted as well as this one. No wonder it won an Oscar for screenplay. The cast performances were amazing. Highly recommended. It was a rare treat of literature and movies.

And in usual news, the temperature is still soaring high. Heard that a cyclonic depression named (hold your breath) Bijli might cause some rain today. Lets wait and see.

Cheers!

Food joint

There’s this little food joint near my house, and I sometimes go there to buy dinner if my mother doesn’t feel like making it herself. It’s in a little room with mud tiles for a roof. There are a few creaky old benches for seats, and an old fan and some light bulbs hang from the ceiling. The cooking is done on an old clay oven. The people working there make some of the food beforehand and usually heat it before serving it. They make the rotis on the spot. And this process fascinates me a lot. It’s a three step operation. One guy constantly kneads dough in a huge bowl. He then makes some lechis, rolls them out on a rolling pin and puts them on a huge inverted pan over the oven to heat. A guy standing near him, who also does the cooking, takes the heated rotis and heats them directly over a fire in another oven until they puff up. Then he lifts them with a huge set of calipers and drops them in a container. Finally, another guy serves it along with the other items. The efficiency in this process is breathtaking and I’m amazed at the speed with which rotis are made. On some days the store has a lot of customers, and on other days not too many. There’s a railway station near my house, and the travelers often have dinner there. Another thing I love is the smell of the place. A weird mixed smell of rotis and various food items make for a strange intoxicating smell. It’s not exactly high on hygiene, but with their budget, you can’t expect them to be. Oh, and before I end, the food tastes good.
Cheers!

Restart

Ok, I finally decided to start blogging again after I stopped last year. I am mainly doing it because I finally realised that there were thoughts that I couldn't keep in my regular journal. And that these thoughts are fleeting and temporary. So its best to write them down when I have the chance. I think i read a quote by someone who said the same thing. But I don't remember who. Anyway I'm starting again, and it'll be a wild spurry of thoughts, articles and occasional literature. I hope I'll be able to continue this time. Wish me luck!