Sreejith’s NETwork

I was pretty excited going to Thiruvananthapuram (TVM) today. Plan was to drive till thrissur, park the car at aunt’s place, then take the bus which starts at 9 from there to TVM.

I started of at 6 in the morning with my sis, by 7:30 I reached Athani, which is about 5Km from aunt’s place and there the “tyre got flat“, no problems, I tried opening but now the “bolts are stuck” because my “spanner and bolts were bit worn out“. There was tyre shop about 20 feet from the car, but “it wasn’t open“.

My sis was with me so took an auto and dropped her at Aunt’s place, came back, waited till 8:20am for the tyre shop. Still no one, so I went back and took my sis to the bus stand, reached there at 8:58 and “nearly missed the bus“.
Went back to my car and now the shop is open, yay ! wait, the shop “guy won’t help” till evening, he is too busy to open a screw or lend/sell me a spanner it seems. Again tried a lot to open it myself but nothing. Searched for another shop, found one, with one guy in it. Asked him for help, but “no workers are there“, would he do it ? No, “his hand is cut“. Thankfully he lend me a spanner. So, I fixed the tyres myself.

And thats how “my trip got canceled“.

To top that,
- I lost a project to another guy ’cause I was late to reply.
- Lost my name as facebook username to another guy.

Airtel and South Africa’s MTN, the largest cell-phone operator in Africa, made a brief statement to shareholders on May 25 that they were hammering out a complex deal which would merge the companies. If successful, the deal would likely give Sunil Mittal control of a telecom behemoth that would have the third-largest number of subscribers in the world.

Well, I didn’t exactly post this to congratulate them. This is actually a rant. A few days ago, I tried downloading the “Google Maps mobile”. Simple enough, I went directly to the Google page using “Airtel live” and started downloading the app. After downloading 15KB it got stuck, so I canceled it. Now, I believe I may have taken around 2 mins for this whole process and after disconnecting, I got a message saying, I have been charged Rs 65/- for the last session. So, I called our friendly support people, I might have called 7 times in total.

What happened ? They say that the session lasted for some 400 seconds and I have downloaded 4xxxxxxx KB , don’t remember the exact number but it started with a 4 and had 6 digits (lets keep the lowest 400000). So, I asked them, how am I supposed to download 400000 KB in 6.7 mins (400 secs) ? Well, their answer was that “Our systems can’t be wrong“. I tried hard to tell ‘em its not possible to download that much with a 32kbps connection and one moron adamant with his statement that I have been fairly charged .

I called the Noda Officer here “Jyotsna Vishud” , explained her all this, she told me she’ll look into it, 2 weeks and nothing yet.

I’ve been using the gprs service for about a year now without any problem. I know there can mistakes in any business, but what grinds my gears is their failure to accept and their adamantly lame reasons to support their stupidity.

Crisis of Credit : Nice visualized explanation of how the credit crunch started

I’ve been using mac close to three years now, but never ever bothered to try typing in Hindi. In fact, I left the Idea whenever I it came, cause all that hard work of searching and installing a software always came in my lazy mind, like in Windows.
Well actually, it was there along, sitting inside the system preferences, grinning at my foolishness.

Cutting it short, Here’s how you do it.
- Go to System Preferences > International > Input tab
- Check Devanagari-QWERTY
- Check the “Show input menu in menu bar” for quick switching.

As you are there, you’ll realize that, there are many more language present there.

Its not a random update post, in fact I don’t post much about any software getting released, in fact I don’t post much about anything. :/

Apple released the beta version of Safari 4 and “by god” .. has some new serious stuffs. It has Opera’s quick start kind of start page, which looks more like a theater view. Zoom in or out on web content using keyboard shortcuts. Loads javascript much faster Safari windows has its own font smoothing and 150 more features.

So I suggest you go ahead and download it right now.

I don’t usually sit in front of the idiot box for more than an 10 mins or so if an award show is coming but the 81st Academy Awards made me watch it. Its probably not the award, must be the craze for movies that started an year ago. Whatever it is, it was a treat, “Slumdog Millionaire” dominated by winning eight awards including Best Picture, Best Director went to the jolly person “Danny Boyle”. “A.R Rahman” unsurprisingly got 2 awards, Best Original Song (Shared with Gulzar) - Jai Ho and Best Original Score. Then there was the impressive stage performance by Rahman.

Best Picture - Slumdog Millionaire - Christian Colson
Best Foreign Language Film - Departures - Japan - Yojiro Takita
Best Documentary Feature - Man on Wire - Simon Chinn
Best Animated Feature - WALL·E - Andrew Stanton

Best Director - Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire

Best Actor in a Leading Role - Sean Penn - Milk
Best Actress in a Leading Role - Kate Winslet - The Reader
Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight
Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Penélope Cruz - Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best Writing - Original Screenplay - Dustin Lance Black - Milk
Best Writing - Adapted Screenplay - Simon Beaufoy - Slumdog Millionaire

Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award - Jerry Lewis - Comedic film & Humanitarian Work

You can check out the complete list of 81st Academy Awards nominees and winners