Let's save English from cold-hearted, cruel and almost casual murder

la lingua pura, as Dan Brown calls English in his "da Vinci Code", is the perennial victim of cruel, cold-blooded and almost casual murder. Just consider these dollops of excellence in communication that a knowledgeable English speaker must put up with day in and day out (the text in brackets are mine).

NOTE: These are all quoted verbatim from email messages that I have the bad fortune of reading.

• We constantly are trying to improvise the tool to provide additional features. [sure you’re trying to improvise. Now, how about some improvements for a change?] There are a lot of suggestions [are a lot of suggestions, or are lots of suggestions? Make up your mind!] coming from the users like you who would like to have various features in this tool...Please use this facility generously and help us to help you better. [yes, we shall be generous, and will "help you to help us better"]
• Please revert back for any further clarifications in this regard. [shall I also include the negative -5 for clarification?]
• Finally we are got the response from web service & thanks for your co-operation. [all your response are belong to us and thanks for all the fish]
• Can u give the xml request in your Adapter side(Helper Application side) not in the sample xml request ? ( Meaning Helper Application side your handle request, so that request we want.) [now, that parenthetic saved the day! We'd have been very confused otherwise]
• This will be different call. He only requested to setup at that time. I will check with him and rearrange the call. [this was from a manager]
• It is my mistake only I missed out earlier as M is on leave I could not able to concentrate on it. I will see it won’t happen again. [sorry, I couldn't able to resist including this only]
• I am also sending J for raising NAIF's for SDP and Open Zone for Live source application connectivity from R [edited] Platform. So that they will be in place before this will be migrated onto R from D [edited] platform. [phew!]
• We will have small meeting. I will let you know the timings. [The world is full of small things]
• I reviewed the doc, I updated some sentences and added some commends [wonderful! Thangs a dun!]
• Each environment will have different different settings [and each sentence will have different different errors]
• S is not the write contact, Could you please let me know the issue details [ah, he's the "read" contact; now I get it!]
• Currect Implementation : if(manualcbuk != null && manualcbuk != "null" && manualcbuk !=""){ [To be sure, this is an excellent example of how code ought not to be written, still...be very sure while writing code, son!]
• I didn't have nothing more then this to estimation….So the estimation will obviously grow up. [it will, but when will you?]

And on and on it goes!

Have you come across such gems in your career? If so, improve my day by sharing them :-)

404 Funnies

Have you ever faced a situation where a link you clicked on led to a bland "Page not found" error? Yes? Well, here are some funny variations of the same.

http://www.dailymotion.com/404.php

http://home.disney.go.com/error/pagenotfound

http://www.homestarrunner.com/404

http://www.homestarrunner.com/systemisdown.html

http://www.craigslist.org/404/

http://www.happycog.com/404 (I liked this one particularly)

http://www.pen-and-paper.de/404.php

http://jeremyfuksa.com/404

http://www.galiacho.es/404 The blue screen on this page reminded me of something almost everyone has seen at some point of time (if you're a Windows user, that is).

http://www.martinkorner.co.uk/404

http://www.nextwaveperformance.com/404 This one has a cute flowchart that is, well, funny! :-)

http://www.porcupine.gr/404 This page is somewhat thoughtful, and slightly philosophical.

http://kottke.org/404 This one has a frank headline!

Tata Sky channel mess - some help

You might have noticed that the channel bundles offered by direct to home TV service providers are confusing, to say the least. To make things a little less hazy (for myself), I sat down to arrange their channel subscription packs into neat columns so that a side-by-side comparison is possible. Here's the result. Hope you find it useful.

Random PC Tip - How to repartition your harddisk on Windows

Since a few of my friends seek my help often on PC-related matters, I thought it'd be a good idea to post tips and how-tos once in a while. This is the first of such posts.

On Windows XP and Vista, partition management is a pretty simple task, thanks to Microsoft's partitioning tools that are, I should say, getting better and better. That, however, doesn't mean that they have become good enough to obviate third-party partitioning software: tools like Acronis Partition Manager, Paragon Partition Manager, and others go deep where Windows' tool only scratches the surface, but that's a topic for another day. In this post, I'll tell you how to use the built-in Windows partition manager to get some basic partitioning tasks done.

First off, here's a list of what you can't do on Windows XP using the built-in tool:

1. you can't resize (shrink / expand) existing partitions
2. change the partition type (like you can with Linux's fdisk).

What it does allow you to do are:

1. delete a partition
2. add a partition

I think that there are quite a few good articles that explain clearly how to go about these tasks, and I don't think I have much more value to add there. However, there is one thing that I'd like to point out to make life simpler. That is, instead of opening the Disk Management Console through the usual "My Computer->Manage->Disk Management" or "Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management", you could simply go to Start->Run (WinKey + R on any Windows from Win2k onwards) and type in "diskmgmt.msc" (without the quotes).

Now that you're in the Disk Management Console, here's what you should do in Windows Vista if you want to resize a partition.

1. First off, make sure that you see the main disk. This is usually shown as Disk 0 on most PCs - including laptops - that boot from a hard disk (see Fig. 1 above). If you've got your PC from a vendor like Dell (yes!), HP (avoid them!!), IBM (now Lenovo), Acer (good, though low-end), among others, then it's likely that you have just one partition, though it's also equally likely that you have a "rescue" or "recovery" partition which you'll do well to leave alone if you don't know what you're doing. In my case, the main disk is "Disk 0".
2. Now, identify the main partition - this will usually be the biggest partition (see picture above), that is, the partition with the biggest size. In my case, the main partition is called "OS (C:)".
3. Now, you're ready to repartition your harddisk. Before you go ahead, ensure that you have a backup of your important, personal files, in case something goes wrong. And, believe me, I've gone through enough software glitches to know how frequent they are, so please don't risk going ahead without a backup. Make a backup NOW, and verify that the backed up files are readable!
4. Select the biggest partition by clicking it ("OS", in my case). Now, right-click it and choose the "Shrink Volume" option. You'll be presented with a dialog box which will tell you what the maximum size you can shrink the partition to is ("Size of available shrink space in MB").
5. Type in a value in MB (megabytes). Note that 1000 MB = 1 GB (for the purists out there, I'm well aware that it should be 1024 MB, but go talk to the harddisk manufacturers for this, they seem to have eaten 24MB for every GB). Click Ok.

Congratulations, you've just repartitioned your disk! With the free space you have now, you can follow the instructions in this Microsoft article to create a new volume and format it. Once done, your new partition is ready to use.

A novel approach to philanthropy

These days, it's quite fashionable for a corporate entity to announce its philanthropic ventures. Some of them take pride in their ventures even when their actions clearly inform us that such pride is quite undeserved. However, this company that I really admire, Google, takes an off-beat approach to giving, and that's something that it can't really help since thinking differently is in its DNA. Okay, here's the link.

Sounds from another era

Mind-blowing! That's the one word that readily came to mind when I listened (again) to this phenomenal song from the movie "Anjali". Back when I was a kid around the time this movie was released, I wasn't much into music appreciation though I must have had some vague idea about what good music was all about, helped along in no small measure by The Maestro. Otherwise, it's not possible that I would have been able to appreciate gems like "onna nenacchE pAttu padicchEn" and "ninnukOri varNam".

These songs are real masterpieces of orchestration; they show that music can be highly technical and pleasing, and that these two need not be mutually exclusive. If you can, get a good pair of earphones / headphones and listen to the above song. Unless you listen carefully enough, you'll fail to notice the chorus of males humming in an almost indiscernible, but unmistakable way. These voices add something to the song that I'm unable to express in words, but if you listen to it, you'll perhaps know why I am in tremendous awe of the man, the true jnAni of music - Maestro Ilayaraja.

Father to son

This is why I think Phil Collins is one of the better singers. You have to listen to this soothing melody to know what I mean. The lyrics follow:

Somewhere down the road you're gonna find a place
It seems so far, but it never is
You won't need to stay,
But you might lose your strength on the way

Sometimes you may feel you're the only one
'Cos all the things you thought were safe,
Now they're gone
But you won't be alone,
I'll be here to carry you along
Watching you till all your work is done

When you find your heart, you'd better run with it
'Cos when she comes along, she could be breaking it
No, there's nothing wrong,
You're learning to be strong

Don't look back
She may soon be gone, so don't look back
She's not the only one, remember that

If your heart is beating fast, then you know she's right
If you don't know what to say, well, thats all right
You don't know what to do?
Remember she is just as scared as you.

Don't be shy, even it hurts to say
Remember, you're gonna get hurt someday, anyway
Then you must lift your head, keep it there
Remember what I said
I'll always be with you don't forget
Just look over your shoulder I'll be there.
If you look behind you, I'll be there.

Now, that feels better.

How are plug-in hybrids a great idea?

I just don't get it! If a plug-in hybrid, which runs partly on conventional fuel, and partly on electricity, needs to plug in to a regular electrical socket to charge its battery (or whatever it is that powers the electric motor), then it defeats the purpose of being environmental (or ecological) friendliness. How, you ask? Elementary, my dear Watson!

To charge the battery, you have to use electric power that's most likely generated from thermo-electric power stations that use coals. So, you're actually increasing the consumption of electric current that was produced in an environmentally unfriendly way to start with. I mean, you wouldn't have consumed the electricity that you would be had you never had an electric car in the first place, so my guess is that the extra electricity that you're drawing from the grid will nullify any decrease in the fumes that your car would be emitting. Or so I conjecture.

Am I missing something vital here? Fill me in please.

Resurrecting an MP3 player

I have this MP3 player purchased more than three years ago. It's made by a company called iRiver, and the model that I own is an H320, a hard-disk based player which can do the following:

Play MP3 and WMA (of course!) Play FM (hmmm) Record FM (hmmmmm) Record Voice with an inbuilt microphone (cool) Record through line-in (that's neat) A line-out jack (standard :-|) USB port () USB 1.1 host (now, that's something! It means that you can connect compliant, self-powered devices (that means almost all of them) directly to it and transfer files) Display text files Play video (AVI and a few other formats)

That's quite handy, don't you think? Thank you.

Anyway, this device was playing dead ever since I tried to connect it to my new laptop. That was nearly six months ago. I'd been meaning to open it up and see what the problem with the battery was (I'd assumed that the problem was with the battery), but since I didn't have a screwdriver of the right size, I left it for later. It was only when a friend asked for some songs from it that I realised that I had stored all my TNS collections in it! Now, I simply had to do something.

So, I went to a friendly neighbourhood computer shop and asked the technician to see if he could open the thing up, check up the battery and supply a replacement if he could. Making it clear that they didn't deal in batteries for anything other than laptops, he obliged nevertheless by opening it up. I decided to take it from there, and here's a picture-by-picture illustration of what happened.

This was how it looked before I pried it open.

This is what it looked like after opening the case. Notice the black edges? Nothing but insulation tape.

This is a part whose purpose I couldn't figure out, but going by the fact that there are wires connecting it to the body, I'd guess that it's the battery. It's wrapped around in insultation material.

The thing on the right looks like the hard-disk.

Notice the thin edge between the gaps in the blue material? It's actually the edge of the circuit board. The metal at the bottom is for the connecting screws to be seated.

The blue material is quite rubbery, and I think it's mainly for shock absorption.

At this stage, I decided to connect it to the PC once again; you know, just to see if things would be different now. And were they!

To my surprise, the thing started charging from the USB port, something it had stoutly refused to do in my earlier attempts at making it work. I gladly disconnected it from the PC, and hooked it up to the standalone charger, and now it's getting filled with juice quite contentedly.

So, while I really don't know why merely opening up the MP3 player should resolve the problem of it refusing to start up, it feels good to have my MP3 player back in action. Welcome back, iRiver, I missed my ARI and TNS collections among others :-)

Science in public service

Nigeria. What comes to your mind when you hear the name of that country? Email scams offering you a share in the many millions left behind by a dictator in return for a small favour? I used to think so too, until I came across the above article. Warms my heart to know that satellites in space don't help only those who are cartographically inclined, but also farmers and those who find medical help inaccessible.

Upgradable cellphone towers!

Years ago, when the phone line modem ruled supreme as far as Internet connections were concerned (yes, there was an era before broadband, as much as it may be difficult to believe for people weaned exclusively on broadband), I remember reading a news article reporting that a company - Motorola, if my memory serves me well - had come out with a software modem! The idea was strikingly novel. After all, the modem merely converts binary data to analog signals and back, and there's no technical reason why software couldn't do it. The brilliant idea, for all its potential - cost savings over the price of a modem, and upgradability to higher speeds immediately come to mind - didn't really kick off, and phone line modems continued to rule the roost until they were made more or less obsolete with the advent of its speedier cousins, the ADSL modem and the cable modem.

They say that there's no force on earth that's more powerful than the force of an idea whose time has come. I believe that the time has now come for the idea of software replacing the functions that were once the exclusive domain of hardware. This time, though, it's the radio component in cellphone towers that's finding its existence being challenged by the young upstart, the software radio! And come to think of it, it makes excellent sense too. I mean, how great is it to have your cellphone tower upgrade to the next greatest technological advance in radio communications technology.

Go Vanu!

Of Spam Mail, Forwards and People who send them

I think all of us universally agree that spam is usually a big nuisance. Not so universal in agreement will we be if we were to talk about mail that's not exactly spam but is irritating all the same though it's sent by friends and / or people we know. In fact, I would say that there's a small section of people among us who actually love those inane forwards we get many times. If we were to compare these forwards to those mails that are generally considered spam, there's one glaring difference: the spam mails are usually commercial in nature and are sent by people we don't even know existed (and probably wouldn't care to know either, come to think of it!), whereas the forwards are usually non-commercial in nature and.... Okay, okay, I'll stop beating around the bush and come straight to the point.

In my early days of using the Internet and email, I've sent some of these very same inane forwards and "please forward: small cell lung cancer patient needs help" kind of mails. I've also been guilty of sending mails with huge - really huge - attachments (mostly some funny pictures, or purportedly funny videos) to most of my friends, under the stupid assumption that they'd be as interested in whatever it was that had caught my attention then. There is this friend of mine who had made it very clear to me that such mails were not welcome. I thought, "Fair enough!" - th0ugh to say that I wasn't hurt would not be entirely true - and that was that. Well, that part of my Net career came to an end when my eyes were opened to the existence of something called spam. And I swear I haven't been guilty of similar e-behavioural lapses since.

However, sometimes when I come across something which I think is pretty interesting, I say so briefly (in a line or two) in an email, attach the link, and send it across to a good number of my friends. However, the same friend again lashed out at me - yes, you read it right - and in effect said to me: I had been told once not to send such mails once [she chose to ignore the fact that these mails were personal]; so, let this be the last time, or else!

I was hurt because though what I was sending was unwarranted information, some of the mails that I sent were actually quite relevant to her, or so I thought. I mean, since I was a friend, the least she could do was tell me - politely - that she didn't quite appreciate those kind of mails. Knowing myself, I would have probably gotten into a friendly argument with her, the key word there being "friendly." Well!

It would have ended there if nothing further had happened. This friend sends me mails on subjects that I'd told her quite clearly were of no interest to me at all. I was - and still am - more than annoyed at her double standards. To bite someone's head off, that too a friend who is as harmless as I am - ask any of my friends if you don't believe me :-) - about an email and then sending similar email to that same person!! It certainly takes all kinds to make this world!

Indian Traffic Rules

I have often vented (on my friends) my frustration and irritation at the way Indian motorists behave on the roads. Now, I've decided to step into the shoes of one such offender and look at the rules as they apply to him / her. Here's the list (I'm sure any "true Indian" can add more).

1. Ride where you please; you're paying road tax every year, and hence you've earned the right to do so! There are people who think that only a small portion of any road ought to be used while driving. How can you expect narrow-minded people to know any better?!
2. Practise precision driving by manoeuvering your vehicle into any available gap while waiting at a traffic signal. Can you believe that there are people who look at such behaviour despicable? Those morons think that nobody should indulge in actions which they're not capable of themselves. (Tip: if you move to the leftmost side, you'll usually find that you can make a racing start very easily)
3. Don't apologise if you accidentally brush against another vehicle. There are people who consider such acts to be the only decent thing to be done in such situations. As if it's going to make any difference!
4. Feel free to overtake the vehicle in front of you from any side. If people are going to stare at you, glare back!
5. The humble horn that's present in any vehicle is extremely versatile. Which other instrument can you use to express such varied emotions as anger, frustration, happiness, irritation, and even musical knowledge at times?

Have I missed something that's glaringly obvious? Enlighten me please!

Play on, Blogger

Google seems to be getting aggressive with their networks. By that, I didn't mean physical networks, even if they are true. What got my attention was this and this. While the latter is not such a big deal, the former is a clear indication of whom Google is going to target: Facebook. Don't believe me, or don't think it's possible? Well, this should help you.

Hmmm, let's see how things turn out a year from now.

Yet another kindred soul

Can't say that I agree with everything that this guy says, but he's more or less bang on target. This industry sucks! I hope I get out of it soon!

Update: Here's another article. Do you need more proof?