Girish Gangadharan

MUST SEE – Super slow motion punches

// October 2nd, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Fun, LOL, Miscellaneous, WOW, Youtube

Today is Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. So I figured I’ll post something about violence.

I know. I’m bored (and going to hell).

Wordle

// September 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // cool site, cool tool, Miscellaneous

Stumbled upon wordle today. Gave it my blog’s url and played with it for a while. It’s pretty cool actually. When I finally got bored and stopped, here’s what i had.

Click on the image above for better resolution (Takes you to wordle)

Wise way to find training

// September 8th, 2008 // No Comments » // Miscellaneous

Ok. Before i start talking in detail about the point of this post, i’m obligated to let you know that my brother-in-law is the CEO of Innowize Software Pvt. Ltd, India, that owns and operates trainwize.com.

When i was a teenager, i remember begging my dad to enroll me into a software training course. There were only a few major players like NIIT, SSI, Aptech etc. that offered decent courses. Anyways, my dad finally agreed and spent about $800 approximately on tuition alone, when i joined SSI Tech.This was in 2000-2001, i think.

What I didn’t know back then, was there were a lot of other institutions that offered the same level of training for half the price. It was too late though. The fees was non-refundable. It was pretty sad since my dad had to borrow money from his friends to help pay for that course.

Anyways, that brings me to the point of this post. There are twice as many training centers in India now, especially in the major cities like Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad etc. And there is still a big gap connecting the prospective students and the centers.

Trainwize promises to fill that gap. It is the first of its kind web portal in India, that allows training providers to list their course offerings with all relevant details such as price, duration, course outline and prospective trainees to find courses quickly and effortlessly. It was first launched in Chennai and they are planning to open branches in Bangalore and Hyderabad very soon.

With details about training courses from training providers of various sizes and types of offerings, this portal will have the most comprehensive listing of training courses in India. Its easy to use interface and features such as ratings and featured providers will make it the online destination of choice for training seekers, whether they are recent graduates, or professionals looking to upgrade their skills.

The idea definitely has potential, given the market in India. Since this is his maiden venture, i wish him and his company good luck.

Firefox killer?

// September 1st, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Miscellaneous, WOW

Of course! Isn’t that what the world needs right now? Yet another browser?

“Oh…we know what you are thinking. Why would I dump the browser (read Internet Explorer/Firefox/Opera/Camino/Safari) I use every day and even try yours, let alone switch? Well, here’s why. Our new browser has speed-dial! Bet your browser doesn’t have that feature….huh?”

Ok…let me stop being cynical now and cut to the chase. Who could possibly build yet another browser and actually get people to sit up and take notice?

No points for guessing it right. The correct answer is Google.

Ladies and Gentleman, Google Chrome�is at your service.��(UPDATE**�: Back up again. Link updated to point back to Chrome’s home page. �I’m still going to leave the link to the comic.)

(UPDATE* : Apparently not. Seems like they pulled it down as soon as the word got out. So i have updated the link to now point to the cartoon, from Google itself.)

I was actually looking forward to Android, thinking that was the next big thing from Google although it’s been in the works for years now. But this one just sneaked up on us.

I’m really curious to see if it is good enough to beat the most popular browser.

Oh….it’d better be good…

Will it blend the iPhone?

// July 12th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Fun, Miscellaneous, WOW

Given all the outrage over Apple’s dirty manufactured shortage of the iPhone 3G, and the aggravating activation process where the users had to connect the phone to their computers and wait for hours and hours for iTunes to establish a connection to the pool of servers, which by the way couldn’t seem to handle the traffic as people from about 21 countries were upgrading/activating/syncing their “revolutionary portable communication devices”, it may not be unreasonable if people actually end up blending their ~~iPhones~~ bricks as shown below.

Homo Hetero Bhai Bhai

// June 29th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Miscellaneous, WOW

Here’s an funny quote from Delhi Queer Pride 2008

Hindu Muslim Sikh Isai Hetero Homo Bhai Bhai

meaning “Doesn’t matter if you are a Hindu or a Muslim or Sikh or a Christian (Isai), homosexuals and heterosexuals are brothers.”

Bhai = Brother in Hindi.

Apparently, they just took an old statement Indian government has been using for decades, calling for unity in diversity that goes like this

Hindu Muslim Sikh Isai Aapas mein hai Bhai Bhai

meaning “Doesn’t matter if you are a Hindu or a Muslim or Sikh or a Christian (Isai), we are all brothers amongst us.”

We are seeking the right to love. was basically the point, hundreds of homosexual rights activists that participated in India’s largest gay pride parade, were trying to make when they marched through the cities of Kolkata, Delhi and Bangalore.

Things are obviously showing signs of changing. I knew there were gay people in India and i knew they didn’t want to come out even if they had the opportunity. What i didn’t know was that homosexuality was illegal there. That’s right. Illegal. You could get arrested for your sexual orientation.

Wow.

Mini vacation

// June 28th, 2008 // 5 Comments » // certification, Miscellaneous, Personal, Vacation

My parents are at my sister’s place in Phoenix at present. They arrived last Monday and are going to be staying with her for the next 6 months helping her take care of the family during her pregnancy. Good times! By the way, she’s having a boy baby.

I’m blogging this sitting at the DFW airport in Dallas on a Saturday morning (6:30 AM). My flight to Phoenix departs in about 45 minutes. Can’t wait to see my peeps.

I’ll be spending the next 10 days there. So many things to look forward to – mom’s cooking, Samhitha, Shyju’s bickering, long conversations with Dad etc.

So while i wait for the boarding call, i guess i have a few things to share. I passed another Microsoft certification exam 070-528. Scored 965. Required score to pass – 700. And that makes me an MCTS now, I guess. Yay me!

My best friend Ganesh had a girl baby. He hasn’t sent me the pics yet. I’m so happy for him.

And yet another important news….but i guess it deserves a post of it’s own….so you’ll have to wait. Not sure if i’m mentally prepared to openly talk about it just yet.

Ohhh! There is the boarding call…..gotta run…

New domain. New site.

// April 1st, 2008 // 5 Comments » // Fun, Miscellaneous, Pet projects, Wordpress

A few days back i bought a new domain name (see URL) inspired by Matthew Mullenweg ‘s domain, founding developer of WordPress.

I know. i know. Vanity is not really my thing. But hey… sometimes you just gotta give in. (Did that rhyme, btw?)

So anyways, a new (and really cool) domain name deserved a new site i thought. And i started hunting for some cool WordPress template and after a lot of reviewing, decided to use PortraitPress theme by Magnus Jepson.

I wish i was as creative as the Visual Designers i work with, that design and build their site’s theme (mostly on blog engines like WordPress or textpattern or Expression Engine) from scratch.

But i’m not (i’m “just” a programmer) and as long as there are kind souls like Magnus, that don’t mind sharing their beautiful work for free, i don’t mind using it either.

Take a look around and let me know what you think.

And Oh..oh… before i forget, note the clean URLs. Getting WordPress to strip off the “index.php” was a big pain in the butt in the previous versions. For example, “http://example.com/index.php/2008/04/01/sample-post/“. And since almost all of the fixes they recommended, involved editing the .htaccess file which doesn’t apply to IIS, i never got it to work.

But this time, the site has clean URLs, for eg: http://giri.sh/contact and http://giri.sh/about, even though it is hosted on the same environment – IIS on Windows 2003 server. I’ll post a tutorial with screenshots on how to do it.

By the way, if you are reading this from your RSS reader, don’t bother updating your feed URL. I’ve been using feedburner to publish my feeds and i have updated it already. But please visit the site and lemme know what you think.