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Top 5 things I lost by shunning TV
It has been almost 2 months since I stopped watching TV. With 2 exceptions – Followed Chandrayaan launch on the (t)rusty Doordarshan and saw Obama creating history.
Rest of the time I have shunned TV. Here is my top 5 things that I miss about TV.
1. Breaking News – yeah right. I do miss a whole lot of things that seem to break continuously round the clock.
2. Cricket – Oh I miss so much. During this time 4 test matches and 2 ODIs were played and I missed the painful ecstasy of watching world’s most boring entertainment and not to mention Rahul Dravid score 0 in 3 balls or Ganguly’s o in 1 ball of his last match (don’t take the knives out yet, my next post will be on Ganguly – in fact I like him a lot)
3. Movies laden with Ads – A good hollywood movie will take 3 hours with all the ads strewn inbetween. I really miss the analysis I do with all the products and advertisements that are shown between the movies – so I can plan the next unwanted purchase and help the economy rolling.
4. Car and bike show – I miss the anchor talking for an hour walking around a car describing about the tail lights, the bonnet’s shape, the lines, the curves – and finally the 10 minute drive he will do on highways. I will surely miss watching a maruti 800 with 3 digit number plate that will overtake him on 4th gear.
5. The rest – Will miss the mindless Takeshi’s castle, financial analysis ( who needs them anyway), how grasshopers escape from their predators, Shah Rukh’s Birthday…an endless list of things that I missed out so now I am a total social misfit. I don’t know what I will speak when I meet people from the outside world…scary.
Free website monitoring
This is a very useful free resource. They let you monitor up to 2 websites free. Also they send a weekly report about your site uptime and performance. This is just one of the many free services that are available which we can take advantage of.
Browser shots !!
So I was wondering how does Apartment Adda look like on different browsers, different platforms – is it loading fine or is it throwing errors? Head over to browsershots.org and give your url. It will take some time but your site is hit with 61 browsers from all the OS platforms of the world. I got my results back with errors on an old version of opera and chrome.
The entire development of Apartment Adda has been done on chome with occasional switch to firefox to use firebug. Need more investigation – you can download the results to your desktop and view each one of them carefully.
Very useful service.
Launching ApartmentAdda.com
I am happy to announce the launch of ApartmentAdda.com – it is an online portal for communication and management for apartment communities.
Today most of the apartment communities network online using yahoo groups or google groups. Apartment Adda is a replacement to these groups and in addition provides more tools custom built for apartment communities – like notice board, file sharing, polls and also management tools like maintenance fee tracker, issue tracker etc.
It is close to 2 months since I started working on this. Has been quite a roller coaster ride. Had to take care of legal aspects, UI design, logo, the mantra, features page – it is endless !! Is my work over? -no in fact it is just beginning and things are getting really interesting !!
Head over to apartmentadda.com and see if it can benefit you. It sure will !!
Launching ApartmentAdda.com
I am happy to announce the launch of www.ApartmentAdda.com . It is an online portal targetted at apartment communities.
Today most of the apartment communities network online using yahoo groups or google groups. Apartment Adda is a replacement to these groups and in addition provides more tools custom built for apartment communities – like notice board, file sharing, polls and also management tools like maintenance fee tracker, issue tracker etc.
I have been working on this portal for the past 2 months.
Some major milestones !!
October 2007 – Registered apartmentadda.com domain
Then Prithvi was born and I got busy in a couple of projects.
September 17, 2008 – Work begins on Apartment Adda
September 28,2008 – Prototype demo to Oasis Breeze Apartment’s Association Committee
Oct 5,2008 – Early Beta release – Oasis Breeze, Harmony Apartments sign up
Nov 12,2008 – Launch
Head over to the site and have a look – www.apartmentadda.com . I feel very excited and nervous !! Perhaps this is how Steve Jobs feels when he launches his iPod or MacBook !!
Google chrome not showing alert and confirmation dialogs in popup
Am I the only one noticing this? I have a pop up page which shows a confirmation dialog – it used to work with the earlier Chrome version. But the current chrome version ( 0.3.154.9 ) does not show the confirmation message.
The confirmation messages shows up fine in Firefox, IE ( holy guacomole ),Opera and Safari.
Weird.
Michael Chrichton ( 1942 – 2008 )
Michael Chrichton passed away on Nov 4, 2008.
A salute to a great author with a great imagination.
His books that I relished.
Jurassic Park
Enjoyed it for the chaos theory and he inducted me into fractal world.
Disclosure
Picked this book in the middle of my 3rd year exams. Started reading at 2.00PM and put it down at 3.00AM the next day. ( thankfully I had a day between exams).
Eaters of the dead
I don’t remember much about this book but for one interesting anecdote in the book – the length of a man’s nose determines the length of his..you can guess 🙂
The Great Train Robbery
Chaltahai book. Nothing is sticking on my brain now.
Prey
Introduction to Nano technology. But kind of predictable and got boring towards the end.
Airframe
Marketing said you will never fly an aircraft after you read this – but my memory is too short so it did not matter !!
Movie adaptations that I enjoyed.
Sphere
I made the cardinal sin of seeing this movie and then regretting later that I saw this movie. Now I will never read this book – time is too short and also the director has already imagined for me – I cannot imagine anyother way now.
Congo
Good fun. No regrets that I did not read the book. Couple of months saved 🙂
Lost World
I do not remember the movie – but still I want to read this book – it is in my list of books to catch upon.
Got to get the books he has written after Prey – State of Fear and Next. I will definitely feel sad when I read his books henceforth – while reading a book you are actually reading the author’s mind – and the feeling that the mind is no more – kind of makes you feel sad.
Legalities of starting a business
I always wondered what it takes to start a business in India.
Turns out that it is quite simple – no big bureaucratic red tape which I always thought India was. There are 3 major types.
Sole Proprietorship:
This is what I opted for. Nothing to register with the government, lawyer or auditor. You are fully responsible for your business. Liability is solely yours. What it means is you incur a huge loss – you have to pay from your personal property. You wake up in the middle of night and decide – man let me start a business. There you go – your business is born. As simple as that.
Want to open a bank account. No problem – tell them your company name and give address proof and PAN card number. Done.
Till 2 Lakhs of income, you pay 20% tax. Beyond that it is 30%.
Partnership:
You need help from an auditor for this purpose. You and your partner(s) decide what is the percentage you own the company ( and hence the liabilities ) etc. Costs some 5000Rs I guess. I did not dig deep into this as this was not the option I was taking.
Even if your firm made only 100Rs as profit you have to pay 30% tax.
Private Company:
This is the most expensive and longer router ( but safer route ). You first give a proposal to the government entity with a bunch of company names. Then they will tell you which one is available. Then you might have to spend to the tune of 1Lakh Rupees to get all done and it is a long drawn out process.
So you have a great idea – just go ahead and start doing it. Have a friend helping you out – cough up the 5K and continue your march.
I know what you are thinking – even I went through the same phase. What if someone stakes claim to my brand name by doing the legal 1Lakh Rupees way while you were slogging to popularise brand.
Well first accept that you are screwed. Like it helps !!
You have your user base – just change the name to something better – call it formerly known as blahblah.com. I am no expert in this – but when you are beginning do not worry about such things – if it did not cost a whopping 1Lakh I would have registered my company. But the 1Lakh can be spent in far better ways – getting a good UI designer, designing a fundoo logo, get a kickass server – so your pages load fast.
How about patenting? I still have not explored this area – might be doing it soon. Watch out for a post on that.
So have you started your business by now?
Good Luck Mr.Obama
Good luck Senator. I hope you win the election and by next week you are Mr.President. Here are the reasons why I support this young man.
1. Obama is young and is experienced enough. If W can be President, Mr.Obama – editor of Harward Law Review – can very well be. No arguments. Shut up Mc.Cain and Palin.
2. I am an admirer of Clinton. I love to listen to him. Obama is another great orator of our times. Give him a chance to speak to the world.
3. This is kind of a hope. Currently I am reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and there is a striking similarity to the story and our present day crisis. In the story all innovation wasstifled. The industrialist who invents a new alloy, another one who invents a new way of drilling oil – all are hounded by the establishment ( Washington, old way of doing business guys, incompetent scientists ) – to not prosper with their innovation. In fact these new ideas are killed unceremoniously citing various reasons.
Roll forward 70 odd years and the same thing is being enacted. Stem Cell research has not taken off, electric cars are yet to start rolling off in US ( biggest consumers and biggest pollutors – sorry – it is not China and India – howmuch ever you twist the facts ). I feel John Mc Cain, W – are all the bigots who stifle innovation – because they and their friends ( oil companies pharmaceutical giants, insurance companies) will get wiped out if the new ideas succeed. They prevent the world from becoming a better place to live in. I am hoping Mr.Obama will remove the barricades and change the world. I can bet on Mr.Obama than on Mr. Mc Cain.
4. And this is another hope. I hope Obama inspires another Obama in India. An energetic young man who will put India to where it deserves to be – a country that redefines mankind and spreads peace and happiness in the world – and not a third world country, that apes US and UK.
Me? Thanks for the thought 🙂
And Hell No – not you Mr.Rahul. It is a sad sad comparision. Tell me one good book you have read. I know you have not written any thing – not even a blog? Tell me one original speech you have given – what are your views on Reservation, Terrorism, Kashmir, China, LTTE. I cannot stand the coming General Election in India when such comparisions will be made.
Coming back to the man of the moment – Mr.Obama – may the pregnant chads and dimpled chads fall in your favor.
