Tuesday, May 31, 2005

In the fields

Well I had to go to a village in TN last week. It was short visit but just before returning I fished out my camera and captured a few shots. The main snap is being used in this post at SudaSudaCoffee

Bullock Cart

But what amazed me is this snap. Cant believe that my teeth is reddish in color.

I know what you are thinking, but no
- I wasnt involved in any road side brawl
- I didnt eat any raw/live chicken (I am a veggie)
- I stay away from paan/beetlenut and its varied stuff

What else could be the reason? Either I need to get my eyes checked (for color blindness) or else I need to get my camera checked.

- Dheepak Ra

Monday, May 30, 2005

Shaadi

Well every story ends with "they married and lived happily ever after". Let this blog entry begin from that place.

Bride: Rebecca (becky)
Groom: Kiran

Now wait a minute, have I interchanged the Bride and Groom? I used to mix up those two terms quite often but no, not this time.

Wedding

Anyway Rebecca was my lecturer in college who taught Construction Management for us in the final year of Engineering. Usually in our college days, the lecturers were classified in two groups - the minority with whom we had such a great relationship that we admit frankly and goto movies and the majority with whom we just walk out (Any minister/pm reading this - we make good candidates for parliament). Rebecca was one of the few lecturers who managed to gain a neutral ground with us.

When we passed out from college, she joined another - to pursue her MBA from UK. On graduation she continued to work in UK with Babtie. She was one of the few lecturers, with whom I am still in touch via email (God bless these guys who invented internet and email). So ever since her marriage date was fixed - May 23, 2005, preparations were underway. Starting from the hotel to stay in, friends to be met, travels etc.

Departed to Hyderabad on 20th night itself, watching "Josh" along the way. Cant review this movie - slept within the first 30mins of travel. Arriving in Hyderabad, I stayed in Hotel ****** (Man, I never thought I can forget the name of this hotel but I have. Will check up the visiting card and update this later). They charged 600 ruppees per day for a non-ac room and there was no housekeeping whatsoever. Despite the apalling service the hotel had 100% occupancy ratio. Either everybody is getting fooled like me or else there is dearth of decent hotels.

Despite huge plans of site seeing (for photos in sudasudacoffee), I had to settle down with just two places in three days. One was Ramoji film city and the other was the good old museum. But then let me reserve them for separate blog entry.

Mercury was hovering above 40 and it was sapping everyone's energy. Having lived in Chennai for 21 years, I had always believed that heat will never affect me. I was proved wrong. Each day, I was taking 3 litres of water and 2.5 litres of juice yet I felt as if I would die of thirst......

So stayed put in hotel counting the hours till marriage. On the D-day met another lecturer of mine - Jessy. She and Preetha madam taught us Building Drawing. I still remember those days when I submitted my drawings either last or first. When given the freedom, came up with those school (my first drawing to get an "A"), clinic, bungalows and not to mention the Pyramid (dont know whether my classmate who is working now with Shoba, stole those drawings and built it for Infy, Bangalore. Need to check up with him some day, as to how my drawings got leaked) I tend to go off the track pretty easily. Now let me get back to marriage.

As far as the marriage itself, it went smoothly. For the first time, I had witnessed a christian marriage in person. Anyway after marriage and reception, I was back to my hotel - just in time to steal a quick nap before catching the AirDeccan flight back to Bangalore in time for work. Its another issues that Air Deccan was an utter disappointment - the pilot flew so high that ground wasnt distinguishable. Technically speaking the spatial resolution was pretty bad around 5m (I did my college project using satellite imageries)

I had setout to write about the marriage and now it seems I have written about everything except marriage. Still in this blog, I never edit anything. This is supposed to be a free flowing one and so bear with me.

BTW just wondering as to how many of you had the patience to read till this point. If you did please leave your signateure in the comments so that others can also admire your patience......

- Dheepak Ra

Unfulfilled promise

I had promised quite some time back, to update this site. But then promises were meant to be broken (mind you usually I dont)

Quite a lot of you, drop in here via my blogger profile (this site is the first entry). Well I advise you to jump to my photoblog first......

Having got used to posting only pictures in my other photo blog, I am struggling to key in the words. Now where do I begin with - the salary hike, my friend's marriage, relative's death, movie reviews? On second thoughts let me reserve them for future posts.

This is just a post to indicate that this blog is still alive......

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Firefox Vulnerability

Just a week back Firefox browser downloads crossed the magical 50 million mark, signifying the growing acceptance of open source softwares.

However on 8th May 2005, two critical bugs were discovered in Firefox. Eventhough both are critical in nature, their effectiveness increased when they were exploited in conjuction.

Check out the Secunia Advisories which is accepted by all in the software industry.

Greyhat security - one of the discoveres of this bug, has this to say.

Normally all critical bugs are patched up in a day or two by Firefox. This one still hasnt been fixed (today is the third day since the discovery). However they have made a workaround and renamed their update servers, making sure that default installations arent vulnerable.

And before you bash Mozilla and dump Firefox, just remember that we got a workaround and response from Mozilla (changing their servers & few more) in hours instead of days and weeks by Microsoft. Not to mention the fact that MS, takes months & years if not never, to patch some of the vulnerabilties. Whereas in Firefox, one can trace the bug status and see what effort is put into it.

If you are interested in tracing the bug status, then check out this bugzilla entry [Update on 11 May: Due to security reasons, one needs to be a registered member to access the details.]

Reproducible Test Case:
If you are keen on testing whether your browser is vulnerable. Then here is a neat test:
Add a website say "http://sudasudacoffee.blogspot.com" as Allowed websites via Tools->options->Allowed sites. Open the sudasudacoffee website in the browser. After that copy and paste this in the url (excluding the double quotes)- "javascript:InstallTrigger.install({'blah':{URL:'http://www.mozilla.org',IconURL:"javascript:eval('alert(Components.stack)')"}});void(0)" If you are vulnerable, you can see an alert box.

Temporary Solution
To protect yourself, goto Tools->Options-> uncheck "allow websites to install software" that should reduce most of the issues. For 100% effectiveness, javascript should be temporarily disabled. However I dont suggest it bcoz the probability is too low and most of the sites expect javascript to be enabled.

Waiting for Firefox update.......

Update on 12 May:
Fixed:
On 11th may itself, updated version 1.0.4 has been rolled out. You can download your copy at http://www.getfirefox.com

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Bangalore Bloggers Meet

Group Snap

Eventhough blogging has mutated from a "me too" to "hobby" to "part time work(I spend 3 hours a day on blogging)" However I had never been to a bloggers meet before. Atleast not till 30th April 2005. Thanks to Prabha and Prabhu for having introduced me to the rest of the bloggers.

Cup of Coffee:

Coffee

Its always nice to meet people from varied back ground, tastes and interest bounded by the their passion for blogging. Its nice to spend an evening chit-chatting and cracking jokes over a cup of coffee at Barista. Well I am more of a photographer (mind you - a beginner) than a writer. So I am not expending any effort in penning it down.

Autographs:
signatures

- Dheepak Ra