it's official!

the move to wordpress is complete and tested. i will not be updating this site any longer. the new location for i, prash is: http://www.prash.net, but i have found a good use for this place.
whenever prash.net is down for maintenance, i will point it here. please do not change your bookmarks back to this site: the new location will be back up soon whenever that happens.
see you there!

i, prash, am on wordpress!

finally!
after much procrastination, i, prash, am excited to report that i now use wordpress! i, prash, join the ranks of fine predecessors like alex, carthik and of course those southern artistes karthik and manoj!
it was not really a 5 minute install thanks to wordpress still in tune with mysql's OLD_PASSWORD, but anyway, here i, prash, am - all set to explore the wonderful features, themes and plugins of this truly easy to use tool.
for sometime, i will continue to update here until things are all set with the new location. thereafter, i'll see you there!
here's to many more fun days of blogging!

razor sharp!

two seconds after razor2 is installed, it kicks in like the superstar it is!
vipul, you, sir, rock!

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searching for spam

who would have ever thought it would happen?
2 hours waiting for spam. 2 self-loathing, anger-inducing, can't-believe-i am-actually-waiting-for-spam hours.
and then it comes, gets a score of 3.5 and slips right into my inbox without a by-your-leave!
#*&$%!(^#*@&!!!

ok let me explain.
yesterday i installed my own mailserver. yes yes, it had everything: qmail, qmail-pop3d, bincimap, vpopmail, qmailscanner, spamassassin, clamav - in short "the works".
and then the craziest thing happened. i had to verify that everything was hunky-dory with my setup and so guess what i needed ..... some spam! and can you believe i got not one piece of junkmail on that sunday evening for 2 straight hours. and then, when it finally comes, all decked up in its grandiose promise of increasing my length and girth, spamassassin takes one cursory glance at it, gives it a score of only 3.5 ( my threshold is 5.0 for junk mail) and sends it skipping off to my INBOX.
darn it! (those were not my exact words, but i am trying to keep this pg)
anyway, i think it's time for vipul's razor.
more on this later (and for those trying to do something similar - coming soon is a complete guide to a decent debian system - i had the sense to document my every step this time around - so keep that ping coming!)

Me too! Me! Me!!

ok, so karthik book-tagged me, which is not so bad considering i was waiting to be tagged and if it didn't happen soon, i would have done it myself. (this reminds me of the people who think they sing well: once they are in a party and the small talk is over, they get a kind of glazed look in their eyes and they will refuse to say anything unless someone requests them to sing that "titanic paattu". of course even if no one requests them , they will route the topic around until it settles on songs and somehow that titanic movie - "so nice movie, no?" anyway it's bound to happen: for the next 5 minutes you will be treated a very indian-accented rendition of a very dion-y song. of course, everyone should clap in the end ... good heavens!)

anyway, where was i?
oh yes, let's begin with ...

How many books do I own?
this is difficult to answer, the bulk of my favorites are back home in india, because of luggage weight restrictions and because somehow a tilting wet grinder that weighs a gazillion tonnes is more important than my hardbound copy of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. i am still waiting for the idlis ...
i guess i have about 400 in total of which i was permitted to bring (and then bought some here) about 150.

Last books bought
Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. When I first heard the basic premise of the novels, I refused to buy them for many years because I found it hard to believe that someone could make such a bold statement on what is usually a very personal decision of the mind. Finally after much coaxing from my brother-in-law, I decided to buy them just to prove him, Rand and all you fans wrong. I am still reading the first, so judgement is reserved! But I will accept this much: the writing is sharp and I find that a rarity these days.

Last books read
As is obvious from my blog, I have last read Illusions (i read this book off and on - actually you can do it in one sitting - a philosophical treatise on the adventures of a reluctant messaih who influences the author during their flying exploits over the midwestern crop-fields. I like Richard Bach and was a fan ever since I read his Seagull book) , Who Let the Blogs Out (when I started off with this whole blogging thing and wanted to know what else I could do with blogging; turns out not much else .....) and before that: Eats, Shoots and Leaves (a comical adventure on the misuse of pronunciation - the title is a take on the following joke: a panda walks into a cafe and orders a sandwich. After eating, he fires a gun in the air and walks towards the door. When the waiter asks in confusion what he thinks he’s doing, the panda throws him a badly punctuated book on wildlife: “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves”.)

Five Books that mean a lot to me
Although many books have meant a lot to me, including my LAMP book, no not that lamp!)
1. The Little Prince: An amazing story of the journey of a stranded airplane pilot from planet to planet where he meets different people each lonely in his own way.
2. Who moved my cheese? (I also read bigger books, but for now, just hear me out ...): The story is deceptively simple: Two rats are stuck in a dark maze and have all the cheese they want nearby when one fine day the cheese is gone. One rat wants to just stay there hoping someone will put the cheese back, while the other simply starts out looking for more. You will not believe me if I tell you the amazing influence this story had on me when I read it about 2 years back. It made me get off my lazy backside and find a new job in a new city. I have never regretted that and still keep reading this novelette now and then.
3. Illusions Most times you will just walk through the aisles of a library and pick a book at random and read it at home and return it. And then you will repeat the process ad infinitum. Othertimes, you will come across a book that so changes you think that you will buy it and then read it once every other 3-4 books. This is one such. There isn't much I can tell you about it except to look out for the parallels with advaita - the philosophy I most closely associate my innermost thinking with.
4. A Tale of Two Cities Maybe it was because I read this at the very impressionable age of 14 or maybe because I am just a sucker for a martyr story, but this book still ranks very high up for me simply because of the powerful narrative and the way Dickens is able to bring togther such a diverse set of characters into a specific period and bring out the best and worst in each of them. Oooooh, I have spent countless nights just imagining Madame DeFarge knitting the names of the doomed into her weave!
5. Moby Dick From "Call me Ishmael." to "...;then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.", a whale of a read (ouch!) - every single word of it ... (Oh yes Karthik, indeed classics can be fun reads)

Now for the tags - since I am relatively new to the blogosphere, let me just say that if you are reading this and haven't done this yet, please consider yourself tagged (and since it's likely I don't know you, drop me a line and let me know).

and now for sale: AIR!

just when you thought ebay had seen it all, it now sports a fresh jar of air breathed by super-stars angelina jolie and brad pitt.
ninemsn reports that the ad proudly proclaims:

"Be the first to own this jar of Celebrity air, which may contain air molecules that came in direct contact with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt!!"

and as proof of authenticity, includes 13 photos of the air being captured.
some people are truly jobless and get paid for it too. bidding stands at more than $20000 (wait, it's now $425000)!

the real thing?

from the christian science monitor comes this neat piece of news that could well change the way we look at energy and its creation. have we really discovered the cornucopia of cold fusion this time?
only time will tell.

thank you!

thank you! thank you!! thank you!!!

if i wake up tomorrow ...

... and find out that debian sarge is delayed some more, i will scream out loud!!!
and while on this topic, the nerve of those idiots from redmond to post an ad for "Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition Beta 2" (thanks ms, for the pithy name) and that too right on the slashdot linux page (refresh a couple of times if you don't see it at first, it's hiding in there somewhere!) that is announcing the imminent arrival of sarge.
aaaaarghhhhh!

tomorrow is monday ...

... and for the first time,

• i am not worrying if there is a brand new technology out there that has cropped up over the weekend with another tla like JCP or JMX, and which i might need for my "next project" which would happen once my "bench" period was over,
  
• i feel my contribution is actually being valued by a company that does not think of me an hourly expense,
• i am given the freedom to explore new technologies and use them only if i feel the need and i am sure they would improve the bottom line (and not like my previous projects where i would be forced to use a caterpillar earthmover, when what i really needed was a shovel),
  
• i actually want to get out of bed on a monday morning...

ok, it's out of my system.