Welcome to the world of Deepak.

Update 1: Included video

The last couple of days have been the most tenseful in our lives. I am sure my parents hadn’t been so feared for the well-being of my sister. The reason is, she was expecting delivery of her baby.

And today, the 17th of August 2011, the day when the protests against corruption in India was at its heights, when a single man called Anna Hazare was bringing the Government of India to its knees, the Junior decided to make his grand entrance to this world. At 8.30PM, he was welcomed to this world – using violence…
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Was checking out todays edition of ‘ The Hindu’ and noticed a quarter-page ad for Emerson. There were two things funny about the ad:

1. The ad was about saving business in Brazil. What is the point of putting up an ad in an Indian daily about Brazil? We are in a country where we are not even bothered about own natural resources. Does the company think we will jump in to save Brazil???

2. Was happy when I saw a bar-code in the ad. Immediately fired up my Android phone’s bar-code reader and scanned it. It took me to a page which didn’t open. It had a server error in the mobile module of the site:
http://www.emerson.com/nbdmobile/defaultnbdb.aspx

A company that spends such huge money in a newspaper ad, shouldn’t they have checked everything. I feel this is money down the drain…

UPDATE 1: Angry Birds RIO has been officially launched in the Android Market. So you will not need this hack.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.rovio.angrybirdsrio

However, you can use this hack to access Amazon’s App-a-day deal…

Angry Birds fans across the world know the release of the latest game ‘Angry Birds Rio‘. The developers of this game, Rovio Mobile, has launched this game through Amazon Appstore, which unfortunately isn’t available to people outside US. However, using a couple of hacks, you will be able to play this stunning game.

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Update 4: (Dated 3rd August 2011)

‘The Hindu’ carries an article today about the LPG confusion and asking consumers not to panic. The deadline for submitting LPG documents and the RR number has been extended upto 4th August 2011 (Thursday). The Department of Civil Supplies is considering to extend the deadline beyond August 4th. You can upload your documents here - http://web1.kar.nic.in/fcslpg1/

As always, do let us know in the comments below whether uploading the documents worked…

Update 3: (dated 25th July 2011)

Consumers can check the status of their connection on the website of the department of food and civil supplies

You can leave in the comments whether this worked or not so that it can help others…

Update 2: (Dated 9th Feb 2011): The Karnataka Government has issued a notice today that the last date for submitting documents has been extended to 19th February 2011. All you have to do is submit a copy of your ration card and electricity bill to your LPG agency. If you do not have a ration card, you can submit a copy of electricity bill with the LPG Consumer number written on it. The Government has warned that if documents aren’t submitted as required, there is a possibility of disconnecting your LPG connection and even cancellation of your ration card (if you have one, that is…)

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UPDATE 1: (dated 5th Feb 2011) Today I visited the lpg agencies and the good news is all you have to submit is a copy of your electricity bill with the consumer number of your lpg connection written on it. It took a maximum of 5 minutes at each lpg agency. A clear example of the government order gone wrong…

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If you are staying in Karnataka and you have a ration card, I am sure you are familiar with the confusion and controversy surrounding the latest Government order.

This is what the problem is. Sometime last month, the Government of Karnataka had asked all APL (Above Poverty Line) Ration card holders to submit a copy of their ration card and Electricity Bill to their LPG agency. The rationale behind this is to weed out duplicate APL ration cards in the state. This is where the confusion starts. What if you do not hold a ration card? My family doesn’t have a ration card. AFAIK, we last had a card, nearly 8 years back, when my parents were in Port Blair. When we relocated to Coimbatore after that, we lost documents for the transfer of the card and nobody bothered to get it renewed again.
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Update 1 (dated 25th July 2011)

This might be old news, but KSRTC now accepts ticket confirmations on your mobile. You can now present the SMS confirmation or email that you received when you booked the ticket and present your original ID proof. Now, all counting days before the Indian Railways implement this.  (Source)

Yesterday I had to visit the City railway station in Bangalore to send off my grandparents who were travelling to Coimbatore. Their tickets were booked online via IRCTC and they had the ticket printouts already with them. But, I had to take platform tickets. Am trying to document the various places it might be available and what is the easiest solution to this problem:

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• 19 Lessons from United Airlines on How To Build A Crappy Survey – UIE Brain Sparks – As I was boarding my fourth ai… http://bit.ly/hbG3Ag #
• spending some days in the 'scenic' madhugiri… http://bit.ly/e8mtyh #
• Killer Tag line by HTC — 'It's not your Dream Phone, it is the one after that'… wondering what the new phone is about… LOL… #
• HTC Desire gets minor #Android update…http://goo.gl/J4lhu sorry guys, my Desire is already baked by #Gingerbread .. #
• Google Nexus S to be launched in India! @ just Rs.24,000 http://t.co/G89bgD6 via @TheGadgetFan — go India Go… #
• WONDERFUL test match…. Go india go… Well done pujara.. #
• The Ball that will Change India's Image forever… http://sports.in.msn.com/cricket/sa-india/article.aspx?cp-docume… http://bit.ly/elvaYu #
• Check Out How Crazy Complicated The Online Display Ad Business Is (GOOG, AOL, YHOO) – SAI: Silicon Alley Insider -… http://bit.ly/gEZumM #
• BSNL gotta be kidding…14.4Mbps speed…WTF….

  Get ready for 14.4 Mbps speed on BSNL 3G, BSNL will offer 14.4 Mb… http://bit.ly/hHsTAn #

• Had lunch at 'bhojana shale' near my home. Food was good. Even has an A/C service area. Will take my family there next time… #
• Watching "i, robot" right now. Yhe precursor to rajini's endhiran. Thinking how the movie eud have been only if shankar had type of tech #
• am carving for a pizza suddenly. no pizza shops nearby… – i guess i will have maggi only for lunch… #

connected to the net using my new 3G USB modem and BSNL 3G —

I have linked my Twitter account to my blog and whenever I tweet, it shows up as a post here. Earlier I thought it is cool as I can now update the blog through Twitter. However, I realized that the posts aren’t under my control and I have to log in here to modify the post-titles and stuff like that.

And I felt that the home page was always cluttered. Today, I took the decision to remove Twitter updates from my homepage. But I had a problem. These tweets are under a separate category. I don’t wanna unlink them. I just don’t want those tweets in my Home Page. After searching through WordPress docs, I came across this wonderful plugin -”Advanced Category Excluder“.

All I did was install the plugin, then in the plugin settings, removed off the ‘twitter’ category from showing up on my homepage…

Presto…. a clean home page …

I was playing around with my new android phone & as usual was inside the Android marketplace. I noticed Calvin’s app there and went inside to install it.

Once done with the installation, I noticed that there is no website listed under the developer’s details. This app has been downloaded more than 250k times.

What a waste of screenplace real-estate. The developer had left the website as the default one, which is example.com. Am thinking how much traffic us lost to his potential website. Hmm

I think I will drop him a line about this. Let’s see how this goes.

P.s. this post entirely written using my new HTC desire.

Finished Watching madarasapatinam. Thoroughly enjoyed the movie. The director has taken great pains to show the old Chennai or rather Madras with splendor.

I am sure old people from Chennai would have felt nostalgic. The best was watching the river coovum in all its glory.

I am sure this movie will win some awards this year.