Recovering lost data

NTFS undelete came to my rescue for the second time. Its a very good tool to have but it works only on NTFS filesystem (?).

While recovering the data, most important thing to remember is to use a new partition or storage as target. Attempt to recover to the same location may corrupt the recovered data.

It worked quite well with USB disk, but took a lot of time on Vista partition... GUI hanged for quite some time ;-)

Becoming lesser by the day

Interesting, got it as a mail fwd

Our communication - Wireless
Our dress - Topless
Our telephone - Cordless
Our cooking - Fireless
Our youth - Jobless
Our food - Fatless
Our labour - Effortless
Our conduct - Worthless
Our relation - Loveless
Our attitude - Careless
Our feelings - Heartless
Our politics - Shameless
Our education - Valueless
Our follies - Countless
Our arguments - Baseless
Our Job - Thankless
Our Salary - Very Very less
Our emails - useless (especially this one)!

Pune Barcamp5

This is my 2nd barcamp @ SICSR, Pune (earlier being BC3). Weather on Saturday was just like pre-monsoon season, more suitable for enjoying long drives than attending tech sessions :-)

Well about BC5... it wasn't as interesting as BC3 barring a couple of sessions. Recession seems to have an impact on BC5 too ..., NO sponsors, NO free T-shirt, NO free lunch ....

Some notes from interesting sessions I have attended

Startups and Venture Capital

• Startups should consider approaching good VCs to seek seed fund, guidance, direction, and industry connections
• VCs generally look for good idea, its scope and market size, motivation of the team, domain expertise, leadership and execution skills in startups

Its advantageous for startups if their idea is backed with patents and has scope for fallback if required (part of the idea may be marketed to serve another purpose or another set of users).

Typically the process of meeting, convincing and successfully seeking funds from VCs last anywhere between 4 - 6 months. On the average, VCs stay invested in startups for about 7 years with typical investment size of $1 to $10 million.

This talk was given by people from headstart...

Guy Kawasaki may have different thoughts on this topic though ....






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Theme: Security is an integral part of IT hence none should take it for granted

Group of enthusiastic people have come together to spread cyber security awareness. The plan is to have regular get-together and share knowledge pertaining to cyber security.


Why you should use Twitter


This is an interesting session. Till I attended this session, I never appreciated twitter and treated it like just another social networkish time waster (of course it is unless one really makes use of what it has to offer as a good communication platform).

The best part of twitter is

• Short messages would do, don't need to worry about composing big post (but at the same time blogs helps improving writing skills :-) )
• Messages can be posted / received through various means to twitter (mobile SMS, messenger, web, standalone apps such as TweetDeck)
• With good network, useful information flows in
• Keep up to date on topics of interest by creating filters? (ex: #bcp5 to get updates related to Pune Barcamp5)
  
• Helping hand can come from any corner of the network, even if you are not connected to them

Photos on flicker...

Blogged with the Flock Browser

A gap too wide @ Cricinfo

Well written article by Andrew Miller about frustrations of currently touring English team.

Andrew points to an amazing feat of Shewag. His stats in tests read 195, 309, 155, 164, 173, 201, 254, 180, 151, 319, 201 ..... definitely he made a mark in history of Cricket.

Enjoyed the article including the comments :-).

Pune gearing up for CYG 2008

For a sporting event of this stature, preparations should have been amazing but unfortunately Pune is still under construction lots of roads are in bad shape despite of lot of efforts put into renovation.

Fortunately the road I use for daily commute has been very good and pleasant in terms of neatness traffic and usability :-)

Trying to capture CYG colours..., will try to put more

- Cat-eyes along Aundh Road
- Walls painted with CYG theme
- CYG bill boards

Unfortunately the CYG rules says cameras are not allowed into the sports complex :-(

Abhinav Bindra makes history at Beijing 2008

Bindra is the first Indian to win a GOLD at Olympics in an individual event. Abhinav won the Men's 10m Air Rifle with a total score of 700.5.

Congratulations Abhinav for the great show. You made my day! I was very excited :-)

The match was so close that, Abhinav overtook Hakkinen of Finland and scores got leveled at the pre-final round. When it mattered the most, he hit a magical 10.8 in the decider.

More interesting to see was his composure and behavior even after making history.

I could enjoy this see-saw contest just because of the pouring rain that held me from leaving to office early.

Way to go, hope to see India vaulting in the medal rank this time

Doing the right thing

Good quote from Benjamin Franklin

Just knowing the right thing is not enough. You must do the right thing to get results. The person who does things makes many mistakes, but he never make the biggest mistake of all: doing nothing!

Good to know more about the Nuclear Deal

Entire nation is divided over Indo US nuclear deal. Every one can be an expert in topics such as the nuclear energy (deal) where both sides of the coin could be true and justifiable.

The need of the hour is a well respected, reliable and highly intellectual expert (I mean a real expert) who can weigh the pros and cons for us so that we can either feel comfortable or voice our concern.

Though I am not fully convinced, following articles eased a bit of my confusion

The Deal and Its Impact

Nuclear Power, pros and cons


Curtsy IndianCurrentAffairs for pointing me to the above TOI articles

Very Good Article on Farmer suicides — myth and reality

Very well written article that gives a good picture of how numbers are misused for self interest Farmer Suicides - myth and reality @ ET

Bears take on Sensex... What do you do?

If you are an investor... don't miss this article.

Market dynamics always had short term impact on equities. All one need to keep in mind is patience pays (of course, only if one is not greedy and invests in good companies).

What if the Sensex falls below 10k? Still invest @ rediff.com

I can't do any better

Cute little baby singing Janaganama....

Cartoons and thinking out of the box

A movie director will have 2+ hrs to present his story/crap, a TV commercial director can have the luxury of a few seconds. What about the news paper cartoonist? all they can afford is a corner of a page to present a story which is relevant, thought provoking, sarcastic, and laughable.

One has to think out of the box to produce some brilliant work (cartooning) under such constraints.

This cartoon is from today's (22nd June) Eenadu Magazine by famous Telugu cartoonist Mr. Sridhar. Its about the state of current tussle between UPA and Left on the Nuclear Deal with US.

I enjoyed it a lot :-)

Monsoon and its joy

Great captures Of Monsoon Masti & Misery

Enjoy

month of IPL

Have been following but yesterday's Rajasthan vs Mumbai Indians is the most nail biting ... during the last over, scenes from Aus vs S.A @ Eng W.C were rolling in my head. Unfortunately MI failed to do a Aussie feat to at least end the game for a tie (dear Dilhara, and Sanath what did u do?).

Every thing looked great till the 17th over, Pollak and Raje bowled extremely well and were looking to finish off the game in style. A few glitches with the ball and the fielding cost the game for the MI. My heart has tanked with their defeat... I wanted to see Sanath and Sachin in the next round too, and more importantly I wanted to see RR's defeat (cheer the underdogs :-)).

The major debacle of the IPL team Deccan (DACCAN) (de) Chargers topping the losers chart. My home team :-( is a bunch of big hitters but got hammered by every one else (pity u ppl), including Royal Challengers.

Owners of the DC might be praying for a better bargain on sale of some BIG players :-)

Well now, Rajasthan Royals, Punjab XI, Chennai Super Kings, and Delhi Dare devils are in the semis. Though Punjab is looking good, feel the finals is going to be between RR and DD.

Mothers day

I have come across this article yesterday Amma Vardhillu (sorry for those who can't read Telugu). The narration presents the daily routine of a mother and yet passes the message for us.

I could connect so easily with this article because it almost reflects the routine of my mother too (for that matter almost all will concur).

They sacrifice, does over-work without selfishness and derives pleasure out of serving the whole family.

Whether we acknowledge or not time will keep rolling and mothers will be mothers for ever.

Achieve goals by becoming a self leader

Every one aspires to be a leader, and achieve heights. Here is tool to help us realizing our dreams, a book titled Self leadership and the one minute manager.

Leadership can't be taught any better than the story presented in this book, grab this book for your betterment (this looks like the gist). Simple, elegant narration makes it a good read, the volume of the book makes us more interested in finishing it in a single go.

The Key points for me are

- People are not mind readers, so don't assume things and ask for what you want or convey how you feel (i.e challenge assume constraints)

- Become empowered by making use of points of power (relationship, task, personal, and knowledge etc)

- At every state, based on your competence and commitment, seek direction or support to get things done. Such a practice should make us a self leader

- Any one who can provide us the required support, or direction is a leader

- Never turn away from responsibilities

- Measure your competence and commitment at every stage, seek what you need to proceed

- Collaborate with people for fruitful results

- Make better use of the most powerful sentence in English I NEED

Height of time passing

TV channels can degrade to any level :-) though it looks funny, reflects how they are thinking (treating) about the viewers..

I couldn't recall who's wisdom, but said "Front page of a news paper is sufficient to cover the days NEWS from around the world (i.e news are rare)

Then we have TV channels competing to cook news out of anything (or should we say trying to re-define the meaning of news?). I simply hate the current set of private news channels....

Steal deals

Visited CROMA over the weekend (At Eshaanya Nilayam, Pune). The prices were really luring. Many electronic gadgets were being disposed at steal prices as part of their year end sales.

I couldn't believe My Book from Western Digital (250GB EHDD) was tagged at 5K. Had I not taken an assembled piece earlier... damn.

undeserved victory

The Sydney (2nd) test match is definitely one of the most controversial, its no less than a match fix. Indian team has played some excellent cricket in this match (excluding the last session, they should have ended it well for a draw).

In the end it looked like, 15 (Ind) vs 25 (Aus) due to the pathetic umpiring (any county umpire could have done a far better job). Australian team has lost the respect all over the world due to their immoral behavior.

Former Aussie players batted for the current team saying that, its the way cricket is played in Aus and visitors needs to understand.... it sounds like we are not going to care for you, but you should. how stupid!

Another former says that morality only applies to taking catches but not for batting. how discriminating...

Someone rightly said, down the line people will only look at the stats (India lost the match) and never at the circumstances. Had umpiring been normal India would have won this match by a big margin (I am sure, Australian players were not able to handle Kumble at all).

The best innings of this match is definitely that of Laxman's magical and flawless century

Few more... here

Kumble and Co. have been cheated

Sack arrogant Ponting, demands Peter Roebuck

Australia's attitude lacking in appeal

Kumble questions Australia's spirit

It's blunder Down Under!

Sporting greats upset by Australia's behaviour