Thinking of terrorists, I came up with a poem that kind of reflects the anger that you see in their eyes. Though serious things are rare from me, but i kinda liked the outcome… Check out da poem, here at my blog.
Hmm, Now not that I share some of the extremist sentiments, it just came to me, in a moment of pity…..

Orkut, one of the most boring (although better than the others of its kind) sites which has replaced chatting on Yahoo! Messenger as THE definitive way to waste time in India, has got a new interface now. I hardly check my account anyway, but since I’d got quite a few scrap notifications and was surprised to see a new interface.

Now, for those not into this stuff, Orkut’s earlier interface was as appealing as roadkill. Looked pretty much like some kid with too much time on Notepad designed the stuff. It looks better now, much snazzier interface, and actually makes you want to use it than puke into a bucket. What I like about Orkut is its standardised interface, unlike other sites (which I don’t even bother to be a member of despite the spam mail they send me weekly) - I simply hate it when I accidentally end up on other social networking sites and end up staring at a page which takes 10 minutes to load and / or crashes my browser because of the ghastly number of utterly useless Java applets, Flash games, photo slideshows and other bullshit peopl think is very cool to put up their. I can imagine them, staring at awe at a shitty bit of junk code and go ‘wow’ when they hit the preview button. Losers.

I just hope that along with the interface, Google was kind enough to part with some cash and get some more reliable, doughnut-loving servers for Orkut, even though I won’t bother to visit it.

Do zoom in by clicking on the image to get a better view...

Yes folks, no Photoshop GIMP tricks here. That’s an actual screenshot taken on Prashanth’s PC today. That’s Yahoo!’s favicon on Google India’s page. Strange eh? This was on Internet Explorer 7, and opening the same page then on his PC in Mozilla Firefox showed the correct Google logo. So it was probably an IE7 (cache?) issue. Funny though, really, to think that Google’s been bought out by Yahoo!. In fact, at one point of time, Google DID approach Yahoo! requesting to be bought out, but the CEO at that time, Terry Semel thought it was too costly an offer to consider. Come to think of it then, this could actually have happened. Maybe his PC got connected to some server in a parallel universe where Terry decided to part with the cash…

Didn’t I say Microsucks…

Father Agnel School (Gautam Nagar) will be holding their annual Agnel Talent Fest 2007 from 30th August 2007 to 1st September 2007. It is one of the most prestigious events in Delhi, albeit slightly irritating because they award themselves a position in almost each and every event and then *gracefully decline to accept* it. This year, the theme is Global Warming, which I think is bullshit (the notion of global warming, not the topic).

The ATF’s Exquizzit, their quizzing event is one of the best and the toughest quizzes in Delhi, and sure hope that on 1st September the DPS VK Quiz Club does something in it. Joy Bhattacharya, the brain behind ESPN School Quiz, and one of the lead researchers at ESPN. He has also worked with the team behind Kaun Banega Crorepati, University Challenge, and India’s Child Genius. Boy, is he an amazing quizmaster, and his quizzes are so fun.

Getting there
Now that’s a question many people from the DPS VK QC and the Code Warriors (there are two tech events) have asked me a lot. For exact directions from your place, the best place is www.mapmyindia.com. Here are two general maps of the area though, click on the images to get an enlarged view.

Downloads

• Agnel Talent Fest 2007 Invite (PDF)
• ATF Exquizzit 2006 Prelims (PDF): Don’t get conned into thinking that the quiz is easy on the basis of this admittedly very easy paper - the competition is fierce and qualifying cut-offs are high. The stage rounds then teach you what trivia quizzing actually is.