Category Archives: Thought Work

The Mayonnaise Jar

“The Real Winners in life are the People who look at every situation with an expectation that they can make it work or make it better” – Barbara Pletcher

I do not intend to use my blog to publish silly chain email. But this one was a real exception! And for a couple of reasons: It was a pleasure reading this although prolix, and that my friend Rohit Patkar sent me this. Rohit has also been in my good books (of etiquette) for his email habits – sheer quality and nothing else. For other things, he is an atheist. Read on… Continue reading The Mayonnaise Jar

Bulk Image Compression & Gift-CD in Picasa

For the last decade, I have been scuffling to find a tool that will reduce the quality of several images at once. Before Picasa Web Albums was available, I used to manually reduce the quality of my scanned or digital images to meet two constraints: available server space and bandwidth (offered by a free host) I used evaluation versions of a couple of tools, that didn’t live too long. In this post I will explain how Picasa lets you compress several images at once so that they can be attached to email; also, creating a Gift CD – a great way to share pictures with so-called ‘computer illiterates’! Continue reading Bulk Image Compression & Gift-CD in Picasa

Globalization in Showbiz: Can we have ‘Is Janam Mohe Brazil Hi Bhejo’ ?

A couple of days back I read in the newspaper that Brazil’s hot-selling soap opera is one based on the Indian caste system. Caminho Da India (that’s not Punjabi! It Portuguese for ‘India’s Way’) is set in Rajasthan & revolves around a dalit boy who falls in love with an upper-caste girl facing opposition from their families and society. The Portuguese show has its entire production team and actors flown down from Brazil, yet revering traditional Indian values by not kissing on screen. The show has gained so much popularity that Rajasthani trinkets make a fashion statement on Brazilian streets. Also, chai, theek hai and bhagwaan ke liye have become household parlance. Continue reading Globalization in Showbiz: Can we have ‘Is Janam Mohe Brazil Hi Bhejo’ ?

LDAP Address Book in Mozilla Thunderbird

Necessity is the mother of invention

Although I haven’t invented anything, necessity has sure been the driving force for this post. A few of us share a common Novell mailbox at work. Since archiving is done locally on a single machine, it is not available to others. Tired of this, I migrated to Thunderbird a couple of months back. I set up my mailbox, created folders & message filters and a back-up utility. The only thing missing was my address book. While in Groupwise, names would auto-complete. So I went on to find a solution! Continue reading LDAP Address Book in Mozilla Thunderbird

Setting up my Press, Part 2: Choosing the right property

This trilogy titled ‘Setting up my press’, will definitely not serve as a tutorial, is only an account of my decade long experience with web hosts & getting along with WordPress. In Part 1, I discussed my build-or-use decision and WordPress PoC. In this part, I will put my decade long experience with web hosting to use to help buy web-estate wisely. Do stick around for Part 3 on installation tips & must-have plug-ins. Continue reading Setting up my Press, Part 2: Choosing the right property

The Gandhi Dynasty

Further to [permalink href=”250″ title=”Sea-link inaugurated, but what’s in a name?”]my post on the Sea-link Naamkaran issue[/permalink], here is a a ‘short’ list of schemes, roads etc. for the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty promotion with Tax Payer money! I was actually waiting for something like this, until this morning when I found it in my Forwarded Email label (folder for non-googlians). Continue reading The Gandhi Dynasty

BE @ MU, Part 1: Recommended Books & Study Tips

Graduating as a Mechanical Engineer from Mumbai University (with distinction) was one of the best things that happened to me. Although I haven’t retained the trend I chose to graduate, I will continue to be a chauvinist. Here are some tips for fairing good and good books to refer to develop ilm that can never be taken down, no matter which industry you move to. Continue reading BE @ MU, Part 1: Recommended Books & Study Tips