Zemanta blog assistant

Image via Wikipedia

This is first blog using Zemanta. Wanted to checkout the features provided by this chrome plugin. The video tutorial was short and straight forward. So thought it would be nice to try a new tool after a long time.

As a sample i tried adding this image the tool provides a media gallery adjacent to the compose textbox and one can an image with just one click.  Yet to look at how to add media images to the gallery though.

Type a popular word like Michael Jackson
and it automatically searches for references in wikipedia and other sites and links it from the blog. Though it takes sometime for the links to appear this is an interesting feature which allows one to add links to reference pages without any hassle :-)

Another piece of feature is it picks words from the blog and provides suggestions for tags.

Its a neat plugin, interesting way of thinking hope they come up with more new features like this in the future.

Ayirathil oruvan

With lot of expectation we set foot in to the movie theatre for the movie premiere Ayirathil Oruvan by Selva Raghavan. It was a brave move by the director to experiment recreation of our history but the screenplay and graphics miserably let down the effort to making it a good movie. Not to mention the story line which started out as a good entertainer initially had lot of loose ends during the second half. 


War-crime, archaeology, sea voyage is all something new about the movie. The movie tries to blend the lives of historical chola dynasty lineage who have been secretly hiding in mystery land which cannot be reached without passing by 7 obstacles and contemporary pandia lineage who hold access to all the modern technology, weapons. The narration was poor that one cant make out the direction as to where the characters in the movie was leading to. 


During the second half when the chola dynasty was located after the entry of Parthiban all of them converse in old tamil script which was hard to follow. The background score in the movie was good but in order to affright there is sudden blare of sound after mute scenes. This was repeated many times in the movie and at times it created more annoyance than anxiety. The first remix song is what i liked it fits the cheerful start of the voyage, rest of the songs though good to hear were added just for the heck of it and doesnt gel well with the movie. 


The movie has an open ending leaving us wonder if there would be an second part. Though the movie didnt meet my expectation it would be a guiding light for more movies to come in the same genre. With all the gory scenes its definitely not for the weak hearted & kids.


With a disappointing pongal releases am looking forward for Ajith's flick Asal, Venkat Prabhu's Goa..

Getting back to routine

Its been a while since i got back to my routine things have been adhoc for a while lot of last minute tasks sprung up and i missed few of my routine tasks. Few of them were,

1) Reading books

2) Gym

3) Playing TT/Swimming

4) Movies

5) Long drive

Oflate i have been falling sick 'cos of irregular weather pattern its cold and dusty outside. And i have been looking forward to moving out of my current project. This is my first time am moving out of an ongoing project. Normally i work in a project till its end but this project been a different experience. I joined this project as a design/code reviewer and had to extend my responsibilities as developer, mentor, tester, release engineer, interviewer, hr, architect, reviewer am really thankful that to the project that i was able to play multi-faceted role in this project. 

With the confidence i gained in this project am looking forward to play a larger role. So looking for a new project. My new project might use Websphere which is something new for me. So am gearing up myself to use this product. Hope its conceptually same as Weblogic. But the help docs are really hard to find when compared to the latter.

Planning to get back to schedule from tomorrow to start with am planning to 

1) Wake up by 8:30 am

2) Go to office 10:00am

3) Gym - 6:30 pm

4) Go to bed by 11:30 pm.

Hope all goes well :-)

29th Bday blast

Memorable Birthday
Its been a while since i blogged and i just got the right topic to blog. It is my bday today (27/12) and it was filled with surprises. All of a sudden am left wondering if the word 'surprise' describes the intense emotional state that i was in today.

Thanks to my fiance and friends they just made my day. I had an wonderful bday celebration to remember by and it was the most fulfilling day in my whole life.

Me and my fiance had planned the day well in advance when my father called up in the last moment asking me to travel to kancheepuram temple in the morning around 6'o clock, which is 1.5 hrs from chennai. We had to revise our plans accordingly. Am an evening person and waking up early kind of ruins my day. So had to cut down on treat with friends and stick to the plans that me and my fiance earlier had.

Lack of sleep left me tired and thought of sleeping in the car on the way return. To my surprise i got calls every now and then from friends wishing me for my bday. I was kind of surprised how most of my friends remembered my bday. It has been an usual thing for ppl to forget my bday and i was used to it. With all the wishes and request for treat i was already confused as to how i could fit in treats today. Thought i will check with my fiance about her plans before confirming other treat. To my surprise she had replied that guests had arrived in the morning and she wont be able to go out until 2:00 pm. As i was tired and since she wasnt ready  i just wanted to doze for a while.

Anand had just asked for a treat at fisherman's cove the previous day thought i will atleast go out for lunch with him to start my celebration. Called him up and asked him to buzz once he gets ready thought i would doze off till then when another surprise was awaiting when my mother called up my to-be inlaws and invited them for dinner. Since the whole plan that i had had collapsed i was hoping atleast i could go out with Anand for good lunch. He had initially said her sister & his mom would join for the lunch. Then he too changed the plan said they had left to pondicherry to attend another family function.

With no time to sleep and all my plans ruined i made up my mind for lunch with Anand and dinner at home and end my day thinking i could sleep after the lunch.

Atlast i got a call he said he was ready so i got ready and went to his house. His sister & cousin sister also joined the treat. I was their target for ragging through-out the drive. It was fun but i was too hungry to concentrate on their bullying hunger was my top priority. I was rushing through the traffic since others in the car were feeling hungry inspite of their ragging. There was an commotion when Anand's sis got an sms after which all of them started talking about changing the destination, stopping by nursery, stopping for a leak. I was perplexed as to why there is sudden introduction of delay for lunch.

After all the hungama we were all back in the car ready to hit the hotel. We went to hotel and it was crowded and it took time for the valet to attend my car. Had to wait for another 10 mins and we went in having been to this place i was fixed to this restaurant named 'Upper deck' on the way to 'Upper deck' Anand stopped me by to show an sign board

It said 'Balaji's Birthday party at Machaan'. My mind was so clouded that even after reading the sign board  i couldnt recognize it was my name on the sign board (I didnt realise it was me, what a bummer). I said  Anand looks like someone with the same name is celebrating his bday party here lets go to 'Upper deck' and turned around when Anand pulled my hand and said 'No, lets go here' thats when i turned around to see the ppl inside and to my surprise/shock i saw one of my friend named Vinod. I fixed my eyes on him so much so that i couldnt realise the whole room was filled with ppl i knew. Vinod was supposed to be in someplace outside India and i kind of had a mixed feeling if this guy is really Vinod, when i was about to convince myself that he might not be he was smiling at me by this time i had entered the restaurant and i was totally taken aback.

Oh my god!!! There were my college friends, school friends & colleagues and to top it all my fiance. What else can one ask for during one's bday (best friends + party + surprise = deadly combination). It was absolute bliss. Phew, i was trying to take a deep breath let the moments sink in. Did someone shout SURPRISE it would have helped a little. I guess no one did or have i gone deaf. I was looking at the guests i was looking at her eyes 'Did you do this? Did you arrange all this?' I wanted to hug her and whisper 'Thank you sweet heart' but not sure how others would react i just held her hands in acknowledgement.

It did take a while for me to digest the surprise element something i had been secretly longing for all these years. Realized i went numb for a while by seeing all my friends at once gathered around just to celebrate my bday party i quickly retracted and started saying 'hello' to all my friends proceeded by a brief introduction of my fiance with each one of my friends.

We had a good lunch and since it was totally unplanned we really were left out of ideas after the introduction. There were few conversations going on but it was all set apart. Spl thanks Anand & co, Shri & co for being the binding factor between groups. Anand's sister came up with this idea of cricket/volley ball and Akshay wanted to fly kite so we collected Cricket kit from the hotel authorities and started having fun again in groups. Few ppl flew kites, few ppl played cricket, few ppl were fiddling with frisbees when her highness came up with this idea of ladies joining the cricket game that did spark something and all of a sudden all of us were in to this game.

It was a short game with 6 overs with lots of fun. Thanks to the scorers none of the score that was reported today was true. It went on for around an hr or so and in the end there was a big fight to choose the winning team. It was a good show we went back to the restaurant to refresh ourselves. Coffee & cookies were served we all had a lite snack and bid good bye.

I think this is one day i would cherish for my life time. When the whole world was about to collapse, like a phoenix it bloomed in to fun-filled, fulfilling day of my life.

Thanks a lot sweet heart it was an incredible bday. I had a blast of joy. Hope we remain the same ;) (touch wood or gold :D)

Thanks to all my friends who coordinated with my fiance to make this an rememberable moment. Hope you guys had fun too :-)

Chk back to view snap shots of the party later.

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Dormant blogging

Me being a dormant blogger had to come up with a convincing reason to convince myself & others as to why one wouldnt blog :D. Think before you leap, so I wondered how people manage to blog about their life regularly. But the act of formalizing life events in words is interesting & challenging. As any other activity this too hits crest & trough there are times when there is so much to write and times when life is so dull and there is nothing to write. And i dont blog when it hits crest (as it is now) or trough. Its the art that one has to develop over time by continuous reading & blogging.

Life has never been the same since July 28 and there has been a lot of changes in me. So many things happened in such short time i just could'nt imagine it really happened.

Am happy i inspired two of my friends to start blogging. One is an Aries female 25 years of age who likes to devise her own life plans http://macherjournal.blogspot.com/. This blog of hers is my personal favorite http://macherjournal.blogspot.com/2009/08/this-something-i-wrote-really-long-back.html for one obvious reason.

Another friend of mine Leo female who has the best job in the world currently (bringing up her child :-) ). Her first blog is just about that http://blogdaily-nandhini.blogspot.com/2009/10/for-long-time-now-i-have-been-thinking.html

Not sure if i was their true inspiration but i know they didnt blog earlier and started blogging after my initiative. So i assumed :P

Am glad Revs opened her blog for public again. I derive inspiration from Revs (http://revsrules.blogspot.com) & Anand (http://anandnataraj.com)

unhappy weekend :(

Last three days have been a test to my temperament and the experience left me in sad state. I normally try to be prepared to such unexpected situations but continuous failure left me in belligerent mood. I got an email forward this friday which quotes 'you can always manipulate your mind to react normally during bad situations' and one hint was to concentrate on breathing whenever you feel angry, breathing cycle is connected to the brain and whenever a person is angry their breathing becomes shallow as a result in outburst of anger. We were looking forward for this movie Quick Gun Murugan which is a spoof of old tamil movie for a while and Anand managed to book tickets for the movie 3 days earlier at Satyam. 

This weekend unlike any other was well planned. I had to finish my job early, workout in gym and enjoy the movie on Friday. Rest on Saturday and do a bit of shopping, gymming. Travel to trichy to attend Rams wedding on Sunday and return back the next day. 

On friday i did manage to finish the job on time and was amazed to see less traffic on my way back home. Reached home early and called Anand twice and no answer. Knowing him well i guessed it rite that this bum must be sleeping. So had to stop by his home to wake him up but he wanted to sleep. Went to gym alone was happy to see less crowd quickly finished my stretching and exercises and was rushing back home so that we could go have dinner outside and enjoy the movie. Guess my luck had changed at this point after my return from Gym. Quickly refreshed and went back to pick up Anand for the movie and saw him asleep. Was planning to have something good for dinner and  this time i got annoyed when he said the movie is at 10:30 what are we going to do starting at 9:00. It was a shocking statement usually he is the one who wants to explore places rather than going on planned visits. 

After a late start we went to this hotel in Saidapet named Mount Palace where the waiter fuelled my  temper by delaying not the dish we ordered but notifying us about the unavailability of the dish. He had the knack of posing so many questions as to how you would want to the food to be. And i eagerly wait for the dish to be prepared and he returns back after 5 mins just to say that the dish is not available. He repeated this thrice and i got totally pissed off and wanted to walk out. Anand convinced me that it would only delay our movie schedule so had to stay back without much hope as to when or whether we would receive our dishes. I had ordered chicken biriyani which is the most common dish and doesnt take much time as it is kept prepared. And for some reason it was delivered late too. 

After this short stint with the waiter we headed to Satyam annexe parking where we usually park we reached the spot by around 10:25 and to our surprise it was full. First time since the annexe was open we managed to see it full had to return to usual parking lot which is usually less effective. The guys have 3 gates but they let the traffic through one gate which causes bottleneck. I was suggesting Anand why cant they individual gates for each theatre so that they can avoid the bottleneck. There was a prompt reply from him 'That too will not solve the problem dude what if people enter in wrong gates' which kindled my anger even more as i wasnt expecting a deterring comment. Phew i just wanted to vent my frustrations and his comment left me in worse state. I managed to control my emotions and asked him to get the tickets so that by the time i get to park we will have the tickets ready. But for some reason he ignored that and i wasnt happy and was not in a mood to repeat it. 

Finally we got inside the theatre and Anand tried to convince me that there is no reason for me to be angry. That was totally out of line, i had to reply back strongly that there is all the reason for me to be angry and just want to express it freely. Sorry for that bro but your comments were sharp and wasnt helping me. After that he realised that i was indeed in a bad mood and tried to cheer me up through out the movie. Though i didnt like the movie few scenes in the movie were hilarious. Anand totally enjoyed the movie was laughing throughout the movie and was cheering me up. 

Next day we went to couple of cafe 36 degrees and Amethyst. It was my first time to both these places but my bad luck with the waiter continued. Had to repeat the order again and again as the waiter was leaving out one or couple of items whenever we order. At that moment i said to myself and to Anand & others that i am not going to order for now. Anand pitched in again trying to convince that i have to fight against this so-called fate. There was a kids bday party going on in 36 degrees and there were kids playing all around and fortunately that helped shape my mood. We left to Amethyst unplanned as soon as we enter there was a car standing in parking entrance, being our first time we thought the parking was full and parked my car outside on the road. When we returned to my frustration the car had left and the parking lot had enough space to accomodate atleast 10 cars. Went back again to get my car and park it inside the parking lot. Went inside with a bad mood quickly browsed through the menu and said i want to have Vanilla cappucino and left to the restroom. Came back and was eagerly waiting for the coffee and trying to admire the place. I have visited few countries outside India and have always felt there is no cafe or pub to match one that i have been to outside India. This cafe was totally different and it matched all my expectations. Before losing myself in awe i asked Anand 'so what did you guys order for yourself' and he replied back 'What! we are yet to order, we were waiting for you'. Phew! thats exactly when i had to give up. 

There were few other bad experiences on my way back home. Lets see if things get better when i go to Trichy tommorow.

Phew!!! what an bitter weekend so far...