Canon EOS 1000D DSLR

After spending nearly 3.5 yrs with my Canon Powershot A610, I ended up buying a Canon EOS 1000D last month. As I always like to think of Canon/Nikon for camera, this time I considered Nikon D60, Nikon D3000 , Canon EOS 450D and Canon EOS 1000D. Later, I decided to go in for a cheapest one as its my first DSLR, then I narrowed down to Canon EOS 1000D and Nikon D3000, and later I picked Canon EOS 1000D.

 

The reviews of Canon EOS 1000D from some good camera reviewing sites are listed down.

My favorite site : DPReview 

For more pics : http://clicks.kollihills.com/

Worlds' widely used Free Software needs MONEY

Linux Foundation launches branded credit cards. I dont think this is just another marketing plan for Linux. Its their marketing strategy to get money..

For each Credit Card activated, the Linux Foundation gets $50, and some amout for each transaction in those cards... Many Linux enthusiast will apply...

 

Using Credit cards

Credit card fraud is a big issue in India and abroad. I still know lot of people who never uses internet banking and earns more than a million rupee a year in IT field. Most of the time I have felt why these people are more reluctant?? Sometime back a colleague of mine used to give me money every week for booking him a rail ticket in IRCTC. He had a debit card, he was eligible for a Corporate Credit card but he never used those in the internet.

Even last week one of my ex-Manager who is yet to start a interior designing business came to my home to buy some softwares and domain name using my card in the internet. Lot of times I have used my cards for my friends’ purchase online.

But lot of Credit card based fraud are really making me to think twice before helping others to use my card... Visa & Master card gives a new way to secure your card information online called Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode. Most of the companies comes with their own way of securing or some good proven way to secure that. Nearly two years back I criticized in my blog about HSBC over killing the users by giving a security device.

 BBC claims that they have purchased UK residents credit card details from New Delhi. [More] This new issue and other stories are really making me to feel that those reluctant people are better!

Ant

Awesome social insect which is busy and active always. I have spent lot of times in watching those, when I go to our farm in Kollihills.com or somewhere when I get time and ants!!

I took this close up shot a year back in Kollihills. Can be found in my Flicker.

 

 

Just to avoid mosquitoes and other insects, I have stapled a plastic cover(kind of mosquito cover/net) in all the windows. Couple of weeks back, I saw a small hole in one of them, which was near the edge wood of the window, so I didn't mind.

Today I saw ants taking few small pieces of Noodles from my kitchen and tried to take it into that hole passing the hall and another room. I spent nearly an hour, and saw them doing their work. That room is not having enough lighting, so the photos are bad :-(

Windows Live Writer Supports Sharepoint Blog

Its great to see, Live writer supports posting to Sharepoint Blog.

Long since I used Live writer and even blogging...

New Dell Inspiron 1420

Bought a new Dell Inpiron

Am not so superstitious, yet once in a blue moon at least few incidents will happen to prove that am of the above sort.

On 15th Jan 2008 I planned to return from my native to Chennai after long leave for pongal. I was doing some thing or the other that I forgot totally about my return ticket; “yeah I haven’t taken a printout yet!!!!!”  said to myself. Forced with an urge to get the work done as soon as possible kicked my bike vigorously. As and when I tried pushing my bike forward a cat crossed my way across...Ahhh...What a bad indication?? “Never mind!!!” I started my bike with full speed, after going few yards forward; my friend Senthil Raja called me and told he has taken the printout… Patting my self I thought “So cat crossing our way is not a bad sign here onwards!!!”… That day night I and my friend Guna traveled to Salem to catch our train. When cross checking with the tickets I came to know, ours was on the same day early morning 12’o clock, which according to us previous day night!!!!!!a stupid misconception!!!!!!

Actuall reason was I booked 8 train tickets on that day, as that day was the opening day (60 days) so some confusion... Even though we managed to get a private Omni Bus, I was really thinking why this happened to me, and not for the others I booked the tickets

So, is this due to the effect of that cunning cat which crossed my way???

Its been a year that I posted to this section. But the stupidity was one of the biggest!!!

Nokia 5310 Express Music

Bought a new Nokia 5310 Express Music two weeks back. Awesome for the price. Will be posting about this in few days!!

RAM / Memory Module for hp TC4400

RAM. I was planning to buy that for a long time here in India. But 200 Pin 667 MHz - 2 x 1GB RAM costed something like 10K bucks and that too without warranty/bill. So atlast I ordered in Crucial US, which was only $107 and it came through UPS but the Indian government levied import duty of around Rs. 1057.

I ordered 2 X 1GB RAM for my hp TC4400 laptop in Crucial on 30-Jul-2007. And made the payment on 31-Jul. On August 3rd, it was here in India, just in 4 days!! My Laptop carried 3 years Onsite - International Warranty and so I checked hp whether the warranty will go void, if I upgrade the RAM by myself. One guy in hp support said it will go void, and the other said NO. When asked about the fee, they said as its my request and my personal upgradation the service would attract some charge ( which was around Rs 1200 + Tax  ) So I registered a service request the

Got my hp tc4400

I have got my new Tablet PC last thursday from HP.  Awesome to use. Im mostly engaged in that only. Learning more about the Tablet functionality.

Well, battery is really great. That too with WLAN enabled, im getting nearly 5 hours!! Also the Core 2 Duo is doing great job.

Please wait for a week or two for my review on this new hp TC4400.

In tablet Mode

HSBC Security Device

I have a HSBC credit card and often check my account/statement online. In the last week of May, I got a mailer from HSBC saying that they are going to deliver me a "SECURITY DEVICE", and with that only I have to use my HSBC account online.

And on 14th of June, I got a red colored box from them which read - "Until now, banking online with us was SAFE". And when I opened the box it had another: "We are now making it EVEN SAFER". And there was a small lid type of thick sheet & upon opening I found the  Security Device, which was in the size of a keychain.

Mission Impossible 3 & Superman Returns

Today Im going to 2 movies(Mission Impossible 3 and Superman Returns) one after the other in Satyam Cineplex in Madras. Sometime back I went to In her Shoes & Hanuman in Satyam on the same day with my cousin. And now its with my friends.

We are 10 people in total, I booked the ticket through their website, thecinema.in. The website, gives the ability not only to book the ticket, also to get coupons for the snacks & while booking they allow you to select the seats which comes wth an aditional fee of Rs.10/-

Mostly I used to book the tickets online, but this is the first time im booking 10 tickets, thats the maximum number of tickets one can book at a time. Its getting late, im moving for Superman... as a superman

Problem in Microsoft Visio

I have been using Microsoft Visio for about a year to draw flowcharts & block diagrams. MS Visio was actually a good tool, in terms of usage like other Microsoft Product & it is smart enough to convert all the diagrams into many type of image formats.

My current project Prima, is a product thats under-development in Saksoft. It has so many modules and each of us have part in designing work also. As per some standards I created a .vsd file(visio native file format) so that I can share with my teammates.

Im using Microsoft Visio 2003 & most of my team mates use Visio 2000. So, there exists a backward compatability issue. The problem is, the file saved in Visio 2003 is not supported by Visio 2000, and that is normal. So I opened the file & tried to save the same in the lower versions like we do it in the Word...and the worst part is that Visio 2000 was missing, only Visio 2002 was there. And actually the file(the one I designed) had half a dozen rectangles & couple of arrows & Texts. Basically, this a simple workout in the Visio but the fileformat is not supported/missing.

Atleast Visio 2003, supports some other formats such as XML drawing, XML stencils etc., but there is no solution for my problem other than re-doing the drawing.

So I have to use one of my Teammates' PC with Visio 2000, to create that .vsd file!!!

 

Spams in the Mailbox

Generally I used to get nearly 500 spams a day. The SPAM filter is not that much good since 10-25 SPAM mails comes into my Inbox(not getting filtered properly), so i have to do something else. Also is there anyway to stop/reduce the number of spam mails ?? Since my mailbox bandwidth is increasing by 8% a month due to SPAM.

A Trip to Vedanthangal

Last weekend myself with Senthil Raja, Arun, Prathap, J Prakash went to Vedanthangal. Actually we planned to Vandalur zoo, but, I saw in some TV Channel a day back that Vedanthangal 's season is going to end, so extended the route to see the birds. Vedanthangal is around 80 kilometers from Chennai / Madras (from thiruvanmiyur). We started here at around 2 pm, and reached there by 3:30 pm in bikes.

Vedanthangal, one of India's largest bird sanctuary, spreads around 75 acres of water & a bit land, which is a bushy with trees, ideal for birds to nest. Water mold covers most of the water surface, so the unclosed area is full of fishes & toads. We saw many birds, and none of us are bird watcher so we don't know the name, but we saw many birds with long-bills.

But, the main problem we faced was, we had nothing to zoom, even we neither had binocular nor SLR cameras. There was small 50 meter outpost-kinda  building, which had a binocular which is zoomed to particular area & was given 15 seconds by the sanctuary people to the visitors watch. But there were many foreigners with big sized SLRs & binoculars, enjoying!!!

My new camera Canon Powershot A610 was used to take the above snaps. And the time was around 3:30 it was bright sunny, so every object illuminates...

Update : Just today, (08-Feb-2006), I saw in Sun TV about Vedanthangal and it was good to see, the birds closely. Even some birds where feeding their young ones. and some with Eggs. So, go with a binocular or a SLR camera.

Update : Now you can rent  a binocular in Vedanthangal!! That too for Rs 10 / hour.

 

Just now I came to office, after few hours of sleep. From yesterday 12noon, I was in office, and went this morning. Its like a long day.... And last weekend also I was in office only. So, for the past 20 days, I don't have weekend as such. Its due to my Project, which is going for UAT this week. So its like ......

This sunday i missed Blogger's Meet,  also Im going to miss the  ( BLUG/2005 ) / FOSS.in 2005 event as well. I badly want to goto FOSS.in 2005, but im not lucky this time.

Anyway, im going to Tiruppur, to my cousin's house for 4 days from wednesday. We have planned for a *Kodaikanal Trip* But the Rain & Raod are our new obstacles.

Hope there won't be any problem.

The old Logo representing Linux Bangalore



The new name FOSS(Free & Open Source Software) 2005 - Logo

Tomorrow, it is scheduled for BLUGers meet, in Ashraya Hotel, so im taking off tomm'& leaving for bangalore tonight. I missed the last meet & hopefully, we will have more things to discuss about the coming FOSS.in/2005 event (which was called Linux Bangalore before).

OkCupid, a dating site tells our nature of political ability, after a few dozen questions. From Micheal Earls

I am a Social Liberal (60% permissive) and an... Economic Moderate (50% permissive) Iam best described as a: Centrist I exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness. loc: (37, 0) modscore: (30, 36) raw: (3033) Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

I have arranged for a get together in Kandar School this evening @ 4 for my school mates. Morethan 25 people are going to come. After 6 years we are going to meet....

I have few things to blog about, but last week one of my father's Maternal Uncle passed away, so I was there in coimbatore and couldn't do anything. I hope next week I will get back to these stuffs.

As per the news, Microsoft is letting Windows Vista Beta 1 tomorrow and official Beta 1 release is on August 3^rd. So, im not going to sleep tommorrow night. Im serious buddy, if it come late then, i will take off  sure...  Hope for the best......

I feel like converting all my old blogs in MySql to XML, so that I can postback it here... I have to start the work atleast tomorrow. Have to update this site, and others as well. Election is going to come in 10 months or less!!!  ArasiyalTalk.com, an otiose undertaking. Have to do something... Have to go to Office...  Niche work for a Vagabond!!!!

"Six software professionals under the age of 33 have died and 2 top Executives from renowned software companies have become paralysed because of stress-related heart ailments in the last six months in Chennai, says a study by Mitran Foundation, a Bangalore-based voluntary association of practising doctors"     -  Thanks Karan.

As a IT Pros we must not only deliver projects in time, but also do other important things in time( having Food & Sleep). 75% of us are not doing this, and im also one the worst possbile person in the list. Just two months back i have changed :now a days i goto bed @  1am & will be out by 6-7am. Previously I used to go to bed by 3 or 4am and wake up at 9-9:30am, and will rush to office,which i was doing for years, thank God, I have changed that.  And when it comes to food, I don't take BFs.. straight to Brunch/ Lunch, if I take something at 11am (brunch) then Lunch will be given off, and i will have something at 5/6 pm then no dinner in that case. Then in nights i used eat all these Junks. Hopefully im in the phase of changing this too..... Hope I will change soon....

The first said statement can happen to anyone, we must think about our family..... so its self pity on us. 
We must always remember 2 things : 

• Health is Wealth
• Prevention is better than Cure

After a long time, I bought a new mobile, Nokia 6260. It is loaded with Symbian OS v7.0s, Series 60(2^nd Edition) Platform. Its really cool. Starting from GPRS, Camera, it has many features, and it supports Blue-Tooth Keyboard too. GSMArena.com reviewed the phone to a maximum possible extent, so I didn't feel like explaining it ;) 

For more than a month im using Microsoft Money 2005. Its pretty good. Its basic features include  Spending By Category, Payee, then Monthly Income, Expense etc., in Reports and to say more, its having options for Investment Planning, Credit Card(even Bonus Point option is there), Loans, etc., Its having all the day-to-day activity categories. Reports in the form of Graphs are also possible(supports Bar & Pie Graphs). Actually its a web based application. And accessing the data stored in a flat file. And another advantage is  many of the indian banks like ICICI, CITI Bank etc., supports Money File Format, means we can download the account statement in Money File Format. Thats very useful, since you can't type all the bank transactions.

As I said before, it supports heavily for Stocks, Shares, Mutual Funds etc., It has a option of getting the latest Share/Stock value. But unfortunately Indian Stock Markets are not there in the list. Hopefully we can expect soon.  So as of now manually we can update it.

Even graphs for the stocks are also displayed with many tailored set of attributes. If you are using any other Personel Financial Package, you can sure try this. A 90 day free-trial is available for download.

I was alloted 201 shares. Nearly 35 saksoft employees applied it seems, and only myself &  Mr. Sankaran from the Admin department got it. So its a mere luck. It is due to oversubsription. Nearly, 37 times it was oversubscribed in retail investments sector.

201 shares @ a price of Rs. 30/- so totally Rs. 6030/- Now im waiting for the shares to listed on the NSE. Will be there  in NSE from 10th or 11th of this month. I hope it will exceed Rs. 50 (so that i will have more gain ;) )

For information on allotment  : http://www.saksoft.com/sak_feb05/saksoft_allotment.pdf

I was previously using a PHP based personal accounting software.

http://kiruthik.com/PermaLink,guid,3789392e-7259-4959-ab31-6e1bd47a00cb.aspx

 But now a days I felt like having more features. So I tried many software, but I didn't feel those good. So for the past one week I tried   Microsoft Money, its pretty good. And moreover it lists most of the banks in India too....... And also a option for my investments in STOCKs...

Now a days im  just giving support to many of my online friends. Freq ppl are asking question.... Helping my Friend and Sis

Yes, our company is planning for expansion. Listing is on NSE only. We do business in the most of well know banks in abroad and in India. I still feel this is for more reachability of the company. Im planning to take part in the IPO.

For more details visit  http://www.saksoft.com/sak_feb05/saksoftipo.pdf

Update : Aditya Krishna, our Managing Director told press "We have readymade proprietary products like Verisens which allow banks to quickly implement business intelligence solutions that enhance the value of their core business offering,"  regarding the IPO.

Issue price is Rs.30 (Face Value 10 + Premium 20),it is priced moderately less. 25,00,000 Lac shares @ Rs.30 yielding  Rs. 7.5 Crores and  opens on 30th March & Closes on 7th April. But no preference for employees ;)

The risk factor is a elongated banana leaf, it explains a lot..... and I was told by people in Admin that it is oversubcribed nearly 30 times in the 5th day of its opening!!!! I wish I will get.

 its a  SPECIAL TRIP   since we went to see the elephants  from different parts of the state. Cool, its our CM JJ's order. But, i felt its worth doinggg. This is the second yr,

As usual we(anna, myself & athai, Akka was in madras, so she couldn't )  started in the morning,  to mudumalai from Tirupur. yes, its his SKODA, which took us all there....

From ooty it was 37 Kms to Mudumala(via Thalaikundha & Kallatti ). But it took more than 1 hour. Near Kallatti we saw a jeep standing by its side .. its Bajaj Trax .......Thank god, it didn't slip the other side of the road, which is a big slope...

When we reached mudumalai, we were honoured by some monkeys. :)  From 1 1/2 yrs old baby elephant to a old one, was just enjoying the climate. Few doctors were trying to give some medicine too.... They feed those huge animals with big balls of RICE mixture(made up of rice, sugar, etc.,) And few of them took bath in the nearby stream

We were there for two hours, we took some stills too, but I couldn't bring it back, since some problem in my bro PC's USB port.

And you know, while coming from mudumalai we saw a single elephant(not the one in the temple, real wild one)just crossing the road and was just going towards the stream, hopefully to drink water.... Its december, and still it was hot........

Try visiting http://www.kiruthik.com/pic.php?mudumalaitrip  for the pics..... Hopefully it will be available soon.

 

My previous software for my own personal account was using VB & MS Access. Now Im working mostly in Linux, so atleast for the daily entried I used to log into windows....  So to solve this, I converted my small VB based app to PHP so that i can use it in both Windows & Linux and the database is our free MySql.....

From my diary......

Username : kiruthik

Password  : e633458io

dial server number : 172222

i will never forget this day in my life.

sssss  kiruthik@giasmd01.vsnl.net.in  my first internet connection,first isp based mail address. thanks appa i love uu.   After 3 weeks of my application submission and my change in plan (from SHELL a/c to TCP/IP a/c) (see 3rd of this month) VSNL(videsh Sancher Nigam Ltd) sent me the connection details.  Im sooo happy. its worth more than rs 10,500 uuueee....

But appa told me to study well....  he remembered me what kozhi told last week.

i will go to madras and coimbatore to use this account, but i don't know how appa will react if i go here and there for this.

 First i have to pass all the subjects this mid term, then he will be ok. 

Told pragadeesh anna and geetha regarding my new connection. i told this to karthi(cock), suresh, and vijay karthik in the kandar ground, they didn't understand, and after 1o mins of explanation, they understood.and also viji akka took the whole bunch (the packet from VSNL) to her computer center....