McLaren rulez

Just discovered My Favorite URL forever… Cool, huh?! 😉 No prizes for guessing which the Winning Constructor was. Yeah, here are some lesser known facts about F-1. I’ve always wanted to document my opinions about Ferrari and Schumi. I’ll do some of it now. The notes on this URL will stab Schumi fans right thru’ the heart, so read with care. The archives of Formula1.com really are commendable! The 1999 British GP was where Schumi had his crash. “Fast Eddie” Irvine took up the gauntlet and did undeserving Ferrari proud. No wonder he left the Scuderia, tho’ he wuz a Schumi fan too.

There’s no doubt Schumi is hugely talented, but there’s a lot of hype too. Its his attitude towards racing that I do not like. Kinda complements Ferrari‘s. I’ve always wondered about him being the best driver ever. Ferrari gave him a car that was unquestionably the class of the grid, which detracts hugely from his last four c’ships. But his back-to-back c’ships when he was in Benetton are what really silence most of his critics… and help his fans shout. But little do they know that other than that nametag, the Benetton of ’94 and the Ferrari of today are essentially the same. Schumi did not leave Benetton and arrive at Ferrari unaccompanied. Few know that he brought along his hands (Rory Byrne – Chief Designer) and legs (Ross Brawn – Technical Director). Well… I came across another shocking and little-known fact in an article on P-F1 :

In 1994 Benetton had a dramatic rise, beating what seemed to be the sure-fire Championship winner Williams-Renault. Except Benetton did it with illegal traction control software on their car and after the season was over there was the undignified sound of the FIA lifting up the carpet and brushing the whole affair underneath – nobody, it seemed, wanted a scandal in F1 after the death of Ayrton Senna.

How’s that? For now, methinks that is enough revelation and shock…

Freak out

Somebody shud commemorate my efforts yday as Bloggers’ Day or somethin’: Four blogs in a day. Phew! Work wuz less yday- but today the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) has been given the green signal, so anybody who has anything to contribute, please mail me! Left quite early yday after collecting Bruce, who’s lookin’ really outta this world! Went with Sangram to Forum. I hereby certify that Aiwa’s next to the Food World near Raheja Arcade at K’mangla is a lovely place to eat out. I made Sangram check out the appam n’ fish curry there n’ he loved it. So you ppl check it out too. Hm, I’ve plans to go to Brigade Rd. today after work. Pankaj‘s bro is in Bang, so Anoop n’ I are joinin’ ’em.

Oh I almost forgot. Read at P-F1 yday that Jacques Villeneuve is rumored to return to Williams next year. I’m just hopin’ that overpaid freak Ralf goes to Toyota. The funny thing is however, that JV is none the worse when it comes to money-mindedness, so I wonder why he’s being offered a seat at Grove. Well, lets hope he settles for less…

Work n’ Play

Ha ha I’m not supposed to be blogging now because the clients are to come over anytime to survey our work. Well, there’s no sign of ’em yet, so here I am! This time I’m not blogging with MSWord as I once did, but with my fave editor: none other than ViM! Hmm.. btw Shell‘s giving away Ferrari sticker sets for free, so you may sign up at Inside Track. Got to know this from orkut of course. I hate people who adopt accents. n I love my Dell GX270. What else do I love? Ho hum.. My bike! Yeah btw, I’ve decided to name him. Gotta think of a name first tho’. How’s Kimi?! But thats what I call my nephew 😐 Mebbe Ron, after Ron Dennis?! Nah.. sounds girlish. Doesn’t suit a bike thats definitely male! What about Bruce? After Bruce McLaren?! Yeah! I think thats what I’ll call it! Heh, so I’ve got to go n’ pick up Bruce in an hour…

Philosophical => Mature

Somebody once wrote:
“I wonder what it would be like to BELIEVE.. not just in god, but in a way of life, in religion.. ”

Now thats what I call maturity. That, exactly, is what we are to believe in… Whoever wrote that, with it, has proved himself more intelligent than the ‘majority with blind faith’.

“to believe, heart and soul, that one man is the way to the lord, that HE gave up his life to wash away your sins.. to trust, with every fibre in your being, that he was holy.. that kinda faith, i’ll never have.. ”

And good too I believe, ‘cuz that kinda faith leads you away from the real objective of being proactive and actually uplifting society. I believe someone can’t just wash away your sins… I like to believe that God is
not that forgiving… its probly that very notion of people that spurs them to do the kind of things they do today… instead it should be good for society if people start believing in ‘karma’…

Sorry if I hurt the sentiments of someone who read this- these are just my personal thoughts on the matter.

Weekend in Chennai

Hey, I searched for the Barron’s GRE Word List and got the whole thing in ASCII format. Cool, huh?! Pretty useful stuff. Esply when you have a brain thats as slippery as a banana peel. I’ve forgotten a lot of those words. For instance, there’s one for picking out the good from a group- sometimes, even Google doesn’t help. But I just searched for ‘pick‘ in the GRE.txt I have, and it ‘culled‘ out the word in a jiffy! 😉 Cool, eh?!

I’ve a lot of pending blogging to do- like about my weekend trip to Chennai. Ah by the way, if I haven’t mentioned Google’s Orkut, here: Do sign up for it. Its cool! Esply ‘cuz it has ‘kut’ in it, like me- Kuts. :p There’s even a Bajaj Pulsar community on it! Which reminds me, I’ve to go pick up mine today- had given it to be painted in McLaren livery- will try to put up pics later!

The Chennai trip wuz good! Met Kolli and went to Hotel Basera on East Coast Road with him n Vithal. You can’t call it daylight robbery, ‘cuz they’re open till midnight, but the prices are frightfully high. Had a coupla beers and followed it up with steamed rice and some lovely fish tikka. Slept over at Kolli‘s place [which is a stone’s throw from the Beach at Tiruvanmiyur], but not before a heart-to-heart with him- while Vittu slept like a baby on the beach.

I swear it would have been good to join Vittu. But Kolli said it’d be too comfortable to wake up at dawn, which we wanted to, to see the sun rise over the horizon so distant that we couldn’t where the clouds separated from the sea… Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? Well, fact is, we woke up at 7.30 and missed the sight, except for Vithal, who managed to watch the spectacle.

We rode bikes to Mayajaal, where we played pool and bowled. I cannot neglect to mention that I struck down all the pins with my very first venture :), though I followed it up with a performance that doesn’t deserve mention 😦 Well, for the first time this year, I missed the race. Sacrificed it to be with my pals. Not that I missed much, ‘cuz Schu won again. At least Hans-Ulrich Maik, the Ilmor chief got the sack! 🙂 Lets hope the tides of McLaren’s fortune will turn. Tho’ the engine is guaranteed to screw up at the next race as well. I’ll be waiting for Hockenheim, which is when I hope they’ll get the MP4-19B on track.

Inventions

Ever heard of intrablogging?! Well, you couldn’t have, ‘cuz its a term I just invented. Wait, lemme check up on Google whether someone already has used that. WAAH! Its there on 3 pages! :`-(

Well, anyway, Talkin’ of inventions, [we’ll come back to intrablogging later] I wuz thinkin’ yday of what kinda mindset people must have… to be inventors. I used to think, “OK, Dunlop invented the tyre [those screwed-up yanks renamed it ‘tire’ later]. Simple thing. Lucky he wuz born that early. He’d have no chance of pulling off something that trivial in today’s world, where everything’s already invented”. But those thoughts seem a trifle stupid to me now. I mean, even then, maybe people thought they had everything, and presto! this guy suddenly brings out a rubber hose and rigs up his son’s bicycle wheel to equip him to win a race! Now thats what I call COOL! What appeals to me more than these latest technological marvels, is something as sublime as a mere tyre! My creative energies were at an all-time high yday and my thoughts were beginning to scare me. Sadly, I can’t seem to remember any of them now. 😦

I’d like to invent something. Something to… No, thats all I will say. How can one fill up the blanks? I won’t think of a purpose for it to serve, now. I guess that’ll be a part of the invention itself- gives you a clue of how unique the invention will be. I mean… somebody thought of writing, then of an instrument, invented the pencil/pen/use of a quill [whichever came first], when people had not even imagined the use of hands to record events/thoughts materially. You have to think of something that basic, to make the kind of impact the pen made in our lives. In verity, the ability to record is what really sets man apart from the animals, is it not? Whereas, think of something.. hmm.. lets see.. OK. something that helps you to run faster. There! You didn’t spend much time thinking for such an end. n’ the result? The shoe is not a very appreciable invention.

This environment is proving to be the wrong place to think.. my thoughts seem to be blocked by some invisible force. So I will quit here. Ah, about intrablogging? C’mon! the word should give you some clue! Think about it! I really think (ah!) that thinking is the best part of life. There’s nothing that I enjoy more. In essence, its my org.’s DNA (Imagination, Action, Joy) without the ‘Action’ part. I dunno why people say, you think, you act, n’ you reap the results. For me, just thinking gives so much joy…

Schuey Sux

Blogging is s’posed to be one’s own creation. But today, I’m too busy to fill this in by myself… On the other hand, I don’t wanna leave today’s space blank. Also, I can’t exactly laud Kimi‘s performance at Imola (though he did convert last place on the grid to a point finish!), so I’ll just resort to some shameless Schuey-bashing! What say, folks?! Here goes, courtesy P-F1…

Star of the Race/Villain of the Race
Michael Schumacher, Ferrari, Winner
We got the best of Schumi and the worst of Schumi at Imola, but he was still the class of the field. Though Button handled his first pole flawlessly Schumacher’s performance was put into context by his team-mate. Had the two Ferraris been in the hands of, say, Barrichello and Massa, it could have been a Scuderia 5th and 6th instead of a 1st and 6th.

The best bit was his supreme car handling skills, his remorseless pace – the worst bit was his strong-arm techniques in resisting Montoya on the opening lap (and the air of feigned ignorance in the press conference afterwards). As the race unfolded we could see that he didn’t need to do it. He would have jumped Montoya after pit-stop 1 and Button after pit-stop 2.

As it was he indulged in some trademark manoeuvres to keep the Colombian behind him. Coming down to the Villeneuve chicane on the opening lap he put in a ‘snap schuweave’ a sudden jerk of the wheel causing a sudden swerve to counter Juan’s move up the inside. Nothing wrong with that – it’s been established as legal, even if a fractional miscalculation from the car in front might take both cars off at 150mph – and at least Juan didn’t have a pitwall next to him.

But going into Tosa replays showed that Montoya actually had his car in front of the Ferrari and so Schumacher was obliged to leave him room. It was established after the European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring in 2003 that in overtaking manoeuvres cars have to leave room for each other.

On that day Montoya went round the outside, Schumacher let his car wash out, hit the BMW-Williams and ended up himself in the gravel. Afterwards, the FIA wanted to make sure from the in-car footage that Montoya hadn’t squeezed Schumacher too hard over the kerbs and left him enough room. In the end, they decided he had.

At Imola, Schumacher clearly pushed Montoya onto the grass. Had he turned tighter and given him room, then he would have probably been outdragged up the hill, so he decided not to.

But this is how the most experienced driver in the field saw it: “I saw his attack on the outside at braking, but then going out of the corner for me… first of all I did not see him, but second, outside around the corner you usually lose ground so I didn’t expect him to be there.”

Yeah, right. Nothing learnt in the 9+ years since Adelaide ’94 then…

Afterwards Juan was furious and expected the FIA would do something about it. They won’t, though. It is one of the fantastic ironies of F1 that on the weekend where Ayrton Senna’s untimely death was being remembered, the man in charge of driver safety for the GPDA (Grand Prix Driver’s Association) was the single most likely cause of further injury.

Michael doesn’t do irony very well, so he probably won’t appreciate that. Or the fact that he came back from an official trip to Ireland last week where he was promoting road safety. Which is why the FIA love him. He gets out there and he preaches their safety message, even if he doesn’t take a blind bit of notice of it when he’s on-track.

However, first lap aside, the six-times World Champion had another peerless race. For Schumi fans a bit of a collector’s item, really. For me, though, the best bit of all came from the press conference.

Michael: “It’s emotional because I’m the ambassador of the San Marino Grand Prix and the State and it’s a home Grand Prix in the pocket where I was able to really excite all our supporters, the tifosi outside. The emotion that’s going on there is really fantastic. It’s a dream come true, to come home after a successful first three races and deliver a dream result – with the exception of qualifying – for the final result.”

That could have been straight out of Schumi’s Secret Tagebuch. Quality.

TGIF

Got absolutely jacked by the client at a meeting on-site yday. They got unnecessarily worked up, for what could have been sorted out without the exhibition of their superiority complex. I’m not implicating them with a mention… the behemoth that they are. I’ve booked a tick to Chennai by bus- leaving tonight with Vithal. Hopefully will get to see PR19926 and CS19926. Forgot my mob at home today. Amol has come – he’s my friend from school again. He’s here for an MBA interview. Ah! Gladdening news.. Anoop’s transferred to Bangalore. He’ll reach here on Sunday- joinin Satyam Bangy on Monday! Cool, huh? Our house will look more like a Pulsar showroom than ever with the no. of Black Pulsar 150’s outside rising to three 🙂 With Dej coming along occasionally, you could add a red one to that! wtafn [new abbr. I caught from nittmalayal!]

Gmail

Am one of the very first users of gmail.com – Google’s Mail Service, which is still in Beta. It gives me no less than 1000 MB of space! Awesome, I say! Here’s the mail I got:

First off, welcome. And thanks for agreeing to help us test Gmail. By now you probably know the key ways in which Gmail differs from traditional webmail services. Searching instead of filing. A free gigabyte of storage. Messages displayed in context as conversations.

So what else is new?

Gmail has many other special features that will become apparent as you use your account. You’ll find answers to most of your questions in our searchable help section, which includes a Getting Started guide. You’ll find information there on such topics as:

How to use address auto-complete
Setting up filters for incoming mail
Using advanced search options
You may also have noticed some text ads or related links to the right of this message. They’re placed there in the same way that ads are placed alongside Google search results and, through our AdSense program, on content pages across the web. The matching of ads to content in your Gmail messages is performed entirely by computers; never by people. Because the ads and links are matched to information that is of interest to you, we hope you’ll find them relevant and useful.

You’re one of the very first people to use Gmail. Your input will help determine how it evolves, so we encourage you to send your feedback, suggestions and questions to us. But mostly, we hope you’ll enjoy experimenting with Google’s approach to email.

Speedy Delivery,

The Gmail Team

p.s. You can sign in to your account any time by visiting http://gmail.google.com

Voila! Howzzat?! n’ the reason for that special invitation for li’l ol’ me is right before thou! Yes Sir! This is what Blogger.com said when I signed in yday:

As an active Blogger user, we would like to invite you to be one of the first to try out Google’s new email service, Gmail.

Would you like to give it a whirl? YES / NO

Who would deny Google?! Fantastic stuff- absolutely ingenious, I say!

Infy sux

Wrote this looong mail to Giri, so I thought I’d kill two birds with a stone by editing and posting it on my Blog! 😉

Dunno why people keep asking whether my project is over … its a long term one – Phase1 gets over only in June-July. My friend Dej is doing shit work- just like all others who got into big companies… its the same funda- I had an option of taking CSE at Model Engineering College, Ernakulam and being happy in CS. Instead I opted into screwed-up EEE at RECT and suffered… [only academically, of course ;)]

Same thing… you can do shit work in Infy/TCS or you can do super work in my company. Of course, working here has its downsides. Luckily for me, I didn’t have a choice, which wuz good… ‘cuz BE is only 4 years but work is for many more… 😉

Project is going along nicely. It wuz delivery time [Release 1] the last few days and ppl are shying away from their responsibilities. My speciality is that I work fast- n the responsibility wuz distributed amongst us all – n I did some real quick work- which is very satisfying… 🙂 Went home at after 10 pm yday 🙂 Its not that I couldn’t have gone earlier- but whats the use anyway- what’ll I go home n do? Vinu has gone to Scotland- Infy ppl had a hol. yday cuz of voting- there wuz somethin in the papers that some class of cos. cannot work. IT services cos. do not fall in that category, but i guess NRN is too ignorant/didn’t want to take the risk, so he gave Infy an off.

Funny thing wuz its only after waking up early, daily ablutions, dressing up and travelling 20-30 kms to office that the Infy folks knew it wuz a hol, so Venky stayed there till afternoon anyway to return! 😀 Poor fellas… Today Vittu wuz sayin: When he reaches Infy in the morn after negotiating all the traffic along the 15 km of Hosur Road [its what connects Bangalore to TN, so its crowded as hell most of the time- Infy is in Electronics City which is on Hosur Road], he looks like what ppl are s’posed to look like at the end of a day of work ! 😉 He goes by bike y’know – the others all go by Infy bus. The bus is costly- they charge 1k+ p.m. but I guess its good for health [up there, you don’t have to inhale all the noxious fumes emitted by the vehicles on the road!]