The Game of Life

We Have Moved!!

Mayank Kumar — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 02:30:00 +0000

Hi there! Welcome to The Game of Life!

If you look at the URL (the little bar above in your browser), it will be pointing to www.mayanklive.com instead of your good old blogspot address. Don’t get too fidgety. That’s because we have moved to this new domain to ensure that you, my reader, always gets to read the best articles without having to remember and type such a long URL.

As with any change, this process of moving will be a little painful and I request you to kindly bear with me. Lame, I know! But I promise to be back with a savvier look and more importantly, some good articles. Till then bookmark www.mayanklive.com in your browser. Thanks for your love and support!

The Art of Ogling

Mayank Kumar — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:11:00 +0000

Me and my roommate were returning from a movie theater when I noticed a girl in a black dress and black goggles who seemed to be pretty. Maybe I looked for a second too long at her that I was chided by my roommate. “Dude, don’t look at girls like that!!”, he said out aloud, much to my embarrassment and his delight. This made me think and write about – How the hell do you look at girls?

Let me set the ground rules before you read on. Don’t despise men who stare at girls or think of them as perverts. They are doing a public service. This is how it works – Girls spend time, effort and money in buying makeup, clothes and other numerous accessories which make them look good. Have you ever thought why they go through so much trouble? Sure, looking good boosts self-confidence but it is also to attract other people’s attention, men in particular (and in some cases women’s attention). If men don’t stare at women who look good, women will be disappointed. Surely, they will not go through so much trouble if no one pays attention and stop buying makeup and stuff. This will result in losses worth billions of dollars and cause unemployment to so many people. So the next time you see a man ogling at a woman, thank him.

Ok, so now that we have established that ogling is a noble cause, let us now teach ourselves how to do it. Here are some suggestions:

Scan before you look – Before looking at a girl, take a quick scan of her surroundings. If you notice a strong, well-built man standing near her, ogle at your own risk.
Make it quick – Don’t make the girl nervous by looking at her continuously. This will drive her away. Look at her in short bursts.
Divide your attention – Don’t keep staring at one girl only. Remember, you are doing this for a noble cause. Your aim should be to look at as many girls as possible. Keep scanning for potential targets but remember Rule 1.
Don’t let her know – You should try your best to not let the girl know that you are looking at her. As Jerry Seinfeld, a character from the hit comedy series ‘Seinfeld’, said “Looking at a cleavage is like looking at the sun. You don’t stare at it! You get a sense of it and then you look away.“

Hopefully, the above suggestions will help you in your quest of finding good-looking girls. Keep ogling!!

P.S. – This article is for humor purposes only. I don’t support people who make life hell for women by causing them discomfort in any way possible – mental or physical. They should be punished to the maximum extent under law.

Proud to be a Bihari?

Mayank Kumar — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:45:00 +0000

After nearly an year, this December I had a chance to visit Bihar. My visits normally consist of resting in my home in Patna and occasional visits to my uncle’s place. But this time it was different. I had to go to Gaya to attend my cousin sister’s marriage ceremony. Stepping out of Patna made me question – Am I really proud to be a Bihari?

Patna is like any other city in India, struggling with pollution, traffic jams, crime, etc. Being snuggled in my bed in Patna had made me forget the reality of what Bihar really is; after all its been nearly 10 years since I had traveled to any town outside of Patna in Bihar. So, the illusion was broken the moment my uncle’s brand new Maruti A-Star moved out of outskirts of Patna, to what is supposedly the “National Highway”. If you haven’t guessed it already, its an apology of a road. The car groaned and complained as it bumped along at a snail’s speed. As my uncle is in PWD (Public Works Dept.) – Roads division, I asked him why isn’t the government repairing these roads? He told me that since that was a NH, it doesn’t come under the purview of Bihar Government. The central govt. apathy towards Bihar results in these conditions.

Things did improve slightly when we passed a small village called Dhanarua and stopped for snacks. My uncle told me that few years back this was a Naxal-infested zone and people never stopped here even when there were no roads. Under the Nitish Govt., the road has been built by working under constant presence of paramilitary forces. I was speechless.

Somehow, we covered the 140 kms journey in more than 4 hours (yes, 4 hours!!) and finally reached Gaya – the place where Gautam Buddha gained divine knowledge and where Hindus from around the world come for Pind Daan - offering to appease the souls of their dead ancestors. When we entered the town, I felt I had traveled 15 years back in time. There was no electricity. Garbage was strewn everywhere, with people and cattle walking on it. You cannot imagine the filth even when we were in the main market of the town. The entire town was under a thick black smoke coming from the numerous gensets that work round the clock there. I felt like I would develop asthma! The more I looked around, the more sick I became. So I just shut my mind and passed the rest 2 days of my stay in that condition.

I was relieved when I got back to Patna (after that excruciating journey again). But now things didn’t seem so good here too. I saw rich people stealing electricity from poles by hooking up wires and then cursing the govt. when lights go out. I switched on the TV and watched the local news. It didn’t help the matters as I could now feel the angst of people whose suffering goes unnoticed on National TV. I felt like being one with them. I wanted to do something for them but didn’t know what.

Now back in Pune, I still think about it. I know I will slowly forget it, but I don’t want to. So I am writing this blog so that even if I forget it, it will refresh my memory. I will wait for the day till I gather up the courage to leave everything and go back to my state and work for my people. Wish me luck!!

Type in Hindi on any website!

Mayank Kumar — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:32:00 +0000

Like all of us, I too use Google Talk client to chat with my friends and family. Yesterday while chatting, I wished I could chat in Hindi the way we do in Blogger, Orkut or other Google sites. And what if we could type in Hindi (or other regional languages) on any site, the same way. Well, Google has again come to the rescue!

Google Talk can help you with automatic, quick transliterations, converting the Roman characters that you type into your chat to Indic characters. Transliteration lets you type Indic words phonetically in English script and still have them appear in their correct alphabet. Please note that this is not the same as translation. The sound of the words are converted from one alphabet to the other, not their meaning. To use this, you will have to use a Transliteration bot. To use a bot, add it to your Friends list and send it the message you want transliterated. For example, if you send “Namaste” to en2hi.translit@bot.talk.google.com (English to Hindi), it will respond with “नमस्ते” If you’re using the Google Talk Gadget or Gmail chat, you can also get your conversation transliterated by inviting a bot to a group chat with a friend.

To get your messages transliterated, you can send chat to these bots:

Languages	Bots
English to Hindi	en2hi.translit
English to Kannada	en2kn.translit
English to Malayalam	en2ml.translit
English to Tamil	en2ta.translit
English to Telugu	en2te.translit

* don’t forget to add @bot.talk.google.com.

To type in Hindi on any site, visit this link - http://t13n.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/blet/docs/help_hi.html

Riding The Google Wave

Mayank Kumar — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 08:16:00 +0000

We all have heard about Google Wave. We all want invites for it. Some us got them and excitedly opened up the Google Wave. 10 minutes into it most us are bored. We don’t know what to do with it. So we turn to the really long video of Wave (80 mins) and due to the slow internet connection, we give up that too and finally shutdown the browser. MTV even joked about the video that it was so long, may be Ashutosh Gowariker has directed it!!

This is my attempt at demystifying the Google Wave. I have tried to include some pictures so that it is clearer. Before we begin, let me tell you that Google Wave is still a preview version so it is buggy and crashes often. OK, enough of gyaan, let’s begin…

Prerequisites:

A fast internet connection. A slow one will ruin your Waving experience.
A browser that supports HTML 5.0 and has a powerful JavaScript engine. Google recommends Chrome and Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and above. Internet Explorer doesn’t support Wave. But if you still want to use it, then you will have to download the Chrome Frame for Internet Explorer.
Google Gears. Although it is not mandatory, but it will surely enhance your waving experience by drag-and-drop support, slideshow, and much more.

Let’s Wave!!

OK, so we are now all set to wave. We login to Google Wave, and the user interface comes up. You can’t help but compare it to Microsoft® Office® Outlook®. But the similarity ends here.

So what is new in Wave. Wave essentially combines Mail, Chat, Collaboration and much more all-in-one. It is the future of Mail. You see Email (which is now 40 years old!!) is like snail-mail. You write something and then you send it across to your friends who can then reply/forward it.

So if you had to work on a document and then ask for reviews, you would have to send a copy to your friend and then wait for his reply. But in Google Wave, the wave is stored on a central server, meaning anyone, who is on that wave, can edit it and others can see that happening in real-time.

You can add your comments, drag-and-drop pictures, video, URLs and everything will be visible to the other user happening in real-time!!

You can extend this real-time capability to play games (like Sudoku, Chess), have real-time polls, share notes of a meeting, the possibilities are endless.

More from Wave:

Google Wave can be used for posting your images, articles to blogs, Twitter, Orkut, etc. You can see that wave in your Wave client and don’t have visit every site to see how user’s have commented on your work. You can see all that in one single place.

For example, if you have uploaded a picture on 10 sites/blogs and now want to edit the caption. You would have to visit every single page to do that. But using Wave, you post your wave on as many sites you want and in one single edit of the wave, the changes will be reflected on all the sites, in real-time!!!

As Wave is open-source, you can develop your own extensions to it and use it on your website. Enterprises can use it to collaborate by using their own server and not share any data with Google or any third party.

The day when Google Wave becomes stable, I predict that most companies would switch to it. Will that be and end to other forms of communication? Not really as we are so heavily dependent on them, we won’t change the way we work so quickly. But Wave will surely revolutionize the Internet and make the world a better place.

Happy Waving!!

P.S.- I have about 26 invites of Google Wave left. So if you want it leave your email address here and I will get back to you.

What should I write about?

Mayank Kumar — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:56:00 +0000

For the past few days I am suffering from what is famously described as the “Writer’s Block“. Wikipedia defines it as “a condition, associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work”. I am not able to decide what to write about, not due to dearth of ideas, but because there are too many ideas floating around my head.

Should I write about how I saw a small kid climb into his school bus with a Harry Potter like broom in hand and wonder how the good old Chandamama has gone out of fashion and circulation? Should I write about Sachin Tendulkar completing 20 years in international cricket?

Should I write another movie review? Should I write another article about the idiosyncrasies of women around the world? Should I write about how I too have started using these heavy-weight words, generally reserved for MBA students?

Should I write about the problems faced by overworked IT professionals? Should I write about how they bug their managers about onsite opportunities and deny it when asked publicly? (“Oh, I am not crazy about onsite opportunities. These are small things.”) Should I write about how we travel in the overfull company bus but do not complain?

Should I write about how Shiv Sena attacked the IBN offices in Mumbai and Pune and how then declared it to be “spontaneous”? Should I write about the divide in the media itself which is evident from the fact that when IBN was crying foul over the attack, other news channels mentioned it in their tickers? (Zee News was in fact showing the wedding video of Shilpa Shetty, complete with music and everything.) Should I write about how CM Ashok Chavan was gloating over the fact that he has arrested 17 attackers while ignoring the masterminds?

Should I write about the money spent by builders in my society just to promote their new building while hundreds of workers who built it are going to sleep with a hungry stomach? Should I write about how emotionally charged up I am feeling today and don’t have a clue about the reason behind it?

Oh what should I write about?

P.S. – Orkut has started a new feature called “Promote”. I thank the person who has trashed my promotion of this blog for it shows how important me and my blog are to him/her. Thank you!

What should I write about?

Mayank Kumar — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:56:00 +0000

Oh what should I write about?

P.S. – Orkut has started a new feature called “Promote”. I thank the person who has trashed my promotion of this blog for it shows how important me and my blog are to him/her. Thank you!

Pune’s Taliban!!

Mayank Kumar — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:05:00 +0000

One fine day I was going to my office (on second thought the day on which I have to go to office can’t be a fine day!) when I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Hey! You didn’t recognize me!!”, complained a strange women who had her face completely covered in a cloth with only two holes near the eyes as her gateway to the world. I stared at her puzzled, racking my brain to identify her voice, but wasn’t getting anywhere. “Er… how can I recognize you when all I can see are two eyes?”. “Idiot!!… I am Shruti”, she shrieked. Oh yes!! I said sorry for not recognizing her as we entered the office. (To this day I wonder why I said sorry? It wasn’t my fault.)

I had often wondered why girls in Pune cover up their faces when they go outside. Today was my chance to get the answer from the horse’s mouth. So I asked Shruti about it which soon turned into a heated argument. Some excerpts:

Shruti: “See, the cloth protects us from the sun and heat and pollution. Plus it also protects us from The Swine Flu!!”

Me: “Okay, I would understand the heat part if it were May or June, but c’mon, this is November. It is raining outside, so the dust is also less and so is the mercury. And why do you apply all those facial lotions, scrubs, etc. which, by the way boast of such a high Sun Protection Factor (SPF) that even the sun would also blush, when you have to cover up the face!!

And what rubbish about Swine Flu. You know 99% of people affected by it get healthy without any medication. This flimsy cloth would do no more than suffocate you than protect you from Swine Flu.”

At this point her face was getting redder. I should have stopped.

Shruti: “We also cover our faces so that no lecherous men can leer at us. And it also protects us from our relatives who can’t recognize us when we are on a bike with our boyfriend.”

Me: “Hmm.. That’s a good point. Hiding your love life from the world”, I smirked. “Anyways, you know this also presents a security threat as terrorists can also misuse this. Plus I know that you people do this because all other women do it. It’s like a herd mentality. Otherwise, what’s the point of covering even your hands. You know, you won’t have any problem even if Taliban takes over Pune because you are the Pune’s Taliban!!”

Shruti: (Her face and eyes all red) “Okay, you win. I am always wrong. You are Sir Oracle. Whatever you say is correct. I am going now as I have to work and not waste time like you. Bye.”

You can’t really argue with that!!

P.S.- All characters and story are completely fictional and bear no resemblance to any person, living and of course, dead.

Pune’s Taliban!!

Mayank Kumar — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:05:00 +0000

Shruti: “See, the cloth protects us from the sun and heat and pollution. Plus it also protects us from The Swine Flu!!”

And what rubbish about Swine Flu. You know 99% of people affected by it get healthy without any medication. This flimsy cloth would do no more than suffocate you than protect you from Swine Flu.”

At this point her face was getting redder. I should have stopped.

Shruti: “We also cover our faces so that no lecherous men can leer at us. And it also protects us from our relatives who can’t recognize us when we are on a bike with our boyfriend.”

Shruti: (Her face and eyes all red) “Okay, you win. I am always wrong. You are Sir Oracle. Whatever you say is correct. I am going now as I have to work and not waste time like you. Bye.”

You can’t really argue with that!!

P.S.- All characters and story are completely fictional and bear no resemblance to any person, living and of course, dead.

The Makeover of My Blog!!

Mayank Kumar — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:24:00 +0000

As with most of us, I first logged into Blogger just out of curiosity when I was in college. Soon I was hooked and wrote at least 10 posts which were well appreciated by my friends. But since no one around me was much into blogging, it soon fizzled out. Then I got a job and my work sucked out whatever little enthusiasm was left in me for blogging.

All of it turned around the day I discovered that my company encourages blogging. In fact, they even have their own internal blogging portal. I was amazed to see how many people wrote about so many interesting things. I too regained momentum, and out came this blog. Then I started looking into the fine side of blogging – How to make my blog beautiful? The answer was staring at my face – dig into the “Code” – the thing that I do as a software engineer.

So how do you actually dig into the code, or may be even look into it? It is simple.

Log into Blogger -> Dashboard.
Go to Layout.
Go to Edit HTML tab.

There you will find the Code which is basically CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) and Javascript. Now to the uninitiated, it would look like alien language. That’s when Google comes in handy!! In my quest for making my blog nice, I stumbled upon some really helpful sites.

The first one for a new blogger is Tips for New Bloggers. It contains some great information about making your blog beautiful and explains them in easy to understand steps.

However if you are not really a geeky person, then there are some nice blogger templates available (other than the default bland templates available on Blogger). Just Google and apply them to your blog and voila! you are done. Also make sure to add some nice, cool widgets to your blog to make it cooler!!

Hope this will help in making your blog beautiful and reap its benefits. And if it does, then please put a comment here to keep encouraging me!!