Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Banglore: The Silicon valley of India

Bangalore is truely the Silicon valley of India. Every nook and corner you will find an IT company and all the IT big shots or have presense in Bangalore like Intel, Microsoft, HP, EMC, Google, nVidia, Trilogy, Cisco, Dell, Yahoo, NetApp, Covansys, Sun, Adobe to name a few.

All the talks about Pune being the next IT destination and Pune being IT industry being sound absurd once you visit Banglore. Pune infrastructure is getting worse by day and which is doing good enough job to keep the big players out of Pune. To brief it in one sentence, Pune is minimum 5 years behind of Banglore in terms of public and IT infrastructure.

Bangalore's US$ 47.2 billion economy makes it a major economic centre in India. Indeed, Bangalore is India's fourth largest and fastest growing market. Bangalore's per capita income of US$ 6,460 is the highest for any Indian city. Banglore have 2nd highest literacy rate in India and Banglore Airport is the third busiest in India.

Home to prestigious colleges and research institutions, the city has the second-highest literacy rate among the metropolitan cities in the nation. However, as a large and growing metropolis in the developing world, Bangalore continues to struggle with problems such as air pollution, traffic congestion, and crime.
On my visit to Bangalore last week I realised that they are working hard to improve the public infrastructure to reduce traffic congestion but this is sure going to take a while.

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Thursday, September 28, 2006

Tribute to F.R.I.E.N.D.S (Part 2 of 6)

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Thursday, September 21, 2006

Coleslaw Tomato Heaven Sandwich

I just concocted the recipe for "Coleslaw Tomato Heaven Sandwich" out of my many experiments I keep on doing for my breakfast. I just loved the sandwich way too much, hence I was forced to name it. So I coined a self explanatory name for it. I used Tomato slices mixed with coleslaw for filling and butter and Tomato ketchup for layering on bread slices. It was just yummy :) 

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Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Tribute to F.R.I.E.N.D.S (Part 1 of 6)

Friends - The immensely popular and most addictive sitcom ever made. It tickled the funny bone of millions of people and at the same time touched their heart in many ways. It's one of its kind and will always be remembered by its countless fans. This 6 part video is a small tribute to all the friends . Lets start with part one....... Cheers Friends!!

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Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Prank of the month

One of our colleague Gokul writes a storage blog named "Gokul On Storage" but some how this made more sense to us.....

Isn't he really on Storage? ;)

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Thursday, September 14, 2006

BizAn wins the best storage management software award

Sun StorageTek Business Analytics code named "BizAn" wins the Big Byte award to prove it is the best storage management software available today.

Following are the winners in each of the 12 Big Bytes categories:

* Backup and Archiving -- Asigra Televaulting 6.0

* NAS -- BlueArc Titan 2000

* SAN -- Brocade Silkworm 4900

* Services -- Aptare StorageConsole

* Storage Network Security -- Spectra Logic BlueScale Encryption

* Storage Management Software -- Sun StorageTek Business Analytics software

* WAN Optimization -- Riverbed RIOS 3

* Large Enterprise User Excellence -- Kindred Healthcare (Vendor: Cisco)

* Small/Medium Enterprise User Excellence -- Saturday Night Live (Vendor: QLogic)

* Small/Medium Business User Excellence -- Fitchburg State College (Vendor: LeftHand Networks)

* Best Private Company -- EqualLogic

* Best Public Company -- AXS-One

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Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Setting up Remote Debugging in Visual Studio .Net 2003

Driver Machine – Machine on which Visual Studio editor will be running to debug the application( It will have the source code ).
Target Machine – Machine on which Binary to be debugged will be present.

Steps –
1) Create a user account on Target Machine with the same user name and password as on the Driver Machine which will be used to debug the application. User should be member of Administrators or Debugger Users.
2) Following is the list of files which need to be there on Target machine to be able to debug the application remotely.

File- Full remote debugging- Native only
coloader.dll X
coloader.tlb X
cpde.dll X
csee.dll X
csm.dll X
dbgproxy.exe X
dbghelp.dll X X
diasymreader.dll X
jsee.dll X
NatDbgDM.dll X X
NatDbgTLNet.dll X X
mcee.dll X
mcee_cs.dat X
mcee_mc.dat X
mdm.exe X
mdmui.dll X
msdbg2.dll X
msdis130.dll X
mssdi98.dll X
mspdb71.dll X
msvcmon.exe X X
msvcp71.dll X X
msvcr71.dll X X
pdm.dll X
psapi.dll X X
shmetapdb.dll X
sqldbg.dll X
vjee.dat X
vs7jit.exe X

(X X means the file is required for both full remote debugging and native debugging and X means its not needed for native remote debugging)

These files are required to start debug monitor “MSVCMON” on Target machine. In addition binary to be debugged must be present on target with required components to run.
Now start the debug monitor as “msvcmon -tcpip” – by default it starts in pipe mode

Note:-
The Remote Debug Monitor (Msvcmon) executable is installed in the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\Packages\Debugger directory.
you can find the required files from a Visual Studio.NET installation from above location.

3) Make sure the binary is build in debug mode .
4) We need to set some properties under Project Settings -> Debugging as follows

• Connection -> Remote via TCP/IP (Native Only)
(This not very secure way of doing it – pipe mode is more secure but slower also DCOM debugging should be used if security is an issue)
• Remote Machine -> IP of Target Machine
• Here Remote command should be set to the path to executable on Target Machine to debug.

Now you are all set to debug … set the break points or debug step by step. You can now debug the process on the Target machine as if it is on the local machine.

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Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Kanda Poha with Tomato twist!!

I decided to experiment a bit with the original "Kanda Poha" recipe and I could get really tasty dish out of it. All I did was add some slices of tomato to the Poha while sauteing the onions (Kanda) and used some fresh tomato slices to garnish the Poha once it was ready. Man it was looking and tasting great. I just couldn't resist myself from writing it out. So, here is the sample...

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Monday, September 11, 2006

A great weekend of unlimited fun.

I talked about work work and work on this weekend. But what I completely missed out was how much fun I had. I think last sunday was quite an auspicious day because 2 most awaited picnics had to coincide that day. So, when I was having a lot of fun at Hans with my colleagues, at the same moment I was missing the ecstasy of being with my college pals on a memorable trip to Lohgadh. It really is a funny feeling to lose and gain a certain aspect at the same time. As pictures are worth a thousand words I have decided to give you a tour to what I had and what I missed on this saturday.

What I enjoyed...

What I missed...

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You feel great when your efforts pay up!!

As I said in my last blog.. I was trying to solve a problem I couldn't reproduce. So, after a lot of brainstorming and code analysis. I came up with a hypothetical situation which could cause the exact problem. To prove my hypothesis I tweaked the source code to achieve the hypothesis I had in mind and sure enough I was able to produce the problem successfully. For the lack of better or another idea I went ahead and fixed the code to handle this situation. Now we could do nothing but to bet on this solution to work and this I stopped yesterday full of anticipation and restlessness because this bug was really really critical for us.

But with Monday we saw interesting turn of events. Our earlier efforts were proving to be more fruitful than we thought of. Interestingly idea of overloading the machine to stretch beyond the performable limits worked pretty well and we could reproduce the problem. This was the best which could happen in this situation as analyzing the message log provided solid foundations for my early hypothesis about the problem and we were sure that our all ready solution would work for sure. We celebrated this playing  TT for about an hour and now I am not feeling like working anymore. So let see what do I do :) 

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Sunday, September 10, 2006

Thought of the day

"If you think you can solve problems no matter how tough they are, try solving a problem which you cannot see."

My heart cried this out while trying to solve a problem, which I couldn't reproduce, all day.

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Working on weekend

Its quite an interesting fact that this is the first time I am working on a weekend in my 2 years professional career. It has become so common for many of my friends but not for me. I like to enjoy my weekend away from work. And so I did on friday evening and Saturday. We were out to "Hans" resort enjoying our weekend on a company picnic. It was great fun and I am having all sorts of aches because of the booze, dancing, river crossing and 110 km journey to and fro.

But now we have got a critical issue at hand to resolve and that also by tomorrow evening. So here I am working in office and believe it or not I am enjoying it as well. Some of my colleagues will join me in due course of time today. So, I am getting back to work .. wish me luck :)

Have a Great Sunday.

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Thursday, September 7, 2006

Templates are there to help you, not to bind you.

I believed in the above statement until I used Blogger's Blog templates. Blogger has, no doubt, an impressive collection of templates. However the display area for posts is quite narrow, due to which posts tend to look large despite the fact that most of the screen is just left unused.
So, I decided to edit the template to get the desired look. But editing a predefined template, believe me is not an easy task. It takes more than altering screen coordinates of the frames. Because all you can do by altering them is to get the broad display for the posts, but the vacant portion of the side bar is rendered white instead of the desired sidebar color.
To over come that I tried to reverse engineer how do they achieve to get the rendering right for the side bar and found out, that they actually use a background image like seen below for each template and use them to fill the complete display area for blog.



Which, I think, is a bad idea. Still to get my work done I took the original image, edited it according to the layout I wanted, published it and replaced the original with the new one. It was a bit of pain but I got what I wanted. Smart , huh :)

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HBO picks Sun storage

This is the piece of news about my company and my favorite movie channel so thought of sharing it...

Sun Microsystems Inc. announced that Home Box Office (HBO) is now exclusively using Sun's workflow and storage products. HBO used Sun to make a transition from a video tape-based environment to a server-based storage and play-out system that enables high speed and 99.999% reliability to support its bicoastal network of 28 standard definition and four high-definition channels, as well as on-demand distribution. The new digital content management and delivery infrastructure is comprised of Sun StorEdge NAS systems, Solaris 10 OS, Sun Fire servers, and Sun Java integration with Grass Valley Profile and K2 play-to-air systems from Thomson.

Isn't it cool :)

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Monday, August 21, 2006

Monsoon special Pulsar

Yes you read it right..... Now you can customize your Pulsar to suite the worst ever post monsoon conditions. With the right tweaks it gets a better look and better caliber. Read the full article
I kind of liked the new looks and new specifications and provided the right time I thought it may be worth sharing so Do let me know if you get to lay your hands on it?

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Friday, August 18, 2006

My latest crush - "Geography"

Yes, it’s true... Geography is the latest on my crush list and I am falling in love with it. I am beginning to realize how ignorant I have been so far. I realized that I barely knew anything about the vastness of our “small” world, Thanks to worldatlas.com and Google Earth. It’s just the beginning and I have way to go.

To keep my enthusiasm alive I keep on finding interesting facts. Some of them might be interesting for you as well. So here we go.

Lesotho (Capital - Maseru) is the only country in the world which is surrounded from all sides by land and shares its international border with only one country (South Africa).


Bermuda Triangle’s
three vertices are
1) Miami
, Florida, United States

2) Puerto Rico
, United States

3) Bermuda
Island

And interestingly these vertices are approximately 1000 Miles apart from each other forming an Equilateral Triangle.

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Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Sun Microsystem Ads .... Too good :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQXvnWfOKlA&search=sun%20microsystem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzX9-nx_B4&mode=related&search=sun%20microsystem

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Beautiful

Have you guyz every get a chance to appreciate really really beautiful machines?? Well I have got it and I also got a way to share with you all. Just follow the link and let me know you like it (well ofcourse you will love it) or not??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-PB86oy044

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Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Puzzle to puzzle you

Offlately, I came across an addictive series of puzzles/riddles. I am still on it... trying to solve each puzzle with renewed enthusiasm after every success :)

http://neutralriddle.50webs.com/

Hope you enjoy it too... All the best!!

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A youth awakens!!


Rally against the Goverment 'sQuota policy in pune on Sunday 21st, May 2006.

The rally held on Sunday 21st, May 2006 to protest against government's quota policy was a huge success and the Interesting part was: "the rally was not really organized". The information about the existence of such a rally was spread by word of mouth, emails, sms's and phone calls. No one knows who the originator was but everyone knew why they are there.

It was great to see such a good response to the rally. We must be close to 1000 in number. This response was great considering the fact that we have recently witnessed police brutality on protesting students in different parts of country. Still so many people came just on a call of a forwarded email/sms. What more... the crowd was a mix of working professionals, students from different stream and business men. Not all of them directly related to the cause but still a sense of responsibility was there amongst them which lead them there.

Hope this passion continues to live within us not just for the reservation thing but for anything which can bring good to society and us.

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Friday, May 19, 2006

Auto-hypnosis

A process to which I was familiar for long but didn't know the technical term for it.... now I know it :) but still it doesn't work for me :(

Its definition as I found on Stephanie Rothman's blog goes as
Autohypnosis

n. In both senses also called self-hypnosis.
* The act or process of hypnotizing oneself.
* A self-induced hypnotic state.

To put it in simple form....
May be at some point of time someone would have said to you the process to activate your biological clock to work for you as your alarm...

Aaah forget it.. the process goes as
1) Before going to sleep, close your eyes.
2) One by one put all your thoughts from your mind.
3) When you are thinking of nothing then tell to yourself to go to a sound sleep and wake up at some particular time.

Result: You should go to a sound sleep and wake up exactly at the time you have said to yourself.

Many people say it works for them. But no matter how hard I tried ... I could never succeed in waking up at the right time, though I managed to get a sound sleep as always ;)

Any ideas how to make it work??

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Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Shall we dance??

Dancing is a passion which is inside almost everyone. Some people follow it, some not. But believe me or not anybody can dance, no matter how good or bad but everyone can dance.... I remember when I was a kid I was so passionate about dancing that I never missed out on any opportunity to dance, but never got enough support and guidance to follow it as passion. After long, I lived my passion again while dancing to the beat of Salsa :)

Offlately, I got a chance to watch Shiamak Dabar's show which took me down the memory lane.... to the days when I used to dance like crazy. It was great to see so many people dancing together (none of them professional dancers). The performers were the students of Shiamak Dabar's academy... Some of them were advanced level dancers some were at beginner level. Students in all age ranges.... even the kids in 3-5 yrs of age group were dancing... looking very very cute. I was too delighted to care for the bad condition of the famous Ganesh Kala Krida Mandir. But I really liked the idea of the show.

All you need to do is to join the academy then you get trainers to guide you. Good dancers around you to motivate you and to top it all shows like these to boost your morale and to let everyone see you can dance.............

So, shall we dance ?? :)

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Sunday, April 16, 2006

The Quick Wok

I had been to Yana the sizzler joint on FC Road today with few friends. This time I decided against any sizzler and went for the dish which even they recommend - The Quick Wok. It’s a Chinese preparation in which you get to choose what you want.

The items which you can choose from are
1) Rice / Noodles
2) A wide range of assorted vegetables
3) Meat (Chicken Salami slices were the only option here)

You get a bowl and you can pick whatever you like from the above mentioned items in any combination. Now you got to decide on a sauce in which the dish will be prepared. They offer variety of sauces sequenced from sweet to hot. My friend chose to go for Italiano sauce (It has a tomato base and it was in the least hot or I would say sweet category) and I chose Black Bean sauce (Medium spicy) which turned out to be very tasty. After this you give the bowl to Chef and he just fries it in the sauce and very little oil on hot flames and in less than 5 mins The Quick Wok is ready.

It was really a pleasure to eat and really healthy meal. I liked the preparation and I am determined to try The Quick Wok with really hot sauce soon.

And if you are really hungry ... try Ginger Bread there, but be aware that you get one full bread loaf with garlic butter plus some extra garlic to annoy some people, right Aditi?? ;) .... But the garlic bread was yummy and way better than the one you get at Pizza Hut.

Now my eyes are already starting to close. So, good night and bye for now :)

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Saturday, April 15, 2006

Distributed Computing can do wonders

I was always attracted towards Distributed Computing.... The concept is so simple but so powerful at the same time. It was Distributed Computing because of which the Cheapest Super Computer in the world could materialize. Now there are many super computers in existence which utilize the power of Distributed Computing and are termed as Beowulf Clusters.
Its fascinating how, many independent entities work together to achieve a goal. Just like any living being does. Take example of KAZAA, a Peer to Peer download utility. It’s so simple and works really in the best way it can.
1) It searches for the files at all Peers (KAZAA users).
2) It allows download of a file in parallel from any no. of sites (sites keep on changing as the users go offline).

Search is very simple to visualize but what makes the file download process so robust and flexible. Here is how I think it must be working.....

Algorithm: Download File
Input: A File on a site of say 500 MB (Just to indicate that download is gonna take a lot of time)

1) Ask the peer from where the file is selected.... to send the checksum/MD5 hash (I bet for MD5) of the file first.
2) Once you have the MD5 checksum you search available sites for a file matching this checksum.
3) Suppose 3 sites are found.
4) with each sites found you get some settings like... download from that site is allowed or not, download limit, no. of concurrent downloads that site allows, speed at which that site can send data.
5) Depending upon all above factors compute a chunk of bytes which can be downloaded from each site in a brief time frame.... logic is if the download speed is too slow then start downloading small chunk of bytes from the site, so that as soon as we find faster sites we start downloading rest of bytes from that site o.w. it would take ages to download.
6) Start 3 threads, one thread to download from one site.
7) Now MD5 ensures we are downloading the portions of same file but its important to make sure we are downloading mutually exclusive chunks from sites and also we don't miss even a single byte.
8) Its easy to ensure mutually exclusive chunks of download.... Just maintain a common current offset from where a site will start downloading its assigned chunk of bytes and update the offset as it starts.
9) To ensure we haven't missed a single byte... we can maintain a log for each thread which will tell us how many bytes were successfully downloaded by the thread out of its assigned chunk.
10) Also we keep checking for the availability of more sites periodically and if found we start new threads to download from those sites as well.
11) Finally when the treads terminate. Run MD5 on downloaded file to crosscheck we have got what we were expecting.

So simple and so powerful....ain't it?

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Friday, April 14, 2006

Chill out in office


What else should I say ;)

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Saturday, March 18, 2006

HOLI - The festival of Colors

Holi- Most colorful festival amongst innumerable festivals of India. The festive's preamble begins on the night of full moon in early March every year. Bonfires are lit on many places this ritual is called Holika Dahan. After this the Holi celebrations differ from place to place. In north, we play Holi on the next day of Holika Dean. In Maharashtra, play of colors is reserved for Rang Panchami (the 5th day after Holi). Apart from the day of celebration style of playing Holi also changes from place to place. Most interesting of them is the "LATHI MAAR HOLI".

But at my place (Bihar) and some other states from North we play Holi in two sessions.

Session-I:

Duration: 8:00am - 1:00pm

Mission Statement: "Soak everyone in Color".

Teenagers and Adults roam in groups and put color on everyone they come across. This can sound a bit crazy but this is the way it is :) Kids take charge generally on rooftops, ready with buckets of color and many means (mugs/color guns/color balloons and anything they can find useful) to throw color on anyone passing by.

Result: you cannot cross a street without getting soaked in color.

Break Time:

Duration: 1:00pm - 4:00pm

Everyone gets cleaned up and eats well to get ready for Phase II.

Session-II:

Duration: 4:00pm - 10:00pm

Everyone gets dressed in traditional wears and carries 'Gulaal' (dry colors) along. It’s the time to meet all the people you know in your time now. We visit everyone we know put gulaal on them. People welcome you with variety of delicious dishes prepared specially for Holi and you just cannot refuse to feast on them.

The next day is spent in cleaning up yourself, clothes, your home and taking rest.
......

img: me (2nd from left :D ) and my team


It has been Six years now since I have been home for Holi. But this Holi reminded me of Holi at my home. This Holi my office was working but I took leave to play Holi and it was really great.

In first session, I went to my friends and played Holi with them. Though I couldn't play Holi with some of my friends which I really wanted to but still it was great fun to color everyone and get colored in turn. I went to my office as well and put color on my friends who were working that day, they must be thanking me for giving them taste of Holi free of cost ;)

In second session, I was taken by surprise. I was all cleaned up and went to a friend's place for "MAALPUA" (a sweet made on the occasion of Holi in North). Suddenly our few friends (who were working that day) appeared at his place and they colored both of us. I was not expecting anything of this sort so I was furious initially but was soon started enjoying. I really thank them for reminding me of the Holi I used to play.

Now I am determined to play next Holi at home :)

Perhaps I will have to play one more round of Holi on Rang Pachami, I am ready to enjoy that in advance now :)

Happy Holi to all of you.

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Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Dance to the beat of Salsa

Yesterday I had my first lesson of Salsa. Class started with basic steps (2-3-4 or quick-quick -slow) which none of us could get right for long ;) Our dance teacher seemed to be an optimist and appreciated our efforts on the first day. He kept on repeating "Salsa dancing involves exaggerated hip movement which should come naturally by the wieght shift due to steps."
At the end of day my right hip was in a bad condition.
But the I really liked the style - simple steps, not much of discipline but thoroughly enjoyable. This forced me dive more into SALSA style. I found some basic information so thought of putting them as well.

Hope you find them useful....

Salsa:
Salsa has become one of the most popular dance styles in the world today and is known for its sexy sassy moves performed to hot Latin rhythms. This is why it was termed as "Dance of Sex" initially but Sex appeared too harsh as the name so later on Sex was Replaced by Love. So now its known as "Dance of Love".

Salsa is danced on music with a recurring eight-beat pattern, i.e. two bars of four beats. Salsa patterns typically use three steps during each four beats, one beat being skipped. However, this skipped beat is often marked by a tap, a kick, a flick, etc. Typically the music involves complicated percussion rhythms and is fast with around 180 beats per minute.

Salsa is a slot or spot dance, i.e., unlike Foxtrot or Samba, in Salsa a couple does not travel over the dance floor much, but rather occupies a fixed area on the dance floor. In some cases people do the Salsa in solo mode.


History:
The history of salsa is not easily defined. Who invented salsa? The Cubans, Puerto Ricans? Truth is that salsa is a fusion of many Latino and Afro-Caribbean dances, which each played a large part in its evolution. Some of these dance styles are Mambo, Chá, Guaracha, Changuí, Lukumí, Palo Montel, Rumba, Yambú, Abakuá, Comparsa and some times even Mozambique.

The word Salsa:
Salsa means 'sauce' in the Spanish language and has more recently acquired a musical meaning in both English and Spanish. In this sense salsa has been described as a word with "vivid associations but no absolute definitions, a tag that encompasses a rainbow assortment of Latin rhythms and styles, taking on a different hue wherever you stand in the Spanish-speaking world".

Steps:
The basic movement occurring in the dance patterns of the various salsa styles is the stepping on the beat of the music. Salsa is best grouped in pairs of 4-beat patterns counted "1-2-3-...-5-6-7-...". The leader starts on count 1 by stepping with the left foot. On count 2 and 3, they step with right and left, respectively. On count 4, the lead pauses or makes an optional tap with the right foot. On counts 5, 6, and 7, they step with right, left, and right, respectively, again followed by a pause on count 8. As a standard, every step must be taken with full weight transfer. The follower part is identical, but with left and right reversed. In all patterns and styles, the leader starts with the left foot and the follower starts with the right foot.

Basic Step:
The term "basic step" normally refers to a forward-backward motion. On counts 1, 2, and 3, the leader steps forward, replaces, and steps backward. On count 5, 6, and 7, they step backwards, replace, and step forward again. The follower does the same, but with forward and backward reversed, so that the couple goes back and forth as a unit. This basic step is part of many other patterns. For example, the leader may dance the basic step while leading the follower to do an underarm turn.

The following variants of the Basic step may be used, often called breaks.

* Forward break: Starting from any foot, step Forward, Replace, In-place, counting 1,2,3 or 5,6,7.
* Back break: Starting from any foot, step Backward, Replace, In-place, counting 1,2,3 or 5,6,7.
* Side break: Starting from any foot, step Sideways, Replace, In-place, counting 1,2,3 or 5,6,7.


What style do you dance?

What style do you dance? A question of often heard in the salsa scene, as with the salsa music the dance has evolved and adapted according to the influences surrounding it.

The most common styles are New York also known as mambo, LA style and Cuban.

New York style:
Along with LA style, New York style is one of the most popular styles that can be seen around the world today, as the name indicates this style originated in New York. In New York, salsa is also known as Mambo. This reflects the origins of salsa dancing in New York City.
One of the unique features of New York style salsa is that it is ‘danced on 2’, which means that the first step is taken on the second beat, as opposed to the first beat or as it is referred to in salsa ‘on 1’.

LA Style:
As name implies Los Angeles, USA has developed its own characteristic style of salsa. It is one of the most popular salsa styles around today.

The primary influence in LA style is West Coast and Latin Ballroom, which is noticeable in the flamboyant moves such as the many dips, spins, drops and complicated entwining turn patterns … enough to dazzle any spectators' eyes.

Cuban style:
Cuban Salsa, also known as 'Casino Salsa', involves dance moves which are characterised by complicated arm movements. The foot work in Cuban style involves a lot of circular motions where couples walk around each other while performing various intertwining turns.

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Sunday, February 26, 2006

Mixed Doubles



Genre: Black Humor

Director: Rajat Kapoor

This is story of a middle class couple (Ranvir and Konkona) who love each other even after ten years of togetherness, but the spark in their married life is gone. Ranvir’s colleague Vinay Pathak is a flirt and keeps on boasting about it. Character played by Vinay symbolizes the typical male in our male dominated society. Vinay Pathak’s performance in the cafeteria is remarkable, when he has found out his wife is also cheating on him and this he is not able to accept.

Time for kahani-mein-twist now: Ranvir’s NRI friend tells him about swinging (spouse swapping) which leaves him startled. He just can’t resist the temptation and want to give it a try. He tries to convince Konkana but she contends. But Ranvir wont give up and he tricks her into this somehow. Ranvir plans to swing along with Rajat Kapoor & Koel Puri. Their short appearaance in the movie is also enough to make an impact. Ranvir has to return disappointed as he doesn't get what he wanted and this ignites his male ego, which is perfectly depicted by the conversation between Ranvir and Konkona in the car on the way back home.

All this is portrayed very beautifully with sprinkles of laughter through out. Whole movie continues seamlessly on a light note. Anurag Kashyap has done a good job at dialogues. Simplicity is statement movie seems to make and yet it touches many chords.

I feel the movie is worth a watch.

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Wednesday, February 22, 2006

I am back .... :)

Last two days were so hectic, that I couldn't even find time to take a deep breath. But now I am back again. I don't know "Is that air of relief I am breathing today?" but yeah I feel quite relaxed and I am really happy with what ever I have done in last two days.


Anyways, sorry I couldn't update you all on our "beautifully and perfectly planned" Barbecue Party ;) I can think of only one word to describe it ... "fantabulous". I don't think I can explain how much fun we had but I will try my best.

Venue: A colleague's Farm House (10 kms from Khadagvasla Dam towards NDA naval training centre)
Meeting time: 4pm (near NDA naval training centre)

Everyone had to reach the meeting point on his/her own. And finally we all were at meeting point by 6pm (Kudos to AJ n KJ, who couldn’t determine which directions they should take for long, But it was not their mistake either, bcoz they didn’t have GPS in their car so they
couldn't seek help of Google maps). Finally We reached the Farm House by 6:15pm (pretty decent huh) and we were amazed at the beauty of the place. A beautiful bungalow surrounded
with greenery every where. On the back side Dam water was flowing and atmosphere was just perfect. We took time to explore the Farm house before it went dark. Unfortunately our "lost in the way" friends, who have Cameras & they love photography, forgot to get their cameras,
Otherwise I didn't have to write down anything :).

We started to prepare ingredients for Barbecue. Thanks to Murtaza we didn't have to do anything to prepare chicken. After that we all were fighting hard to start coal fire so that we can start Barbecue for say one hour. All of our expert minds contributed to extreme extent to
get it right. But all these efforts paid up when we had dinner. Man it was really good, and we made sure we cooked chicken perfectly (U know Bird Flu is ON) ;)

Now it was time for MASTI. This started with KJ playing some all time best tunes on his guitar with all of us singing and dancing. It’s a different story that none of us knew singing and dancing ... well sorry some of us knew. But we really enjoyed KJ's performance. Then in some time lights were out and candles were light. People started all kinds of "Bhoot Stories" and to make the atmosphere more scary KJ was full on with his Guitar, playing all kinds of weird scary tunes as in Bollywood movies. I don't know whether anyone got scared but it was fun. After then to change the mood I played (Video) "I like to move it move it" from Madagaskar and as expected mood was changed ......... ppl sat down to watch the movie :(.


It was 12:00 am and the view was really breathtaking from balcony. Clear sky light up with all stars and no moon, surrounding trees were looking mysterious like never before, Dam water was reflecting the stars and looking amazingly beautiful. Beyond that another sky full of stars, I mean city full of lights and behind that there stood Sinhagadh with its towers. And on top of them small red lights were making everything look sensational. All this was so beautiful that I was standing there, mesmerized, for I don’t know how much time.

MASTI went on, we took some rest and next morning after having breakfast we returned back to Pune.

This trip gave me a good hangover for next two days and I was feeling so good that I can't describe.

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Friday, February 17, 2006

It's Friday and Weekend fever is ON

Thought of the day - You should be your natural self.

No one seems to be in the mood to work. It's really strange you can actually feel the atmosphere smoothly changing from what it was in the morning to what is now in the evening. Morning and everyone is busy with his/her routine stuff like checking mails, attending meetings, having coffee and whole bunch of things. Its afternoon and people are looking less interested in work, environment becomes quite light hearted, people are gossiping, joking along with their work. Evening and few of them have already left.
(Few of us chilling out today)

Some are planning to leave and others are just wishing if they could also leave (as they got to wait for the bus leaving at 7:00pm).

Sure they all seem to be affected by the Weekend fever ;)
But for few of us life was not this easy for a change on a weekend. Because we were the worst affected by the weekend fever I guess. Why??
We had a genuine reason -- We have planned a Barbeque Party on the Saturday Night, Venue - A Colleague's Aunt's Farm House -- wow we gonna have a blast man.

Well I just gave the word 'planned' a whole new meaning. All of us didn't know who is going to do what? Where to meet? And most interesting are we all going for the party in the first place.
We had to work out the logistics, make sure every one is coming, work on plan B (what if some people just refuse to come), and PREPARE A FINAL PLAN ;)

We had a meeting with all the probable members in the afternoon and there we go.....
1) One person refuses to come.
2) Another guy comes up with dependency on this guy and declares 'I m not coming if he is out of it'.
3) Getting key ingredient 'Marinated Chicken' and 'Coal' to the Farm House.

after that and till now believe me or not we were doing nothing but fixing all the pieces of the puzzle and putting those in right places.
This could have taken little lesser but few of us were making sure that nothing goes on smoothly. Man I agree it's really really hard to be a Manager. I don't know how they survive yaar.
Two of our colleagues were almost ready to Barbeque themselves ;) I just hope they drop this idea when we already have barbeque on.

But finally we have worked out everything well now almost everything is 'planned' actually planned :)

So, just look for my next blog after the party and I can assure you that I will get more than enough material to blog out.

Have a great weekend guyz.

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Thursday, February 16, 2006

Fun and Work can always go hand in hand.

Last three days were the most hectic days at work for me. Stuck between numerous problems, not ready to come to a solution, I was literally annoyed with it.
I worked in all the time I can manage, let it be home or office. Still the situation remained the same and I felt like screaming and scaring these problems away.. sounds really stupid, huh.

But believe me or not I enjoyed more than anybody can think of (being in that situation) in last two days. How??? That was easy, I have got best of friends yaar.

14th Feb - worked from 9am to 9pm, completely exhausted.

And here Aditi comes for Rescue. We went for dinner to Polka Dot(A multi cuisine restaurant).
Well It seems she is an Expert of all kinds of Cuisines and She is the one because of whom I took risk to try Cuisines other than Indian & Chinese.

She selected some Italian dishes and ordered. And I was just praying.. why?? Last time When I had Italian It was a disaster.
I guess no one knew what to order & we created a mess. Well if not all most of the food was wasted.

But this time ....... wow I love Italian food yaar, well its a different story that I couldn't recognize or remember name of any of the dish we ordered. But I reallllly loved the food.
We had were there for couple of hours( including 1/2 an hour waiting period) because of huge rush. But Crowd was really good ;) as it was Valentine's eve. So we enjoyed the time nontheless.

The dinner was followed by Desert - Tiramisu (only name I could remember) which we both were not able finish despite it was very delicious, and Liquere that was a perfect end to the dinner.

All my work pressures were lost somewhere in my head and I just needed a sound sleep.

15th feb - Pressure on its peak, worked from 10am - 9pm, completely exhausted.
On my way home... shopping for some groceries and there rings my Cell phone. Bhupi, my graduation college Pal, was there at my Flat waiting for me.
He came to gave me my Graduation Degree which he had for last 2 years, I guess. Finally I got it. He was supposed to study but I was in a mood to watch movie.

In some time we had dinner and as I started the movie plan I didn't have to tell him to come and join me :)
We started with 'Casablanca' but I got bored in less than 10 mins. Ahh I need some recreation yaar. Ohh yeah I have got Madagaskar today only.
We watched "Madagaskar" and I loved it. I think he loved it too. Movie was great but the song "I like to move it move it...." was the show stealer.
Played it 4 times in a row.... after that we were talking and doing TP till 3am in the Night.
I read few pages of "Digital Fortress - by Dan Brown" also before going to bed.

16th feb -
Day started with pressure.. problems were getting solved like anything. I was excited and there was definately something in the air.
Today we (me and my colleagues) had a blast with lot of jokes and leg pulling combined.

Day is over so off for the day
take care.

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Wednesday, February 15, 2006

What is Love ??

Another Valentine's day of my life, and I sit here working whole day, enjoying the time we have as usual...... "4:30pm" and people start leaving to meet their Valentine.....
"5:30pm" Office is almost deserted which is generally after 7:00pm(the Bus time). ohhh yeah, Its Valentine's day silly.

I get an e-mail from a dear friend

----- Mail Start ---------
Here comes the day which is not mine,
as i dont have any valentine.
things happened in the past which are not fine.
rainy days for me even when the sun shine.

no girl to propose,
no aroma of rose,
no chance for my bike to give lift,
no special person to give gift.
no miss is there to miss
no experience of kiss.
no dinner in the moon light.
no chance to have the day bright.


even though i dont fall in love
i will always bow to love.
wishing great time to ppl who are in love


"Wish u a happy valentines day"

------ Mail End ------------

Wow how truthful the poem is...

I felt like saying something ... so took some time to write my first Blog :)

Here the fact of the matter is I don't really know what do u mean by love??
If love is caring for some one .. I care for all my friends, my parents, my work, my ambitions and lot more.

Am I in love with them?? ... I say yes. But still I cannot differentiate between the LOVE which I feel and ***The LOVE***

Another thing which always comes to my mind is ...
Do we need to have a day to express our love to our loved ones??
I say yes again.... Its like having a predefined schedule/appointment with your loved ones..... So, we atleast try hard to make it to the appointment.
Or we just get very busy with our busy lives.

Let it be anything its really a fun to roam around in the city on this day ;)

So I am off to enjoy the eve.. n await comments from the love guru's :)

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