Year passes by..

yeah I know it's still mid of 2005 but today would mark exactly one year since I met someone for the last time...seems to be long time huh? believe me it seems way too long than one year.

Waltzing Matilda

Guess I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and have been feeling pretty low; not that I've been feeling great off-late but since feeling low is also relative, today has been particularly a bad day. Did nothing today except watch one Adam Sandler's movie: Happy Gilmore, listen to some music(80's stuff) and cook lunch for myself (made egg-korma, the easiest and the safest thing to cook: not much scope of spoiling it, the only thing that perhaps you can get wrong is salt. Ate bread-toast for dinner as had no mood to cook). Happy Gilmore is a no-brainer light movie abt a hopeful Hockey Player who turns a pro Golfer to save his Grandma from being evicted, something that Adam Sandler marvels at, his other 3 movies which I saw off-late: The Wedding Singer (with Drew Barrymore) and Anger Management (with Al Pacino),

can't remember the name of the third movie!

were also more or less the same with Sandler at his comic best.

Apart from that the day for me has been pretty much murky, I know a lot of people have told me that I cling to the past for too long and don't move on along with time..I really don't understand what they mean by moving on, does it mean stop thinking, stop feeling, stop dreaming, stop hoping, stop doing what matters to you most? If that what moving on means then yes I would never move on with life, I would never stop dreaming, never stop feeling and having lived my life for 27 years I really don't think it's possible for me to change now anyway.

Bharwan Bhindi

Bharwan (hindi): Stuffed
Bhindi (hindi): Lady's Finger or for the ppl. with "Americonish" accent- Okra!
Bharwan Bhindi: Stuffed Lady's Finger/Okra.
People who know me well know that I just love bhindi in any form: even half cooked bhindi seems pretty good to me. So today I thought of trying out my oh-not-so-great culinary skills and decided to prepare my version of Bharwan Bhindi. The recipe was more or less mine & knowing how good I am taking shortcuts I didn't stuff the bhindi with masala that I prepared but added it along with the bhindi. In the end it came out pretty fine though turmeric and chilli powder were a little on the higher side...anywez I was pretty much pleased with my preparation & hopefuly one day would make it for someone special (no prizes for guessing who!).

I've got a secret....

http://postsecret.blogspot.com ...what's your secret?

Open source

On my system I decided not to install any "pirated" stuff, so thought I should give some open source/free softwares a try, here's what I have on my system : -

• OS: Windows XP Professional (I am very tempted to install Debian Linux also; just pushing it back as I only have 40GB HDD, perhaps I should look at installing Linux on External Hard Disk).
• Web Browser: Mozilla Firefox, firefox wins over IE in leaps & bounds. It's more lightweight (only 4.7MB installer), more stable, and above all keeps spywares and those annoying pop-ups away (more so with Adblock extension installed). I was very very flustered with IE after getting idiotic pop-ups even after installing Google/Yahoo pop-up blocker (servustats.com is one such site for instance on which the Google/Yahoo pop-up blocker fails) . I think the other reason why lotsa users are switching to Firefox from IE apart from the above features is due to the fact that Firefox's look & feel and keyboard shortcuts are more or less similar to IE which makes transition pretty simple.
• Development Tool(s): MS C# 2005 Express Edition CTP, Web Developer Express Edition CTP. I love .net and all those folks who think Java is better than .net, I think both are good in their own way. (aside: I would love to install Mone once I get Linux installed, it sure seems promising!)
  
• Database: Sql Server 2005 Express Edition CTP (new avatar of MSDE).
• Office suite: Open Office 2.0 Beta, another cool open source app with backing from Sun. I have been able to open all MS Word/Excel 200x documents in Open Office w.o. any loss of formatting. The only drawback is that even though OO Base opens MS Access files, it doesn't allow you to save it back, you can only save it in Oasis format (some open source frmt). Also the look and feel of Open Office is very much like MS Office making it pretty easy to use for MS Office users.
• Email Client: No prizes for guessing, has to be Mozilla Thunderbird with Calendar extension installed :-). It has pretty strong Junk/Spam filter which you can make better by training it. The biggest drawback is that the keyboard shortcuts don't map to Outlook or Outlook Express so Outlook users have to search for Keyboard shortcuts! Though it does a good job in synch-ing Tasks/Events from Outlook (which I use in the Office).
• Anti Spyware: MS AntiSpyware, guess it's the best though I would also recommend Lavasoft.
• MP3 Player: MusicMatch Jukebox basic with DFX installed.
  

Isn't life strange?

sometimes life just goes in one direction and the harder you try to change it the further it goes in that direction. Off-late I've learnt that at times not doing anything is better than trying to do something to change things. I guess it's alright to let life drift sometimes and let it go where it has to go. Last one year has been really crazy and today was the day which started it all.

Life, what is it but a dream?

Even if you don't believe in astrology you have to read this article by Kevin Burk on Neptune being retrograde, it's got the mix of astrology, metaphysics, quantum physics and a bit of philosophy et al. Didn't you have a sense of deja-vu?