Galácticos

Its the era that marked the signing of the most famous and the best footballers on earth by Florentino Pérez, the President of Spanish football club Real Madrid. And each of these players is called a Galáctico meaning super star.

During its first era(2000-2006) Pérez signed Luís Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, David Beckham and Michael Owen. The team had huge success in the beginning of this era winning multiple championships. The super star image of each of the Galácticos added by the powerful marketing strategy of the club made it the world's richest club by revenue overtaking Manchester United. However the club did not enjoy much success in the coming years and most of the Galácticos eventually left the club ending its first era.

With Pérez back as the President of the club, the second era has begun(mid-2009). He now has signed Kaká, Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Xabi Alonso. Ronaldo was signed for a all time record fee of $132m making him the richest footballer on earth.

Samsung's new Mobile Platform

Samsung, the second largest mobile provider in the world has finally come up with the much anticipated open mobile platform called the Samsung Bada. This means that it will no more be shipping either Symbian or Windows Mobile platforms with its upcoming phones.

Bada means "Ocean" in Korean and is named aiming to create a wide variety of applications by developers. It will have a strong user interface, be developer friendly, and enable mobile operators to offer various content and services.

The competition would be immense with the likes of some of the greatest companies like Microsoft, Google, Symbian, Apple, Research In Motion and Palm which are already in the mobile operating system market from a long time. But considering the fact that Samsung manufactures the second highest number of mobiles in the world, it will be a interesting road map for Bada.

The Run Machine...

17,000 runs and still counting! Sachin Tendulkar was at his very best and it was one of those fluent and authorative innings of his in recent times. It needed a miraculous effort from the Indian batsman to chase a score of 351 runs in the 5th one dayer and it was Sachin all the way who made the target achievable till the very end.

The Indians faltered as a batting unit and the top order hardly contributed. Sachin kept loosing his partners at the other end, yet kept scoring briskly at his end. I feel they should have taken the batting powerplay much earlier, when Sachin and Raina were in very good touch. Coudnt have expected the tailenders to finish the game as it was the batsmen who had to do their job.

Australians deserved this victory, they played as a team. With many frontline players (mostly bolwers) out due to injuries, each of their batsmen performed and 350 was always going to be a very tough chase. The Indian bowling was very mediocre and they had two catches droppped of Shaun Marsh who eventually scored his maiden century. I never expected that the match whould end so closely.

Thanks Sachin! for keeping the excitement till the very end of the match. He still has that charm left in him and I am expecting many more such innings from him.

Firecrackers and its Hazards

Ever wondered what a firecracker is made up of ? Its main constituents are Potassium nitrate(75%), Carbon or Charcoal or Sugar(15%) and Sulphur(10%). These substances create a powerful chemical reaction when they come in contact with fire and the result of this chemical reaction is what you see in most firecrackers. The reaction produces nitrogen and carbon dioxide which are very harmful to the human body.

Health Hazards: Respiratory problems such as asthma and bronchitis are the main threats apart from others like hearing loss, high blood pressure and sleeping disturbances. Sudden exposure to noise could also cause temporary or permanent deafness and also a possible heart attack.

Awareness: With kids and youth being the major consumers of fireworks, schools and colleges should be the first source of education which will make them aware of the possible hazards. Media, government and individuals should bring the awareness amongst the public so that the effect of burning crackers is controlled to whatever extent is possible.

We are actually seeing people getting more Eco-friendly and also there is a change in their attitude towards giving back something to the nature. This is well illustrated by the drastic downturn in the sales of fireworks and the general opinion from people about lesser intensity of fireworks getting burnt.

Remotely Connecting to Windows from Linux/UNIX

rdesktop is a open source tool to connect to Windows machine remotely. Install this on your Linux/UNIX machine and connect to your Windows machine on the same network. Its the implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol which provides the user's Windows desktop.

This is how you get rdesktop working:

1. Download the source of the latest rdesktop version from the download link.
2. Extract the tar file to a local directory of your choice ( /usr/local/rdesktop in this case)using the command "tar xvzf rdesktop-1.6.0.tar.gz -C /usr/local/rdesktop"
3. Change your working directory to the unzipped location using the command "cd /usr/local/rdesktop/rdesktop-1.6.0"
4. Setup the installation using the command "./configure"
5. Compile the software using the command "make" and check if there are no errors.
6. Install the rdesktop client using the command "make install"
7. You can now access your windows machine using the command "./rdesktop server" where "server" is either the hostname or IP Address of your windows machine.


rdesktop options :

Usage: ./rdesktop [options] server

-u: user name
-d: domain
-s: shell
-c: working directory
-p: password (autologin)
-n: client hostname
-k: keyboard layout (hex)
-g: desktop geometry (WxH)
-f: full-screen mode
-b: force bitmap updates
-e: disable encryption (French TS)
-m: do not sendmotion events
-l: do not request license

Na Tukaram Alla

After enough research and discussion and time wasting on deciding which movie to watch this weekend, it was Sushma(my wife) 's idea to watch this drama at Ranga Shankar this Saturday(04-07-2009). We had to buy the tickets a day in advance as it was a play which had notable names associated with it (and was a weekend as well).

Yes, it was the troupe Sanket, the dream child of Kannada actor Shankar Nag performing this. It was S Surendranath who adapted this from Herb Gardener’s “I am not Rappoport”.

Its about the energy of a elderly man who has this knack of changing his profession as and when the situation demands. He becomes a retired policeman who tries to fight a goon, a advocate fighting to save his friend's job whom he meets daily at the park. Come what may, he would never stop fighting for what he feels is right. There are so many dangerous situations that he gets stuck in and would somehow manage to get out of.

The script is so humourous that you have your ears wide open all the time, not to miss even a single word uttered amidst the huge cheer from the crowd. B Suresh is the focal point in the entire play with Yenagi Natraj (son of the famous theater icon Yenagi Balappa) perfectly filling the role of his friend. Never forgotten are all those North Karnataka slangs that these two share between them.

A play defenitely worth watching :)