Category Archives: miscellaneous

Aaaarghhhh!

Posted on May 22, 2007 by Varun

No comments. Keep wondering. Continue reading →

Posted in daily diary, miscellaneous | 1 Comment

My other blog

Posted on May 18, 2007 by Varun

My old blog actually.

Did you know that I blogged at www.ThoughtfulChaos.com for a year and a half before moving here?

I skimmed through all the blogs on my old blog and picked out my favourite ones. Hey… I am not that bad a blogger after all. I have listed my favourite below in chronological order and grouped by topic. Enjoy!

Family, Friends and Loved ones

The nomad that I am (Pune, Delhi and Mumbai)

Silliness

Books

  • Bye Dumbledore – *sniff* *sniff* Only the second time ever that I felt very very sad on reading a book. First time was when Sherlock Holmes (supposedly) falls into the Reichenbach Falls.
  • Dumbledore _might_ not be dead – There is still hope!

Meta (blogging about blogging)

Everything Else

Continue reading →

Posted in meta, miscellaneous | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

09:F9:11:02:9D: 74:E3:5B:D8: 41:56:C5: 63:56:88:C0

Posted on May 13, 2007 by Varun

09:F9:11:02:9D: 74:E3:5B:D8: 41:56:C5: 63:56:88:C0

If you know what this is you are a fellow geek. If you don’t can you take a guess in the comments?

I will add the answer after a few days… let me see if I get any interesting replies. Continue reading →

Posted in miscellaneous | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Wanna play Scrabble? – Scrabulous.com is THE place to check out

Posted on May 13, 2007 by Varun

Wanna play Scrabble? – Check out Scrabulous.com.

My friend Jasmine introduced me to this cool site that allows you to play Scrabble online for free, either with yourself, with a friend sitting halfway around the world or with total strangers who share your love of Scrabble.

The software that the site uses is lightweight and really easy to use. It almost feels as if you are sitting in a room with the Scrabble board in front of you ready to go to vocab war. There is almost no learning curve and as long as you know the basic rules you are ready to go as soon as you log in. I am totally addicted. Did I mention that the site also allows you to chat with your opponent during the game?

I have observed a few games (you can just drop in and watch other games in progress… there are some amazing scrabble players in there) and have played a couple of games with Jasmine. I lost both times ( :-( ) but Jazz, in true Arnie style, I WILL BE BACK!

Couple of tips from Scrabble-guru Jasmine:

  1. Use the online dictionary before forming a word you are not sure exists (I do that all the time), it will save you some precious seconds.
  2. Familiarize yourself with the Two Letter Words list… they come in very very handy in crunch situations and earn some very useful points.

My username for the site is varunvnair, so if you join add me as your buddy and drop me an email or an offliner and we will have a game sometime. Continue reading →

Posted in fun, miscellaneous | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Nooooooooo!

Posted on March 29, 2007 by Varun

Thesis submission, pt. 3 Continue reading →

Posted in miscellaneous | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Question: What’s better than getting an iPod?

Posted on March 25, 2007 by Varun

Answer: Getting an iPod for free :-)

Took part in some survey couple of months back. Seems like mine was one of the 1st 100 entries and got a silver 2GB 2nd Generation iPod Nano in the ensuing lucky draw.

We don’t have a very good collection of music at home so am still not making much use of the iPod. Hope to correct that shortly. Continue reading →

Posted in miscellaneous | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Bloggers immune from suits against commenters (at least in the US)

Posted on February 26, 2007 by Varun

Nice move: In the US a Federal Court has ruled that message board operators and bloggers will not be held responsible for postings made by others on the board or blog.

Examining the impact of Sec. 230 on this case, the court noted that “Congress intended that, within broad limits, message board operators would not be held responsible for the postings made by others on that board,” adding that allowing bloggers and message board operators to be sued for the statements of commenters on their sites would have an “obvious chilling effect” on speech.

I wonder if an Indian court of law would also rule in a similar way. Continue reading →

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I don’t like laptops

Posted on February 26, 2007 by Varun

I don’t like laptops. My fingers keep hitting the wrong keys, my palm keeps grazing the touchpad causing my mouse pointer to go haywire, I have to actually search for keys and I have to pore into the tiny monitor. Even my next system is going to be a good old desktop, that’s for sure. Continue reading →

Posted in miscellaneous | Tagged | 1 Comment