Archive for November, 2007
The Retarded Child strikes back!
November 25th, 2007
After my new haircut (and the new growth of hair), as per Vishal and my dad - my looks best match those of a retarded child - lol 
This name gives me a kick - demolishing people’s notions about me is immensely pleasurable!
This retarded child made a fierce comeback today in his pre-quarters match. I was up against AXA (Pune) in my first match at Josh 07. My opponent’s slices were a double edged swords because of bad condition of the only court where the matches were being played. Center part of baseline on one side and complete left part of the other side had absolutely no friction. So any slice hit by my opponent was like - ‘zuk’ ‘zuk’ !!! Top that with a slice hitter’s slow & consistent game! And on the contrary, all my top-spin shots lost their kick due to the court’s surface! I knew - I had a tough game ahead of me!
And on top of that when the umpire announced that the Men’s singles matches are going to be “best of 3 sets” - my hair stood at their ends! (last year, all the matches except finals were best of 11 games!)
Completely unprepared (and without any practicing on the court or stamina to stand for a 3 setter) we started the match.
The opponent looked like he have had some formal training. He knew how to use Wilson racquet’s “W” and “M” when it came to toss for side’n-serve, he knew that he has to practice for overhead shots before the game starts, etc.
It was a completely service game. Each one of us were holding onto our serves and the scoreboard showed “Mayank(2) - AXA dude(3)” in no time. I knew that I have to come up with a strategy - and fast, if I had to defeat this AXA dude. All his returns were just utilizing the speed of my shots - he was only blocking my shots, hitting none. He was hitting shots at almost 60% consistency - while mine was below 25%
Defeating slow players requires a strategy - Either a very fast or a very slow and consistent game is required! And since I had experienced this same scenario when I played (and won) the same tournament last year - I knew what I had to do! Play a faster game than him and increase my consistency (or decrease his!)…
That proved to be the turning point for the match & the game started to change to a rally based game. I broke his serve once in the first set and managed to win the set by 6-4. I knew my strategy was working! Niceeee!!!
Second set was altogether different… he was demoralized, was loosing energy much faster than me, I was more _into_ the game, I had found a way to avoid slippery surfaces of the court, I was returning almost100% of his 1st serves, I had more confidence & I already had one set saftely tucked under my name - in short, I was thinking!. It was an uphill climb for him, while my journey was more like that of a plateau. I just had to continue doing what I was doing + be more consistency with my first serves. I always had an advantage on this cemented court- my first serves were like bazooka shots! Whichever was in, I won that point… so much so, even the top spin second serves were proving deadly!
So the retarded child struck back & won the second set 6-4 in lesser time that what it took him to finish the first set.
It was a good game to start the tournament with. I had not expected such a tough opponent in the first round itself - but in a way, its good as well. Now I have one less tough opponent to worry about. (People might say that i’m scared of tough opponents - dude, this is a game & I am playing to win it! Strategies are required and every chance to take that point is needed at every step of the match! And 3 setter match is no joke!)
In a nutshell, I won my match today because my opponent was even more unprepared than what I was. BUT, this wont be always the case! Someone, somewhere might be preparing hard, with a dream in his eyes to win this tournament this year - ever since I won this tournament last year.
I’ll make sure that this dosn’t happens in the next match - God and luck always favour a prepared mind! I’ll be prepared the next time!
Note 1 - before ending, a big applause for my opponent - he almost brought me to my knees today. Had he been a regular player, I had little chance in front of him - but as I said, its a game & I am playing it to win!
Note 2 - An advice for the organizers - please respect last year rankings! Second year into the tournament and you cannot expect yourself to be ignorant of how lawn tennis draws are made and filled. There was no notion of rankings in the draw & it could have happened that the top two seeds are fighting each other in the very first round! Grr… - consider last year’s rankings!!!
Off to sleep now, I have a doubles lined up for tomorrow and even have to give another kick start to my Mixed Doubles partner - Pooja. More on that later…
Posted in Life in Pune, Tennis | Comments (6)
50 beta signups on ApnaBill.com
November 16th, 2007
ApnaBill.com has seen 50 interested users in just less than 2 days after the initial announcement.
I would like to thank each one of them personally for showing initiative & the interest. I hope that we stand by all of our promises & deliver a very user-friendly and impact-full product once the beta signup stage finishes.
Please continue showing your interest by Signing up for the Beta.
Thanks a ton!
Posted in ApnaBill, Startups | Comments (0)
A quickie for using RoR with Gedit
November 16th, 2007
Syntax highlighting for *.rhtml files - no more need to click view/highlight-mode/markup/html
http://robzon.aenima.pl/2007/10/ubuntu-710-rails-gedit-and.html
Enjoy RoR more!
Posted in Rails | Comments (1)
Introducing ApnaBill.com
November 14th, 2007
I am so happy & proud to announce ApnaBill.com
ApnaBill.com is an effort to bring the ease and power of e-commerce to Prepaid Mobile recharge process.Once ApnaBill.com is up, its users would be able to recharge their prepaid connections from the comfort of their home in seconds!
Gone are be those days when you need to find a local shop to get your prepaid connection refilled or recharged! ApnaBill is here!
For now, our Beta Signup process is open - please register & we shall ping you once ApnaBill is ready to serve you!
Beta signups for ApnaBill.com are now open!
Our services would be applicable to Indian mobile phone users only.
Posted in ApnaBill, Startups | Comments (1)
A SliceHost invite up for grabs…
November 14th, 2007
Some weeks ago, I was looking for a hosting provider for my Rails project - for which I added myself to SliceHost’s waiting list.
For some reasons, I dont need the invite they’ve sent me now (I am now a happy RailsPlayground customer). If anyone from my readers is interested, I can forward you the invite. Slices start from 256Slice - $20.00/month - 10GB HD, 100GB BW
Ping me - maku at makuchaku dot info
The slice invite is valid only for 4 days from now.
If SliceHost guys think this post is against their policy, they are welcome to approach me about the same. I respect their business guidelines.
Posted in Broadcast, Rails | Comments (5)
Getting up & running on RailsPlayground
November 13th, 2007
RailsPlayground has some excellent and fast customer support, but this time, I wanted to deploy my app without any of it being used - that means I had to debug the weirdo “Application Error - Rails application failed to start properly” error myself. The RailsPlayground staff had managed it the last time for me…
The best solutions, which worked instantly for me were
- http://6brand.com/application-error-rails-app-failed-to-start-properly
- http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/Gotcha
Though I followed 6brand’s guidelines very closely, my app was already setup in the way that was mentioned in the blog post.
The Gotcha mentioned on RubyOnRails wiki did the trick for me
REMOVE ANY pp’s AND puts FROM YOUR CODE!!!
Once done, your code would start running like it always does on your dear 127.0.0.1
Another trick that will help you alot during your initial deployments is to run your code in “development” mode by hand-editing config/environment.rb file, replacing “production” mode to “development”. There is far more information to look at in a devel log than in a production log.
Have fun!
Posted in Rails, Startups | Comments (1)
When everything had a first time…
November 4th, 2007
Mahesh’s first blog post reminded me of my own first post - which was wayy back in Nov 2004, at 1:11 AM and coincidently from a system running Ubuntu (I just installed Ubuntu Gutsy on my laptop - more on that laters).
Check out http://makuchaku.blogspot.com/2004/11/everything-has-first-time.html for kicks!
Wishing Mahesh all the very best for his blogging 
Posted in A strong urge to blog... | Comments (1)
ISS gang @ Pune
November 3rd, 2007
From left - Anand, me, Rehan and Murtuza.
Missing from the pic - Aseem, Nitin, Shubro & our very own Siddharth boss.
Thanks to d00d (Subhasis) for the pic
Posted in Life @ IBM, Life in Pune | Comments (0)
Sweet!
November 3rd, 2007
Check this out - I finally received them most awaited pics from Bob
This is Bob’s 48 caliber baby! Much lighter than the other guns I fired that day…
And this was the revolver I shot… look at all those empty shells - these are not even half of the number of bullets I fired :D - was feeling like a cowboy lol
BTW, juts to mention a funny incident that day - when I first loaded a magazine into the pistol - the very first time - I inserted it in the reverse direction - such that, the pointed side of bullets were pointed towards me - confused that how should I get the magazine out without cocking the gun, I showed it to Bob - who couldnt help smiling at me before he showed me the right way lol - that was real funny - I hope no one else gets that magazine in wrong direction - its scary - the very first time you hold a gun & the bullet points towards you hahaha
Posted in A strong urge to blog..., makuchaku in USofA | Comments (2)
A quiet Saturday morning at office…
November 3rd, 2007
After meeting the lovely family from Goa (Mahesh’s family & relatives) in the morning, the soo silent office environment at 10 AM is pretty daunting!
Grr…. today’s a beautiful Saturday morning & I have to work my ass off!!!
I was hoping to catch up with my (personal) project at home and upgrade my Fedora installation to rawhide (Fedora 8) using Rama’s new 1 Meg fat pipe (Tata Indicom) - but instead I am here at office, trying to finish a rails project… I’m happy and sad - both at the same moment.
Happy because my project would be delivered on time if I spend these two days in office - sad because I had some other plans for the weekend, which will now have to wait!
But the good part - going early to bed yesternight (10 pm) woke me up at 6:30 in the morning - I was able to pull in half an hour of gym in today’s schedule - which was nice! If I can continue this, I would like to add a 15 minutes of jog as well - morning air is very refreshing and roads are far better than the treadmill
Okay - so much so for the morning commentary - time to code now!
Posted in A strong urge to blog..., Life @ IBM, Life in Pune | Comments (0)