If there is something that i use for the most of the time on my computer, it is nothing other than the good old winamp. The definitive mediaplayer for windows- the brainchild of the maverick programmer justin frankel- it continues to be the best voted player for digital audio. But being an ardent fan of winamp, i was a bit frustrated by the news that winamp is not going to have any further developments. Why because, the original winamp team has left AOL, the company that bought winamp from justin frankel. It's a long story about how justin as a university dropout started of the winamp saga at the age of 16. Winamp turned to become a stable and versatile player and even more popular than windows mediaplayer. It's estimated that justin frankel-through his winamp- has caused an annual loss of revenue to the tune of $2b to the music industry! That gives a rough idea about the mammoth user base of winamp. Then came a hefty $80m deal that saw the takeover of nullsoft (the company formed by justin and his friends for marketing winamp- he claims it to be a play on microsoft!) by AOL. Following days were evidently not so smooth for the happy-go erstwhile nullsoft team whose every activities were monitored by the eagle eyes of AOL. Justin was dragged in to a point of threatening when he released the file sharing program called gnutella (and that too hosted on AOL servers!) at the very time when AOL was partnering with Time warner inc. which turn in was waging a bitter legal battle with napster. Though he was forced to back off, the source code had already been leaked and that later did the groundwork for the file sharing clients like kazaa, morpheus, winmx etc etc.. A couple of stunts later AOL unceremonoiusly throwed out the nullsoft team one by one and before they reached justin, he voluntarily stepped out (one would do well to check out his blog at hotdog.com). As expected, winamp too suffered the repercussions. THe version 5.05 is supposed to be the final version for now. A sad demise for such a brilliant piece of work. I think winamp is destined for a fate similar to that of the media player sonique which too saw its downfall when the original team was expelled by lycos.

today's express carried a capsule review of the various free content providers on the web. wikipedia - a free source encyclopaedia that anyone can edit- triumphs the game. A much criticised venture, when it started off in april-01, has now acquired the proportions of a mammoth mediahouse. With offshoots of wikipedia running into travelogue databases, news portals, e-book collection etc, they have now stunningly proved the good old theory of 'wisdom of crowd'. three cheers to jimmywales-the man who started it all!

Kerala is getting into the swirl of election hustles. It's now a hot bed of sectarian politics and continues to be so with rising levels of sycophancy. As evident from the recent issue of DIC(K)'s decision to remian aloof from any tieups and the consequent split of DIC(K) itself and a not-so-surprising return to its original form. Although the fronts alternate between themselves in being at power through the process of rejection (rather than election) by people, we all feel the terrible change in god's own country,that of the downward spiral into which our infrastructure development and investment flows have fallen into. A much hyped global investor's meet, and a couple of other profligate conclaves, for all practical purposes, has proved themselves to be nothing more than third rate publicity stunts. We come to know about the real picture because there is always the opposition to bring them up, while themselves ignoring the fact that they too are responsible for the economic stagnation the state is facing.

ok i'll stop the dystopian gyan session. i've got a couple of days more to prepare for the iisc interviews. i may be going to b'lore soon for the same. These days it's becoming increasingly difficult to stay off from the tv. star and sony are apparently on a race to grab the telecast rights for all blockbusters. This sunday they had a nice package of 'no entry', 'hulchul', '1857 the rising'. Without saying it goes that i had a taste of all the three. So that explains why i find it that difficult.

I think it has been a long time since i penned something on my blog...not that i was preoccupied with some other job, in fact i was not having any job at all, but rather couldnt frequent to a cafe as i was away from my home and ironically that was in b'lore.!
instead of a rather cliched retrospective narration, here it goes...








<ACTION>
june 1 - 2005
"my successful first day at degussa..met my colleagues, a treat at PARK, all went so smooth and cool."

july 23rd - 05
" a fateful twist to wind up the job because of some unexpected troubles.."
<CUT>

<ACTION>
august 28th :
"registered for TIME course and started to attend their classes from mid september.."
"Nov, 20 CAT, Nov 27 IIFT, Dec 11 JMET."
last week of December:
"Results are out-- instead of a belled CAT i saw a belled myself...97.15 CAT, 94.4 JMET,only calls are from iitkgp,
iitd, iitm..the final verdict is to give GATE a good shot."
<CUT>

<ACTION>
Feb 12 GATE and March 15 results are out:
"man..! in think i'v struck gold ..an unexpected 99.53"
<PACK UP!..THE TAKE IS OK>