Dude, Where's My Blog?

A Hellish Airport Nightmare

2006-05-20T08:15:00.000+01:00

Airports. Can be very intimidating. Thousands of people rushing about, and hundreds of opportunities for things to go awry. Not just at the airport, but in the journeys getting there.

Now, I had a really traumatic day yesterday. I was taking the Tube to Heathrow, and somehow or other, I managed to catch the WRONG train, going to Raynors Lane, so I had to switch trains, cross platforms, and join the rush hour crowd. I think I overexerted myself. In my panic, I was rushing about, and forgot to breathe properly. I felt light-headed, and felt like throwing up. I leaned on my suitcase for support. Someone in the crowd was asking me for directions, and the next moment, I found myself toppling to the ground. Concerned commuters stopped to offer assistance, and the Tube staff were especially helpful. I suppose it was my own fault. I overpacked my luggage, and found myself struggling to carry it all. Word to the w(e)ary. Always travel light. Saves a lot of time and reduces the risk of being charged for excess baggage.

Anyway, I took about 15 minutes to clear my head and rehydrate myself with H20, before continuing on my journey. Airlines are especially strict nowadays when it comes to baggage allowances. The only exception to the rule would probably be for frequent flyers and first class travellers. And the rule is more strictly enforced on transit flights.

I ended up sending one piece of luggage via Excess Baggage, which charges a premium if you send items from the airport. It takes about 7-10 working days to arrive at the destination, and then you'll need to clear your excess luggage through local customs. Mind you, all the paperwork and long queues could take up to an hour or more. And then, you'll need to take the luggage over to Left Luggage over in the Arrivals section of the Terminal. An amiable chap named Dinesh served me at the Excess Baggage counter. Struck up a random conversation about hellish days and rants about outdated computer systems - they're still using an arcane setup for their invoices and stuff.

Anyway, by the time all this was done, I had less than an hour to spend in the Duty Free section. In any case, I was just too weary to go bargain hunting. I bought a few things for the family, and took a moment to rest. Proceeded to the gates, and was on the plane in about half an hour. Another half hour, and we were in the air... albeit, after a shaky takeoff. It was drizzling a bit, typical London weather.

I'm currently in Doha, awaiting a connecting flight. Thankfully, the airlines provides free hotel accommodation for long transits. It's a 4 Star Hotel apparently, but I seriously doubt it would hold a candle to similarly rated hotels in Europe or the US.
The hotel room prices varies between 900-1200 QAR (approx. 130-175 GBP) per night. Thank goodness that they have Wi-Fi access (varies between 1Mbps-12Mbps)!
FYI, Qatar ISPs block certain websites. You know what sites I'm talking about... :P

Interesting conversations with various hotel employees. About 60% of people in Qatar are foreign workers. I suppose, the pay is quite good in oil-rich Qatar. Sri Lankans, Filipinos, and various other nationalities, seem to fill the hotel & tourism industry. It's a sweltering 100 F/38 C, although the forecast says 42 C. I don't think I'll be going outside - thankfully, the hotel rooms are air-conditioned.

Anyway, it's another 12 hours to my connecting flight, so I have complementary breakfast, lunch and dinner... now, if I could just fit in a few hours of shut-eye, I just may forget about my bad airport experience.

Quote of the Day

2006-05-08T23:31:00.000+01:00

But without his "madness" Zarathustra would necessarily have been only another of the millions or billions of human individuals who have lived and then been forgotten.

- John F. Nash, Jr.
The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1994
(That's the Nobel Prize, people)

Source: http://nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/1994/nash-autobio.html

Just Elite: Coolest Ads

2006-04-13T06:43:00.000+01:00

Just Elite: Coolest Ads

Guess who's a Miserable Failure?

2006-02-25T11:20:00.000Z

Google search for miserable failure. Yeah, I know it's an old story (circa 2003), but it still good to know that it's still the no.1 result for that search. Google bombing rocks. Other past google bombing successes include French military victories and weapons of mass destruction.

Hasselhoff Hooked on a Feeling

2006-02-08T14:30:00.000Z

OR: http://www.youtube.com/?v=Gi2CfuqcUGE

Found this link off Superficial.

Don't know whether to laugh or cry. I glad to see that he doesn't seem to take himself too seriously. The last time I saw his mug was while watching EuroTrip, in which he appeared in a dream sequence singing a German song.

No, they weren't reacting to Hasselhoff's performance, but that's the general thought going through my mind whenever Hasselhoff sings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hasselhoff

Brokeback to the Future

2006-02-04T14:28:00.000Z

For some reason, the original post caused some problems in editing. Here it is again.

For those who have trouble with embedded links, try
http://www.youtube.com/?v=zfODSPIYwpQ instead.

If you liked that, you can also try the following links:

Top Gun Brokeback Squadron
Brokeback Angels

And check out Mighty McPilgrim's Brokeback Mountain Parody.

Maddox cracks me up...

2006-02-03T01:57:00.000Z

Illegal immigration, racism and free enterprise... God Bless America. :)

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=walmart

Crude but Funny

2006-02-02T03:45:00.000Z

TinyURL is one of those sites that specialise in URL redirection, making long URLs shorter and easier to send via email.

Below are three TinyURL links. Guess why they made me laugh.

tinyurl.com link 1
tinyurl.com link 2
tinyurl.com link 3

Get an online Doctorate

2006-01-31T07:03:00.000Z

I stumbled upon this site, and a few hours later, I still am undecided on whether it's meant to be funny for a serious cause, or funny for humour's sake. Maybe it's because it's 7am and I haven't slept a wink.

Click http://www.theologicaluniversity.org/

Hollywood Stock Exchange

2006-01-29T09:48:00.000Z

Ever wish you had $2 million to play with? Do you like movies? Well then, Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) might be the game for you. You're given 2 million Hollywood dollars (H$) to start with, and you can use this to 'invest' in various actor and movie stocks, funds and options; as if this were a real live stock exchange! You can invest in your favourite actors/actresses and bet on the latest movie releases and even movies in development. The trading system is simple: Buy, Sell, Short and Cover. You can even set limit prices at which you want to trade. Actor prices are based on their previous movies' performance in the Box Office.

I've been playing this for some time now, and so far, I've turned that H$2 million into H$26 million.

Sign up and play for free.

George Dubya vs Jesus

2006-01-28T05:48:00.000Z

Who do you think would win? Would you badmouth Jesus?

http://www.wiseass.org/html/content-jesus.html

God only knows...

If you're in the mood for US Politics, why not check out the blog below
http://openyourmindseye.blogspot.com/
Some of the videos there are H-i-l-a-r-i-o-u-s!

Random Funny

2006-01-27T22:41:00.000Z

Sandrine Holt and Easter Island

2006-01-26T05:54:00.000Z

I was actually looking for pictures of Sandrine Holt, and somehow ended up looking at island pictures of Rapa Nui (there was a movie), also known as Easter Island.

Easter Island is THE most isolated inhabited island in the world.

Easter Island Satellite Photos
Easter Island Wiki

And...
How the Polynesians claimed the Pacific

And on the subject of Sandrine Holt, you can find some pics from 'Once A Thief' in the link below:
http://www.nicklea.com/oat/gallery.htm

Blogger.com fights Spam Blogs

2006-01-19T12:47:00.000Z

Blogger Buzz: Next Blog, Now With Less Spam!

This sounds great. I enjoy clicking that "Next Blog>>" icon, and if this helps to eliminate those worthless spam blogs (aka splogs), so be it. I myself had one of my blogs wrongfully labelled as a potential spam blog. Heehee.

The reason for that, is because, it's a picture blog! And the links were to larger images.

Anyway, the way it works, is that there's a word verification required to make new posts, thus preventing the spam bots from auto-blogging.

Word of the Day

2006-01-16T03:39:00.001Z

schadenfreude

1. Malicious pleasure at someone's misfortune.

I suppose that's why people watch reality TV.

The Uneducated Superpower

2006-01-14T06:39:00.000Z

I stumbled across an interesting website about literacy in the USA, or rather the LACK of it. I'm not talking about proficiency in reading and writing, but in terms of general knowledge, foreign language skills and basic geography & history.

http://www.rehydrate.org/facts/global_illiteracy.htm

Here are a few interesting tidbits from the above site:

Almost 50% of the high school seniors in Baltimore, Maryland could not locate the United States on a world map. (LOL)
95% of American college freshmen tested could not locate Vietnam on a world map. (OMG)
75% of Americans responding to a nationwide survey could not locate El Salvador on a map. (It's between Honduras and Guatemala)
Only 15% of U.S. high school students in 1979 studied a foreign language and fewer than 3% of all high school graduates achieve a "meaningful competence" in a foreign language.
France and the Federal Republic of Germany commit 1% of their national budgets to (international) educational, cultural and information activities; the US Government less than .1%

The information on that site appears to be a bit dated (circa 1990s), but there is still some truth in it. Although considered a world superpower, the US still lags their 1st World counterparts in terms of education. Instead, the spending is diverted to the military-industrial complex and corporate America.

It is pompous to believe that the US is the centre of the universe, that everything needs to revolve around it. But, if the above info is even half true, the world needs to worry.

Especially now, with a leader that preaches a mantra of democracy and freedom in foreign lands, yet at the same time, increase the restrictions of those freedoms in his own country. The events of recent years have not helped the situation. The world watches, as the US, once the protagonist, turns aggressor.

Ignorance may be bliss, but not if you've got an arsenal of weapons and a trigger happy finger.

Firefox - it's a love/hate relationship

2006-01-14T05:01:00.000Z

I first got hooked to Mozilla Firefox when it was called FireBird. Version 0.6, if I recall. I was fed-up with getting viruses and trojans via Internet Explorer, and didn't want to have Opera with all their ads.

I stopped using IE entirely, and Firefox became my one and only browser. I loved the idea of tabbed browsing, and the wonderful world of extensions. On the few occasions when I have no choice but to use IE (at a friend's, or at a cybercafe), I found the navigation cumbersome and icky.

Since switching over to Firefox, I've not had a single trojan virus on my computer. ActiveX is still a dangerous loophole exploited by hackers today.

Over the months, I've experimented with alternative browsers based on IE. They allowed greater flexibility with settings, and even tabbed browsing. But it's just not the same.

Now, I love Firefox, don't get me wrong. But, the last few versions have suffered badly from the dreaded memory leak. Basically, the program consumes mega loads of memory over a short period of heavy surfing. The current version, Firefox 1.5 is the worst offender yet. My latest record in terms of memory usage, was a whopping 800 MB of RAM, and over 1GB of Virtual Memory! Needless to say, Firefox crashed soon after. Now, in a perfect world, when you close a tab or window, you would expect the program to release the memory accordingly. But for some reason, this doesn't happen, and the memory use keeps on going higher and higher.

Now, I did a test run, opening tabs in both Opera and Firefox, and after surfing about 100+ pages on each, the memory usage was as follows:

Opera 90MB RAM/110MB Virtual
Firefox 200MB RAM/310MB Virtual

Disabling extensions brought it down somewhat, but it was still much higher than Opera's memory consumption. There is still a memory leak in Opera, but it's not as bad as Firefox 1.5.

Now, if the developers of Firefox can do something about the memory leak, I'll be happy to stick with Firefox... but, if they can't fix it, I will probably have no choice but to switch to Opera.

Google Search: Firefox Memory Leak

Another Fun Test

2006-01-10T18:27:00.000Z

The Girl Next Door
73% Sexy-Cute, 59% Dark-Light, 54% Artsy-Stylish

Cute, neither Dark nor Light, and neither Artsy nor Stylish. This sounds like a blah category, right? Oh, my, no. The Girl Next Door has been the subject of more dirty fantasies than you could possibly count. She's so sweet, and innocent, and infinitely corruptible. Every morning you glance out your window hoping she'll have forgotten to draw the blinds. You may feel bad about it, but you know you'll be doing it again tomorrow.

If you liked my test, Please rate it highly! Thanks!

Also, make sure to check out my Beautiful Faces Test if you haven't already.
See All The Categories

Sexy	Dark	Artsy	The Goth Girl
Sexy	Dark	Not Artsy or Stylish	The Brooding Poet
Sexy	Dark	Stylish	The Mistress
Sexy	Not Dark or Light	Artsy	The Hippie Chick
Sexy	Not Dark or Light	Not Artsy or Stylish	The Hot Friend
Sexy	Not Dark or Light	Stylish	The Sorority Girl
Sexy	Light	Artsy	The Actress
Sexy	Light	Not Artsy or Stylish	Your Friend's Sister
Sexy	Light	Stylish	The Prom Queen
Cute	Dark	Artsy	The Suicide Girl
Cute	Dark	Not Artsy or Stylish	The Bad Girl
Cute	Dark	Stylish	The Bettie Page Girl
Cute	Not Dark or Light	Artsy	The Art Student
Cute	Not Dark or Light	Not Artsy or Stylish	The Girl Next Door
Cute	Not Dark or Light	Stylish	The Debutante
Cute	Light	Artsy	The New Age chick
Cute	Light	Not Artsy or Stylish	The Favorite Friend
Cute	Light	Stylish	The Cheerleader

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 92% on Sexy-Cute
You scored higher than 62% on Dark-Light
You scored higher than 57% on Artsy-Stylish

Link: The Your Type of Girl Test written by dgc20e on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Fun Test for the Bored...

2006-01-10T09:34:00.000Z

Pure Nerd
82 % Nerd, 21% Geek, 47% Dork

For The Record:
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.

The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.

Congratulations!

Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you're interested in any of the following:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Professional Wrestling
Love & Sexuality
America/Politics

Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 95% on nerdiness
You scored higher than 21% on geekosity
You scored higher than 81% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Microsoft WMF vulnerability

2006-01-06T03:24:00.000Z

Windows image file exploit W32/PFV-Exploit

The exploit is currently being used to distribute the following threats:
Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Agent.abs
Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Small.zp
Trojan.Win32.Small.ga
Trojan.Win32.Small.ev.

Be warned. Microsoft has yet to issue an official patch/fix for this vulnerability, although the main antivirus companies do detect the W32/PFV-Exploit trojan.

-=-

Those using IE or any browser using IE engine like Avant or Maxthon to surf might want to consider switching to Firefox or Opera.

Those with Firefox 1.0.4 and below, you might want to upgrade to a higher release.

If you have not done so, best to also UNCHECK the “Allow websites to install software” and “Enable Java” in FireFox whenever you surf.
Tools -> Options -> Web Features

Note that you can get infected if you visit a web site that has an image file containing the exploit. Internet Explorer users might automatically get infected. Firefox users can get infected if they decide to run or download the image file.

In our tests (under XP SP2) older versions of Firefox (1.0.4) defaulted to open WMF files with “Windows Picture and Fax Viewer”, which is vulnerable. Newer versions (1.5) defaulted to open them with Windows Media Player, which is not vulnerable…but then again, Windows Media Player is not able to show WMF files at all so this might be a bug in Firefox. Opera 8.51 defaults to open WMF files with “Windows Picture and Fax Viewer” too. However, all versions of Firefox and Opera prompt the user first.

Switch to Firefox(Latest version is 1.5) today. Especially for those people who’s into 12 DailyPro and other autosurfs. You can check out the button on the bottom right on our sidebar. It’s free & integrates with Google toolbar, nifty.

Sources:
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/archive-122005.html
http://www.hexblog.com/2005/12/wmf_vuln.html
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/181038
http://gohyip.com/blog/2005/12/30/surfing-...-do-the-switch/

Update: Microsoft have since released a patch to correct the problem, although many feel that the patch was rushed and didn't solve all the problems associated with this security flaw.

Download via WindowsUpdate or click below:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS06-001.mspx

Quote of the Day

2006-01-02T22:39:00.000Z

"Sometimes, it's easier living the lie."
- Carl Hanratty, from "Catch Me If You Can".

2005-12-28T05:05:00.000Z

Your Hidden Talent

You have the natural talent of rocking the boat, thwarting the system.
And while this may not seem big, it can be.
It's people like you who serve as the catalysts to major cultural changes.
You're just a bit behind the scenes, so no one really notices.

What's Your Hidden Talent?

Life according to Nad

2005-12-26T20:58:00.000Z

Life according to Nad

Quote of the Day

2005-12-25T02:59:00.000Z

"I litigate, I don't capitulate."
- Freddy Riedenschneider, from "The Man Who Wasn't There"

Experimenting with Beetroot

2005-11-27T07:32:00.000Z

This was probably the first time I've tasted beetroot. And you know what? It tastes somewhat similar to corn on a cob, but stronger.

I made spicy beetroot soup.

Ingredients
1 big onion, coarsely sliced
1 tin of sliced carrots (lazy me)
1 tomato, coarsely sliced
2 medium potatoes, diced
2 medium beetroots (pre-cooked), diced
Salt
Pepper
Chilli, to taste
Vegetable Oil
1 litre of water
Bisto Onion gravy pellets

Steps

Pour out some vegetable oil, enough to coat the base of pan. Heat on medium setting.
When oil is hot enough, toss in the onion slices. Wait until fragrant.
Add the potatoes and other ingredients.
Add water. Add salt and pepper. Add the Bisto Onion gravy pellets.
Add chilli to taste.
Bring to a boil, then simmer for half an hour.

Impressions
Sweet, earthy and quite savoury. Leftovers can be re-used in a pasta dish, perhaps.

2005-09-06T14:18:00.000+01:00

Taking a break from internet and stuff. For about 2-3 months. That means, more time for things that matter.

I'll be back sometime in November.

Random Joke of the Day

2005-08-23T03:33:00.000+01:00

Supernatural? :

There was this case in the hospital's Intensive care ward where patients always died in the same bed and on Sunday morning at 11a.m., regardless of their medical condition. This puzzled the doctors and some even thought that it had something to do with the supernatural. No one could solve the mystery as to why the deaths took place at 11 AM.

So a worldwide expert team was constituted and they decided to go down to the ward to investigate the cause of the incidents. So on the next Sunday morning few minutes before 11 a.m., all doctors and nurses nervously waited outside the ward to see for themselves what the terrible phenomenon was all about.

Some were holding wooden crosses, prayer books, and other holy objects to ward off evil........ Just when the clock struck 11... Santa Singh, the part-time Sunday sweeper, entered the ward and unplugged the life support system & plugged in the vacuum cleaner.

Source: http://www.thedesi.com/sardarji_jokes.php

Quote of the Day

2005-08-23T00:15:00.000+01:00

Life's a cookie.

Funny Pic of the Day

2005-08-13T17:06:00.000+01:00

This had me laughing the first time I saw it. I needed the cheering up. The weather has been really depressing lately.

KenoClix

2005-08-13T04:22:00.000+01:00

I just won 200 credits on KenoClix!
I matched 9 numbers with my Keno Card, which is rather lucky, I think.
KenoClix is a traffic exchange program with an inbuilt Keno game. Free members earn 0.5 credits for each valid pageview. On each pageview, you draw a number. After 20 pageviews, the number of matches on your Keno Card is tallied. The more numbers you match, the more bonus credits you earn from KenoClix.

You can find other traffic exchanges here.

Strange Dream

2005-08-12T11:02:00.000+01:00

It was about my family. Aunts, uncles, cousins, sister, etc.
For some reason, I was left with the task of cooking. What did I make? Fried chicken, and a special sweet dipping sauce. And noodles.

Then, I remember a big brown table, like the one we used to have when I were growing up. For some reason, my aunts were cooking something on that table, except, that it was a bit chaotic, with woks almost toppling and lots of arguing. And no visible heating source.

And that's all I remember before waking myself up with sleep-talking. I was talking about the table out loud. Weird.

Moving on...

2005-08-09T22:06:00.000+01:00

Well, Blogger hasn't replied and so, I think I will just have to face the facts. I've lost about 3 months worth of blog entries.

Here are my current blogs:
http://click4money.blogspot.com/ (Original GPT blog entries. Kept for posterity)
http://gpt-insanity.blogspot.com/ (Current GPT blog)
http://dudewhereismyblog.blogspot.com/ (Blog for ranting about other stuff)

Still waiting...

2005-08-05T01:30:00.000+01:00

Still no word about my missing blogs. It looks I will probably have to face the fact that those blog entries are gone forever. :(

One thing I have learnt, is to set the blog to automatically send me an email copy of whatever I post. I will also have to remember to save my blog templates from now on.

I read somewhere that there is one blog created every second. That's 86400 blogs created daily! That's approx. 31.5M new blogs in a year. And the cyber gremlins decided to pick on my blogs. 'We need space for our new blogs, sorry.'

Grrrr.

Argh!

2005-08-02T17:03:00.000+01:00

I'm in a foul mood today. I logged in, and ALL THREE of my blogs are gone! Lost in cyberspace. The irony of the situation is, I was planning to create a backup of all my blog entries TODAY.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed though. I've sent in a message to the blogger support team and hopefully, they have a copy of it somewhere.

In the meantime, I guess I'll just post stuff HERE.

Feel free to leave your comments, especially if this has happened to you before. Any other good blog sites out there?

Ciao.