~ Guinness in Bangalore ~

Last friday when I joined rags @ Haze, Kormangala, I was pleasantly surprised to see Rags consuming Guinness. Atleast the last time while I was there, a year ago, I could get only lager. When we managed to settled down, I ordered a can as well. Both of us are big on Ale & Guinness; I got to taste whole family of Ale and Guinness was my favorite beer for the time spent in the UK. We were wishing that one day, Guinness would be served chilled from a tap. Rags wasn't too optimistic about that idea.

After a while, couple of my colleagues from the company happened to drop. One of them said, "You must be crazy enough to be having Guinness here as well". I said am very surprised & excited to see it available here. Then he mentioned the price, my jaws just dropped. Rags hadn't bothered to look at the price before ordering his can, neither did I when I joined him. Guess what would be the price for a 330 ml can of Guinness?................450 Rupees/$11.25/£5.62.......when i mentioned the same to Rags, he couldn't believe it either. We thot it was astronomical price for a 330ml can of Guinness. I could have brought a 5 cans of Guinness in the UK. Rags echoed the same, that he could buy the same quantity in the US. Well after gulping a can each, we weren't crazy to repeat another one.

So next time if you plan to buy Guinness in Bangalore, drink responsibly :)

~ Go Tsonga Go ~

The first grand slam of the year, the Australian Open, has been interesting so far with the major upsets of top seeds. The young players have shown lot of variety in their games, which untill few years have been just power play.



Even though I didn't follow the initial rounds of the Aussie Open, have been regular watching from the Quarters of Mens, Womens & Doubles. The matches which I enjoyed were the epic battle between Federer fand Tipsarevic in the third round, which lasted for four hours & twenty one minute; Tsonga Vs Nadal; Federer Vs Djokovic; Henin Vs Sherapova; Ana Ivanovic Vs Venus Williams. Am eagerly awaiting for the Men's finals which is to begin @ 14:00 IST. I am supporting Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, whose looks are very much alike the boxing legend Muhammad Ali in his younger days.







The above clips is Tsonga's performance against the World #2, Rafael Nadal in the Semi-finals. The Spaniard just couldn't match Tsonga on that day. I wanted Federer in the finals, to know how he would play against the young gun from France. Unfortunately, Djokovic proved to be too good for the World #1.



Enjoy the next video which has been brilliantly edited by Watts, capturing the emotions of the newly crowned women's champion, Ms Sharapova and the current World #1, Roger Federer & composing them according to the James Blunt classic, You Are Beautiful.

~ Stage6 hack ~

I have been watching many movies which are hosted on stage6 for the past one year. Most of the movies or videos I watched where referenced from either DivxTube or DivxLive sites.

When I tried to search the Stage6 site for the concert videos for few of my favorite thrash metal bands, I was unsuccesful. I approached the google dorks way, which still didn't make any significance difference to the search results.

Finally, today I found a easy way to search for videos hosted on Stage6. My search approach holds good for those videos that have been tagged by users.

The default search would return a list based on top ratings, which normally wouldn't be the one you are looking for. Instead I construct the URL for stage6, it isn't that complex. Follow the steps,

1) URL Pattern: http://www.stage6.com/videos/tag:[tag_name]
For Ex: http://www.stage6.com/videos/tag:metallica

2) Copy & Paste the URL in the address bar of your browser and hit enter. This would list all the videos belonging to Metallica or click here to do the same.

This resultset isn't much different than that of the default result. As said before the default search would order the videos based on the ratings. You can better this search, by using 'length' as the value on the order key.

1) URL Pattern: http://www.stage6.com/videos/tag:[tag_name]/order:length
For Ex: http://www.stage6.com/videos/tag:metallica/order:length

2) Copy & Paste the URL in the address bar of your browser and hit enter. This would list all the videos belonging to Metallica or click here to do the same.

Now you would definitely see the difference in results displayed. I finally got the video of Metallica & Symphony Orchestra I was looking for so many days.

~ Tuesday Reflection: Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You get what you think ~

Have been following the blog 'Friday Reflections' from Anand Shah for quite a while now. The posts are reflections on various topics surrounding the human behaviour & they are inspiring. 'Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You Get What You Expect' happened to be the last Friday's post. Although I get what Anand meant, I have a different take on the same.

My perspective goes something like this, "What you think is what you would get & become, eventually. I believe that the thoughts have more power in shaping the future of an individual. Ultimately your thoughts are the pre-cursor to your actions, which in turn adds to your ever-growing Karma. So, for me, the thought is the primitive factor which decides what an individual would get, when & where (Space & Time)."

Time to re-think what you have been thinking off late, because you might get that very soon :)

~ Iron Maiden: Somewhere Back In Time World Tour ~

Iron Maiden kick start their World Tour 'Somewhere Back In Time' on 01 Feb 2008 from Mumbai, India. Bangalore doesn't seem to be lucky for a second gig. Fair enough, Iron Maiden gave their first performance in India, in Bangalore, early this year.

As of now, I plan to attend the concert. Hope I get my leave sanctioned & the tickets. Anyone interested in joining, let me know.

Image copyright: Iron Maiden.

~ Never miss a performance ~

Came across this interesting & informative website called 'Bandsintown' via Rands in Repose. The name of the website says it all; once you sign up on this site with your current location, it just lists you all the bands who are gonna perform. Amazing service isn't it, especially for someone who loves music & has moved into a new city. You can follow the music scene in the locality without having friends/connexions.

Wish I had come across this website when I had moved to UK back in Feb. If you haven't noticed, I have update the blog with a widget ;)

~ Whatz in a Name? ~

Rory Sinclair : just found a guy in TopUp TV HP live
Rory Sinclair : Mr Paul Sourbutts
Rory Sinclair : :-)
Rory Sinclair : great name
Vivek Kondur : LOL
Vivek Kondur : great surname
Vivek Kondur : he wld have had a good time while studying
Rory Sinclair : lol

For the question 'What's in a name?' on BBC lead me to an article which states 'Link to your Past'. I wonder what kind of a history this guy would have had, to arrive at that surname ;)