2006

Here is the background music from some Hindi songs between 1995-1999. Can you guess which movie they are from? Don't worry about the spelling. Just spell it like it sounds, and the box will turn green. Comments Sarvadamana 13 Oct 2006 7:38 pm: 9/10 in the previous and 8/10 in this one. Is it possible to mail the answers for numbers 6 and 7 of this quiz and number-6 of hindi songs 2000s? amitabh biyani 21 Oct 2006 5:28 pm: 10 on 10 here :) good quiz sourish 21 Dec 2006 3:01 am: 10/10 deepak joshi 6 Oct 2012 5:49 am: thank you

These are pavement drawings. They are NOT 3D objects. But it’s hard to believe. (Even the shadows are perfect.) See more at Julian Beaver’s site. Comments Abbie 9 Oct 2006 12:00 pm: hey these are cool drawing they actualy look 3-D and like the come right out of the ground alex meneses 9 Oct 2006 12:00 pm: UNBELIEVABLE……AMAZING…..WISH I CAN SEE YOUR DRAWINGS IN PERSON….

I talked about my approach for multicriteria decision-making, and mentioned that it was fundamentally flawed. Here’s why. The charts above compared two industries. The bigger the area, the more favourable the industry. The underlying assumptions being: The criteria are comparable. (Points at the same level are of comparable importance. Twice as large is twice as important.) All (and only) relevant criteria have been included. In this particular example, I know for a fact that both these assumptions are invalid. And in every case I used this methodology, the assumptions fail. ...

1.5 million internal e-mails of Enron were released after it collapsed, to help figure out why. The UC Berkeley Enron Email Analysis Project has some links analysing these emails. Check out the visual analysis. Comments Prakash Ayer 9 Oct 2006 3:03 pm: Hi Anand, Did you mean Enron instead of Amazon here? Take Care S Anand 9 Oct 2006 3:15 pm: Gosh, yes – sorry, typo on my side. (Wonder why that happened… must’ve been sleep-typing :-) Ravi 16 Oct 2006 6:51 pm: Along the same network visualization lines, http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html and http://liveplasma.com/ are pretty interesting too. Or if you like Digg, http://labs.digg.com/swarm/ works too. (drop me a line some time Anand - kumar (pulli) venkateswar (at) gmail (pulli) com) Irrexu 27 Oct 2006 5:06 am: Long time since you’ve posted any article on your site.. Anand, just a suggestion though.. I think you should start writing more about yourself and the latest in your life.. I am sure there are a lot of takers for that like me. Cheers!

Here is the background music from some Hindi songs from the 2000s. Can you guess which movie they are from? Don't worry about the spelling. Just spell it like it sounds, and the box will turn green. Comments Mihir 13 Mar 2009 6:44 am: Hey, Anand.Great work !!! Keep it up… One question, from which song is the 1st piece ? Dhar 8 Oct 2006 9:29 pm: A friggin 0 outta 10. :( S Anand 9 Oct 2006 7:13 am: You really need to start watching Hindi movies, buddy ;-) Dr. Atul Garg 9 Oct 2006 10:56 am: Pretty good quiz. I scored 5/10 and I think I recognised a few other tunes but couldn’t guess the movie. I couldn’t even cheat from the page source code, couldn’t be bothered to go into JS scripts to get the answers. Thanks. Nice one !! Good website too. S Anand 9 Oct 2006 12:04 pm: Thanks! (I did go to some pains to encrypt the answers, so the JS scripts wouldn’t have helped either :-) Venkatesh S 12 Oct 2006 12:17 pm: Hi Anand, This is Venky, Batch of 2000 from IIMB…good to connect after ages! Great Quiz..I got 6/10..let’s keep in touch. Cheers! S Anand 12 Oct 2006 8:12 pm: Hi Venky! Great to hear from you. Will mail you. Sandeep 20 Oct 2006 2:16 pm: 9/10 mate. But could not guess the first one. amitabh biyani 21 Oct 2006 5:37 pm: 9/10 here too. don’t know the 1st one Rajesh 1 Nov 2006 3:00 pm: 9/10: Whats the first one? SHAMIT 27 Apr 2007 1:36 pm: First one is Swades ;) sonu goyal 20 May 2007 3:13 am: aaaa anusha 8 Oct 2006 12:00 pm: I scored 9/10…whats the 4th one…. nabanita 8 Oct 2006 12:00 pm: hehehhh it was gr8….!! nice test..!! hav sum more?? Anson 22 Nov 2008 11:09 pm: Scored 9/10… the 4th audio is a bit difficult. Anyway, good work, Anand… Keep it up. Rivjot 12 Mar 2009 8:57 am: 10/10 too easy, should have made a little harder appreciate the efforts for putting the quiz though, i love ur blog :D Anup 4 Nov 2009 11:13 pm: 10 on 10. Very easy ones. Anil 8 Jul 2010 3:59 pm: got all ten.. 1st one confused me for a while though.. nirmala 18 Dec 2010 8:34 pm: 5 n 10 coulndt find…help pls

Video of Guy Kawasaki’s talk on The Art of the Start at TiECon 2006. It’s informative, even if you don’t want to start a venture, but I didn’t know Guy was such a funny speaker! He begins with: Early in my career, I sat through many keynote speeches – at Comdex, at Mac Road Expo. I saw many many hi-tech CEOs speak, and I have to tell you, one thing I noticed is they pretty much sucked as speakers. And the second thing that I figured out sitting in these audiences of sucky keynotes is that if there’s anything that’s worse than a CEO who sucks as a speaker, it’s a CEO who sucks as a speaker and you have no idea how much longer he or she will suck! And so, I have adopted the top 10 format for all of my speeches. This way, if you think I suck, at least you can track progress through my speech. ...

When I wrote my Tamil song lyrics quizzes, I had two problems: I can't write in Tamil (not on paper, nor on a computer) I can't spell right in Tamil (ந vs ன, ர vs ற) I overcame the first using a Tamil transliterator. I write in English, and you see it in Tamil. The problem of ந vs ன was simple. ந occurs as the first letter of a word, and just before த. Nowhere else. (Is this always true?) ...

Have a look at this infinite depth painting. You can zoom in forever. At some point, you realise, you’re back where you’re started. Almost like going around in circles, except that you’re zooming in.

Jason Kottke finds interesting code search hacks, ranging from the WinZip key generation algorithm to programmers who want a new job.

Guy Kawasaki on Mumbai via Kaps @ DesiPundit

Cool abused amazon images.

I had to screen resumes from a leading MBA school. I’m lazy, and there were hundreds of CVs. So after procrastinating until this morning, I decided on 2 principles: I will not spend more than 45 minutes on this. (That’s the duration of my train ride to office.) I will not read a single CV. (I would write a program.) The CVs were in a single PDF file. I saved it as text (it shrunk from 66MB to 1.6MB without the photos). Then I wrote a Perl program to filter CVs by keywords. We were looking for people with an interest and/or experience in IT consulting, so I picked “technology”, “consulting”, “SAP”, “IBM”, “Accenture”, “Deloitte”, etc. ...

Netflix has released a sample of its customers’ movie ratings at Netflix Prize. You can download these (700 MB), create an algorithm that rates the training data, run it against the test data, and see if you can get better ratings than their algorithm. If you do, you win $1 million. (Chris Anderson explains why.)

The view from my office is pretty good. Comments Anonymous 30 Sep 2006 7:35 pm: Neat. Is it your office or your current client’s office? Have you guys broken even? Or is it still lifeline from the parent? S Anand 30 Sep 2006 9:20 pm: Thanks! This is the Infosys office, not a client’s. As for breakeven, yeah, we actually have!

Here are words from the middle of 8 songs TMS has sung for MGR. Can you guess which movie they are from? Don't worry about the spelling. Just spell it like it sounds, and the box will turn green. Comments sailesh kumar basu 13 Mar 2009 7:20 am: V.V.Good, who can forget Thalaivars Songs Lyrics and Films. Continue the good work. Anonymous 28 Sep 2006 5:06 am: I am RamaKrishnan. I am also from TamilNadu I am not understand the lines above… Its a songs or anyother thing? S Anand 28 Sep 2006 6:46 am: Ramakrishnan, these are 2 lines from the middle of 8 different MGR film songs. You need to guess the film they appeared in. ashwini 3 Nov 2006 9:51 am: Good selection. ashwini 3 Nov 2006 10:17 am: which song is the 6th one pls. Prasanna 24 Dec 2006 5:46 am: Great site & great effort,Anand!Hats Off!Couldn’t crack no.6.Will you post the answers or can email me?Thanks. Murali Kannan. T 20 Feb 2007 12:40 pm: Very nice work! I’m a great fan of MGR. Keep it up. subadra 6 Mar 2007 2:39 am: but fr the nadodimannan song we found everything.appa went to sleep.the first thing he said in the morning is nadodimannan Mohan.C 27 Sep 2006 12:00 pm: I really enjoyed this quiz I remember old songs of mgr thru this quiz GOOD JOB lakshmi 27 Sep 2006 12:00 pm: fantastic job Anand I really enjoyed it. geetha 27 Sep 2006 12:00 pm: i have answered some Meena 22 Sep 2008 1:22 am: Excellent lyrics. Vivacious. I’m flabbergasted. I am from Trichy. I just loved all these lines. Thanks for recalling such a treasure in our life. You have done a great job. Rajagopalan 30 Dec 2008 11:27 am: Good song selection. Did not get two songs correct. K.Swaminathan 31 Dec 2008 5:40 am: Where I can get the lyrics of our Great MGR Songs. Please advise me. I want free download of lyrics of Mr.MGR songs. Regards, Swaminathan Rameshkarthikeyan 4 Mar 2009 2:13 pm: I need a song but i forget the starting of the song. “Ellam enakul erunthalum ennai thannakkul vaithirukkum " S Anand 4 Mar 2009 3:00 pm: You’re probably referring to Ulagam Pirandhadhu Enakkaaga from Paasam. Got it by googling. Rangan 15 Oct 2009 12:55 pm: I really enjoyed this and i love to do for MGR related quizzes. But sad thing is that i am not able to find answer for one question:-(. My evergreen hero is MGR and i love to watch all MGR movies. What a charismatic person he is! Rangan 15 Oct 2009 1:04 pm: Particularly i love to watch movies like Nadodi Mannan, Thirudathe, Enga Veetu Pillai, Adimai Pen, Aayirathil Oruvan, Ninaithadai Mudippavan, Anbe Vaa, Ullagam Suttrum Valiban, Rikshawkkaran, Rajakumari, Arasakattalai, Madhuraiveeran, Mannadhi Mannan, Kalangarai Vilakkam, Nadodi, Kudiyirindha Kovil, Padagotti etc etc. Some movies may be missed out from this list. I have watched all the above movies more than 20 times. I like his bunny cheeks when he laughs. This kind of cheeks only madhavan (maddy) is having after MGR and this is told by famous director Manirathnam. venkatp 12 Oct 2011 1:53 pm: fantastic…… santhosh 6 Apr 2016 6:24 pm: I want song first. I only remember songs middle line . that’s is patta maram paal varuma paagarkai then tharuma devar magal paarviley.. Can anyone help to find that song..

And so, thanks to Infosys Consulting being spun off as a separate legal entity in the UK, I got my new laptop. (Because our old laptops were legally the assets of Infosys Technologies Ltd, and not Infosys Consulting Inc. Weirder things have happened, but who’s complaining?) My old Toshiba Portege A200 has been replaced by a Dell Latitude D420 (which I was dreaming for, after having just read Jeff’s post on big laptops). ...

A comparison of the top 10 bittorrent sites. BTJunkie emerges the winner. Comments Dhar 27 Sep 2006 10:55 pm: Not convinced with the comparison. Looks like the chappie Renald is just using to blog to promote BTJunkie. Checked the features of BTJunkie, they are nowhere close to Torrentspy, yet it gets a rating of 9. No way anyone can confirm BTJunkies claims like Torrents Indexed, Torrents Added Daily etc. Neither does the author specify how he confirmed these points. “At first I thought BTJunkie’s numbers must be fake, but I assure you it is real! I tested the number posted with the number in the actual directory for the day and they matched for a week straight!” Yeah, sure! S Anand 28 Sep 2006 6:47 am: Does sound like a plug, doesn’t it? :-) I’m planning to do a test myself. Why don’t you try one too? Sumit Dhar 8 Oct 2006 12:54 pm: http://torrentfreak.com/the-largest-bittorrent-search-engine-on-the-web/ S Anand 8 Oct 2006 2:50 pm: A solid rebuttal. I tried BTJunkie last week. Wasn’t very impressed. And the few movies I couldn’t find anywhere else, I couldn’t find here either.

You can play a video backwards and still recognise the scenes quite well. Can you do that with sound? I tried it on this Bryan Adams clip of Summer of ‘69 (mp3). When played backwards (mp3), it almost sounds like Arabic! Instruments sound weird backwards too, like the guitar played backwards and drums played backwards. It’s seems obvious once you see the wave file. The picture below shows the guitar. The sounds are clearly not symmetric left to right. ...

Google’s dirty little secret talks about how Google determines whether your site appears on top for a search depending on whether you and the searcher are in the same geography or not. So if your server is in Kazakhstan, expect fewer hits.

Here are words from the middle of 10 songs TMS has sung for Sivaji. Can you guess which movie they are from? Don't worry about the spelling. Just spell it like it sounds, and the box will turn green. Comments Anonymous 2 Oct 2006 6:28 pm: help out wth the 5th one alone. sounds familiar,bt guessing fails. Anonymous 2 Oct 2006 6:29 pm: hey gt it got it. got the 5th one also.gud one ashwini 3 Nov 2006 9:54 am: Excellent songs ashwini 3 Nov 2006 10:20 am: Found out all songs. deen 16 Nov 2006 9:45 pm: 5th is pakappirivinai pls. mark the numbers for songs arun 13 Dec 2006 9:03 am: i think i have answered most Hema 5 Mar 2007 11:55 am: I have answered most. One or two with the help of your mother. Very interesting and thrilling. Excellent work done. Keep it going. subadra 5 Mar 2007 3:05 pm: appa and i got all correct lakshmi 24 Sep 2006 12:00 pm: all are correct. geetha 24 Sep 2006 12:00 pm: ha got some maduraimouli 8 Jan 2012 4:19 pm: rende rendu theriyalaye…naan enga poven periamma ? yarai keppen?