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It is SSF walk time again!

vidurgupta — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 05:25:25 +0000

Last year, I had posted about SSF walk and it is that time of the year again. A small SSF intro: It is a Bay Area based Non-Profit working to fund education projects in India. To raise funds, they are oragnizing a 5k/10k walk and, as always, the event is targeted towards a whole family experience. These are the details of the SSF 2010 Walk.

If you are inclined to donate, consider this team.

Thanks, Vidur

Filed under: children, help, India, life, non-profit

The rise of cricket, the rise of India

vidurgupta — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:57:55 +0000

An interesting talk by Harsha Bhogle on TED.com. He traces the rise of cricket in India with special focus on T20 and IPL. He links it with the economic rise of India and how the power of money has changed the attitude of foreign players and Indian viewers. It is quite funny to be honest.

Filed under: fun, India

Mile Sur Mera Tumhara: The Old and the New

vidurgupta — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 02:12:46 +0000

Recently a new version of ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara’ was released and it has created a lot of talk about which version is better. Personally, I believe that old is gold but am putting both versions here for you to decide. First, the old version:

And this is the new version. It is pretty long so 2 links.

Filed under: fun, India, movies

GMail Outage???

vidurgupta — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:05:35 +0000

I have trying to log into my gmail account for the past half hour and repeatedly getting server errors.

Temporary Error (500)

We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes.

This is the technical information

Hide Detailed Technical Info
Numeric Code: 66

I wonder if this affects only me or is a wider issue like the one reported on Feb 24, 2009.

Posted in google

SSF Family Walk

vidurgupta — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:50:42 +0000

I have posted about Small Steps Foundation in the past. It is a Bay Area based Non-Profit working to fund education projects in India. To raise funds, they are oragnizing a 5k/10k walk and, as always, the event is targeted towards a whole family experience. These are the details of the SSF 2009 Walk.

If you are inclined to donate, consider this team.

Thanks, Vidur

Posted in children, education, non-profit

Why Women Shouldn’t Drive

vidurgupta — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:27:16 +0000

No offence meant but this very funny

Posted in bakkar, fun

Kiva: The money multiplier effect

vidurgupta — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:26:08 +0000

It has almost been a year since I started lending at Kiva.org and it would be fair to say I can come a long way. The most interesting change that Kiva folks made during this time is that instead of crediting the loan repayments to lender’s account at the end of loan term, they do it as the repayments come-in. This has had a real money multiplier effect. Let me explain.

I funded my Kiva account with $500 last May. Of this, I have donated $55 to Kiva. And I have made loans worth $800 which as almost twice my investment and all this in less than a year I hope I am doing my part in helping the global economy.

I have made 22 loans till date out of which 2 have been repaid and no defaults. My Kiva page (link) has more info. I encourage everyone to explore micro-lending, as a lender and/or loan seeked. I believe it is way of helping people becoming self-sufficient and conribute to the society.

Releted Posts: http://blog.vidur.name/?s=kiva

Posted in kiva, micro-finance

How To: Pine on Fedora 8

vidurgupta — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:50:47 +0000

I am sure half the world knows this but I having been using pine at work on the servers. I recently moved from Windows to Fedora 8 as my work-station OS and wanted pine. This is when I came to know that I am supposed to use alpine instead of pine now

These are instructions to install alpine:

alpine: if you read your e-mail with pine (the latest GNU-friendly version is now called alpine) on your machine, there is good news in Fedora 8. alpine, because of its new GNU licensing, is now available through the normal fedora repository. so, simply:

$ yum -y install alpine

This is the source of the info.

Posted in office, tech

How To: Copy to/from VNC Viewer

vidurgupta — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:28:56 +0000

I use VNC regularly and for quite a while I struggled with the fact that I could copy from my VNC window to my PC. Finally, I had a breakthrough couple of weeks ago. This is what should work:
- logon to your VNC session
- open a terminal window (like Xterm)
- type ‘vncconfig &’ which should result in a small window with 3 options.
- enable all the options, put this little window somewhere in the corner and forget about it.

This should do the trick

Posted in tech, work

Rainbow: Two days in a row

vidurgupta — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:44:50 +0000

Well, there something about a rainbow that makes me feel like a kid and puts a big smile on my face. Now, I have seen a rainbow for 2 consecutive days and I took some snaps. These are from my iPhone so not very clear but do capture all the colors and its beauty.

These are snaps from Monday. This was about 5 pm when I stepped out of my office in Sunnyvale, CA.

Rainbow1 on 03/02/2009

Rainbow2 on 03/02/2009

Rainbow3 on 03/02/2009

And these are from yesterday:

I wish I had my camera for a close up

Posted in environment, life