Aala Santhosh Reddy

It was my first experience of attending a rock Concert. Thanks to Times (the sponsor of the show) and Akhil I had great fun listening to Pentagram and Parikrama perform live last Saturday at Rock Heights near Shilparamam.

Parikrama opened the show but had problems with the back end team who couldn’t deliver the required output. One could see the band members constantly giving instructions to them for adjusting the sound output. But even then it was lovely hearing them perform some hit numbers. I liked the song ‘Am I Dreaming’ from LOTR and particularly the violin bits from Imran.

After a short break we got to hear Pentagram perform. It was their first show in Hyderabad. The big difference one could see was that the band got the crowd on their feet and involved them in the performance. Vishal Dadlani did put some extra effort (He informed that he had a ligament tear in one of his legs) to get the crowd groove to their music. After hearing some great music towards the end of the show and a wonderful dinner at 36 Jubilee Hills I was home with the songs still lingering in my mind.

Look forward to attend some more rock shows.

Finally downloaded Firefox3 today afternoon. Do check out the Mozilla Europe’s website that sports a refreshing look and gives a truck load of information about how to optimize and make use Firefox3. And for people who are curious to know how many times Firefox3 has been downloaded head to the download counter.

It is 11:15 PM (IST) and I am still waiting to download my favourite browser’s latest version to be part of a Guiness Record being attempted by the folks at Spreadfirefox. Although I have only one hour more to download Firefox 3 for some reasons mozilla, spreadfirefox and getfirefox sites aren’t responding.

But, I might have already used more or less the same version of Firefox 3 that will be available for download today. I found it fast, intuitive and better than the earlier versions. However, the version did not support a few add-ons and I promptly unistalled the version to get the official release.

Firefox 3 supposedly comes with 15,000 improvements and is expected to perform much faster than Firefox 2 or Internet Explorer 7. Started as a project to provide web users with an easy to use, light weight application that also conforms to web standards, Firefox has immensely grown in popularity. Firefox is available in 45 different languages is estimated to be used by more than 175 million users in 230 countries.

The list of books I have to finish reading is growing. I urgently need to take some quality time out to finish reading them and add them to the list of books I have read.

The first book to add to the list is the much acclaimed bestseller Shantaram by Gregory David Robers which I have been trying to read from the last few months. Fortunately spotted the book with one of my senior colleagues who readily agreed to lend the book to me. The next book to join the list is Einsten: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson which my dear friend Ram thought would be an ideal birthday gift (thank you Ram).

A much needed and appreciated decision by my employer ensured that we (Akhil and I) missed the books and of course the superb coffee at Brio in Crossword. Finally we found the time this Saturday to pay a visit to our favourite place and we did cover up for not visiting the bookstore in the month of May.

Akhil went on an overdrive this time picking up more than six books. And as part of the relief efforts from my side I took on the responsibility of reading two books: Everybody loves a good drought by P Sainath and Accidents like love & marriage by Jaishree Misra. And here is the growing list of books that I need to finish reading at the earliest.

• Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann
• Unrational Leadership by Charles Fleetham
• The Fifth Discipline by Peter M Senge
• Inevitable Ilusions by Piatelli Palmarini
  
• Being Indian by Pavan K Varma
• The Dogs of Justice by Nina Sibal
• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
• Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
• Everybody loves a good drought by P Sainath
• Accidents like love & marriage by Jaishree Misra