Just saw this article in The Hindu. This is absolutely ridiculous...esply the dress code and not using cellphones at all...how much stupid can ppl get???. I hope my college doesnt get so reckless..

CHENNAI: Taking its penchant for disciplinarian education a step further, Anna University has banned the use of cell phones and prescribed a dress code for students in all engineering colleges across the State from Thursday.

It will also take a serious view of any film-based cultural events being held in such colleges, Vice-Chancellor D. Viswanathan told The Hindu .

The restrictions will be in force in 227 engineering colleges, apart from the university's four constituent colleges where a ban on camera phones is in force. The varsity has dispatched letters to the effect to the institutions. "There will be no military-like strictness in implementing the rule and institutions have been asked to go about it in a phased manner," Dr. Viswanathan said. Students violating the ban will be warned and then proceeded against according to the code of conduct rules.

The dress code states that students should not wear jeans, t-shirts, skirts or sleeveless and tight-fitting outfits and enjoins them to dress conservatively.

According to the Vice-Chancellor, while certain outfits detract from the seriousness of academic pursuits, cell phones, especially those that come with cameras, cause problems on campus and eat into valuable lecture time.

Student bodies, while welcoming selective restrictions on cell phone use, have come out strongly against the dress code which they see as "an unnecessary move by the varsity which should engage itself instead in improving the content of education and not indulge in such gimmickry."

What a bowler!!! He is just awesome. Probably the only New Zealand player to torment the aussies...atleast in recent times. I have seen him bowl quite brilliantly to the australian left handers. Such a smooth and lovely action and a pretty face too . If not for constant injuries this cop from NZ would have really gone places. He still can and probably will. Its great to see him back and back with a bang. I thought he would have something to say when i saw NZ 30-odd for 5 and said to my friends wait till he comes in and bangs a few into ganguly and although i slept off after that i woke up to know that India had been reduced to 39/6 with bond 5/12. He remains one of the few cricketers i admire amongst those who have done well against Australia.

Raaga.com is a lovely website to listen to streaming audio in a few of the indian languages. Its one of my favorite sites. But it does require real player to be installed on your comp i guess. But there seems to be some issue with Raaga Player running on Firefox. All these days i thought it might be the issue with my system but now i gotta know my amazingly techie online friend also has problems with it.
Initially the player used to start but it never got going i.e the songs never got played. But now am starting to have a rather pleasant issue with it.  I use Internet Download Manager (IDM) for my downloads and i have to admit its one of the best as rated by download.com, a reliable reviewer of various softwares.  It has got a feature known as advanced browser integration to capture all sorts of downloads.  Now coming back to raaga what i find is everytime i make my selection of songs and click on "Play Selected" link, as always the player opens but IDM captures the song (and the small ad) that is to be played as a .rm file and downloads it. The best part is .rm which runs on real player is an extremely compressed format for songs and the usual size of a full song is around 600-800 KB which is amazing. The only drawback if any could be the relatively low level of audio...not the quality..its top notch...but the level is low and you may have to raise your speaker volume for these songs. But its still a lovely "bug" if it could be called one to download the songs in real quick time, listen to them and if you like them download the mp3 format from some other site to get the required audio level too.
I dont know if its just my system for some strange reason causing this, for i havent tried this on any other system or with any other download manager. So all of you "raaga" lovers out there check this trick out and let me know if it worked for you.

Looks like dizzying times for Jason Gillespie a.k.a "Dizzy" on the cricket field is bound to have a break as he is in all probability likely to be dropped for the trentbridge test. Trevor Hohns the chairman of Selectors of the ACB is coming over and he has always taken a hard stance on non-perfomers. Just ask Mark Waugh or Bevan or Bichel. Gillespie has been and is a great bowler but he has been dreadfully out of sorts and rhythm since the aussies set foot in England. He has been given a fair lot of oppurtunities to get back some rhythm but has been disappointing. I would go so far as to even say that with him even half as good as he used to be, it would have been 3-0 to australia at this time.
Already he isnt playing the warm-up against Northants. But why Glen n Lee are playing i cant understand for both have just recovered from injuries. Guess the management just wanted them to find and keep some rhythm going which wouldnt be a bad idea. Now it seems to be a straight battle between Kasprowicz and Shaun Tait to slug it out against the Northants for the place in the test team.
So will it be the wily but military medium Kasper or the fiery, raw Tait donning the baggy grean for perhaps the most important test of the series???? We shall know come thursday morning.
Australia have been troubled by england's reverse swing and Kasprowicz does has the ability to reverse the ball but he doesnt have the same pace as the Englishmen to cause serious worry. Australia are known to make some bold decisions and I for one wouldnt be surprised if they decide to put Tait under the scanner with immense pressure of the Ashes at stake in addition to his debut.
I know gillespie would be disappointed to have missed out...but i hope he is given a chance in another series and am sure he will come back good. On a lighter note, Dizzy really wouldnt be worried if he was playing for India for just look at their Captain's record for past 4-5 years...pathetic would be a complement, yet its his contributions some 7 years back and hence, a superior career record thats considered. huh!!!