Sunday, April 26, 2009

Geocities is closing down

Did you hear that Geocities is closing down? Unless you started using the Internet well after the Dot-com bubble burst, you are likely to have seen geocities web pages. If you were considered Internet-savvy back then, you would have a homepage on geocities. Or on tripod or angelfire... That was the "in" thing to do back then.

It appears like a number of people really hated those amateur homepages and are happy to see it closing down. Many of the pages there were made by total novice web-site designers who were doing it to make a statement. Agreed, the statement they made was mostly "see, I too have a tacky homepage." However, I will be very surprised if today's blogs, facebook homes and tweets are considered state-of-the-art after another decade.

If you are guessing why I feel so strongly about geocities, your guess is right. Though I jumped on the Internet bandwagon quite late, I too was among the "in" crowd of early 2000s with a homepage. Tacky floating background images, a guest book, links page, even the uber-geek Javascript. My homepage is still alive. It will be alive until Yahoo takes it down later this year. Until then it is good to visit once in a while and smile at what was considered cool back then.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

How to get thrilled?

If you are like me, the most risky thing you do in a typical work day probably is consuming cafeteria food. The more adventurous ones among us try activities like rock climbing, parasailing and if you are really reckless, to the point where you don't care about your life, bungee jumping. So what should the former type, cafeteria food type, do to get a good rush of adrenalin once in a while? I recommend driving up the highway from Mysore to Bangalore on a Sunday evening. The thrills only get multiplied if you are not familiar with this road. This is not a joke, let me explain how it works.

It works best if you have a small and tall car like a Santro. Alternatively, choose a car with low ground clearance. Make a resolve to drive at at least 80kmph all along. Even more importantly, decide not to let any vehicle overtake you on the way and if for some reason someone does, to take revenge (overtake him/her) within the next couple of kilometers. Wait in Mysore till the sun sets and then, set out.

You will quickly notice that pretty much half of cars in Mysore are now headed to Bangalore. To be fair, it is a pretty nice road. Two lanes on either side with a smooth riding surface. So you will quickly find yourself driving at more than 100kmph. Just when you thought it is going to be a smooth drive, BANG! That was the sound of the new makeshift speed breaker constructed by haphazardly pouring some tar onto the road, hitting one of the vital organs at the belly of your car. That was fun, wasn't it? The impact has switched on the wiper and right-turn indicator. Please turn them off. You see, the speed breaker was created just a few days ago and was placed in a curve, so that you cannot see it from a distance. No, they did not think it is necessary to place any warning signs or paint the hump with a paint. You were driving too fast, so you deserved what you got. When combined with the darkness of the night and glare of high beam headlights from the other side of the road, the recipe is complete.

Did I say high beam headlights? As if there is another type of headlight? While it is not as bad as a median-less road, glaring headlights cause problems because the road has curves all along. There are a number of villages on the road and this means there are various types of cross traffic. Pedestrians (helpfully wearing black clothing, to add to the effect), stray dogs, bullock carts, bicycles with not even a reflector on them, motorbikes with not even a reflector (forget lights) on them, all crossing the road at one of the various cuts in the median. When combined with plants that have been grown on the median and the headlights from the opposite side trying to blind you, you are never sure what is waiting at the next turn. How thrilling is that?

Though the road is a 2-lane on either side, you have realized by now that some of the vehicles, especially tractors, can go on either side of the road in either direction. While it is not so thrilling to come across these during the day, it surely is during the night because either they don't have any lights or have very powerful lights pointing directly at you.

So you escaped all the hurdles and reached Maddur. Now get ready for the next challenge. There are a number of restaurants on the highway between Maddur and Ramanagara. Every car religiously stops at one of these restaurants, as if this is required by law. On a Sunday evening, every restaurant in this stretch is so terribly crowded, there is neither a guarantee that you will get what you want, nor the quality you expect it at. The thrill here comes from capturing a table and eating whatever overpriced food is available.

At least one stretch of the road, a couple of kilometers long, is usually closed on one side, making that stretch a 1-lane on each side, median less road. This means there is a huge congestion at that place. This is when the survival instincts of Bangalore's drivers kicks in big time. They will do anything, with no care for the physical health of themselves or the others, to gain, may be, a couple of overtakes. I won't be surprised if some of them are willing to drive through few sugar cane fields to get ahead of others. Please participate in this mayhem to enhance your fun of driving.

By the time Ramanagara is behind you, the traffic on the road has increased considerably. Add a few slow moving trucks and luggage auto-rickshaws to the mix and it is close to impossible to maintain a good speed. However, remember that you have resolved to maintain at least 80kmph because that is essential to get the thrill that you are looking for. After a high speed, high stakes game of driving for about an hour, you are ready to join the Bangalore traffic, which, to your surprise, is not any less on a Sunday evening than other days. This is when you start thinking "What are this many people doing on the road on a Sunday evening? If all these suckers were at home watching TV, I could have driven so easily and reached home by now". Eventually, you do reach home. The thrill ends. Until Monday afternoon, lunch time at the cafeteria :-)