Sripathi's diary

In search of the perfect desktop

2011-12-09T22:53:00.001+05:30

I am usually in favor of change. It takes a lot for me to say "This is too much of a new thing". However, recently there was one such moment. I got a new laptop at work recently and I had to decide which Linux distro to go with. I usually go with either Fedora or Ubuntu on my desktops. However, recent versions of both Fedora and Ubuntu have had major modifications to the desktop environment. While Fedora ships with Gnome 3, Ubuntu has put Unity interface on top of Gnome 3. Although both are major changes from Gnome 2 based distros, I was confident that I would be able to start liking them easily and quickly. How wrong was I!

My first choice of distro was Ubuntu 11.10. Unity desktop was okay, but there were many minor irritants that I found tough to adjust to, even after a week of using it. Pidgin notifications wouldn't work the way I want, some window switches required more keystrokes than before and so on. I started looking for options to tweak Unity to suit my taste. Slowly I realized that this may not be easy. Hence I decided to try Gnome 3, so installed Gnome 3 shell on top of Ubuntu 11.10. I was able to adjust to Gnome 3 much better than to Unity, but there were still some irritants that I just could not fix. So I decided to try out other options. The first stop was KDE. I was an old friend of KDE, so it did not take any ramp-up time, even though I had never used KDE 4.x before. In the mean time I got Linux Mint 12 installed on another disk partition. Mint has done a great deal of work with Gnome 3 to make it behave like Gnome 2. It fixed pretty much all my grouses. I could have just lived with that. However, by now I was determined to try as many options as possible before finalizing my desktop. Sometimes I get into this sort of mode.

The only other reasonable option seemed to be XFCE. XFCE on top of Ubuntu 11.10 worked like a charm. It seemed to do everything I wanted and nothing more. It is simplistic by today's standards, but not short in functionality. After using each desktop environment for a couple of days, I was convinced that I should stick with XFCE. At least till Gnome folks make Gnome 3 useful again.

So I cleanly re-installed my laptop with Xubuntu 11.10. I like some of the tweaks Xubuntu folks have done to XFCE. I have stuck to Xubuntu as my primary desktop for the last few weeks and I think I will stick to XFCE for an year, if not more. End of search. For now.

Mekedatu

2011-08-27T12:24:00.014+05:30

I had been to Meke Daatu / Mekedatu / ಮೇಕೆ ದಾಟು recently. There are enough travelogues that cover this place, so I will restrict myself to a few specific bits that could be helpful to visitors.

Time needed: Half day visit from Bangalore. Usually combined with other places to convert this to a full day visit.

Distance: Around 90 Kms. Easily drive-able. I saw a handful of buses too plying to this place from Kanakapura.

Directions: Google driving directions.

How to drive: Go to Kanakapura. Enquire about "Sangama Road" and take that. Sangama is at the dead end of that road, around 35Kms from Kanakapura. No confusion at all.

What to do: You can play in the waters at Sangama, but be careful about whirlpools. From Sangama, you need to cross Kaveri river on a theppa (a local boat, round in shape). These boats can topple, so respect the instructions given by the boat driver.

A tip: Irrespective of what the boat driver tells you, a little bit of water does get into the boat, so your trousers can get wet! Take stock of what you put in your hip pockets before getting into the boat.

There is a bus service from the other side of river to Mekedatu (5KMs). At Mekedatu one can enjoy the views of river Kaveri rushing through a narrow rocky place. It is not possible to touch the water here. It is dangerous to venture too far out on the rocks because there are no guard rails or any safety measures. People die regularly by falling into the river here. Government has put this friendly notice board and washed their hands off.

Road condition: Very good as of now. Even for motorcyclists. Bangalore to Kanakapura is an NH. From there on, it is an SH in very good condition.

Fuel: Fill up at Kanakapura. There is no fuel station beyond that. Hence you need enough fuel in your vehicle to cover around 70Kms round trip from Kanakapura.

Food: There is a brand new restaurant in Sangama, overlooking the river. Servers both veg and non-veg. Clean, but not necessarily tasty. Limited menu options. Very few options other than this restaurant. A lot of people carry their own food.

When to go: Preferably on weekends/holidays. Many of the facilities may not be working on other days. Choose a cloudy day as it can get really hot and uncomfortable on the rocks and sands of Mekedatu. If you are going there on a sunny day, plan to be there early in the morning (9AM) or late evening (5PM). Everything closes down when it gets dark, so don't be too late. The crowds here can be quite rough on the new year day. So avoid this day if you are planning to take your wife or girlfriend.

Cost: Car parking: RS. 50. Theppa across the river: Rs. 50 per head (to-and-fro). Theppa driver demands Rs. 10 tip either way. Bus ride from Sangama to Mekedatu: Rs. 40 for bus ride (to-and-fro). Veg lunch: Rs. 100 per head.

Finally, a video:

How to make your auto/taxi ride interesting

2011-07-31T22:55:00.002+05:30

Whenever I take an auto or a taxi ride (which is quite rare... I usually take my own vehicle everywhere or I take the bus), I chat up with the driver during the ride. These chats kill my boredom, as well as give me a glimpse of how these people think. The topics discussed and the viewpoints expressed are radically different from those at my office lunch table.

Rarely have I seen an auto or taxi driver who is not interested in chatting. Most of them have very strong opinions about things around them and will not shy away from expressing them. Be it Rajanikanth's health, Yeddyurappa's wealth, Veerappan's death, Katrina Kaif's dancing skills, Upendra's dialogue delivery, quality of traffic in Bangalore, rains, ration cards... anything. Also, their perspective of things is very different from your friends/colleagues. An auto driver once said the worst drivers in Bangalore, starting from the worst, were 2-wheelers, BMTC, BPO taxis, private cars and then autos! A taxi driver said it is insulting for the man to let a woman drive... he would never let his future wife do that! Another talked about how teenage boy/girl pair behave in the passenger seat of his auto and what he does to prevent that. Yet another told me that he knew everything about Mumbai because he visited the city some 15 years ago for 2 days. On one occasion an auto driver refused to turn the meter on, but told me a figure that was pretty much what the actual metered amount was going to be. During the ride, I asked him why he did that. He said "Sir, if I knew you were a localite I would have started the meter... I try to avoid traffic junctions by taking interior roads... outsiders who are not familiar with the roads think I am taking a circutous route and complain "ghuma diya"! Hence to avoid all the trouble I fix the cost beforehand!

Most of them, when narrating some incidence that happened in their life, the road, blow up their role with lots of masala. This is especially true when they are talking about their verbal or physical fights with others. It appears that they add up some of the characteristics of their favorite screen hero while talking about themselves.

Another topic they are usually eager to talk about is their financial condition... most autos and taxis are not driven by the owners, so they will have many things to say about the owner of the vehicle.

Finally, one last interesting incidence. This taxi driver had seemed to be especially well behaved and cultured. He was driving for 1.5 hours in busy traffic and was at a signal wanting to turn left. A couple of cars which were in wrong lanes had blocked our left turn. My driver turned restless and started honking. Immediately, the driver of the Innova in front of us got down and started charging towards us. He was a tall, decent looking man dressed in jeans, a kurta and a rudraksha chain around his neck with kumkum on his forehead. He looked like the owner of the Innova and he must have been from a well to do family. To my horror he started shouting unimaginable obscenities at my driver, tried to pull him out of the car and landed a couple of blows on his face. My driver was startled, but realizing the situation was not in his favour, went on defense mode, pleading guilty and begging the other guy to stop. Then the signals turned green and the guy went back to his car and drove away. I was slightly shocked from what happened, but I would have never anticipated what happened next. The driver called someone on his mobile and complained. No, not the police. He called someone who he called "Anna" (brother), gave him description of the car, it's registration number and the guy's description. I asked him "Who did you call and what will they do to him?" "We have our own support system sir. They will take care of him". He refused to say anything more than this. A chill ran down my spine, imagining all sorts of things "taking care" could mean!

Are we friendly to each other?

2011-07-17T19:36:00.001+05:30

I am sure each one of us has heard about incidences where foreigners, especially westerners, asked us some questions about India that are genuine from their side, but amusing to us. With a large number of jokes on this theme, it is hard to say which incidences are genuine and which are not. Long back I myself have been asked "Is there telephone in India?" from a person who was working with people in Indian every day. When they visit India, they ask different types of amusing questions. One such person had asked me "Why are footpaths 1 foot higher than the road here?" and just then a 2-wheeler zoomed past us on the footpath. On the positive side I did not have to answer his question :-)

While most of the questions asked by westerners are just funny, sometimes you get a questions that makes you think long and deep. I faced one such question recently. We were a small group at the lunch table with our European guest. The topics of discussion were the usual. The guest was asking us a few questions about how things work in India. He then asked a question that startled us. "Wherever I have been in Bangalore, people have been very friendly to me. Are Indians naturally this friendly to each other or are they being extra friendly to me?" I tried to explain "I suppose the people here realize that you are from outside and might need some assistance with various things, so may be they are being more helpful to you". But the man persisted "No, I am talking about friendliness, not being just helpful. For example, are you as friendly to each other as you appear to be to me?" Now there was a silence at the table for a few seconds, while we were thinking how to answer this. Luckily, it turned out that the group at the table was indeed quite friendly to each other, so we just told him "Yes we are". However, this left me thinking about whether we are we really more friendly to our visitors than we are to our own folks.

I suppose foreigners indeed think we are more friendly to them, possibly because of the way we interact with them when compared to how they interact with us when we are in their country. May be we do go an extra step or two to make them feel comfortable. As far as friendliness is concerned, I think we are much more friendly to each other within our personal network than they are among themselves. To an extent we do that with any outsider to our cities or home, although we do not say "Hi" to total strangers as Americans do. However, are we as friendly to someone from another state/city who we personally don't know as we are to a foreigner? I guess we are not. But then, when we see someone from another state/city who is totally lost and needs help, we are likely to go an extra mile to help them out.

On the other hand, we also regularly hear about people from out of town, including foreigners, being duped, mugged or even murdered for gains. This too happens all over India. All of us would have experienced that when we are not in our home town we are much more likely to be cheated one way or the other.

So I can only conclude what we already know: No rule can be generalized to all of India. This makes it difficult to say "This is how we are". That's what makes our country so interesting.

For the record, the "foreigners" that I know are mostly from western countries, mainly US and England. I am not very familiar with how people from other countries behave.

Do you live in Bannerghatta?

2011-05-22T19:30:00.004+05:30

I was in a training session. During a break, the people in my table group started chatting. As it is usual in casual conversations in Bangalore, the topic moved to traffic and the amount of time it takes to travel. I was fairly sure I had the bragging right for the longest journey back home. However, what one of the ladies, who had been in Bangalore for years, said startled me. "I live at Kankpura, so it takes a really long time to reach home". I was surprised, but I quickly realized that she probably lives somewhere on Kanakapura road, not in Kanakapura town. I asked her "Do you really mean you live at Kanakapura?" "Yes" "Kanakapura is around 55 KMs from the center of the city, so from here it must be around 70 KMs. Why do you live there?". It was her turn to be surprised now. "No, it is around 25 KMs from here". I was now certain what she meant, but I was in a mood to play a bit. "But you said you live in Kanakapura". She gave me a confused look. I persisted "Do you know why that road is called Kanakapura Road?" "No" "Let's say you lived on Jaipur Road in Delhi... would you say you lived in Jaipur?" She was from Delhi, so she got it immediately. "Oh! is there a place called Kanakapura on that road? Now I got it!". "Do you mean you really didn't know that Kanakapura is a town 55 KMs down that road?" "No".

I am sure she is not the only person who has migrated to Bangalore who hasn't made an attempt to know much about the surroundings. In fact there are huge corporations, including banks, who make this mistake regularly. I live close to Bannerghatta road, so I see plenty of examples of people referring to the entire road as "Bannerghatta", although Bannerghatta is roughly 30 KMs away from Bangalore. For example, the "Bannerghatta branch" of a famous bank is NOT in Bannerghatta. It is in Bangalore, on Bannerghatta Road, at least 10 KMs away from Bannerghatta. There is a 5-star hotel and a huge mall coming up on Bannerghatta Road, 15 KMs from Bannerghatta, which says it is in Bannerghatta.

A lot of people seem to think that the entire road is called "Bannerghatta". The same applies to other towns around Bangalore, the most prominent being Sarjapura. One can see lots of other examples of people who know close to nothing about the state, city and area they live in. Our cities are not melting pots, but salad bowls.

Wish there was a horn at the back of my car

2011-05-08T19:56:00.002+05:30

It was one of the days when I had spent unusually long amount of time on the road. The ordeal seemed to be finally getting over as I approached my office campus. It is just this last stretch of service road, then I will be at the security check. There is a line of cars backed up at security check... I am very likely to be late for my morning meeting. I stop my car in the line and casually look at the rear view mirror. The car approaching from behind at 20-30 kmph has a lady at the wheel. As the car approaches mine, I suddenly notice that she is not looking at the road! She is instead looking DOWN at her laps, possibly reading a message on her mobile phone. Her car isn't slowing down at all. She is oblivious of the line of cars stopped in front of her. I feel like screaming at her, but there is nothing I can do. I wish my car had a loud horn pointing backwards. I am now convinced that she is going to slam my car. The cars in front of me have moved ahead, so it gives me an idea in the last second. I take my leg off the brakes. Her car crashes against mine with a loud thud, but my car absorbs some of the impact by rolling ahead. The lady is startled. I get out of my our car to investigate the damage. A few thoughts run through my mind as I walk back: How much damage could it be? Will there be an altercation? Oh man, that's a lady... if a crowd gathers she will get all the sympathy. I am surely going to be late for the meeting. Would the bumper have broken? How much does it cost?

By the time I walk back the lady has gotten out of her car. "You were not even looking at the road" I scream. She seems to be genuinely shocked and is pleading "Sorry... sorry". There is a mobile phone in her hand, which very likely is the cause of this accident. Looks like there won't be an argument about who the culprit is. Surprisingly, the back bumper of my car is intact except for a couple of scratches. WOW! Her car, on the other hand, is in a worse shape. The front bumper is broken and the number plate has fallen off. There is no crowd. Many drivers in cars lined up behind us start honking impatiently, but nobody gets out of their cars. I realize that there is no need to wait there any longer. She was the culprit and luckily she is the one who got punished as well. The whole incidence was over in less than 5 minutes and I drive ahead into my office. Not the best start for the work day, but it could have been much worse!

School day for kids

2011-03-17T23:09:00.004+05:30

It all started a few weeks ago when my 3 year old daughter started singing and dancing to a particular Kannada movie song (Gaalipata). We initially ignored it, but when she kept on doing this every day, we got curious. My daughter is notoriously bad at telling us what happens at school, in spite of her excellent verbal skills. Hence it took us quite a few days to figure out that the teachers were preparing the kids for a dance program, which we later learnt to be the school day event.

Eventually the day came last week. It was the school day and "graduation ceremony" at Podar Jumbo Kids, Vijaya Bank Layout branch. If you have not attended such an pre-schooler event, please do so when you get your next chance. It is more fun than you think it can be.

The meat of the event was a number of dance performances by kids of various classes. We handed over our kids to the teachers as soon as we entered the venue and waited for their little one to get dressed, come on stage and perform. A noticeable thing with kids of this age is that most of them have no idea what stage fear is. So they are not bothered whether they are dancing in the living room of their home or in front of hundreds of people in an auditorium. However, there are a few who start crying the moment they are on stage. Some of them recover and join the dance, while a few them continue to cry at the top of their voice all through the dance. Some kids saw their parents in the audience and started screaming "mommieeee" and running towards them unaware of the 6 foot fall at the end of the stage! A couple of kids did not seem to want to show their faces to the audience, so they turned away from the audience and danced throughout. Some of them were distracted half way through the dance and started doing various things like chatting with their co-dancers, giggling uncontrallably and so on. Some ran backstage while the dance was still going on and the teachers had a tough time catching them and bringing them back onto the stage! All this while the teachers stood at both sides of the stage and danced with the kids, trying to bring a semblance of co-ordination to the dance. The kids mostly chose to ignore their teachers and did not let much order creep into their dances. They can get away with this.. even receive wild applause only because they are kids... being watched by starry eyed parents. Photos from the event are here.

I must appreciate the efforts put in by the school for the event. The teachers had prepared for weeks. The venue, JSS Auditorium, was quite good. They had arranged for dresses themselves and done a great job at that too! They showed a lot of enthusiasm and commitment to make the event a success. The teachers had their own dance performance as a surprise package at the end of the event. One of the good things they did was announce right in the beginning that they were going to give a DVD of the event to every kid. This avoided the chaos in front of the stage with eager parents trying to capture their kid through their cameras. They even sent us off with food packets.

My daughter will stop going to this school in 2 weeks and I am going to miss this place. Their infrastrcture, while not great, is not bad either. However, they seem to have put together a nice bunch of teachers and support staff who all love kids. I would certainly recommend this place (Podar Jumbo Kids, Vijaya Bank Layout branch).

Everyone and their aunt want to wish you

2011-02-11T20:34:00.004+05:30

I have often heard from my colleagues that the "politics" in Tamilnadu is far "advanced" compared to other states. They say the kind of things being seen in Karnataka political circles now-a-days were tried and perfected in Tamilnadu decades ago. I don't know whether that is true, but they sure seem to be ahead in erecting gigantic flex banners. In the above banner, more than 130 people seem to be wishing rest of the village (if anyone is left out) whatever they want to wish. "Happy Pongal", I suppose... sorry, I cannot read the language.

Pondicherry

2011-02-06T17:09:00.007+05:30

Recently I did a trip to Pondicherry that I had been thinking for quite some time. As a typical techie, I did a lot of research on the internet before heading there to make my trip smoother. However, I found many new things that I think might be useful to people planning a trip. This is not a travelogue, just things I did not find by googling, but learnt first hand. I was planning to have a leisurely vacation, so I did not make an attempt to maximize my sight seeing there.

While there are good bus services from Bangalore to Pondicherry, I chose to drive my Santro because of a few reasons. Having a car makes it easy to get around Pondicherry. I didn't want to mess with the autorickshaws there. You can rent 2-wheelers in Pondicherry, but that is not suitable for families. Lastly, the distance to Pondicherry is around 310Kms, which is well within what I can drive in a day.

I took this route, which is by far the shortest at just 310 Kms. The alternative is this, but it takes the distance up by another 110 Kms. The road was smooth till Krishnagiri as expected, because it is the Chennai highway. However, from Krishnagiri to Tiruvannamalai I hit one of the worst National Highways I have ever driven on. It was 110 Kms of pure misery, with not even a single Km of stretch in a decent shape. I took more than 3 hours to cover this distance. I had high hopes on the roads of Tamilnadu, which this road totally destroyed. The road from Tiruvannamalai to Tindivanam (67 Km) was in a decent, though not great shape. From Tindivanam to Pondicherry (40Km) it is the Chennai-Pondicherry road, which is an excellent 4 lane road. Total drive time: 7 hours. While returning, I wanted to avoid the Tiruvannamalai-Krishnagiri stretch like I would avoid Plague. I took the advice of taxi drivers: I knew these guys would know best. They advised me to take the state highways from Tiruvannamalai-Dharmapuri through Tanipadi, Naripalli, Harur, Morappur and then drive on the NH from Dharmapuri towards Krishnagiri. Google maps doesn't know about this road! This added 50-60 Kms to my journey, but the roads are very very nice. Just 2 lanes, but very little traffic and a scenic road. Recommended.

I stayed at Kailash Beach Hotel. There are many "beach resorts" in Pondicherry and some of them are just lodges, calling themselves resorts. Kailash turned out to be a good place. You get whatever they claim on their website. Their swimming pool is pretty good. Rooms don't face the beach, but it is just a 2 min walk away. This place is 10 Kms south of Pondicherry.

Pondicherry beaches have apparently become very hostile since the Tsunami. The slope of beach is very drastic, so you can hardly go 10-20 feet into the water. The water brings tonnes of sand with it. Hence it is not a great place to play in the beach. I listed 3 famous public beaches in Pondicherry, but it was possible to play in the water in only 1 of them: Auroville beach.

Do not under-estimate the traffic of Pondicherry. The traffic generally remains low throughout the day, but during morning and evening busy hours it can get very crowded. Traffic moves at snail's pace along the main arteries of the city (Cuddalore road, roads leading to ECR in the north, etc). it took me 30+ minutes to drive 10Kms at 6:30PM. Drivers are better behaved than in Bangalore (probably any other big city). Most signals have free left turn and the drivers are decent enough to leave the left turning lane clear. Bicycle riders seemed to be on a suicide mission though. The roads in the core of the city (shopping areas and french quarters) become very busy during evening shopping hours. The police cut off 4-wheeler entry on many of the roads to avoid traffic jams. Parking can still be found in the smaller lanes. Watch out for 1-way roads.

The people were very helpful. Whenever I asked for directions, the people were willing to stop what they were doing, walk up to me, give clear directions and make sure I understood the directions. They would realize that I do not speak Tamil and try to explain in English. I had seen such people in Paris long back... may be it is the French culture thing!

Language wasn't a big hurdle because I realized that I could understand more Tamil than I thought I did. However, I realized that I could barely talk even a couple of words in Tamil. I started asking them to talk in Tamil, but I would reply in English. At least one road-side seller in Promenade beach, (who was probably a Muslim), was more comfortable with Hindi than with English.

Promenade beach is the show piece of the city. However, there is no sandy beach here... the water directly hits the embankment rocks. It is a beautiful place to sit in a roof-top restaurant on a full-moon night (which was the case when I went) and enjoy the beauty of the ocean while having your food. There are many hotels and 'guest houses' on this piece of road.

I visited the Chunnambar water resort. This is a highly advertised and recommended place. However, there are some drawbacks. The main (only?) attraction of the place is boat ride in the backwaters, leading up to Paradise Beach. This was one of the most beautiful and clean beaches I had seen. However, they were not even letting us touch the waters in Paradise beach. This killed most of the fun for us. We took a speed boat ride in the river, which was worthwhile.

Everyone talks about Auroville, which is 15Kms from the city. The place is peaceful and nice and is filled with westerners. You will see pictures of a spherical building in golden color in many websites: It took a 1.5 Km hike to reach that place from Auroville parking lot. They were not allowing us into that structure, so we only got to see it from quite a distance. I put the zoom on my new Canon to full use to take some pics. I couldn't associate myself much with Auroville or even Aurobindo Ashram, which is in the heart of the city.

Visited the Arulmigu Manakula Vinayagar temple. Air conditioned, which I guess will be very useful in summers. Tamil was essential to understand anything the guy at the counter says.

Sacred Heart Church is a good place to visit. 110 year old. Right in the city next to Railway Station. Good architecture. Belgian glass that looks so good. Also visited the church at Villianur, which is 10Kms from Pondicherry. Though older, the building was not all that great.

I ate at Hotel Surguru, Adyar Ananda Bhavan, Hotel Ajantha Sea View (nice terrace restaurant facing sea), Sri Krishna Sweets (restaurant attached), Auroville cafeteria. All good, nothing to write home about. Being a vegetarian, wasn't too interested in trying out French cuisines.

There is a memorial for French soldiers who died in the First World War on the Promenade Beach.

I went there in the 3rd week of January. The weather was nice: 30 degrees and a bit sticky at noon, but comfortable in morning and evening. I suppose December and January are best months to visit.

How many Indians are vegetarians?

2011-01-16T16:00:00.004+05:30

While I was studying college, most of my class-mates were vegetarians. Later, while working in Bangalore, it just turned out that the majority of my colleagues in my group were vegetarians too. Whenever we went out for a team lunch, it was common to renegate the non-veggies to one side of the table by the majority vegetarian gang. A colleague who eats non-veg often comments that vegetarians should just graze on the lawn!

I have heard many of my colleagues and friends comment that the majority of Indians are vegetarians. That opinion was understandable, considering the surrounding we were in. Most of the restaurants (self-service fast food types, a.k.a Darshinis back then) were purely vegetarian. Whenever I attended any function, the food wood be vegetarian too.

I slowly learnt that my surrounding was not a true sample of this country. Though India indeed has the highest number of vegetarians in the world, the percentage of vegetarians in India is not more than 40% and is just 20% per some sources. Further, contrary to my expectations, the southern states have smaller percentage of vegetarians than the northern states (not the north-east).

Recently, at a team lunch in office, I turned out to be the only vegetarian in a group of 10. I knew that this was closer to true percentages of vegetarians in this country. However, I felt quite strange about this change. It made me wonder whether this was just a co-incidence that I was the only vegetarian in that group or whether the demography changed significantly in the last decade.

Grand offer: Save 0.0625%

2011-01-15T17:18:00.002+05:30

Save 2 paise per Kg of atta. Worth 4 minutes of talk time!

What are these?

2010-10-17T15:01:00.003+05:30

These are a type of cucumbers popular in the coastal belt of Karnataka. What is unique about them is that they can be preserved for months when stored in this way. Looking at these at one of my relatives place recently brought back my memories of my grandfather's house on the western coast of Karnataka between Udupi and Kundapur. More about this some time later.

From Russia, with Threads

2010-10-09T20:13:00.003+05:30

Getting Canon Lide 100 scanner to work with Fedora Linux

2010-09-26T20:17:00.002+05:30

Recently I needed to use Canon Lide 100 scanner. When I plugged it into my Fedora laptop I realized that this scanner is not supported by Linux (sane or simple-scan). A bit of googling took me here. Looks like support for Canon Lide 100 is already in the git repos of sane (sane-backends package, specifically), but you have to do a bit of circus until your favourite distro starts shipping more recent version of sane.

I followed the instructions from there, but slightly customized it for my Fedora 13:

# yum install libusb-devel

# git clone git://git.debian.org/sane/sane-backends.git

# cd sane-backends/

# ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var

# make

# make install

Now edit /lib/udev/rules.d/65-libsane.rules to add these lines about the scanner:

# Canon CanoScan Lide 100
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04a9", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1904", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

# reboot

At this stage the scanner should have worked, but it did not :-( I took another look at the sources of sane-backend. It looked like the file backend/genesys/conf should have been copied to /etc/sane.d/genesys.conf, was somehow wasn't. I manually copied this file over:

# cp ./backend/genesys.conf /etc/sane.d/genesys.conf

Voila, Canon Lide 100 now works with my Fedora 13 using xsane.

Yeah, we are that bugged!

2010-09-17T20:34:00.004+05:30

Did you ever sit near the entrance of the floor in your office and see all kinds of people stop by to ask you "Where does X sit?" or "Where is meeting room Y?"

We also do this!

2010-09-04T18:34:00.002+05:30

You might think we are too busy improving our search engine or churning out features for Android, but we also find time to run this internet surfing centre in Mysore.

This blog is now 5+ years old

2010-08-20T22:54:00.003+05:30

I never thought this blog would live this long when I started this on 26th July 2005. It is now a bit more than 5 years old, which, in today's digital age, means it is one generation old! I have 241 blog posts on this blog, which translates to roughly a blog per week. Thanks to everyone who read this blog.

A major milestone

2010-08-19T23:41:00.000+05:30

or an aging car!

End the day with net gains

2010-08-17T22:36:00.000+05:30

The daily drive to the office begins. Today I am somehow more irritable than usual. I am driving through a fairly narrow stretch of the road, stuck behind a fully loaded tractor that is barely making 30kmph. There is a steady stream of traffic from the other side, making it impossible to overtake the tractor. My patience is running thin when I spot a momentary gap in the oncoming traffic, giving me just enough time to overtake. However, a guy on a motorcycle moves to the right of my car, doesn't move fast enough and prevents me from overtaking. My blood boils. I honk and move my car threateningly close to his bike. This infuriates the bike rider, who gives me a mouthful, receives some from me as well and moves along. Not the best start for the day.

By the time I reach Koramangala I have cooled down completely and am driving much more sensibly. At an intersection without traffic lights I am about to make a right turn, when I notice a motorcycle coming into the intersection at a very high speed from the road to my right. The guy sees my car and quickly realizes that he is in trouble as he isn't sure he can stop in time. I stop my car immediately and let him through. I notice that the guy has a smile on his face as he waves to me while passing through the junction.

Later in the day I am driving back home. One of the roads in BTM has a steady stream of traffic during these hours. The drivers are pretty aggressive and crossing the road at this time is not for the faint at heart. I notice an elderly gentleman, may be in his late seventees, trying to cross the road. He makes an attempt to cross ahead of a few cars in front of me, but the car driver blazes his horn and prevents the man from crossing. I quickly glance at my rear view mirror and notice a long chain of cars behind me. This man is not going to cross the road any time soon unless he risks his life or limbs. When the man is directly in front of me I stop my car and ask him to cross. The driver of Tata Sumo behind me goes mad with anger and blares his horn. I stay calm. The elderly man says a big "Thank you" after he crosses the road. I hear him trying to give some advice to the driver of Sumo as I pass.

Looks like I ended the day with a net positive: I did more right than wrong on the road.

It's very clear what we sell here

2010-08-11T23:04:00.000+05:30

"Things necessary for pooja shop"

A collapsed bridge

2010-08-06T21:19:00.004+05:30

I am sure many would still remember the devastating floods that hit North Karnataka and Andhra last year. I had missed being in the middle of action (read 10 feet of water) by a short margin back then. One of the major impacts of the floods was collapsing of the bridge on the State Highway 13 that connects Mantralayam with Raichur. Recently I got a chance to visit this place and see the devastation for myself.

There is now a temporary bridge built by placing a few large pipes along the mighty Tungabhadra and filling up the remaining distance with mud. It is not easy to cross this bridge on cars more used to the city. This temporary bridge is sure to wash off if there is even a fraction of the rain that came down last year. I didn't see any activity of reconstructing the main bridge.

Update: The temporary bridge has already washed away.

Political correctness? What is that?

2010-08-02T23:27:00.002+05:30

I hear that "Chronologically advanced" is more correct than "senior citizens"

Victory is sweet

2010-06-12T22:36:00.000+05:30

I walk into the store and find a number of sales people dressed in smart uniforms (jeans and t-shirt, but a uniform neverthless). It is one of the most famous mobile phone outlet chains in Bangalore. One of the sales persons greets me at the door and asks me what I need. My response, more specifically my meagre budget reduces his enthusiasm, but he still manages to smile and directs me to one of the counters.

I tell the sales guy the model I am looking for. He shows it to me and as I am looking at it he tells me "Sir, if you are looking to buy this mobile, why don't you buy that instead?" and shows me a comparable model from another brand. I know that they push the brand that gives them the most margins and I am usually not a sucker for this. However, I am somehow tempted to consider his suggestion and take a look at the other phone and ask him "How is this better?"

Now the sales guy knows I have bitten the lure, so he goes on to explain why the phone he suggested is the bestest, wonderfullest thing to have ever been invented, whereas the model I had originally asked for is just average. He quickly blurts out a list of impressive specs. Wireless FM, dolby stereo speaker, a battery that lasts forever, megapixel camera that gets wonderful photos, bigger display, the works. Now I am sceptical when a well known brand of mobile phone gives all this for the kind of price I am paying. I take a close look at the phone and it's box. It has wireless FM alright, it says so in big bold letters on it's front facade. The camera doesn't list the megapixels, so I suspect it is just a VGA camera. The box doesn't say anything about speakers being dolby or even stereo. The guy still insists that it is dolby speaker and megapixel camera. I suppose the phone manufacturers themselves did not know about these impressive specs or just plain forgot to mention them. By now he probably thinks I don't know anything about mobile phones and he can get away with pretty much anything. So he says "Sir, this is ion battery. Hence it surely lasts much more than other phones".

Now that ends my patience and I decide to give it back to him. It goes something like this:
"What do you mean by ion battery? Do you mean Lithim-ion?"
"Yes sir, it is the best technology...."
"Wait. Don't you know that every mobile phone in the last few years has come with a Lithim-ion battery? Can you show me a mobile phone in your store that does NOT have a Li-ion battery?"
"No sir, but this one is best quality..."
By now I am on the offensive.
"I know that the same company makes the battery for the two brands we are talking about and the same technology is used in both"
I don't know anything about this, but I know he won't contest this. He doesn't know what to say. I decide to pile it on. I had started the browser on my own phone when I started looking at this phone and started loading it's specs page. By now the webpage has loaded. I can now look at it and authoritatively tell him that the phone has a VGA camera, display is same size and type as other phones in it's class and a pretty ordinary mono speaker. The guy is speechless. I raise my voice a bit and tell him that it is not correct to misguide the customers this way and demand that I be served by someone who is more honest.

The owner of the store has now overheard some of this conversation and comes over and tries to calm me before other customers get to hear what is happening. He scolds the sales guy and sends him off. I know that the scolding is just a drama. In fact I guess that sales guy is the star performer of the store and the owner totally likes the way he sells. However, I have won this battle and will cherish this victory.

What good is a social network unless you login?

2010-04-26T20:28:00.003+05:30

I have an account on most well known social networking websites. That doesn't mean I am active on any of these. The routine I follow with most of them is:

I get notified of a friend request
I login and process the friend request
I log out.
Do nothing until step 1 repeats.

I don't grow farms, nor do I join any groups. In most cases others have to discover me on these websites, I don't do it pro-actively. Considering this, it is not surprising that I never signed up on one very popular website: Twitter. I had assumed it is a passing fad and had hoped to hop on to the next one that comes along. By the time I realized I underestimated how big Twitter was going to get, everyone and their aunts were busy tweeting. After the Dalai Lama got on twitter and tweets played a role in bringing down a minister, I decided it was finally time for me to join.

There is one problem though. Now that I have signed up, I am treating it the way I treat my Facebook account... not log in unless someone nudges me to. So I have a twitter account to boast of, but not to use. I wonder how many people are my type of social networkers...

Happy animal?

2010-04-10T22:43:00.002+05:30

If this is how 'happy' animals look, I pity the sad ones.

Please let me help... myself!

2010-04-04T20:49:00.002+05:30

There was a stranger at my door recently. I guessed this must be one of the numerous salespeople who visit our house regularly. I feel sorry for the salesperson who spends a few minutes trying to convince us to buy something because we have not bought a single thing from door-to-door sellers for more than a decade. However, this guy at my door wasn't going to speak to me. He was trying to find the person in my house who was recently knighted: "Saar ilva?" "Isn't sir at home?" I now assumed he must have some business with my father, but insisted on knowing who he was. His reply was the same. He would deal only with the saar. I then called out for my father. "Appa..." To my surprise, the stranger immediately left the scene. I stood puzzled for a while until the reason for his behaviour dawned on me. During the above conversation I was sitting next to my bike, trying to clean it's spark plug. The stranger must have assumed that I cannot be the owner of the house because I was doing the work of a mechanic! I looked again at what I was wearing and it looked alright to me... but then I am a guy, so I don't know much about dressing :-)

After building my house I realized that it is the house that really owns me, not the other way around. It is like a cranky little baby that demands constant supervision and feeding. There is always something to fix or improve. After having haggled with the plumber, electrician, carpenter, etc who either refuse to do any such 'minor' jobs or do a bad job of it, my father and I decided that self help is the only effective way to get things done. So we equipped our house with enough tools to carry out any repair and improvement jobs. We do most of the things like plumbing, electricals, painting, primitive carpentry, etc ourselves as far as possible. Since the last few years I am cleaning our overhead tank (Sintex) myself. However, a LOT of people just can't understand why we do these things ourselves. For example, while buying electric wires and pins, the store owner insists that he will send his electrician with me. He looks at me strangely when I say I'll do it myself. I have been asked various questions when people saw me painting our gate, trimming our plants and so on. Our neighbors are not an exception to this, though they are getting used to it now. I guess they think I am stingy or strange or both when I tell them I don't need any help. Thanks, but I'll happily soil my hands rather than go after the elusive repair guy.

Bandipur vs Bannerghatta

2010-03-21T17:27:00.004+05:30

It is almost summer vacation time and a lot of people will be thinking of going to a National Park to see wildlife in it's 'natural' habitat. So typically people travel all the way to Bandipur or Nagarahole National Parks, book expensive resorts like Jungle Lodges and take expensive safari trips into the forest in the hope of finding some tigers or lions or godzillas in the forest. By the time their safari ends, they would have seen hundreds of deer and if they are really lucky some bears or gaur. However, tiger, which is the prize catch, remains elusive. Sometimes you wonder whether they are any tigers at all in this forest. If you ask the safari guides, they will tell you the last time anyone spotted a tiger in one of these safaris. You will then learn that your chances of seeing a tiger was as narrow as winning a lottery.

They don't tell you that you are unlikely to see tigers in these National Parks. You go there believing you will see at least 1000 of the 1411 tigers still left. However, if you want to be sure that you see tigers and lions, the place to visit is much closer home. Bannerghatta National Park, anyone?

Just take a Vayu Vajra Volvo bus to Bannerghatta National Park on a leisurely weekend. The bus drops you right at the gates of the park. Don't expect to see too much of jungles like Bandipur or Nagarahole. Remember, this National Park is closer to Bangalore than some of residential apartments :-) You need to buy tickets for lion-tiger safari and board the safari bus operated by the forest department. The safari is very similar in structure to the ones you see in Bandipur or Nagarahole, though there is less jungle all around and much more chance of seeing animals. The animals of Bannerghatta are not afraid of humans. They stride carelessly into the path of your safari vehicle. They might even give you a bright smile when you take a picture! The driver may sometimes need to honk and make way through the group of tigers who have assembled right in the path of the safari to hold a meeting or something. The safari lasts about 45 minutes.

Once back, take a stroll through the zoo (which is the inverse of safari, they are the ones in cages!) to see other animals. Then buy something to snack on in one of the numerous shops and head back to the bus stop. See, you didn't have to sweat even as much as you would to catch the greatest deals during a sale in your favourite mall and costed even less!

None of this is to say that it is not worth visiting the real serious National Parks elsewhere. Go there to experience closeness to nature without any expectation of seeing these animals so you won't be disappointed. When you want to be sure to see the animals, you know you won't have to go too far.

But I drive a car!

2010-02-26T21:51:00.002+05:30

ಈ ಜಾಹೀರಾತಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಹಿಂದಿ ಬೇಕೇ?

2010-02-20T13:47:00.005+05:30

MOIA (ಮಿನಿಸ್ಟ್ರಿ ಆಫ್ ಒವೆರ್ಸೀಸ್ ಅಫೇರ್ಸ್) ನವರು ಕಳೆದ ವಾರ ಕನ್ನಡ ದಿನಪತ್ರಿಕೆಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಈ ಜಾಹೀರಾತು/ಸಂದೇಶವನ್ನು ಪ್ರಕಟಿಸಿದರು. ಇದರಲ್ಲಿರುವ ಹಿಂದಿ ಸಂದೇಶವನ್ನು ಕಂಡು ಕಂಡು ನನಗೆ ನಿಜಕ್ಕೂ ನಗು ಬಂತು. ಇದನ್ನು ವಿನ್ಯಾಸ ಮಾಡಿದವರಿಗೆ ಜಾಹೀರಾತುಗಳ ಮೂಲ ಉದ್ದೇಶವೇ ತಿಳಿದಿಲ್ಲ ಎನಿಸುತದೆ. ಸಾಮಾನ್ಯ ಜನರಿಗೂ ತಿಳಿದಿರುವಂತೆ ಜಾಹೀರಾತುಗಳೇ ಮುಖ್ಯ ಉದ್ದೇಶ ತಮ್ಮ "target audience" ನಲ್ಲಿ ಸಾಧ್ಯವಾದಷ್ಟೂ ಹೆಚ್ಚು ಜನರನ್ನು ತಲುಪುವುದು. ಇದೇ ಉದ್ದೇಶದಿಂದ MOIA ನವರು ಲಕ್ಷಾಂತರ ರೂಪಾಯಿಗಳನ್ನು ಖರ್ಚು ಮಾಡಿ ಪ್ರಾದೇಶಿಕ ದಿನಪತ್ರಿಕೆಗಲ್ಲಿ ೧/೪ ಪುಟಗಳ ಜಾಹೀರಾತನ್ನು ಪ್ರಕಟಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಆದರೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ದಿನಪತ್ರಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಜಾಹೀರಾತನ್ನು ಪ್ರಕಟಿಸುವಾಗ ಆ ಸಂದೇಶ ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿರುವುದೇ ಉತ್ತಮ ಎಂಬ ಸಾಮಾನ್ಯ ಜ್ಞಾನವೂ ಇಲ್ಲದೆ ಹೋಯಿತೇ? ಈ ಸಂದೇಶವನ್ನು ಕನ್ನಡಕ್ಕೆ ತರ್ಜುಮೆ ಮಾಡುವುದು ಅಷ್ಟೊಂದು ಕಷ್ಟವೇ? ಅಥವಾ ಸೋಂಬೇರಿತನವೇ? ಅಥವಾ ಕೇಂದ್ರ ಸರ್ಕಾರದ ಜಾಹೀರಾತುಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಹೇಗಾದರೂ ಹಿಂದಿಯನ್ನು ತುರುಕಲೇ ಬೇಕು ಎಂಬ ನಿಯಮವಿದೆಯೇ?

Update: ಫರ್ಜಿ ಏಜೆಂಟ ಅಂದರೆ ಏನು? ನಿಜಕ್ಕೂ ನನಗೆ ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ.

Travel with salwar stitches

2010-02-12T15:28:00.003+05:30

If you ever felt the urge to go on a 3.5 hour travel with unlikely companions like new salwar stitches, step right in. Beware, we may alter your travel in all kinds of ways.

Creating a KVM bootable Fedora system using febootstrap

2010-02-06T10:50:00.003+05:30

febootstrap is a tool to create Fedora bootable systems. This is similar to the more popular debootstrap utility on Debian based systems. Most people use it to create a chroot-able environment to test something out. Another common use is to create a minimalistic Fedora system that you can boot through qemu/KVM. Here is how I went about setting such a system up for myself. Of course, this may not be the only way (or the best, for that matter) of doing it.

Preparation:

If febootstrap is not installed, install it:

yum install febootstrap

Ensure you have internet connection or access to a local Fedora repository.
Ensure you have at least 1GB of free disk space.

Steps:

1) Create a disk image: First, create a normal file on the disk by reading from /dev/zero. It's size is what the size of your guest is going to be. 1GB is plenty if you are doing a minimal install.

dd if=/dev/zero of=fedora-12-image bs=1G count=1

2) Create file system: Create a file system in that file:

mkfs.ext3 ./fedora-12-image

3) Loop mount: Loop mount the created file system:

mount -o loop ./fedora-12-image ./mnt

4) Install using febootstrap: Use febootstrap to populate the mount point with Fedora packages. By default febootstrap installs packages in the "Core" group of Fedora.

febootstrap fedora-12 ./mnt

If you have a local mirror of Fedora please provide that as the last argument. In the absense of that it pulls packages from public Fedora repos. This step installed 160 packages and took just a few minutes to complete for me.

Now you already have a chroot-able Fedora environment that you can use.

chroot /mnt

5) Install additional packages: As I mentioned above, febootstrap has only installed packages in the "Core" group. Hence some of the packages you need might not have been installed. You can install them now by doing this:

First, bind mount a few directories from the base system into this environment. This is essential to let yum succeed.

cd /mnt

sudo mount --bind /dev ./dev

sudo mount -t proc nodev ./proc

sudo mount --bind /etc ./etc

Now install the packages you need. Here, I installed "strace". febootstrap-run just runs the specified command in the chroot-ed environment.

febootstrap-run /mnt yum install strace

Now unmount the mounts:

umount /mnt/dev /mnt/etc /mnt/proc

6) Fix up: Copy /etc/fstab and /etc/resolv.conf from the base system. These wouldn't have been done by febootstrap.

cp /etc/fstab /mnt/etc

cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc

Edit the fstab in the installed system to fix things up. Specifically, edit the mount point of / and don't mount any other real disk partitions. My fstab looks like this:

/dev/vda specifies that I will be using virtio for disk IO. It could be /dev/sda or /dev/hda depending on your KVM setup.

7) Set root password for the installed system:

chroot /mnt

passwd

Now create another login, if you wish, using useradd

8) Unmount the loop mount.

umount /mnt

Now the system is ready to be booted through KVM. However, it does not have a kernel, initrd or grub. You will have to specify the kernel and initrd to use while starting the virtual machine. Here is what I use:

qemu-system-x86_64 -name f12-kvm -drive file=./fedora-12-image,if=virtio -m 512 -kernel /arch/x86/boot/bzImage -append "root=/dev/vda noapic selinux=0"

Notice the -kernel parameter being passed to specify the kernel to use. If you need to pass an initrd, use -initrd option. Additional options will be needed to configure network, etc.

Advantages of this approach:

Speed of booting. The system boots up in just a few seconds. (4-5 seconds for me).
Ease of changing the guest kernel. Just compile the kernel on the host, restart KVM pointing it to the new kernel. Hence this is excellent for testing your kernel modifications. You could also just point the guest to the kernel installed on the host.
Very small size of the guest. The base Fedora-12 system is less than 500MB in size. You can have one such image as your 'base' image, create additional images with various packages to use in different environments.

Read it out loud

2010-02-02T23:10:00.000+05:30

"Hey, I'm putting up a notice. How do you spell drum?"

"d-u-r-m"

"Thanks!"

What is our "national language"?

2010-01-31T21:00:00.002+05:30

Recently the Gujarat High Court ruled that Hindi is NOT India's national language. This came as a rude shock to a majority of people, both Hindi speakers and non-Hindi speakers. Everyone assumes that Hindi is the official "national language" of India. However, the founding fathers of our nation had a good understanding of diversity of this nation and hence stopped short of declaring Hindi as the national language. Hence our constitution does not say this either. What it does however is it recognizes Hindi is the official language of the Union Government and a number of other central Government bodies. The Eighth Schedule of the Consitution recognizes a number of regional languages as 'official' languages.

Our country is unique in so many ways, the biggest of all is it's diversity. We don't have many things that are common across the country and we don't really have a "national language" either. We still stick together as a country and that is great. Would having a common language across the country improve our unity? I am not sure.

Google knows it all!

2010-01-27T22:33:00.004+05:30

If I just enter an error message I see on my Linux box, can Google automatically find the phone number and (snail) mailing address of the maintainer of the package that is causing my problem? That would be Kewl!

Plight of coastal highways

2010-01-26T19:38:00.003+05:30

I was standing right on one of the busiest National Highways anywhere in Karnataka. Normally the road has enough traffic to make it difficult to drive and dangerous to overtake, because it has just 2 lanes. However, on this day there was no sign of any vehicles on the road. Not even an occasional car. Just a few bicycles, a few 2-wheelers going to nearby places and pedestrians.

This is National Highway 17, one of the first 'coastal highway's of India, running along the western coast of India across all of Karnataka and most of Maharashtra and Kerala. The road offers glimpses of the Arabian Sea on the west and mountains on the eastern side, a number of bridges across numerous rivers joining the sea and a lot of greenery all around. When I was a kid I lived in extreme rural areas with hardly any roads. One of the incentives of visiting my native place was travelling on this beautiful and smooth tar surface. I used to sit right at the front of the bus, close to the driver, watching in awe how the bus devoured the distance.

Bus travel in South Canara and Udupi districts is very different from most other places. Private operators control all the routes in this area and they are known for providing one of the best timely services anywhere in the country. Let's consider buses leaving Udupi bus stand. There is an express bus to Manipal every 5 minutes, to Kundapur (38km) every 5 minutes, to Malpe every 5 minutes and to Mangalore (60km) every 3-4 minutes. They all have demand! So a bus driver on Udupi-Mangalore road knows that the next bus is only about 3 minutes behind him. Also, 'agents' at various bus stops along the way would have already issued tickets for his bus even before he arrives. Hence he can't ever afford to slow down and let the next bus overtake him. He can't go too fast either, because he can't overtake the earlier bus. So his time error margin is just 3 minutes or less over a 1 hour journey!

Traffic on this road was increasing steadily. Matters turned worse when the cost of iron ore increased by many folds in the international markets a few years ago. A number of trucks carrying iron ore started taking this road to the Mangalore port. Today's trucks typically carry 35-50 tonnes, whereas the highway was built long back when trucks carried only 10-15 tonnes. This led to the condition of the highway degrading rapidly. The road developed huge potholes, making it close to impossible to manouver for cars. The dust on the road made it very difficult for everyone to breathe. Private bus operators were forced to withdraw Volvo buses from their fleets. Accidents and breakdowns became very common. The Government meanwhile slept. Even the proposal to widen NH17 to 4 lanes has been eating dust for a number of years. Travelling on NH17, one of my favorite things to do from childhood days, is a trecherous ordeal now.

Meanwhile, another beautiful road NH48, that connects Bangalore to Mangalore, which passes through the famed Shiradi Ghats, was losing shape quickly. Government's answer for this road was also the same.

The people of the coastal districts held a number of protests and bundhs to let the Government know about their plight. A number of repair and restoration works were done on these roads, but because of the quality of the work, extreme weather conditions and the load on the roads, none of these lasted more than one rainy season.

The people from the three coastal districts, under the banner of "The Rashtreeya Heddari Ulisi Samithi" held a "Highway Bundh" on 23rd Jan to again highlight their plight to the powers in Government. This was one of the biggest protests in recent times. No vehicles, including even 2-wheelers were allowed to take the highways from early morning till around 3PM. This was also one of the most well organized protests I have ever seen. Not a single bus was stoned, no emergency vehicles were stopped, people taking smaller roads (not NH) were not troubled. The people from the coast lived up to their reputation as some of the most cultured and well behaved. To my unluck, I was on a trip to my native and I had to waste one day just sitting at home because of this bundh. Though this was a great inconvinience to me, I could readily understand the plight of people who need to take these roads every day. I hope the situation changes for the better soon.

You can't wear any shorts while dining!

2010-01-16T10:44:00.003+05:30

A better photo for my earlier post.

I don't know about you, but I would feel very shy and uncomfortable visiting the restaurant without wearing shorts. I had hoped I could make do with a Lungi, but they don't allow that either.

There is a simpler (and correct) explanation for that

2010-01-14T13:09:00.003+05:30

They say when there are 2 possible explanations for a particular event, the simpler of the two is usually correct. I got a first hand experience of that recently.

My trusted 4 year old Canon A520 all of a sudden started showing signs of old age. 4 years should not be too much. My first digicam, a 2.1 MP Kodak, which was the bleeding edge of gadgetry when I bought it, is still alive, though it is doesn't like to come out of the cupboard for the fear of being insulted by my cell phone camera.

I noticed 2 problems: The batteries started getting drained out too fast and the camera once in a while showed "Error E30" on it's display. Immediately the engineer in me started looking for a complex, grand explanation for this. Out came the multimeter and confirmed that the batteries had correct voltage. A torchlight confirmed that they had enough juice too. Canon says "Error E30" is related to SD card. I formatted the cards. I also read that the lens barrel could have some obstruction, which could result in the camera assuming that there was not enough power in the batteries to push the lens out. I wanted to disassemble the camera to clean the lens barrel and I found detailed instructions on a website to do this. However, I just could not get the outermost ring of the lens barrel out and hence I decided to take the camera to the service centre.

The service centre told me that my camera was alright, in spite of all that I had read. They said the batteries were indeed at fault. I did not believe this initially, but since they demonstrated with their batteries, I had to oblige. I bought some new Sony 2700mAh NiMH batteries and this solved all the problems with my camera. Now I know that there is neither a problem with the lens barrel, nor with the SD cards. The problem was that I had tried to save some money on my previous set of batteries by buying a not so well known brand. The problem was much simpler than I had expected! I later read in various forums that that bad batteries could indeed cause these problems. However, initially my mind was looking for a fancier problem, so I had ignored all this!

How not to place ads

2010-01-05T22:04:00.002+05:30

Communist truck

2009-12-29T18:02:00.004+05:30

It is leaning to the left!

Fake Steve's speech

2009-12-20T14:58:00.003+05:30

I never have enough patience to watch any youtube video longer than a couple of minutes. Hence I was very surprised when I watched all 50 minutes of this video and felt like I could watch some more. Dan Lyons is indeed a very nice speaker. If you have been a regular with The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs (which means you like the kind of satire and humour he uses), you will enjoy this too. Agreed, it is more than 2 years old, but it is still very good.

Holding a contest in the age of digital photos

2009-12-18T20:59:00.002+05:30

We were holding a photography competition in my office. While forming the rules for the contest we realized how difficult digital photography has made it to hold such a contest. It was so much simpler in the (good?) old days of film.

First of all, ownership/copyright. In the old days, it was easy to say who the owner of a photo was. Whoever has the negative! It was as simple as that. With digital photos, anyone who has a copy of the image has as much control over it as anyone else.

Second, about digitally enhanced photos. We made a rule that digitally enhanced photos are not to be submitted. However, we knew clearly that there is no way to detect it in a fool proof way. It is now close to impossible to spot simple enhancements (color/brightness/corrections) to photos. Also, should cropping be allowed? Thinking about this from another angle, most digital cameras can do some amount of processing of the image based on the specialized photo settings used. Ideally that too should be disallowed! Also, some cameras allow you to edit the photo after it has been taken. So is it okay if the photo is edited in the camera rather than photoshopped/gimped on a computer? Where do you draw the line?

Next, we were trying to create various categories. One of the thoughts was to have categories based on camera types. This quickly ran into trouble. Now-a-days it is becoming difficult to correctly classify SLRs and point and shoots. Also, some cell phone cameras already have 12MP cameras, whereas my point-and-shoot is just 4MP. Technically, any cell phone camera (for that matter any point-and-shoot camera without a viewfinder) is an SLR! We would then have to classify cameras based on their cost! But wait, cost in India or abroad? Which year?

We just decided not to worry about any of this and have the contest in free format, just for fun.

"Terrorists" in our daily life

2009-12-16T20:36:00.001+05:30

I have not written in quite some time... must be writer's block or something. So I thought I'll just dump something here, though it isn't as coherent as I wish it was.

If you do the mistake of watching/reading any media, you would have realized by now that pretty much everything around us can harm or even kill you. Here I am not referring to things like bombs, guns, etc. Those are so 90's-ish. These days the fad is writing about things that you always thought were benign and telling you why those are the new criminal scum that you should be highly afraid of. "Car AC can kill you", "Chocolate can harm your sleep patterns", "Pesticides in fruits could eat your first born", "Antibiotics could make you grow 10 heads" and so on. Every other day, you learn that one more thing you use regularly in your life could be the worst thing to ever happen to you.

No doubt, there is truth, in whatever quantity, in each of these reports. However, many reports project just one side of the coin, while totally ignoring the other side. I feel the report makes sense only when both the sides are thought about. Also, the reports are decorated with flashy headline and filled with exaggerated claims to ensure that people read it.

People sometimes fail to realize that this 'bad' thing that they are writing about is bad only in very long term or the chances of them really harming you are so small compared to various other things around them. I have seen a lot of people stopping doing what they have been doing for years because they saw one such report. Some examples: a) Stopping eating any rice because that's what makes you fat b) Stop eating apples because they are covered by wax (really, this has happened) c) Stop drinking coffee completely. d) Stop travelling in city buses because there is swine flue threat.

Learn to drive on 'cattle class' roads

2009-11-21T22:58:00.004+05:30

To get a learner's driver licence in Karnataka, one should be very clear whether to pass a cow from the front, back or respectfully wait till the cow gets bored and leaves the scene. (Hint: The cow lives on the road. It never leaves). The correct answer? Any of the above as far as you don't tweet about cattle and get into trouble.

Noisy week here

2009-11-16T20:11:00.003+05:30

This week our store is filled with bird sounds.

Should we fix it or should we do away with it?

2009-11-12T22:54:00.002+05:30

Most of us in India are not perfectionists. One may argue that most humans are not perfectionists, but my hunch is the percentage of perfectionists is especially low in India. While imperfection is very easily apparent in construction/manufacturing projects, it is not difficult to observe this in pretty much any area of life. Yes, software engineers included :-) Road project are completed but some stones and mud are left behind on the road. Lists, like electoral lists are compiled with spelling errors in them. Vehicles are serviced without fixing that nagging squeaky sound coming from it. Metro train pillars collapse. Race conditions in code get 'fixed' with strategically placed sleep() statements.

Sometimes some of these imperfections end up having a big impact. It is interesting to observe how people react when such impacts surface. When something is found to be not working perfectly, the ideal way is to fix it and then ensure that such things don't happen again. However, the easier way is to just remove the facility itself. I see the latter approach employed in a number of occasions. Often the public too find this more appropriate. It is much harder to fight for doing things correctly than not doing it. This is more interesting when I explain with some examples.

Specimen 1: A cement bench in a park collapsed backwards because it had not been constructed with a good enough foundation. Ideal solution: Ensure this never happens again by ensuring quality in constructing such benches in future. Implemented solution: No more benches with backrests.

Specimen 2: Many thermal power plants in our country don't handle flying ash properly. Ideal solution: Fight to ensure power plants comply with environmental guidelines. Implemented solution: Nobody wants a new power plant in their district any more. (They all want 24x7 power, btw.)

Specimen 3: You build a good highway. People want to travel faster on this road and that is one of the reasons to build a good road anyway. However, the people from the little cross roads that join the highway cannot understand that the traffic on the main road is pretty fast. This leads to accidents. Ideal solution: Educate the folks who enter the highway indiscriminately. Implemented solution: Speed breakers on the highway.

Specimen 4: This is quite good. The coffee machine in my office had a steam nozzle. It wasn't cleaned very often, so it would often be dirty. Some of the employees complained about this. Ideal solution: Keep the steam nozzle clean. Implemented solution: The steam nozzle on the coffee machine was just removed :-)

What do you think? Are there even better examples?

No compromise on cushioning

2009-11-08T12:09:00.003+05:30

We may not have a wide variety of cuisine, but our sofa is great.

Seen somewhere in East Bangalore.

You know you have been using Linux for too long when...

2009-11-03T19:58:00.001+05:30

You see a chameleon, you can instantly remember that it is the logo of SuSE Linux and can even remember that they call it "Geeko", but you just can't remember what the damn animal is called in real life.

It happened to me recently and I am surely not proud of this incidence. As I was driving down NH206 at 100kmph, I came within a second of converting a beautiful green chameleon who was crossing the road leisurely, into a thin layer of green goop stuck to the tarmac. As I swirled the car to avoid the little animal, the occupants of the car were startled. All I could blabber out immediately was "There was a ... suse ... what is it called ... geeko ... on the road" The expression on the face of my relative in the front seat, a farmer from a remote village of Shimoga district, was priceless.

ಜೈ ಕನ್ನಡಾಂಬೆ!

2009-10-30T20:48:00.001+05:30

Automation is for weenies

2009-10-29T22:14:00.002+05:30

Automation is not such a great thing in Indian context. It is cheaper to employ someone than to use machinery to automate the work. Neither is self service such a favoured concept. Employment generation is what we do.

There are examples of this everywhere around us. BBMP officials once bought, rather imported a few road sweeper trucks, probably influenced by what they saw in some foreign country in one of their educational junkets. However, due to the pressure from everyone, they had to keep these trucks un-operative, left to rust and die unceremoniously so that these don't threaten employment of the road sweeping crew. In my office there is a door that doesn't close properly. There is a security guy stationed at the door, whose only job throughout the day is to close that door if it is left open by someone!! I sometimes think it is commendable that bank ATMs became popular in India. It could very well have been a human sitting in a little counter throughout the day!

Going against this trend, BESCOM, the Bangalore Electricity supply folks, set up an automated kiosks for paying bills at their JP Nagar office. Anyone could pay bills all through the day at these kiosks. Quickly, there were a number of people who either did not want to or could not read the instructions and started getting frustrated that the machine doesn't work. I think we Indians are notorious for our inability to read instructions and maps. Further, the machine does not accept worn out notes. It took a long time for people to pay bills through this kiosk. Usually, a number of people would surround the machine, discuss about the right way of using the machine and curse BESCOM.

I had been there some time last year and I saw a change. Now there was a BESCOM employee whose job was to operate the machine on behalf of bill payers. This was kind of defeating the purpose of automated kiosk, but speeded up the operation for users and improved customer satisfaction.

I went there again last month and I saw that this concept had gone even further. Sure, the operator was there, but now there was another person, a cashier, who sat with a cash bag on a chair near the kiosk. The operator collected cash from us, exchanged old, worn out notes for crisp ones from the cashier and fed them into the machine. This was to ensure that the operation goes on smoothly. Now there are 2 humans to help out with a process that is supposed to be fully automated. Hail automation! Hail self service!!

Contrary example where self service has worked very well? Sukh Sagar, Adigas, etc.

Eighth wonder of the world

2009-10-18T23:00:00.005+05:30

Quick: What's the eighth wonder of the world (Even before we uncontroversially finalize the first seven wonders of the world)?
Clue: It isn't Rakhi Sawant.
Answer: It is "Samruddhi Maharaja Bath Stool". Ah, this was easy, wasn't it?
Applications for the ninth and tenth wonders are now being accepted.

This Poori is not very active

2009-10-14T20:00:00.004+05:30

I don't mind "Chille Vada" and "Onian Pakoda", but I totally hate it when my Pooris are idle.

There, I fixed it

2009-10-09T20:58:00.002+05:30

A flexible rear windshield.

An incomplete trip (Part 2 of 2)

2009-10-05T21:07:00.012+05:30

Hampi has improved quite a bit since I visited long back, but I think a lot more can still be done. This is a UNESCO world heritage site for god sake and the main approach road to this place is filled with potholes most of the way. There are no good restaurants and no petrol pumps in Hampi.

The rain was pouring steadily and quickly, low lying temples like the Prasanna Virupaksha underground temple were in 1 foot of water.

Carrying an umbrella in one hand and a hyperactive two year old in the other is not the recommended way of seeing a vast spread of outdoor monuments. By afternoon we had managed to (sort of) see most of the 'highlights' in Hampi. Hampi's temples don't have carvings as intricate as the ones you see in Belur and Halebidu. That's because the carvings in Belur/Halebidu have been done in soap stone, which is much softer than granite used in Hampi. A striking feature here is that while the lower levels of all buildings are done with stone, top portions, including the gopuras of temples have been made with bricks. Hence the top portions of many buildings has eroded in rain in all these years. Seeing Hampi is depressing to me. Nowhere else I have seen such a wonderful place being reduced to ruins by fellow humans at such a scale.

By evening it was still raining and we were at the Tungabhadra (TB) Dam was full to the brim and water was being let out from all it's crest gates. As per my plan we were supposed to drive to Bijapur the next morning. That's when Ananth called. I have accepted a piece of good advice from my close circle of friends from time to time, more often from Ananth than anyone else. He told me the devastation rain was creating in Bijapur and Bagalkot districts and asked me to reconsider my decision to head North. Within the next couple of hours I had received a few more phone calls asking me not to go towards Bijapur. The news being churned out in TV channels clearly showed the horror caused by rains. It was one of the worst floods in the history of these places and I had planned to head straight into this mess. Weather reports predicted more rains on 1st October. Hence it was an easy decision to cancel heading to Bijapur. One other thought that was floated was visiting Mantralaya before heading to Bangalore. I took a close look at my Santro. It neither looked like a helicopter, nor like a motor boat. Considering the amount of water being let out of the TB dam in Hospet, going to Mantralaya was going to be extremely risky, so I backed out. I had to thank my decision later, considering the whole of Mantralaya, including the Raghavendra temple, got submerged in 10 feet of water that day. I only lost a chance to be on the news, though ;-)

I started driving towards Shimoga on 1st Oct. While most of the journey was easy, I had to pass through a stream of water running on the road at one place due to a nearby lake overflowing.

A passer by assured me that it was safe to cross, but he also cautioned me to have my car in 1st gear and accelerator pressed. He then casually mentioned that he had just driven his M800 across the stream, did not take enough precaution, water had gotten into some parts of the engine and was waiting for it to dry!!! While I absolutely did not want my car to get stuck in a water stream in some remote area of Davanagere district, I surely did not want to drive back 20KMs on a bad road either. After having watched the situation for a few minutes and having seen a couple of other vehicles making across safely, I too set out into the water and made it across safely. Rest of the journey to my wife's place in Shimoga district was eventless, considering rain was no more an event by now. It rained non-stop till the morning of 3rd October. I drove back to Bangalore on 3rd and luckily the rain gods finally showed some mercy on me and made my drive easy.

An incomplete trip (Part 1)

2009-10-05T20:41:00.005+05:30

I had taken off the entire last week to go on a trip to North Karnataka. I had planned to visit Chitradurga, Hampi, Bijapur, Badami, Aihole, Pattadakal, Hubli and so on.

We set out on 29th Sep to my first destination, Chitrad urga. The road to Chitradurga from Bangalore (NH4) is excellent and I could drive at more than 100kmph most of the time. A very pleasant cloudy weather welcomed us at Chitradurga fort. The fort is in a very good condition considering the battles it has withstood centuries ago. Fort walls are mostly intact and the ASI has done a good job of preserving it. Seeing the fort was not an easy task though... carrying a 2 year old around is not very easy.

One interesting aspect of visiting Chitradurga fort now-a-days is watching Jyoti Raju scale the walls of the fort with utmost ease. He has now become famous enough to appear in all news papers and magazines. Here is a video of him I captured.

By noon it was raining cats and dogs in Chitradurga, so we decided to proceed towards my next destination, Hospet. The road from Chitradurga to Hospet (NH13) is in a deplorable condition most of the way. The road has a heavy traffic of trucks from the mid and North India heading towards Bangalore. The 2-lane road is filled with potholes and when it rains it is hard to say how deep a pothole is. Generous scraping of car's under belly resulted.

The next day I woke up to realize that the rains that began last afternoon had not yet stopped. The town of Hospet, while not very nice to tread on in the best of weather, was a terrible slushy mess during rains. My plans of watching Hampi was under serious threat now. The cozy confines of my room in Malligi hotel was tempting me to just curl up in my blankets and sleep off. However, having travelled all this long I was going to ensure I get my money's worth. Armed with umbrellas we set out to see Hampi.

The speciality is that there is nothing special

2009-09-28T22:23:00.005+05:30

"Specil", to be precise.
(Seen at a well-known, traditional South Indian restaurant in Koramangala)

Want dinner? comply with the dresscode

2009-09-25T18:20:00.002+05:30

The notice reads:

"You are hereby requested not to wear SHORTS, LUNGIES or HAWAI CHAPPALS while dining VISHALA RESTAURANT during DINNER from "

No, this was not found at Bangalore Club. Heck, not even in Bangalore. I found this in Mysore, at one of the older hotels, Dasaprakash Paradise.

Hmm... looks like high end socialites like M F Hussain can't dine here. However, it is okay to wear shorts, lungies or hawai chappals for lunch :-)

Getting used to little luxuries in life

2009-09-23T23:36:00.002+05:30

A couple of days ago, it finally happened. My house was plunged into darkness for the first time since we moved in more than 4.5 years ago. Our most trusted inverter finally gave up against constant battering of power cuts we are going through due to some major electrical cable work going on in this part of the city. The house fell dark at around 8 in the night.

We saw it coming, but due to being conditioned by years of easy, predictable life, we were not at all prepared for it. We did not know where (and whether) we kept candles any more, our torches did not have battery in them, our emergency light had long been unused, hence did not work. My daughter, having never seen a dark night all through her life, just could not understand why we were not turning on lights. We did not even have enough drinking water - we had always taken for granted that the water purifier is always there. It was also the worst time to realize that my cell phone was almost out of battery and I had to make a few important phone calls. It was a total chaos for a while.

This incidence made me reflect on my own life. In my childhood I had lived in a place where there was no municipal electricity at all. We only had a diesel generator for the entire village that ran from 7 to 10PM. We did not have a phone at home till I was in college. Now I find it hard to live a couple of hours without electricity. It is easy to get used to luxuries in life. We tend to assume that our life only improves from where it is and not even think about the possibility of degrade. When a difficult time arrives, we are as ready for it as a zoo-bred tiger suddenly left to fend for itself in the jungle.

Head in the belly?

2009-09-07T22:46:00.003+05:30

Did this truck eat it's own head? ;-)

Diversity of markets

2009-09-06T22:40:00.002+05:30

There is a phenomenon that is common for a sub-species of humans called Engineers, especially the male of this species. They buy the latest and greatest gadgetry and feel a sense of superiority complex over other members of the species. My camera has 12 Megapixels, whereas yours has only 10. My mobile has wifi and 3G, yours doesn't. My computer (on which I only suft the web,) has quad-core CPU. My toaster can do my tax calculations.. and so on. A lot of us are affected by this feeling to some extent. When some of us are face-to-face with people who choose their gadgets based on a completely different set of criteria, according to which our gadgets are inferior to theirs, we are often dumbfounded. I was in one such situation recently.

I was showing off my new Samsung Star to some of my relatives who live in a rural area. I was expecting them to be impressed with the features of my phone on which I had spent close to 10K. However, that was not to be. I was not prepared for the features they desired in a mobile phone and I was surprised about how different our choice making was. The first question they asked me was whether the phone supported dual sim cards. This is a much needed feature in remote rural areas where cell phone coverage is not very good and they would have to use whichever network was available. They cared about playing radio (AM and FM) without having to connect the headphone. About the quality of the built-in speaker. About the ability to work on least signal strength. About the robustness of the phone. About battery life. About having a built-in flash light. About being able to get repairs done in the nearby town. They didn't understand why I cared so much about the touch screen or full qwerty keyboard or ability to charge from a computer's USB port. Many of the phones around them, from brands like Karbonn and Micromax were beating my phone hands down, while costing much less. I learnt some valuable lessons about the diversity of the markets and am now able to better appreciate the jobs of marketing managers, who have to make critical decisions about the features to support and the markets to target.

In search of the perfect IMAP mail client on Linux

2009-08-08T10:23:00.003+05:30

This is the story of my search for the perfect e-mail client on Linux. I use an IMAP mail id at work to talk to open source world. I download mails from IMAP server to my machine and view it locally. I subscribe to several mailing lists, hence I use extensive filtering. Like most people who work on Linux, I like my mail client to behave exactly how I configure it, nothing less, nothing more. I like my mail client to be fast and trustworthy and needless to say, not mangle my patches. I keep changing my Linux distro, so I like a mail client that is readily available on a wide set of distros and is being supported actively. I don't like to compile my mail client from sources because of the hassle it creates on a constantly updated machine. Also, the client should store mails in grep-able formats for easy searching later.

None of the requirements above are too out-of-the-world. Most people who work on open source projects, especially Linux kernel, have similar requirements. However, everyone has his/her own favorite mail client and they want you to believe that theirs is the best. When I started working on Linux a few years ago, folks around me told me to use mutt. They gave me a number of reasons to use a non-GUI mail client, even though most of the reasons were invalid or unimportant. For example, it consumes less memory (but I have enough free memory all the time, I never consume swap), it loads up very fast (but I shut down my mail client only once in a week or so), it is fast (is every other mail client painfully slow?) it is text mode (but you use Firefox, right? not elinks/lynx?)

I used mutt for some time. After a while I started wondering if there was anything better. Yeah, mutt was fast and light, but it had a steep learning curve, a few features weren't part of the standard binary that went with the distros, it was easy to make mistakes with procmail filtering rules. Hence, going against the advice by many around me, I set out looking for a GUI based mail client. I decided that I will use mutt only if I have no choice. That would actually be a defeat for GUI based mail clients on Linux.

Mozilla Thunderbird: Probably the most popular mail client on Linux. Though Thunderbird tends to mangle patches, there are ways to make it behave well. However, in spite of doing everything I could, it sometimes mangled some of my patches in strange ways. One of the primary problems in Thunderbird was that it didn't have a native option to "inline" text files. so I set out looking for alternatives.

KMail: I was a KDE user back then, so my next stop was KMail. For quite a few years KMail served as my favorite mail client. It doesn't mess up patches, has enough configuration options to make it behave exactly the way I want, has good filtering that can be easily migrated when I change distros and is generally pretty trustworthy. Unfortunately KMail is part of KDE and KDE4.X is hell bent on fixing everything that is NOT broken. In Fedora11 I hit some ugly problems with KMail. It could not display some of multipart/alternative mails properly, it mangled one of the patch I sent and so on. This, combined with a few quirks I was living with all these years (for example, moving all mails from /var/spool/mail/ to it's internal dirs) made me finally think of trying the alternatives.

Evolution: Evolution has been shipping as the default mail client on Gnome for a number of years. It should have served my purpose pretty well. However, on Fedora11 I hit a number of problems with it. It crashed frequently. It messed up the mail header indexes that it maintained and hence could not read filtered mails. Reading through mailing lists and bugzillas, I realized that Evolution has hit problems like this once in a while. This was a non-starter.

Sylpheed: Sylpheed is a light weight, fast and simple mail reader that is available on most distros. It worked very well for my needs. However, there seemed to be some bugs in it. I could not change keyboard shortcuts, for example. No use.

Claws-mail (Slogan: "it bites"): Claws branched off Sylpheed codebase and is in fact Sylpheed on steroids. It seems to have all features of Sylpheed (and more), but not the bugs. Most distros ship binary for it and it has an active user/developer base. For the last 6 weeks I have been very happy with this mail client. It is _very_ fast, has enough config options to keep me happy, good filtering options, good community of users. It can do everything I want and doesn't come in the way of my work. It has a funny slogan and a strange logo, but it works beautifully. So until I face bad problems on this, I am going to be on Claws-mail.

I now have 6 mail clients simultaneously configured on my machine: mutt, Thunderbird, KMail, Evolution, Sylpheed and Claws! How's that?

Jog falls

2009-08-05T22:23:00.004+05:30

I was at Jog falls on Monday, trying to do at least a part of the trip idea I suggested here. Unfortunately the Linganamakki dam, which has to release the water that dances down Jog falls, did not get full yet this year. This meant the falls was far from it's full glory. You can still enjoy it if you are going there for the first time and are willing to climb down the gorge and get wet in the water at the bottom.

Notice the people at the top of the falls to get an idea of relative size of the falls.

Installing Java apps on Samsung Star

2009-07-30T19:52:00.002+05:30

As I described in my previous comment, installing Java apps on my Samsung Star S5233A has been a pain so far. It is possible to install Java apps over WAP, but if you have downloaded an app to your PC there is no easy way to install it on the phone. After following spooky procedures described by various people on the web and still failing to install, I decided it was not worth it. Instead, I upload my Java apps to websites that let you download the same over WAP (example: www.davidpye.com). I upload .jar from my PC to the website and then point my phone's browser to the location the website specifies. Works like a charm.

Samsung Star S5233 review

2009-07-19T10:07:00.005+05:30

After months of dillydallying about buying a new mobile phone, I was yet to make up my mind, but fate decided to put an end to my dilemma. My old faithful Nokia 3230 conked off again and any I didn't have the mood to resurrect it again by spending more money. After a feverish research on the web for a couple of days and coming within minutes from buying a Nokia E63, I finally ended up with a Samsung Star S5233. Samsung Star must be one of the fastest selling phones in India right now. It is one of the cheapest full touch screen phones of any time (I paid Rs. 9550 inclusive of VAT) and it has enough features to attract the average phone buyer.

On the hardware side, the phone has good build quality and feels quite nice in the hands. It looks and feels like an iPhone to an extent. The resistive touch screen, though not in the same league as iPhone, is not too far behind either. It has actual buttons for volume adjustment, camera, locking the screen and call functions. The camera is 3.2 megapixels, but without autofocus and flash, can generate good photos only outdoors. The stylus is bulky and doesn't fit into the body of the phone, but there is no real need to use the stylus unless you are browsing the web. There is no wifi or 3G. I like the fact that the phone's battery is charged through the same micro-usb that is used to connect it to computer. However, I would have liked to see an independent audio jack.

I don't know what OS it runs. I suppose it is some proprietary one. The UI, though it feels very different for someone coming from an old Nokia, was quite easy to learn. The way to do a lot of things changes significantly (for the better) the moment you move to a touch screen. I think laptops will (and should) start shipping with touch screens soon. The applications provided with the phone are quite good. It has a document viewer that can read pdfs too, google maps, youtube, reasonably good web browser, facebook app, weather app and so on. The phone does a good job of playing music too. I have mostly positives about software on the phone.

Negatives on software side include OS crashes, especially when I had connected through bluetooth. I could not find many applications to download. It would have been nice to have a few more games on the phone, especially the ones that use motion sensing and gyroscope. I suppose the phone is still too new. The software they provide (Samsung New PC Studio) to make the phone talk to Windows computers is absolutely horrendous. They have made it unnecessarily complicated and seems to be quite buggy. The phone did not want to connect to my Linux box through USB until I put a memory card in it.

So I conclude that this phone is pretty good value for money and it deserves the tag some people have given it: "Poor man's iPhone".

Update:
I have one more good and one more bad thing to say about the phone.
Good: Camera. While I was unimpressed by the pictures I got indoors, I was able to get much better pictures in brighter conditions. Here are some proof:

Bad: Software installation. The phone supports Java apps, but there is no easy way to install third-party applications on the phone. I have googled for it and found that some people have installed Java apps successfully, but the procedure itself sounds like black magic and I have not succeeded so far. I wish there was an easy way to install Java apps using my PC.

Update2:
Some of the commenters have asked about the battery performance. I am not a heavy user of the phone. I talk may be 10-15 minutes on the phone every day, take 3-4 pics with the camera, play 10-15 minutes of games and listen to a bit of music. The battery is lasting roughly 5 days for me. Of course, the phone is still very new.

I have not attempted to connect my PC to the internet through this phone. Hence I don't know how well that works. I want to do the other way around, though. I want to connect the phone to the internet through the computer. However, this doesn't seem to be easy. Currently I use Airtel Live connection, which costs real money!

Don't let anyone overtake you

2009-07-08T22:29:00.002+05:30

In order to prevent others from overtaking you, you would have to drive very fast. If you can't do that, you may load the luggage in a creative manner to scare away potential over-takers.

Amusing singing

2009-06-21T16:45:00.001+05:30

My 4 year old nephew singing the song "Minchagi Neenu Baralu". He can't pronounce a few sounds, most notably "L", which makes his singing quite amusing (if you know Kannada)

A trip idea

2009-06-18T21:05:00.002+05:30

I don't write many travel blogs now-a-days. And for a good reason. I don't travel much. However, I felt the urge to write a bit about the last trip I did, mainly because it will be a good place to visit during the coming months.

I had been to Honnavar. It is a town on the west coast of Karnataka, roughly 450 Kms from Bangalore. The town itself is quite nice and there are a number of nice places of interest around it. First of all, the road to Honnavar is quite nice. It passes through Shimoga, Sagar, Jog Falls, Gersoppa, which means it is one of the scenic routes. The road is in a good shape, and there isn't too much traffic on this road, so it is a pleasure to drive on this road. In the next couple of months the road is going to turn even more green and scenic due to the monsoon rains.

In my view, mid-August is the best time to visit Jog Falls, because there will be a lot of water and a lot of greenery. Agreed, the rains make it inconvenient, but if you want convenience you should stick to the Forum Mall. That too, only on weekdays. As you approach Honnavar, you will notice that the hilly (Ghat) roads don't end even when you are just a couple of Kms from the coast. That is the speciality of the sea coast in this part. The hills stretch almost till the beach. The beach in Honnavar is clean and neat, but there are few other beaches nearby as well. Depending on the taste and amount of time on hand, there are a number of places of interest all around: Gokarna, Murdeshwar, Dhareshwar, Idagunji, Apsara Konda, Maravanthe, Karwar, Dandeli, come to mind. If you are willing to drive 3 hours, you can visit Udupi, Agumbe or even Goa. So I think this is a good place to plan a trip somewhere between mid July - mid August. One word of caution: the rain here can be extremely heavy. Avoid driving when it is raining heavily. Especially in the night. I made the mistake and I know how hard it is.

BTW, I stayed at Kamat Executive Inn, Honnavar. It is pretty decent and costs around 500 Rs for non-AC and around 1000 Rs for AC. The "kotte kadabu", idly cooked in leaves of jackfruit tree, that they serve in the morning is delicious. There are a few other lodges around this place.

Oh, there are no petrol pumps for around 50-60 Kms before reaching Honnavar. So beware!

Approximately unknown?

2009-06-15T23:28:00.003+05:30

I have been enjoying my shiny new Fedora 11 installation so far. Lots of good things to say about it. The battery meter however is extremely... er.. diplomatic. It says "You have approximately Unknown time of remaining battery life" :-)

Let the games begin!

2009-06-15T13:32:00.000+05:30

Now that India is out of T20 world cup, the blame game season can commence. Expect anything and everything to be blamed, including Dhoni's ego, media problems, Yuvraj's personal life, Sehwag's attitude, Ishant's hair style, over-confidence, new jersey colour, planetary positions, terrorism and so on. The so called experts will come out with insightful columns which are so easy to write in hind sight. Don't be surprised if there are demands for pulling the captain down. Let the fun begin!

UNIX turns 40!

2009-06-09T21:01:00.002+05:30

The OS that most people start studying Operating Systems with is turning 40! I have known it for 13 years. I started off with SCO Unix in one of the computer training institutes. It surely wasn't love at first sight. In those days it was very common to see SCO Unix, because that was the only prominent UNIX that ran on Intel. Remember, Linux was hardly on the horizon back then. Later, at my first job my 'desktop' was a dumb terminal connected through a serial ports to the central SVR4 server. This meant it was complete text mode. We had to go looking for a Windows machine to see image attachments sent in e-mails :-) I suppose most people start their UNIX experience with Linux.

Hell is full!

2009-05-09T22:25:00.003+05:30

I don't doubt him even for a second.

Geocities is closing down

2009-04-26T16:59:00.002+05:30

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.

How's the contrast?

2009-04-22T22:47:00.001+05:30

That's my daughter.

How to get thrilled?

2009-04-18T11:48:00.003+05:30

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 :-)

ಮಹಾರಾಷ್ಟ್ರದಲ್ಲಿ ಕರುನಾಡ ಸೇನೆ?

2009-04-10T13:00:00.002+05:30

Which city is MH-13 from? Sollapur?

Vehicle registration numbers

2009-03-20T10:03:00.004+05:30

I have this habit of observing vehicle registration numbers. In the last few years, one can see vehicles from various parts of India in Bangalore. I am referring to private vehicles here, not those heavy trucks. While DL, AP, TN, KL are pretty common, sometimes you get to see exotic(!) ones like Nagaland (NL), Sikkim (SK) and so on. I have seen a TVS Scooty from J&K! Recently I saw this one from Lakshadweep.

An unexpected question...

2009-03-15T11:43:00.003+05:30

We were having a snack at a darshini. For the Bangalore noob, a darshini in Bangalore is a simple, low cost self-service restaurant with high tables and no seating, just like the Shanthi Sagar or Adigas in your neighbourhood. My daughter was perched on the high table, visibly unhappy with the Rava Idly she was getting to eat while eyeing Gobi Manchurian that we were refusing to give her. An elderly gentleman, may be in his late seventies, walked in. My daughter has this habit of staring at strangers with wide eyes and blank face, not unlike how Mowgli must have stared at the first humans he saw. This invariably draws the stranger's attention, which leads to the stranger trying to talk to her. She then loosens up, ready to give a big smile or even a hand shake. This man, rather than trying to chat up the kid, asked us "ಮಗುವಿನ ನಕ್ಷತ್ರ ಯಾವುದು?" "What is the nakshatra (birth star) of the child?". We had as much expected this question as the shareholders expected the Satyam scandal. A number of people ask us what her name is, never her nakshatra. We somehow gathered our wits and told him her birth star and he said something like "It is a very good star, she will get very good education" and left the scene. While my wife thought it was strange that someone would ask this question, I was quite amused by it. This person did not look like a Purohit, he was just a person who grew up in a traditional environment and doesn't want to change with the changing times.

Most liked feature in web browsers?

2009-03-10T22:26:00.000+05:30

What is your most liked new feature in web browsers in the recent times? To me, it was tabbed browsing till some time ago. However, this is not a new feature. It was there when I first started using the earliest betas of Phoenix browser (2002?) and even before that, in Opera. In the recent times, the feature I have liked most is the ability to search in the address bar for URLs I entered in the past. I think this came with Firefox3.x series and is also referred to as "Awesome bar" by some. Currently, Google Chrome has extended this functionality to search using any text in your previously viewed web pages. Even better, I would say, but Chrome doesn't (yet) run on Linux. If you know an add-on to Firefox that can provide this functionality, do let me know.

To lengthen the peak of our happiness...

2009-03-07T12:52:00.002+05:30

No, this is not one of those spam advertisements that offers to improve a certain aspect of your life. No sir, this is much more nobler than that. As you know, the success of a certain movie has brought DIGNITY (yes, dignity in capital letters) to our Country. Now I am sure you are wondering "I only wish someone was striking a right chord to lengthen the peak of our happiness!" Worry no more, your prayers have been answered. No idea what that kid is doing there, though.

So who won?

2009-02-15T13:06:00.003+05:30

So who won yesterday? Was it the group in favour of Valentine's day celebrations or the one against it? TOI making everyone believe that this was a game with the two opponents clearly marked out and only one was going to win.

Anyway, now that the dust has settled, I picked up today's newspapers. I subscribe to two newspapers, Vijaya Karnataka in Kannada and Times of India. Incidentally, TOI bought VK a couple of years back, so both are now owned by the same parent company. However, there is a big difference between what these two reported about yesterday.

VK version:
"ಬಿಗಿ ಬಂದೋಬಸ್ತ್ ನಡುವೆಯೂ ಪ್ರೇಮಿಗಳ ದಿನಾಚರಣೆಗೆ ರಾಜ್ಯದ ಹಲವೆಡೆ ಅಡ್ಡಿ-ಆತಂಕ ಎದುರಾಯಿತು.
...
ಶ್ರೀರಾಮ ಸೇನೆಯ ಬೆದರಿಕೆಯಿಂದಾಗಿ ಪ್ರೇಮಿಗಳ ದಿನಾಚರಣೆ ಬೆಂಗಳೂರಿನಲ್ಲಿ ರಂಗೇರಲಿಲ್ಲ. ಲಾಲ ಬಾಗ್, ಕಬ್ಬನ್ ಪಾರ್ಕ್, ಕಾಲೇಜು ಕಾರ್ನರ್, ರೆಸ್ಟೋರೆಂಟ್, ಪಬ್ಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರೇಮಿಗಳ ಎಂದಿನ ಕಲರವ ಕಾಣಸಿಗಲಿಲ್ಲ."

which roughly translates to:
"In spite of heavy security, there was disruption to Valentine's day celebrations in many places of the state.
...
Due to the threat by Sri Rama Sene Vantentine's day celebrations in Bangalore was pale. Lal Bagh, Cubbon Park, college corners, restaurants and pubs did not see the usual level of revelry."

TOI version:
"Love and peace thrived in perfect harmony in Bangalore and other parts of Karnataka on one of the most-anticipated Valentine’s Days ever. Bangalore was swathed in red and pink. Thanks to the police which put away potential disrupters, including Hindu Rashtriya Sena chief Pramod Mutalik, behind bars and the civil society which decided to push back hard against moral policing, V-Day came up smelling roses.
...
By evening, the boulevards of MG Road and the sidewalks of Brigade Road, Residency Road and other high streets were chock-ablock with youngsters, out with friends and love interests, in throngs. Pubs began to fill up as the sun came down and restaurants reported brisk footfalls. Star eateries, which had sold out their V-day specials, saw couples — young and old — enjoying their romantic dinners serenaded by romantic music and covered by discreet, high security.
...
The scene was similar in other parts of the state, though the scale and colour of the festivities were a pitch lower than Bangalore."

Wow, isn't that strange? Two newspapers from the same publishing house, reporting on the same incidence, being so different in their reports? One thing that is very clear from all this is that TOI, though it owns VK, doesn't have much control over the contents of it. May be they want to give this kind of independence to VK, but my bets are that with the kind of people who run VK, it won't be possible for TOI to control the contents of VK too much unless they kick out a lot of the editorial folks.

Weather and food habits: epilogue

2009-02-13T22:11:00.001+05:30

Recently I had wondered "Why do we like to eat spicy food when it gets cold, but overall spiciest food habits are seen in hottest places on earth". I got two responses from my friends.

Hariprasad said: Its almost as if we are too used to the 'hot' weather and cannot tolerate a deviation from the same. That's our natural state, kind of. So, when the weather gets cold, we are actually 'uncomfortable'. Since we can't do much with the weather, we wear warm clothes and eat hot food trying to 'restore' normalcy, at least in our body."

Ego said: "My Friend wanderlust had the following answer: "it's because in hot climates, food spoils easily unless you preserve it with spices. check it out... the more away from the equator you go, the blander the food.”"

Both explanations sound logical and they are not exclusive of each other. I guess the answer is a combination of these two. Hence I guess I sorta know the answer now. Thanks folks!

Pataguppa bridge

2009-02-11T22:32:00.007+05:30

I mentioned a place in the backwaters of Linganamakki dam in my previous post. So where is this place and what is the interesting history behind this place?

The submerged bridge I mentioned is Pataguppa Bridge (ಪಟಗುಪ್ಪ). If you visit the Wikimapia page, zoom out a couple of times so that you get a good idea of how it looks. The place looks like this on Google Earth:

This place is along a road that used to run from Hosanagara to Sagara towns in Shimoga district. Long long back, before our parents were born, this was _the_ road between Hosanagara and Sagara. Later, in 1930s, they built a dam called Madenur (ಮಡೆನೂರು) dam in this area. This dam submerged significant area of land around this place and cut off this road link. Hence they built a bridge at this place to keep the road connectivity on. Remember, this was built during the Raj. It was built completely using stones.

Much later, in 1960s, the Linganamakki dam was built. This was the big daddy of Madenur dam, so it submerged even more land, pretty much half of Hosanagara Taluk, including the Madenur dam. Yes, a whole dam was submerged. In summer when the water level in Linganamakki dam comes down, one can see the Madenur dam even now. It is still intact, even after being submerged in water for so many years! Along with the dam, the bridge too went underwater! Hence the Government increased the height of this bridge, by erecting stone pillars on top of existing bridge and building a road on it supported by iron beams. The bridge was still going underwater for a few months during rainy season, but was usable during other times of the year. This went on till some time in the 1970s, when the top half of the dam, the one built on iron beams, collapsed under the weight of a truck. There were thoughts of repairing the broken bridge, but they really needed a new bridge, one that is remains above the water even when the dam is full. However, the pleas of people who lived in this area fell on deaf ears. The road link was permanently lost. All the buses and trucks that used to ply on this road started taking another, longer route to travel between Sagara and Hosanagara. Population of this area dwindled, only the core residents remained here and rest of the world started forgetting this area.

This is how the bridge looks now. Observe the lower bridge, which is still intact even after more than 70 years.

Now, decades after this bridge collapsed, the Government has finally begun building a new bridge here. It will mean there will be a lot of heavy machinery in what has been a serene place so far. They will huff and puff, pull down a lot of trees, dig out a lot of mud, project will get delayed numerous times and eventually there will be a new bridge. This road will come alive again and the lives of people living here will change forever. Again. All this will probably take 5 more years, but hopefully it will happen.

BTW, I have not visited the Madenur dam so far. I surely want to go there this summer, when the water levels are low enough to explore this place.

Some more photos from this place are here.

The magic of a spectacular sunset

2009-02-01T21:17:00.004+05:30

There is nothing like sitting on the ground watching a spectacular sunset slowly taking place. Last week, as I sat near a submerged bridge in the thick of Malnad region, on the shores of backwaters of Linganamakki dam, built across Sharavathi river, mother nature was putting up a great show. Everything was right about that place and time: A huge water body with tree stubs in it, dense forests on both sides of water, a few birds merrily singing along, eager to reach home before it gets dark, a lone boat, doing the last round for the day across the water, a handful of friends sitting along with me, but nobody speaking a word, just soaking in the beauty of the moment. It was magical.

Once the sun sets, the night falls surprisingly fast. Within a few more minutes, it is all over and time to go home with memories. For the sake of memories, I did take a few pictures. I did try all manual settings on my compact camera, leading to some really nice shots. The first one below is in pretty high resolution.

Weather and food habits

2009-01-30T18:36:00.000+05:30

A couple of weeks back it was pretty cold in Bangalore. There used to be a bit of wind throughout the day, adding to the cold. The floor in my home - all granite, had gotten pretty cold, making me curl up my feet under me when I sat on the sofa. I was munching on some spicy snack and gulping down piping hot filter coffee, saying to myself: "This is the ideal weather to eat hot and spicy food like pakodas, bhajjis and so on".

I don't know what is it about the cold weather that makes people go after spicy foods. As I started thinking about it, I realized that this is not a universal phenomenon. In fact, just the contrary is probably true. Think of places which are well known for spicy foods and chances are, they are some of the hottest places on earth. Mexico, India, Thailand. Even within India, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan. On the other hand, most people in cold climate, like Europeans, prefer non-spicy foods. Even within India, Kashmiri food is pretty sweet, isn't it? Of course, there are exceptions to these rules. Especially in India, where there are exceptions to pretty much every rule. However, I can surely say, in general, cold places are not well known for spicy foods. So what is the relation between the weather and food habits? I did some googling, but could not spot anything obvious quickly.

If you know, please do let me know.

Spam taking over the internet

2009-01-29T18:33:00.002+05:30

I read recently that 95% of all e-mail in the world is just spam. I can readily believe that. I am pretty conservative about giving out my mail ids on the internet. In spite of that, gmail tells me I receive more spam than genuine mail. I used to use a mail id on an obscure website long time back. The only reason for using their mail id was that they were giving me 100MB of storage, whereas everyone else was at 2-4MB range back then. I had not visited that mail id in years. Last week somehow I remembered this id and curiously logged into it. While I was not looking, this mail id was slowly and steadily accumulating around 30 spam e-mail ids every day. Everything from offering me millions of dollars for free to offering me online degrees to selling me the blue diamond-shaped pill at very low cost. Some of the mails claimed that they arrived long before I, for that matter, the internet, was born!

Update: Yes, I know why it is 1969. After all, I have worked on UNIX!

ಡಬ್ಬದ ಹೊರಗಿನ ಯೋಚನೆ

2009-01-18T15:20:00.008+05:30

ಮಕ್ಕಳು ಯೋಚಿಸುವ ರೀತಿಯನ್ನು ಊಹಿಸುವುದೂ ಕಷ್ಟ. ಇದಕ್ಕೊಂದು ಉತ್ತಮ ಉದಾಹರಣೆ ನನ್ನ ತಂಗಿಯ ಮಗನ ಡಬ್ಬದ ಹೊರಗಿನ ಯೋಚನೆ (ಅದೇ, "thinking outside the box" ಕಣ್ರೀ!)

ಒಂದು ದಿನ ಶಾಲೆಯಿಂದ ಮನೆಗೆ ಬರುವಾಗ ಒಂದು ಒಂಟೆಯನ್ನು ನೋಡಿದ. ಮಕ್ಕಳಿಗೆ ಸಹಜವಾಗಿ ಎಲ್ಲಾ ವಿಷಯಗಳ ಮೇಲೂ ಕುತೂಹಲ. "ಅದೇನಮ್ಮ?" "ಅದು ಒಂಟೆ ಕಣಪ್ಪಾ".

ಮಾರನೆಯ ದಿನ ಅದೇ ಜಾಗದಲ್ಲಿ ಮೂರು ಒಂಟೆಗಳು ಹೋಗುತ್ತಿದ್ದವು. ತಕ್ಷಣ ಅವನ ಬಾಯಿಯಿಂದ ಹೊರಟೇ ಬಿಟ್ಟಿತ್ತು: "ಒಂಟೆ, ಟೂಟೇ, ತ್ರೀಟೇ" ("one-tay, two-tay, three-tay"). ಹೇಗಿದೆ? ಹೊಟ್ಟೆ ಹುಣ್ಣಾಗುವಷ್ಟು ನಗುತ್ತಿದ್ದ ನನ್ನ ತಂಗಿಯ ಸ್ಕೂಟಿ ಬೀಳದೆ ಇದ್ದದ್ದೇ ಆಶ್ಚರ್ಯ.

Petrol bunk: part of Bangalore's history?

2009-01-18T14:02:00.005+05:30

Last Friday, as I pulled my car into my usual BP Petrol bunk (Yes, we call them petrol bunks in Bangalore, not petrol pumps) on Hosur Road, I noticed something different. I usually fill petrol at Venkateswara and Co, which is on South-bound Hosur road, just before Silk Board fly-over. This place is the most reliable one on my way home. They have never tried to cheat me either by not making the meter zero before beginning or distracting me while petrol is being filled (you know, "Cash or Card, saar?" types). The owner is usually right there, ready to jump in and ensure that the staff don't cheat. This day, the whole place was lit up with colorful lights. There was a little podium made at one end and flower bouquets were placed all over the place, including on the pumps. The owner, all excited, was roaming around instructing the staff to make final moment touch-ups to the decoration. It looked like there was going to be a speech of something.

I picked up a chat with the cashier while my car was being filled. He says "It has been 50 years since this petrol bunk was opened, sir. That's why the celebrations". I can't believe my ears. "50 years?" I say with a lot of exclamation in my voice. "Yes, golden jubilee. The current owner is a third generation owner of this place". The cashier said the news in a matter-of-fact way. I am sure he cannot feel as excited as the owner for this event. After all, he works there for a salary and the owner being strict may in fact be a hinderance for his income.

As I drove off, I kept telling to myself: "Man, 1959. Really? What was there in India back then?" Was Premier Padmini there, at least? This page says NO. Was Ambassador there, after all, it has existed for ever? This page says Ambassador started in 1957, so it was barely there. So there were pretty much no cars at all, except may be a few imported ones. Even Tata trucks hadn't been around for too long. Secondly, this place was well outside the city. Hosur road was probably there, but it wasn't going up to Madras back then. There was no Koramangala and no Indiranagar, forget about BTM. So this place must have been one of the extremely few petrol bunks in Bangalore back then. This is incredible that they have been selling fuel for that long. This place is a part of Bangalore's history!

First rain of 2009

2009-01-08T16:13:00.001+05:30

I have this tradition of recording the first rain of the year I see in Bangalore. Today (Jan 8), it rained. Well, okay, it kinda drizzled, but what the heck. This is probably the earliest rain I have seen in Bangalore. Another interesting observation: I have seen it rain in Bangalore in most of the months of the year. Probably all, with the possible exception of February. I wonder how many cities in India can claim this.

Start early!

2009-01-05T21:19:00.003+05:30

To ensure the next generation is well versed with Linux, not some proprietary OS, it is important to give them an early start. How early? 1 year olds are perfect.

Manufacturing might

2008-12-31T07:02:00.001+05:30

I am amazed at how good China is in manufacturing everything that was ever to be made. Especially toys. Pretty much every toy you can buy - both in stores and foot paths, are now made in China. I bought a little plastic bird, fitted with a motion sensor, a speaker and a little 'button' cell, so that it chirps when it senses any movement near it. They can make it in a huge factory somewhere in China, ship it all the way to India, possibly Chennai, transport it on road to Bangalore, distribute to stockists, resellers and foot-path vendors and they can still sell it for a meagre 20 Rupees. What should be the cost of manufacturing the toy? At what price can they sell this toy in the town it is manufactured at? While this is terrific, what is even more amazing is that if you want to replace the battery in the toy, you will need to shell out 40-70 Rupees. Do your math now!

Bangalore? Bengaluru?

2008-12-16T21:01:00.002+05:30

Bangalore is on it's way to become Bengaluru. There are people who like the change and there are people who don't. There is yet another class of people who cannot make up their mind either way. They spell it "Bangalooru" :-)

A feature I wish for

2008-12-11T13:52:00.000+05:30

I sometimes connect my laptop to an LCD monitor at work. The monitor supports lower resolution than what my laptop supports. Hence I often keep switching between two resolutions on my GNOME desktop. When I switch to higher resolution, all my windows retain their old size (pixel-wise), so they turn out to be too small. I need to manually resize each window to my taste.

What I need is a way to set the size of the window to be relative to the size of the desktop. That is, I want all my terminal windows to be around 75% of the width of the desktop and 100% of the height of the desktop, excluding the taskbars. I want my pidgin IRC client to be 50% in width and 75% in height. Is that even possible with the existing GNOME desktop? If not, is it possible with any other desktop on Linux? If not, I wonder whether any other OS has such a feature.

Weird problem with Linux file system

2008-12-09T18:36:00.001+05:30

How big is the problem of your hard disk drive getting full? If it is anything like what happened to me, LOTS. I am still trying to come to terms with all that happened on my laptop.

Like any self-respecting geek, I run Linux as my primary desktop. In fact I have 3 Linux distros installed on my fairly small hard disk. As a result, most of my disk partitions are filled to the brim. Sometimes I need to delete stuff from my disk even to make way for even a 300MB file. On my Fedora9 partition, I have both root and /home on the same partition. On one of the unfortunate days last week, while I was compiling some code, the partition reached 100% full. I wasn't alarmed, after all, how bad can this be? But it was going to be quite bad.

The first thing that I noticed was that bash command history did not work. The next bash shell I spawned did not show a proper prompt (PS1). Little investigation showed that my ~/.bash* files did not exist any more! I frantically started looking at my $HOME to noticed that a number of small files, like my custom scripts directory, were missing. I don't know what else and how much more I have lost. Didn't I back up my entire home dir? Yeah, right.

I know, this is NOT what you expect and people will tell me this cannot happen. Unless I am trying one of the bleeding edge file systems. But I was on good old ext3. I did not find any hint about this in kernel messages. I tried googling for this, but this problem is very difficult to phrase and my attempts did not hit anything. I wonder whether anyone who reads this blog has hit such a problem or have any idea what might have happened. One more thing: I am NOT willing to try to recreate this problem ;-)

Scripts I use

2008-12-09T17:58:00.003+05:30

These are a couple of scripts I use to convert files between media formats. The only advantage of using these is that I don't need to remember all the crazy command line options.

rm_to_wav.sh
--------------------
basename=`echo $1 |awk -F. '{print $1}'`
mplayer -cache 32 -ao pcm -ao pcm:file=$basename.wav $1

wav_to_mp3.sh
----------------------
basename=`echo $1 |awk -F. '{print $1}'`
lame -V2 $1 $basename.mp3

Usage:
-----------
rm_to_wav.sh filename.rm
wav_to_mp3.sh filename.wav

FOSS.in 2008

2008-12-01T21:11:00.005+05:30

FOSS.in conference is over! As I mentioned in my previous post, I gave a talk there. What do I feel about how the event went?

First, the bad things.

This year's conference had an unique, unprecedented build up. It all started with this Atul's post. It turned out to be very controversial and it put off a lot of people, especially abroad. I am not guessing this. I met a few people at Linux Kongress this year, who personally told me that they felt unwelcome at FOSS.in this year and hence refrained from sending a talk proposal. The organizers provided some clarification towards the end of the year, but the damage had been done.

Next, the global economic meltdown meant finding money for sponsoring the event was going to be tough, because very few companies were willing to spend money on this. This meant low propaganda for the event, leading to much lower anticipation building up to the event. All this led to much smaller number of delegates this year. Someone who had been to FOSS.in 2007 would immediately recognize the difference.

Now the good things.

FOSS.in organizers did a lot of things right, especially as the conference approached. First, they corrected some of the misconceptions in the minds of people, especially with this post.

Secondly, they communicated effectively with the speakers to ensure the workout sessions, which was the most unique thing about this year's conference, were planned pretty well.

Third, they showed the openness to Linux kernel talks, thus alleviating one of the biggest complaints from my team at work. In fact they stepped back and let the people who know about kernel plan sessions related to this area.

They ensured that the conference ran smoothly by ensuring that a lot of little things were taken care of well. Food was good, biscuits served with tea were even better. Little things like running around and getting us more extension cords for workout sessions, ensuring that logistics at the conference were handled well go a long way in enhancing satisfaction in the minds of attendees. I also liked the "Show me the..." theme.

There was live streaming of talks from the main hall, which was another cool thing.

The talks themselves were pretty good, but I think they could have been better. I really enjoyed the closing note by Kalyan Varma. While his photos were obviously very good, it was clear that he had prepared a lot for this talk and it showed in the class his talk exhibited.

Finally, there were far too many good things about the conference than bad ones. The event was an overall success. Talks, workouts, logistics, everything was a success. Lower turnout compared to last year was expected, hence I can't say that was a failure either. I don't know what the organizers are thinking about FOSS.in 2009, but I hope they retain the format of this year and just polish up some of the rough edges. I hope the people who participated in FOSS.in 2008 will come back with much more enthusiasm next year and get their friends involved. The Linux kernel people will surely be more interested about the conference next year. I hope we will be able to advertise the event much better next year, which hopefully will bring in much more sponsorship money. This conference is surely one of the better organized FOSS conferences in the world, I hope it only gets better.

My talk at FOSS.in

2008-11-28T10:14:00.001+05:30

Hey, I will be talking at FOSS.in today! The talk can be heard live online. Just point your media player to http://radioverve.com/foss.in.pls!

One of my best photos

2008-11-25T23:18:00.001+05:30

I obviously have thousands of photos of her by now, but this one most deserves to be here on my blog as well.

My crazy thoughts

2008-11-14T20:19:00.002+05:30

For lack of a better one, this blog post will go with this stupid title. These are some random thoughts that have run through my mind. Only when I tried to express them in writing did I realize how vague these thoughts are.

Lets say an air plane crashes somewhere in the world and 50 people die. Lets say another 50 people die in a train or bus accident. Guess which of these gets the maximum coverage in our news media?

Lets say 20 people die on a particular day in a bus accident in Bangalore. Let's say another 20 individuals die in various isolated (lets say, 10) accidents across Bangalore on the same day. Now guess which of these becomes the major news story in news papers and news channels and which doesn't?

Lets say 20 people die in a bomb blast in some city. On the same day, more people would have died due to reasons like deadly diseases in the same city. Which one becomes the 'breaking news' that evening? More US soldiers die in motorcycle accidents than in Iraq. While there is a huge hue and cry over the latter, the former hardly ever gets mentioned.

Let's consider another scenario. MNS activists beating up a North Indian in Mumbai is a much bigger news than dacoits breaking into a house in Mumbai, killing it's residents and running away with valuables. Isn't that strange? Hari has wondered why Article 355 was not imposed on Maharashtra Government because it did not protect the North Indians from miscreants. I wonder how different it is from protecting the locals from dacoits. If the purpose behind the crime determines it's significance, there are a number of such hate crimes which don't hog any limelight.

A techie doing anything, including committing suicide is a much bigger news than a non-techie doing it.

Well, I don't just blame the media for this. It is how most people think as well. A lot of people may think this is just normal. However, it intrigues me to know that the value of life (or death) depends on the mode in which it was lost and what the profession of the person was. The world is a strange place.

Photo from Deepavali

2008-11-03T22:12:00.004+05:30

One of my better photos from this Deepavali. I was randomly exposing it for 2 seconds and I happened to catch this firework by luck. No doubt there is noise because it was at ISO200, but what else can you expect from a puny Canon A520? The view is from the terrace of my home, looking north towards BTM 2nd Stage.

Speed limit for tanks

2008-10-23T22:50:00.002+05:30

Remember, if you drive your tank to Hamburg, please follow the speed limits! Yes, the German traffic cop won't mind if you drive a war tank right into the market street, as far as you are driving within speed limits. I wonder whether shooting at the building all around is allowed. But then, if I am really driving a tank, do I care?

PS: Some intense googling revealed that these are weight limits, not speed limits. It still doesn't make complete sense, but much better.

Car car car!!!

2008-10-15T22:47:00.007+05:30

It was not as if I did not know about it, but still, the sheer percentage of high-end cars on the roads of Hamburg was impressive. If it was not a Mercedes, it would be an Audi or BMW or Skoda. Volkswagens were a dime a dozen, somewhat like the Alto on Indian roads. Most of the taxis were Mercedes and so were the police cars. There were very few Japanese or Korean cars to be found. The only American brand that I could easily sight was Ford. Unless you count Opel, of course.

However, not everyone in Hamburg can be rich. Hence I was bound to see some low-end cars as well. The ones that used to catch my attention were the ones sold in India. I first spotted a Suzuki Swift and then a Hyundai Getz. So the claim by these guys that these are global cars is kind of true.

Next, I found a Chevy Spark, named Matiz. Oh, so there are people who buy Chevy in this country.

But I was not ready for the next big surprise... I spotted.... a Hyundai Santro Xing. Yes, a Santro!! It was called "Atos Prime" here. Seeing the humble Santro rubbing shoulders with the likes of Alpha Romeos and Audis has increased my respect for my own Santro.