No, not fair at all. Absolutely not. Just when I was wondering why newly joined employees in my office behave so differently from the way I used to behave back then, I see this article which says there is a generation gap between junior and senior students in the same college, who differ by just 2 years in age. I wonder what these kids would think of me... may be same as what I think about ancient Egyptian civilization.
2 years? Is that all it takes to create generation gap? It is as if the Orkut generation is different from the Facebook generation, which itself is ancient compared to the Twitter generation. What about people who started off with Yahoo Groups? Listen to me people, a generation is around 30 years. Or at least 20. Not 2. Okay? Do you listen?
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Chitranna Chitranna
ನಾನು ಸಾಧಾರಣವಾಗಿ ಸುಮಧುರ, ಮಂದಗತಿಯ, ಉತ್ತಮ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯವಿರುವ ಹಾಡುಗಳನ್ನೇ ಕೇಳಲು ಇಷ್ಟ ಪಡುತ್ತೇನೆ. ಒಮ್ಮೊಮ್ಮೆ ಇದಕ್ಕೆ ತದ್ವಿರುದ್ಧವಾದ, 'ಗಲಾಟೆ' ತುಂಬಿರುವ ಹಾಡುಗಳೂ ಇಷ್ಟವಾಗುತ್ತವೆ. ಆದರೆ ಇಂಥಹ ಹಾಡುಗಳು ಬಹಳ ದಿನವೇನೂ favourite ಆಗಿ ಉಳಿಯುವುದಿಲ್ಲ. 'ಮುಂಗಾರು ಮಳೆ'ಯ ನಂತರ ಹೆಚ್ಚಿನ ಸಂಗೀತ ನಿರ್ದೇಶಕರು ಅದೇ 'ಫಾರ್ಮುಲ' ಅನುಸರಿಸಿ ಮಧುರ ಗೀತೆಗಳನ್ನು ನೀಡಲು ಪ್ರಯತ್ನಿಸುತ್ತಿರುವುದರಿಂದ ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ನನಗೆ ಇಷ್ಟ ಆಗುವ fast beats ಇರುವ ಹಾಡುಗಳೇ ಬಂದಿರಲಿಲ್ಲ. ಆದರೆ ಕಳೆದ ವಾರದಿಂದ ಚಿತ್ರಾನ್ನ ಚಿತ್ರಾನ್ನ ಹಾಡು ನನ್ನ ಮನಸ್ಸನ್ನು ಹಿಡಿದಿಡುವಲ್ಲಿ ಯಶಸ್ವಿಯಾಗಿದೆ. ಇದರ ಟ್ಯೂನ್ ನಲ್ಲಿ ಒಂಥರಾ ಆಕರ್ಷಣೆ ಇದೆ. ಎಲ್ಲಾ ರೇಡಿಯೋ ಸ್ಟೇಷನ್ ಗಳೂ ಈ ಹಾಡನ್ನು ದಿನಕ್ಕೆ ನೂರು ಸಲ ಹಾಕಿ ಇದರ ಮೇಲೆ ವಾಕರಿಕೆ ಬರುವಂತೆ ಮಾಡುವುದು ಗ್ಯಾರೆಂಟಿ. ಆದರೆ ಅಲ್ಲಿಯವರೆಗೆ ಈ 'different' ಹಾಡು ನನಗಿಷ್ಟ.
Aid for one-handed steering
Anyone who drives in Bangalore's peak hour traffic will be good at steering with just one hand. The left hand is busy with changing between 1st and 2nd gears. Unless of course you drive an automatic. If we are going to do one-handed steering, we might as well make it easy. Now-a-days these knobs that cling on to a side of the steering wheel are becoming popular. It somehow caught my fancy and I bought one.
The knob turns internally, making it super-easy to make any complex turn, even a sharp U-turn with just one hand. It is also useful on a straight road, because it makes steering much easier. So far, I have liked it. If you have been thinking about buying it, I suggest you go right ahead.
The knob turns internally, making it super-easy to make any complex turn, even a sharp U-turn with just one hand. It is also useful on a straight road, because it makes steering much easier. So far, I have liked it. If you have been thinking about buying it, I suggest you go right ahead.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
How not to place your advertisements
This was an example of not planning the placement of your newspaper advertisement properly.
On Page 23, there is this news:
On Page 24, some more about this topic:
And on Page 26, this advertisement:
On Page 23, there is this news:
On Page 24, some more about this topic:
And on Page 26, this advertisement:
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Buying a mobile phone
It is that time again.... time to buy a mobile phone. My old cell phone is still alive, but it doesn't have much life left in it. It is a trusted Nokia 3230. It was a prized possession when I bought it in 2005. It was a fashion statement. Now, looking back, I cannot figure how a phone that is as slow as that (a full 45 second boot-up time + 15 seconds for menu to get activated) could become such a big success. This phone has absorbed a lot of physical impact, like falling and rolling from Savanadurga hill, being dropped to ground innumerable times and so on. It has bruises all over to show for it's adventures. However, what gravity could not do, water did. It fell in a wash-basin when the tap was on!
I am a really slow decision maker, so I may not buy another phone just yet. I am not really too much electronics-crazy. However, we males have this strange brain model that makes us want a gadget that we don't need. This phone has a speakerphone with sub-woofer and home theatre support? Wow! That phone runs Linux? Can I run bash on it and run my python scripts? Tri-band phone is a necessity even though I never carry my phone abroad. That sort of creature we males are. No wonder handset manufacturers love us!
Thankfully, reality strikes us when we look at the prices. 31 freaking K for that snazzy new touchscreen phone? If I were spending that sort of money I would expect to get a laptop, not a cellphone. 25K for that phone that syncs my e-mail to the phone? Oh... I don't really need to see my mail on my mobile.... Eventually you settle for something that is still more than what you need, but less than what you want.
I have looked at the specs of a few phones. I am looking at a range of phones from Nokia 3600 the Sony-Ericsson P1i. I wonder which one I end up buying eventually. And when.
Update: I got my trusted 3230 resurrected by spending Rs. 650 and convinced myself that it can do everything I need from a mobile phone for now.
I am a really slow decision maker, so I may not buy another phone just yet. I am not really too much electronics-crazy. However, we males have this strange brain model that makes us want a gadget that we don't need. This phone has a speakerphone with sub-woofer and home theatre support? Wow! That phone runs Linux? Can I run bash on it and run my python scripts? Tri-band phone is a necessity even though I never carry my phone abroad. That sort of creature we males are. No wonder handset manufacturers love us!
Thankfully, reality strikes us when we look at the prices. 31 freaking K for that snazzy new touchscreen phone? If I were spending that sort of money I would expect to get a laptop, not a cellphone. 25K for that phone that syncs my e-mail to the phone? Oh... I don't really need to see my mail on my mobile.... Eventually you settle for something that is still more than what you need, but less than what you want.
I have looked at the specs of a few phones. I am looking at a range of phones from Nokia 3600 the Sony-Ericsson P1i. I wonder which one I end up buying eventually. And when.
Update: I got my trusted 3230 resurrected by spending Rs. 650 and convinced myself that it can do everything I need from a mobile phone for now.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Jharkhand (Part 2)
It must have been a while since I wrote 2 posts on consecutive days! Here is part 2 of my Jamshedpur trip highlights.
We went to Bistupur main road a couple of times. This is the Brigade Road of Jamshedpur. Pretty neat.
We were looking for a vegetarian restaurant and were directed to one on Bistupur main road (where else?). This happened to be the place known for South Indian food. However, the restaurant seemed to be run by a North Indian, hence we decided to do what I have learnt over the years: Eat the local food. By the time we got rotis and subji on our table, we looked around the hall and saw everyone... I mean literally every single customer in the restaurant... including the locals, sardars, huge families... was eating dosa. Wow, I am sure the restaurant staff were laughing their guts out because we ordered rotis in that restaurant. We too quickly corrected ourselves and switched to a dosa.
Oh, by the way, we were in Jamshedpur because we were visiting NIT Jamshedpur. It seemed like any other NIT that I have visited. Pretty good facilities, pretty good students, good experience. What surprised me was how far from the main road was this place. It seemed to be connected to the main road by narrow and bad roads. This being a pretty old institution, I am not sure why they did not build it closer to the main roads or provided wide enough roads. I suspect the roads were wide, but were encroached upon over the years.
On the day we were leaving Jharkhand, our train was at 6:15AM. When we came out of the hotel at 5:30, we were surprised to see the amount of sunlight. We had gone more northwards and eastwards from Bangalore and it was the summer in Northern hemisphere, so I was expecting early sunrise. However, I was surprised to see the number of people already on the road. The town seemed to be more active at 5:30 than Bangalore is at 7AM.
Our return journey was in a train, so we were not going to experience the roads again. A couple of things in the train reminded us again about the amount of impact naxals have in this area. As we entered our coach, we saw a commando - in full gear with a machine gun, strolling in it. Later, as the train passed through a certain area, they closed and locked all doors from inside and pulled down all the window shutters. Wow!
After watching more paddy fields, we were back in Kolkata.
We went to Bistupur main road a couple of times. This is the Brigade Road of Jamshedpur. Pretty neat.
We were looking for a vegetarian restaurant and were directed to one on Bistupur main road (where else?). This happened to be the place known for South Indian food. However, the restaurant seemed to be run by a North Indian, hence we decided to do what I have learnt over the years: Eat the local food. By the time we got rotis and subji on our table, we looked around the hall and saw everyone... I mean literally every single customer in the restaurant... including the locals, sardars, huge families... was eating dosa. Wow, I am sure the restaurant staff were laughing their guts out because we ordered rotis in that restaurant. We too quickly corrected ourselves and switched to a dosa.
Oh, by the way, we were in Jamshedpur because we were visiting NIT Jamshedpur. It seemed like any other NIT that I have visited. Pretty good facilities, pretty good students, good experience. What surprised me was how far from the main road was this place. It seemed to be connected to the main road by narrow and bad roads. This being a pretty old institution, I am not sure why they did not build it closer to the main roads or provided wide enough roads. I suspect the roads were wide, but were encroached upon over the years.
On the day we were leaving Jharkhand, our train was at 6:15AM. When we came out of the hotel at 5:30, we were surprised to see the amount of sunlight. We had gone more northwards and eastwards from Bangalore and it was the summer in Northern hemisphere, so I was expecting early sunrise. However, I was surprised to see the number of people already on the road. The town seemed to be more active at 5:30 than Bangalore is at 7AM.
Our return journey was in a train, so we were not going to experience the roads again. A couple of things in the train reminded us again about the amount of impact naxals have in this area. As we entered our coach, we saw a commando - in full gear with a machine gun, strolling in it. Later, as the train passed through a certain area, they closed and locked all doors from inside and pulled down all the window shutters. Wow!
After watching more paddy fields, we were back in Kolkata.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Jharkhand! (Part 1)
Recently, I got an opportunity to visit Jamshedpur. No, I am not writing a travelogue. That is the domain of guys like this. My expertise lie elsewhere. I am not sure exactly where, though. Hence I will just jot down some of the interesting things that happened in this trip in a systematic fashion that I call 'random'.
This was my first time ever in Jharkhand or undivided Bihar. There were 3 of us. We took a cab from Kolkata to Jamshedpur. It was an air-conditioned Toyota Innova, so we did not get to 'experience' Kolkata as such. I had seen the city before, but the folks with me kept saying the whole city looks like it is covered with soot... everything was of dull grey without much other color or shine. I know the reasons for this: 1) We were passing through the old part of the city 2) Kolkata's proximity to the sea. It is not easy to maintain the external paint of buildings in this weather.
The road we took - the highway to Mumbai was in excellent shape. However, good things can't last. We took a deviation from the highway near Kharagpur (of IIT fame) towards Jamshedpur. I have a big suspicion that at this stage our Innova somehow launched into space and landed on the moon. The 'national highway' that we were on had no resemblance whatsoever to the national highway we were on until then. The ideal vehicle for this road was not an Innova but a hovercraft.
Throughout our 6 hour journey, every single piece of agricultural land we saw on the sides of the road had paddy cultivated in it. We literally did not see a single other crop anywhere on the way. How's that?
We passed through a few villages, but we hardly saw any shops selling condiments. This is unlike the South India, where you can find a shop selling Kurkure, Bisleri and Pepsi even in smallest villages on the highway.
We saw a huge number of those long trucks carrying industrial produces, most of them steel products. Surprisingly, a disproportionately large number of them were Nagaland registered (NL). Yes, I have a habit of observing vehicle registration plates. Most of these trucks were carrying railway axles. There must some reason to Nagaland trucks plying on Jharkhand roads, like tax benefits, unless the railways are planning major rail network explansion in Nagaland. That would be fun, though. Trains on mountains, more locations to shoot songs like Chaiya Chaiya.
The only English newspaper easily available in Jamshedpur was "The Telegraph". Well, I know this is a historic, great newspaper and all, but I never thought this would be so popular in this state. In Kolkata, I can understand...
The Telegraph told us why the national highways were in the stage they were. Money had been approved for repairing them, tenders had been called multiple times, but nobody had placed a bid. This is because the naxals don't let any road repair work happen at all. We now quickly linked naxals to absense of condiment stores along the highway as well.
The public are not far too behind. Bus service between Ranchi (yeah, Dhoni's) and Jamshedpur was in dire conditions because of non-co-operation of general public. Bad condition of the roads and naxals only added to the trouble.
Parts of Jamshedpur are maintained by the tatas (Tatanagar) and the rest of the urban local body (municipality?) Tatanagar is a huge contrast to everything else we saw in Jharkhand. We saw the "Jubilee Park", which I must admit is one of the best maintained parks I have seen in a while.
Wow, I have written a lot! I never thought I would write so much. I have some more. In Part 2.
This was my first time ever in Jharkhand or undivided Bihar. There were 3 of us. We took a cab from Kolkata to Jamshedpur. It was an air-conditioned Toyota Innova, so we did not get to 'experience' Kolkata as such. I had seen the city before, but the folks with me kept saying the whole city looks like it is covered with soot... everything was of dull grey without much other color or shine. I know the reasons for this: 1) We were passing through the old part of the city 2) Kolkata's proximity to the sea. It is not easy to maintain the external paint of buildings in this weather.
The road we took - the highway to Mumbai was in excellent shape. However, good things can't last. We took a deviation from the highway near Kharagpur (of IIT fame) towards Jamshedpur. I have a big suspicion that at this stage our Innova somehow launched into space and landed on the moon. The 'national highway' that we were on had no resemblance whatsoever to the national highway we were on until then. The ideal vehicle for this road was not an Innova but a hovercraft.
Throughout our 6 hour journey, every single piece of agricultural land we saw on the sides of the road had paddy cultivated in it. We literally did not see a single other crop anywhere on the way. How's that?
We passed through a few villages, but we hardly saw any shops selling condiments. This is unlike the South India, where you can find a shop selling Kurkure, Bisleri and Pepsi even in smallest villages on the highway.
We saw a huge number of those long trucks carrying industrial produces, most of them steel products. Surprisingly, a disproportionately large number of them were Nagaland registered (NL). Yes, I have a habit of observing vehicle registration plates. Most of these trucks were carrying railway axles. There must some reason to Nagaland trucks plying on Jharkhand roads, like tax benefits, unless the railways are planning major rail network explansion in Nagaland. That would be fun, though. Trains on mountains, more locations to shoot songs like Chaiya Chaiya.
The only English newspaper easily available in Jamshedpur was "The Telegraph". Well, I know this is a historic, great newspaper and all, but I never thought this would be so popular in this state. In Kolkata, I can understand...
The Telegraph told us why the national highways were in the stage they were. Money had been approved for repairing them, tenders had been called multiple times, but nobody had placed a bid. This is because the naxals don't let any road repair work happen at all. We now quickly linked naxals to absense of condiment stores along the highway as well.
The public are not far too behind. Bus service between Ranchi (yeah, Dhoni's) and Jamshedpur was in dire conditions because of non-co-operation of general public. Bad condition of the roads and naxals only added to the trouble.
Parts of Jamshedpur are maintained by the tatas (Tatanagar) and the rest of the urban local body (municipality?) Tatanagar is a huge contrast to everything else we saw in Jharkhand. We saw the "Jubilee Park", which I must admit is one of the best maintained parks I have seen in a while.
Wow, I have written a lot! I never thought I would write so much. I have some more. In Part 2.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
KDE hack
Everyone's needs from a Linux desktop is different from others. Hence each desktop is configured in a unique way. I have a couple of strange needs from my desktop, so mine is 'different' in it's own way.
I am a GNOME convert. However, there are some KDE apps I still like. For example, I use Kmail for my mails. Hence I install both KDE and GNOME on my system, but run GNOME as the default desktop. When I click on a web link in kmail, I want it to open in Firefox. However, by default kmail opens web links in Konqueror. This is because it uses KDE's default settings. So what I do is I go to KDE's control center and set the default application for html to be Firefox. This fixes the problem. Or it did all these days.
On My new Fedora 9 desktop, the above trick did not work. I suspect KDE4 that is shipped with Fedora9 does not like Firefox. I ensured that my GNOME
settings too make Firefox the default web browser, but web links still kept opening in Konqueror. I googled, but only found references to things I
had already tried.
Can I just remove konqueror from my system, since I don't use it anyway? Well, no. It is part of kdebase rpm. So it looks like Konqueror is closely tied to KDE. Hmm.. can I remove the konqueror binary from /usr/bin? When I did that, kmail did not open the weblinks at all. I suspect it reported an error somewhere that it could not find the browser, but it said nothing directly to me through an error window! Next, I wanted to find out how kmail finds out the browser application. After straceing and ltraceing kde binaries running on my system, I had found nothing.
That's when Srikar reminded me of an old trick in the bag. Replace /usr/bin/konqueror with a symlink to /usr/bin/firefox :) This of course worked as expected. I know it is a horrible hack. It must have broken a few things in the KDE desktop. However, I don't use KDE as the desktop. I just need apps. Hence, it works for me :)
I am a GNOME convert. However, there are some KDE apps I still like. For example, I use Kmail for my mails. Hence I install both KDE and GNOME on my system, but run GNOME as the default desktop. When I click on a web link in kmail, I want it to open in Firefox. However, by default kmail opens web links in Konqueror. This is because it uses KDE's default settings. So what I do is I go to KDE's control center and set the default application for html to be Firefox. This fixes the problem. Or it did all these days.
On My new Fedora 9 desktop, the above trick did not work. I suspect KDE4 that is shipped with Fedora9 does not like Firefox. I ensured that my GNOME
settings too make Firefox the default web browser, but web links still kept opening in Konqueror. I googled, but only found references to things I
had already tried.
Can I just remove konqueror from my system, since I don't use it anyway? Well, no. It is part of kdebase rpm. So it looks like Konqueror is closely tied to KDE. Hmm.. can I remove the konqueror binary from /usr/bin? When I did that, kmail did not open the weblinks at all. I suspect it reported an error somewhere that it could not find the browser, but it said nothing directly to me through an error window! Next, I wanted to find out how kmail finds out the browser application. After straceing and ltraceing kde binaries running on my system, I had found nothing.
That's when Srikar reminded me of an old trick in the bag. Replace /usr/bin/konqueror with a symlink to /usr/bin/firefox :) This of course worked as expected. I know it is a horrible hack. It must have broken a few things in the KDE desktop. However, I don't use KDE as the desktop. I just need apps. Hence, it works for me :)
Friday, July 18, 2008
Did this ever happen to you?
I was at one of my company's events recently and I was listening to a presentation. Some guy came and sat in the vacant seat next to mine. From my quick glance towards him, I figured that this is someone I know pretty well. I turned around and looked at his face. From the side view, I was quite confident that I know this person. I tapped his shoulder and said "Hi". He turned around and from the front, he looked quite different. He was not the person I thought he was, I had done a mistake. However, by this time this guy was in the game. From the looks on his face, I could easily tell he was totally confused inside and was trying to guess who I was. He of course tried not to show it on his face and replied "Hi. How are you doing? Which project are you in now?" What could I do? I too acted as if I knew him and exchanged pleasantries. At the end of the day, he must still be wondering who this stranger who spoke to him was.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Sarvam Bollywood Mayam
Another post about FM radio stations. Hopefully the last for a while.
Typically I listen to FM on my way to work. I keep switching stations at the rate of approximately 0.5 seconds. I think it is required by some biological law for men to keep switching TV channels and radio stations at this frequency. A couple of weeks back, I was pleasantly surprised to hear to some old(ish) Hindi music on one of the stations. Mithun's "I am a disco dancer" and such stuff. Only towards the end of my 1 hour journey I realized the reason behind this: The radio station was celebrating 25 years of India's cricket world-cup victory in 1983 and to make us recall how those days were, they were playing Bollywood songs from that year. It left me wondering how these guys can link anything to Bollywood.
However, nothing tops what I heard a few more days back on another radio station. It was the World Environment Day and there was a movie star in the studio to discuss about it. I guess the movie star knew as much about the environment as the squirrels know about space shuttles. However, the host was intelligent. She went "Hi! Today is world environment day. Environment is all about greenery. So who do you think is the evergreen star of Bollywood."
LOL!!!!!
Typically I listen to FM on my way to work. I keep switching stations at the rate of approximately 0.5 seconds. I think it is required by some biological law for men to keep switching TV channels and radio stations at this frequency. A couple of weeks back, I was pleasantly surprised to hear to some old(ish) Hindi music on one of the stations. Mithun's "I am a disco dancer" and such stuff. Only towards the end of my 1 hour journey I realized the reason behind this: The radio station was celebrating 25 years of India's cricket world-cup victory in 1983 and to make us recall how those days were, they were playing Bollywood songs from that year. It left me wondering how these guys can link anything to Bollywood.
However, nothing tops what I heard a few more days back on another radio station. It was the World Environment Day and there was a movie star in the studio to discuss about it. I guess the movie star knew as much about the environment as the squirrels know about space shuttles. However, the host was intelligent. She went "Hi
LOL!!!!!
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Traffic report on radio stations
What is one common program across all FM radio stations in Bangalore? Something that they play tens of times every day? Something that the radio stations want you to believe you cannot live without? Something that claims to make your life easy every day? Something, in spite of all these claims, is roughly as useful as navel lint? It is none other than traffic congestion report, of course.
First of all, the methodology used to obtain traffic congestion information is the biggest culprit. I have seen traffic reports coming out of helicopters in the US. Here in Bangalore, radio jockeys ask the commuters to send out traffic jam information to them and they in turn broadcast it to the entire city. The concept is nice, but sadly it doesn't work. The people stuck in a traffic jam often have no clue about the cause of the jam. Often, they don't want to or cannot get out of their cars to find out. However, they cannot control the urge to send out an SMS. Hence you hear reports like "The outer ring road is blocked all the way from Sarakki to Mysore Road". Hey, that is around 7KMs of jam. How does any one person know that the jam is that big?
Secondly, the information is often incomplete. In the evenings I always get to hear this: "Huge traffic pile-up reported in Madivala". Alternatively how about this: "Slow moving traffic on Airport Road". Well, where on Airport Road? Eastbound or westbound? Which parts of Madivala? This information is meaningful only when it is qualified with more details, like "Huge traffic pile-up on Hosur road, heading towards Electronics city, at Bommanahalli junction".
Lastly, in most cases, there is very little you can do with the information, even though it is accurate. In most areas on the outskirts of Bangalore, which are hardly planned, there are no alternative roads. For example, if I hear in the morning that Bannerghatta Road is choked north-bound, I still get on to that road, because I have no credible alternative. This would be true for most roads heading out of the city and the outer ring road. The only use of this traffic information would be to mentally prepare in advance to suffer. That is not much of a use, is it?
First of all, the methodology used to obtain traffic congestion information is the biggest culprit. I have seen traffic reports coming out of helicopters in the US. Here in Bangalore, radio jockeys ask the commuters to send out traffic jam information to them and they in turn broadcast it to the entire city. The concept is nice, but sadly it doesn't work. The people stuck in a traffic jam often have no clue about the cause of the jam. Often, they don't want to or cannot get out of their cars to find out. However, they cannot control the urge to send out an SMS. Hence you hear reports like "The outer ring road is blocked all the way from Sarakki to Mysore Road". Hey, that is around 7KMs of jam. How does any one person know that the jam is that big?
Secondly, the information is often incomplete. In the evenings I always get to hear this: "Huge traffic pile-up reported in Madivala". Alternatively how about this: "Slow moving traffic on Airport Road". Well, where on Airport Road? Eastbound or westbound? Which parts of Madivala? This information is meaningful only when it is qualified with more details, like "Huge traffic pile-up on Hosur road, heading towards Electronics city, at Bommanahalli junction".
Lastly, in most cases, there is very little you can do with the information, even though it is accurate. In most areas on the outskirts of Bangalore, which are hardly planned, there are no alternative roads. For example, if I hear in the morning that Bannerghatta Road is choked north-bound, I still get on to that road, because I have no credible alternative. This would be true for most roads heading out of the city and the outer ring road. The only use of this traffic information would be to mentally prepare in advance to suffer. That is not much of a use, is it?
Sunday, June 22, 2008
My Nokia thinks the headset is connected even though it isn't!
My old faithful Nokia 3230 showed the first real illness today. Well, first, if you don't count the hangs and instantaneous reboots sometimes seen, because that is almost a 'feature' of Symbian OS. The other thing to discount is the slowness. The phone is notoriously slow. How slow is it? From the time you power it on, you need to wait more than a minute to make your first phone call :) On the positive side, this phone has the best build quality I have seen. It has fallen from all sorts of places without showing any signs of damage, including one incidence when it was rolling down the Savanadurga hill.
Today, the phone claimed that the wired headset, which is both the hands-free and the FM radio device, is connected to the phone, even though the alleged headset was nowhere within 10 feet distance from the phone! The phone refused to send out voice through the speaker, turned off the built-in mic, instead expecting the headphone to do these jobs. Now phone was useless without the headset.
A bit of googling led me to all sorts of suggestions, like the rebooting ritual, hard power cycling ritual, firmware upgrade ritual. None of them worked. The other possibility was liquid ingression (scary terms which just means water getting into the phone) and malfunctioning of the data port pins of the phone. Finally, I left the phone in sunshine for an hour and voila, my phone had cured itself! All it needed was some Vitamin-D :-) The rituals of debugging mobile phone problems is very similar to debugging your computer problems (especially Windows), except computers don't need a suntan.
Today, the phone claimed that the wired headset, which is both the hands-free and the FM radio device, is connected to the phone, even though the alleged headset was nowhere within 10 feet distance from the phone! The phone refused to send out voice through the speaker, turned off the built-in mic, instead expecting the headphone to do these jobs. Now phone was useless without the headset.
A bit of googling led me to all sorts of suggestions, like the rebooting ritual, hard power cycling ritual, firmware upgrade ritual. None of them worked. The other possibility was liquid ingression (scary terms which just means water getting into the phone) and malfunctioning of the data port pins of the phone. Finally, I left the phone in sunshine for an hour and voila, my phone had cured itself! All it needed was some Vitamin-D :-) The rituals of debugging mobile phone problems is very similar to debugging your computer problems (especially Windows), except computers don't need a suntan.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Does this ever happen to you?
I used to visit my grandfather's house quite often during my childhood. Of late, I go there quite rarely, because nobody lives in that house. Every time I visit the place now-a-days, a strange feeling happens to me. I feel the whole place is much 'smaller' than what is imprinted in my mind. The whole house, rooms in it, the surroundings, the private lake nearby, the front courtyard, everything seems smaller. Further, the distances to nearby places seems much lesser. Distance to the nearby temple, to the beach, to the paddy fields, to the neighbor's house, everything. This has happened to me at a number of places I used to live in while I was a kid. When I visit the towns where I spent my childhood, did my schooling, everything seems to be smaller now. It appears as though the impression in my mind is the relative sizes of these objects to my own size and since I have grown now, the places now appear smaller. This does not seem to happen with places I lived in after my teen years. My college in Mysore, the surroundings, my hostel and so on seem to be of the same size as before.
For a long time, I used to think this happens only to me. Recently, I came to know that I am not alone. Now I wonder whether this happens to everyone. If you read this blog, could you please comment on this?
For a long time, I used to think this happens only to me. Recently, I came to know that I am not alone. Now I wonder whether this happens to everyone. If you read this blog, could you please comment on this?
Monday, June 02, 2008
IPL and royalty
Well, why is IPL so terribly obsession with the royalty? I mean, really. Out of the eight teams, four of them had a name that contained word referring to the kings. Rajasthan Royals, Chennai SuperKings, King's XI Punjab, Bangalore Royal Challengers. Even Kolkata had Knight, a related term, in the name. Of course, Bangalore had a good reason to use that name. I don't know what reasoning other teams had to choose their names.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Wow, what an error message
I saw this wonderful message on my Linux system today when I tried to launch Nautilus. Just imagine the impact of this message on someone who is very new to Linux.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
About the new airport in Bangalore
The HAL airport in Bangalore was shut down at the dawn of today, in lieu of the new Airport at Devanahalli. There won't be any commercial flights landing at this airport. All these days, I used to see flights in the sky from my home, as they circle around to land at the HAL airport. My office is so close to the HAL airport that the people in planes could probably recognize us on the ground as the flights landed. All this will change. My home is more than 40Kms from the new airport, so I will only be seeing planes only at a great distance.
The biggest impact of this will be on people living far away from the new airport, because it will be order of times more difficult to reach the new airport. There is a lot of discussion happening about keeping the HAL airport open, because the new one is too far away from the city. However, is 35Kms really too much? Don't many great cities of the airport have their airports tens of miles away from the city center? With the exception of the old airport of Hong Kong, I don't think any great city of the world has it's airport in the heart of the city. I think the people in Bangalore are fighting the wrong battle. The problem is of connectivity to the new airport, not the distance to it. However, that is a much more difficult problem to solve, considering the political system of the state. Hence they just choose to fight the easy battle - demanding keeping the HAL airport open.
The biggest impact of this will be on people living far away from the new airport, because it will be order of times more difficult to reach the new airport. There is a lot of discussion happening about keeping the HAL airport open, because the new one is too far away from the city. However, is 35Kms really too much? Don't many great cities of the airport have their airports tens of miles away from the city center? With the exception of the old airport of Hong Kong, I don't think any great city of the world has it's airport in the heart of the city. I think the people in Bangalore are fighting the wrong battle. The problem is of connectivity to the new airport, not the distance to it. However, that is a much more difficult problem to solve, considering the political system of the state. Hence they just choose to fight the easy battle - demanding keeping the HAL airport open.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
When should a kid start using computers?
I didn't use a computer until I was 18 years old. But now-a-days, kids demand to use computers as soon as they are 5 months old. The first thing that my daughter demanded in all her life was not a toy or a food, but my laptop. Tough days ahead for me!
Friday, April 18, 2008
What have YOU won in all these years?
Now-a-days, there are a number of programs on TV where they ask you to either send SMSes or make phone calls for various reasons. The most common of these, of course, are talent shows where you think you are deciding the winner of the competition by sending lots of messages and your mobile service provider walks laughing all the way to the bank! The other kind is where they give out 'prizes' to the callers. One such program runs on a Kannada TV channel in the afternoon. It works like this: You basically send as many messages as you want/can on the previous day to 'register' for the program next day. The program is run live, where they call the people who have sent highest number of messages. They show a sari and ask us to guess it's price. If you guess it correctly, or if your guess is closer to the actual than others on that day, the sari is yours. Simple?
One of these days (18th March), my wife got the crazy idea of actually competing in this event. Off she went, sending a few messages, but she sent it in my daughter's name. The next day she was in front of the TV in the afternoon, to see how she fared. Unfortunately, the number of messages she had sent was nowhere close to the highest numbers that day. There was no way they were going to call her. However, as she sat there watching the program, it turned out that a number of people who the TV anchor called either did not pick up the call or were unreachable or busy and so on. As a result, the last person to be called for the day turned out to be my daughter! As the anchor announced the name of my daughter, there was a lot of cheering in my home from all. Celebrations had already begun. We didn't get the sari, but we got the consolation prize - cosmetics worth Rs. 1000. But my mom and wife didn't mind that. They were celebrating as if my daughter had got the first rank in CAT exams. My daughter, meanwhile, being all of 5 months old, was blissfully unaware of her achievement(!) and was thinking exactly what most babies of her age think, that is, "Should I cry now or later?" and "Huh?"
Now, winning the prize is one thing, actually going to the office of the TV channel and getting it from there is totally another. Considering that we were only going to get a box of cosmetics, most of which may be unusable, I was not even close to thinking of actually going and getting it. But my mom and wife had other ideas. "What have you won on TV in all these years? Nothing. She is just 5 months old and she has already won something in her very first attempt. At least for that reason you must go and get the prize". It was only then that the importance of my daughter's achievement and the gravity of the situation started sinking in to me. I quickly realized that I had no choice.
The office of the TV channel was right in the middle of the city, with no parking available anywhere in 2 Km radius of it. Finding the office was an appropriate job for Indiana Jones. Further, I had to make two trips to their office because of their restrictive timings. Finally, there was a little shocker. They wanted the person who had won the prize to come and claim it! We convinced them that the 'winner' was a 5 month old baby who won't claim anything in the world as hers for another few months. Finally, the prize was ours! It was a package of various cosmetic items from an obscure Japanese company which mostly sells in Sri Lanka. Not bad. Hey, my daughter must now be famous in Japan and Sri Lanka too. What an achievement!!!
One of these days (18th March), my wife got the crazy idea of actually competing in this event. Off she went, sending a few messages, but she sent it in my daughter's name. The next day she was in front of the TV in the afternoon, to see how she fared. Unfortunately, the number of messages she had sent was nowhere close to the highest numbers that day. There was no way they were going to call her. However, as she sat there watching the program, it turned out that a number of people who the TV anchor called either did not pick up the call or were unreachable or busy and so on. As a result, the last person to be called for the day turned out to be my daughter! As the anchor announced the name of my daughter, there was a lot of cheering in my home from all. Celebrations had already begun. We didn't get the sari, but we got the consolation prize - cosmetics worth Rs. 1000. But my mom and wife didn't mind that. They were celebrating as if my daughter had got the first rank in CAT exams. My daughter, meanwhile, being all of 5 months old, was blissfully unaware of her achievement(!) and was thinking exactly what most babies of her age think, that is, "Should I cry now or later?" and "Huh?"
Now, winning the prize is one thing, actually going to the office of the TV channel and getting it from there is totally another. Considering that we were only going to get a box of cosmetics, most of which may be unusable, I was not even close to thinking of actually going and getting it. But my mom and wife had other ideas. "What have you won on TV in all these years? Nothing. She is just 5 months old and she has already won something in her very first attempt. At least for that reason you must go and get the prize". It was only then that the importance of my daughter's achievement and the gravity of the situation started sinking in to me. I quickly realized that I had no choice.
The office of the TV channel was right in the middle of the city, with no parking available anywhere in 2 Km radius of it. Finding the office was an appropriate job for Indiana Jones. Further, I had to make two trips to their office because of their restrictive timings. Finally, there was a little shocker. They wanted the person who had won the prize to come and claim it! We convinced them that the 'winner' was a 5 month old baby who won't claim anything in the world as hers for another few months. Finally, the prize was ours! It was a package of various cosmetic items from an obscure Japanese company which mostly sells in Sri Lanka. Not bad. Hey, my daughter must now be famous in Japan and Sri Lanka too. What an achievement!!!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Human alcohol meter
A few days back, I was at the Kempegowda bus stand, a.k.a "Majestic", at around 11PM. I was dropping off someone for a late night bus. I started heading back and was at the first traffic signal, near Sangam, where a traffic policeman stopped my car by literally standing in my path. When he approached me I rolled down the glass of my car, wondering what this was about. He then put his head _into_ my car, so far inside that it seemed as if he was going to kiss the steering wheel. Well, I too like my car quite a bit, but not so much as to kiss it. While I was wondering whether this guy is drunk, he said "Your good name please, sir?" I quickly answered and he said "Okay okay. Just checking", took his head out and asked me to carry on. I was still surprised, but I carried on. Only after a couple of seconds did I realize why he did that: He was checking if I was drunk and he wanted to smell my breath to confirm. He was a human alcohol meter! I left pretty amused, but impressed. I ho
pe they take all drunk people out of roads and make roads safer for driving in the night.
pe they take all drunk people out of roads and make roads safer for driving in the night.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
How cpu frequency scaling can affect applications
I have seen a very interesting problem while playing "Cricket 2007" game on Windows. The problem is probably caused by cpu frequency scaling and it gives an interesting perspective on how power management in operating systems and hardware can affect application writers.
My laptop runs at around 800MHz when it is on battery and at around 2.1GHz when it is connected to the mains. Lets say I boot the system running on batteries and connect it to the mains after it boots up fully. If I run Cricket 2007 game on this now, it runs way too fast. The game is almost unusable at this stage. The only way I have found to rectify this is to reboot the system while it is connected to the mains. Alternatively, if I boot up the system while it is connected to the mains and later switch to battery before starting the game, it plays too slowly, far slower than a typical slow-mo replay. It is not the problem with the battery, because if I boot the system on battery and continue to run the game while it is on battery, it plays correctly.
The problem is pretty interesting. I suspect it is because of cpu frequency scaling because I can't attribute it to anything else. However, whose fault is it? application's? operating system's? I have some thoughts, but I have no idea of Windows internals, so I can't be sure.
The application has no idea that the cpu frequency has changed before it is started. It must be doing some calibration for timing when it is started, by reading the frequency of the cpu from the OS. It is quite possible that the OS does not provide correct information to the application. Lets say the system was booted at 800MHz and the OS stores this value somewhere. Later the system could be running at 2.1GHz, but when the application queries, OS still says it is running at 800Hz. The application does it's calibration based on this number and it goes horribly wrong because the cpu is running much faster.
On second thought, it is not correct for the application to depend on cpu frequency being constant. This frequency could be varying all the time on modern hardware, so any application that depends on this value for it's timing calculation could go wrong. The same holds for any application that performs time calculations based on TSC. Depending on TSC is an even bigger mistake on SMP systems.
My laptop runs at around 800MHz when it is on battery and at around 2.1GHz when it is connected to the mains. Lets say I boot the system running on batteries and connect it to the mains after it boots up fully. If I run Cricket 2007 game on this now, it runs way too fast. The game is almost unusable at this stage. The only way I have found to rectify this is to reboot the system while it is connected to the mains. Alternatively, if I boot up the system while it is connected to the mains and later switch to battery before starting the game, it plays too slowly, far slower than a typical slow-mo replay. It is not the problem with the battery, because if I boot the system on battery and continue to run the game while it is on battery, it plays correctly.
The problem is pretty interesting. I suspect it is because of cpu frequency scaling because I can't attribute it to anything else. However, whose fault is it? application's? operating system's? I have some thoughts, but I have no idea of Windows internals, so I can't be sure.
The application has no idea that the cpu frequency has changed before it is started. It must be doing some calibration for timing when it is started, by reading the frequency of the cpu from the OS. It is quite possible that the OS does not provide correct information to the application. Lets say the system was booted at 800MHz and the OS stores this value somewhere. Later the system could be running at 2.1GHz, but when the application queries, OS still says it is running at 800Hz. The application does it's calibration based on this number and it goes horribly wrong because the cpu is running much faster.
On second thought, it is not correct for the application to depend on cpu frequency being constant. This frequency could be varying all the time on modern hardware, so any application that depends on this value for it's timing calculation could go wrong. The same holds for any application that performs time calculations based on TSC. Depending on TSC is an even bigger mistake on SMP systems.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
What is a .docx file?
Today someone sent me a MS Word file in an e-mail. Being a Linux user, I don't quite like working with MS-Office documents. However, I have accepted it as a reality of life. Also, Openoffice is now good enough to handle most MS-Office files.
The file I got today in mail had a .docx extension to it. I initially thought the sender had saved the file with wrong extension, but soon realized that Openoffice doesn't know how to open it. "file" command on the file says it is a zip file. Hmm... okay, let's unzip it. It contained a bunch of xml files among other things. I wasn't sure what was happening. The obvious next stop was google.
Google told me that .docx is an ooxml file, which is the latest standard for office documents being pushed by Microsoft. Openoffice doesn't support it yet, so there was no way (that I know of) to open it on my Linux. I booted to my Windows partition and showed the file to MS-Word. It too refused to open it. Hmm... some more googling revealed to me that the ooxml format is the default on newer MS-Office versions, whereas older versions don't support it. There is an update available from Microsoft that makes old versions of MS-Office handle ooxml files. The update was 26MB in size, so instead of pulling it down, I asked the sender to save the document in older MS-Word format and resend it.
A couple of things that surprise me are, a) MS-Office has been using ooxml format as the default for a while and I don't even know about it. b) Users of new MS-Office will typically save their files in new format because that is the default. That means all users of old versions will need to pull down this 26MB update to see these files. 26MB is not a very small size for low-bandwidth users.
I hope ODF benefits from all this.
The file I got today in mail had a .docx extension to it. I initially thought the sender had saved the file with wrong extension, but soon realized that Openoffice doesn't know how to open it. "file" command on the file says it is a zip file. Hmm... okay, let's unzip it. It contained a bunch of xml files among other things. I wasn't sure what was happening. The obvious next stop was google.
Google told me that .docx is an ooxml file, which is the latest standard for office documents being pushed by Microsoft. Openoffice doesn't support it yet, so there was no way (that I know of) to open it on my Linux. I booted to my Windows partition and showed the file to MS-Word. It too refused to open it. Hmm... some more googling revealed to me that the ooxml format is the default on newer MS-Office versions, whereas older versions don't support it. There is an update available from Microsoft that makes old versions of MS-Office handle ooxml files. The update was 26MB in size, so instead of pulling it down, I asked the sender to save the document in older MS-Word format and resend it.
A couple of things that surprise me are, a) MS-Office has been using ooxml format as the default for a while and I don't even know about it. b) Users of new MS-Office will typically save their files in new format because that is the default. That means all users of old versions will need to pull down this 26MB update to see these files. 26MB is not a very small size for low-bandwidth users.
I hope ODF benefits from all this.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
What makes software great?
As time goes by, I have started appreciating usability much more than any feature in software. For that matter, anything. Using a well-designed product is so much more fun that using a feature-rich but difficult to use product. Did I hear someone say "The GIMP"?
Today I was in a well-known hospital who had their registration and billing software custom-made by one of the biggest software services companies in India. I am not going to call names, but lets just say it is the company that is largely owned by one of the richest persons in India. They charged me registration and consultation fees upfront and everything was fine until I was about to leave, when they had to charge some more fees due to the doctor. The software raised an exception that consultation fees cannot be charged two times. There was no other category to put the fees under that would allow the money to go to the doctor and not the hospital. Further, the consultation fees was fixed by the administrator and the lady handling billing system could not change it. After a number of phone calls, she caught hold of the administrator who provided a lengthy workaround to the problem. No wonder, she was cursing the software and the company who wrote it :-)
I wonder how much of actual field testing is done before deploying such software. Do they hand it over to real-world people to try it in actual day-to-day scenarios or just sit in the offices, think of possible scenarios, write the code based on their assumptions and roll out the product.
Today I was in a well-known hospital who had their registration and billing software custom-made by one of the biggest software services companies in India. I am not going to call names, but lets just say it is the company that is largely owned by one of the richest persons in India. They charged me registration and consultation fees upfront and everything was fine until I was about to leave, when they had to charge some more fees due to the doctor. The software raised an exception that consultation fees cannot be charged two times. There was no other category to put the fees under that would allow the money to go to the doctor and not the hospital. Further, the consultation fees was fixed by the administrator and the lady handling billing system could not change it. After a number of phone calls, she caught hold of the administrator who provided a lengthy workaround to the problem. No wonder, she was cursing the software and the company who wrote it :-)
I wonder how much of actual field testing is done before deploying such software. Do they hand it over to real-world people to try it in actual day-to-day scenarios or just sit in the offices, think of possible scenarios, write the code based on their assumptions and roll out the product.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
How much is the cricket commtary worth?
It was not like I had a lot of respect for cricket commentators to begin with. Except when something very special happens in the game, what they say in a particular situation can easily be predicted. Lets say the batsman comes out of the crease for the very first ball he faces and hits the ball over the head of long-on fielder for a six. The commentator will say something like "He has decided to take the bull by it's horns, take the fight to the opposition. It is his natural style and it is a good idea to play your natural game while chasing such a total" Lets say the batsman was not that lucky and ends up sending the ball 'down the throat' of the fielder at long on. The same commentator would now say something like "This shot was absolutely not needed at this time of the game. The need of the hour was to consolidate and go for shots only towards the end of the game".
Recently I played Cricket 2007 game on Windows. This is a pretty nice game, but I admit I am not a game junkie, so it is easy to impress me. The game has pretty good animation, realism and gameplay. But what is commentary without the commentary? So the game contains pretty interesting commentary. They must have analyzed what typical commentators say in various situations in the game and made some voice snippets for each. Lets say it is a six. The commentary is one among "That is huge, he hit it right out of the ground" or "It doesn't matter when he hits it in the air when he hits it so far" or "Oh, I don't think it was a bad ball either" or "The bowler can't really complain, because it was not such a great ball. I am sure the captain won't be very happy with that" and so on. They play one of these randomly depending on the situation. Sometimes they play 2 or 3 together. However, what surprised me is that the commentary doesn't sound too repetitive/boring/unnatural compared to the real one! It sounds pretty alright.
This confirms my suspicion that commentary is not such a great skill after all. If you just collect a bunch of things to say in every situation and play them randomly, that is good enough! Even games can do a pretty good job of it. When I watch cricket matches, I don't mute the TV, because I like to hear the noise created by spectators in the ground. I am not that particular about the commentary.
Recently I played Cricket 2007 game on Windows. This is a pretty nice game, but I admit I am not a game junkie, so it is easy to impress me. The game has pretty good animation, realism and gameplay. But what is commentary without the commentary? So the game contains pretty interesting commentary. They must have analyzed what typical commentators say in various situations in the game and made some voice snippets for each. Lets say it is a six. The commentary is one among "That is huge, he hit it right out of the ground" or "It doesn't matter when he hits it in the air when he hits it so far" or "Oh, I don't think it was a bad ball either" or "The bowler can't really complain, because it was not such a great ball. I am sure the captain won't be very happy with that" and so on. They play one of these randomly depending on the situation. Sometimes they play 2 or 3 together. However, what surprised me is that the commentary doesn't sound too repetitive/boring/unnatural compared to the real one! It sounds pretty alright.
This confirms my suspicion that commentary is not such a great skill after all. If you just collect a bunch of things to say in every situation and play them randomly, that is good enough! Even games can do a pretty good job of it. When I watch cricket matches, I don't mute the TV, because I like to hear the noise created by spectators in the ground. I am not that particular about the commentary.
Monday, March 24, 2008
How valuable is a life?
Today, Bangalore's newspapers had reported the news about a 'techie' killing his wife and committing suicide as the prime news on the first page. I could not understand why all newspapers thought this was the most important news of the day. FM radio stations, not to be left behind, were asking the listeners to send their opinion about the incidence through an SMS to them.
Don't get me wrong. I definitely feel sorry for the young couple and wish their lives had not ended tragically this way. However, this is not the first time entire families have ended their lives in such a tragic way in this city. If you sift through the newspapers, you could find at least one incidence in a month where a mother poisons her children and ends her life, a farmer, not being able to bare the burden of loans, kills himself and so on. Such news gets reported somewhere deep in the internal sheets, hard to find even if you are looking for. However, this incidence gained so much of importance only because the person involved is a 'techie'. (a unique word coined by Indian media which could mean anything from a people manager in a software company to a call center executive in a BPO company.) My thoughts when I saw this were, is the life of a techie more valuable than that of, say, a Government employee? If not, do the newspapers do this only because the readers are more interested in reading about the life of a techie than that of a more humble person? Or is it because.... I don't know...
After all, the families of the deceased would hate nothing more than media glare on the private lives of their
dear ones after this tragedy. I hope the media leaves them alone.
Don't get me wrong. I definitely feel sorry for the young couple and wish their lives had not ended tragically this way. However, this is not the first time entire families have ended their lives in such a tragic way in this city. If you sift through the newspapers, you could find at least one incidence in a month where a mother poisons her children and ends her life, a farmer, not being able to bare the burden of loans, kills himself and so on. Such news gets reported somewhere deep in the internal sheets, hard to find even if you are looking for. However, this incidence gained so much of importance only because the person involved is a 'techie'. (a unique word coined by Indian media which could mean anything from a people manager in a software company to a call center executive in a BPO company.) My thoughts when I saw this were, is the life of a techie more valuable than that of, say, a Government employee? If not, do the newspapers do this only because the readers are more interested in reading about the life of a techie than that of a more humble person? Or is it because.... I don't know...
After all, the families of the deceased would hate nothing more than media glare on the private lives of their
dear ones after this tragedy. I hope the media leaves them alone.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
White collar 'crimes'
When I have a quick water cooler chat at work or when I meet people over lunch, one of the favorite topics of discussion is traffic problem. I often hear my friends/colleagues complain about a truck/auto/cab driver driving recklessly and causing danger to everyone on the road. Sometimes the discussion moves on to other related areas of public nuisance. I hear people complaining about the behavior of parking lot attenders at work, cafeteria crew, traffic cops, apartment construction companies, the Government, etc.
If a total outsider, like a foreigner were to join such a discussion, he/she would get this picture: The lower strata of the society, where there are less educated, poor/lower middle class people, is what causes *all* of the problems in Indian society. Bangalore is a better place because it has a large number of software engineers, who are a much better breed. Because hey, you don't hear complaints about other software engineers or other such white collar people. If we were to only look at the English language media, the same opinion will be cemented in our mind.
So in my opinion, software engineers, being the most educated, creamy layer of the society, should be setting examples for others to follow. But are we really doing it? Do we always behave on the road, following all road rules? Do we all stick to lane discipline while taking U-turns? Do we treat the parking lot attenders with respect? Do we thank them for their help in parking our vehicle? Do we thank any support staff at our office? If we ever did, do we do it with a smile on our face?
Whenever I see a silly traffic jam being created by a well heeled, sophisticated type of person in a Corolla, I get doubly angry than seeing a call center cab do the same mistake. Other examples are my colleagues spilling coffee in the microwave and not bother to clean it up, jump queues at the cafeteria, spit chewing gum in the rest room wash basin and so on.
If a total outsider, like a foreigner were to join such a discussion, he/she would get this picture: The lower strata of the society, where there are less educated, poor/lower middle class people, is what causes *all* of the problems in Indian society. Bangalore is a better place because it has a large number of software engineers, who are a much better breed. Because hey, you don't hear complaints about other software engineers or other such white collar people. If we were to only look at the English language media, the same opinion will be cemented in our mind.
So in my opinion, software engineers, being the most educated, creamy layer of the society, should be setting examples for others to follow. But are we really doing it? Do we always behave on the road, following all road rules? Do we all stick to lane discipline while taking U-turns? Do we treat the parking lot attenders with respect? Do we thank them for their help in parking our vehicle? Do we thank any support staff at our office? If we ever did, do we do it with a smile on our face?
Whenever I see a silly traffic jam being created by a well heeled, sophisticated type of person in a Corolla, I get doubly angry than seeing a call center cab do the same mistake. Other examples are my colleagues spilling coffee in the microwave and not bother to clean it up, jump queues at the cafeteria, spit chewing gum in the rest room wash basin and so on.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
The way things change and the way they don't
I visit my native place (a small village right at the sea coast in Udupi district) once or twice a year, for a couple of days. My visits were much more frequent when I was a kid. Hence most of my memories of my native place are from my childhood. This often makes me blind to the changes that have happened there and I continue to think that the place is as it was a couple of decades back. However, when I see carefully, the changes are vast. Modernisation has swept the entire district and changed it forever.
I clearly remember walking 2 kms from the nearby town Saligrama to reach my grandfather's house, because we would have to wait 4 hours for the next bus. Now, people in the village don't depend on buses which ply every 30minutes. All auto drivers in the town have cell phones. People in the village just call them up and within 15 minutes, you have the auto at your door. People don't mind shelling out 50Rs for this. Also, walking those 2 kms to the town is close to non-existent now.
There are innumerable things that have changed rapidly in the last decade or so. People are eating chaats, buying expensive cars, sending their children to English medium schools, are already tired of Big Bazaar, just like their counterparts in Bangalore. Seeing all this, it is often easy to conclude that everything has changed.
The last time I was in my native place, it was for the annual religious ceremony at the village temple. I had not attended this event for a very long time. I have fond memories of this ceremony from my childhood, when the entire day would be filled with fun and frolic for us. It ended with a grand puja in the evening, followed by distribution of 'prasada' that was extremely tasty. This time, I was observing to see how this has changed in the last couple of decades.
First and foremost, I observed that I was the _only_ one in the entire gathering of hundreds of people who was wearing a trouser, everyone else was in a dhoti. There is no restriction that one should not wear trousers at this event, so I was very surprised to see that even teenagers had worn a dhoti. Later, I observed that the process of the puja had remained virtually unchanged since my childhood. The same procedure, the same puja, kids having a fun time running around the place, elders trying to bring them to order, nostalgic senior citizens... Everything was just the same. For a few hours, I was transported back in time by 20 years.
It is my gut feeling that things will change here too. Eventually, young people will attend the puja wearing cargos or even shorts and eventually there will also be jeans-wearing girls. But for now, the place has resisted the sweeping change and has clung on to an era gone by. I wonder for how much longer.
I clearly remember walking 2 kms from the nearby town Saligrama to reach my grandfather's house, because we would have to wait 4 hours for the next bus. Now, people in the village don't depend on buses which ply every 30minutes. All auto drivers in the town have cell phones. People in the village just call them up and within 15 minutes, you have the auto at your door. People don't mind shelling out 50Rs for this. Also, walking those 2 kms to the town is close to non-existent now.
There are innumerable things that have changed rapidly in the last decade or so. People are eating chaats, buying expensive cars, sending their children to English medium schools, are already tired of Big Bazaar, just like their counterparts in Bangalore. Seeing all this, it is often easy to conclude that everything has changed.
The last time I was in my native place, it was for the annual religious ceremony at the village temple. I had not attended this event for a very long time. I have fond memories of this ceremony from my childhood, when the entire day would be filled with fun and frolic for us. It ended with a grand puja in the evening, followed by distribution of 'prasada' that was extremely tasty. This time, I was observing to see how this has changed in the last couple of decades.
First and foremost, I observed that I was the _only_ one in the entire gathering of hundreds of people who was wearing a trouser, everyone else was in a dhoti. There is no restriction that one should not wear trousers at this event, so I was very surprised to see that even teenagers had worn a dhoti. Later, I observed that the process of the puja had remained virtually unchanged since my childhood. The same procedure, the same puja, kids having a fun time running around the place, elders trying to bring them to order, nostalgic senior citizens... Everything was just the same. For a few hours, I was transported back in time by 20 years.
It is my gut feeling that things will change here too. Eventually, young people will attend the puja wearing cargos or even shorts and eventually there will also be jeans-wearing girls. But for now, the place has resisted the sweeping change and has clung on to an era gone by. I wonder for how much longer.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
What's in a name?
When I became a father 3 months back, I had no idea how difficult it was going to be to find a name for my daughter. After all, I have succeeded in giving wonderful (I think so) names to other's kids in the past. How difficult could it be to name my own kid? From what I have learnt in the last few months, a lot. I and my wife had a clear idea of the kind of name we wanted for our baby. However, her idea was completely different from mine :-)
These days, there are a number of avenues available to search for names. There are the good old books, there is the Internet and of course, there are relatives. Relatives suggested names from various places. Some worked as teachers and they remembered the names of all the kids in their class, some suggested names from TV serials, some suggested names they had heard, names of kids of their friends and so on. We read through a couple of "Baby names" books and went through a number of websites.
One of the main problems in reaching a conclusion is that we want a name that has a nice meaning, or at least not have a bad meaning. These days it is easy to choose a cute, sweet name for your baby, having heard it somewhere among your relatives and later realize that the name actually means "lunatic". Most baby name websites publish meanings of the names. However, the meanings are either whatever was given by contributors to the website, or given by whoever among their employees was free when the name was added to the site. It is not uncommon to see a name that doesn't mean anything, but someone in some website says it has some meaning in Hebrew. Or Icelandic.
It was very difficult to find names that was acceptable to both me and my wife and also had a nice meaning. We have not even bothered to get a consensus from other stakeholders. After a lot of effort, we have narrowed down to a small list of names. Next weekend is the deadline before which we need to narrow it down to just one name. Wish me luck please. And never underestimate the complexity of the process of naming your baby.
These days, there are a number of avenues available to search for names. There are the good old books, there is the Internet and of course, there are relatives. Relatives suggested names from various places. Some worked as teachers and they remembered the names of all the kids in their class, some suggested names from TV serials, some suggested names they had heard, names of kids of their friends and so on. We read through a couple of "Baby names" books and went through a number of websites.
One of the main problems in reaching a conclusion is that we want a name that has a nice meaning, or at least not have a bad meaning. These days it is easy to choose a cute, sweet name for your baby, having heard it somewhere among your relatives and later realize that the name actually means "lunatic". Most baby name websites publish meanings of the names. However, the meanings are either whatever was given by contributors to the website, or given by whoever among their employees was free when the name was added to the site. It is not uncommon to see a name that doesn't mean anything, but someone in some website says it has some meaning in Hebrew. Or Icelandic.
It was very difficult to find names that was acceptable to both me and my wife and also had a nice meaning. We have not even bothered to get a consensus from other stakeholders. After a lot of effort, we have narrowed down to a small list of names. Next weekend is the deadline before which we need to narrow it down to just one name. Wish me luck please. And never underestimate the complexity of the process of naming your baby.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Beach trek!
Probably the biggest adventurous thing I do on a day-to-day basis is driving through the BTM ring road between 9 and 10AM. However, every now and then, a deep voice within me instigates me to to something really adventurous. I usually ignore it as an indication of indigestion. However, once in a while I lose my sense and decide to indulge in something like going on a trek. December 15-16 weekend was one such time. It was going to be a 'beach trek', which meant, instead of climbing mountains, we were going to walk tens of kilometers along a beach. Not that it is any less insane.
We were a bunch of software engineers at different levels of physical fitness. There were some who had done a Himalayan expedition in the last couple of years, whereas there were some whose most physically strenuous job in the last few months involved a walk from a distant outdoor car parking lot (gasp!). My own glorious trekking past had ended a number of years back. Hence it was like putting Schumacher and a M-800 driver in the same car racing team.
We set out to Bhatkal in a bus, from where our trek was supposed to begin. It is a town approximately 500Kms from Bangalore, along the western coast of Karnataka. Our journey in a KSRTC bus lasted just about 14.5 hours at an impressive rate of 35Km per hour. By the time we reached, it was 9:30 in the morning on a hot and sunny day. By the time we were at the beach, it was what experts call the right time to walk on a sunny, hot beach for hours: 12 in the noon. Our plan was to walk till Byndoor on the first day and on the second day, walk till Maravanthe, which is probably one of the most beautiful beaches anywhere in India.
It took approximately 30 minutes for our initial euphoria to dry up and realize that the day was going to be harsh, hot and sticky. We quickly learnt a valuable lesson that walking a long distance on a surface that inclines from left to right can be bad for your left ankle. There were hardly any people on the beach, leading us to wonder if the population density of coastal Karnataka had come down drastically in the recent times. (I thought Tsunami hit the east coast of India, not the west!) We stopped at a coconut grove for our lunch, the best planned activity of our trek. After a while, we stopped for a dip at a fresh water lake right next to the beach. The vast sea seems like a powerful salt water empire, against which the little fresh water lakes seem to be trying to hold on to their own identity. Some more rigorous walk ensued and we eventually reached Byndoor. Success for day 1.
(Pic1: Sripathi, Chandra, Hariharan, Bharadwaj, Prasanna, Naren and Bharata. Pic2: Same folks + Chandru)
On day 2, after carefully considering all the factors, like the heat factor, the sweat factor, the strain factor and the i_prefer_AC_rooms_to_beach factor, some of us, specifically the M800 types, contemplated skipping the beach and catching a bus to Kundapura. After all, the road runs close to the beach, so we could still enjoy the beach from up close, without actually interacting with it's 'factors'. However, Bharata, our team lead for the trek, dangled the carrot of doing most of the walking early in the morning, before it got too hot. So we set out on day 2 and by 8AM, we were at the beach. The weather was quite pleasant and the beach was much flatter than the previous day, giving our ankles much needed support. Within the first hour, we had walked almost 5 kilometers. By noon, we had pretty much walked the entire distance.
We saw a lot more people on the beach early in the morning. It confirmed our suspicion that the area was in fact pretty well populated, but the native people had much too common sense to be walking on hot sand in the noon. Tens of children were playing on the beach and _all_ of them wanted us to take their photos. It left me wondering "These kids are not going to see these pictures _ever_ in their life again, why do they still want to get their picture taken?"
We had to cross 2 river mouths in these two days. We took help from local fishermen for this. What surprised us was that on both the occasions, the boatman refused to take any money from us for his efforts. Especially on day 2, a boatman invited us to use his boat, did 2 trips across the river, but flatly refused any money. All I can say is these people have not gotten in touch with the auto-rickshaw drivers of Bangalore.
By around 1PM, we had entered Maravanthe. Bharata proposed that, since we had met the objectives of the project, we call the trek over and and travel onward to Kundapura in a bus. Not surprisingly, the proposal was approved with 100% votes by the team. We checked into a lodge in Kundapur for the rest of the day and took the night bus to Bangalore.
PS: The 'official' travelogue should appear on Bharata's blog soon.
We were a bunch of software engineers at different levels of physical fitness. There were some who had done a Himalayan expedition in the last couple of years, whereas there were some whose most physically strenuous job in the last few months involved a walk from a distant outdoor car parking lot (gasp!). My own glorious trekking past had ended a number of years back. Hence it was like putting Schumacher and a M-800 driver in the same car racing team.
We set out to Bhatkal in a bus, from where our trek was supposed to begin. It is a town approximately 500Kms from Bangalore, along the western coast of Karnataka. Our journey in a KSRTC bus lasted just about 14.5 hours at an impressive rate of 35Km per hour. By the time we reached, it was 9:30 in the morning on a hot and sunny day. By the time we were at the beach, it was what experts call the right time to walk on a sunny, hot beach for hours: 12 in the noon. Our plan was to walk till Byndoor on the first day and on the second day, walk till Maravanthe, which is probably one of the most beautiful beaches anywhere in India.
It took approximately 30 minutes for our initial euphoria to dry up and realize that the day was going to be harsh, hot and sticky. We quickly learnt a valuable lesson that walking a long distance on a surface that inclines from left to right can be bad for your left ankle. There were hardly any people on the beach, leading us to wonder if the population density of coastal Karnataka had come down drastically in the recent times. (I thought Tsunami hit the east coast of India, not the west!) We stopped at a coconut grove for our lunch, the best planned activity of our trek. After a while, we stopped for a dip at a fresh water lake right next to the beach. The vast sea seems like a powerful salt water empire, against which the little fresh water lakes seem to be trying to hold on to their own identity. Some more rigorous walk ensued and we eventually reached Byndoor. Success for day 1.
(Pic1: Sripathi, Chandra, Hariharan, Bharadwaj, Prasanna, Naren and Bharata. Pic2: Same folks + Chandru)
On day 2, after carefully considering all the factors, like the heat factor, the sweat factor, the strain factor and the i_prefer_AC_rooms_to_beach factor, some of us, specifically the M800 types, contemplated skipping the beach and catching a bus to Kundapura. After all, the road runs close to the beach, so we could still enjoy the beach from up close, without actually interacting with it's 'factors'. However, Bharata, our team lead for the trek, dangled the carrot of doing most of the walking early in the morning, before it got too hot. So we set out on day 2 and by 8AM, we were at the beach. The weather was quite pleasant and the beach was much flatter than the previous day, giving our ankles much needed support. Within the first hour, we had walked almost 5 kilometers. By noon, we had pretty much walked the entire distance.
We saw a lot more people on the beach early in the morning. It confirmed our suspicion that the area was in fact pretty well populated, but the native people had much too common sense to be walking on hot sand in the noon. Tens of children were playing on the beach and _all_ of them wanted us to take their photos. It left me wondering "These kids are not going to see these pictures _ever_ in their life again, why do they still want to get their picture taken?"We had to cross 2 river mouths in these two days. We took help from local fishermen for this. What surprised us was that on both the occasions, the boatman refused to take any money from us for his efforts. Especially on day 2, a boatman invited us to use his boat, did 2 trips across the river, but flatly refused any money. All I can say is these people have not gotten in touch with the auto-rickshaw drivers of Bangalore.
By around 1PM, we had entered Maravanthe. Bharata proposed that, since we had met the objectives of the project, we call the trek over and and travel onward to Kundapura in a bus. Not surprisingly, the proposal was approved with 100% votes by the team. We checked into a lodge in Kundapur for the rest of the day and took the night bus to Bangalore.
PS: The 'official' travelogue should appear on Bharata's blog soon.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Ironies of life
Recently I became a father of a baby girl. We were in a hospital in Jayanagar and there were scrores of my relatives and friends visiting us, to see the baby and wish us. We had kept some sweets ready in our hospital room to offer to the visitors. What I observed was that most of the visitors were reluctant to pick up a full piece of sweet, either because they were diabetic or because they were trying to lose weight. Most just ate a small piece, that too after mentioning that they should not really be eating it.
Later, I went around the hospital floor to offer sweets to the staff there. Their approach towards the sweet was in stark contrast to our visitors. While nurses picked up a full piece of sweet without any qualm, some of the the cleaning staff (ayahs) actually asked me if they could take a second piece as well. I saw one of them preserving the second piece which she said was for her son.
This had a profound impact on me. While we go around offerring something to people who already have too much of it or don't want to have it, there are others who want to have it, but probably won't even be offerred. I then took out a box of sweets and left it at a desk where the hospital staff can take from at will. At the end of the our stay in the hospital, the box I left at the desk was empty, whereas the one I had kept in my room was not :-)
Later, I went around the hospital floor to offer sweets to the staff there. Their approach towards the sweet was in stark contrast to our visitors. While nurses picked up a full piece of sweet without any qualm, some of the the cleaning staff (ayahs) actually asked me if they could take a second piece as well. I saw one of them preserving the second piece which she said was for her son.
This had a profound impact on me. While we go around offerring something to people who already have too much of it or don't want to have it, there are others who want to have it, but probably won't even be offerred. I then took out a box of sweets and left it at a desk where the hospital staff can take from at will. At the end of the our stay in the hospital, the box I left at the desk was empty, whereas the one I had kept in my room was not :-)
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Controversy about honoring sports persons
When India won the T-20 world championship, everybody, including the state Government, PSUs, BCCI, media and private companies showered the winning team with praises, money and endorsements. This was widely publicized in the media and the Governments which did not reward crickets from their state (TN, Gujarat) were hounded and criticized until they too succumbed and announced cash awards. This resulted in other sports persons raising serious objection about the step-motherly treatment they are dished out. Hockey players had recently won the Asia cup, others had won world championships in snooker and billiards. The media and eminent persons of the society joined the uproar. Hockey players wondered why Sahara group, which sponsors the cricket team as well as the hockey team, treats these two differently when it comes to shelling out money. Quickly, the state Governments were in defense mode. Some of them hurriedly announced cash awards to these sports persons too. The controversy is not dying down fully yet. Vishwanathan Anand, after winning the world chess championship, has wondered what kind of reception he is going to get from the people back home, considering that they showered their love on the winning Indian cricket team.
As I think about this episode, some things are clear in my mind. First of all, it was wrong on the part of the Governments to go over the top in honoring the cricketers while neglecting other sports persons. In fact, the Governments could have done away with giving any cash to the cricketers, because they are getting a good amount of money from Sahara, BCCI and endorsement deals. They could have instead spent the money on other sports and that would have been a genuine encouragement to these sports. Finally, rewarding sports persons does not make our politicians any great. After all, it is the public money they are spending, not money from their own pockets.
Secondly, corporate sponsors like Sahara. They are a company engaged in making profits. They should and do think of their profits all the time, hence they are going to spend money only in places where they believe they have a good return on investment. It is not that they have a special interest in cricket. If hockey (or, say, Kabaddi) was the most popular game in India, they would have spent the money on hockey, not cricket. Hence, why blame them? We don't care to even watch a hockey game on TV, so how can we expect corporates to shower money on the game? There is no use forcing anyone - Governments, corporates, media to give more importance to other games. If we watch these games, these things will happen automatically.
Third, some games are inherently not as enjoyable for the general public as others. For example, there is no way whole India is going to sit at the edge of their chair and watch Vishwanathan battle it out for the chess world championship. So Vishy, please don't expect a massive gathering of people along your victory parade from Chennai airport to the city in an open bus.
As I think about this episode, some things are clear in my mind. First of all, it was wrong on the part of the Governments to go over the top in honoring the cricketers while neglecting other sports persons. In fact, the Governments could have done away with giving any cash to the cricketers, because they are getting a good amount of money from Sahara, BCCI and endorsement deals. They could have instead spent the money on other sports and that would have been a genuine encouragement to these sports. Finally, rewarding sports persons does not make our politicians any great. After all, it is the public money they are spending, not money from their own pockets.
Secondly, corporate sponsors like Sahara. They are a company engaged in making profits. They should and do think of their profits all the time, hence they are going to spend money only in places where they believe they have a good return on investment. It is not that they have a special interest in cricket. If hockey (or, say, Kabaddi) was the most popular game in India, they would have spent the money on hockey, not cricket. Hence, why blame them? We don't care to even watch a hockey game on TV, so how can we expect corporates to shower money on the game? There is no use forcing anyone - Governments, corporates, media to give more importance to other games. If we watch these games, these things will happen automatically.
Third, some games are inherently not as enjoyable for the general public as others. For example, there is no way whole India is going to sit at the edge of their chair and watch Vishwanathan battle it out for the chess world championship. So Vishy, please don't expect a massive gathering of people along your victory parade from Chennai airport to the city in an open bus.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Why thank (just) Muslims around the world?
At the presentation ceremony of today's Twenty-20 finals, Shoib Malik said: "First of all I'd like to thank people back home and the Muslims around the world." I really don't understand why he has to thank people of a religion particularly. Does he think people of other religions never support Pakistan? Why is that so? BTW, India is home to nearly as many Muslims as Pakistan itself!
South Indian = Madrasi
North Indians have always been poor at differentiating between the people from the four southern states and appreciating the difference between their languages, cultures and ways of life. Any south Indian is referred to as a "Madrasi". With the vast movement of North Indians to cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai in recent times, I was expecting that the situation would have changed by now. I was expecting that at least TV channels would be able to make this distinction very well.
A few days back I was watching a discussion on CNN-IBN. English news channels live on hype and they had a mouth-watering topic that day - the controversy related to the Sethusamudram project. One of the participants was a historian from Tamilnadu, I don't remember his name now. The discussion was moving on the lines of "Is Lord Sri Ram only popular in the North India? Is he relevant in the south?". The anchor asked the historian if he could elaborate. The historian said something on the lines of "Ram is not worshipped in Tamilnadu. There are hardly any temples for Ram in Tamilnadu. In fact many believe that worshipping Ram brings ill fate" At this stage, the anchor concluded something like this: "So worshipping Ram is limited to North India. Since South Indians don't worship Ram, we can't say that Ram is an integral part of Hindus in India." These are not the exact words she used, but pretty close.
Now, I really don't know whether Lord Ram is worshipped much in TN. This is a far too controversial topic to write about. What irked me is, how can Tamilnadu represent South India completely? Of course Ram is worshipped in Karnataka. Of course there are temples for Ram in Karnataka and AP. We surely don't believe that worshipping Ram brings ill fortune. Ram may not be as popular a god in South India as he is in the north, but saying nobody worships Ram in the south is too much of stretch. Come on folks, South India is not just TN. While at it, every South Indian is not a Madrasi!
A few days back I was watching a discussion on CNN-IBN. English news channels live on hype and they had a mouth-watering topic that day - the controversy related to the Sethusamudram project. One of the participants was a historian from Tamilnadu, I don't remember his name now. The discussion was moving on the lines of "Is Lord Sri Ram only popular in the North India? Is he relevant in the south?". The anchor asked the historian if he could elaborate. The historian said something on the lines of "Ram is not worshipped in Tamilnadu. There are hardly any temples for Ram in Tamilnadu. In fact many believe that worshipping Ram brings ill fate" At this stage, the anchor concluded something like this: "So worshipping Ram is limited to North India. Since South Indians don't worship Ram, we can't say that Ram is an integral part of Hindus in India." These are not the exact words she used, but pretty close.
Now, I really don't know whether Lord Ram is worshipped much in TN. This is a far too controversial topic to write about. What irked me is, how can Tamilnadu represent South India completely? Of course Ram is worshipped in Karnataka. Of course there are temples for Ram in Karnataka and AP. We surely don't believe that worshipping Ram brings ill fortune. Ram may not be as popular a god in South India as he is in the north, but saying nobody worships Ram in the south is too much of stretch. Come on folks, South India is not just TN. While at it, every South Indian is not a Madrasi!
Friday, September 14, 2007
My ADSL modem and router configuration
I bought my Linksys WRT54G wireless router in the US. It is a bit sensitive to voltage fluctuations. On some days the quality of power supply in my area is poor, which results in the router rebooting all by itself. When this happens, I am forced to remove the router and connect directly to the ADSL modem. The modem, having been made for Indian conditions, is much better at coping with voltage fluctuations.
Typical modem-router configurations recommend setting the modem in bridge mode and using the router to talk PPPoE language. However, in my case, when I remove the router and connect directly to the modem, I will have to change the modem from bridge mode to PPPoE mode. This is a surely extra work and is not nice. So I needed a setup in which I could either connect to the modem or to the router without making any change to settings anywhere (except of course restarting networking on my laptop).
Now I have got a setup that does exactly this. This is how I have done it:
As you can see here, I have my modem in the default PPPoE configuration. Modem's IP is 192.168.1.1, which is the default. I have enabled DHCP server on it, giving out IPs between 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.33.
Moving on to the Linksys router, I have configured it to be in "Automatic configuration - DHCP" mode. I have set it's IP to be 192.168.1.36. This can be any IP outside the DHCP IPs provided by the modem. I have disabled the DHCP server on the router, because I don't want to have 2 DHCP servers in my network.
I have connected the ethernet cable from the modem to the one of the router's 4 regular ports, not the "Internet" port.
I have enabled DHCP on my laptop. It gets it's IP from the modem. The router acts just as a router, forwarding all packets to the modem. When I disconnect the router and connect directly to the modem, it still works perfectly fine without needing any configuration changes anywhere.
Typical modem-router configurations recommend setting the modem in bridge mode and using the router to talk PPPoE language. However, in my case, when I remove the router and connect directly to the modem, I will have to change the modem from bridge mode to PPPoE mode. This is a surely extra work and is not nice. So I needed a setup in which I could either connect to the modem or to the router without making any change to settings anywhere (except of course restarting networking on my laptop).
Now I have got a setup that does exactly this. This is how I have done it:
As you can see here, I have my modem in the default PPPoE configuration. Modem's IP is 192.168.1.1, which is the default. I have enabled DHCP server on it, giving out IPs between 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.33.
Moving on to the Linksys router, I have configured it to be in "Automatic configuration - DHCP" mode. I have set it's IP to be 192.168.1.36. This can be any IP outside the DHCP IPs provided by the modem. I have disabled the DHCP server on the router, because I don't want to have 2 DHCP servers in my network.
I have connected the ethernet cable from the modem to the one of the router's 4 regular ports, not the "Internet" port.
I have enabled DHCP on my laptop. It gets it's IP from the modem. The router acts just as a router, forwarding all packets to the modem. When I disconnect the router and connect directly to the modem, it still works perfectly fine without needing any configuration changes anywhere.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
About Twenty-20 cricket
I watched parts of the first ICC Twenty-20 match yesterday. I believe it is in line with the trend of the time and is bound to succeed. It is good that ICC has formalized the rules of T-20 to make it a mainstream game. I don't know if the dresscode of cheerleading squad is 'official', though :-)
As batsmen get used to the T-20 format, they will learn that it is possible to score runs of many balls that they used to just defend all these days. This will have an impact on the one-day cricket as well, just as the one-day cricket had an impact on test-cricket. More and more one-day games will see scores above 300 now.
The idea was simple. People don't have patience to spend a whole day watching a game of cricket, so the game has been shortened to meet people's tastes. Purists obviously don't like this experiment. They argue that T-20 makes the game lose it's character, skillful batting becomes irrelevant, the game is demoralizing to bowlers and so on. However, when one-day games were introduced, a lot of people opposed this 'dilution' of the game, but slowly got used to the idea of a game that finishes on the same day as it begins. Of course, there are people who still believe test cricket is the only 'pure' form of cricket, but such people are bound to be extinct in a few years.
As batsmen get used to the T-20 format, they will learn that it is possible to score runs of many balls that they used to just defend all these days. This will have an impact on the one-day cricket as well, just as the one-day cricket had an impact on test-cricket. More and more one-day games will see scores above 300 now.
The idea was simple. People don't have patience to spend a whole day watching a game of cricket, so the game has been shortened to meet people's tastes. Purists obviously don't like this experiment. They argue that T-20 makes the game lose it's character, skillful batting becomes irrelevant, the game is demoralizing to bowlers and so on. However, when one-day games were introduced, a lot of people opposed this 'dilution' of the game, but slowly got used to the idea of a game that finishes on the same day as it begins. Of course, there are people who still believe test cricket is the only 'pure' form of cricket, but such people are bound to be extinct in a few years.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Been a long time
It has been four and a half months since I blogged. I don't know how it started, I guess I became very busy for a few days and slowly blogging ceased being an important activity. However, I have started missing it, so it is surely time to get back to it. Hopefully I will keep up to it from now on.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Demise of Poornachandra Tejaswi
Poornachandra Tejaswi, one of the best known Kannada writer and novelists, passed away on the 5th of April. I have read some of his books (Jugaari Cross, Karvalo, Abachoorina Post Office, Chidambara Rahasya come to my mind immediately) and thoroughly appreciated them. I liked the suspense that used to be a part of his novels. He came out of his illustrious father Kuvempu's shadow and created a unique impact on the Kannada literature. It is unfortunate that we won't get to see any more of his writing. May his soul rest in peace.
First rain of 2007
Bangalore saw it's first rain of the year on 11th and 12th of April this year. Last year, it was on 4th March. Not a good sign, considering the serious water shortage in the city.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Living in a construction zone
I live in one of the 'upcoming' layouts in Bangalore. It is coming 'up' really fast, considering all the apartments coming up all around my house. Within 100 metre radius of my house, there are at least 100 new houses coming up! Living in a completed house with so many under-construction houses all around is very unique experience. I have lived here for almost 2 years now and it has not been easy!
Coming to think of it, this area has been like this ever since we came here. First, it was the telephone guys digging up the road to lay the underground cable. Then the electricity guys decided to lay underground cable. Then came the Kaveri water folks (no, we don't have water flowing in our pipes yet, but we have pipes ready so that rodents get a breeding place.) Then came the asphalting folks. After this, many people started constructing houses.
Beginning phase of every new house has been very painful to us. First, they drill a bore-well (there is no water supply yet!). This involves a couple of huge trucks entering the area and making enough noise to drive away all wildlife from Bannerghatta national park, very late into the night. The next phase is digging for foundation. They dig carefully place all the mud on the road so that it causes maximum inconvinience to people using the road. This phase lasts 1-2 months and is the most dusty one. After this, a lot of sand, cement, bricks and metal come in, all of which is carefully laid out on ... you guessed it... the road! I guess they consider any land outside the road to be impure, not to be used for dumping construction materials. After a few months of dusty development, the house is almost ready and the road is almost completely destroyed! Any construction waste is left behind exactly where it was, without anyone bothering to clean up after the act. As a final punch, they conduct a 'Grihapravesha', the day when they block the road completely with a shamiana. Meanwhile, my house has lost it's original color, I hardly remember what it was. It is now covered in a fine layer of dust.
The other nuisance of living in a construction zone is the construction labour. These are floating population, typically families of a husband, wife and 4-5 children. Children, instead of going to school, specialize in throwing stones at electric lights. Husband and wife together earn around 200Rs per day, which should amount to around 6000 per month, which is not very bad considering their spending is so less. But alas! most of this money gets spent on liquor, so it is common to see the whole family engaing in a high-pitched, foul-mouthed quarrel at 10 in the night.
I have to suffer this for at least another 1 year. Hopefully things will get better after that.
Coming to think of it, this area has been like this ever since we came here. First, it was the telephone guys digging up the road to lay the underground cable. Then the electricity guys decided to lay underground cable. Then came the Kaveri water folks (no, we don't have water flowing in our pipes yet, but we have pipes ready so that rodents get a breeding place.) Then came the asphalting folks. After this, many people started constructing houses.
Beginning phase of every new house has been very painful to us. First, they drill a bore-well (there is no water supply yet!). This involves a couple of huge trucks entering the area and making enough noise to drive away all wildlife from Bannerghatta national park, very late into the night. The next phase is digging for foundation. They dig carefully place all the mud on the road so that it causes maximum inconvinience to people using the road. This phase lasts 1-2 months and is the most dusty one. After this, a lot of sand, cement, bricks and metal come in, all of which is carefully laid out on ... you guessed it... the road! I guess they consider any land outside the road to be impure, not to be used for dumping construction materials. After a few months of dusty development, the house is almost ready and the road is almost completely destroyed! Any construction waste is left behind exactly where it was, without anyone bothering to clean up after the act. As a final punch, they conduct a 'Grihapravesha', the day when they block the road completely with a shamiana. Meanwhile, my house has lost it's original color, I hardly remember what it was. It is now covered in a fine layer of dust.
The other nuisance of living in a construction zone is the construction labour. These are floating population, typically families of a husband, wife and 4-5 children. Children, instead of going to school, specialize in throwing stones at electric lights. Husband and wife together earn around 200Rs per day, which should amount to around 6000 per month, which is not very bad considering their spending is so less. But alas! most of this money gets spent on liquor, so it is common to see the whole family engaing in a high-pitched, foul-mouthed quarrel at 10 in the night.
I have to suffer this for at least another 1 year. Hopefully things will get better after that.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Ubuntu Linux desktop
Some of the so called 'experts' predict in January of each year that this year is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop. I remember people declaring that 2003 was going to be the year of Linux on the desktop. They kept on revising their targets at the beginning of each year. It has now become so common to see such articles on tech websites that nobody really takes them seriously.
A positive development in the last few years is the rise of Ubuntu. Those who have not been bitten by the Ubuntu bug wonder what is so special about it. Those who use it swear by it. There is a lot of buzz around it all the time. All the code and binaries shipped by Ubuntu are readily available for any other Linux distro to see and copy (due to GPL). So what does Ubuntu do that others don't?
The simple answer is, things work on Ubuntu. Things work as they should. Things work as you expect them to. Here is a Linux distro that cares for the average joe. It doesn't expect you to understand tens of configuration file formats and edit them using 'your favorite text editor'. Ubuntu has been designed with desktop in mind, not just the back-end server. There are tons of software packages for Ubuntu. It has a wonderful package manager. Once you have all the correct repositories set up, you can install pretty much any software without bothering about dependencies, all from a nice GUI called Synaptic. I have been using Ubuntu on my desktop for weeks now, but I have not learnt any debian package management commands yet! Your best chance of getting your wireless, suspension (to disk, to memory), etc working on Linux is on Ubuntu. It is possible (almost) to live without opening the text mode terminal on Ubuntu. There is also a vibrant community around Ubuntu, so things will only get better in future.
If you are hesitant to make the jump, try out the Ubuntu live CD/DVD. I'm sure you will love it.
A positive development in the last few years is the rise of Ubuntu. Those who have not been bitten by the Ubuntu bug wonder what is so special about it. Those who use it swear by it. There is a lot of buzz around it all the time. All the code and binaries shipped by Ubuntu are readily available for any other Linux distro to see and copy (due to GPL). So what does Ubuntu do that others don't?
The simple answer is, things work on Ubuntu. Things work as they should. Things work as you expect them to. Here is a Linux distro that cares for the average joe. It doesn't expect you to understand tens of configuration file formats and edit them using 'your favorite text editor'. Ubuntu has been designed with desktop in mind, not just the back-end server. There are tons of software packages for Ubuntu. It has a wonderful package manager. Once you have all the correct repositories set up, you can install pretty much any software without bothering about dependencies, all from a nice GUI called Synaptic. I have been using Ubuntu on my desktop for weeks now, but I have not learnt any debian package management commands yet! Your best chance of getting your wireless, suspension (to disk, to memory), etc working on Linux is on Ubuntu. It is possible (almost) to live without opening the text mode terminal on Ubuntu. There is also a vibrant community around Ubuntu, so things will only get better in future.
If you are hesitant to make the jump, try out the Ubuntu live CD/DVD. I'm sure you will love it.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Customer support and the credit unions in the US
You get to really measure the quality of customer support of a company only when something has gone wrong and you expect them to fix it. For example, you will get to evaluate the customer support of your mobile phone service provider when you are trying to get some error in your bill corrected. I am writing about an example of good customer support that I have received from a credit union in the US.
I am not sure exactly how credit unions in the US are different from the regular banks, probably they run on the same principles as co-operative banks in India. I have been a customer of two credit unions - the first time when I was in Salt Lake City a few years ago and again in 2005, when I was in Austin. It was always nice to interact with them - they created a friendly atmosphere and I was always able to get all my work done with minimum or no hassle.
Recently, I had a bit of trouble while closing my account and getting my money back from IBM-TEFCU. My account had been closed, but my last check went missing! Meanwhile, the credit union had been rebranded as Amplify and it's website design had changed completely. Hence I suspected that it may be difficult to solve the problem and get my money back. However, they responded to my every e-mail promptly and did everything they could to ensure that I get my money back. Today my money has reached me and I feel very satisfied when I send them a thank-you note.
There have been other such incidences where credit unions have given me exceptional help and support. Hence I recommend anyone who is going to the US, especially for the first time, to open their bank account with a well known credit union in their area.
Update: Here is some crisp information about how credit unions differ from regular banks. Now I know why they used to call me a member of the CU, not a customer.
I am not sure exactly how credit unions in the US are different from the regular banks, probably they run on the same principles as co-operative banks in India. I have been a customer of two credit unions - the first time when I was in Salt Lake City a few years ago and again in 2005, when I was in Austin. It was always nice to interact with them - they created a friendly atmosphere and I was always able to get all my work done with minimum or no hassle.
Recently, I had a bit of trouble while closing my account and getting my money back from IBM-TEFCU. My account had been closed, but my last check went missing! Meanwhile, the credit union had been rebranded as Amplify and it's website design had changed completely. Hence I suspected that it may be difficult to solve the problem and get my money back. However, they responded to my every e-mail promptly and did everything they could to ensure that I get my money back. Today my money has reached me and I feel very satisfied when I send them a thank-you note.
There have been other such incidences where credit unions have given me exceptional help and support. Hence I recommend anyone who is going to the US, especially for the first time, to open their bank account with a well known credit union in their area.
Update: Here is some crisp information about how credit unions differ from regular banks. Now I know why they used to call me a member of the CU, not a customer.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Strength of unity (and virtues of social living)
I normally sleep for some extra time on Saturdays and Sundays. But last Saturday was different. I woke up to a loud noise created by a bunch of crows outside my bedroom window. When I peeked out of the window, I saw a bunch of crows on the electric wires and nearby houses. They were looking down at the ground and crowing as if their lives depended on it. They used to take to air every few seconds, scoop down to the ground, then fly up into the air and settle again where they were sitting. This activity was drawing the attention of other crows nearby and they were quickly descending on the scene of action to join this activity.
For a minute I could not figure out what was going on. When I looked at the ground, to my surprise, I saw that a crow had fallen on the ground. It's legs were entangled in some rope, making it unable to fly. It was twisting and turning in the dust, trying to free itself from the rope. Meanwhile, a stray dog was eyeing this rare opportunity to lay it's teeth on the crow. That is when it struck me what exactly was going on there. The crow population was making all the noise to encourage the fallen one and they were hovering close to the ground every few seconds to scare off the dog from going too close to their friend. The amount of noise they were making and their intimidating behavior was enough to keep the dog at bay.
After a while, the crow had freed itself from the rope around it's legs. Now it's friends were even more enthusiastic in encouraging it to take to the sky. But it was just sitting there motionless, making me wonder if it had been too hurt to fly. However, after taking a few more minutes to regain itself, the fallen crow finally took off into the air! This was an incredible sight to me. Because of the single-minded, selfless, dedicated effort of the crow community, one of their own escaped what could have been definite death and flew back into the air. The stray dog, which came back after a few minutes, must have been disappointed to find no crow on the ground, no crows hovering around, just a rope lying in the dust. Unlucky day for him. I started my day being impressed about the unity and mutually helpful nature of the crows.
For a minute I could not figure out what was going on. When I looked at the ground, to my surprise, I saw that a crow had fallen on the ground. It's legs were entangled in some rope, making it unable to fly. It was twisting and turning in the dust, trying to free itself from the rope. Meanwhile, a stray dog was eyeing this rare opportunity to lay it's teeth on the crow. That is when it struck me what exactly was going on there. The crow population was making all the noise to encourage the fallen one and they were hovering close to the ground every few seconds to scare off the dog from going too close to their friend. The amount of noise they were making and their intimidating behavior was enough to keep the dog at bay.
After a while, the crow had freed itself from the rope around it's legs. Now it's friends were even more enthusiastic in encouraging it to take to the sky. But it was just sitting there motionless, making me wonder if it had been too hurt to fly. However, after taking a few more minutes to regain itself, the fallen crow finally took off into the air! This was an incredible sight to me. Because of the single-minded, selfless, dedicated effort of the crow community, one of their own escaped what could have been definite death and flew back into the air. The stray dog, which came back after a few minutes, must have been disappointed to find no crow on the ground, no crows hovering around, just a rope lying in the dust. Unlucky day for him. I started my day being impressed about the unity and mutually helpful nature of the crows.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Normalization of India
When somebody goes to US for the first time, he/she is obviously very excited. There are so many new things to see and do, everything there seems to be very exciting and nice. This was especially true of me when I first landed in a small city called Salt Lake City in Utah in the year 2000. During then, Food-World was only just starting off in India, malls and multiplexes were still a few years away. Four-lane roads almost didn't exist either. Hence everything I saw in that small US city seemed to be wonderful. But as time progressed and I visited other places in US, I realized that all cities of the US were very very similar to each other. Similar freeways, similar roads, similar road names (Cedar street readily comes to my mind), McDonalds, Burger Kings, Mixican food joints, Wal-marts, 'Target's, down-towns with high rises. If you had seen one city, you had seen them all. Unless of course you were visiting a national park or other such tourist attraction.
India is not like this. Every city has it's own character and uniqueness. This is especially true for cities in different states, but towns within a state too are never a replica of each other. Compare Hubli and Mysore, you get the idea. The people in US speak about 'cultural differences' between various states/areas of their country, like east coasters and mid-westerners. They have no idea how much diversity can a country can possess until they learn about India.
I have observed a trend recently that is just a trickle now but I expect it to speed up in the coming years. Indian cities are slowly losing some of this diversity and becoming 'normalized'. This trend can now be majorly seen with higher middle-class and high end of the society in bigger cities, fast spreading into smaller towns.
I was in Chennai recently and since I had a few hours of free time during one evening, I roamed in and around Spencer's plaza, the most famous mall in Chennai. Outside the mall, I saw a billboard for 'Fitness One' and I exclaimed "Hey, they are in Chennai as well". In fact, most billboards were of national brands. Inside the mall, I got a sense of deja-vu when I saw outlets of so many familar brands Ihad seen in Forum Mall or Garuda Mall in Bangalore. Cookie Man, Samsonite, Pizza Hut, Subway and so on. In fact I returned from the mall being kind of disappointed, because it felt like I could have seen all that in Bangalore. I should have go to Marina beach instead, that is something that will never come to Bangalore :-)
I had believed that people in Chennai just can't speak Hindi. So I believed that anyone who doesn't know Tamil should try to speak in English. However, to my surprise I found that I was able to get more mileage out of speaking in my broken Hindi (theirs was worse!) than with English. I had found this to be true in Cochin too an year ago. So I am now convinced that within a few more years (or a decade), it will be possible to converse in Hindi almost everywhere in India.
As brands spread their wings across India, they will slowly erode the uniqueness of all places, making them look more and more like each other. It is already possible to go anywhere in India, transact on your ATM card, continue to use your cell phone, visit a cyber-cafe, buy your favorite brand's bottled water, eat your favorite food, buy a flat built by the same developer and feel at home in many other ways. As time goes by, this trend will only increase, making all cities and towns 'normalized' across India. We are miles and generations away from making our cities replicas of each other like it is in the US, but the trend is definitely in that direction.
India is not like this. Every city has it's own character and uniqueness. This is especially true for cities in different states, but towns within a state too are never a replica of each other. Compare Hubli and Mysore, you get the idea. The people in US speak about 'cultural differences' between various states/areas of their country, like east coasters and mid-westerners. They have no idea how much diversity can a country can possess until they learn about India.
I have observed a trend recently that is just a trickle now but I expect it to speed up in the coming years. Indian cities are slowly losing some of this diversity and becoming 'normalized'. This trend can now be majorly seen with higher middle-class and high end of the society in bigger cities, fast spreading into smaller towns.
I was in Chennai recently and since I had a few hours of free time during one evening, I roamed in and around Spencer's plaza, the most famous mall in Chennai. Outside the mall, I saw a billboard for 'Fitness One' and I exclaimed "Hey, they are in Chennai as well". In fact, most billboards were of national brands. Inside the mall, I got a sense of deja-vu when I saw outlets of so many familar brands Ihad seen in Forum Mall or Garuda Mall in Bangalore. Cookie Man, Samsonite, Pizza Hut, Subway and so on. In fact I returned from the mall being kind of disappointed, because it felt like I could have seen all that in Bangalore. I should have go to Marina beach instead, that is something that will never come to Bangalore :-)
I had believed that people in Chennai just can't speak Hindi. So I believed that anyone who doesn't know Tamil should try to speak in English. However, to my surprise I found that I was able to get more mileage out of speaking in my broken Hindi (theirs was worse!) than with English. I had found this to be true in Cochin too an year ago. So I am now convinced that within a few more years (or a decade), it will be possible to converse in Hindi almost everywhere in India.
As brands spread their wings across India, they will slowly erode the uniqueness of all places, making them look more and more like each other. It is already possible to go anywhere in India, transact on your ATM card, continue to use your cell phone, visit a cyber-cafe, buy your favorite brand's bottled water, eat your favorite food, buy a flat built by the same developer and feel at home in many other ways. As time goes by, this trend will only increase, making all cities and towns 'normalized' across India. We are miles and generations away from making our cities replicas of each other like it is in the US, but the trend is definitely in that direction.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Chennai is wonderful!
I was in Chennai last weekend. While returning, I was sitting in an auto-rickshaw to reach the airport. It was going at approximately at a speed of Mach 2, with it's wheels barely making contact with the road, narrowly missing other similar autos and cars by a distanceof approximately 2 air molecules. My mind, when it got a bit of respite from being scared to death, was thinking about this wonderful city.
Chennai has always been a fascinating city to outsiders for various reasons. This is the city where if temperatures drops below 20 degrees the entire population could go on hibernation due to cold weather. Due to this weather, air-conditioned cinema halls were common here long before PVRs and INOXes came to Bangalore. I am a native of Udupi district, which is also on the seashore and is approximately at the same latitude. But Chennai heat is different.
An outsider who is not overcharged on a Chennai auto-rickshaw is yet to take birth on Earth. I have once paid Rs.20 for a rickshaw journey and Rs.80 for the return journey on the same route.
This is a city where most restaurants are very strict about their timings. If you enter a restaurant at 1:30PM and ask "What is there to eat?" the only answer you will get is only "Lunch". It is quite likely that they don't even sell idlis during lunch hour. If you go at the right time, you will get to savour a very tasteful Sambhar in most of the restaurants. I don't like their Rasam, though.
This is probably the only state where almost all advertisements, popular TV shows and Hollywood movies are translated to the local language.
Chennai is the headquarters of the strange Tamilnadu politics. A politics where every movie star worth his/her salt dreams of becoming the Chief Minister of the state some day. Of course, the only qualification is that his/her fans should have built some temples for this star. A politics where the leaders, often called Amma or Appa, are literally worshipped by their followers, often by prostrating in front of their leader in public gatherings. A politics where electorate always gives a clear majority to one of the political part
ies, as long as the name of the party contains the letters D, M and K.
Chennai is interesting and fascinating.
Chennai has always been a fascinating city to outsiders for various reasons. This is the city where if temperatures drops below 20 degrees the entire population could go on hibernation due to cold weather. Due to this weather, air-conditioned cinema halls were common here long before PVRs and INOXes came to Bangalore. I am a native of Udupi district, which is also on the seashore and is approximately at the same latitude. But Chennai heat is different.
An outsider who is not overcharged on a Chennai auto-rickshaw is yet to take birth on Earth. I have once paid Rs.20 for a rickshaw journey and Rs.80 for the return journey on the same route.
This is a city where most restaurants are very strict about their timings. If you enter a restaurant at 1:30PM and ask "What is there to eat?" the only answer you will get is only "Lunch". It is quite likely that they don't even sell idlis during lunch hour. If you go at the right time, you will get to savour a very tasteful Sambhar in most of the restaurants. I don't like their Rasam, though.
This is probably the only state where almost all advertisements, popular TV shows and Hollywood movies are translated to the local language.
Chennai is the headquarters of the strange Tamilnadu politics. A politics where every movie star worth his/her salt dreams of becoming the Chief Minister of the state some day. Of course, the only qualification is that his/her fans should have built some temples for this star. A politics where the leaders, often called Amma or Appa, are literally worshipped by their followers, often by prostrating in front of their leader in public gatherings. A politics where electorate always gives a clear majority to one of the political part
ies, as long as the name of the party contains the letters D, M and K.
Chennai is interesting and fascinating.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Gautham, on my previous post.
Gautham's take on my previous post. I decided that it deserves more limelight than what it can get in an obscure comment in my hardly-read blog. Hence I'm posting it here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Jobless that I am, I ended up composing this verse.
[Should be sung in the tune of Yankee-doodle-doodle-do!]
Shilpa Shetty goes to london
With her chicken curry
They call her paki, dog, poppodum
n' Shilpa ends up merry.
Yank-the-media out of town
Yank-the media into ground
Thrash the media once for good
And let them lay there buried.
Salman, Vivek and Abhishek
Ash is on a date-fury.
Media goes to hotels and temples
To tell us she'll marry.
Yank-the-media out of town
Yank-the media into ground
Thrash the media once for good
And let them lay there buried.!
-------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Jobless that I am, I ended up composing this verse.
[Should be sung in the tune of Yankee-doodle-doodle-do!]
Shilpa Shetty goes to london
With her chicken curry
They call her paki, dog, poppodum
n' Shilpa ends up merry.
Yank-the-media out of town
Yank-the media into ground
Thrash the media once for good
And let them lay there buried.
Salman, Vivek and Abhishek
Ash is on a date-fury.
Media goes to hotels and temples
To tell us she'll marry.
Yank-the-media out of town
Yank-the media into ground
Thrash the media once for good
And let them lay there buried.!
-------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, January 29, 2007
Overreporting on Indian media
Easy question: What are the two most over-reported news items in Indian media in recent times?
Easy answers:
1) Shilpa Shetty's misadventure on English television. I never imagined that some websites and TV channels will follow the results of Big Brother just like they track cricket scores. Pray tell me, why on earth is this so interesting?
2) Abhishek-Aishwarya's marriage. I knew this was going to be big, but I'm still annoyed at how much newsprint and air time is getting spent on this. Every day there is either a new speculation that they are already married, or else, what they are going to wear on their wedding. Either way, this never fails to make it to headlines every single day. I wish they marry soon so that this madness ends. Also, I don't care if they wear jeans and t-shirt or even a lungi on their wedding day.
Looks like our politicians are not creating enough news to feed the newspapers and TV.
Easy answers:
1) Shilpa Shetty's misadventure on English television. I never imagined that some websites and TV channels will follow the results of Big Brother just like they track cricket scores. Pray tell me, why on earth is this so interesting?
2) Abhishek-Aishwarya's marriage. I knew this was going to be big, but I'm still annoyed at how much newsprint and air time is getting spent on this. Every day there is either a new speculation that they are already married, or else, what they are going to wear on their wedding. Either way, this never fails to make it to headlines every single day. I wish they marry soon so that this madness ends. Also, I don't care if they wear jeans and t-shirt or even a lungi on their wedding day.
Looks like our politicians are not creating enough news to feed the newspapers and TV.
Friday, January 05, 2007
My prediction comes true!
One of my technology predictions has come true within a couple of months! If there is a career in predicting technology trends, I guess I am ready for it now :-)
Monday, January 01, 2007
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Vaikuntha Ekadashi
Today is "Vaikuntha Ekadashi", a holy day for most Hindus. It is believed that one must visit a temple of Lord Vishnu/Venkateshwara today because doing so will fetch a lot of 'punya'. It is also believed that the doors of Vaikuntha are open for everyone today, so if a believer dies today, he/she will get a free entry there. So it is common to find long queues at all Venkateshwara temples, from early morning all the way till late night. Luckily people don't commit suicide on this day to get their free pass into the Lord's kingdom!
People seem to believe that the God, who is most willing to grant you your wishes on this particular day, won't be so forthcoming for the rest of the year. Is the God going to hibernate for the other 364 days, or what? My beliefs in religion are a bit different from the mainstream. I don't usually get sucked into standing in those long queues at temples on this day.
Today was an exception to this rule. I accompanied my parents to the Venkateshwara temple in J.P.Nagar at six in the morning, mainly because I had to drive them there. To my dismay, I found that the queue for general entry (dharma darshan) was already winding past a few cross roads! We were in a 'special' queue, having paid a fees in advance. However, the special queue was not too short either, reassuring me that J.P.Nagar had no shortage of rich people. What disappointed me was the way people were behaving.
People just did not follow the queue. Everyone felt he/she was special enough to break the queue and walk straight to the entrance. Even when we were moving in the queue, there were people who tried to overtake me - as if I was not moving fast enough! Many did not think twice before throwing garbage on the road. Petty quarrels were breaking out between the devotees as they waited in the queue. I was thinking - these are some of the best-educated, rich people of this city. If these people don't possess basic civic sense, what can we say about the rest of the juntaa?
I think Hinduism should have included a couple of rules about civic sense. Like, "if you jump a queue, you go to hell" or "if you throw filth on road, the doors of Vaikuntha will be closed for you, even on Vaikuntha Ekadashi". Sheesh!
People seem to believe that the God, who is most willing to grant you your wishes on this particular day, won't be so forthcoming for the rest of the year. Is the God going to hibernate for the other 364 days, or what? My beliefs in religion are a bit different from the mainstream. I don't usually get sucked into standing in those long queues at temples on this day.
Today was an exception to this rule. I accompanied my parents to the Venkateshwara temple in J.P.Nagar at six in the morning, mainly because I had to drive them there. To my dismay, I found that the queue for general entry (dharma darshan) was already winding past a few cross roads! We were in a 'special' queue, having paid a fees in advance. However, the special queue was not too short either, reassuring me that J.P.Nagar had no shortage of rich people. What disappointed me was the way people were behaving.
People just did not follow the queue. Everyone felt he/she was special enough to break the queue and walk straight to the entrance. Even when we were moving in the queue, there were people who tried to overtake me - as if I was not moving fast enough! Many did not think twice before throwing garbage on the road. Petty quarrels were breaking out between the devotees as they waited in the queue. I was thinking - these are some of the best-educated, rich people of this city. If these people don't possess basic civic sense, what can we say about the rest of the juntaa?
I think Hinduism should have included a couple of rules about civic sense. Like, "if you jump a queue, you go to hell" or "if you throw filth on road, the doors of Vaikuntha will be closed for you, even on Vaikuntha Ekadashi". Sheesh!
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Power of procrastination
My inherent ability to procrastinate has reached an all-time high this December. I can't seem to be able to do anything without putting it off for weeks. I must find out why it turned out to be this way. But I will do it tomorrow. or day after ;-)
I seriously hope things improve starting with the new year.
I seriously hope things improve starting with the new year.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Bad boys of cricket
Indian cricket team has finally won a match in South Africa. Going by the way they played the one-day series, everyone thought they would have to buy lottery tickets if they were to hope to win anything at all in the tour. However, miracles do happen.
One of the positives of the first test, in my view, was the attitude shown by Sreesanth. I have read somewhere that some of his team-mates don't like his extravagant mannerism and "I don't care shit" attitude. However, ever since Saurav Ganguly was sidelined, there was nobody with such a colorful personality in the team. I really liked the way he responded in kind to Nel, when he hit Nel for a six on the very next ball after being taunted by him. Contrast this with the way Dravid had responded to Allan Donald a few years back in a similar situation. What a difference!
We really need some bad guys in the team to keep it vibrant and colorful.
One of the positives of the first test, in my view, was the attitude shown by Sreesanth. I have read somewhere that some of his team-mates don't like his extravagant mannerism and "I don't care shit" attitude. However, ever since Saurav Ganguly was sidelined, there was nobody with such a colorful personality in the team. I really liked the way he responded in kind to Nel, when he hit Nel for a six on the very next ball after being taunted by him. Contrast this with the way Dravid had responded to Allan Donald a few years back in a similar situation. What a difference!
We really need some bad guys in the team to keep it vibrant and colorful.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
There is a girl...
who brings a smile on my face in the morning. I see her almost every day on Bannerghatta Road. When I start from home to office, I am always anxious, wondering whether I am going to see her or not. If I don't see her, I know that I am going to be less happy throughout the day. She never smiles at me, hardly even notices me, but I feel reassured the moment I see her.
Well, she is a traffic warden. She stands at the junction of Bannerghatta Road and N.S Palya main road where I take a right turn towards BTM Layout. Without her being there, our moronic drivers create a traffic jam at that junction within a few seconds. A messy trafficjam there affects my commute time to office and puts me in a bad mood. She is very diligent in her work and ensures smooth flow of traffic at that junction. Unfortunately on some days she does not show up, so all hell breaks loose.
Well, she is a traffic warden. She stands at the junction of Bannerghatta Road and N.S Palya main road where I take a right turn towards BTM Layout. Without her being there, our moronic drivers create a traffic jam at that junction within a few seconds. A messy trafficjam there affects my commute time to office and puts me in a bad mood. She is very diligent in her work and ensures smooth flow of traffic at that junction. Unfortunately on some days she does not show up, so all hell breaks loose.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Hard disks vs flash memories
A few years back, when the dot-com craze was at it's peak, when the need for storing large amount of data was growing by the minute, everyone thought the hard disk and storage manufacturers were going to have a wonderful time ahead. Nobody could think of any other technology that could pose serious threat to hard disks. Today, less than a decade since then, hard disk manufacturers are alarmed by the advances in flash memory technology. Fuelled by robust growth in digital cameras and other hand-held devices, flash memory manufacturersare seeing unimaginable growth. With every passing year, flash memory cards are almost doubling in size and prices are dropping. Today I saw that Toshiba is coming up with an 8GB SD card. It is now believed that very soon, 40GB SD cards will be common. Hard disks have traditionally provided larger sizes, faster data rates and cheaper storage in comparison to other technologies. But how long will they remain ahead in this race? It is clear that flash memory sizes will eventually catch up with hard disks in size. Will disks continue to have faster data rate and cheap storage advantage?
I predict that notebook computers will be the first to adopt flash memory. Since these memory cards don't have any moving parts, they will be best fit in notebook computers. If flash memory cards improve their data rates, operating systems could use them instead of a disk partition for hibernating. If they improve the reliability, they could replace the ROMs in computers. It could make it much easier to re-flash the BIOS and other such non-volatile storages both in computers and embedded devices. Whatever it is, I think flash memories have much better future compared to hard disks. Sandisk, Kingston, etc will do much better than Seagate, Hitachi, etc!
I predict that notebook computers will be the first to adopt flash memory. Since these memory cards don't have any moving parts, they will be best fit in notebook computers. If flash memory cards improve their data rates, operating systems could use them instead of a disk partition for hibernating. If they improve the reliability, they could replace the ROMs in computers. It could make it much easier to re-flash the BIOS and other such non-volatile storages both in computers and embedded devices. Whatever it is, I think flash memories have much better future compared to hard disks. Sandisk, Kingston, etc will do much better than Seagate, Hitachi, etc!
Saturday, November 18, 2006
The Financial Expert
I just finished reading "The financial expert" by R.K.Narayan. I don't read all that much in English; I prefer to read in Kannada instead. Whatever little I have read in English was all written by western authors. Hence reading a story in English by an Indian author, with the story set in India was refreshingly different. I cannot say I liked the story all that much, but the people in the story, the way they talk, the way their surroundings are, everything is so very different and nice. I think I should read more stories of this type.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Planning my day
My employer allows me to work from home (WFH). I am proud of that, because not many companies in Bangalore give such a facility to employees. It greatly enhances flexibility of planning my day. For example, I can leave office at a fixed time in the evening, irrespective of how much work is still pending, because I can always work a few hours after reaching home and get the work done.
Unfortunately all good things come with strings attached. I have recently realized that WFH facility is slowly making me inefficient in planning my day. I no more have the pressure to finish off all my work by the end of the office day! Invariably I push some of the work to later in the night. So now-a-days I _plan_ to work the entire day - the hours I spend in office as well as the hours I spend at home. I am working from home later in the night on pretty much all days, irrespective of whether there is a requirement for that or not.That is definitely bad. I must get back to planning my work only for the office hours and work from home at night only if it is inevitable. I wonder how successful I will be in doing that.
Unfortunately all good things come with strings attached. I have recently realized that WFH facility is slowly making me inefficient in planning my day. I no more have the pressure to finish off all my work by the end of the office day! Invariably I push some of the work to later in the night. So now-a-days I _plan_ to work the entire day - the hours I spend in office as well as the hours I spend at home. I am working from home later in the night on pretty much all days, irrespective of whether there is a requirement for that or not.That is definitely bad. I must get back to planning my work only for the office hours and work from home at night only if it is inevitable. I wonder how successful I will be in doing that.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Helmet rule
After postponing it roughly 200 times, the state Government has finally made it compulsory for all two-wheeler riders in Karnataka to wear helmets. Err... except if you are in Bellary. This concession for Bellary is apparently because the weather is too hot there. I would have accepted that argument a couple of months back when the CD politics was at it's peak in Bellary and it was generating a lot of political 'heat'. But now, I don't see how Bellary is any more hot than Raichur, Gulbarga or even Mangalore. Bangaloreans can't claim any such concession unless Mallika Sheravat visits the city. (No, in fact I don't find her hot.)
There are obviously many advantages of wearing a helmet. I have at least 3 friends who are alive today only because they wore a helmeton a particular day in their lives. However, I am seeing that helmets are now helping not just the rider, but everyone else on the road. It is normal now-a-days to see youngsters talking on cell phones as if their life depends on it. In a few years, if Darwin's theory is any true, we should start seeing kids being able to use cell phones the moment they are born. Now, you don't expect people to stop talking on their phone just because they are performing, in parallel, another activity like riding a bike or doing a brain surgery. So they hold the phone between their ear and shoulder, bending their head completely to one side and continue riding. Obviously, we can't expect such people to ride attentively. Heck, I have seen pedestrians hitting poles and parked vehicles on the road because they were engrossed in talking on cell phone. I am always scared to see such people riding a bike in front of my car. You never know when they are going to do something very stupid and end up under your car. Now, with their helmets on, they cannot talk this way while riding the bike. So it is a simple solution to this problem. Of course, people can still hands-free, but that is better than before.
We need helmets to come with built-in head phones. Then we could use hands-free and FM radio on our cell phones while riding, without having to carefully wear the earphones. Hey, this could be a patentable idea right here!
There are obviously many advantages of wearing a helmet. I have at least 3 friends who are alive today only because they wore a helmeton a particular day in their lives. However, I am seeing that helmets are now helping not just the rider, but everyone else on the road. It is normal now-a-days to see youngsters talking on cell phones as if their life depends on it. In a few years, if Darwin's theory is any true, we should start seeing kids being able to use cell phones the moment they are born. Now, you don't expect people to stop talking on their phone just because they are performing, in parallel, another activity like riding a bike or doing a brain surgery. So they hold the phone between their ear and shoulder, bending their head completely to one side and continue riding. Obviously, we can't expect such people to ride attentively. Heck, I have seen pedestrians hitting poles and parked vehicles on the road because they were engrossed in talking on cell phone. I am always scared to see such people riding a bike in front of my car. You never know when they are going to do something very stupid and end up under your car. Now, with their helmets on, they cannot talk this way while riding the bike. So it is a simple solution to this problem. Of course, people can still hands-free, but that is better than before.
We need helmets to come with built-in head phones. Then we could use hands-free and FM radio on our cell phones while riding, without having to carefully wear the earphones. Hey, this could be a patentable idea right here!
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