"Specil", to be precise.(Seen at a well-known, traditional South Indian restaurant in Koramangala)
Monday, September 28, 2009
The speciality is that there is nothing special
"Specil", to be precise.(Seen at a well-known, traditional South Indian restaurant in Koramangala)
Friday, September 25, 2009
Want dinner? comply with the dresscode
The notice reads:"You are hereby requested not to wear SHORTS, LUNGIES or HAWAI CHAPPALS while dining VISHALA RESTAURANT during DINNER from
No, this was not found at Bangalore Club. Heck, not even in Bangalore. I found this in Mysore, at one of the older hotels, Dasaprakash Paradise.
Hmm... looks like high end socialites like M F Hussain can't dine here. However, it is okay to wear shorts, lungies or hawai chappals for lunch :-)
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Getting used to little luxuries in life
A couple of days ago, it finally happened. My house was plunged into darkness for the first time since we moved in more than 4.5 years ago. Our most trusted inverter finally gave up against constant battering of power cuts we are going through due to some major electrical cable work going on in this part of the city. The house fell dark at around 8 in the night.
We saw it coming, but due to being conditioned by years of easy, predictable life, we were not at all prepared for it. We did not know where (and whether) we kept candles any more, our torches did not have battery in them, our emergency light had long been unused, hence did not work. My daughter, having never seen a dark night all through her life, just could not understand why we were not turning on lights. We did not even have enough drinking water - we had always taken for granted that the water purifier is always there. It was also the worst time to realize that my cell phone was almost out of battery and I had to make a few important phone calls. It was a total chaos for a while.
This incidence made me reflect on my own life. In my childhood I had lived in a place where there was no municipal electricity at all. We only had a diesel generator for the entire village that ran from 7 to 10PM. We did not have a phone at home till I was in college. Now I find it hard to live a couple of hours without electricity. It is easy to get used to luxuries in life. We tend to assume that our life only improves from where it is and not even think about the possibility of degrade. When a difficult time arrives, we are as ready for it as a zoo-bred tiger suddenly left to fend for itself in the jungle.
We saw it coming, but due to being conditioned by years of easy, predictable life, we were not at all prepared for it. We did not know where (and whether) we kept candles any more, our torches did not have battery in them, our emergency light had long been unused, hence did not work. My daughter, having never seen a dark night all through her life, just could not understand why we were not turning on lights. We did not even have enough drinking water - we had always taken for granted that the water purifier is always there. It was also the worst time to realize that my cell phone was almost out of battery and I had to make a few important phone calls. It was a total chaos for a while.
This incidence made me reflect on my own life. In my childhood I had lived in a place where there was no municipal electricity at all. We only had a diesel generator for the entire village that ran from 7 to 10PM. We did not have a phone at home till I was in college. Now I find it hard to live a couple of hours without electricity. It is easy to get used to luxuries in life. We tend to assume that our life only improves from where it is and not even think about the possibility of degrade. When a difficult time arrives, we are as ready for it as a zoo-bred tiger suddenly left to fend for itself in the jungle.
Monday, September 07, 2009
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Diversity of markets
There is a phenomenon that is common for a sub-species of humans called Engineers, especially the male of this species. They buy the latest and greatest gadgetry and feel a sense of superiority complex over other members of the species. My camera has 12 Megapixels, whereas yours has only 10. My mobile has wifi and 3G, yours doesn't. My computer (on which I only suft the web,) has quad-core CPU. My toaster can do my tax calculations.. and so on. A lot of us are affected by this feeling to some extent. When some of us are face-to-face with people who choose their gadgets based on a completely different set of criteria, according to which our gadgets are inferior to theirs, we are often dumbfounded. I was in one such situation recently.
I was showing off my new Samsung Star to some of my relatives who live in a rural area. I was expecting them to be impressed with the features of my phone on which I had spent close to 10K. However, that was not to be. I was not prepared for the features they desired in a mobile phone and I was surprised about how different our choice making was. The first question they asked me was whether the phone supported dual sim cards. This is a much needed feature in remote rural areas where cell phone coverage is not very good and they would have to use whichever network was available. They cared about playing radio (AM and FM) without having to connect the headphone. About the quality of the built-in speaker. About the ability to work on least signal strength. About the robustness of the phone. About battery life. About having a built-in flash light. About being able to get repairs done in the nearby town. They didn't understand why I cared so much about the touch screen or full qwerty keyboard or ability to charge from a computer's USB port. Many of the phones around them, from brands like Karbonn and Micromax were beating my phone hands down, while costing much less. I learnt some valuable lessons about the diversity of the markets and am now able to better appreciate the jobs of marketing managers, who have to make critical decisions about the features to support and the markets to target.
I was showing off my new Samsung Star to some of my relatives who live in a rural area. I was expecting them to be impressed with the features of my phone on which I had spent close to 10K. However, that was not to be. I was not prepared for the features they desired in a mobile phone and I was surprised about how different our choice making was. The first question they asked me was whether the phone supported dual sim cards. This is a much needed feature in remote rural areas where cell phone coverage is not very good and they would have to use whichever network was available. They cared about playing radio (AM and FM) without having to connect the headphone. About the quality of the built-in speaker. About the ability to work on least signal strength. About the robustness of the phone. About battery life. About having a built-in flash light. About being able to get repairs done in the nearby town. They didn't understand why I cared so much about the touch screen or full qwerty keyboard or ability to charge from a computer's USB port. Many of the phones around them, from brands like Karbonn and Micromax were beating my phone hands down, while costing much less. I learnt some valuable lessons about the diversity of the markets and am now able to better appreciate the jobs of marketing managers, who have to make critical decisions about the features to support and the markets to target.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
In search of the perfect IMAP mail client on Linux
This is the story of my search for the perfect e-mail client on Linux. I use an IMAP mail id at work to talk to open source world. I download mails from IMAP server to my machine and view it locally. I subscribe to several mailing lists, hence I use extensive filtering. Like most people who work on Linux, I like my mail client to behave exactly how I configure it, nothing less, nothing more. I like my mail client to be fast and trustworthy and needless to say, not mangle my patches. I keep changing my Linux distro, so I like a mail client that is readily available on a wide set of distros and is being supported actively. I don't like to compile my mail client from sources because of the hassle it creates on a constantly updated machine. Also, the client should store mails in grep-able formats for easy searching later.
None of the requirements above are too out-of-the-world. Most people who work on open source projects, especially Linux kernel, have similar requirements. However, everyone has his/her own favorite mail client and they want you to believe that theirs is the best. When I started working on Linux a few years ago, folks around me told me to use mutt. They gave me a number of reasons to use a non-GUI mail client, even though most of the reasons were invalid or unimportant. For example, it consumes less memory (but I have enough free memory all the time, I never consume swap), it loads up very fast (but I shut down my mail client only once in a week or so), it is fast (is every other mail client painfully slow?) it is text mode (but you use Firefox, right? not elinks/lynx?)
I used mutt for some time. After a while I started wondering if there was anything better. Yeah, mutt was fast and light, but it had a steep learning curve, a few features weren't part of the standard binary that went with the distros, it was easy to make mistakes with procmail filtering rules. Hence, going against the advice by many around me, I set out looking for a GUI based mail client. I decided that I will use mutt only if I have no choice. That would actually be a defeat for GUI based mail clients on Linux.
Mozilla Thunderbird: Probably the most popular mail client on Linux. Though Thunderbird tends to mangle patches, there are ways to make it behave well. However, in spite of doing everything I could, it sometimes mangled some of my patches in strange ways. One of the primary problems in Thunderbird was that it didn't have a native option to "inline" text files. so I set out looking for alternatives.
KMail: I was a KDE user back then, so my next stop was KMail. For quite a few years KMail served as my favorite mail client. It doesn't mess up patches, has enough configuration options to make it behave exactly the way I want, has good filtering that can be easily migrated when I change distros and is generally pretty trustworthy. Unfortunately KMail is part of KDE and KDE4.X is hell bent on fixing everything that is NOT broken. In Fedora11 I hit some ugly problems with KMail. It could not display some of multipart/alternative mails properly, it mangled one of the patch I sent and so on. This, combined with a few quirks I was living with all these years (for example, moving all mails from /var/spool/mail/ to it's internal dirs) made me finally think of trying the alternatives.
Evolution: Evolution has been shipping as the default mail client on Gnome for a number of years. It should have served my purpose pretty well. However, on Fedora11 I hit a number of problems with it. It crashed frequently. It messed up the mail header indexes that it maintained and hence could not read filtered mails. Reading through mailing lists and bugzillas, I realized that Evolution has hit problems like this once in a while. This was a non-starter.
Sylpheed: Sylpheed is a light weight, fast and simple mail reader that is available on most distros. It worked very well for my needs. However, there seemed to be some bugs in it. I could not change keyboard shortcuts, for example. No use.
Claws-mail (Slogan: "it bites"): Claws branched off Sylpheed codebase and is in fact Sylpheed on steroids. It seems to have all features of Sylpheed (and more), but not the bugs. Most distros ship binary for it and it has an active user/developer base. For the last 6 weeks I have been very happy with this mail client. It is _very_ fast, has enough config options to keep me happy, good filtering options, good community of users. It can do everything I want and doesn't come in the way of my work. It has a funny slogan and a strange logo, but it works beautifully. So until I face bad problems on this, I am going to be on Claws-mail.
I now have 6 mail clients simultaneously configured on my machine: mutt, Thunderbird, KMail, Evolution, Sylpheed and Claws! How's that?
None of the requirements above are too out-of-the-world. Most people who work on open source projects, especially Linux kernel, have similar requirements. However, everyone has his/her own favorite mail client and they want you to believe that theirs is the best. When I started working on Linux a few years ago, folks around me told me to use mutt. They gave me a number of reasons to use a non-GUI mail client, even though most of the reasons were invalid or unimportant. For example, it consumes less memory (but I have enough free memory all the time, I never consume swap), it loads up very fast (but I shut down my mail client only once in a week or so), it is fast (is every other mail client painfully slow?) it is text mode (but you use Firefox, right? not elinks/lynx?)
I used mutt for some time. After a while I started wondering if there was anything better. Yeah, mutt was fast and light, but it had a steep learning curve, a few features weren't part of the standard binary that went with the distros, it was easy to make mistakes with procmail filtering rules. Hence, going against the advice by many around me, I set out looking for a GUI based mail client. I decided that I will use mutt only if I have no choice. That would actually be a defeat for GUI based mail clients on Linux.
Mozilla Thunderbird: Probably the most popular mail client on Linux. Though Thunderbird tends to mangle patches, there are ways to make it behave well. However, in spite of doing everything I could, it sometimes mangled some of my patches in strange ways. One of the primary problems in Thunderbird was that it didn't have a native option to "inline" text files. so I set out looking for alternatives.
KMail: I was a KDE user back then, so my next stop was KMail. For quite a few years KMail served as my favorite mail client. It doesn't mess up patches, has enough configuration options to make it behave exactly the way I want, has good filtering that can be easily migrated when I change distros and is generally pretty trustworthy. Unfortunately KMail is part of KDE and KDE4.X is hell bent on fixing everything that is NOT broken. In Fedora11 I hit some ugly problems with KMail. It could not display some of multipart/alternative mails properly, it mangled one of the patch I sent and so on. This, combined with a few quirks I was living with all these years (for example, moving all mails from /var/spool/mail/
Evolution: Evolution has been shipping as the default mail client on Gnome for a number of years. It should have served my purpose pretty well. However, on Fedora11 I hit a number of problems with it. It crashed frequently. It messed up the mail header indexes that it maintained and hence could not read filtered mails. Reading through mailing lists and bugzillas, I realized that Evolution has hit problems like this once in a while. This was a non-starter.
Sylpheed: Sylpheed is a light weight, fast and simple mail reader that is available on most distros. It worked very well for my needs. However, there seemed to be some bugs in it. I could not change keyboard shortcuts, for example. No use.
Claws-mail (Slogan: "it bites"): Claws branched off Sylpheed codebase and is in fact Sylpheed on steroids. It seems to have all features of Sylpheed (and more), but not the bugs. Most distros ship binary for it and it has an active user/developer base. For the last 6 weeks I have been very happy with this mail client. It is _very_ fast, has enough config options to keep me happy, good filtering options, good community of users. It can do everything I want and doesn't come in the way of my work. It has a funny slogan and a strange logo, but it works beautifully. So until I face bad problems on this, I am going to be on Claws-mail.
I now have 6 mail clients simultaneously configured on my machine: mutt, Thunderbird, KMail, Evolution, Sylpheed and Claws! How's that?
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Jog falls
I was at Jog falls on Monday, trying to do at least a part of the trip idea I suggested here. Unfortunately the Linganamakki dam, which has to release the water that dances down Jog falls, did not get full yet this year. This meant the falls was far from it's full glory. You can still enjoy it if you are going there for the first time and are willing to climb down the gorge and get wet in the water at the bottom.
Notice the people at the top of the falls to get an idea of relative size of the falls.
Notice the people at the top of the falls to get an idea of relative size of the falls.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Installing Java apps on Samsung Star
As I described in my previous comment, installing Java apps on my Samsung Star S5233A has been a pain so far. It is possible to install Java apps over WAP, but if you have downloaded an app to your PC there is no easy way to install it on the phone. After following spooky procedures described by various people on the web and still failing to install, I decided it was not worth it. Instead, I upload my Java apps to websites that let you download the same over WAP (example: www.davidpye.com). I upload .jar from my PC to the website and then point my phone's browser to the location the website specifies. Works like a charm.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Samsung Star S5233 review
After months of dillydallying about buying a new mobile phone, I was yet to make up my mind, but fate decided to put an end to my dilemma. My old faithful Nokia 3230 conked off again and any I didn't have the mood to resurrect it again by spending more money. After a feverish research on the web for a couple of days and coming within minutes from buying a Nokia E63, I finally ended up with a Samsung Star S5233. Samsung Star must be one of the fastest selling phones in India right now. It is one of the cheapest full touch screen phones of any time (I paid Rs. 9550 inclusive of VAT) and it has enough features to attract the average phone buyer.
On the hardware side, the phone has good build quality and feels quite nice in the hands. It looks and feels like an iPhone to an extent. The resistive touch screen, though not in the same league as iPhone, is not too far behind either. It has actual buttons for volume adjustment, camera, locking the screen and call functions. The camera is 3.2 megapixels, but without autofocus and flash, can generate good photos only outdoors. The stylus is bulky and doesn't fit into the body of the phone, but there is no real need to use the stylus unless you are browsing the web. There is no wifi or 3G. I like the fact that the phone's battery is charged through the same micro-usb that is used to connect it to computer. However, I would have liked to see an independent audio jack.
I don't know what OS it runs. I suppose it is some proprietary one. The UI, though it feels very different for someone coming from an old Nokia, was quite easy to learn. The way to do a lot of things changes significantly (for the better) the moment you move to a touch screen. I think laptops will (and should) start shipping with touch screens soon. The applications provided with the phone are quite good. It has a document viewer that can read pdfs too, google maps, youtube, reasonably good web browser, facebook app, weather app and so on. The phone does a good job of playing music too. I have mostly positives about software on the phone.
Negatives on software side include OS crashes, especially when I had connected through bluetooth. I could not find many applications to download. It would have been nice to have a few more games on the phone, especially the ones that use motion sensing and gyroscope. I suppose the phone is still too new. The software they provide (Samsung New PC Studio) to make the phone talk to Windows computers is absolutely horrendous. They have made it unnecessarily complicated and seems to be quite buggy. The phone did not want to connect to my Linux box through USB until I put a memory card in it.
So I conclude that this phone is pretty good value for money and it deserves the tag some people have given it: "Poor man's iPhone".
Update:
I have one more good and one more bad thing to say about the phone.
Good: Camera. While I was unimpressed by the pictures I got indoors, I was able to get much better pictures in brighter conditions. Here are some proof:
Bad: Software installation. The phone supports Java apps, but there is no easy way to install third-party applications on the phone. I have googled for it and found that some people have installed Java apps successfully, but the procedure itself sounds like black magic and I have not succeeded so far. I wish there was an easy way to install Java apps using my PC.
Update2:
Some of the commenters have asked about the battery performance. I am not a heavy user of the phone. I talk may be 10-15 minutes on the phone every day, take 3-4 pics with the camera, play 10-15 minutes of games and listen to a bit of music. The battery is lasting roughly 5 days for me. Of course, the phone is still very new.
I have not attempted to connect my PC to the internet through this phone. Hence I don't know how well that works. I want to do the other way around, though. I want to connect the phone to the internet through the computer. However, this doesn't seem to be easy. Currently I use Airtel Live connection, which costs real money!
On the hardware side, the phone has good build quality and feels quite nice in the hands. It looks and feels like an iPhone to an extent. The resistive touch screen, though not in the same league as iPhone, is not too far behind either. It has actual buttons for volume adjustment, camera, locking the screen and call functions. The camera is 3.2 megapixels, but without autofocus and flash, can generate good photos only outdoors. The stylus is bulky and doesn't fit into the body of the phone, but there is no real need to use the stylus unless you are browsing the web. There is no wifi or 3G. I like the fact that the phone's battery is charged through the same micro-usb that is used to connect it to computer. However, I would have liked to see an independent audio jack.
I don't know what OS it runs. I suppose it is some proprietary one. The UI, though it feels very different for someone coming from an old Nokia, was quite easy to learn. The way to do a lot of things changes significantly (for the better) the moment you move to a touch screen. I think laptops will (and should) start shipping with touch screens soon. The applications provided with the phone are quite good. It has a document viewer that can read pdfs too, google maps, youtube, reasonably good web browser, facebook app, weather app and so on. The phone does a good job of playing music too. I have mostly positives about software on the phone.
Negatives on software side include OS crashes, especially when I had connected through bluetooth. I could not find many applications to download. It would have been nice to have a few more games on the phone, especially the ones that use motion sensing and gyroscope. I suppose the phone is still too new. The software they provide (Samsung New PC Studio) to make the phone talk to Windows computers is absolutely horrendous. They have made it unnecessarily complicated and seems to be quite buggy. The phone did not want to connect to my Linux box through USB until I put a memory card in it.
So I conclude that this phone is pretty good value for money and it deserves the tag some people have given it: "Poor man's iPhone".
Update:
I have one more good and one more bad thing to say about the phone.
Good: Camera. While I was unimpressed by the pictures I got indoors, I was able to get much better pictures in brighter conditions. Here are some proof:
Bad: Software installation. The phone supports Java apps, but there is no easy way to install third-party applications on the phone. I have googled for it and found that some people have installed Java apps successfully, but the procedure itself sounds like black magic and I have not succeeded so far. I wish there was an easy way to install Java apps using my PC.
Update2:
Some of the commenters have asked about the battery performance. I am not a heavy user of the phone. I talk may be 10-15 minutes on the phone every day, take 3-4 pics with the camera, play 10-15 minutes of games and listen to a bit of music. The battery is lasting roughly 5 days for me. Of course, the phone is still very new.
I have not attempted to connect my PC to the internet through this phone. Hence I don't know how well that works. I want to do the other way around, though. I want to connect the phone to the internet through the computer. However, this doesn't seem to be easy. Currently I use Airtel Live connection, which costs real money!
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Don't let anyone overtake you
In order to prevent others from overtaking you, you would have to drive very fast. If you can't do that, you may load the luggage in a creative manner to scare away potential over-takers.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Amusing singing
He can't pronounce a few sounds, most notably "L", which makes his singing quite amusing (if you know Kannada)
Thursday, June 18, 2009
A trip idea
I don't write many travel blogs now-a-days. And for a good reason. I don't travel much. However, I felt the urge to write a bit about the last trip I did, mainly because it will be a good place to visit during the coming months.
I had been to Honnavar. It is a town on the west coast of Karnataka, roughly 450 Kms from Bangalore. The town itself is quite nice and there are a number of nice places of interest around it. First of all, the road to Honnavar is quite nice. It passes through Shimoga, Sagar, Jog Falls, Gersoppa, which means it is one of the scenic routes. The road is in a good shape, and there isn't too much traffic on this road, so it is a pleasure to drive on this road. In the next couple of months the road is going to turn even more green and scenic due to the monsoon rains.
In my view, mid-August is the best time to visit Jog Falls, because there will be a lot of water and a lot of greenery. Agreed, the rains make it inconvenient, but if you want convenience you should stick to the Forum Mall. That too, only on weekdays. As you approach Honnavar, you will notice that the hilly (Ghat) roads don't end even when you are just a couple of Kms from the coast. That is the speciality of the sea coast in this part. The hills stretch almost till the beach. The beach in Honnavar is clean and neat, but there are few other beaches nearby as well. Depending on the taste and amount of time on hand, there are a number of places of interest all around: Gokarna, Murdeshwar, Dhareshwar, Idagunji, Apsara Konda, Maravanthe, Karwar, Dandeli, come to mind. If you are willing to drive 3 hours, you can visit Udupi, Agumbe or even Goa. So I think this is a good place to plan a trip somewhere between mid July - mid August. One word of caution: the rain here can be extremely heavy. Avoid driving when it is raining heavily. Especially in the night. I made the mistake and I know how hard it is.
BTW, I stayed at Kamat Executive Inn, Honnavar. It is pretty decent and costs around 500 Rs for non-AC and around 1000 Rs for AC. The "kotte kadabu", idly cooked in leaves of jackfruit tree, that they serve in the morning is delicious. There are a few other lodges around this place.
Oh, there are no petrol pumps for around 50-60 Kms before reaching Honnavar. So beware!
I had been to Honnavar. It is a town on the west coast of Karnataka, roughly 450 Kms from Bangalore. The town itself is quite nice and there are a number of nice places of interest around it. First of all, the road to Honnavar is quite nice. It passes through Shimoga, Sagar, Jog Falls, Gersoppa, which means it is one of the scenic routes. The road is in a good shape, and there isn't too much traffic on this road, so it is a pleasure to drive on this road. In the next couple of months the road is going to turn even more green and scenic due to the monsoon rains.
In my view, mid-August is the best time to visit Jog Falls, because there will be a lot of water and a lot of greenery. Agreed, the rains make it inconvenient, but if you want convenience you should stick to the Forum Mall. That too, only on weekdays. As you approach Honnavar, you will notice that the hilly (Ghat) roads don't end even when you are just a couple of Kms from the coast. That is the speciality of the sea coast in this part. The hills stretch almost till the beach. The beach in Honnavar is clean and neat, but there are few other beaches nearby as well. Depending on the taste and amount of time on hand, there are a number of places of interest all around: Gokarna, Murdeshwar, Dhareshwar, Idagunji, Apsara Konda, Maravanthe, Karwar, Dandeli, come to mind. If you are willing to drive 3 hours, you can visit Udupi, Agumbe or even Goa. So I think this is a good place to plan a trip somewhere between mid July - mid August. One word of caution: the rain here can be extremely heavy. Avoid driving when it is raining heavily. Especially in the night. I made the mistake and I know how hard it is.
BTW, I stayed at Kamat Executive Inn, Honnavar. It is pretty decent and costs around 500 Rs for non-AC and around 1000 Rs for AC. The "kotte kadabu", idly cooked in leaves of jackfruit tree, that they serve in the morning is delicious. There are a few other lodges around this place.
Oh, there are no petrol pumps for around 50-60 Kms before reaching Honnavar. So beware!
Monday, June 15, 2009
Approximately unknown?
I have been enjoying my shiny new Fedora 11 installation so far. Lots of good things to say about it. The battery meter however is extremely... er.. diplomatic. It says "You have approximately Unknown time of remaining battery life" :-)
Let the games begin!
Now that India is out of T20 world cup, the blame game season can commence. Expect anything and everything to be blamed, including Dhoni's ego, media problems, Yuvraj's personal life, Sehwag's attitude, Ishant's hair style, over-confidence, new jersey colour, planetary positions, terrorism and so on. The so called experts will come out with insightful columns which are so easy to write in hind sight. Don't be surprised if there are demands for pulling the captain down. Let the fun begin!
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
UNIX turns 40!
The OS that most people start studying Operating Systems with is turning 40! I have known it for 13 years. I started off with SCO Unix in one of the computer training institutes. It surely wasn't love at first sight. In those days it was very common to see SCO Unix, because that was the only prominent UNIX that ran on Intel. Remember, Linux was hardly on the horizon back then. Later, at my first job my 'desktop' was a dumb terminal connected through a serial ports to the central SVR4 server. This meant it was complete text mode. We had to go looking for a Windows machine to see image attachments sent in e-mails :-) I suppose most people start their UNIX experience with Linux.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Geocities is closing down
Did you hear that Geocities is closing down? Unless you started using the Internet well after the Dot-com bubble burst, you are likely to have seen geocities web pages. If you were considered Internet-savvy back then, you would have a homepage on geocities. Or on tripod or angelfire... That was the "in" thing to do back then.
It appears like a number of people really hated those amateur homepages and are happy to see it closing down. Many of the pages there were made by total novice web-site designers who were doing it to make a statement. Agreed, the statement they made was mostly "see, I too have a tacky homepage." However, I will be very surprised if today's blogs, facebook homes and tweets are considered state-of-the-art after another decade.
If you are guessing why I feel so strongly about geocities, your guess is right. Though I jumped on the Internet bandwagon quite late, I too was among the "in" crowd of early 2000s with a homepage. Tacky floating background images, a guest book, links page, even the uber-geek Javascript. My homepage is still alive. It will be alive until Yahoo takes it down later this year. Until then it is good to visit once in a while and smile at what was considered cool back then.
It appears like a number of people really hated those amateur homepages and are happy to see it closing down. Many of the pages there were made by total novice web-site designers who were doing it to make a statement. Agreed, the statement they made was mostly "see, I too have a tacky homepage." However, I will be very surprised if today's blogs, facebook homes and tweets are considered state-of-the-art after another decade.
If you are guessing why I feel so strongly about geocities, your guess is right. Though I jumped on the Internet bandwagon quite late, I too was among the "in" crowd of early 2000s with a homepage. Tacky floating background images, a guest book, links page, even the uber-geek Javascript. My homepage is still alive. It will be alive until Yahoo takes it down later this year. Until then it is good to visit once in a while and smile at what was considered cool back then.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
How to get thrilled?
If you are like me, the most risky thing you do in a typical work day probably is consuming cafeteria food. The more adventurous ones among us try activities like rock climbing, parasailing and if you are really reckless, to the point where you don't care about your life, bungee jumping. So what should the former type, cafeteria food type, do to get a good rush of adrenalin once in a while? I recommend driving up the highway from Mysore to Bangalore on a Sunday evening. The thrills only get multiplied if you are not familiar with this road. This is not a joke, let me explain how it works.
It works best if you have a small and tall car like a Santro. Alternatively, choose a car with low ground clearance. Make a resolve to drive at at least 80kmph all along. Even more importantly, decide not to let any vehicle overtake you on the way and if for some reason someone does, to take revenge (overtake him/her) within the next couple of kilometers. Wait in Mysore till the sun sets and then, set out.
You will quickly notice that pretty much half of cars in Mysore are now headed to Bangalore. To be fair, it is a pretty nice road. Two lanes on either side with a smooth riding surface. So you will quickly find yourself driving at more than 100kmph. Just when you thought it is going to be a smooth drive, BANG! That was the sound of the new makeshift speed breaker constructed by haphazardly pouring some tar onto the road, hitting one of the vital organs at the belly of your car. That was fun, wasn't it? The impact has switched on the wiper and right-turn indicator. Please turn them off. You see, the speed breaker was created just a few days ago and was placed in a curve, so that you cannot see it from a distance. No, they did not think it is necessary to place any warning signs or paint the hump with a paint. You were driving too fast, so you deserved what you got. When combined with the darkness of the night and glare of high beam headlights from the other side of the road, the recipe is complete.
Did I say high beam headlights? As if there is another type of headlight? While it is not as bad as a median-less road, glaring headlights cause problems because the road has curves all along. There are a number of villages on the road and this means there are various types of cross traffic. Pedestrians (helpfully wearing black clothing, to add to the effect), stray dogs, bullock carts, bicycles with not even a reflector on them, motorbikes with not even a reflector (forget lights) on them, all crossing the road at one of the various cuts in the median. When combined with plants that have been grown on the median and the headlights from the opposite side trying to blind you, you are never sure what is waiting at the next turn. How thrilling is that?
Though the road is a 2-lane on either side, you have realized by now that some of the vehicles, especially tractors, can go on either side of the road in either direction. While it is not so thrilling to come across these during the day, it surely is during the night because either they don't have any lights or have very powerful lights pointing directly at you.
So you escaped all the hurdles and reached Maddur. Now get ready for the next challenge. There are a number of restaurants on the highway between Maddur and Ramanagara. Every car religiously stops at one of these restaurants, as if this is required by law. On a Sunday evening, every restaurant in this stretch is so terribly crowded, there is neither a guarantee that you will get what you want, nor the quality you expect it at. The thrill here comes from capturing a table and eating whatever overpriced food is available.
At least one stretch of the road, a couple of kilometers long, is usually closed on one side, making that stretch a 1-lane on each side, median less road. This means there is a huge congestion at that place. This is when the survival instincts of Bangalore's drivers kicks in big time. They will do anything, with no care for the physical health of themselves or the others, to gain, may be, a couple of overtakes. I won't be surprised if some of them are willing to drive through few sugar cane fields to get ahead of others. Please participate in this mayhem to enhance your fun of driving.
By the time Ramanagara is behind you, the traffic on the road has increased considerably. Add a few slow moving trucks and luggage auto-rickshaws to the mix and it is close to impossible to maintain a good speed. However, remember that you have resolved to maintain at least 80kmph because that is essential to get the thrill that you are looking for. After a high speed, high stakes game of driving for about an hour, you are ready to join the Bangalore traffic, which, to your surprise, is not any less on a Sunday evening than other days. This is when you start thinking "What are this many people doing on the road on a Sunday evening? If all these suckers were at home watching TV, I could have driven so easily and reached home by now". Eventually, you do reach home. The thrill ends. Until Monday afternoon, lunch time at the cafeteria :-)
It works best if you have a small and tall car like a Santro. Alternatively, choose a car with low ground clearance. Make a resolve to drive at at least 80kmph all along. Even more importantly, decide not to let any vehicle overtake you on the way and if for some reason someone does, to take revenge (overtake him/her) within the next couple of kilometers. Wait in Mysore till the sun sets and then, set out.
You will quickly notice that pretty much half of cars in Mysore are now headed to Bangalore. To be fair, it is a pretty nice road. Two lanes on either side with a smooth riding surface. So you will quickly find yourself driving at more than 100kmph. Just when you thought it is going to be a smooth drive, BANG! That was the sound of the new makeshift speed breaker constructed by haphazardly pouring some tar onto the road, hitting one of the vital organs at the belly of your car. That was fun, wasn't it? The impact has switched on the wiper and right-turn indicator. Please turn them off. You see, the speed breaker was created just a few days ago and was placed in a curve, so that you cannot see it from a distance. No, they did not think it is necessary to place any warning signs or paint the hump with a paint. You were driving too fast, so you deserved what you got. When combined with the darkness of the night and glare of high beam headlights from the other side of the road, the recipe is complete.
Did I say high beam headlights? As if there is another type of headlight? While it is not as bad as a median-less road, glaring headlights cause problems because the road has curves all along. There are a number of villages on the road and this means there are various types of cross traffic. Pedestrians (helpfully wearing black clothing, to add to the effect), stray dogs, bullock carts, bicycles with not even a reflector on them, motorbikes with not even a reflector (forget lights) on them, all crossing the road at one of the various cuts in the median. When combined with plants that have been grown on the median and the headlights from the opposite side trying to blind you, you are never sure what is waiting at the next turn. How thrilling is that?
Though the road is a 2-lane on either side, you have realized by now that some of the vehicles, especially tractors, can go on either side of the road in either direction. While it is not so thrilling to come across these during the day, it surely is during the night because either they don't have any lights or have very powerful lights pointing directly at you.
So you escaped all the hurdles and reached Maddur. Now get ready for the next challenge. There are a number of restaurants on the highway between Maddur and Ramanagara. Every car religiously stops at one of these restaurants, as if this is required by law. On a Sunday evening, every restaurant in this stretch is so terribly crowded, there is neither a guarantee that you will get what you want, nor the quality you expect it at. The thrill here comes from capturing a table and eating whatever overpriced food is available.
At least one stretch of the road, a couple of kilometers long, is usually closed on one side, making that stretch a 1-lane on each side, median less road. This means there is a huge congestion at that place. This is when the survival instincts of Bangalore's drivers kicks in big time. They will do anything, with no care for the physical health of themselves or the others, to gain, may be, a couple of overtakes. I won't be surprised if some of them are willing to drive through few sugar cane fields to get ahead of others. Please participate in this mayhem to enhance your fun of driving.
By the time Ramanagara is behind you, the traffic on the road has increased considerably. Add a few slow moving trucks and luggage auto-rickshaws to the mix and it is close to impossible to maintain a good speed. However, remember that you have resolved to maintain at least 80kmph because that is essential to get the thrill that you are looking for. After a high speed, high stakes game of driving for about an hour, you are ready to join the Bangalore traffic, which, to your surprise, is not any less on a Sunday evening than other days. This is when you start thinking "What are this many people doing on the road on a Sunday evening? If all these suckers were at home watching TV, I could have driven so easily and reached home by now". Eventually, you do reach home. The thrill ends. Until Monday afternoon, lunch time at the cafeteria :-)
Friday, April 10, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)