A trip Northward
I have visited few countries and several cities over my short professional career,but all my life I have never been to Northern India. The farthest I have been was to Goa .
The opportunity finally came last month when I had to attend a personal dissertation for my Graduate studies.Ever since I came back I wanted to write about what I felt about the place . Here it is finally!
I start with a disclaimer that the views are mine alone and based on rather brief visit to these places.
My journey started on a flight from Hyderabad to NewDelhi. I reached Delhi in the noon. The Delhi airport is pretty huge ,much like the Hyderabad airport. It was a sultry day and I was told to take a ‘prepaid’ cab to ‘ISBT – Kashmere gate’ As someone accustomed to the ’sir taxi sir..sir hotel sir‘ calls by drivers outside Hyderabad the environment was quite different. I finally found the taxi stand and a hesitant driver took me in.
Driving in Delhi requires guts and a certain among of harshness. If you are someone who puts brakes at each pothole and slows downs for each speed breaker, better not try it in Delhi. The person behind you does not care and would drive though the holes,speed breakers with impunity.
Cantonement,Chanakyapuri,Daula Khana,Dwarka,Karol bagh, Mahatma Gandhi marg the names reminded me of my history lessons,of Mughal dynasties . I finally got down at Kashmere Gate of ISBT .The ISBT was not as what I expected it to be. It was not the urbane terminal ,that you expect at the National capital.Rather it was a mundane bus station .An enlarged version of the normal Mofussil bus stations you see in towns. I looked around and found the Jaipur terminal.
In accordance to the universal law that governs us, the bus I was to board had ‘just left’. The next bus was at 10:00 pm in the night and I had 5 hours for that. That was lot of time for me to roam around the streets of Delhi.
I had to go to the Fathepuri ,near old Delhi railway station to board the next bus .That is where the private buses start. Thanks to the benevolence of some Delhiites ,I was shown the wrong route . I meandered and finally was walking on a very busy street .After few steps I looked at a board in English.It read – ‘Chandni Chowk’. I’ve heard about this street quite a bit .Though I lost my way, I was quite happy to be around one of the oldest streets in Delhi.
Among other shops,what amused me so much was the enormity of chat shops through the road. The connoisseur in me was curious to see the so many varieties of road side food. Kulfi, Faluda, Tokri ,Kachori, Masala Soda,Aloo Tikki and some more items that I see for the first time. That street is a haven for ‘Delhi Chat’. Quite overwhelmed with the choices available,I went into a big shop in that zone.
I finally zeroed in on a Rabri Faluda as that looked the quite exotic,especially its preparation.I’ve not seen that back in Hyderabad.
I walked across the length of Chandini Chowk for almost a kilometer,before I concluded that I was shown
the wrong route. After much deliberation I finally reached Fatehpuri and the private bus stands. I waited for another 2 hours before started my journey to Pilani,Rajasthan.
Pilani is a unique place and the BITS campus was quite unlike what I had expected it to be. There is lot more to my 3 day sojourn to North India.I will post about them pretty soon.
For the curious: The private bus stand was just a 100 meters to the left of Old Delhi railway station ,while I walked almost 2 kms to the right to realize that.
Elections 2009 : The body is willing ,but the spirit is weak.
Today is election day in our place. This years election was a bit different from earlier years. The campaigning has reached a new low with people going all out with personal attacks like ‘weak’, ’slave’ , and swearing like ‘I will crush his head with a road roller’ and so on.
In the start of this election season I had high hopes on some new faces who ‘realized that they should give back to the society’ and got into politics.
But then came the manifestos ,virtually every party’s manifesto was rife with freebies. All the promises look short lived. If one is ready with a color TV, the other party promises a Laptop’. ‘All loans will be annulled’ says one, ‘we will send you money every month’ ,’our leader will take care of your education’, ‘don’t be afraid of job loss/recession, our leader will create 2 million jobs every year’
Even the new ‘give back to the society’ guys were busy showing off their on-screen gimmicks to enthusiastic
“followers” . Another new (and bad) development this year was the money distribution that was SO rampant that the police had to run ‘crackdown’ operations almost everyday. Towards the end of the campaign and as the elections neared, I was totally disgusted with really no good choice.
Election day came.. democracy didn’t have anything better to offer this time.And then there was the ‘Jagore…lets do something’ camp giving a clarion call to vote. Yes I woke up..and I am ready to vote, but every party had nothing but populist offers in their manifesto . Voting for them would mean I support that 
Luckily, there was at least one party in our area which didn’t offer anything and was talking some sense. I wish all the best for this party .I am not sure if they would win the elections.
But I am happy this time my vote would be counted as a one of those who didn’t like the free TV or the new laptop .
Some happenings in the tech world
Hello all and welcome to another episode of this column which has become quite infrequent. This in part due to a new assignment that I took up at work . The work is quite interesting. Will make a post on it quite soon.
One of the many events that happened this month was OReilly ETech conference. I am not a big fan of this event but this year had nice talks that might interest you.
Real hackers program DNA : While you were guessing about the next avenue for hackers, here is someone from MIT who is hacking into DNA! Reshma Shetty has done a PhD on Biological Engineering from MIT and is now part of ginkgobiworks ,a synthetic biology startup .
She is one of the speakers at the recent ETech conference. One of her interesting works was tinkering into an E.coli bacteria with genes from a petunia plant and made E.cloi ‘smell nice’. For more on this and the field of synthetic biology have a look at this interview .
New YouTube features: You Tube got an overhaul recently and with some new features to its armor.I could also see a lot of HD videos and it has become quite seamless in switching to HD vides from the normal ones. The site also integrates Twitter functionality,that allows you to share the video link as a tweet.
Another upgrade is better mobile integration with the company launching its official YouTube application
for Symbian and Windows Mobile. I remember of a beast called Android. But I couldn’t find a version of the YouTube app for this.. Surprising! as YouTube is from the Google stable.
Designing for Gestural UI: The mobile and PC UI design is getting ready for the next disruption – Touch and Gestural UI. With the huge success of iPhone and its fabled multitouch,
‘Gestures’ have become the new areas of interest in the mobile application world with most users opting for ‘touch based UI’.
If you are into this domain and are working on designing of better usability for Gesture based UI ,then here are some suggestions from the SXSW2009 interactive conference that happened recently. There was a session on Gestural UI with examples from some cool apps on the iPhone.
Bruce Eckel on C++ and Java: The C++ 0x standard is coming up with new features (one of them is named as ‘futures and promises’ ) I don’t know where/how these functions might be used and how many are still using this language and these new features on a daily basis. Here is a short comment by Bruce Eckel’s on what languages like Java/C++ and brought in to the programming community.
Movies 2009: கற்றது தமிழ்
I went to a popular DVD rental store recently looking for DVDs of Nip Tuck. While searching
the library I found a movie that was in my to-do list for a long time.
Katrathu Tamil (I Learnt Tamil) is a serious movie on the plight of some professions in India today.
Being quite brilliant at school Prabhakar could have well chosen a professional degree to have
a ‘bright and secure’ future. But he chooses to do MA in Tamil literature ,thanks to his love and
respect for his Tamil mentor. Reality strikes Prabhakar after graduation. Of the 30 from his class ,only 3 get into a job. Prabhakar looses his teaching job after a minor tussle with the local police.
Distraught with life,and the harsh living conditions around him, his life goes wayward and Prabhakar turns a psychopath. He starts hating everyone around him and goes on a killing spree killing around 22 people in cold blood.
The director tries to portray the gripe that many have in their mind over the ‘professionals’. IT Pros and BPO executives. I liked the portrayal of a psychopath and how he gets his compulsive obsession to KILL .
Yuvan Shankar raja’s music has gelled well with the movie.
Watch the movie if you are a serious movie buff.
Movies 2009: Little Miss Sunshine
With no new movie to watch, I was searching for some old movies from a nearby library.
It was the blurb on the CD cover that made me to rent this one.
Everyone in the Hoover family are a disappointed lot with many things going wrong in their lives. At this time, Olive Hoover gets selected into the Little Miss Sunshine pageant by chance.
The movie shows the Hoover family going on an adventurous ride to participate in the beauty contest.
Its a humorous take on the life of some American families and how the ‘just’ manage to live together. The characters in the movie are quite funny. I loved watching them. Watch this movie if you like satire/dark humor.
On side note, Kate Winslet is on the cover of the Time Magazine for her various roles including the one in ‘The Reader’! Waiting for the movie here in India.
Movies 2009: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button:
I wanted to watch this movie after seeing it nominated for the Oscars. Born on the day when the world war 2 ended, Benjamin Button’s life is quite different from normal people. Everything happens backwards for him. You can see the movie to know more on what I mean.
Bradd Pitt’s performance in the movie was good . I liked the makeup of Bradd Pitt during various stages of his life ..from birth to his end. Some scenes in the movie makes you wonder how they were made !
But the screenplay of the movie was a test of patience . The ending was quite abrupt and the story line was not impressive. The movie shows ordinary events and boredom sets in soon. Some quotes in the movie remind you of movies like Forrest Gump. But the similarities end there.
The curious case.. is a slow movie that should be watched at leisure and probably with breaks . Watch it if you are a Brad Pitt fan . Else ignore.
On side note, I personaly feel this years Oscars is going to be a drab affair. I don’t want to watch Kate Winslets’ The Reader or Sean Penn’s Milk unless I get some strong reco’s from friends.
Movies 2009: Slumdog Millionaire
The movie shows how a ‘chaiwala’ makes a dream run at a popular game show to become a millionaire
overnight. The movie has a racy screenplay, and was enjoyable to watch .
It has all the ingredients of a typical masala movie . Everything including the very lucky ‘just in time escapes from villains’ to ‘picking the phone calls by the right people at the right time’ . The movie depicts Mumbai during various times in the life of the hero. Unfortunately it shows all the grey /shady parts of Mumbai.
I fail to understand when Quantum of Solace shows esoteric unheard of places,road side shops in Europe.
Whereas if the movie happens in India its always slums,the Taj , brothels and beggars (and now call centers) ..sigh..
The background music is quite subtle . The songs fail to make an impression ,except for one tune that reminded me of a humming in another movie by Rehman. Rehman’s music is great , but this is not one of his best.
Slumdog Millionaire is watchable once,if you forgive the director for some stereotypical descriptions about India . A corner of my heart says that this movie should not get the Oscars this year. It should be TDK !
Tech this week ( Jan 9 – Jan 16,2009)
Hello all and welcome to 2009’s first issue of this (not so regular) thread at my blog.
Nokia licenses QT under LGPL: After acquiring () Trolltech , Nokia has decided to move license QT under LGPL instead of QTs Q Public License A major issue with QTL was its incompatibility with the GNU GPL.
This made it extremely difficult to link QT with other GPL covered programs. With QT moving to LGPL this limitation is gone! The decision has been hailed by many in the FLOSS community. QT is already cross platform and changing the licensing model will make is more ‘corporate’ friendly.
Meanwhile,it has been found that there could be some issues with LGPL 2.1 and the various C++ template classes in QT. Though QT’s signal’s and slot mechanism does not use C++ templates, templates are used with the container classes in QT. Template instantiation actually nests (QT LGPL code) into the end user code. So, we have a problem if the end-user licenses his code under non-LGPL! For the update on this,you have to look here .
I am not sure how this move would thwart GNOME’s efforts in getting into the mobile Linux world. I hope both these libraries have their own pro’s and cons and would continue to be widely used.
Windows 7 in beta: Last week also saw the release of Windows 7 as a beta. The Windows 7 buzz was around for quite some time. User response has been overwhelming for this product. More than desktop, I think the strategy is to run Win7 on net books as well and removing dependence on WinXP for this.
TechRadar has made an attempt to run this on a ASUS EEE 1000 and are impressed with the sleekness. Also some hackers have released a Windows7 LiTE version (find this in Bittorrent) that strips out some modules like language support,speech assist ,Windows Media Centre etc and managed to
get Windows7 run with a lesser memory than Windows XP SP3 and lesser install space than Windows Vista!
I believe Windows 7 will finally allow Windows to stop its support for XP after so many years.
Vodafone demos 16Mbps with HSPA+: Last week also saw Vodafone demonstrating 16Mbs bitrates using HSPA+ , an evolution over HSPA . HSPA+ is considered as an enhancement to HSPA and achieves high data rates by including MIMO technologies. The current HSPA+ Release 7 provides downlink data rate of up to 28Mbps and an uplink of 11Mbps. Future revisions may support higher bandwidth.
Linux kernel 2.6.29 -whats new : The merge window for the next release of the Linux kernel closed recently . Heise online has been running a series on the new and noteworthy features in this release.
An important feature would be the integration of Intel’s WiMAX stack into the kernel mainline by Greg Kroah Hartman. The next noteworthy feature is the integration of Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) feature into the kernel mainline. Kernel Mode Setting would add a rich boot experience to Linux desktops . This feature is already present in the latest Fedora release and many were impressed with the seamless boot process of that release. Now that KMS makes to the linux mainline other distributions would also benefit from this. For a complete coverage on the release, you can have a look here.
Some Innovative iPhone (and Android) apps:
Ever since downloadable apps were popularized by the iPhone, this space has grown pretty much.
Many innovative applications have come up. These applications have made good use of sensors inbuilt with the device. They are also well integrated with the web. Such apps were not done prior to the iPhone and their ilk. This is a post on few apps that I liked for their innovative use of available information on smart phones .
1. OCarina:
The best app in this list would be Smule’s OCarina . This application simulates the Ocarina, an ancient flute like instrument on the iPhone .
The application converts the iPhone into a true musical instrument. Its quite amazing to see how gestures, tilt, touch and breath are fed into the device to create some good music. Some videos here .
Its not surprising that the application made it to the list of entries contending for the ‘Best Mobile App’ category at the Crunchies 2008 event .
2. Google Mobile App
The next application is Google’s mobile application for the iPhone. Especially the voice search.
The application makes use of an undocumented API that allowed access to the proximity sensor of the iPhone . With this information,the application would automatically activate voice search when appropriate. Users have found this app quite useful and the voice search ‘really works’ .This app has got good reviews from many. Here is a video that shows this app in action.
3. Textecution:
This is an Android application that automatically disables texting while you are driving.
The application reads the GPS information of the phone to find out if the phone is moving faster than 10mph.
If the phone is moving faster than 10mph all texting is disabled on the phone! A simple idea that brings in
a lot of safety. For more,have a look at their site here .
4. Pandora :
Pandora was one of the first applications to come to the iPhone. This application allows users to stream music from Pandora Radio directly to their iPhone . The service plays new songs based on earlier songs played by the user. This application is quite popular and there has been over 2 million downloads of this application since its launch on July 2008.
5. Shazm :
Talking of Pandora,here is yet another music application that is equally innovative. Shazm is a music discovery service . Bring your iPhone close to any tune that is played now, and Shazm discovers the tune and shows the name of the song!
Its quit interesting to hear of these applications .I am curious to see how all these apps work internally.Hope someone is magnanimous to open up the source code of these apps!
2008: a year in review.
2008 has been an eventful year for me. There were many changes ,most of which were good. Here is a snapshot on various things that happened the past year.
Entertainment :
Most liked movie: Into the Wild.
Jaw dropping performance : Javier Bardem (NCOM),Heath Ledger (TDK) .
Best actress : Ellen Page (JUNO)
Favorite Songs - English: Society(Eddie Wedder), Tamil:Dosthu bada dosth (Saroja), Hindi: Khwaja Meri Khwaja (Jodha Akbar).
Good riddance of the year : Stopped watching ‘Junk news/Junk Media’ and moving to Good Old DoorDarshan.
Others:
Most eagerly expected event – Firefox 3 download day (Yes I am part of that World record download feat)
Favorite pass time – Blogging.
New addiction of 2008 – Twitter.
Favorite website site – Ars Technica.
New skill set – Sending SMS’s.
Change in affiliations from previous years:
Songbird instead of Rythmbox
OpenOffice 3.0 instead of MS Office .
Perforce instead of Clearcase .
ABG (Anything but Google) instead of ABM.
Pidgin instead of GTalk .
WordPress instead of Blogger.
Favorite quote of the year:
Joker: "If you’re good at something, never do it for free… "
New and noteworthy :
-> Getting married!!
-> Buying a ‘gift’ for a girl.(quite a feat this one)
-> New job.
-> Taking pictures like never before.
-> Tweeting.
-> Visiting Western Europe .Some pictures here and here.
-> Digital surround sound at home .
-> writing a major exam with (literally) 0% preparation. And passing it (God is great).
Things to try next year:
Making a check in to a FLOSS project.
Build a decent Movie/English series media library.
Use twitter for news updates.
I wish you all a good year . Have a nice time!!
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