Our first interaction with Prof.MR was with Audio Engineering. A subject that fellow  colleges would have give up as ‘yet another irrelevant subject of the past’ . My perception of the subject was the same.

Professor MR came up and said that he would not be completing the complete course and we will not have enough time for that. It was surprising because all he had was 5-6 tattered  notes’ with him. But the days progressed and one could sense the depth of this subject. My respect for the ‘tattered notes’ grew .All he needed was a glimpse of the notes and he could speak at length for hours combined.

Ideas from Kinsler & Frey could be deciphered only by MR sir! In the end ,MR made us respect the engineering in the mundane cone speakers and why they are so popular. Audio Engineering was not a remnant of the past, MR made us realize its relevance for us.

Then came another ‘dry’ subject Antennas and Wave Propagation.And guess who comes to decipher it for us .Yes it was MR again and back with his ‘diary notes’.

With Communication Engineering, MR had saved his best lectures for the end! I vividly remember many things he taught during this course.

Inspite of his knowledge ,MR kept his head firmly on his shoulders. His enthusiasm for the subject  never diminished even after talking about these for well over a decade.

It was a rude shock when I came to know that he was admitted to hospital with serious complications.  A wave of emails ,and prayers from alumni from several parts of the globe followed. But God had a different plan for him. Our beloved MR sir passed away on August 28 2009.

My alma mater has lost a great mentor. His endearing smile and his ken will be sorely missed.I pray for great strength and better times for his family and the repose of that great soul.

It has been some time that I blogged about news that was interesting to me. Here is a pick from the many links that I read over the past month.

Machine learning in GCC : IBM recently released an extension for GCC that enabled ‘machine learning’ capabilities into GCC. The compiler could intelligently optimize application to provide better performance. The researchers say that this learning capability helps developers speed up things by as much as 50%.

India’s own chip : In an effort to ward of thread in using commercial  processors on its military establishments, the Indian government is going to make its own chipset and use it for critical systems with sensitive information. The government has setup a new company called the Zerone Corp  for this effort. While there is some skepticism if the effort will be successful I have good hopes on this . We recently launched our own mission to Moon and have a Nuclear Sub now!  BTW Zerone Corp seems quite unheard of. Does anyone know ??

The 140 limit: After the success of twitter, I used to wonder how the creators   came up with the 140 character limit for the service. Jack Dorsey ,the co founder of Twitter gave some insights into this.   “The maximum in an SMS message is 160 characters before breaking the message, so we took 15 characters for the username, 5 characters for formatting or whatever, and ended up at 140 characters… we wanted to appeal to the lowest common denominator, the cheap $20 Nokia prepay cell phone… “

People in our country witnessed a Total solar eclipse today. Watching any celestial event is quite fascinating  I have seen a partial eclipse back in 1999 and could remember it very well.

This time, the sky was overcast in our city so  much of activity outdoors. But thanks to the media I had my hearts content of seeing many occurrences of the total solar eclipse  across India and several parts in China.   The defining moment for me was when it became pitch dark for almost a minute at Taregana . Though the sun was not visible there due to the monsoon, going dark suddenly was quite fascinating and for few seconds the correspondent covering just took a break from his  reporting and was watching the spectacle in awe!

The visual from China was fascinating as well. The eclipse lasted much longer there  and  the Sun’s corona was evident in that place.

Trivia:  Helium was discovered during one such total solar eclipse by  astronomers watching it from  a field in Guntur in Andhra Pradesh.

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.

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 .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 !