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An example of bad teamwork

2010-06-14T13:54:00.004+05:30

Following up from an earlier post of mine, I'll describe another instance where the confluence between online and brick-and-mortar banking doesn't quite work as it should.

I relocated from Bengaluru to Hyderabad, and I don't like opening new bank accounts every place I visit. I don't like that paperwork, mailers and managing multiple accounts and cards. Why should I "leave a trail" of sorts as I keep moving around? It just doesn't make sense.

Anyway, I asked HDFC, with whom I've banked for 7+ years now to transfer my account with them in Bengaluru to a branch of my choice in Hyderabad. I did this 5 years back too when I had to move my first HDFC account between the two cities. It was a very painless affair, and I expected nothing less this time (May 21, 2010).

Only, I'm still screaming at CSRs and the branch personnel every few days as not only has the old account not been deleted, but the ATM card still considers the old account as primary. And this is after all the funds have been transferred by the bank from the old to the new account. So I'm now in this uncomfortable situation where I cannot withdraw money from a non-HDFC ATM, because those only allow linking to the primary account. For all the things HDFC has got right, there's one very glaring wrong -- the relative scarcity of HDFC ATMs. The nearest one from my office is 3 km away, the nearest from home is between 3 and 4 km away and there is perhaps only one (or two) along my current 23 km (one-way) commute. Their website lists only fifteen - yes, one five - non-branch ATMs in the whole of Hyderabad! I now have a negative balance in the old account because of penalties levied on me for trying to draw money from an account with no balance. Brilliant!

I found out the reason for this snafu only after I threatened to switch banks (I'm a Classic Privileged or whatchamcallit customer). Not after a couple of phone calls to the CSR or a friendly visit to the branch to withdraw money, but after threatening to pull the plug. The reason is described below.

Some time ago I'd asked for the ability to conduct mutual fund transactions on my account and I got it. This MF account was tied to the old savings account. The account transfer form, which contains a long list of things that the customer might want transferred/updated (add-on cards, credit cards, addresses, phone numbers, demat a/c details etc.) doesn't have a section where a customer could either close down or transfer an MF account. However, their systems don't allow a savings account to be closed if an MF account is linked to it. And their systems also don't allow the new account to be created as primary and have the ATM card linked to it *despite the customer clearly indicating so* on the transfer form. More brilliance!

I'm guessing HDFC has outsourced its NetBanking and other online banking work to one of those great IT powerhouses and someone somewhere's forgotten translating a new process/constraint (MF transactions were added much after NetBanking came into existence).

This is a classic situation of the left hand (retail liabilities, probably) not knowing what the right hand (backed systems/IT for NetBanking) is up to.

Funny ad

2010-02-24T16:40:00.002+05:30

See the new "Lemon" mobile ad on TV recently?

It's one of the corniest ads I've ever seen (up there with the worst Hero Honda and various FMCG ads), with a pilot proclaiming that his Lemon mobile phone is as defect-free as his girlfriend and that he trusts his plane in the sky and his Lemon on terra firma.

Trusting a lemon? How ironic can an advertisement get? :)

A short survey for fans of Telugu cinema

2009-11-14T02:40:00.002+05:30

If you enjoy watching Telugu cinema I request you to fill up this short survey - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=wt42TFZZ1xLwTgRZGH2UBw_3d_3d

This is a completely anonymous survey to gather some data for a project I'm doing (along with a few others) on Tollywood.

I also request you to pass the survey link on to friends and family who watch Telugu movies as well. Needless to say, the data gathered would be of great help to us in our project!

Perspective

2009-09-24T20:04:00.002+05:30

The last month or so was a pretty tough one for me on a personal, emotional level. Not a day went by where I wasn't brooding over various "issues", wallowing in my own inpetitude almost.

And then I heard of this terrible accident to a neighbour. He is currently undergoing something worse than the worst possible outcome. Suddenly I realized how really trivial my issues are in the grand context of life.

You either face up and move on, or you stop moaning and move on.

In either case, you move on.

An example of bad design

2009-07-25T13:34:00.003+05:30

A long, long time ago phishing and virtual keyboards were things of the future. A certain bank called Citibank India allowed customers to choose any password of their liking for their online accounts.

To people like me who understood the importance of strong passwords, this instilled great confidence. I was free to incorporate numbers as well as special characters and make the password as long as I wished. All was well, until a couple of years back.

The prevalence of phishing attacks and Trojan scripts that could log keystrokes meant that every bank worth its salt had to introduce countermeasures. Of the banks that I used Citibank was probably the first out of the gate with a virtual keyboard with randomized placement of keys. And kudos to them. Unfortunately, their keyboard did not contain the space character at all! So I could not use it. Luckily for me, they did provide the option of using a standard keyboard to key in the password (and they still do).

However, I had to safeguard myself against the possibility of them removing the option to key in the password using the keyboard, which means I had to either force them to include the space character in their virtual keyboard (the better option strategically) or change my password so that it does not contain spaces (not a very confidence-inspiring thing).

HDFC was very late with its virtual keyboard, but all credit to them for including almost the space bar in their offering. I am pretty sure some smart product manager in the team that implemented HDFC's system learnt from Citibank's snafu.

A more recent development was that any online payments using Citibank's gateway now required one to have an IPIN. Earlier (again, this was very long ago) one could just process the payment without having to key in the IPIN. Now it's either the IPIN or the date of birth if one didn't have the IPIN. This arrangement is fine. Only, my worst fears did come true. The password entry in the payment gateway does not allow keyboard entry! So I'm now stuck.

For as long as I could I continued keying in my birthday instead. There was a supposedly a limit of 10 instances where one could substitute the birthday information for the IPIN. I'm pretty sure I went over the limit over time (which is good for me but really bad in the grand scheme of things, as it brings moral hazard into play). The rules then changed to something like twice a month for the first few months and then once a month thereafter, with a maximum limit of 4 if I remember correctly. Going by their history I needn't worry, but I really should.

Of course from Aug. 1, 2009 there's going to be the Visa/Master master password mechanism.

To cut to the chase, of the two options that I presented above, obviously I'm too small for Citibank for the first to happen. I did give this feedback once to a CSR, but which big company in this world listens to feedback from its junior-most employees (leave alone customers)? And in which big company in this world has the average employee actually passed on customer feedback to those that could do something about it?

That left me with the somewhat unsafe second option. And here's where things get really interesting. I logged into my account a little while ago to take stock of things, and then proceeded to change the IPIN. Like any good system, it asks me for the old IPIN and the new IPIN, repeated. I key in the necessary stuff and ask to proceed, only to be stopped short saying that special characters aren't allowed.

So here you have a system which was initially designed to be as open as possible, then followed up with an "innovation" that deviated from that initial design (whereas it was well within its possibility to have a perfect fit) and then exaggerated by the fact that certain aspects of the implementation still continue to function with the old design parameters and certain others don't.

And then banks complain that they have systems in place which aren't being used enough.

There is very good basis behind the insight that any system should be designed for customers by customers and not by engineers.

I am not going to particularly relish my phone conversation with the CSR now, for the simple reason that he/she probably will not even understand just what the hell I'm talking about. As far as they know, all "characters" are available on the virtual keyboard, and not many people know that the space character can (and must) be used in passwords.

One weekend at ISB

2009-05-07T16:16:00.004+05:30

I'll let the picture do the talking, to begin with -

All of the events fall into 3 categories, broadly - interesting, very interesting and have-to-attend.

This is in addition to 3x weekend assignments (some individual, some groupwork), revising for next week's in-class quizzes and revising (both theory and problem practice) for the mid-terms which are just a week away now.

And then there's personal stuff (swimming or tennis or whatever else, or perhaps music or photography).

And of course there are the weekend all-nighter parties (which unfortunately I couldn't include in the picture above simply because compressing the entire calendar into a small space would make things unreadable).

Not everyone attends everything, but the point I want to make is that this is life at ISB - so much to do in so little time, and weekends are *always* busier than weekdays.

A couple of really neat sites

2009-04-02T10:00:00.003+05:30

I came across these in the space of the last 12 hours!

http://www.vidteq.com - driving directions (for Bengaluru) that also include video footage of the drive along the route! Watch out for pop-ups highlighting landmarks en route.

http://www.propiq.com - an online real estate agency with a difference. This is integrated with Google Maps, and includes photos and videos of every property that's listed. And yes, you pay the same one months' worth of commission on rentals (which sucks, but you're getting much more compared to one of those idiot roadside agents).

PropIQ, interestingly enough, is apparently started by a bunch of IIT Guwahati grads from the batch of 1998 (class of 2002)! Not only that, their Koramangala office is -><- that close to the bachelor pad I was put up in between July/Aug. 2004 and Aug. 2007. Lord knows how useful their services might have been to some of my mates who'd house-hunted during July/Aug. 2007 when it was time to vacate the old place.

1 false neutral, 2 close shaves, 3 friendly truckers and 6 breaks - Fun in the sun over 12 hours and 600 kilometres

2009-02-28T14:11:00.016+05:30

Having secured admission to ISB's PGP Class of 2010 I am shifting back to Hyderabad after spending nearly 5 years in Bengaluru. Luckily we (i.e. my wife & I) have not accumulated tons of luggage over the past 1.5 years so we're going to bring almost everything down. That included my motorcycle, a 2003 vintage (yeah, there've been that many versions) Bajaj Pulsar 180. I love my bike. I don't have a name for it or anything, but it's my first vehicle that I bought totally out of my own earnings/savings and there's a bit of sentimental value attached there. There was no way I was going to sell the bike.

I wasn't into long-distance riding in May 2004, which was when I shifted to Bengaluru. At that time I had GATI courier the bike. Needless to say, they lost a customer for good. Just out of curiosity, though, I did talk to a GATI CSR over phone and enquired how much they would charge to courier the bike now from Bengaluru to Hyderabad. All of 2100 INR, and that doesn't include packing. Incidentally packing is not one of the services they offer. That's an additional 500 or 600 INR payable directly to the guy who comes to collect the bike. From the CSR's description it didn't sound like the kind of packing that was meant to preserve and protect the paint job on a motorcycle's painted surfaces. I wasn't going to spend another couple or so grand for repainting like I did in 2004. So, go with GATI and feel your wallet go lighter by around 5-6k INR, or DIY.

I was clear in my mind even before speaking with GATI that I was going to ride down. My wife agreed to this undertaking, no questions asked. She knew and understood that over the course of the next one year I can't even think of a long-distance ride. On top of that we don't know what the future holds for us. Post-MBA, career responsibilities will increase by orders of magnitude over what they are right now. On top of that we will start thinking about furthering the family. We are realistic and know that biking will probably not be among the top of our list of priorities for the foreseeable future. The last year, too, was pretty hectic. No going out on weekends (had to write those application essays, you see). Things were busy at work. The bike was collecting dust in the office parking lot as I only use the car for commuting now (there's no fun using a bike like the 180 on the milk run - that's probably just me, though). Basically my wife knew how badly I wanted a ride. And so she let me do the ride. Thank you, Mani! I love you.

Setting the stage
So, after nearly 8 months I get my bike out of the office parking lot some 3-4 days before the ride and ride it back home. After sputtering for the initial few minutes the engine didn't skip a beat and was eager as ever. In fact the bike never let me down during the ride. It performed flawlessly. I must thank Venkat and his boys at Auto Service for doing a such a stellar job over the years. I (and my bike) are going to miss Auto Service. Thank you, guys! You're unquestionably the best.

I've been on a few rides before, but with the exception of one (to Tirupati and back in January 2006) they were all group rides. Also, the longest distance I've done in a day before this was around 450 kms from Bengaluru to Kundapur, again in January 2006. Of course, that route was technically much more challenging, and there was the return journey back on the very next day too. However, in terms of mental challenge, this was easily going to be the toughest ride for me so far. Longest distance ever in a day. Solo. And in summer.

Alright, let's do it.

False start
The tank was already close to full. I still was able to get in nearly 225 INR worth of Shell's plain vanilla brew. After reaching home I quite uncharasterically set the fuel flow control knob to the OFF position. I also reset the trip meter lest I forget in the morning.

Then I went out (by car this time) hunting for a canister of Gulf's puncture sealant resin. Thanks to Haren for tipping me off on where I can find this stuff and thanks to Gliff and Venkat for giving me Haren's number. Anyway, I couldn't get hold of the stuff, but at least I now know where to look for it in future.

I planned to start at 5 AM on February 27, but it was 6 AM by the time I got my Cramsters down into the parking lot. Mounted them, called up my wife (who was already in Hyderabad) and rolled off, only to find the bike sputter to a stop at the exit gate of the apartment complex. Sweet.

So there I was, kicking the bleep out of my poor bike, with all the morning walkers and security guards looking at me as if I was from another planet (you know, Cramster'd and all early in the morning...), when it suddenly struck me that something needed to be ON was actually OFF. And that was my brain.

6:15 AM, and finally we were going somewhere.

The storm before the lull
That was the title I had originally planned to document a month-long travel orgy in case I secured admission to ISB. However, what I was finally left with was just this one day's bike ride. For a multitude of reasons, I have to be in Bengaluru till April 3 at least, with the course starting on April 11. As some great soul once said, the best laid plans are first sent to Murphy for his approval.

It was a cold morning. Wintry almost, but with perfect visibility. I brought along my jacket, but didn't wear it. Instead, I bungied it on top of the Turtle on the rear seat, so that I had a backrest. The Turtle contained a huge stack of newspapers and a pair of sandals. Nice little backrest in a pinch.

The taxis gave me a very wide berth. Traffic on the road to BIAL was surprisingly sparse. I didn't start ripping too hard at this point. I still needed to get used to the feel of biking again after such a long hiatus (my last ride of some substance was around New Year 2007 to Coorg).

I had my iPod and headphones in my pocket but I never put them to use even for a second. I wanted to enjoy listening as the engine roared under me. I wanted to enjoy listening as the wind rushed turbulently around me. I wanted to listen to the sound of the brake fluid in action whenever I frantically hit the front brake. I wanted to listen to the clicks made by the gearshift mechanism as I switched gears in anger.

I wanted to take a break every 2 hours or so. Nature called, however, and I had to take a break slightly earlier, near Bagepalli at around 7:55 AM, with the trip meter reading 100.0 kilometres. I took this opportunity to call my wife and inform her of my progress. I wasn't feeling hungry or thirsty yet, so I pulled off at 8:00 AM.

I was under absolutely no illusions that this cold would set the tone for the rest of the day. Still, I didn't quite know what to expect.

60 kph wannabe
I wanted to finish the ride within 10 hours if possible. All of my previous rides had an overall average speed somewhere in the 40s, which is pretty abysmal considering the bike I ride and the roads on most of those rides. I wanted to set that record straight.

So despite having only 2 lanes to work with and the bad patches of road immediately after Bagepalli and almost up until the Anantapur bypass I was pretty happy to reach the 250 km mark in exactly 4 hours at 10:15 AM.

Enroute I had what was to be the only false neutral I encountered over the entire trip. Some things never change. There was also that close moment where I began overtaking a truck as a culvert loomed, and right when I entered the culvert the trucker suddenly moved to the right probably to veer around a pothole or something. My mistake.

I could feel a lapse in alertness and the need for refuelling now, so I pulled over at a dhaba for an apple and some water. A south-bound truck pulled over and the crew of 3 alighted. After a quick wash (it had begun to get uncomfortably warm) one of them approachmed me and asked, "Kitna deti gaadi?". I shared this bit of technical data with him, along with some other related information. He asked me what I was doing on the road in this heat. I told him I was heading to Hyderabad from Bengaluru, whereupon he asked me how long it took me to reach this spot. In the meantime his mates had gathered around and they too wanted to know what I was up to. They were frankly surprised that I had covered 250 km in 4 hours (I was actually only mildly happy, honestly speaking, as this was nothing earth-shattering). One of them then asked me to take it slow. "Galat nahin samajhna. Aaraam se chalao. Bahut danger hai...". He meant it well. I said I'm going to take it slow (mainly because the heat would mean frequent rehydration breaks) and I plan to reach Hyderabad by around 4:15 PM. 6 hours to cover 350 km more approximately. That's not really outside the realms of possibility. They concurred, "Aaraam se pahunch jaoge".

I rode out of the dhaba at 10:40 AM. Long-ish break but I was still confident I could maintain the 60 kph average.

Little did they know.

Little did I know.

The worst 100
In terms of road and traffic conditions, mainly. Gooty was horrible. Luckily the pain lasted not more than a kilometre or so. I almost took the road to Mantralayam. I sensed something was wrong and asked an old lady for the correct direction at the fork, and then proceeded.

The road leading out of Gooty would've been awesome if not for the slightly broken surface and the heavy, slow-moving truck traffic compouned by more 2-lane luxury. Lots of nice dipping, rising and sloping curves (*cough*), but these are not the kinds that need to be taken slowly. The truck Gods didn't understand that, though.

After a while it got to the point where I just wanted to implode. Progress was slow. The 60 kph dream was evaporating faster than the fluid levels in my body, and not a tree in sight. I had planned to take a break at the 400 km mark (i.e. after Kurnool) but I'm glad I finally managed to find some great shade at 351.2 instead, just outside Kurnool.

This was near a temple and not a dhaba, so luckily the trees were spared. I had another apple, lots of Electral, water and buttermilk. The stuff was luckily still at indoor room temperature. I sat on a stone slab bordering a small cigarette shop. The owner of that shop was an old man, dozing away to escape the heat. He woke up and made a point about the heat, and how he feared the oncoming "summer" months. We started talking and once again I encountered that look of surprise and admiration as I mentioned what I was up to. He wanted to know about the apple I was eating (a shiny red Washington example) and then commented how he pays through the nose to get his kids local apples that don't look half as enticing. You get this sense of how the recession hits those who have no business to be hit by it. Such is life.

The distance board showed Hyderabad was still 223 kms away at this point. I thought I'll take one more break at around the 450 km mark and that should be enough.

I rolled out at 1 PM after a quick face wash, just as the local school kids started gathering around the trees for lunch.

Mistake after mistake
I missed the bypass before Kurnool. I'm pretty sure there is one, as I don't remember taking that long, arduous route through Kurnool town when I drove my car down to Bengaluru from Hyderabad in May 2006.

I wished I was dead, really.

The sun probably heard my wish.

Diversions, tractors, dust, heat.

Every time, the sight of the next diversion board or an unruly or traffic-holding tractor on the road was driving me closer to insanity.

One more tractor or diversion and I swore I would lose it.

At the 425 km mark, I could take it no longer and stopped by the side of the 4-lane (yet again) road. Not a tree in sight, and it was the hottest part of the day yet (around 2:30 PM). 60 kph was a distant dream now. 175 km in a little less than 2 hours. Who was I kidding?

My right forearm started itching and burning. I should've worn that full-hands T-shirt that I put on for a mere 10 seconds at home before ditching it in favour of the one I eventually wore. I should not have forgotten to bring along that sun control lotion I spent a fortune on a few months earlier, but never used even once. I should've bought a bottle of really cold water in Kurnool town. I should've finished the lemon concentrate earlier on in the day.

And then I noticed smoke coming from the exhaust pipe. White, wispy smoke? With the engine switched off? Had something happened to the engine? Did the Great Elemental Confluence conspire to burn the bike instead than me? Out here in the middle of nowhere?

It was the Cramsters! The straps on the right saddle bag were resting on the unshielded part of the exhaust pipe, and the right bag contained all of my food and medicine supplies for the trip along with the bike's papers, toolkit and spares. I yanked the bag up before things went further south. I guess this was like the brakes of an F1 car at rest catching fire. As long as I was moving the flow of air helped to calm things down. Stop, and all hell breaks loose.

I adjusted the bags slightly but I still made a mental note to keep lifting the right bag up every once in a while.

I started at around 2:45 PM and I knew my earlier plan of just taking the one break would be foolish given the circumstances. The saving grace was that the road now looked like it would never be a narrow 2-lane only affair again. Shared carriageways, yes, but with enough room. I had also seen the worst of the heat as past 3:15 PM or so I could feel the heat easing off.

There was another problem, though.

At various points in this stretch (and also a couple of places in the initial 100-odd kilometres), the 4-laning was complete but traffic was still sharing only the one side of the divided highway. This of course made sense where sections were barricaded off, but there were unbarricaded sections as well which weren't being used. There were no boards to indicate whether or not the opposite side could be taken. This posed a problem a couple of times as oncoming private vehicles and taxi MUVs and buses wouldn't give an inch as they were overtaking slower-moving vehicles (usually laden trucks or the odd Ace or shared auto). There was this one Corolla in particular that seemed on intent on crushing me between itself and the divider. For the most part I was defensive and slowed down enough especially when I was on a downward slope (right-of-way stuff, basically). At other times no amount of flashing and honking would work (unless there was a big truck behind me).

Paradise on Earth
I took my next break at the 500 km mark, just outside Jadcherla. I had covered the last 75 kms in an hour, give or take. And I knew from my Volvo experience that the next 70-odd kms (basically until Shamshabad) were going to be excellent as 4-laning was 100% complete.

I had a few snacks and some more fluids. Called up GR to take his advice on the best route once I was inside Hyderabad. 5 PM onwards on a Friday is the ticket to asylum if there ever was one. I started again sometime between 4:10 and 4:15 PM (yes, another long break but this was more to assuage my sore derriere) and I was going to take just one last break after crossing Shamshabad, before the final stretch in rush hour madness.

The temperature was thankfully back to pleasant levels now, plus there was this feeling of approaching home. Combined with the beautiful toll roads, this was enough incentive to rip the hell out of the bike. The next 65-odd kms (i.e. the point where the highway met the RGIA approach road) passed by in a blur. I took adequate care at the various crossings and intersections, though, as the Luna-tics were blissfully unaware of the kind of speeds I could attain.

I went back to sedate speeds after that point as I was mostly inside city limits now. I took my final break some 10 kms later, at 5:15 PM at the ~576 km mark, after crossing the Agriculture University.

The video game
A friend of mine, actually a wingmate from college, met this interesting European exchange student when he was in IIM-A. This European guy equated Indian city traffic (he took the example of New Delhi, apparently) to a video game where you just point at some available/free space and shoot. That pretty much sums up Hyderabad traffic. Wide roads and hollow brains. I sometimes appreciate the narrower roads of Bengaluru, as that means less possibility of people taking advantage of the width to use the road as a racetrack.

I'm not at all familiar with roads in the Old City, despite having been born and brought up in Hyderabad. I missed the Rajendranagar X Roads which would've allowed me to take the more circuitous but ostensibly freer Gachibowli, Jubilee Hills, Punjagutta, Begumpet route. I took the wrong turn at the Nayapul (or is it the Puranapul?) and ended up in the narrow bylanes on the other side of the Musi river.

There's one thing in Hyderabad that never ceases to amaze you. You ask for directions and you're told, "Bas ek hi raasta hai. I-shtret.". Out of experience, I know what that actually means. You go straight as far as the road goes and at the next crossing or junction or intersection you ask for further directions. Anyway, in due course of time I ended up at Nampally Rly Station.

In these days of ek ke saath ek free I got ek galat turn ke saath 100 speadbreakers free. I am not going to sing paeans about Hyderabad's roads ever again, at least not until YSR and his cronies are around. The stretch must hardly have been 5 kms (much less, I would think) but it had done to my back what the previous 580-odd kms couldn't do.

Surprise, surprise!
There are two schools of thought when it comes to biking. Let all of your near and dear ones know, or just do it surreptitiously.

I belong to a third school. Let those who don't mind know, and keep the others in the dark. My parents didn't know I was riding down. It would've been the death of me had they did. In fact they didn't even know I was planning a vacation, leave alone spending it in Hyderabad.

So when I pulled up at home at around 6:15 PM, 12 hours and 600.4 kms after I had set off in Bengaluru, my wife who was standing at the doorway had a million-watt smile and a look of undescribable happiness and relief on her face, and my parents were stunned into speechlessness with looks of total incredulity on theirs.

60 kph failed me, but 2 days later I still feel refreshed and invigorated. The coming year of pressure, deadlines and sleeplessness will be just that bit less stressful now.

Compile speed-up with ccache and overclocking

2009-01-30T06:14:00.005+05:30

Enabling ccache really speeds up C/C++ code compilation by leaps and bounds.

An incomplete merge of openoffice-3.0 on my gentoo box once took 26385 seconds (~7 hrs 20 mins). There were lots of other merges between the previous OO compile and this one, so I'm pretty sure the cache was worthless as far as this merge was concerned.

A subsequent re-merge of the ebuild, this time successfully, took only 9876 seconds (~ hrs 45 mins). That's just incredible speed-up. The comparison isn't entirely fair because in the interim I overclocked my machine's CPU mildly (an Athlon XP 2500+, from the stock speed of 1833 MHz to 2142 MHz), but you can see from the figures that the bulk of the speed-up is not from the overclock.

Update: I changed some USE flags which meant a remerge of openoffice overnight. This time, it took 21952 seconds (~6 hrs 6 mins) for a successful merge. The ccache-boosted merge happened around 3 months ago, with a lot happening in between. I think ccache must have had a very minor role to play here. So the speed-up due to the CPU overclock is at least 16.8% (considering the earlier figure of 26385 seconds was for an unsuccessful merge). The overclock itself is around 16.86%, which means we're seeing a fairly linear increase in compile performance with clock speed. This does make sense, considering there's very little the rest of the system does (very little disk access, most compiled code probably fits in the CPU's cache so even memory access doesn't come into the picture, although even the RAM's been overclocked by 12.5%) during a code compile workload.

Will the Telugu Brahmin advance?

2009-01-27T05:28:00.001+05:30

Telugu Brahmins must be the only people who place an equal importance on sound education as well as on blindly following irrational practices. What an interesting, and sometimes irritating, antithesis!

And so it was on Republic Day 2009 again, when the whole world was rejoicing the opportunity to view yet another solar eclipse, yet we take pride in hunkering down and locking ourselves indoors, in fasting throughout the day (almost) or wasting food that was cooked in the morning. This is just a small thing, though. It's not life-changing by any means, at least not for those who've already seen an eclipse. Some of the other things that are done in the name of tradition are simply mind-boggling.

At this juncture, I would like to point your attention to this excellent article by Justice Markandey Katju. Coincidentally, this piece appeared in the Republic Day edition of The Hindu.

Of what use are all those degrees if we cannot open your minds to scientific thought? Age-old wisdom says exposure to eclipses can be harmful. With the advent of modern viewing technology, though, the single most important question in human history - "Why?" - begs to be asked. The conclusions aren't sacrosanct. The processes are. The scientific spirit is. What was true yesterday may not be true today, because, thankfully, the human race does advance.

The question is, will the Telugu Brahmin advance? And would he contribute to the advancement of the human race?

As long as we submit to fear and doubt, though, the answer to either question shall remain a firm "No".

Of cleanliness and Godliness - Part II

2008-12-20T22:32:00.001+05:30

How about this to bolster Part I?

Wow!

Tarnished record

2008-12-07T18:54:00.002+05:30

I've had my cell phone for a little over 5 years now and today was the first time I lost it.

I say "first", because the phone was found almost immediately in the parking lot by a kind neighbour who called my mother and informed her.

So now I can stop being proud that I have never ever lost my phone.

Conflicting emotions

2008-12-03T12:20:00.002+05:30

On Monday, December 1 2008 I got my Voter ID card. I was lazy in 2003/4. I admit it. And I didn't want to repeat that mistake again. Especially not in these times, when the vote of the urban voter probably means more than at any other time in the history of independent India.

I was happy. I felt elated to see my name on a voter ID card. I was amazed at the efficiency of the process, and the friendliness of the staff.

And then I felt sad.

Who gets my precious vote?

Will it be the party which feels it reached its goal in 1947 (and I for one feel its claim is dubious and its contribution is not as much as it makes it out to be), and never saw the need to do anything more after that? Which feels that it achieved its mission then and can now sit back with its feet up in the air? Which feels that it can, in the name of democracy, function like a dynasty? Which feels that maintaining status quo is the best form of governance? Which cannot take a stance for fear of alienating those who do not agree, thereby losing their votes?

Will it be the party which blesses us an inept, uninspiring PM and two senior leaders who were more worried about getting their feet and clothing wet with water and slush from the puddles in Ahmedabad when people around them were covered in blood? A party with a committee that sees, in these times, a clear political advantage in appointing a Maratha as the CM of Maharashtra now that the existing one has oh-so-selfessly offered to resign (which by the way seems like a fashionable thing to do after the horrendous fact)?

Will it be the party with its tacit approval of Hindu fundamentalism? Which saw the need to make a political issue out of the absence of Kerala's CM at the funeral of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan? Which, as the ruling party, couldn't do a thing to prevent the JD(S) from holding Bengaluru to ransom for a day? Which can't see beyond gaining political mileage out of the misery that has enveloped the nation in its darkest hour so far? The party that unfortunately lost its only unanimous choice for leader for no fault of his (or the party's itself, for that matter)?

Will it be the party that openly flaunts court orders and sees it fit to inconvenience the citizens of a city, and its young and old and innocent and unhealthy, on a mere whim?

Will it be the party that leads investors to believe there's no future with them around?

Will it be the party that can't stick to its ideologies in the face of adversity?

I hope my vote helps answer the following questions. The only problem is that I don't know whom to vote in to power.

When will we see a party that thinks not about whether it can retain/regain power, but thinks rather about what it can do for the people? When will we see a party that thinks being in the Opposition means just criticizing the ruling party with no rhyme or reason? That being in the Opposition means nothing can be done for those constituencies that helped their members win? When will we see cooperation between parties and politicians for the common good, to achieve a common goal?

When will we see politics from becoming the refuge of the incapable? When will we see politics cease to become a family business? When will see statesmen and not politicians? When will we see leaders with intelligence and sensitivity etched into their words and deeds, instead of the rubbish currently on offer?

When will we see leaders who walk the talk? Rather, when will we see the silent performers? When will we see leaders who can inspire us and instill confidence into us? When will we see leaders who dare to take a stance and stand by it in the face of adversity?

When will we have our Churchill?

In memory of... (contd. some more)

2008-11-13T21:00:00.003+05:30

The more I think the more I remember.

Maruti Alto 1.1
I can't remember if it was the VX or the VXi or both, but Maruti had an Alto with the 1.1-litre engine that now does duty in the WagonR. This was the highest-end Alto with all the features and bling, and was one hot hatch for its size.

Chevrolet Forester
A re-badged Subaru that ostensibly draws from Subaru's rallying pedigree, this was yet another under-rated car which probably lost out because (I think) it was too pricey without looking that way. Most people expect something butch when they think "SUV", which was how this vehicle was marketed by GM, and the Forester definitely didn't look the part. However, it was one very capable vehicle even if not used off-road. I wish GM would bring this (or something similar) back.

Tips and anecdotes II

2008-11-09T09:26:00.002+05:30

Don't waste your money on a Wi-Fi add-on card for a PC
Chances are your PC is connected to a UPS, and if so, it's almost a given that your modem/router (for internet access) is powered by the UPS as well. This means that you can very easily run a CAT-5 cable from your PC's NIC to the modem or router. Even if the PC has to move, the modem/router will move as it has to be connected to the same UPS.

Ergo, there's no point in spending a few hundreds of rupees (about a thousand in my case) on a Wi-Fi card for your PC.

There are exceptions of course. Maybe you're lucky enough to live in a part of the world that doesn't enjoy power outages (I would recommend a UPS even in this case). Or you don't mind not having internet access during a power outage (which means the modem/router needn't be on the UPS). Or you have a penchant for moving things around but don't want to mess up your telephone/cable wiring every time you move your PC to a new location (in this case you'll need a small battery to power your modem/router in a power outage or make do without internet access during a power outage -- overall clumsy solutions).

In memory of... (contd.)

2008-11-08T22:38:00.002+05:30

I missed out on these in the last post -

1st gen. Honda City VTEC
I'm sorry, God. Please forgive this wretched soul for missing You out the last time around.

When Honda released the 2nd gen. City (with the 1.5 litre i-DSI engine) all the auto enthusiasts of the land cried foul. The market, however, voted with their collective wallets. Maybe Honda got the formula wrong (in terms of the market in general) with the 1st City. Maybe the market wasn't ready for such a car back then. Or maybe it was a combination of both, but I don't think any enthusiast could have predicted the level of success Honda's 2nd gen. City enjoyed.

In balance, think Honda has unveiled a masterstroke. With the 3rd gen. Honda City (just launched), they have gone back to their roots in terms of performance (although there's still the high CG to contend with), yet maintaining all the aspects that made the 2nd gen. City such a success with the public. We'll have to see how this new City (essentially, a baby Civic) fares in the market.

Ford Mondeo
Again, a really under-rated car. While winning the European COTY award doesn't necessarily mean a smash-hit on Indian roads, it still means a fair level of capability and substance. Unfortunately, brand matters a lot in India, and like Opel before (with the Vectra) and Hyundai now (with the Sonata), Ford must've realized that a good car alone does not a success make in the Indian D-segment. It's still difficult to beat the biggies - Honda, Mercedes-Benz and Toyota (I've listed them out in alphabetical order!).

While we're at this game, let me also list out the bikes that fall into the RIP category -

Yamaha RD350
Move over, God. Your time has come.

Yamaha RX100
Ah, those days! November 11, 1989. I was all of 8 years old. I could barely ride a cycle, and my uncle traded in his Enfield Explorer for a brand new RX100 that, at the time, cost him around 27000 INR. This bike was the stuff of every adolescent (and some pre-adolescent) boy's wet dreams. Those were the days when "traffic" was just another noun, just something that was there, and not the cornerstone of every commuter's life as is the case today. I never rode the RX100 back then (couldn't, you see) but I enjoyed every kilometre as a pillion while Uncle Dear ripped the pants off the bike at every opportunity (and there were aplenty).

I finally got to ride the bike, of course, and what I felt just cannot be described here. Ask some of my friends who are into biking, and they may be able to tell you.

Suzuki Shogun
TVS/Suzuki released the Shogun when I was probably around 12 or 13 years old. Of course, I was a rabid RX100 fan-boy, and would never accept the Shogun for what I, deep down, knew it was - the usurper of the RX100 from its throne. Sadly, I *never* got to ride the Shogun. I had a couple of friends/acquaintances who owned this glorious bike, and while one of them did promise a ride, it just never materialized.

For years, the fan-boyism continued. First it was the RX100 vs. the Shogun. Later on, when I bought my first bike with my own money (a black "Classic" Pulsar 180, some six months into my career), it was the Pulsar vs. the CBZ/Karizma. It was only I when I started some serious biking that I grew up, and above, such petty fan-boyism. After all, it's just the rider that matters (of course, not when the choices are a Mofa and a YZF-R1). Therefore, the presence of the esteemed Shogun in my list.

Enfield Lightning 535
Word has it that Royal Enfield felt that this bike was too powerful, and pulled it off their menu. "Too powerful" is probably an understatement. This bike pulled. Nearly 180 kg of itself, nearly 100 kg of yours truly and another 100+ kg of the bike's owner. Slot the gearshift into first, and just a teeny-weeny nudge of the throttle and the bike takes off nonchalantly. Just like that. This friend of mine would glide up steep flyovers in 4th while the Pulsars and CBZs (two-up, of course) ran out of breath and downshifted, frantically trying to keep up.

That completes my list. We may never see the likes of these stand-out vehicles again. Mother Earth is simply too precious to indulge in personal fantasies. Sometimes we just have to give in (or give up) for the greater common good.

I hope you enjoyed the compilation. I'm really looking forward to comments and discussion regarding the vehicles in the list (and those not in the list too, of course).

In memory of...

2008-11-08T20:31:00.002+05:30

...cars I would've loved to own, but can't anymore. Well, I can if I buy used, but I don't want to go down that route.

Maruti Zen
No, not the stupid new Estilo, but the old (carburetted) petrol-engined original. What a beauty it was! The revamped BSII/III model was somehow not too much fun to drive (seemed too much like a diesel engine because of it's lack of nice acceleration even in lower gears).

Maruti Baleno
RIP. Lovely car with a lovely engine. Replaced now the SX4 which sadly misses the point. I don't feel like elaborating any more on that point.

By the way, I think both of the above cars would feature in anybody's list of Top 5 Most Underrated Cars to have sold in India.

Skoda RS
Waiting for a replacement for this gem. Will we see a Laura RS? I think not. It's going to be a tough sell, but the old RS never sold in too many numbers anyway. I still can't forget the short but sweet test drive I had of the RS. I wish I had broke the bank and bought one, and although this is not an excuse I'm very wary of Skoda after-sales and service.

Let's just hope the current Honda Civic (specifically, the 1.8V MT) doesn't go the way of the dodo by the time I manage my funds to be able to buy it.

In the name of God

2008-08-25T21:29:00.003+05:30

* it's OK to cheat people at places of pilgrimage
* it's OK to continue to use, in places of worship, precious metals such as gold, the mining of which causes extensive damage to the environment (and people's lives and possibly property)
* it's OK to break queues (or not form them at all) or push and shove without regard (be it men, women, children, elders, differently abled) to get what you want or go where you want to before everyone else
* it's OK to steal prasadam from where it's being made or while it's being transported to the place where it would eventually be served
* it's OK to ... you get the point.

Hail the devout!

Addendum: I would also encourage you to listen to the track "In the name of God" by Dream Theater from their 2003 album Train of Thought.

Power cuts!

2008-08-25T19:35:00.002+05:30

11 outages of various lengths in the space of 13 hours that have left my UPS absolutely bone-dry and totally incapable of riding even something as small as a single voltage blip! What's a guy to do? It's very difficult to think about working from home these days, as the power backup offered by the generators in my apartment complex is abysmal (just one light each in the hall and kitchen) given the kind of erratic power supply we are fortunate enough to have bestowed upon us.

One option is to work on a laptop. It's time to get a new battery for that aging office ThinkPad. The damn thing doesn't even last 45 minutes now, and not even that much is if there is lots of disk activity such as during boot-up. However, I see no reason in spending roughly 2 to 3k INR on a battery for a laptop that won't even fetch me a few hundred bucks. Anyway, the machine belongs to the office so I probably don't have to worry too much about this aspect, although I'd rather use a newer machine with faster hardware. Secondly, I simply do not enjoy programming on a pathetic 1024x768 15" screen, and definitely not with the 1920x1200 I can get from my Dell 24" LCD. However, that LCD needs power, again, and loads of it (at least compared to a laptop screen). With the UPS low on reserve power, hooking up the LCD to the laptop is again not a smooth option.

In the absence of efficient, mature solar panels that can consistently (i.e. irrespective of how bright/cloudy it is) deliver 300W of power and given current battery technology, what's a guy really to do if he wants to work from home? Shift to a different place in town (not very feasible and besides, many other factors come into play)? Use loads and loads of costly, inefficient solar panels and depend on utility power + UPS for the night (if needed)?

The long-term solution really is to have a battery technology that combines the advantages offered by lithium-ion batteries such as low size/weight, easy maintenance, quick charge times (compared to the kind of backup time they offer) and consistent output along with those of lead-acid batteries such as low cost and the ability to support a high power draw for a long time. Such a technology would make me leap for joy but we're still a few years away, at best, from getting there.

I can probably get an inverter, but I don't know if the apartment owners' association would permit the usage of one, and in any case my main problem is not the rest of the appliances but only the computer, and during day time on a few days at that. Besides, I would still be affected by the same problem I am facing now - of not enjoying 37.5 straight hours of uninterrupted power to keep my UPS batteries fully charged and capable of serving my machine's power needs for 1.5+ hours at a stretch (incredible ratio, isn't it?).

Suggestions?

Tips and anecdotes I

2008-08-25T19:13:00.003+05:30

I come across things or people or quotes that I find interesting enough to post, but are too short for a regular blog post and are somehow not suitable for twittering. So I've decided that I'll compile and post them every once in a while. These compiled posts won't be of digest length, but will perhaps contain two to five mini-entries each. This is the first installment of such posts.

Always ask for warranty on a CFL
These are supposed to last long, but we have all heard of MTBF. That applies to CFLs too, and considering these things are costly, it's good to have your shopkeeper cover your CFL under some kind of warranty. I've seen that the packaging doesn't indicate any warranty, but you can request your shopkeeper for one, and typically they'll just write the date of purchase (day, month & year) on the (ceramic?) base of the lamp and sign it, identifying that it was bought from him/her. I don't know if the shopkeeper will really honour it if the bulb goes kaput in, say, less than a year, but you know you at least have a basis to claim warranty.

6 gears cause more accidents
I took an APSRTC Garuda Volvo yesterday afternoon from Tirupati to Bengaluru. It was a newer vehicle with an improved dashboard and instrument cluster. I was boarding the bus and there were two teenagers (siblings - a boy and a girl) who were behind me in the line. The boy exclaimed to his sister that the bus had 6 gears. In reply, his sister nonchalantly attributed the spate of accidents involving these very high-speed buses to this fact!

That amused me. I remember how when I was a kid I (and most other kids my age) used to think higher gears meant faster speeds. To hear that from the mouth of a grown-up, though, was somewhat funny.

At the same time, it brought home to me the importance of good traffic sense education. What causes death and mayhem is recklessness, bad judgement, loss of control and people who aren't alert on the road; not the number of gears a vehicle has or the speeds it can attain.

Checking your ego on the road

2008-06-26T13:27:00.002+05:30

It's nearly impossible to overtake someone on the roads these days - especially when both parties are on bikes, and even more especially when the bikes are among the more powerful bikes on the market today (loosely, those with engine capacities of 150 cc and above) - without seemingly causing untold agony and hurt to the ego of the person being overtaken.

I'm not on the road to race. If I overtake someone, it's because of that person being at that place at that time, causing him (or her) to be overtaken. I would've done the same had that person not been there on the road getting overtaken by me. So it's not a race, nor an ego boost for me. I am just riding, on my way to wherever I want to go. It's as simple as that! It surprises me how easily this fact is lost on all of the wannabe road-racers and their egos. Can't a guy just weave through traffic at a little more than "normal" speed just for the heck of it? Does every such instance have to mean that it's a challenge to yet another street race?

I'm not a racer, nor do I pretend to be one. If I am really good at racing, I'll make that my profession, and spend my "off the job" days practicing at some race track. However, that doesn't mean that I can't sometimes go beyond my comfort zone on the road when conditions permit. It seems like I'll have to carry a disclaimer board every time I want to do this, to prevent unnecessary risk to other road users.

Some information on importing CDs/DVDs into India

2008-05-03T08:59:00.004+05:30

I see this question pop up often on online forums (*) or mailing lists - Would importing CDs/DVDs into India from abroad attract customs duty?

After having had first-hand experience in this regard over the last few days here is my answer to this question.

I am absolutely in love with Lenswork magazine and I am a regular listener of Brooks Jensen's podcast on "Photography and the Creative Process". Sometime last year Brooks started the new Vision of the Heart podcast and to fully appreciate these one must have access to previous issues of the Lenswork magazine, most of which are out of print.

I decided to do the next best thing, which was to order electronic (in-CD) versions of all the back issues of the magazines. All in all, it meant I had to purchase two CDs worth of content that cost me approximately 11500 INR including shipping from the United States to my office in Bengaluru. Costly matter, but I justified it as a better investment than a new piece of equipment to improve my photography. I placed the order on April 1, 2008.

Sometime in the last week of April 2008 I received a note from the Customs Appraisal Department informing me that the shipment has arrived, but I need to provide some information so that the appropriate duty can be charged. The note required me to present the invoice of my purchase so that the value of the shipment can be assessed correctly, and a import/export certificate and a technical write-up. The last two documents are only necessary if I am a volume importer/exporter so I didn't take them with me to the CAD office.

I found out (quite to my horror) that the import duty on purchases of optical media is nearly 34.4% of the purchase value! And this also includes the shipping cost (which was considerable in my case). Needless to say, I have to cough up nearly 4000 INR now before I can lay my hands on the CDs and I am obviously sad/angry about it.

I could have bribed my way out by undervaluing the purchase (Lenswork did not print the value of the shipment on the parcel) but I didn't want to.

Before getting to my rant about why I feel such a high rate of duty is unjustified, I want to outline a few legal ways in which one can reduce this burden -

1.) The official told me that purchases less than 5000 INR do not attract duty. So consider splitting your purchase if that's possible. Remember, taxable value includes the cost of shipping and handling.

2.) Gifts upto 10000 INR are not taxable (**). So consider having your purchase bought and shipped to you by an NRI friend and arrange for some method of foreign funds transfer that doesn't attract duty (PayPal?) or local funds transfer to your friend's local account if possible. Alternately, consider buying it yourself and shipping it to your friend's location abroad (some merchants won't allow this as the billing information on your credit card is obviously going to be different) and then have him/her just ship it to you. In all of these cases, have your friend mark the package as a gift. Some merchants allow the buyer to specify special instructions while making the purchase. Perhaps you could explore the possibility of having the merchant mark the parcel as a gift.

3.) Arrange for an internet transfer of the contents of the media, if possible. One may not be able to get all content (music and movies come to mind) in this manner. Chances are most merchants (biggies like Amazon come to mind) can't do this either. However, explore this option where you can as this causes you the least inconvenience. You don't have to bother with the CAD. You don't have to be a burden to any of your friends. There's, at best, a minor inconvenience to the merchant only if they don't have a secure web transfer/distribution method worked out. It's easier for small merchants, as you can see.

4.) Get someone you know who's coming down to India get it for you. CDs are small, light and don't take up any space whatsoever if you are OK with getting rid of the merchant's shipment packaging. Or wait until your company sends you abroad. Neither was an option in my case, unfortunately.

A semi-legal way out would be to ask the merchant (via the aforementioned special instructions) to undervalue the goods. Some may agree. Some may not. Over the years, I've had 4 purchases of goods that I've had to import. I've not exercised this option any time. Each was from a different merchant. Two of the merchants undervalued the goods on their own without me mentioning anything. I still ended up paying some duty on one of them because it exceeded the 5000 INR limit (if I remember correctly).

There are illegal ways out and I don't need to elaborate on those :).

Now for my rant.

Charging duty on CDs is downright foolish, IMHO. What if I choose to download the content (exercising option 3.) above if possible)? Also, when was the last time you were stopped by Customs at international arrival if you had a couple of CDs in your baggage whose value exceeded 25000 INR (the allowable limit if you're bringing goods in-person rather than via post/parcel)?

Duties are meant to protect local businesses. Does Lenswork have any competitor here? I would go so far as to say that Lenswork is incomparable. It has no competition anywhere in the world. I agree that Customs cannot reliably assess this aspect, however, but my question must be viewed in a broader scope. Do we have any camera equipment manufacturers in India? Do we even care enough to have and encourage one? Then why tax imported camera gear? Or computer peripherals for that matter?

34% is no laughing matter. While the media goes agog about the New India with its increasingly "liberal" market policies (that I would argue are only widening, rather than bridging, the chasm between the rich and the poor) no one highlights the archaic customs and duties rules and regulations we have.

I expressed to the CAD official that the 4000 INR I'm going to cough up in less than a week is part of the price I pay for being a non-NRI and he agreed, and said it was good on me to do what I was doing. I feel proud of that, and I am of course happy that I will finally get to see some really classy photographs.

(*) - Is it forums or fora? Firefox says 'fora' is incorrect, but dict.org doesn't.
(**) - I don't know how many times this option can be exercised in one calendar/financial year.

Life's like that

2008-04-15T19:02:00.002+05:30

I had a Citibank IndianOil MasterCard which was pretty useful to me when I was in Hyderabad, as I always used to fuel my vehicle(s) up at IndianOil outlets and the rewards structure would mean I get free petrol every now and then.

After shifting to Bengaluru nearly 4 years back I realized that the few IndianOil bunks near where I lived weren't giving me the best fuel (you know when the engine seems hoarse? it's like it's saying it doesn't really enjoy the drink it's being fed?) and I also felt (didn't actually measure this) that they were cheating on the amount. And then Shell happened, and as they say, the rest is history.

Just a few months back I contacted Citibank and had them cancel my IndianOil card and had the credit line and points transferred to a cash-back Citibank card that I also have. After all, who wants more cards than absolutely necessary? :)

Now, the government decides that private players can price fuel any which they want and that they also need not sell non-premium unleaded anymore. WHAM! Shell drops regular unleaded from the repertoire of fuels it dispenses and the prices on premium fuel slowly start moving northwards. Reliance has done one better and has actually gotten out of the retail fuel business. I feel for them but not so much as I never used Reliance petrol/diesel anyway.

I can't bear the nearly 60 INR that Shell charges for one litre of the heady stuff, so what do I do? Scour the bunks near home and work to see which ones are good, and lo and behold, it's the friendly neighbourhood IndianOil bunk on St. Mark's Road, just opposite the Skoda/Ford/Mahindra showrooms.

Hmm - where's that IndianOil card when I need it again? Why - I wilfully sent it to /dev/null, didn't I? Ah, well...

Fastest algorithm to identify a unique number across different sets of numbers?

2008-04-14T21:45:00.004+05:30

A colleague of mine posed me this simple puzzle today. Let's say there are n sets of integers. The job is to find all the numbers that occur only once across all the sets, and to find those numbers in the best manner possible.

I immediately started thinking about subtracting the intersection of all sets from each set but quickly realized that that approach will get me nowhere and the worst case is really bad. So I hit upon the following -

H1, H2 = 2 hash sets, initialized to empty
for each set {
  for each element e {
    if (!(H1 contains e)) {
      H1.add(e)
      H2.add(e)
    } else {
      H2.remove(e)
    }
  }
}

Not the most optimal on space but I'm guessing this is a reasonably fast algorithm. Essentially, at the end of every one of the outer loops, we have two sets, one of which (H1) is the union of everything that has gone by, and the other (H2) is the intersection of everything that has gone by. We are only interested in those elements that have an overall count of exactly 1, so an intersection is basically what we want.

Being the abysmally-poor-at-algorithms guy that I am, I'm looking for ways to better this. I invite your suggestions!

Update: I just realized that a fair bit also depends on how the data is presented. If the numbers are available as a list or array, one could just do the first half of a bucket sort and be done with it. Even if it's separate arrays, just concatenating them would be sufficient.

Why do I hate TV advertisements?

2008-04-14T20:49:00.002+05:30

They make people switch channels like crazy. That hurts my eyes and my brain. My ears can cope with it, for now. And one ends up missing parts of all programmes one is trying to follow - so what's the point?

I'd like to hear your reasons now :).

Just what is wrong with the auto drivers of Bengaluru?

2008-02-27T09:30:00.002+05:30

I have to cross the Prof. Ashirvadam Circle (junction of Museum and Residency Roads) signal while going to work. I usually try to be in the second lane from the left (facing in the direction of flow of traffic) because I have to take a left and an immediate right on Museum Road. There are 4+ lanes on this road and those wishing to go straight down Residency Road should *ideally* be (but rarely are) in the first 2 lanes to the right.

It was the same yesterday as well. As the lights turned green and everyone started to move, I noticed that there was a jeep to my left and he was not going to turn left into Museum Road. So I waited to let him pass. I had my left blinker on all the while. I began moving again once the jeep passed me and it was then that I heard a loud, aggressive, angry "Oyi!" and when I turned my head further back I could see this opportunistic auto driver trying to barge his way in into the void created by the jeep, and obviously I had come in his way. The auto driver was continuing straight down Residency Road as well.

I fail to understand these buggers. I waited for the (errant, I might add) jeep because that was right beside me. The road has 4 lanes with enough provision for those wishing to go straight without taking a left turn into Museum Road. I had my blinkers on all the while. Obviously I'm *not* going to wait for every idiot who's *behind* and to the left of me to continue straight and pass me before I make my left turn. So why all the aggression and shouting?

These auto drivers must do well to remember that it is in fact they who make sudden turns and lane changes with nary a hint of a warning or a signal. One only has to look at places like the junction of MG Road, Kasturba Road, Queen's Road and Lavelle Road to understand this. Autos are supposed to be on the (dysfunctional) auto lane, which is fine, but for God's sake, if one wishes to turn right into Kasturba Road, then move the bloody hell out of that auto lane well before one reaches the signal, and not *after* the lights go green and impeding everyone in the middle lanes (who are continuing straight into Lavelle Road). By the way, even two-wheeler riders are guilty of this kind of irresponsibility.

I'm not even going to dwell on the other painful aspects at play here, such as the harassment of auto passengers by drivers, the pollution (smoke and sound) caused by these vehicles, and the countless other ways in which they manage to impede and disrupt traffic (ever seen two autos going side-by-side and full-pelt on a 2-lane road with an uphill gradient with neither going above 40 kmph and able to overtake the other, with more powerful vehicles trailing helplessly behind?).

It's amazing (and disgusting) how the travelling and commuting public has to put up with these khaki-clad nuisances (there are a few very good and courteous drivers but they are very rare) day in and day out. Thank God for the few pre-paid auto counters that exist. I wish there were more, and I also wish there were more strategically designed auto lanes rather than tactically-designed ones. The concept of having separate auto lanes is good, but it only makes sense when such lanes are on all roads, and there is an idiot-proof mechanism that allows them to switch directions at signals without inconveniencing others.

On the whole, though, I wish the Metro is dot on schedule.

Dictatorship == FTW!

2008-02-20T17:19:00.002+05:30

We're all very familiar with the acronym 'WTF'. A good friend of mine mis-typed it as 'FTW' in a mail. That got me laughing to begin with, and then it got me thinking.

Dictatorships and some flavours of communism are manifestations of 'FTW's.

Mash-up fun!

2008-02-05T10:54:00.000+05:30

I just got invited to Intel MashMaker. The demo video looks really cool, and I'm going to have fun with this one.

I urge all of you to go sign-up. Check out the videos on the MashMaker website to know more about this stuff. I definitely think this is going to change the way we use the internet to gather information.

Late realization

2008-02-02T12:10:00.000+05:30

This is the kind of post that would either have you in splits or have you thinking that the positions of my brain and nuts have somehow interchanged. Anyway, here goes.

I started shaving (my beard, sillies!) when I was in Std. IX (13 years of age) but I would usually go to the barber once in 3 or 4 months to get the job done. After joining college I bought my own shaving kit but I would use it only in case of an "emergency" or when it just caught my fancy to shave - just for fun. I still continued going to the barber and would get shaved only once in 2 or 3 or 4 months (usually tied the job with a haircut - so lazy was I). My friends never got that. They would repeatedly ask me whether I was inconvenienced by the huge beard. It never troubled me, though, and I never got why they all thought so. Apparently, stubbles itch and make one feel awkward. Somehow, I never felt that way. I thought that whole thing about regular shaving making one's skin and beard hard were hogwash and I was special and everyone else was just going crazy setting a lot of store by urban legend. Then a barber told me one day that it was *very* easy to shave off my beard (I told him it was around 3 months old). That got me thinking. After all, this is a guy with experience, and he ought to be right.

And then I got married, and thereby lost the freedom to "maintain" my beard as I would really have liked to. Actually, in a very narcissistic sort of way, I actually liked to grow my beard for long periods of time just to gloat at the look of surprise on people's faces when I got it shaved off. And I can't do this any more now. I'm now like any average Joe, shaving my beard on my own. Ah, the drudgery! You know, it's quite a pleasurable experience sitting down on a reclining chair, all tucked up, listening to some olde worlde music and getting royal treatment.

And to top it all, most supermarkets do not stock the kind of blade that goes on my nearly 10-year old razor, a Gillette SensorExcel World Cup Edition (1998 vintage with the blue-coloured grip strips rather than the standard-issue grey strips). They would rather have me spend a few hundred bucks and get a new razor and a new set of blades. So much for the backward compatibility we pathetic little enterprise software designers and engineers have to ensure with every freakin' piece of code we write. Luckily, I ultimately found a set of blades that would work with my razor and I was all set to go.

So these days I'm doing the job on my own, religiously, twice a week. And horror of horrors, my stubble now starts to itch! What have I done to myself?! I've absolutely managed to spoil something so pure and innocent and made it into this irritating monster, and it is *not* going to change for the better.

Is digital photography really cheaper in the long run? (contd.)

2008-01-30T19:14:00.000+05:30

I'm becoming a master of follow-ups, I think :).

Anyway, this is a follow-up to this previous post of mine.

The New York Times has an interesting article about how it's becoming costly to archive digital production work. While it doesn't really talk about photography, I believe the analysis applies equally well to archives of digital photographs too.

FOSSKriti at Techkriti 2008, IIT Kanpur

2008-01-29T15:39:00.000+05:30

Current members of a computing (that's generic, but please hold on to that notion for a moment) club at IIT Kanpur I was an active member of back in my days in college are looking to organize a mini-FOSS.in-style event at the 2008 edition of IIT Kanpur's annual technical festival, Techkriti 2008.

This is the first time they (the club is called "Navya", which is Sanskrit for "new") are doing something of this nature, and would appreciate some help which could be of various kinds - speakers at the event, sponsorships and donations and last but not the least, participation! There's nothing more important than an active audience and contestants (for any competitions that might be part of this initiative) to give a fledgling event the fillip it needs and its organizers the incentive and enthusiasm and pride to continue doing this in future.

New avenues of patriotism (contd.)

2008-01-26T10:19:00.000+05:30

Just as soon as I published my previous post, our friendly neighbour started playing item numbers! Honest to God, I wonder what's next, and I wonder whether there's some telepathy going on here and he (or she) is doing this just to spite me.

I'll take "Chak De" over this inappropriate rubbish, thank you very much.

I really, really wonder what's next. A more frightening prospect is what may be on display a few years down the line.

New avenues of patriotism

2008-01-26T10:01:00.000+05:30

It is Republic Day and somewhere near my apartment someone has set up an amplifier and loudspeaker to ostensibly play patriotic songs. There was token service to that effect. The first couple or so songs were "classical" (if I may call them that) patriotic songs. Promptly after that, I started hearing songs from films such as "Chak De India" etc.

It is interesting that, these days, the spirit of patriotism needs commercial entertainment to come through.

As a matter of fact, I remember how a friend of mine (a violinist) and me (who plays the tabla) used to be routinely requested to make our classical entreé short and sweet during musical shows at college, so as not to let the audience's interest wane.

I love my country.

What's up with the big two these days?

2008-01-19T22:17:00.000+05:30

I mean El Goog and the big Y. Every day, one or the other of these two (or their cronies, like Flickr or Gmail or what have you) decides to take a walk. Now it's Flickr, just when I want to upload my photo of the day for today.

Others have been experiencing similar problems over the last couple of weeks and more, leading me to believe there's something fundamentally wrong with the ISPs' DNS servers or something. Or are these two facing some real problems with traffic and server load? I wonder.

BSNL DataOne rocks!

2008-01-14T23:57:00.000+05:30

--- 208.67.222.222 ping statistics ---
2244 packets transmitted, 600 received, +1 duplicates, +413 errors, 73% packet loss, time 2244953ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 290.138/394.231/652.225/96.744 ms, pipe 3

208.67.222.222 is a public domain/open DNS server.

Of course, this seems to be a real problem only in certain locations, such as where my parents currently reside - in Ferozeguda, Hyderabad. Everyone else I know who's on BSNL's DSL continue to be very happy with BSNL, as they should be, because it rocks in the real sense when it works.

Repeated calls to customer service are all in vain. I'll try again tomorrow.

Innocence faded?

2008-01-07T17:47:00.000+05:30

I noticed something strange (to me at least) as I was getting ready to drive to work today. Just before I got into my car I spotted this bunch of school-going kids hanging around at the basement of the apartment block I live in and managed to overhear bits of what they were talking about. They must be Std. VIII/IX students - no more. Maybe even less.

They weren't discussing Harry Potter.
They weren't discussing Sachin Tendulkar.
They weren't discussing Diamond Comics.
They weren't discussing fellow students/class teachers/other schools.
Heck - they weren't even talking about cool new cars and bikes.

"Stock market", "SENSEX" and "ICICI" were the words I overheard.

God bless them!

On ever-increasing air fares (contd.)

2008-01-03T15:41:00.000+05:30

As a follow-up to my post on my take on ever-increasing domestic air fares in India, please read this news article published by The Hindu on Wednesday, 2 January 2008.

These are welcome steps and I really, sincerely hope that the DGCA manages to crack down on these airlines.

My photo-a-day blog

2008-01-01T17:27:00.000+05:30

It's up here. Hope you like it!

What's your position on the political compass?

2007-12-27T17:04:00.000+05:30

This is my position on The Political Compass.

Economic Left/Right: -5.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.03

View that as a graph here.

Find out where you stand, at The Political Compass - Test. It's a very interesting test, and I believe the set of issues covered by the questions in the survey is very nearly comprehensive.

On ever-increasing air fares

2007-11-03T21:18:00.000+05:30

Here's the price breakup of the fare on a recent SpiceJet flight from Hyderabad to Bengaluru. The total fare came to INR 2075, with the journey having been booked two days before the flight.

SpiceJet Base Fare: INR 500
PSF: INR 225
Fuel surcharge: INR 1200
Congestion charge: INR 150

There was a time when the only tax levied on an airline ticket amounted to INR 225. With low-cost airlines becoming popular (and unabashedly cheap), the fuel surcharge of INR 900 started adding to the woes of the flying public. It was around this time that quite a few started grumbling about it being better if airlines maintained higher ticket prices rather than airports and airlines fleecing a similar amount of money as taxes and surcharges after keeping the base fares low.

It was probably inevitable that the fuel surcharge would swell with time. Oil isn't getting any cheaper at all.

What really interests me is the congestion charge. It is (as of now, at least) a meager amount compared to the overall fare. I would hope, being the optimist that I am, that this amount would go towards funding new ATC equipment, re-training controllers to use this new equipment and improving airport infrastructure. Given the volume of passengers flying (domestic) daily, we *should* be able to fund all of this pretty soon, failing which I would be really upset.

On the whole, it seems that the original low-cost fares were definitely unsustainable, for good or for bad.

Conventional wisdom

2007-09-28T14:32:00.000+05:30

This is an interesting incident that I witnessed nearly a couple of weeks back at the Landmark store in The Forum. I was standing in the queue at one of the billing counters as I had picked up a couple of books. It was a Saturday evening (I should mention that I absolutely hate visiting malls because of the crowds, and Saturday evenings are *really* crowded - but that day was one of those unpalatable exceptions) and the queues were all very long. I would have chosen a shorter queue, but I stood in the queue for the billing counter nearest to the exit gate because my wife was standing outside.
She does not have a cell phone right now and I did not want her to worry about where I was.

The wife of the gentleman standing in front of me in the queue suddenly came barging in with their two kids and started admonishing the poor man for choosing "the longest queue". She literally dragged him over to another queue which was noticeably shorter. The elder of the two kids must have been five - maybe six - years old, and as the lady told her husband, "Did you notice that you chose the longest queue?" while they were walking over to the other queue, this kid chimed out, "Which will slowly become the shortest queue."

Perhaps I am underestimating five to six-year old kids, but that moment really struck something in me, and got me thinking. Here was conventional wisdom of one kind against another. The lady employed a greedy algorithm of sorts. The end result she had in mind was that her family should get out of the queue and the shop as quickly as it could. In a sense, her approach was probably near-sighted. All things (such as the efficiency of the clerk at the billing counter and the average number of billable items per head of customers in a queue) being equal, the shortest queue does guarantee the quickest path to the exit, but in the real world, all things are not always equal. More often not, a variant of Murphy's law applies where you see that the queue you just moved out of suddenly starts moving a lot faster than the one you just joined (this could sometimes be just imagination and the fickleness that is such a big part of any human being). However, I was amazed to see a young kid realizing the fact that this kind of a greedy approach to minimize waiting times at queues could actually result in a sub-optimal solution.

That said, one simply cannot just stay put in a certain queue if it is or happens to become the longest and one is short on time.

It is an interesting thing - pitting one form of conventional wisdom or common sense against the other. Usually, common sense is derived out of fact and/or considerable experience, and here is one situation where neither really counts.

Of cleanliness and Godliness

2007-09-28T14:10:00.000+05:30

Often times I've heard the argument that one must appear "neat" before visiting a place of worship (this could also include sitting down for prayer at home in front of a deity). I have been - on many an occasion - rapped on the knuckles for "neglecting" to, for example, take a head-bath before sitting down for prayer.

First of all, I do not particularly relish prayer/worship of any kind (i.e. at home or at the temple). I will not say I am an atheist. It is just that I do not think that there is a designated time and place for worship. The fundamental tenet of any religion is that a person should first be a good human being and his/her actions should not hurt those around him/her. I do not have any illusions that regular prayer and worship will automatically absolve me of all my sins and wrongdoings. For all those words and deeds of mine that may have hurt others (I am pretty sure no human being is perfect in that sense and everyone, including me, must have hurt someone or the other albeit unintentionally) I repent regularly.

I also have a lot to be thankful for, and this is another of the reasons why people are urged to worship God - to express their gratitude for their daily bread etc. I do this in a different way. I respect the power that made the Universe (and by extension - Nature and Life).

In this light, I believe that cleanliness should not be limited just to the physical, in that it is not sufficient to be neat and prim and proper physically. One should be clean in terms of the mind and soul too during a prayer session. Often times, it hurts me to see people carry the baggage of hate, scorn, derision and all the other vile emotions to their respective places of worship. At the same time, it is not uncommon to see instances of cheating and mistrust manifest themselves at these same places. I wonder how this can be changed. I ask myself how it might be possible to tell those self-professed religious, God-fearing people that the show they put on is hollow, and without inner cleanliness, there can be no true Godliness.

Weathering the storm

2007-03-17T02:58:00.000+05:30

I think you can brace yourselves for an avalanche of posts from me now that I have practically nothing to do this weekend while I sit in my hotel room and wait out the March Nor'easter which is supposed to last right until Saturday evening at least. The people here love it, saying it's typical New England and that's just the way it is - winter isn't over until April.

I was supposed to have caught a flight out of Boston's Logan international to Washington's Ronald Reagan international at around 7 pm today evening, but Logan's been shut down! That's put paid to my plans for this weekend and there's no scope for any plan B other than just chilling out in the hotel room. Hopefully, Sunday should be easy enough for me to attend some St. Patrick's Day festivities in Boston. I've heard this festival is pretty big in these parts.

Is digital photography really cheaper in the long run?

2007-02-28T00:47:00.000+05:30

I have been thinking about this issue for a while now, and I was anyway going to write about it here when I read a discussion on this same topic over at the excellent Nikon d1scussion mailing list run and maintained by Juergen Specht that prompted me to get on with it and post this right away. Lots of professional photographers abound on that list and it's probably *the* best mailing list I've ever seen that is dedicated to Nikon DSLRs. Therefore, it really pleases me to see that the opinions I've held on this issue match those of many a professional photographer.

One big allure of digital photography is that it allows the shooter to instantly see what he/she has captured. The other big allure was that there's no film, and consequently no running around labs getting rolls of film developed and printed. People saw it as a way of reducing costs and surmised that digital photography would be cheaper in the long run.

This is one of those issues where it's really easy to believe in all you hear until you actually start doing stuff yourselves.

1.) Digital cameras are, essentially, computers. Hence, just like computer hardware, they tend to get obsolete pretty fast. While the picture that is captured at the end of the day is all that really counts, digital-everything has become a commodity now and thus one tends to see the value of any digital camera drop rapidly, and within a couple of years, newer and improved (as in faster, better quality, more feature-rich) equipment is available at a cheaper price than what one paid for his/her camera. Gone are the days when a good film camera would hold its value even after a couple of decades. Digital camera bodies become junk (note: in terms of resale value only) in less than 3 years. 5 at best.

2.) Digital cameras, especially SLRs, are useless unless the photographer has a computer. I say especially for SLRs because point-and-shoot digital cameras produce vibrant, contrasty, sharp, colourful pictures out-of-the-box whereas DSLRs are designed to let the photographer have full control over these aspects of a picture in the digital darkroom. In any case, a photographer would need a computer to store the pictures he/she takes. So start adding the cost of a computer, storage, photo processing software and back-up solutions to the cost of every digital camera setup. When a photographer upgrades his/her DSLR body, it typically requires some upgrades to the computer as well, because the megapixel race has meant that the newer body outputs more pixels per image, resulting in bigger files which require more processing power and storage. So, factor in the cost of computer peripheral and software (required in some cases) upgrades as well.

3.) The "digital is free" mindset, helped in no small means by the instant image review feature, causes photographer to take at least a 100 pictures where with a film camera, he/she would've been content with say 10 (or in the worst case, 36) pictures. This means that the shutter in your average digital camera is working at least thrice as much as that in a film camera in the same hands. And shutters being moving mechanical parts, have a usable life. So digital cameras "wear out" faster, meaning more frequent body upgrades. This is not too big a factor for the casual/hobby/amateur photographer, but is a real issue for professional photographers who typically end up shooting 1000s of images over the course of a single assignment these days.

Many equipment upgrades also happen to be compulsive (i.e. primarily satisfying wants as opposed to needs), at least to the typical equipment nut or gearhead. That is yet another phenomenon of this "digital age" as, at every point of time, more and more nifty features get introduced at incredibly low price points compared to a few months in the past (it's a vicious circle - goes without saying, really).

All of this (depreciation costs + peripheral costs + frequent upgrades) means, to me at least, that digital photography is no less cheaper than film photography. In fact, I would go so far as to say that due to the higher initial prices and frequent upgrades of hardware and equipment, a photographer ends up spending the same kind of money he/she would have spent on taking and printing a similar number of pictures using a film camera, and spends this amount of money in a much shorter timeframe!

Again, please note that all of this may not realistically apply to a casual photographer. Point-and-shoot camera owners are even better placed, as they don't need to post-process images from their cameras a whole lot other than probably straightening, cropping and a little bit of sharpening here and there and so need not invest in high-end computer hardware and photo-processing software. Most such shooters also don't shoot in RAW, which means their photos end up taking lesser space than a bunch of RAW files from any DSLR. There will be exceptions to these (almost) sweeping generalizations but I think you get my point.

Nevertheless, this is something to think about. And as far as I am concerned, at least, it brings to mind the fact that photography is about understanding the subject, the light and the emotion and moment in a scene. Use the instant review feature and shoot tons of photographs with your digital camera of choice to being with, as that's the best way to "learn" stuff. However, once you are able to be creative and visualize what you want from a scene just by looking at it, I would say try to nail it, and use your digital camera like a film camera - sparingly. I think it's really only then that digital will work out to be cheaper than film.

Does my car have a soul?

2007-02-22T14:25:00.000+05:30

I drive a nearly 9-year old Maruti 800. It's a harvest green, carburetted 1998 model. It was used by my father for nearly 8 years before I bought it from him. For me this car was just a stop-gap arrangement until I could lay my hands on some bigger car that caught my fancy.

After driving it around in Bengalooru for nearly 9 months now, though, I am undecided as to what to do. It's just the ideal size for pottering around in city. Manoeuvrability is a breeze, and with only me in the car it has decent pick-up even when the AC is turned on (but only when the compressor switches off, as it does from time to time). Not bad at all. Mileage isn't a problem too. Parking is just absolutely hassle-free. And did I mention easy manoeuvrability?

I had, therefore, more or less decided to keep the car until it totally breaks down, and perhaps add an SUV at some point of time to my garage, because the little 800 is not a car for the highway. Of course it can go places - with minimum fuss to boot - but is neither the quickest nor the most comfortable car in which to travel long distances.

All this was until I just happened to test drive a Swift diesel the other day. A friend of mine wants to buy a car and he'd been taking me along to showrooms so that I could test drive the cars and tell him what I thought of them. I went alone to test the Swift diesel, though, as I had some time on my hands.

Boy! *What* a car! Except for the very slight turbo lag and the note of the engine at higher RPMs, there was *no* way one could tell that it was a diesel-powered engine the car had. I would like to mention that petrol cars are perhaps just as noisy (in terms of decibel level) at higher RPMs, but the note of the engine is obviously different. Modern petrol engines tend to scream whereas modern diesels still rumble and roar, at these RPMs. It's a difference of pitch and rhythm, but the decibels levels are more or less the same. The only difference is that there's a constant, characteristic diesel hum at regular engine speeds. This hum is absolutely minimal in the Swift. No vibrations at all - neither through the pedals nor the seats nor the steering wheel nor the body. And past around 1900 rpm, it pulls. Nay, it positively *rockets* forward. And this was with 3 people in a car that had not yet done a 1000 kms. Impressive refinement and performance from a small-capacity diesel, if you ask me.

Needless to say, it had me hooked. I found myself asking the showroom people to evaluate my old 800 to estimate how much I'd have to cough up if I traded in the 800 for a Swift Diesel VDi. The new Baleno is due out in April in both petrol and diesel variants, apparently, so I decided not to jump the gun. In any case, I'll be out of the country for the entire month of March. I have decided, though, to go for this car even if the new Balenos turn out to be gems. The reasons are simple. It's a small-ish car even though it's much bigger than an 800. Parking and manoeuvrability will be easy, and according to the showroom people it will return 18 or 20 kms to a litre of diesel in the city (I'm suspecting with AC on, because my father's Indigo diesel returns 15 kmpl in the city with AC switched on, from its 1.4l engine - albeit the Indigo is more of a trundler rather than the sprinter the Swift is). So it is still an ideal small car for in-city commuting, and till I get that SUV or whatever, it will also work very well for longer highway drives.

Now comes the interesting part. Since that day, I've noticed that my 800 has started behaving like a perfect gentleman (or lady - I'm not the one to refer to cars as he or she). The engine purrs like a contented cat (this is actually the biggest change - the 800's engine was always smooth but it's added a few more dimensions of smoothness now, it seems to me). There's no jerkiness typical of low-spec carburetted cars. Gear changes that were already smooth have become smoother still. Braking has become more assured. The car has begun to smother bumps on the road in a plusher manner. And all of this was on the same roads with the same driver - me!

Does my car have a soul?

A common misconception about Firefox

2007-01-26T10:37:00.001+05:30

I remember telling a lot of people that Firefox is an absolute memory hog. I also remember getting flamed for this "blasphemy" by wanna-be Microsoft bashers. Now, I don't love Microsoft. I use Firefox. However, I don't bash Microsoft just because everyone else and his grandmother thinks Microsoft is worth bashing. My reasons are different.

We digress, though. The point is that Firefox *is* very heavy on memory. I still use Firefox because I work on multiple platforms (at home I have a workstation that dual boots between Gentoo and XP SP2/Vista Ultimate RC1) and I find that "learning" to navigate around one browser is really enough. Keyboard shortcuts, look-and-feel etc. remain the same irrespective of which platform I use, and that is important to me. I just wish Firefox weren't so heavy on resources though.

Anyway - for all those doubters and nay-sayers, read Chapter 3 of the latest (as I write this post) edition of the Gentoo newsletter - http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20070122-newsletter.xml#doc_chap3 - specifically the "gentoo-user/Suggestions for a minimalistic system" section.

Megapixel madness - Update

2007-01-17T14:50:00.000+05:30

I have received a request or two to speak a bit about the resolving power of lenses, MTF charts and the like. I will take this opportunity to talk a bit about what should be the appropriate print resolution for a particular-sized print. These topics are pretty closely related and I'll really need a diagram or two to explain this as well.

I shall do all of this as part of an addendum article, before continuing on to part III which will deal with the interplay between sensor sizes and megapixel counts.

Please bear with me and thank you very much for your patience!

The photographer is a non-entity at worst and a robot at best, it seems

2007-01-17T14:36:00.000+05:30

I had initially wanted to post this article after completing/concluding my "Megapixel madness" series, just so that there is no loss of continuity (and also so that at least that kind of a line of thought will force me to get off my backside sooner and actually conclude the series). However, I've had enough and I have to get it out of my system. So - please bear with me as I let go and rant.

"Gr8 pix! Which cam?"

(I have imploded with rage and shift-deleted that email without replying to it.)

I hate this particular question on many levels. First of all, I absolutely hate shorthand, especially the SMS variety, over email. However, that's just a personal preference. I am pedantic. Some may construe that to be (something unprintable).

What really irks me more than the language, is the question itself. It's a bit like asking either of these following questions -

"Wonderful food! Which utensils did you use to cook it?"
"Heavenly music! Which instrument did you use to play it?"
"Brilliant book! Which pen did you use to write it?"
"Awesome ride! Which bike did you ride?"

You get the point, I suppose.

I feel better now.

Megapixel madness - Part II

2006-12-25T21:06:00.000+05:30

I wish all the readers of this blog a prosperous New Year 2007 and hope everyone's had a fun Christmas 2006.

In my previous post in this series I had elaborated on how your choices of viewing your images - be it on the computer or on print - should influence your decision of a digital camera with regard to the number of megapixels it is capable of recording. The story doesn't end there, however. There's much more to it. In this article, I'll try to explain some other aspects one needs to consider.

The first of these that I want to talk about is how the human eye perceives changes in resolution. For the eye to perceive double the resolution in an image, the image should feature double the resolution along both its dimensions. This means that to see an image with twice the resolution of a 6 MP image, it should feature 24 MP. That's a lot of megapixels, and very few consumer (even professional) cameras feature that many megapixels. One is basically entering into medium format digital back territory given current offerings in the market. However, we do not always need a 2x bump to appreciate the gain in resolution. Anything above 15%, I think, would begin to offer a perceivable difference in image quality in terms of resolution of detail. Continuing with our example of a 3:2 aspect ratio sensor capturing 6 MP, a 7.2 MP sensor would offer 10% more "linear" resolution (6 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 7.26) whereas an 8.2 MP sensor would offer roughly 17% more linear resolution. I tend to think that 6 to 8.2 MP is a decent jump whereas 6 to 7.2 MP is probably not. 7.2 MP to 8.2 MP (~7% increase in linear resolution) is especially not a jump worth spending a ton of money on. Similarly, while 6 to 10 MP represents a good jump, 8.2 to 10 MP doesn't. One's choice of *upgrading* to a new camera should be made after carefully evaluating the jump in linear resolution that is obtained and whether such a jump is perceived well enough by one's own eyes. Of course, for someone buying a new camera, getting as many megapixels as affordable (while still keeping other features in mind) makes good sense as it offers more leeway while cropping the image. I think the operative word/phrase here is "feature list". Megapixel count alone does not a camera make. Look at other features of a camera (for instance, low-light performance is one important criterion for me - i.e. how less noisy, while still preserving detail, pictures are from a camera at high ISO settings such as 800, 1600 and 3200) in conjunction with the number of megapixels it offers. There are many examples of cameras that offer huge megapixel counts and little else in comparison to competition that delivers many more useful features at a slightly lower megapixel count.

The second factor that should affect the usefulness of a high megapixel count is how good the lenses that capture images are, in terms of their ability to resolve detail. A great camera body (i.e. one that offers good ergonomics, features, speed etc. etc.) with an astronomical megapixel count is nothing without an equally good lens that can let the sensor extract the last drop of detail from the scene captured. In terms of technical brilliance of an image at least, it's the lens more than the body that matters. This is especially true given the upgrade cycles of current consumer and prosumer digital cameras. Bodies and models are updated every 18 months if not 12, and as such, tend to lose their value really fast. Back in the day, a great camera body made a sound investment. It would hold its value well in the used equipment market. This is unfortunately not the case in the digital era, where cameras have become more like computers - obsolete faster than you can type that dreaded word. This has prompted many hobby/amateur photographs to actually spend less on the camera body itself (I'm talking SLR equipment here) and use the cash saved to invest in quality lenses which are worth their weight in gold. If a lens is unable to resolve very fine detail (such as the hair on the head of your portrait subject or individual blades of grass - within a certain distance from the camera of course - in that grand landscape), the camera body can have as many megapixels as it can and they will all do nothing for crispness of the image. Lens resolution is measured in "line pairs per millimeter" (lp/mm) and information regarding lens performance can be obtained from what are known as MTF charts. This is a bit too scientific/mathematical for me to go into detail here, but suffice it to say that all other things remaining the same, a lens that can resolve more lp/mm can deliver finer details with more clarity than another lens that resolves less lp/mm. Again, as with megapixels for camera bodies, lp/mm is just a measure and there are many other factors that are much, much more important when it comes to qualifying the greatness of a lens. As a matter of fact, no photographer I know of really cares (or even knows), exactly how many lp/mm his/her lenses can resolve because it's really unimportant as long as it's known that the lens can take full advantage of the resolution the sensor offers. Let my explanation above not mislead you into thinking that lp/mm is the be all and end all for a lens. I would be greatly disappointed if I have even unconsciously forced you to set more store by an lp/mm rating than it actually is worth. As long as your lens can "feed" the sensor all it wants, you're fine and one way to determine this is to look at subjective/non-quantitative reviews of lenses. A camera + lens combination that produces technically good pictures means that the lens is feeding the camera's sensor well, for all practical purposes. There are areas where lens resolution matters, and as you can guess, it's for purposes such as surveillance, copy-work and reproduction/macro, filler material for lens reviewers' pages etc. etc., but I digress.

I think I'll end this article here. The impact of sensor size on megapixel count is great, mostly in terms of noise performance and with regards to the effects of camera shake. I believe that this factor demands an entire article to itself and therefore, I shall cover that angle in the third article in this series.

As always, your comments are most welcome to point out whether this information has been useful to you or if you believe that there's more to it that I missed or if there's something wrong in what I said. I'll be more than happy to incorporate any corrections. Also, please let me know if you need more information on lens resolution ratings and MTF charts. As I noted earlier, it's a wholly different topic unto itself and I should not muddle an article series on megapixel counts with nitty-gritty details of lens resolution measurements and methods.

Megapixel madness - Part I

2006-12-02T14:45:00.000+05:30

The world (well, atleast that part of the world that's interested in taking pictures) goes agog at the release of every new gazillion-megapixel pint-sized camera. That becomes the latest and greatest thing to have if someone is out and about looking to buy a new digital camera.

Like many other products, cameras also come with their share of marketing-friendly terms and numbers. And these are - megapixels and optical/digital zoom factors. Let's talk about the megapixel madness for now, for that is something I can easily write about off the top of my head. Talking about how high optical zoom factors are only good (for the most part) as a marketing gimmick will take a bit of explaining which I think I am not in a position to do right now using terms or examples that are easily understood.

Most people who are familiar with computers or digital cameras know what a pixel is. It's the simplest/smallest entity that records light and/or presents light of a certain colour. It's some kind of an abbreviation of PICture ELement. Since we currently use technology that only allows recording and presenting images using a 2D array of pixels, a megapixel array typically means any axb sized pixel array (a, b being numbers of pixels) such that a b comes to 1024 * 1024 = 1048576 pixels. Most cameras that we know (except for some medium format and large format ones) record images on a 3x2 sensor. (I will not go into the historical reasons why the 3:2 aspect ratio is preferred in still photography but if any reader is interested in knowing about it, please leave a comment.) So the bare minimum you need to get a megapixel sensor is a 1257x838 pixel array.

If you notice, 1257x838 is already beyond what most common 17" LCD monitors can display at their full native resolution which is typically 1024x768. Given that the average digital camera these days is capable of capturing images at a resolution of atleast 6 megapixels, you see that even a superlative (in terms of resolution) display such as the Apple Cinema 30" HD or Dell 3007WFP or HP's latest 30" model (sorry I don't have the model number with me right now) is incapable of displaying your images at 100%! These displays are capable of a maximum resolution of 2560x1600 which is still significantly less than the 3000x2000 of a typical 3:2 aspect 6 megapixel image.

In my book, therefore, that's factor #1 why you needn't worry about 10+ megapixels if you are on a budget, and especially if you are primarily going to view images on the computer. Of course, technology constantly improves, and there's no telling when we might get 100" LCD displays for use as computer monitors (Oh the horror! Imagine what good you'll do to your neck sitting 2 ft away from a 100" inch display!). Then again, your current camera will get old too over time and you would be looking to replace it with something new. That's when you can go for a megapixel count that satisfies your needs again.

The counter argument to factor #1 is a photograph post-processing term called "cropping". Before we can speak about this though, let me explain print resolution to you as best as I possibly can. When you print your photos, you are printing individual pixels from your image on to a sheet of paper. The more pixels you can cram into a smaller space, the less the print will suffer from the common digital artifact of "aliasing". Aliasing is what you see when you try to draw a line that's neither perfectly horizontal nor vertical on a digital display (pixel array) consisting of perfectly horizontal rows and perfectly vertical columns of pixels. These artifacts are also called "jaggies" or "staircases". If I can, I'll update this blog post with a picture showing this artifact. A picture really speaks atleast a 100-odd words, if not 1000, such as in this case.

By cramming more pixels into a smaller area in the print, aliasing is not eliminated. It just becomes less and less obvious to the normal human eye. Infact, the same argument can be applied against my entire train of reasoning behind my factor #1 above, but as you'll see, there's more than just aliasing to be worried about when it comes to cramming more and more pixels in the same area on a light-capturing device such as a digital camera's sensor. So let's just for the moment say that more pixels per unit area in print equals prints with sharper definition. The tradeoff is that you lose in terms of overall print size. Unless you intelligently upsample your image's resolution to something higher (which in effect is what digital zoom is, but doing it in camera has its own drawbacks which we'll talk about later too), you are left with whatever number of pixels your camera gave you. So printing more per unit area gives you less area overall.

Taking the example of my 6-odd MP camera which outputs 3008x2000 images, printing at 300 pixels per inch (ppi) - which is widely regarded as just about overkill for everyday prints - I still get prints sized 10"x6.67", which is much more than the typical 4"x6" or 5"x7" prints your local photo studio gives you by default. And this is at 300 ppi. Many people are ready to print at 200 ppi, trading-off a bit of viewing distance in favour of larger prints. The idea is that the power of the human eye to resolve fine detail decreases with distance from the object. So a less sharp print at a greater distance will look to have the same detail as a finely sharp print at a closer viewing distance. That's one reason why you can even print billboard poster-sized prints from your 6 MP pocketable digicam, as long as you view these prints from a few metres away.

As you can see, therefore, 6 MP or thereabouts is again enough to give you great prints (assuming the original picture was tack-sharp and free from camera shake etc.) sized upto 8"x11" which is a preferred large print size. 6 MP won't disappoint you even at 11"x14" beyond which you are anyway looking at astronomical per-image printing costs. If you regularly intend to print larger than 11"x14" (ie the printing cost is not a factor and/or every picture you take is worth a poster of its own) then you can think of going for a higher megapixel camera. Therefore, it comes down to a matter of outgrowing your current equipment (every picture you take is worth getting a poster printed of) or availability of huge funds (costs don't matter). As you can see, setting up the background for the counter-argument to factor #1 gives us factor #2, which is "print size", which works in tandem with print resolution (ppi).

Now, let's get back to cropping. Sometimes, photography is difficult in terms of framing and composition. For a variety of reasons, you have this image which would produce a stunning print if it were not for that offending bit in the top-right corner, or that dark patch in the foreground at the bottom, or that slight out-of-focus something in the right of the image. You get the picture. It's sometimes necessary to "cut" away parts of your image and print what's remaining. This is called "cropping". It's like cropping your hair short. You're going to a smaller-sized image in the knowledge that you get a visually more attractive image.

Cropping leads to a loss of information. In digital terms, that's pixels. You're losing a few megapixels (in some cases) of data when you crop an image. How does that affect your prints? Let's say you have this 6 MP image which after cropping comes to around 4 MP. That's a reduction of 33% in the original image. If you want to now print the resultant 4 MP image at the same print resolution (ppi) as you usually use for your uncropped images, you're also looking at print that's some 33% smaller than all your other prints. That's not good at all. You want the same-sized print, which means you *may* well begin to see some form of aliasing in this print compared to all your other prints. Again, that's bad because you have taken great pains to capture that brilliant image and crop it down so the resultant image is visually breathtaking. So you obviously don't want to end up with an image that looks unsharp at close viewing distances.

And so, that's our counter-argument to factors #1 (and even #2). Megapixels are important. However, the thing to realize is that megapixels are only important if you crop a lot. Depending on your situation, that could be construed as a lack of understanding/vision when originally composing the image in the mind behind the lens. I say depending on your situation, because sometimes cropping is inevitable. Let's say (hypothetically) you are a poor student who has been gifted a camera which is capable of shooting at only one focal length, and you're out shooting at a zoo where you can't move a whole lot to perfectly frame that white tiger. Cropping's your only resort then, and that's where megapixels will help *especially if* you are looking to print.

I've observed that this piece is getting really long, so sometime in the middle of writing it I decided to make it a multi-part article. In the follow-up article(s) I'm going to talk about sensor sizes, noise, lens resolution and the demon that is camera shake, all with regard to megapixels.

Hope you found this article enlightening in some way. I would be really happy to hear comments from you, especially those that can correct me, as I do not claim to be an expert on any of these matters.

More on the Congress

2006-11-19T12:20:00.000+05:30

I was watching the news on the telly for a while today morning and the ticker came up with a comment by the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh saying that he's not worried that Volkswagen are not going to set up a facility in Andhra Pradesh. He opined that there are other big companies that will come.

Excuse me, Mr. Chief Minister, but do you think it can become any bigger or more prestigious than VW, given that Toyota and Honda and GM already have their facilities up and running elsewhere in the country now? Just what did you have for breakfast today (or dinner yesterday, or whatever) that made you comment in such a manner?

I'll dig out some links about the VW-AP govt. fiasco and update this blog entry with those links so that readers can have some background to better comprehend my frustration.

I didn't think I would ever seriously say this, but I am beginning to be ashamed of being an Andhra-ite and a Hyderabadi. More than that, I am actually ashamed at myself for not having voted at all in the last round of state elections. And now that I'm living in Bengalooru, I can't say when I will get the chance to vote for my preferred party again in Andhra Pradesh.

So this is a message from me to all of you readers. Use your vote. Please don't waste it. It's too valuable a facility to not use, or probably even worse, misuse or abuse.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which is the best airline of them all?

2006-11-18T19:32:00.000+05:30

This is maybe not the best review out in cyberspace of the multitudes of airline carriers we have here now, but this is out of personal experience.

I have flown a fair bit with Jet Airways and Air Deccan, and slightly less so with Indian Airlines (a very long time ago, to be honest), Kingfisher and only just as recently as yesterday with Air Sahara.

Indian Airlines is the best, no questions asked, if you want predictable and reliable flight itineraries. Being the official domestic carrier means it's the Big Daddy of the airports and skies, with dedicated terminals even, in many airports, and exclusive use of aerobridges in some. The last time I flew with them was 5-and-something years ago, and except for one particular flight where they had this run-down old Airbus A300 (or A310) with near-threadbare seats, it's a very neat experience. No frills, but no hassles. No thrills, but no nasty surprises. If you are flying to attend to that important appointment and do not have alternative means of quick transport (ie, if you're going anywhere that's more than 6 hours by road), I would recommend Indian.

Jet comes pretty close on the reliability front. I guess, with the death of East West Airlines, this is the oldest private carrier in the Indian skies now, and a good record over such a long period of time does have its share of rewards - namely higher priority at airports. The worst part about Jet in comparison to the other airlines I've flown with, has to be the food. And for some reason I've always felt that Jet's seats (I'm talking cattle class - I've travelled business only once due to a health-related emergency and that was with Jet and that was really neat) were the least comfortable and most jam-packed. Kingfisher comes in a close second I think on the seat comfort (or lack of it) front but Jet takes the cake, for me atleast. However, the Jet staff is among the most efficient I've seen. Right from baggage screening and check-in through boarding and in-flight services, I am under the impression that Jet is the most efficient. Less talk, more work. Period. On occassion, the odd Jet flight will get delayed but it's not at all as bad as any of the low-cost airliners.

Kingfisher is a very worthy competitor to Jet. I don't think either can really be classified as low-cost airliners. Great food. Very good in-flight entertainment on Boeing sectors (ATRs don't come equipped with all that TV-behind-the-seat-in-front bling), but I'll have my iPod, thank you very much. Efficiency's a tad lower than Jet but not at all bad. The airhostesses are among the best-looking of the lot.

Air Sahara is not exactly low-cost too, but I really think they missed the plane (yeah, I know, but live with it now). Three-odd years back, when it was just IA, Jet and Sahara, many people I know preferred Sahara over Jet if they wanted to fly with a private airliner. Since then, however, Jet pulled their act together and Sahara just got lost God knows where. Till very recently they didn't offer the option of booking tickets online. Hello Sahara - this is the 21st century, for God's sakes! What this has resulted in, over time, is that Sahara tends to become borderline low-cost, as their seats aren't booked as fast as Jet's or Kingfisher's over the same sectors, and definitely not as fast as any of the low-cost airliners'. Their flights have also started getting delayed by a fair bit of late so it's an interesting mix of mid-size fares and poor reliability. I think I'd choose Sahara if I want food during my flight but am not very particular about when I reach my destination. The food's great. Not as good as Kingfisher's, but way better than what Jet dishes out. Efficiency of the staff is par. Nothing to write home about but not bad at all. The most revealing aspect, however, were the seats (I'm still talking cattle class, people). Comfortable leg room. More than I can say for Jet or Kingfisher. I admit I've been hitting the gym fairly regularly over the last few weeks and have trimmed down a bit, but in the Sahara Boeing 737-800 flight I could actually see people sitting in middle seats on either side able to get up and out into the aisle without the persons sitting in the aisle seats having to get up. Now that really is something! The material used for the seat is also top-notch. Soft and comfy. Overall, best mix of features, economy and reliability I think.

Now we enter the zone of outright economy. I've only travelled by Air Deccan in this space, and sometime next month I'm flying Bengalooru-New Delhi-Bengalooru with IndiGo for the first time. The thing with most low-cost airliners is the flight timings. That's why I'd like to hand it to Air Deccan for maintaining low fares on what are essentially peak flight timings (early mornings, late evenings and such-like).

Air Deccan is the King of Knaves (no disrespect intended even though that's how they position themselves, really). Brilliant connectivity. Flights from anywhere to anywhere at ridiculously low rates if you can book your tickets early enough. Surprisingly, they are fairly punctual for a low-cost airline. In my limited experience, they've been better than either Kingfisher or Air Sahara, for instance. However, this is where things begin to interesting. Their popularity and comfortable flight timings means that their tickets are booked out so fast, that you'll quite often find cheaper Air Sahara tickets for the same journey! That's pretty good for bachelors like me who'd rather have free lunch or dinner with the flight, thank you. Especially when you consider the ridiculously low value you get for your money when you buy snacks on your typical Air Deccan flight, with juice that's past its expiry date, to boot. That said, I've only flown ATR sectors with Air Deccan, and I'm pretty sure they do serve something to eat on longer flights such as Bengalooru-Delhi. The Deccan ATRs feature seating that is definitely more comfortable than Jet's or Kingfisher's ATRs. I've heard mixed things about Deccan's airhostesses. Guys who've done longer flights with Deccan tell me that they are very good, whereas I've only seen scarecrows on all my ATR flights. Staff efficiency's OK. Not great, not bad.

So there you have it. My take on the Indian domestic airline carrier free-for-all. I'll update this entry (or post a part 2) once I fly with IndiGo. I also plan to cover SpiceJet, Paramount and GoAir in future. Is there any I've missed?

Flouting rules

2006-11-18T15:47:00.000+05:30

What makes us (most Indians) flout rules? I'm looking for a concrete, concise and honest answer.

I'm a member of a few motorcycling groups. Among other things (trips, bikes, riding equipment) we discuss safety issues related to biking in a big way. We also discuss the state of roads and the chaos that we witness on a daily basis in the form of commuter traffic in big cities.

To my mind, helmets are natural when it comes to riding on two wheels. When I was in school and never had access to a powered two-wheeler for the most part, I used to ride a bicycle without a helmet. I did have my share of falls and shunts, like everyone else in this world. I never missed a helmet then, but in hindsight, I consider myself very fortunate. Now, I cannot imagine myself riding a two-wheeler without a helmet. It just doesn't feel natural to me. I don't feel comfortable without a helmet and shoes on a two-wheeler. So I admit I was both amused and irritated when I saw a bunch of articles and discussions related to the usage of helmets being made compulsory on Bangalore's roads earlier this month. I don't see the point in discussions on this topic. It's a rule. It's for your own good. Follow it!

I would like to see how long it lasts, though. We are so - adept, as it were - at breaking rules. We are, infact, so adept at not following rules in the first place, that I would go so far as to suppose that many people do not even know the existence of certain rules, or are perhaps too thick to understand plain spoken or written language elucidating these rules when they come across it.

That doesn't make sense to me, however, when I think about it. People break rules selectively. People show insensitivity selectively. What makes the same person who, in a fair teeming with unknown strangers, cares for his children in a way that they do not stray away or get hurt, act so insensitively at the controls of a vehicle? What makes him (or her) so oblivious to and unconcerned with the safety of other people on the road? What makes this person tail an ambulance in the hope of passing through a couple of red signals so that he (or she) needn't stop? What makes him (or her) so impatient and flustered at places and in situations where calm is sometimes never calm enough?

What makes these persons take out their phones and switch them on and the cameras within to take pictures through windows of flying airplanes, when the Government of India expressly bans the usage of cellular phones in aircraft and photography at airports and in the sky? The merits behind these rules can be discussed. Some of them, I admit, are really stupid and in the light of new technological developments, do not have any basis of any substance whatsoever. However, as long as they remain rules, they are meant to be obeyed and followed. We need to follow different procedures to get these rules to change. Democracy is about that - using civic machinery to influence policies. It is not about using our limited sense of intellect and exaggerated sense of bravery to break these rules in an effort to mock them, or not follow them.

All of what I have written above, unfortunately, just comes across as another angst-filled rant. It doesn't answer the question I posed at the beginning of this post.

What makes us break rules?

What's your EQ?

2006-11-14T16:35:00.000+05:30

Your EQ is 133

50 or less: Thanks for answering honestly. Now get yourself a shrink, quick!
51-70: When it comes to understanding human emotions, you'd have better luck understanding Chinese.
71-90: You've got more emotional intelligence than the average frat boy. Barely.
91-110: You're average. It's easy to predict how you'll react to things. But anyone could have guessed that.
111-130: You usually have it going on emotionally, but roadblocks tend to land you on your butt.
131-150: You are remarkable when it comes to relating with others. Only the biggest losers get under your skin.
150+: Two possibilities - you've either out "Dr. Phil-ed" Dr. Phil... or you're a dirty liar.

What's Your EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient)?

Some of the questions asked related to situations I've never found myself in. I've answered those by simply imagining myself in those situations and figuring out what my response would have been. There may be a difference in the real world, but hopefully not a whole lot.

I would also like to add that I do not at all think this is a scientific test or anything. This is the first time I've come across an online EQ measurement test and thought I'd give it a go.

The Congress

2006-10-22T22:26:00.000+05:30

I'm in Hyderabad (my hometown) these days to celebrate (it's pretty boring, actually) Deepavali with folks at home, and while travelling around in the city to meet friends I couldn't help but notice how all the good work done by Naidu during the 9-year tenure of the TDP is slowly, but surely, falling apart.

We know that one of the antonyms of the word 'pro' is 'con'. And I can't help but think that 'Congress' stands for everything that is the opposite of 'progress'.

I think nothing more needs to be said.

An interesting tidbit on 3 of the 4 semi-finalists at the FIFA WC 2006

2006-07-10T23:47:00.000+05:30

I like collecting trivia like this.

Italy hosted the WC in 1990, and Germany won it. Germany hosted the WC in 2006, and Italy won it.

Trezeguet showed the door to Italy in the Euro 2000 courtesy of his golden goal, and it was Trezeguet's miss that cost France the WC 2006 against Italy.

By the way, the next time Italy are to win the WC, I think they'll have to go through another Serie A scandal. That's what happened in 1982, and that's what happened again in 2006. So 12 years from now (or perhaps 24?) will we get to see another instance of this very interesting coincidence?

Football as we do not know it

2006-07-03T23:26:00.000+05:30

I saw an episode of National Geographic's Planet Football a few minutes back, and there were some real eye-openers, as there always are with NGC programs, about the history of football - the game itself, the way it was played and some more recent developments in football equipment such as boots and balls.

Let me start off with the last thing I mentioned above. The program showed a few players, possibly of the Bundesliga (they were all speaking German mostly), performing tricks with the latest boots and ball. The football wasn't Teamgeist (the Adidas ball being used in the current World Cup) but something fairly recent. As can be expected the players showed a very high degree of proficiency dribbling and controlling the ball and generally performing tricks with the ball at their feet. Nothing new so far. They were then asked to buy boots and balls from some 50-60 years back. The original leather ball and boots with sewn-in steel studs. Surprisingly enough, their technique was probably only a couple of notches above mine! Moreover, they started getting blisters very easily, because of the sewn-in studs. Technology, it seems, matters a lot and a player's skill can in some ways be directly related to the equipment he possesses. One comment I found particularly interesting was that the newer footballs remain light even when it rains on the pitch and there's water everywhere. The older leather ball, as is expected, would become a lot heavier and consequently, very difficult to control and shoot.

This snippet rounded off by saying that older players would have been much more technically proficient. That's generally said about any sport - tennis (wooden racquets and all), cricket (no helmet and other protection against genuine fast bowlers on genuinely pacy pitches), racing (abysmal - compared to today - safety standards in frighteningly fast cars on murderous tracks) etc. However, I don't quite agree. This is just my opinion, but I think the older players would probably have a hard time controlling the newer balls with the newer boots! That's not to say that they can't learn. However that also means newer players can pretty easily adapt to the older stuff too. So, all in all, it's difficult to compare players across different eras. There's only one thing in common though. Professional sportsmen playing at the highest level of their respective sports are, with a few exceptions here and there, genuinely talented people and deserve a lot of respect and admiration.

The second part of the program showed how Adi Dassler's (founder of Adidas Intl.) innovations helped W. Germany win the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland against all odds against a vastly superior Hungarian side, which was also a crowd favourite. Please keep in mind that it rained pretty heavily during the 1954 finals that Germany won 3-2.

An ex-employee of Adidas and a very respected one at that, started off showing some old footwear and explaining various aspects of the footwear. Early Adidas footballing shoes were very similar to the classic English footballing shoes in their construction and design. Slowly however, Adi Dassler, who was a passionate footballer and track-and-field sportsman himself, started thinking about how football, which primarily involves a lot of running, can benefit from shoes that were essentially designed as running shoes, and suitably modified to provide grip on grass and enough support to deliver a healthy blow to the ball when required. So out went the old, heavy, shoes and in came the lightweight running shoe design. Then portions of the inner-facing side and toe hood and were modified to provide for delivering optimum power in a kick. Finally, came the screw-in studs, which by far were the biggest advantage the young German team of '54 had. Replacing the studs meant they always had fresh studs and superb grib in tricky, slippery conditions. This was apparently the first time technology had a significant role to play in deciding the football world champion.

A somewhat sad twist to this tale is the constraints the Hungarians were forced to play in. They obviously saw these new boots and wanted them too. But they were (contractually? or patriotically perhaps?) not allowed to and had to wear old-style shoes manufactured in their native Hungary. Inspite of this admittedly huge disadvantage, they still managed to give the Germans a tough time, as is evidenced by the scoreline.

The last part in the program showed the evolution of the modern game (as we know it). It started off with how early football was actually a traditional game played between people of two villages in some part of England (whose name I forget now) and how different tackling was back then. It was totally legit to kick opposing players on their shins, trip them and carry the ball using the hands. In a sense, rugby was how early football looked like.

The "sport" grew popular among school kids and different systems and rules of play were in vogue in different parts. This posed a problem when students used to collect at universities, such as Cambridge, from different schools and continued to play football there. An obvious difference was actually in the way people from different socio-economic sections of society played their football. The common/working class footballer played football no holds barred. Kicking shins, taking people out with dangerous sliding tackles, carrying the ball were all allowed. The program actually showed an old rulebook where all this was actually set in stone, if you will! And the aristocrats didn't like to touch the ball with their hands at all.

In a round-table vote involving people from both parties, the aristocrats won by an overwhelming majority, and the common way was represented by one Campbell (couldn't catch the first name), who didn't agree with this at all. He walked out of the voting room amidst smug snobbery by the aristocrats and went on and founded the Rugby Association!

It's interesting, this history. It means two things. Football is always, even today, considered as the game played and loved by the common man. In truth, the current form of the game was decided by the noblemen instead, and rugby is closer in nature to what the common man used to call football. Secondly, the footballing world heckles at the Americans and their American football. In light of this documentary, I am suddenly forced to think again.

Perhaps the non-American world should really start calling football, as we know it, as soccer?

Charged up

2006-02-23T20:36:00.000+05:30

It's that time of the year again, when I touch anything metallic and sparks fly! If memory serves me right I started having this problem only since 2003, the year I started working. I wonder if that's got anything to do with me becoming host to a bunch of excited electrons when the mercury starts rising.

Myriad thoughts on cricket

2006-02-16T23:53:00.000+05:30

India's U-19 boys cricket team is having a tremendous outing (so far) in the ICC U-19 World Cup 2006 that's being held in Sri Lanka. Looking at this, and other recent performances by the Indian U-19 boys team, one cannot but feel how and why these guys lose out on similar results after graduating to the national side.

I tend to think that's because players in the sub-continent are grafted into their respective national sides a little too quickly. It's not uncommon to see players debuting at 18 or 19 years of age. Contrast that with Australia where, atleast nowadays, most players debut at the ages of 27 to 30. I strongly believe the sub-continent produces vastly more talented and skilful players. However, they cannot compete against even a team comprised almost totally out of members sitting on the Australian bench. I think it's because of the hunger for success a player debuting at 27 possesses. He knows he has 6, maybe 7, years to make his mark, and that really could spur the individual into playing consistently, giving his all, over this period. A player debuting at 18 on the other hand knows that an odd off-day or two really wouldn't hurt his career that much because there's so many more playing years left in which to make a mark in the local circuit and present a strong case again to the national selectors.

Is this good or bad? It's both, if you ask me. If the local circuit isn't really competitive, a young player would only be wasting his time sitting out of the national team and playing professional circuit cricket. So what's really required is a very strong domestic circuit that can make young players really sweat it out for many seasons before they can think of getting in to the national side. And when the time comes, the player knows that every match is more or less a make-or-break for him. And that's one of the reasons behind the Australian national team's success, inspite of possessing players who are probably fairly less talented than those produced by the sub-continent.

Continuing along this vein (of age) the policy of the current Indian cricketing team is slightly surprising. We have opted to groom lots of young players in the bowling department, but we haven't followed this same policy to the same extent when it comes to batsmen. I have nothing against the current team, and they are doing just wonderfully, and all credit to that must go to the players and the rest of team that works behind the scenes. However I feel that a bowler of the quality of Anil Kumble shouldn't probably be left out of the ODI team. He still has a lot to contribute to Indian cricket in ODIs as well as Tests. Having said that though, we suddenly have so many young fast bowlers that for the foreseeable future we can probably reduce our dependency on spin bowling, seeing as we have a paucity of young talent there. Probably it's time now for local cricket to start moving to fast, bouncy pitches and do these players a lot of justice. Letting such talent go waste is criminal.

While most other players fade away slowly as age advances, there are few evergreens. I feel Tendulkar is one of them. While watching today's match I just felt that in addition to all the attention his various centuries receive (and very appropriately, may I note) some of his really fantastic innings were those he missed personal landmarks. That 90 against Australia in the '96 WC, the 98 against Pakistan in the '03 WC, the 143 against Australia in Sharjah in '98 (I would consider 150 as a personal landmark) and so many more, including innings in Test matches. Statistics alone aren't really enough. The context of each one of his more masterful innings paints a much more interesting picture of Sachin the batsman, and there simply cannot be any better. Now, all that I would ask of him is one more virtuoso performance in the '07 WC. He delivered in all the World Cups he's played so far but has been unable to win a World Cup because of a combination of so many factors. One last hooray wouldn't be out of place though. The man deserves it!

Obsolescence

2006-02-09T03:23:00.000+05:30

They say it comes with age. They all talk about how our grandparents can't understand new-fangled dresses, hairdos, food, jobs, gadgets and what have you. Living in the past is taboo and all they want to hear about is progress and life in the fast lane.

I fell for it all. Till the other day I mentioned "old" people and a propensity to not accept change in the same breath. And then I suddenly realized that I too began harbouring similar tendencies. Everyone nowadays wants a cellphone that can take photographs, allow them to surf, read mail, play games, watch movies, connect to their computers and transfer stuff, feed their dog, wash their clothes, call others names etc. etc. I say I don't. One, I don't have the patience to scour through reams of specifications to find the one model that I want. Two, I don't want to have this patience. Why should I, when my current cellphone can faithfully do all that I ask it to?

The digital world has moved from categories and classifications and folders to tags. I had no patience for that too, atleast initially. I've begun sucking up to tags very recently; that too in a very limited manner to organize my bookmarks online so that I don't have to worry about corrupted browser profiles and dead sectors on hard disks. I still haven't tagged my photos. I always tagged my music though.

So, am I being obsolete? Perhaps I'm missing out on progress and life in the fast lane. Maybe. Now, is there anything wrong with this? Can one consider obsolescene to really be taboo?

I can only answer by saying that I'm comfortable with what I use to achieve my needs. I don't feel it eats too much into my productivity or efficiency, and more importantly, my budget, to currently do what I want to do with the technology I use at the moment. Unless I can find a truly great use for any of this new-fangled stuff, it's all useless to me. I don't fancy reading email from my cellphone simply because more often than not I have a computer with internet access available to me most of the time. My commutes are short and infrequent and I can live for an hour a day without having ready access to the internet. After all, who checks mail or reads news online when they're asleep? Just add an hour and nothing is lost.

Such is the case for many other things. There are definitely people who can put the latest technology to the greatest use. Markets, however niche or mainstream, always existed for practically anything that could be designed, produced and sold. I feel I have to consider how my lot can be improved in a manner corresponding to the investment made on such technology before taking the jump. That's fair, isn't it?

So, my dear granddads and grandmoms, despair thou not. You have led great lives and continue to be shining role models to us despite still living in the past.

Change driving by driving change

2006-02-02T16:33:00.000+05:30

Of late I have made a few riding trips on highways. I've been on 4 trips starting June 17, 2005. After hearing horror stories about the conditions of our highways for as long as I can remember, I was really apprehensive about doing all this. Why risk it, I thought? Then I started telling myself that I'll be with friends and I'll ride slow. Moreover I'd never taken more precautionary measures before on a two-wheeler. On all 4 of these rides I've worn a decent leather jacket and a study pair of leather shoes in addition to my faithful helmet. And on 3 of these 4 rides I used leather gloves too. Still, there's no such thing as being "too careful", especially on the road, and especially when venturing out into the unknown.

What remains of all this at the end of the day? The thrill of uninhibited biking - where I do not have to worry constantly about the negative effect of stop-start city traffic on my bike's engine. It's like letting something loose in its element. Add to that the joy of visiting new places and meeting new faces. Not to mention that there's decent opportunity for photography on these trips. There's probably no better way to "recharge" as they say. When with friends, road travel increases bonding. It did that for me. It also gave me a deeper understanding of my vehicle, and taught me how to be a better rider. (Of course I've had accidents - as I write this, I'm recuperating from what is my second road traffic accident ever since I started riding - even then, but I've probably been able to react better under those circumstances).

Exercise practical thought, however, and it's not very tough to realize that the joy of riding is not unconditional. Weather willing, I am still dependent on the condition of the road itself. And that's why I feel really proud about the way successive governments have done their bit in making highway travel faster and safer. I have ridden only about 2400-2500 kms of national and state highways in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, but have had a close look at other stretches of highway where I wasn't riding or driving. So perhaps I'm not well-equipped to comment on the general state of highways in the land, but of what I've seen, only about 300 kms constitutes what I'd call as really horrible stretches of road. And that's an astonishing ~88% of excellent (in terms of motorability) surfaces.

Looking at this, I realize why it's important for us to take to the roads more often. City roads and state highways fall under the purview of respective state governments, which I'm really sorry to note are getting increasingly abominable by the day. I'm pleased to say, however, that Central governments especially over the last decade have rendered yeoman service to our national highway network. Even a brief look at history would reveal how very important it is to have an efficient road network as one of the catalysts of strong socio-economic growth. Some might argue that it's the other way around - wherein a strong economy begets better infrastructure. I'll refrain from commenting on what might be construed, therefore, as a classic chicken-and-egg problem, for as far as I'm concerned, that's just not the case. The more we take to the roads, the better they will get. I'm sure of that. And the more joy there will be for everyone willing to explore our wondrous countryside by road.

In essence, we should drive the change that would result in a changed driving experience!

Midnight at Maravanthe

2006-02-02T02:40:00.000+05:30

When was the last time I did something for the first time? If I restrict this question to cover only memorable somethings, I'd have to say it was my visit to Maravanthe beach on the night of January 7th, 2006. I have been to beaches before and almost all of them epitomize nature at its most imperious best. However, I somehow liked the beaches on the East Coast more than those on the West Coast because the former possess wider beaches. I don't exactly know why, but Vizag and Madras (Chennai) sport wider stretches of sand than Mumbai, Goa or even Maravanthe.

Yet, Maravanthe was the most special. There is this stretch of the beach just flanking NH17 we visited at around midnight. The night in question was a glorious half-moon-lit one. Not too dark, not too bright. Just enough to make out clumps of weed on the beach, the swells and crests and the surf as the waves crashed and broke inches from our feet. In Goa and other harbour/port towns, I was presented with a bead of tiny, steady lights from the many ships anchored out in the distant sea. At Maravanthe, it was just that half-moon, and nothing else.

The highway isn't very far from the shoreline. As I said, the beaches on the West Coast are relatively narrow. However, the sound of the waves rises from a nearly inaudible hum at the road to an almighty roar at the shoreline. The rumble of the trucks and buses that ply on the highway ceased to disturb me as I lay aside all thought and worry and let myself be overwhelmed by nature. It was amazing to watch the waves break closer and closer as, gradually, time progressed and tide changed.

My father keeps telling me how there are really only two things that a person is never bored of seeing - monkeys and the sea. This is because they always do something different. Every instant is different from the previous one. Every time I look at the sea that fact is just re-inforced. At Maravanthe, for a while, I tried to discover a pattern to the behaviour of the waves. For a while, I felt that it was every alternate wave that crashed with awesome power, while the others just fought hard against the previous ones that were receding and merely ended with a whimper. Just for a while. Then this pattern changed, gradually, until it was no more a pattern. It was as if the sea was making a mockery of my efforts at generating a logical train of thought. It enticed and hypnotized me into a wonderful state of calm which I'm sure no man-made substance can even hope to come close, let alone equal, to delivering. The words respect, tiny, insignificant and awe assumed totally new, different meanings.

Sunshine and beaches make for a wonderful pair, along with the milling crowds that make these places so lively. However, no beautifully sunlit beach can provide the calm and bliss that an empty, moonlit stretch of beach can. 45 minutes was enough to drive away the tiredness courtesy of the 430-km bike ride we took to immerse ourselves in this glorious setting.

Hats off to Mother Earth and Goddess Nature. Pray, what am I, without your combined blessings?

Falling in love with the B7R (Part II)

2005-06-19T12:31:00.000+05:30

That was that about the initial impressions one forms of the B7R. However, that is nothing compared to what happens when you set foot/butt in one and the vehicle starts moving. The smoothness of the ride, the lack of any vibrations or engine harshness and *that* acceleration (for a bus)! I once had the good fortune of being in the front row seat on the left, diagonally behind the driver. This gave me a clear view of the instrument console. Picture this - a beast of a bus on a road with a less than decent-sized stretch of empty road in front of it. The driver snicks the gearshift lever to go a gear down, prods the accelerator and before you know it, the gap is non-existent. Hear the turbo spool up with minimal lag. Feel the push in the small of your back through the seat when the turbo goes to work. No bikes and cars overtaking the bus as you'd normally expect them to. 60 kmph is dispatched with utter nonchalance, the bus racing on relentlessly as the driver works the gears northwards.

People might call me a nutter. Here I am, ogling about a monster that has the potential to mow down those tiddly little vehicles in its path. So let me get this clear. I don't advocate doing socially abominable speeds in the city, especially in a vehicle of this size. I don't for a moment think current Volvo drivers are in their right minds to speed along on city roads in the manner that was just described above. However, this kind of performance is a Godsend on the highway. At last there's a mode of public transport that is fast, comfortable and refined beyond compare. I didn't forget to mention safe. When called to duty, the disc brakes installed on this bus shed speed like there's no tomorrow. The only gripe I have with this vehicle, in fact, is the fact there are no seat belts. That's how immensely powerful the brakes are. Unsuspecting passengers on a long-distance trip very often get a nasty jolt in the midst of their sleep, although this can be attributed to some very enthusiastic (and sometimes unsafe) driving. Still, seat belts should be a must on a vehicle capable of this kind of performance.

I'm going to dwell a bit on the engine, transmission and chassis/suspension now, so there'll be a stream of numbers and auto jargon coming your way for the next few seconds. The B7R in India is powered by a 7-litre, 6-cylinder turbo-diesel, Euro II-compliant engine that develops power equivalent to 260 horses at 2200 rpm and a crushing 1100 Nm of torque at 1300 rpm. The engine is mounted over and drives the rear wheels. The power output figure might seem too low for a vehicle that weights upwards of 16 tons when fully laden. However, the humongous torque, a typical diesel trait, ensures that this bus can pull away clean and smooth whether starting from a standstill, going up an incline or accelerating through the gears. The engine itself redlines at 2500 rpm. Given that the newly launched Tata Safari Dicor employs a 3-litre diesel that runs out of steam at 3000 rpm, the B7R's D7B260 engine is a fairly high and free-revving unit for its size. A 6-speed gearbox is provided to easily keep the engine spinning away in the meat of the torque band irrespective of the speeds the bus is doing. While I don't know the theoretical or manufacturer-claimed top speed, I've personally seen buses doing 120 kph on the speedo. Fast, blazingly fast! There's definitely no need for a higher power output as there's really no need to go above 120ks. Doing 100 consistently in itself calls for vastly thinner traffic than we have on our highways. These high, yet safe, speeds mean that a single bus can provide a lot more service in unit time, enhancing return on investment.

The reason the B7R became so popular, however, was not because of the rate of travel. The air suspension on a lightweight chassis means that road surface irregularities do not put travellers in any discomfort. The light chassis ensures lower unsprung mass - which improves the suspension's performance and imparts greater stability to the vehicle. The air suspension, chassis and rear-mounted engine really show how designing a bus as a people-carrier rather than as a load/goods carrier (truck) is so important. All of these act together to provide a smooth, noise and vibration-free ride. Needless to say, passenger comfort is of the highest order. The suspension consists of air-filled compartments over the wheels. These compartments act like bellows and are inter-connected. So whatever the road may throw at the bus, the body generally remains level and potentially bone-jarring vibrations are converted instead into soft sways at worst. This might lead one to believe that handling is severely compromised. Now I really can't comment on that as I've never driven one of these (nor do I think I'll be able to very easily, for that matter - Volvo conducts special driver training programmes to teach potential drivers the best way to control their buses and trucks) but going by a purely subjective evaluation of how the bus holds its line (both in a straight line and while taking turns) at speed and how much input the driver gives to the steering, accelerator and brake to control the vehicle I'm inclined to think the bus handles pretty well (given that it's a bus, and a huge one at that).

What makes a trip in a B7R worth its while, atleast for me? Forget creature comforts like an air-conditioned cabin and plush seats and interiors. Forget the fact that trips that usually took in excess of 12 hours are now done under 10. Forget even the extremely smooth and refined ride and lack of vibrations and noise dampening, although that really is very good for my physical and mental self. Forget all that. The thrill the turbo whistle induces as the revs rise, the subsequent massive push and the feeling of seemingly unstoppable speed and power - that's the fuel my emotional self needs and feeds upon. With innumerable B7R trips under my belt, I still look forward to the next. I still want to get and feel the goosepimples when the turbo whistles out its melody.

Falling in love with the B7R (Part I)

2005-04-16T03:09:00.000+05:30

Anyone who has done a fair bit of travel by bus in India would be wary of setting foot aboard one on his/her next journey. Huge, rattling, metallic contraptions based on pre-WWII era chassis and suspension setups coupled with roads that are more lunarscapes than motorable surfaces ensured that even the toughest of travellers had all the bones in their bodies re-adjusted on even a moderately long journey (200 kms/5 hours). To this hell, add uncomfortable seats, noisy interiors and thick, dark exhaust fumes coming in from everywhere by virtue of open windows. One has to experience this first-hand to really understand what travel fatigue means. Yet, we have been using state/private-owned bus transport services for ages on long-distance routes. Necessity wasn't always the mother of invention alone!

Under these prevailing conditions, Volvo entered the commercial transport segment market in India in a phased manner in the 1990s, first attacking the ultra-long haul commercial vehicle market. Slowly it moved into the short- and medium-haul commercial vehicle markets. Most people probably had no clue what was around the corner here. As far as any of us could see, they were providing yeoman service to these market segments by bringing in high-performance, very efficient, reliable and most importantly, comfortable (for the driver) and safe (for everyone on the road) trucks. Although these were priced way higher than any of the existing models available in the market, fleet operators could see the difference these Volvo trucks made to their businesses. Fast turnarounds, extremely high return on investment and that "image" that comes with owning a high-performance vehicle bristling with technology and features - all of these contributed to Volvo's success in the Indian commercial vehicle market. Volvo followed all this up with their first offering to the long-distance passenger-carrying vehicle segment - the B7R bus (engine + chassis).

The B7R, when it came out, looked like a logical extension to Volvo's product portfolio. And very rightly so. None of the existing buses were actually buses in the true sense of the term. They were basically trucks onto which coachwork capable of seating 50-odd passengers (and room for many more standing ones) would be bolted on. Vehicle dynamics were nowhere near what a passenger-carrying vehicle *should* have had. Comfort was a luxury and using modern technology to make life easy for passengers was akin to sacrilege.

That's enough of history (and rants). Let's move on to the B7R itself. A first look at a fully-built B7R (complete with coachwork) would first leave the onlooker gazing at it in disbelief, which slowly converts into awe at its sheer size. Yes, the B7R is a beast by Indian bus standards. Tall, long, wide and low-slung. It's a looker, too. It's difficult to find, at this time, a bus that looks better than the B7R. Everything from those massive panels, large "greenhouse" windows, the low floorline and the *h*u*g*e* one-piece windshield just gels into one helluva vehicle. Big, handsome, sturdy. A whole lot more confidence-inspiring than the ubiquitous "red bus". Then the smaller details start sinking in. Multiple rear-view, front-side-view and front-bottom-view mirrors to aid the driver get a good view of everything around him, the high-quality latch on the door that swings upwards to reveal a luggage bay that could swallow a blue whale, powerful headlamps - all of these show the thought that has gone into designing this bus. This continues on the inside as well. Well-appointed driver's cabin with all the instrumentation that he might require to have full control and knowledge of such a huge and powerful (we'll come to that in a moment) vehicle, thoughtfully and luxuriously done interiors (though this is more a function of the coachbuilder than Volvo) and one of the most powerful air-conditioners I've ever experienced in a bus.

The cliche first (template + real sample)

2004-07-04T02:19:00.000+05:30

Hi all, I am blah blah blah. This blog records some of my thoughts about blah, blah,... and blah. These are my interests - foo, bar, abracabra and some other BS.

Most things that you see on this page would have come out from me when I'm sober. I hope you like what you see. I don't really care if you don't though. (Can it get more cliched than this?)

:)

Fun's fun while it lasts, so let's cut to the chase! Lest I be judged as a harebrain I'll tell you a bit about myself.

I am Prashanth Aditya Susarla, known among family and friends (hopefully adoringly) by a variety of other names - some really unprintable here, some untransliteratable (yeah I know that word doesn't exist but I had to make *some*thing up!) - the most common of which are Spadix, Motu Uncle and Appu. I am one of those (ubiquitous) software developers you would see leading a largely uninteresting life in the hyper-crazy metropolitan hubbub of Bangalore, working for one of the (again, very ubiquitous) software slaughterhouses.

I hold a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. That's really my only claim to fame :). So while I strive to make my career a worthwhile one in the computer software industry, I do find time to think about and pursue a couple of things out of the many that hold my fancy. This couple (or triple) of things that enjoy my part-time attention keeps changing from to time so I'm not going to list them out here. The idea is that my posts should help paint a picture of me and what I am, rather than me spelling all that out at the outset. That way I ensure people read atleast some of what I write. I'll be happy if the content of these posts can help the reader by -

being the cause of a good laugh
being a source of useful information
providing some food for thought
providing some interesting reading material to pass some time (trivia)

and by any other means that I could not think of above (it's difficult to be up all night and think coherently at 0500 hrs).

Enjoy your time here!