Belur + Halebeedu + Shravanabelagola

Starring : Myself, Reem
Start Time : 17:00 hours,24th December 2006, Sunday
End Time : 18:30 hours, 25th December 2006, Monday

Watch out this space for the pics and the tour details.

Costs:
Belur to Halebeedu =22 INR
Auto in Halebeedu to visit 2 temples(Jain basadis) = 40 INR
Halebeedu to Hassan = 14 INR
Hassan to Channarayapatna = 20 INR
Channarayapatna to Sharavanabelagola = 8 INR
Sharavanabelagola to Channarayapatna = 7 INR
Channarayapatna to Bangalore = 74 INR
Bangalore Bus Stand to Home(Auto) = 130 INR (double meter!!!)
Chappal+bags store @ Halebeedu = 6 INR
Chappal+bags store @ Sharavanabelagola = 12 INR

Accomodation in Belur
Double Bed = 200 INR
Single Bed = 150 INR

Ombattu Gudde - A very fine trek

"If things have to get screwed, then they will - but its the determination and the will that will fight against the odds and conquer the impossible"

Am back from a 2 day trek to Ombattu Gudde.

Starring : Myself, Reem, Shantanu, Roti
Start Time : 23:00 hours,22nd December 2006, Friday
End Time : 15:30 hours,24th December 2006, Sunday
Trek distance : Approx 30kms

Watch out this space for the Trek details and pics.

{ BLOG IN PROGRESS }

It was a long weekend of Christmas and a group of trekkers decided to summit OG. After the initial hiccups in getting the tickets for Gundiya CheckPost, yours truly finally managed to get tickets for all 4 in a private bus.[What would otherwise cost 150INR/head costed us 250INR/head..and hence clearly overshooting our shoe-string budget]

Reached Gundiya CheckPost at around 6:30am. We did not have any breakfast/tea at the CheckPost, as we had enough ration for 2-3 days and had decided that we would break for brunch at around 9-10am near Sangama (the first river to be crossed).We took the right turn near the bridge and continued ; halted near the river for 15mins to brush our teeth and had a dose of chocolates(that Reem had got for us from Dubai).

We continued from there, crossing minor streamlets. Leeches continued to torment us. We continued and reached Sangama at 10am. Took a long break of around 1hour 15mins - relaxed in the clear water and finished the morning chores , had a light breakfast and continued our trek.After around 12 pm, the terrain was dry and there were hardly any signs of leeches.

To be included:
-- the continuous 4 hrs ascent
-- camping on the hill-by the side of OG
-- the 1 hour ascent to the tallest peak of OG
-- water!!

Costs:
Bangalore to Gundiya CheckPost = 250 INR
Hosekere to Mudigere = 14 INR
Mudigere to Hassan = 35 INR
{ / BLOG IN PROGRESS }

Evening at Lalbagh

Myself and Arvind had been to Lalbagh last weekend. The plan was to go there by around 4pm and take some snaps of the flowers and the sunset. Arvind informed me that there was a flower-show happening and we could take some great snaps. We reached Lalbagh at around 5 (after crusading with the traffic) and finally found out that there was no flower-show but a jatre(a show) was under-progress.

Took some pics of the sunset.....

Hampi - The World's Largest Open Air Museum

Of the bananas and the boulders..
Of the Bajjis and the bricks...

Cycled around 40-50 kms...walked 5-6kms...supra-fantabulous it was!

The trail:
Day - 1
Hampi Bus Stand
Virupaksha Temple
Prasanna Virupaksha (Underground Siva) Temple
Hazara-Rama Temple
Zanana-Enclosure
Lotus Mahal
Elephant Stables
Guard's Palace Quarters
Gateway
Stepped Public Bath
Queen's Bath
Lunch @ Kamalapur
Jain Temple
Vithala Temple

Day - 2
Kadalekalu Ganesha
Vithala Temple (again!)
Kings' Balance
Krishna Temple(Slept here for an hour)
Narasimha Temple
Badavilinga Temple
A cycle-ride from Badavilinga till the road that connects to Vithala Temple(approx 20kms to-&-fro)
Sasuvekalu Ganesha
Sunset over Hemakuta Hills

Am just back from a 2 day visit to Hampi -- do visit this space later to read our awesome experiences and some great pics!

Google for Edu ; Coghead

Happened to see this link from Seth's Blog. Can this be Google's foray into Content Management Systems (CMS)!!

More and more innovative ideas are getting transformed into business models and practices on the Internet. Guy talks about Coghead - a web-based package/application to create dynamic applications with very little turn around time.

Oracle already has a similar kind of a tool called Oracle Application Express(Apex) , formerly called HTMLDB, that lets one develop database cohesive web-based applications very easily.

IIMB - Vista 06

After a good party on thursday night(nice Scotch!) and a good cutural fest on friday evening and a fantabulous evening on Saturday(Dandiya+DJ night), i was physically exhausted. My back was aching badly after the Dandiya night(inspite of the hot water bath and nice sleep). As i was just thinking about Sunday, VISTA-06 flashed across my ignominious brain! Myself and my roomie planned that its gonna be some mental exhaustion now - and we decided that we would go for IIMB-Vista 06(a B-School event) and participate in the Business Quiz(Bizzarre).

We reached the campus at around 2pm on Sunday and registered for the quiz - i was happpy to see the 'usual' teams again over here! Sethu appeared from nowhere and we quickly formed a team and registered. After waiting for sometime, the quiz started at 3:30pm(prelims) - a quick written round with typical Derek O'Brien questions!

After the prelims , we headed towards the audi to witness the event baptised as 'Numero Uno' - this was supposedly to be the hunt for the next CEO! I was quite curious to see 'potential CEOs' and how they performed. However, it was again a sordid tale - 5 finalists - and only one(an ex-army major with 17years of work-ex) was quite enthusiastic and charismatic. It was a hands-down victory for the Major.All the others were school kids in fron of him - just hurling management jargons :)

After that loitered around the campus for sometime and by 7pm, the quiz started - the finalists were anounced - i was happy to see the standard teams qualifying - inspite of the fact that we missed it by a whisker :(

Derek gave out the answers for the prelims and 'your truly' was fortunate enough to get an audience prize for answering the expansion of YSM (its a service launched by Yahoo in India - Yahoo Search Marketing). After that the regular rounds followed, with 'yours truly' answering many Qs .There was this Q on the language 'Qwechua' -- as in its claim to fame! none of the finalists could answer it ..and 'yours truly' again showed his 'cheap brilliance' here and answered the Q - Derek called me on stage gave me some prizes...a huge applause followed...

At the end of the day - i was still a loser - another quiz failed to qualify and sitting among the audience and winning some prizes - though the 'knowledge' factor was present, but the fun of being on stage as a 'finalist' is different!


Hope i make it soon to the podium ! Amen!

Code Searches

Yesterday Google launched its new product : CodeSearch.

Although this has generated lots of enthusiasm and interest in the developer (Ctrl+C/V) community, but still there exists a similar site which provides almost equivalent services.
This product is : Krugle

I had stumbled across this site 3-4 weeks back and was impressed with their work; at the same time i was very much sure that Google must be working on a similar product(to keep churning out new products in the 'Search-Space')

+ves of Krugle
--------------------
** Good Ajax, coupled with good performance

** Sleek interface

** "Related Results" Field - eventhough this is still displays very-very restricted number of sponsored links, yet it looks good

** The prescence of a drop-down at the top navigation bar that lists down the languages in which the user wants to search/ Though this feature is also present in Google's CodeSearch - but is still similar to a GoogleHack wherein the programmer has to key in the search phrase like
"lang:lisp xml lang:"c++" sprintf.*%s" to search

Google CodeSearch Features
------------------------------------
** Google's 'proprietary' simple page

** Lots of google hacks to be used

** Adv Search has to be used to utilize advanced code-search features

** Potential Ads in the search-result page.


Both the services are devoid of any Ads as of now, but as the news article states we can expect some ads to be placed in the CodeSearch once it has been received well.Krugle's placement of 'Sponsored Links' in its result list is quite promising and also is user friendly.

iWoz!

iWoz is out!!! [ its released] I am just waiting for it to hit the Indian markets (or is it already present here!!!) - gotta check Landmark/Odyssey and all the other bookstores asap!!

Guy Kawasaki has also hands-on on this book and reviewed it here.

After reading iCon, my interest in Apple has n'ed and am just waiting for this book like a 8-year old pig-tailed kid waiting for her first Barbie Doll ;)

Getting crazy - Thought Process Entanglement!

Yesterday night i was reading about quantum entanglement and a little about how the superposition of states lead us to an almost infinite amount of number-crunching.Then I was reading about Galiliean Motion and the concept of space and time, and objects(points) too. Today was also mentioning the same to one of my pals online.

Later in the day when I was reading about DOM and distributed objects online w.r.t EJBs , then suddenly the 'Objects in EJB' led me to ponder for a second about Galilean Physics and the notion of Objects!

Big Man!

Savandurga

Starring : Myself, Harshad, Ganesh, Rahul and Jagadish
Start Time : 7am , 9th September, 2006
EndTime : 8 pm , 9th September, 2006
Climbing Time : 2 Hours (though myself and Harshad took around 5 hours - as we tried a different route)


Had been on a 1 day trek to Savanadurga - the rocky mountain at the outskirts of Bangalore.IT was one of the finest rock-clmibing that i have done till date.

Though the actual route to the summit is an easy one(any 5 year old can do it) - but myself and Harshad took a different route and had some great fun.....

Death Predictor

Now this is something that kept me LoLing for atleast 10-15 mins. I have come across the Death Calculator and could at least understand the 'random' number generator funda behind it; but this is just the heights of it. This link tells you "How will you Die'!!! Note : the 'How' factor and not the 'When' factor :)

Venkatraman.S: At age 75 you will die from an equipment malfunction in an exciting, fear based reality game show. Your death will receive the highest ratings of any episode of any reality show, ever.

Check out the last few words, does it mean that i will be a great celebrity then !! or just some menial being's death has been exaggerrated by the media/press.
[ Dont waste your precious grey cells pondering this ]

1 day trip to Jog falls

Starring : Myself, Preethi,BLD,Rahul,Harshad and Ashutosh
Start-Time : 18th August, 22:00 hours
End-Time : 20th August, 06:00 hours
Trek : To the base of Jog Falls -- approx 2 Km - up and down