And back from the N.India trip

I am back; after 17 days as i had run out of my budget. I had planned around 3000 INR for a period of 30 days*, but i ended up spending a little too much on street food in Varanasi and Ayodhya and had to cut short the number of days and be back home. It was a good trip covering many aspects of life and meeting different kinds of people and talking to them and exchanging experiences; not to mention the 3000+ pictures that i clicked (have to upload em somewhere!!).

Trail :

Chennai -> Mumbai -> Delhi -> Agra -> FatehpurSikri -> Jaipur -> Pushkar -> Varanasi -> Allahabad -> Chitrakoot-> Varanasi -> Ayodhya -> Jhansi -> Orcha -> Gwalior -> Chennai.

Itinerary:
Day - 1 (30 Sep) Tue : Chennai to Mumbai (Flight- Spicejet) ; eve walk in Churchgate-Colaba. Around Gateway of India and Taj Hotel.

Bombay Marine Drive

Day - 2 (01 Oct) Wed : Mumbai to Delhi(Flight- Spicejet) ; Spend the eve in Delhi

Delhi Metro

Day - 3 (02 Oct) Thu : (its Id!)Around Delhi - Red Fort, India Gate; Leave for Agra(5 hour bus ride); Reach Agra in the Eve.

Day - 4 (03 Oct) Fri : (Its a Friday - Taj is Closed!)To Fatehpur-Sikri. On the way back, view Taj from Agra Fort. Roam around Agra.

Fatehpur Sikri - Salim Chisti Durgah

Day - 5 (04 Oct) Sat : Leave for Jaipur (5 hr bus ride); Eve around Jaipur(Amber Fort).

Day - 6 (05 Oct) Sun : In and Around Jaipur

Hawa Mahal, Jaipur

Day - 7 (06 Oct) Mon : To Pushar(uneventful ride to Puskar). In the eve to Gultaji-ka-Mandir(also called Monkey Temple).

Pushar Lake

Day - 8 (07 Oct) Tue : In and Around Jaipur(City Palace, Amber Fort and Gultaji-ka-Mandir)

Monkeys at Monkey Temple

Day - 9 (08 Oct) Wed : Leave for Varanasi/Benaras(reach Delhi by Jet and then to Varanasi via Spicejet). Took a beautiful drive from the Varanasi Airport to city bus stand via the local bus - nice ride - heard some good nice Avadhi Hindi and Bhojpuri. Stayed at Kanchi Sankaracharya Mutt, Hanuman Ghat. Went for a walk along the streets of Varanasi. Its Navami!! and the streets are filled with the most beautiful women and salivating street food.Roamed around the streets and the durga pooja pandals.

Durga Pooja Pandal at Varanasi

Day - 10 (09 Oct) Thu : Start for Chitrakoot(along with another family who were in the Mutt). Reach Allahabad. Bathe in Prayag/Sangam - confluence of Ganges, Yahuna and Saraswati.Visit some small temples around.Anand Bhavan closed.

View from the boat in Prayag. Australian Sea gulls there.

Dusty and bumby ride to Chitrakoot. Reach in the evening. Stay in a Ved-Pathshala - in the middle of agri fields and loads of greenery all around.

Day - 11 (10 Oct) Fri : Bathe in the Mandakini river(RamGhat). Visit Banarasi Ram, Bharat temple, trek-up to HanumanDhara(mysterious perennial stream appears from nowhere and disappears into nowhere), KanchMandir(temple made of mirrors and glasses), Janaki Kund(Sita used to bathe here), Ram Darshan and Ayush Dham. Ram Darshan was the best of this entire trip - the paintings and the PoP sculptures were amazing; the statue of Ram and Sita in the final room was like a 'durbar' and was pleasing to the eye,mind and the soul. Stroll along the Ayush Dham was beautiful, see different varieties of Cows and how they were nurtured; there is a Cow-research institute here. Came back to the pathshala to see a small snake in the room!

View from HanumanDhara, Chitrakoot

Day - 12 (11 Oct) Sat : Start the day at 4am. Bathe in the Vedpathshala's pumpset(in the open) in darkness. Did a 5km parikrama(on foot) of the Kamadhgiri). The pathshala's teacher('master') was the guide for the day.Visited Gupt-Godavari, Sati-Anusuya temple and Bharat-coop(this is the well in which Bharat(Ram's brother) poured the waters of the all the oceans and the rivers in the world - the well never dries and is the only well in the region that had water during my visit here).

Monkeys with the statue of Tulsidas, during Parikrama of Kamadhgiri, Chitrakoot

Beautiful non-stop and full throttle ride from Chitrakoot to Sitamarhi via Allahabad.Sitamarhi is the place where Sita is supposed to be gone into the Mother Earth.Reach Varanasi at 10pm. Have a good pot of thick 'malai' curd in the local malaiwala and sleep.

Model of Sita going into Mother Earth, SitaMarhi

Day - 13 (12 Oct) Sun : Nice walk around Varanasi to visit the temples of Lord Vishwanatha, goddess Vishalakshi , goddess Annapurni and Kala-Bhairava. The security in the Vishwanath temple was amazing; there were a hundred gates to it, all of which merged into 2-3 final ones.Nothing is permitted inside the temple except for the dress that one wears and probably watch and a non-leather purse. Visited the ruins and the monasteries of Sarnath in the noon. Evening was a visit again to Vishwanath temple for the Saptha-Maharishi pooja;Got place bang opposite the lingam, near the garbha-griha and watched this mind numbing ceremony -- This was also one of the spotlights of this trip. The 1 hour long pooja with the priests chanting some mysterious mantras was amazing. The floral lingam decorations and the final arati of the lingam was something of a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Came back after this and roamed around the streets and ate some good street food.

Sarnath ruins

Day - 14 (13 Oct) Mon : Woke up early in the morning and took a dip in the Ganges in Kedar Ghat. Came back took my camera and walked along the ghats. Went from Harishchandra Ghat(famous for crmating bodies) all the way to the right. And then came back and went all the left till Manikarnika Ghat(again, a very famous ghat for cremating). Met some interesting people from different walks of life along the ghats - a boatman, dhobi(cloth-washer),kids selling postcards, saints, naga-sadhus, drug-dealer, few foreign tourists, etc etc. Boarded the train at midnight to Ayodhya.

Ghats of Varanasi

Day - 15 (14 Oct) Tue : Reached Ayodhya at 4:30 a.m. Took a small cheap room near the station and slept for sometime (the previous 2 days have been hectic). Start the day at 7:30 am. Bathe in Sarayu river. Roamed around the streets of Ayodhya. Visited the famous Rama-Janma-Bhoomi(RJB).Security at RJB is impregnable - the entire region was like military stronghold - army and police at every nook and corner to take care of the delicate situation. Saw the statue of Lord Rama in the tent in the site - heard some 'interesting' comments from the visiting die-hard-Ram-devotees.Ate some amazing sweets and good food along the streets of Ayodhya. Boarded the train at 6pm for Jhansi and slept immediately :)

Streets of Ayodhya

Proposed temple at the Ram Janma Bhoomi Site

Day - 16 (15 Oct) Thu : Reached Jhansi at 7:30am. Dumped my luggage in the cloak room and started for Orcha.Roamed in the ruined palaces and the temples in Orcha. Orcha is a must-visit place in this region. The noon sun was too harsh and in the meantime i had also covered all places there(just didnt take a plunge in the river betwa - but the view from the palaces of the turquiose green waters was beautiful).

Palace at Orcha

Came back to Jhansi and visited the famous Jhansi Fort.

Place from where Queen Lakshmi Bai jumped out of the fort on her horse

Jhansi Fort

Took a train ticket in the UnReserved category to Gwalior and went into the Sleeper compartment - was caught by the ticket checkers, but managed to convince them and got out without a fine(actually i didnt know that i am not supposed to travel, as a Police constable told me that i could).Moved to the General(Unreserved category) and sat on the stairs. It was a nice ride in here. Midway i slept, and i think something hit on my knee, and there i was , with excruciating pain. For a minute, i thought that i had lost my leg, and tried to standup and i did, but could not feel my leg. I let the blood flow for sometime , but the pain was amazing - but there was no blood around! I just let it pass and controlled the pain till i reached Gwalior. I decided to play it safe a little, as the knee joint hurt a little when i tried to climb the stairs - spent sometime in the station's intenet cafe and then got bored and atleast thought of checking out the local lores.I chose not to visit the Gwalior Fort and the other temples as they needed some walking and i did not want to excert any pain on my knees. I asked around and went to the Baaada Bazzaaar and roamed around here. Some of the most beautiful(read 'not sexy') women are in Gwalior. It was great to see all of them wearing Indian dresses(i.e, Salwars/saris) - hardly could spot any wearing western wears. Spent some talking to the Fine Art students who were sketching in the bazaar junction. Also, ate some more luscious street food. It was a time well spent.

Day - 17 (16 Oct) Fri : Boarded the train at 3:30 a.m from Gwalior to Chennai. Train was late by an hour. Day spent in the train and chatting with the fellow travellers. There were teens(in their 19-20) from Kashmir who were undergoing AirForce training in Avadi and were returning back(to Avadi) after a vacation back home (in Kashmir); and also jawans(soldiers) who were returning home(to TamilNadu) from Kashmir border for Diwali vacation. Brain numbing chats with the guys and their experiences. Spellbound. The teen soldiers were showing me the pictures of their girl-friends back home in Kashmir and how one of them got engaged to his GF recently. I could see a couple of wet-eyes here and there. The guys also offered me Golden Apples(the best variety) and dry fruits. Had a wonderful chat with the guys on Kuran and the Kashmir-issue. I must say that this was one of the best days in my life. Train was running 3 hours late.

Day - 18 (17 Oct) Sat : Train 15 min ahead of schedule. Bid adios to mates in the train - exchanged addresses and ph nums. Reached Chennai(Home) at 8:30 a.m.

There i was .. bearded+stinking..back home.

* Update : I was sponsored from Mumbai to Varanasi. After that, it was on me.

Travel Update

The project has come to a close and we have had some very interesting times. We had some real great fun and explorations over the past one week and things have come to an 'official' end. We were kind of unlucky w.r.t the project as we had not clicked even a single picture till today. And today turned out to be the 'lucky' day with some really-great-fabulous(and yes, i can use more adjectives here!) frames being clicked.

ok..ok.. Curious Q is : What is the project about? i understand the curiosity , but am afraid that i have to keep my mouth shut for some more time, till we get the entire series shot over the next couple of months(or years ??). Please do cooperate and and do understand that this project is something that will be great to watch after a few years or after a decade. (now i totally understand that your curiosity levels are at an all-time high and i have completely got your attention :P .. but yes, things will be 'revealed' once things fall into place.)

Brief of what has happened till now :
(30 Sep) Tue :Chennai to Mumbai (Flight- Spicejet) ; eve walk in Churchgate-Colaba
(01 Oct) Wed : Mumbai to Delhi(Flight- Spicejet) ; Spend the eve in Delhi
(02 Oct) Thu : Around Delhi; Leave for Agra(5 hour bus ride); Reach Agra in the Eve
(03 Oct) Fri : Around Agra
(04 Oct) Sat : Leave for Jaipur (5 hr bus ride); Eve around Jaipur
(05 Oct) Sun : In and Around Jaipur
(06 Oct) Mon : In and Around Jaipur
(07 Oct) Tue : In and Around Jaipur

So that completes the Golden Triangle!!

I am going to Delhi tomorrow and am planning to spend some time in Benaras(Varanasi) , by the Ganges. Then i plan to visit Lumbini and Kathmandu(both in Nepal) and return back home. Also, i need to crunch in Gaya,Sarnath and Allahabad - dont know how i am going to manage all those!

Hope things go on fine and hoping to stumble on right minded people & continue the journey.

Day-1 Mumbai

Took the Spicejet flight from Chennai to Mumbai and reached Mumbai on time, but wait...all my hopes of taking the pictures from the flight got wasted, as i had a really bad window glass. I guess Spicejet has to change all its window-glasses ..mind it - it is not dirty - i guess it looked like small broken glasses were fixed with fevicol - i could hardly see anything - it was like some really thick cloud stuck to my window glass. Hence, my camera for the most part of it was sleeping and i was sleeping, as it was futile 'peeping-out'.

Then came the most interesting part -- i had to go from the domestic airport to NewMarine Lines(near Churchgate). I could either take an auto to Andheri or SantaCruz and take the train and reach Churchgate in less than 1 hour and end up spending 20Rs(at the max) or take a taxi and reach directly. I chose the latter, and ended up paying 300rs and almost spent 2.5 hours in the taxi -- the traffic jams near Dadar and KablaDevi were bad!!! I did not have a choice but to take the taxi, as i was carrying my camera and wanted it to safe.

The ride from the airport to the hotel was nice. I could see many facets of Mumbai and it was fun watching all of it. I did not realize 2.5 hours just flew by. There are couple of things that Mumbai has impressed me with, till now:
- The city when seen from the plane is different from other cities - the skyline is gorgeous.
- I did not see any group of people standing anywhere in the city and chit-chatting -- everyone was on the move and everyone carried an air as if they had some business meeting in sometime.
- Everyone is equal here - people here are what they are for - i saw some really good dressed women and men standing by the road and having tea('chai') , which one cannot see in other cities.

Having said that, we did not do much clicking today. we just went on a long walk from Churchgate to Colaba and back - saw the Gateway of India(which is under restoration) and also went inside the Taj(hotel). Taj here is lavish , extravagant and grand - the best hotel in India i have ever seen. I wanted to click inside the hotel, but i was kind of shabbily dressed and was already attracting attention - and hence we quickly moved out. Had dinner at Kamat and moved back to the hotel and am penning this down from my bed with all lights off, eyes semi0closed and ...i ...slepttttttttttttttt................

Moving On

Had my last day at work yesterday(Monday) and am all set for my next adventure.

I am planning to backpack for sometime across India before i decide on what to do next. I am joining an American Photojournalist as an assistant for the next 10 days and am gonna travel+click with him for sometime.

After that i plan to travel for some more weeks on my own and travel all the way up till Leh/Ladakh. I have been hearing a news that the road to Leh is blocked due to landslides/snow. I am really disappointed by this. But whatever, my spirits are high and looking for some good fun and learning.

Chennai -> Mumbai -> Around Mumbai -> Gujarat -> Rajasthan -> Punjab -> Chandigarh -> Leh is what i have in mind. Am not sure whether i would be able to finish the entire itinerary, but would try my best. I want to cover the major tourist destinations and then the ruins and the local art/craftsmanship. Would be more of an explorer than a 'tourist' ...as always. (Do drop me an email/comment, if you want to jam up)

I am not sure when i would return back - if i am tired/bored/run-out-of-cash/lightning-strikes-me , then i might as well return back earlier than planned.

PS : I dont mind sponsors and can give you good pictures in return :)

Twittered!

Finally am into the Twitter arena after having a prolonged self-imposed exile(or whatever) from it.

Random thoughts henceforth @ http://twitter.com/venkat83

PS: I dont really understand how they(twitter guys) are going to make money!!

Update: It is http://twitter.com/venkasub

Long days!

Nah...Nah...this blog hasn't died away in the blogosphere , but is just preparing for a new begining.

Myself and Balaji a.k.a labsji are working on something interesting and hence it has been really hectic. For the past 2 weeks we sleep at 4-5am and have pulled a couple of all-nighters ... hence , life is being really nice to me and is teaching me loads of good stuff(as always).

Keep tuned....this blog might as well get a new face and some *really* interesting stuff coming all your way.
[Guess, i need to put some ads here and there and start monetizing ;) ]

A blind eye to the right cause

There is a famous story of the Vanilla icecream and General Motors that used to circulate the web few years back(am sure it is still going around in forwards)....This story is a marvelous one which teaches lots of management principles and way of looking at things. Most often it happens that we look at things with a wrong perspective or due to the inherent bias we dont even look at things that matter the most - it is these simple things/details that take mammoth proportions going down the lane and bring us down. For the benefit of my readers, am reproducing the story here ..

A complaint was received by the Pontiac Division of General Motors: 'This is the second time I have written to you, and I don't blame you for not answering me, because I sounded crazy, but it is a fact that we have a tradition in our family of Ice-Cream for dessert after dinner each night, but the kind of ice cream varies so, every night, after we've eaten, the whole family votes on which kind of ice cream we should have and I drive down to the store to get it. It's also a fact that I recently purchased a new Pontiac and since then my trips to the store have created a problem.....

You see, every time I buy a vanilla ice-cream, when I start back from the store my car won't start. If I get any other kind of ice cream, the car starts just fine. I want you to know I'm serious about this question, no matter how silly it sounds "What is there about a Pontiac that makes it not start when I get vanilla ice cream, and easy to start whenever I get any other kind?"

The Pontiac President was understandably skeptical about the letter, but sent an Engineer to check it out anyway. The latter was surprised to be greeted by a successful, obviously well educated man in a fine neighborhood. He had arranged to meet the man just after dinner time, so the two hopped into the car and drove to the ice cream store. It was vanilla ice cream that night and, sure enough, after they came back to the car, it wouldn't start. The Engineer returned for three more nights. The first night, they got chocolate. The car started. The second night, he got strawberry. The car started. The third night he ordered vanilla. The car failed to start.

Now the engineer, being a logical man, refused to believe that this man's car was allergic to vanilla ice cream. He arranged, therefore, to continue his visits for as long as it took to solve the problem. And toward this end he began to take notes: He jotted down all sorts of data: time of day, type of gas uses, time to drive back and forth etc.

In a short time, he had a clue: the man took less time to buy vanilla than any other flavor. Why? The answer was in the layout of the store. Vanilla, being the most popular flavor, was in a separate case at the front of the store for quick pickup. All the other flavors were kept in the back of the store at a different counter where it took considerably longer to check out the flavor.

Now, the question for the Engineer was why the car wouldn't start when it took less time. Eureka - Time was now the problem - not the vanilla ice cream!!!! The engineer quickly came up with the answer: "vapor lock". It was happening every night; but the extra time taken to get the other flavors allowed the engine to cool down sufficiently to start. When the man got vanilla, the engine was still too hot for the vapor lock to dissipate.

As always, am not going to draw an inference out of this. Let your mind see , what it chooses to see.

Cribbing = Negativism

The problem with 'people who crib' or 'the problem with cribbing' is that they are AN INTENSE SOURCE OF NEGATIVE ENERGY....

the epidemic source of negativism not inhibited by any counter-cribs but a gradual delinquishment of the available observing nodes.



Raise... Search ... Obtain... Relish... Move on... :)

Powerset ( Mathematical Pun )

Lot has been said about Powerset since its inception and blogosphere has not spared it either after its release in the recent past. Search is one of the toughest problems - given the magnitude and the sheer plethora of the information around. Though most of the blogs concerning the Powerset launch deal with how the management ended up having all the NLP grads(from Stan etc) and paid them 100k+ to develop this platform in SF; i will try to share some personal experience with this engine and how my expectations hasn't been satiated still.

Powerset was touted to be a Q&A engine with 'human' intelligence inbuilt into it. I was expecting some practical applications of Discourse theory too here. But neither were 'visible' in the experience that i had.

This blog is by no means a comprehensive review of the entire engine and its product strategy and the market segmentation brought on by Powerset, but sheer reflections of some emotions(read 'rants').

read on...

--> I was confused for a minute when i first saw the page result(search-hits) after doing the search for 'gandhi'. Now you need to understand when i say this that, i am referring to a 'typical' lane man who wants to search for some recipe or some term. There are just too many UI elements which can easily confuse your grand-mom.

--> I did a search for 'gandhi' and the results that i got were nowhere related to Gandhi(noun) but to the movie and the music bands and etc (in the tabbed bar above the Factz). Hence, i am not going to share what happened when i did a Q search (you may check other blogs for guys who did 'ask' question and the answers were a sheer 'mashup' of all the 'associated' keywords)!

--> The Factz were just too simple and i could not much gather anything from it, except for a solo fact which stated 'Quit India Movement'. The Factz look more like Powerset has simply searched on the n-grams gathered from all of the Wikipedia articles which has a 'rough' semantic association with the word 'gandhi'.

--> The widget on the right of the page (with delicious/reddit/et al links) is simply not required here. Atleast this could be made to bookmark the link with the search-word, but it instead bookmarks the powerset.com site. Anyway, I find this as a criminal waste of screen real estate.(But on a different note, this can be accommodated now, as Powerset has just launched and would be just interested in getting themselves bookmarked the max number of times - somehow, i don't subscribe to this PoV).

--> At the bottom of the page, the section on "Exploring the following pages on Powerset" is something that is simple but yet elegant. I would have preferred to see this result than seeing the Factz.(This is something similar to Sponsored Searches found in many other sites and corporate portals).

--> When you click on any of the result-hits, then the link opens in a new page ; which has an Article Outline on the right. Again, i simply would not even look at this - frankly speaking i did not even observe this, probably it was in my blindspot. Also, the way in which it slides when the page is scrolled - nice effect , but does not amaze me.

Concluding remarks:
# It looks like the entire is just an Alpha release , am sure that the Powerset team can collate its entire '(in)organic intelligence' and take this product to the next level; in the current release its a sheer play with ngrams and some named entity recognition (NER). Am sorry to say, but this does not look like the much-anticipated-Google/Live/Ask-Killer; in fact, not even closer to any of the latter. I would prefer Clusty.com to Powerset.

# Indexing all the wikipedia articles using Lucene/Solr, some NER and using the faceted searching would end up having almost similar results. I somehow opine that using simple algorithms and heuristics often ends up in having 'almost-similar' results than spending millions of USD and thousands of man-hours on developing a product that would be a step advanced than the former.

# Some bloggers have stated that Powerset can be a probable fit in the Enterprise Search space - but still solr+some-nlp-lib would be better of there (or use Google CSE ;) )

# Get the footer of the page properly aligned!!! It looks really bad in Firefox - The text "Privacy Policy" and "Except where" overlap badly.

......... And its not necessary that all sites have to be Javscript powered to give it a 'cool' look&feel .. simplicity rocks!

The Search

It is interesting to see the plethora of search engines coming up almost every month trying to solve a particular aspect(problem) in searches and claiming them to be potential 'Google-Killers'. I admire Google for its ability to 'create' consumer markets than just following or doing what the consumer needs. This is very important for a product firm which does wish to succeed and has the guts to run the extra mile and implement some bleeding edge technologies. Google took a very simple requirement of enabling better data management on the web to a completely different level and is unarguably the best in its class now. Numerous books/articles/blogs have been written and eulogies sung in praise of Google; but at the same time I would like to raise a concern that I have been noticing for the past couple of months.

Google's relevance of results is decreasing day-by-day. I see loads of spam in Google's BlogSearch. There is no effective 'innovation' in the data-visualization and the way the results are being presented to the user continues to remain the same; and the Ads are also being presented in the same format.

IMHO, i would say the following 3 features to be 'most-essential' for the next search-engine startup to be successful:
- Duplicate Elimination (Chris Manning's group in Stan-NLP is doing some amazing research in this, and i guess a stealth-mode startup would have already started)
- Social searches (Something similar to what the Israeli startup Delver is doing - but of a much greater magnitude and more 'intelligent')
- Data Visualization

Update: Got 2 new books to read:
1) Phantoms in the Mind , By V.S.Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee
2) Indian Unbound , By Gurucharan Das

ESSAY- 1 : The Illusion of Choice

I had two interesting conversations with two different people (of opposite genders) last week. One centered on the difference between 'Choice and Decision' and the other being between 'Religion and God'. Apparently, both the guys differed from my point of view and stated some strong arguments in their favour. We did not reach any conclusion per se, but did feel that it was a topic for further exploration.

In this essay, I have tried to reflect on some of the views hovering around these topics. I will not try to 'explain' it, but take it to a state from which i would wish the thought processes to continue.

Choice and Decision
Choice is a 'state of mind' , which sees the presence of one(Hobson's) or more course of actions, given a particular predicament.
Decision is a logical conclusion arrived at by considering all the available choices(course of actions).

According to Hinduism, Maya is a state wherein the mind sees something that is either ephemeral,evanescent or is not-present - this is something similar to illusion. The mind conjectures certain conditions which leads it to 'see' certain things that are not present. The last sentence is indeed interesting. Firstly, how can the mind 'imagine' something that it has never seen - how it can 'make' things without having an experience of the same. For eg. a person knows that a desert is hot and arid because he has experienced it. Now for a person who doesn't even know what a desert is , or even further, hasn't even heard the word - then how can he imagine the 'state of a desert'. It follows that if a person who has already been to a desert (say Bob) explains it verbally to a person who hasn't been there(say Alice), then there are some good chances that Alice can come up with a rough version of a picture of the desert. This is because, Bob was able to relate to the conditions in a desert to a conditions that Alice would have felt when at home or at her present state;but the same scenario becomes difficult for Bob, if Alice was blind since birth.

Experiences do matter.

Religion and God
Religion is a set of rules put forth by our predecessors to bring discipline into our lives. Religion for that matter can be equated to the constitution to be followed in one's life - a way of life. It prescribes some notions that when followed lead to an enhanced status of living with superior intellectual pursuits. The presence of different religions around is a depiction of different schools of thought. Each religion (or school) prescribes certain activities that was felt by a 'single' person to be significant and a mass followed him for the wavelength matched with the Master. The creation of a new school of thought was deeply influenced by the social dynamics and interpersonal relationships. Whenever the society(which constitutes of that 'single' person in the begining) feels that a certain rule needs to be broken or created altogether , and which was totally complementary to the one already existing in the present religion, a new discipline/religion was born.

Now, the creators of the religion(or constitution) did realize that it was difficult for the society to follow some rules when there was no one to supervise and hence 'God' was created. [The concept of 'God' is one of the most beautiful things that fascinates me till date , for it amuses/amazes me - but the thirst still persists and am continuing my hunt to satiate it.] According to humans, God is the one who was supposed to have created the 'new' religion and hence he is the Supreme - the omnipresent - the omniscient. Different rules where ascribed to different Gods.

Symbolism
A perspective that has been missing in both the conversations has been the relevance of symbolism. Symbolism cannot be equated to Experience. The concept of Choice and God is sheer symbolism. We cannot describe either of them, unless we feel them; and describing the experiences is beyond the bounds of the lexicon. These words are the feelings that come closest to the experience, but the feelings cannot be sustituted for a constrained set of grammar rules and words.

As Gary Zukov points out in his book[2], let the masters continue to dance... let the music flow and let us dance along with it. We are least bothered about what had transpired and what is supposed to come. We are just concerened about the present and the dance and the mysticism associated with it.

Finishing Notes....... My knowledge on this subject is very much limited and am trying to understand it more. This essay is not an effort to vandalize the existing customs or rituals , but an effort to share some views that i feel were worthy of consideration in this world. This essay also does not reflect all the rationale behind the topic of contention and many other views that are equally important in understanding the subject. The subject is worthy of exploration and more research, and it carries an enormous philosophical and psychological angle to it. I do not deny the existence of God and neither question the relvance of religion - i do visit temples , pray and prostrate - but i want to understand this 'phenomenon' in its entirety , for it encompasses some of the most delicate and controversial dogmas, principles and thoughts around.

Who am I? Why I am here? What am i supposed to do? What have i done? (Origin > Identity > Destiny)

Humans are causal beings - we ascribe 'causes' to whatever we see happening - this notion is reflected in almost in all the religions - its called 'karma'. I atleast know that Hinduism and Buddhism do lay emphasis on 'karma'. Bible certainly conveys the same essence [1]:

# A person reaps what he sows. (Gal. 6:7)
# All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. (Matthew 7:12)

Karma does not mean that all events are predetermined; what it means is that the it is us who control what has to happen to us.

I do not believe in another 'term' that keeps floating around -- LUCK. Luck a term directed at something that is beyond the control of human mind ,and which we prescribe to when things do not happen as we anticipate them - and i find this to be weird and unacceptable. It is the human mind that decides its course of action; though it should be taken into account that the human mind does decide its course based on the current state of things and the things that have been learnt from the past. The symbiosis of Eastern Mysticism with Western Science is a very potent relationship and should be studied very carefully, with interest.

References:
[1] Buddhism Karma [http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org/karma.html]
[2] Dancing Wu Li Masters - Gary Zukov
[...] experiences that has been gained in my limited stay on this planet :)

Few good reads

I havent read many books after moving down to Chennai ; the last one was The Black Swan - an excellent page turner with loads of gyaan. Taleb is a genius who understands the subject that he is trudging on and explains it with finesse.

Well, i was spending too much time on the Net and on my laptop and was getting into the geekdom(second part) again. My phone bill(broadband) shot up - guess the 2.5 Gb limit wasnt enough. But the 2Mbps line simply rocks. Nwayz, spent some time in the Spencer's(got a good Woodland Shoe) and then went on to Moore Market yesterday. Moore market is the bazaar near the Madras(Chennai) Railway Station wherein one can find everything on Earth (at very cheap rates) - provided on knows the art of negotiation/bargaining. My intentions were simply to go there and get some good reads to fill my shelf(and make my mom yell at me - she argues that i am occupying half the house with my junk).

Got the following :
# Survival of the Sickest - By Dr.Sharon Moalem
Having recently been affected by throat infection, i was searching for something on human anatomy and was happy to find this book. The Doc is a medical maverick who discovers why we need a disease. He talks about our genetic design and asks and answers some provocative questions. I have started reading this book and its going amazing.

# View from the Summit - By Sir Edmund Hillary
Waiting to read this book. An autobiography by the master himself and I being an ardent traveller/trekker this was an excellent find.

# The Dancing Wu Li Masters - By Gary Sukav
An old book - NY Times says that this is the most exciting intellectual adventure after the 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. Its an absorbing guide to the mind stretching mysteries of the new Physics and points out striking parallels with modern Psychology and Eastern Mysticism.

# The Goal - By Eliyahu M.Goldratt
Have read some good reviews. The story of a person who has to save his plant(business) given lots of extraneous conditions that hamper from its development.

# The Great Game (On a Secret Service in High Asia) - By Peter Hopkirk
Related to adventure and war - yet to get a flavour of it.

# Code Complete - By Steve McConnell
This is a book on software construction - a must for many self-taught programmers :)

Am sure these kill keep me occupied for a month or two :)

Streptococcus Viridans

Having survived numerous bacteria and viruses over the past decade and not falling ill even for a single day; inspiteof drinking water from rusty taps, broken bottles, dirty water tanks I was really happy and fortunate. But, 2 weeks back we started getting water in the bubble top containers (mineral water) due to a possible contamination of the well water. And 2 days after that had a heavy fever and then a really bad throat infection. Tried to control from my mind for a week , but that was of no avail - the specie in my throat was more powerful than my mind. Went to the doc finally, his initial dose of medicines weren't of any use , he made the dose even more powerful and I got partial relief. Finally, he advised me of a throat swab and this what the report read :

Organism Isolated : Streptococcus Viridans

Holy cow... my charm for sesquipedalion words ended up in a sesquipedalion bacteria in my throat channel :( My state is not as bad as the 'organism' sounds, but the very thought of an-organism-in-my-body and reciting its name sends mild shivers across my spine.

But the naming convention sounds 'kewl' ... i wish i had a body organ named after me : "Ramanilicous Venkatidans"

Insights 2007

2007 was an eventful year for me. Lots of things happened which gave me new courage to face new challenges and grab new opportunities. Met some interesting people and also had a some great conversations. Though each day is a new experience in itself, but 2007 made me think and take some steps that can have some strategic consequences later in my life.

Some of the important and finest moments......

January - The year started off with me buying a new camera on the NY eve - my new kid - Nikon D50. I was overjoyed - i had saved my hard earned money to buy this. I have had some great moments with this camera and am still having it; hope not to part with it - my commitment is sincere :D

February - My first ever Himalayan trek. At sub zeros temperatures and nothing but whiteness around under some really strenuous conditions , it was an excellent experience. Though the trek was called off after the first day but the experience is something to be cherished till my next Himalayan Trek happens.

May - The Bangalore Midnight Marathon - what an experience it was!!!! I ended up running though i had gone their for clicking :) Almost 8-10hours of clicking with some superb experiences.

July - Resigned from Oracle :) It was a tough decision for me. Life at Oracle was extremely good - with a good balance between good work and an adventurous personal life. 2 Years with Oracle was really satisfying in terms of both - Job satisfaction and excellent learning. But, life was getting very comfortable at a very young age and i did not want it to be like that.

In the meantime, gave some interviews at Google, cleared some rounds and then stopped the process - Google is not the place for me now ;)

August - Joined Svapas (Serendio)
I had lots of expectations when i joined Svapas - i wanted to be the flag bearer of setting up a pure product company based out of Chennai(India).

December - Left Svapas (Serendio)
Things always do not happen the way you expect them to ; though one can take the bull by its horns but it's sometimes clever to think strategically and take a suitable decision, by taking all the variables into effect. Again - experience @ Svapas was great.

2008 is keeping me busy...did not have much time for travel - except for the Andhra tour over the new year. Work is getting more interesting and enjoyable ...loads to learn..loads to share... hope to stumble on some interesting people and learn more :)

Life is beautiful.....

Bland Andhra

[.....this post is under Edit.........WIP]

I did not want to spend the NY at Chennai ...partying and drinking and eating. Hence the traveller in me woke up again from a long slumber(its been 4-5 months since i went anywhere)...

I had 3 choices
a) Kerala
b) The West Coast - from Bekal Fort to Goa
c) Andhra Pradesh (AP)

I did not want to do #a alone , hence chucked it. #b is in my to-do list for almost a year now. And #c was equally interesting as not many people backpack across AP. Culminating at Goa wasnt a good idea, as it was a NY season and it would be crowded (and the skyrocketing prices). Hence, it was #c :) Decided to get the ticket to start off on Friday evening to Vijayawada (VJW). Once in VJW, then i could decide on the future course of action on a daily basis.

Friday evening
Came back from work(it was my last day with my employer) , did some quick packing and started off to the Koyambedu Bus stand - boarded the bus - dreamt - and slept.

Day - 1 ( Saturday , Dec 29th, 2007)
[ KanakaDurga Temple - Undavalli Caves - Mogalarajapuram Caves - Kondapalli Fort ]
Reached Vijayawada in the morning at 5:15am. Brushed my teeth in the bus stand , had a hot tea , dumped my backpack in the cloak room and left for a darshan at KanakaDurga temple.


[.....this post is under Edit.........WIP]

New Buy : Acer 4520

Got my laptop couple of weeks back. It is an Acer 4520 with nVidia GeForce 7000m and an AMD Athlon X2 processor. After having used the DELL series of laptops(Lattitude and Inspiron) for couple of years, it was a pleasant experience moving towards Acer (with an AMD processor).

Actually, i am practically in love with my laptop and did not even expect such good performance from it. Though the idea of not buying a Mac was lurking in my mind, but after a conscious comparison between my desires and my wants, decided to stick to the present choice.

The features that led me to this choice were :
1) superb keyboard
2) amazing display (14.1-inch)
3) fantastic sound quality
4) Nice form factor

In fact, the sound quality is quite mind blowing and has really good clarity. I had little difficulty in getting and installing the video drivers, but once installed , the display is almost comparable to than of a Mac. Now I have a dual boot on XP and Ubuntu and it works like a charm.

The laptop doesnt produce much heat(i used to use Acer 5050 and it got really hot after a couple of hours) and has a nice form factor. Though, the display doesnt do a complete 180 degree tilt(as in, along the plane of the keyword), but the tapered edges does it give it a nice look and feel.

But couple of things i did not like about the laptop were
- the keypad and the surrounding bay is in white - i would have preferred a blackish/greyish color, as the pad gets dirty after a few weeks for a heavy user like me who spends 15-18hours a day with my computer.
- the trackpad is a little slow (probably i am not using properly) and the buttons doesn't work smoothly.

Other features include:
160GB hard disk
1GB DDR2 667MHz RAM
8x DVD Burner(Dual Layer)
Weighs just around 2.5 kgs
all the plugs/ports/sockets intact :D
1-year Internation Traveler’s Warranty

Overall, it has been a good buy for 30k INR.

And did i tell you guys that i got a headphone+mike, 2GB SanDisk zip drive, a LCD/Keyboard vaccum cleaner and a mouse(which looks cheap) as part of the deal.

Backpacking across Andhra Land

Just came back from a solo-tour to Andhra Pradesh.

Places covered :
Vijayawada - Vishakapatnam - Araku - Borra - Bhadrachalam - Warangal
Budget - 2K INR.

Travelled around 3k Kms by bus over a span of 5 days and am back home now. Going solo was a kinda good experience...life does teach loads of things.....

Will upload the pictures and the details of the tour asap.

[Am planning on a 2 day tour to Central TamilNadu....probably....Trichy/Tanjore.... ;) over the weekend ]

Cross Country biking - India

I happened to met Shree almost a year back in The Bangalore Trekkers Orkut group, and then we used to scrap each other occasionally , and then we met during Bangalore Barcamp 4 wherein he shared his gyaan on cycles and riding them and some kewl gadgets. I knew that he was a geek and a great appetite for whatever he was into ... he had already done Bangalore-Ahemedabad and Chennai-Kolkata on his cycle.

Now, he is on cross country - Arunachal Pradesh to Gujarat. As of this writing , i guess he should be in Assam-W.Bengal border - should have done around 1100 km in the last 12 days.

I wish him all the best and sincerely hope that he finishes it. His blog.

Dress Code and Programming

Justin talks about the Dress code by some of the whos-who in the programming 'fraternity' - some of the greatest minds who have contributed to Computer Science Programming for what it is today. It is a comprehensive collection of the people who have either designed a new programming language/framework or have contributed immensely to the concepts in CS.

Essentially these are the characteristics:
1) bearded
2) long haired
3) casually dressed visionaries

Analysis w.r.t me :
#1 - my hairlines continue to recede and hence dont fit in here :(
#2 - though my rate of growth of facial hair is more than that on the head, but the temperate climate in chennai does not allow me to keep the beard for more than 2-3 weeks. .... hence dont fit in here either :(
#3 - i am casually dressed - in fact i dont know what it means..i wear what i suppose is comfortable , and keeps me well ventilated and doesnt emanate a bad odour :D .... am i visionary??

[ what is programming! ;) ]

Kindling the Android

Amazon launches Kindle. Jeff Bezo's announcement!

The game(or is it a war???) between Kindle vs Publishing industry (print media) is going to be something that is worth watching now. The arena has been thrown open and i cannot but see the gladiator winning.

Android is interesting. My first rendezvous with Android SDK was interesting.

Is someone thinking along both the lines ;)

yada..yada..Yedda

It is sometimes amusing when you see your business idea being implemented by some other firm (and also making money from that). One such thing happened today.

"AOL Gets Into Q&A Business, Acquires Israel’s Yedda"

When i saw this news in my reader, i jumped to read the entire story. Apparently, Yedda's modus-operandi is something similar to what myself and my friend Shravan had thought of 2.5 years back(Wednesday, June 22, 2005 7:40:44 PM to be precise). The idea was baptised as "Gyaan.in" and the idea behind that was :

"Gyaan.in deals with the questions that anyone in the world could have about India, and would employ a group of well read researchers in order to send authentic replies to these questions. Through this, we intend to increase knowledge about this wonderful country, increase opportunities for investment in the country, and hence impact most spheres of the economy in the country."

It was a self-sustaining model with an investment of less than 1Lakh. After careful deliberations and some self-introspection we did not go ahead with the idea and dropped it. I do not repent on the decision made and am sure that there are zillion other opportunities to be tapped.

Gyaan.in inspires me even today as it was my first rendezvous with a good business plan and the passion to start "something-of-my-own". This idea was later converted into a Quiz Blog by me which is totally dormant as of now - this was an attempt to bring in all the quizzing cirles in India under a single banner and promote quizzing as an innovative way of Knowledge Sharing.

Mechanism of action

I was watching a show in BBC (10-11am IST,Sunday) on climate change and the host was showing some examples of how we can conserve our environments..humanure...and blah..blah...the usual Greenpeace stuff...But he also claimed that Animals account for 10% of the gas emissions - the Nitrous oxides, methane..etc etc.. He was trying to record the burps and the farts of the cattle :) and observed the statistic.

Now that's what is called as some exploration!! GreenPeace activists -- where r u!!! Alloooooo!!! Is the next slogan going to be "Kill the Cattle-Save the World" ???

For more read this : Flatulence.

Acc this link : "ALASKA - Public flatulence carries a $100 fine. " lol

The Art of Downplaying (Part -1)

It is interesting to see when you let a person win over you, though you know that you can easily win her/him.

One knows that the other person is cheating him , but he still allows the person to cheat him. The cheater is fascinated by his abilities and the bovineness of the victim; the former is elated at his win. But what lurks in the minds of the 'downplayer'!!! No one knows! He loses to win again - return back with a greater impact and totally vanquishing the opponent. Like the phoenix that burns itself to reincarnate.

The Art of Downplaying is a fascinating field of human psychology that amuses me a lot. The complex calculations of a downplayer is very crucial, as his stakes are very high in this strategy. A single mis-calculation can lead to disastrous consequences with zero tolerance of returning back in the game. It is a very fragile and contentious issue and has to be trudged with utmost care.

I also forsee this as an excellent marketing and design strategy - again, with CARE. One announces market for a product , and the same person creates a dumb product (though, he has an excellent one waiting to ambush the market) and leaves it open in the arena. Many new competitors enter the arena. They fight among themselves building more dumb products and creating a huge market in the process; but our strategist lurks in the dark - he is outcasted by others for entering the market with a dumb product and is equally ridiculed. Suddenly, he turns around and announces the advent of the next big thing and creates a market upheaval. (Timing of the launch, type of launch, period of dormancy, timing and type of the re-entrance are the most important parameters here)

Its a check-mate :)

Birth of 'EYB'

(05:05:51 IST) Roshan: no way
(05:05:52 IST) Roshan: bye
(05:05:56 IST) Venkat: this game is good
(05:06:00 IST) Venkat: u say something and say bye
(05:06:06 IST) Venkat: we should p[atent it
(05:06:12 IST) Roshan: yes. :P
(05:06:14 IST) Roshan: but now
(05:06:14 IST) Venkat: bye
(05:06:15 IST) Roshan: bye
(05:06:19 IST) Venkat: surebye
(05:06:20 IST) Venkat: bye
(05:06:23 IST) Venkat: bye bye
(05:06:33 IST) Venkat: and 2 consec byes means end of conv.
(05:06:39 IST) Roshan: oh, if you add another bye to that you can be the backstreet boys
(05:06:46 IST) Roshan: prepubescent girls will go nuts
(05:06:50 IST) Venkat: ahhhh!!!
(05:07:07 IST) Venkat: i prefer both pre and post!
(05:07:16 IST) Venkat: so wat should i do!! [eternal damnation]
(05:07:21 IST) Venkat: >>
(05:07:29 IST) Roshan: well think away
(05:07:30 IST) Roshan: bye
(05:07:34 IST) Venkat: we think.. and thinking leads me to say
(05:07:38 IST) Venkat: "eyb"..
(05:07:48 IST) Venkat: we just reverese it.. but its great.. no one will understand it
(05:07:55 IST) Venkat: it will be like ajax...
(05:08:05 IST) Venkat: u say "eyb" and generate user's interest...
(05:08:21 IST) Venkat: ppl will ask u for the explanation and u can give a real prolix interpretation of the same
(05:08:26 IST) Venkat: eyb eyb
(05:08:30 IST) Roshan: wow
(05:08:38 IST) Roshan: the millions in consultancy fees!!
(05:08:40 IST) Roshan: eyb
(05:08:47 IST) Venkat: u got it !
(05:09:01 IST) Venkat: i will give u a 20% stake in it... u may even opt out of it...
(05:09:17 IST) Venkat: lemme check if the domain exists
(05:09:31 IST) Venkat: ahhh!!!
(05:09:45 IST) Venkat: Etobicoke Youth Band ... :(
(05:10:02 IST) Venkat: but still we patent it and sue them
(05:10:39 IST) Roshan: :P
(05:10:43 IST) Venkat: eyb eyb
(05:11:05 IST) Roshan: haha .... :)

To do when bored!

Save an alien.

Get some investment advice.

Make some neat paper skulls.

Make a robotic-snap-o-lantern.

Job searches.

more and more... but first finish these :)

Sit back and Cry!

Right from the day since i saw the Photosynth demo in one of the TED talks, i wanted to get a feel of this wonderful application. It reminded me of my grad days when i was trying hard to get a 3-d reconstruction of a face from pictures taken at multiple perspectives. I was unable to come up with an algorithm due to the technology bottleneck and the associated memory requirements (Finally, i went on to propose a new algorithm for Face Recognition, but i wasn't satisfied with the results as i had made some assumptions which were not practical in the real life ...anywayz... life went on). My machine was just a 64MB, 733 Intel P3 machine. I knew that this was a very interesting area and anyone how could come up with a kicka$$ algorithm would rake in millions(and billions).

I went to M$ Live labs to check the progress made on this software and get a hands-on.

I was more than happy when i saw the 'Try It' link. The browser refreshed and i got this error :
"Windows XP SP2 and Vista Only

The Photosynth technology preview runs only on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista.

If you feel you've reached this message in error, you can try anyway."

Am i pushed to the darkest corners of the Earth ... can someone hear me .... alllo.... why is this piece of software OS dependent!!!!

Self Introspection

Choosin a Startup to Work for

With the successful marketing of Ajax and the associated Web 2.0 confusion, the profusion of startups is quite understandable. Under these circumstances, it is very much natural that a growing number of enthusiasts wish to work in a startup and make some good quick money (stock options, et al) along with a good learning curve. Choosing a startup to work for is equally important as desciding whether to start a new company or not. Though the experience of working in a startup is quite exhilarating , it should be well understood that it has equally greater impact on the career that one chooses.

I wish to enumerate certain DO's and DONT's while choosing to work in a startup and how to evaluate them and take suitable course of action :

- Decide on your priorities in life ; i.e., whether you are ready to sacrifice (trade-offs) certain 'privileges' for the sake of other benefits. This should be brainstormed well and all the possible outcomes (+ve and -ve) should be well examined. There are lots of options that you may need to consider - few for eg., working long late hours, money, relationships(bf, gf ;) ), travel etc.

- Do a personal SWOT analysis - find out your forte` and weaknesses. W.r.t, the IT Industry , find out the domain that interests you the most and how much experience you have in that domain. Are you well versed with the techinical intricacies and troubleshooting. What is your skill level in the field of interest and what is your skill level in the domain that you are currently working in(it is so often possible that your area-of-interest does not coincide with the area-in-which-you-are-currently-working).

- Identify the Startups that are working in the intended area of interest. Usually word-of-mouth or good social networks helps one in identifying startups and their fundamentals. Also, being a member of the social forums(Yahoo/ Google groups) helps in identifying the startups operating in and around the intended-area-of-work. Blogs often provided a greater insight into these.

- Once you have identified a set of startups that match your critieria(this is done by a simple visit to their website and getting an idea of what the company is into), try to get a contact who is working in that firm. Have a chat with him/her over a cuppa-caffine and understand how they operate and the working conditions.

- If things look fine and you have identified your prospective employer, fix up an interview/meeting with the person who runs the show or the manager in charge. During the course of the interview(either before-during-after) do express your interest to work in the firm for 1-2 days [probably over the weekend, since most of the startups work all days ;) ] so that you get a feeling of the nature of work and also you can exhibit your skills. Mostly this step will be well appreciated and the firm will accept it.

- The 1-2 days that you are going to work in the startup is very-very important and crucial for it decides on the future course of action that you might need to take.
Try to find out the intentions of the show-runners (i.e, whether they want to make some quick bucks by creating a product and selling it or want to sustain in the market - i prefer the latter to the former, as i believe that once the focus shifts to selling the company, innovation takes a backseat and one just works towards getting a larger client base and leaving the product innovation behind).
Try to find the attitude of the 'prospective' co-workers. What is the skill level of these people and whether they really know what they are doing and whether they are competent to do what they are asked to do. How will they match you or you with them. It often helps to work with highly talented people(NOTE : I HAVE NOT MENTIONED THE NUM YEARS OF EXPERIENCE THAT A PERSON POSSESSES) , as they can be a great source of knowledge and learning.
(I personally will not look into the infrastructure facilities and other add-ons as i believe that once the cash inflow is steady , things automatically start looking rosy).

- If all the above satisfy you then its time to talk about money. Discuss the remuneration structure(yada yada , now some of you may tell me that satisfaction is what counts more than money - that's very true , but one also needs to keep himself and his family happy .. hence money is 'more'-equally important :) ). Also consider the fact that market is on the boom and growth rate of the IT industry is pretty exciting.

- Ball is in your court now and play it accordingly.

I have tried to enlist some of the very simple steps that one needs to consider and am sure that many will have more inputs to share. Let me know if this was of any help to you.

Should History be repeated?

When Dhoni and his lads arrrived in India after winning the T20 WorldCup :
- Mumbai traffic on the roads came to a halt for around 3-4 hours
- Lots of money and awards were given to the team
- the players got more endorsements
- a selected few in the team got 'more' money than others
- few members of the Indian Hockey team went on a fast in front of the Karnataka CM's office/house
- more ladies went ga-ga on Yuvi
- all the TV channels had this as the main news for 2-3 days (and some of them even continuing now :) )
- people said that this is like the 1983 WorldCup team returning back

well... the last observation was quite interesting..... and led me think about the actual aftermath of the 1983 WorldCup.
The mighty WestIndians visited India and 'destroyed' :'crushed' : 'mutilated' the Indian team :)

Now, Australians are visiting India ..... Does History repeat itself!! Interested in predicting ????

Check out the Summary of Results (From CricInfo.com):

alt

Sheep Theory

coming sooooooon .....

Aha! Java

Jon Bentley talks about the Aha! Insight in his book Programming Pearls.

I got 2 such 'Aha!s' today :

1) Java does support Short Circuit Operators(or short circuit evaluation)

public class myTest2 {

public static void main(String[] args) {
myTest2 sct = new myTest2();
if (sct.isTrue("left") || sct.isTrue("right")) {
//you may swap the 'left' and the 'right' and observe the behaviour
System.out.println("Expression is true.");
} else {
System.out.println("Expression is false.");
}
System.out.println("All done.");
}

public boolean isTrue(String msg) {
System.out.println("in isTrue (arg = '" + msg + "')");
if (msg.equals("right")) return true;
else return false;
}
}

2) Loop unrolling leads to instruction level parallelism. But am not sure whether this will have any effect on the way Java is architectured. I presume that stack based architectures(Java/JVM) do not have any effect on ILP.

Any thoughts or Ahas!!!!!

Getting Leh'ed

Plans are canceled and am not going to Leh this year :(

Toxicity

Seth speaks about Toxic bosses in one of his latest posts...

".....toxic bosses are far worse than toxic employees. Because bosses are often able to define reality, at least for those in their sphere of influence, they can cause whole sections of an organization to go off the rails....."

I would like to add couple of more observations here :

I find that toxic bosses do not only cause the derailing of the system but they infuse a sense of low-morale and inferiority complex in the team (this is among the non-toxic employees.....the dumb ones remain dumb); not to mention the complete lack of direction and doing-things-for-the-heck-of-it syndrome. Now let me change my gears slightly here and direct you to what Scott Adams mentions about smarter people having lesser intercourse than dumb people ; he rationales that

"....dimwitted get so much action is that they tend to be more attractive than smart people.Hot/dumb people are more likely to mate with other hot/dumb people and produce hot/dumb kids...."

Are Toxic bosses byproducts of this observation!!!

Along similar lines... Toxic bosses recruit more Toxic employees(who are essentially dumb) and the virality spread across the entire organization.The generality of the dumbness increases ( and i dont want to think about what happens to the future state of the organization).

Check out Seth's post on Toxic Employees too ;)

Reckoning BCB4

Barcamp Bangalore (version 4.0) concluded yesterday @ IIM Bangalore campus.There was a similarity between both Barcamp Bangalore 4 and Proto.in - both of them were organized very well, but both of them lacked CONTENT.




Especially in BCB4, most of the collectives were just 'Global Gyaan'; and only a very few talks were worth the praise. Some of the speakers were doing a product demo, which I was least interested in.(Guess what, a speaker was demo'ing her .com site and mentioning that clikcing on a link takes one to a diff page...blah...blah...blah). I had to simply walkout from many sessions, especially on day-2. I had expectations from the Usability and Ajax collectives - but both of them disappointed me with again...the 'global gyaan'. I heard the 'web2.0' and 'ajax' atleast a zillion times :(

The ruby collective had some interesting talks , especially the one on deploying the rail apps - it was an in depth coverage of the various aspects of deploying and hosting(came to know that the Apace server has a higher memory footprint than Nginx and also does a thread level processing of requests).

The Biking collective (on Day 1)was simply amazing with some cool bikes in the display(and also to ride).Shree had got his freind's (KP's) bike Petalon which was a clear winner among all the 4 bikes present there. Rohan (& his freind) had got thier Treks which was also good.The session gave lots of gyaan on the cycles, the sitting and driving postures, the kits and some nice accesories. Shree had a GPS receiver and couple of rear lights.

I had more expecations from BCB4 and am sure that the in next Baracamp(BCB5), the collective co-ordinators will take extra "precaution" in terms of content.

Some pics taken during the event (More can be seen here):

Barcamp Bangalore - 4

Venue: IIM Bangalore
Dates : 28/29 July, 2007

Barcamp Bangalore is finally here this weekend :) The coordinators have done a great job of maintaining an absolutely neat wiki (without any spam and arbit info).

Lots of collectives happening at the same time ...with loads of information and interesting sessions...




So if you are in Bangalore , then drop in(after registering, or i am not sure how much the mods will insist on registrations)...anywayz , it should be fun with loads of gyaan.

I will be live blogging during the event, if my lappie works :)

First Date with Flex

Installed the Flex Builder(Public Beta 3) from the CD provided by the Adobe folks during Proto.in. The CD contained the Demo versions of the Flex Builder, Flex Builder plugin for Eclipse and AIR(and some documentations).

Read the accompanying docs for an hour and was all set to play ;)

Quick features and comments :

- The IDE(Flex Builder) was very light on the memory(given the fact that my lappie is a 2gig machine ;))
- The framework is exteremely easy to learn and i was creating small apps within hours, and was impressed with the results.
- When compared to ADF/JSF, i think this framework is beautiful and extremely developer friendly - but do NOTE here that i had used the IDE for messing around; since , the IDE is a demo and costs 399USD for a license, developers who do not have the dough(folks like me)need to check the command line options - i hope to work with the command prompt today and check out the easeness of development.
- I have yet not started playing around with building DB cohesive applications using FLEX, but i do not think there should much problems.

I am looking forward to the full version of Flex by the end of this year and a FREE IDE :D. I need to learn RoR and compare it with Flex and AIR.

Proto.in - my itinerary

Event : Proto.in
Venue : IC & Sr Auditorium , IIT Madras
Dates : July 21/22, 2007

[This post mentions "what-i-did" during the event and some of my comments. It does not explain the events and the participants in its entirety. I hope to post more on the individual presenters(participating companies) and some interesting startups that i stumbled upon]

I had wondered on how this event would benefit startups and for audiences like me, who are just going to be meek spectators and see the companies present and the VCs talk. The event was supposed to span 2 days :
Day 1 -- the first day being the day of speakers (sessions) - Tracks on Business and Technology
Day 2 -- the main event - the companies (startups) presenting their product.


Day-1 (Saturday July 21, 2007)
Managed to reach the venue on time despite the traffic jam near Gandhi Mandapam.

Quickly registered and headed off to the conference room wherein the Business track was scheduled. There was one more conference room with the Technology Track. After the initial introduction and the India Poised video(ToI) ,the talk by Shankar Vembu (Vembu technologies Pvt Ltd) commenced. It was a beautiful talk, and the speaker stressed on 8 points that Startups should abide by when they want to bootstrap without a venture capital ; the first being - "Dont attend these kind of events if you are serious about your startup" - which i found perfectly right , both at the beginning of the event and also on the closing day :)

After this talk , i moved to the Tech track where Rajiv Mangla and Prayank Swaroop (Adobe) were about to speak on "RIA using Flex,AIR and Ajax". I was curious to attend this session and look at some demos and the framework. The talk wasn't much impressive (but am sure that the framework is kewl), some of the demos were nice. I am sure that the Flex consulting marketing is going to very lucrative in India. Sample AIR cds were given at the end - thanks for that - i was planning to get my hands dirty this week before BCB4 - am yet to explore the CD.

Then i again shifted to the Business Track wherein Rohit Agarwal(TechTribe) was supposed to talk on PR - again a _no-nullshit _ talk which i liked. After this, time for some networking [ time for tea:) ] and meeting some aspiring enthusiasts and interesting startups.

Later moved on to the talk by Alok Mittal(Canaan Partners) , and later moved to the Tech track where Sanjay Swami(myChek) had to elucidate on 'Opportunities in the Mobile Space". I being a noodlehead in the mobile industry, this was a nice talk to listen to. Sanjay spoke 0n some alluring spaces in the Mobile segment which had the potential to grow and some more gyaan.

The best of the talks was that by Atul Chitnis(VP - Geodesic and a FOSS evangelist). Atul spoke on how startups should take up free and Open-source as their platform for their businesses to succeed. His claims were supported by very valid arguments and it was an excellent talk. I did not feel the 30mins whisk away. I wish if this talk could last for a few 15mins more so that startups could have benefited more.

Then, Ganesh Rengaswamy(Greylock Partners and CoFounder of TravelGuru) spoke on the challenges and the opportunities in the Internet space. It was a very informal talk with very formal and good content. I liked the way Ganesh carried himself all throughout the talk - it was again a _no-bullshit_ talk :) . He did not use a powerpoint presentation and managed to engage the audience with good content.


Day-2 (Sunday July 22, 2007)
It was supposed to be the MAIN EVENT. The startups were supposed to present their company and the product (demo , if possible) in a short duration of 6 minutes. Almost all the presenters felt that 6 minutes was too short a time for presenting a product; but i totally second the organizers for choosing the 6-minte deadline, as i feel that i a product can easily be dissected in less than 6 minutes - with all its merits and demerits identified. One of the presenters commented that "it takes atleast 7 minutes for an orgasm and 6 minutes is too less".

A comprehensive analysis of the companies will be done in the forthcoming posts.

iPhone - The omnipresent

All the blogs contain a post on iPhone, and hence its incumbent on me to post a blog on the same too :D me is not gonna review it - not gonna fave it - not gonna criticize it ..
instead... Check out some destructive videos :




The last one is not an actual iPhone ;)

Videos

I watch videos [ read 'Youtube'(v) ] for approx 8-10+ hours a week. But today i wanted to check the features available in the video sharing sites. I am a great fan of Youtube and 99% of my video-watching-exercise happens over the same :D .

nwayz.. I was planning to observe the Top rated videos in Youtube and Google and understand the basic mood of the people and also the way they rate videos. But before I could proceed with my 'complex interpretations' of the videos and its interpretations, i was startled to see the list of the Top Videos in Google.

The Top videos in Google are ONLY porn(bold/undelined). Check out the screenshots of the Top videos from Google and Youtube.

Goat Vs PC # 1

Original Picture here

King for a minute

Click here to see the full size picture [ Created using stripcreator.com - nice one - thanks Kiruba ]

TWTW - The Week That Was

Lots of things happened - met some interesting people - lots of gyaan - saw some amazing movies - Youtube'd a lot - read a lot.

One such interesting video was this.
Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walt Mossberg at the D5 interviews Eric Schmidt. [The best thing that has happened to me in the last 2 years is that i hardly see TV these days, instead i Youtube for the gyaan and the entertainment .. nwayz...] I had read an interview of Eric in HBR (Harvard Business Review) when he was with Novell. The interview was rather boring and it was all CEO/manager talk with no insights into what Novell had to offer to the ongoing technological advancements.But this interview (with Walt) was different. Eric has grown (Google factor???) !

In the interview, Walt brings up a very pertinent Q in the world of advertising -- The way the Ads are presented has not changed over the past couple of years. Google continues to display the ads in the same style that it used to do it say 3-4 years ago. There has been no significant innovation in Ad-Presentation.Though Eric does not give a satisfactory answer to this, but am sure Larry and Sergei (& hopefully other Google developers ) are seriously thinking about this. Am sure M$ would like to take this as an opportunity to launch their innovation in this field of targeted ads and try to step ahead(a leap also) in terms of its ads-presentation to the end users.

Eric clearly demarcates many times in the interview that Google is an enabler of the content but not a content generator.Eric also hints at some interesting apps that we can expect in the near future (Palm/Symbian/M$ - move aside ...Google is on its way in the mobile space).

The D5 series in Youtube simply rocks (also check out the Steve Jobs / Bill gates interview @ D5)

Early Rising

Some days are just too good - beyond any levels of description - no verbiage - no photos - A bright new day - soaring adrenaline - no evil - the feeling to win the world - fresh cologne - a beautiful drive along the valleys - my Aston Martin DB9 - the shimmering sun - the roaring river along the road , striking the rocks - the cardamom tea - The Indian Flag flying high - spotting the mynah - beautiful and innocent smiles of the village girls - the gompas - mild prayers - a Beautiful Mind - Life is Beautiful.