CONtroverSial PROSe

Casual Consumer Photography Musings

2011-12-29T11:57:00.014+05:30

I am neither a professional nor an amateur photographer, but a common man who uses his phone cameras and point-and-shoots. Here are some of my musings related to photography, which are possibly meaningless or wrong.

Digital Zoom

Many point-and-shoot and phone cameras discourage digital zoom. For example, Android cameras set at max resolution don't allow digital zoom beyond that. The reason is that, the image can be cropped any time later during post-processing.
This is true for camera's that store images in lossless/RAW formats. Otherwise quite some detail is lost, when the image is compressed in camera, and then later when cropped and blown-up("digital zoomed") in a PC. If we digital zoom on the camera itself, before compressing the image, more details could be retained! I could see that digitally zoomed image on my point-and-shoot is better than zooming in later during post-processing.

Panorama

Creating panoramic images was too hard long back, but not any more. My phone camera which has an accelerometer, but doesn't have a gyroscope is able to stitch and generate low-res panoramas in no time. Latest phones and cameras all have gyroscopes and do a better job with this.

I tried ~~clicking~~ panning few panoramas in my friends marriage hall with my phone.

And I feel that this format of very ultra-wide-angle is the best/must format for covering marriages! Hope wedding photographers/videographers would start adding panoramas to the mix. If you are planning to spend a lot on wedding photography, ask for panoramas/super-duper-ultra-wide-angle high-resolution shots.

180°/360° Panorama Videos

Awed by the panoramas from my phone. I wanted to shoot panorama videos i.e., videos with 180° or more FOV. Imagine placing/hanging a 360° Video camera in the center of the wedding hall.
One way to do it would be to create an circular array of cameras and stitch the videos together later. Another way could be to have a shining Christmas tree ball/convex hemispherical mirror and shoot a video of the image on it with a camera, and later post process it to do distortion correction. The same could be achieved by shooting on a camera with a fish-eye lens. Even better would be to use a circular fisheye lens and get a 360° (on one axis) video. Or 2 or more such cameras to create the complete 360x360 video. I found few 360x360 stills, but no videos. Also found few uncorrected 360°(single axis) videos.

I am trying to shoot pics/video using all shiny balls, door handles now :) I also tried to shoot videos simultaneously with 3 ~~cameras~~ phones with limited FOV, and tried stitching them together. Even when they are stitched badly, it has a good effect.

Lens and focal length

All the photographic equipment manufacturers use focal length for lenses, even on those that are targeted at consumers. With variety of sensor sizes, it doesn't seem to make sense at all. How does it matter to me, what is the focal length? Why cant they just mention the FOV instead? Focal length is an implementation detail, I am not interested in.

Might be continued

Will be continued, if more thoughts on fast-frame rate cameras that help creating super slow motion videos(which can be another nicety in marriage coverage), Light field cameras, 3D cameras and dreams of combining these together like 360°x360° Super slow motion 3D light field video will continue to occupy my mind...

Real hackweek, protected hackweek and long hackweek

2011-01-30T15:16:00.004+05:30

I have been using KVM a lot, but never took time to understand how kvm works. I used some time from this hackweek to get rid of that regret.

Virtual Machine eXtensions instructions allow trap-and-emulate virtualization. And KVM exposes VMX in a convenient way to userspace in Linux. Virtual Machine Monitors(VMM) like qemu-kvm use the KVM API exposed by linux to ~~emulate~~ virtualize software.

x86_64 processors boot in real-mode. In this mode it can use only 16-bit addresses, ie., upto 1MByte RAM. The execution would begin at physical address 0xFFFFFFF0. Then the software has to switch to protected mode where protection and paging is possible. Paging is optional, but almost all OSes use demand paging extensively. Now 4 GBytes of linear address space is used. And then CPU can be switched to long mode i.e., 64-bit mode. Paging should be disabled in 32-bit mode, before switching to long mode. There are also other modes of operation like virtual-8086 mode to allow executing legacy real-mode software from protected mode, SMM for OS transparent execution of OEM specific code.

I had limited time and very very limited skill at hand. So aiming for the sky was not an option. Hence wrote a very simple VMM that directly starts the guest at address 0H, in 32-bit protected mode with paging disabled. And supports only insb and outsb as the only form of interaction possible for the guest. The guest is a simple static linked 32-bit program that doesn't use any library, and linked to start from 0x0. The guest simply reads a byte using insb and sends byte+1 back via outsb. The guest would halt, when it gets the, "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything". The VMM reads the byte value to pass to the guest from stdin and prints its response in stdout.

The KVM API is really very easy to understand and use. But some knowledge of the processor was required to make use of it. Intel manuals helped there. I don't have good understanding of things yet, but something is better than nothing.

I was occupied by quite a lot of things in life and work in the recent past. So I wasn't really planning to participate and make this a real hackweek. Also a National holiday for Republic day of India, bang in the middle of the week prevents this hackweek from being a long hackweek! But seeing videos of my colleagues from various parts of world having fun, I couldn't resist and decided to go for the virtual hackweek. I thank my employer for giving me this protected hackweek, and let me learn/do things protected from everyday work.

Panorama

2010-11-29T11:55:00.006+05:30

Played with Hugin. It was fun.

Made using Canon A570 IS + Hugin on openSUSE.

Should try on some great places and outdoors.

I have a scrolling animation of the above image as a Google Gadget in my blog now.

தமிழில் க(ka/ga), ப(pa/ba), ட(ta/da), த(tha/dha) -Tamil contextual pronunciation?

2010-10-20T11:54:00.008+05:30

தமிழில் க(ka/ga/ha), ப(pa/ba), ட(ta/da), த(tha/dha)

Some of my friends believe that there is no "gha" in tamil and there is only "kha", only "pa" and no "bha", only "ta" and no "da", only "tha" and no "dha"

But I pronounce differently depending on the word/context

அகற முதல எழுத்தெல்லாம் ஆதி
பகவன் முதற்றே உலகு

aghara muthala yeluthellaam aadhi
bhaghavan muthatrey ulaghu

ஆம்பல் - aambhaல்
விருந்தோம்பல் - virunthombal
பலா - palaa
நிபுணர் - Nibhunar
கடலூர் - cuddalore
கட்டுமரம் - kattumaram

எது சரி ?

Wrong from illite"race"y

2010-08-04T12:08:00.008+05:30

"Right to education" act mandates all schools, including those elite ones, should admit 25% of students from its locality without any test or filtering. I think this is a very good move by Government of India.

But the schools and highly literate rich parents are not welcoming this. No one is denying them the rich the right to education. But they want to remain elite and are afraid of the poor.

http://expressbuzz.com/cities/bangalore/controversial-circular-decried/195084.html
http://www.mybangalore.com/article/0810/parents-in-bangalore-not-okay-with-rte-act.html
http://expressbuzz.com/cities/bangalore/parents-say-no-to-inclusive-classrooms/195349.html

Their concerns are
1. Quality of education will suffer.
2. Rich students will learn foul language from poor students.

They should think for a moment, how they felt when their kid was denied admission by a school, which is considered to be slightly better than the one, where their child is currently studying! Not getting admission there will not affect their kid by much. But imagine the difference, it could mean to the poor kid.

Class system by birth still remains. Just that it has become modernized. The rich wants to makes sure that the poor cannot get quality education or get richer. The ancient class system was not as bad as, this mindset of these literates! Gandhiji would be proud of you, intelligent Indians. Untouchability is a sin.

All poor and illiterates are not bad in character or lack mental ability. Not all rich and educated have the best of character with highest mental ability. One's character or intelligence has nothing to do with his economical status.

I firmly believe that if this gets implemented correctly, many of the toppers will be from the 25%. I wonder what is the opinion of "Youth for equality" on this issue. IMO this 25% reservation is not a reservation. But the 100% only rich and educated is the 100% reservation. I love RTE.

Hey Buddy

2010-07-28T15:16:00.000+05:30

Another draft from 3/1/08

In a chat room
x: Hey buddy
y: Dei, Now I have done laser da

x & y are Tamil people

buddy != புட்டி

i-pod

2010-07-28T15:08:00.003+05:30

உன்னை
பாடும், உன் ipod-ம்
உன் eye பாடும்
என பாடும்

LOL. It is funny to read this, which I had saved as draft on 24/7/09. Publishing Today. :)

Hackweek V

2010-06-13T16:38:00.013+05:30

I had been toying with the idea that, to split a file on my hard-disk, I have to read and write to a new file and then truncate the old file. But isn't it lots of unnecessary I/O. I already have all the data on disk. I should be able to change the meta-data alone and mark the file contents after some length as a different file.

So during this hackweek, I implemented 2 system calls on Linux, sys_split and sys_join. And added support for these calls to the FAT file-system. http://lkml.org/lkml/2010/6/9/200 With this patch one can split a file into 2 or join 2 files without doing much I/O!

Why FAT?
Normally creating a new file and then truncating a file approach, needs temporary free space as well. I once had a need to split files when there was no free space available. On advanced filesystems, sparse-file support(i.e., files with holes) helped. But FAT does not support sparse files. Also I wanted these to work on thumb drives which are mostly formatted as FAT32.

SLE11 SP1 release
This Hackweek was scheduled to follow the release of SLE11 SP1. And all the Bangalore employees, who worked for SLE11 SP1 were given a portable 160 hard-drive as a gift in the middle of hackweek. The transcend disk has a one-touch back up button, which works to sync selected folders, using a proprietary software available only on Windows. No support in Linux or Mac.

gnireenignE one-touch button

I thought, if the button press could be detected, I could use it to unmount the disk! So I set out to reverse engineer it. Usbmon + KVM + windows XP. Got the usbmon traces. I was expecting to see a simple Interrupt endpoint. But it was a bulk end-point only interface. And the software was continuously polling to get the button status. It was quite interesting to decipher the USBS and USBC's, but the SCSI/ATAPI payload had an unknown command DFh. And I assumed that by sending the command, if a button had been pressed in between, I would get a different value. And was trying hard for hours. But failed. Then took few more traces using Windows. Tried hard. When I almost gave up, I found couple of return bytes slightly different! Voila. The return value is different, only if the button is held down during the command. Now, I have a script to sync/unmount with a one-touch button! If you have this device, you can modify the script to do what ever you want it to do. Let your creativity flow freely.

English == UK || English==USA ?

2010-04-06T10:53:00.003+05:30

I know sometimes UK is called as English. For the first time, I saw US as being called as English. So Googlificially, by default, English is US English, not UK English. No wonder there are more people in USA, India, and Nigeria than in UK, who can speak English!

Who is Linux?

2010-04-05T09:23:00.005+05:30

Yesterday, I was bored in the afternoon and had a digital camera with me. I thought of making my own steadicam, but then when I saw the tux over my TV, this contest came to my mind. And the result is an entry to the competition.

I spent only few minutes. I think it is quiet OK, given its very low production value. I am not trying to win, but just like I send crappy patches to Linux and waste kernel developers time, I uploaded it to waste 43 seconds of your time.

Do you know Mahatma?

2010-03-30T11:47:00.000+05:30

The Indian 5 rupee coin comes in so many size/shape/design now-a-days.

And it is going to be a tough task to have automatic vending machines accept them. The picture has only few types of 5 Rupee coins, I had at a time. There are many more in circulation.

Till I saw one of the 5 rupee coin which had "MAHATMA BASAVESHWARA" inscribed on it, I assumed Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is the only Mahatma!

So who is this Mahatma Basaveshwara ? Are there any other people, who are called Mahatma? I found Jyotirao Phule.

Guess, now coins are released in memory of people, incident etc.. instead of stamps. Can you think of anything equivalent that could be done digitally? Or something is already in use?

Back from National Free Software Conference - 2010

2010-03-22T10:05:00.009+05:30

I, along with Chen, the Maintainer of Gnome Evolution project gave a talk in National Free Software Conference - 2010, Bangalore. Our talk was titled "Developing a Free software, Inside story"

I talked about who all are developing Linux Kernel, and how one can get started etc... Then Chen talked from his perspective. It was an inspiring speech, even I felt greatly motivated by him. He started with how he was excited, when he made changes to the software he used and showed it to his friends when he was new to open-source. Later he talked about Gnome and Evolution community. In the end he had lot of fans around him, and it took him nearly an hour to leave the hall after the talk!

Before our talk, we attended couple of talks. "Free Software Business Model – Software as a service" by someone from CGI. It was the usual corporate talk explaining CGI's business and then what is SaaS, PaaS, IaaS,... There was "Debate on Open Standards draft 2.4" by Venkatesh Hariharan, Policy Director, Red Hat and Prabir Purkayastha, Knowledge Commons. It was about Indian government's policies regarding mandating open standards and formats.

I came to know about this conference only 2 days ago for the first time. It was hosted by the Free Software Movement of Karnataka(FSMK), co-sponsored by Dept of IT Karnataka, Kerala IT Mission and Govt of West Bangal. The punch-line of the conference was "Free Software is the Future... The Future is ours..." I predict in future, Conferences won't provide network as everyone would have mobile Internet themselves. And this conference was ready for tomorrow already!

Weird binary!!

2010-03-20T14:59:00.006+05:30

I read about weird binary at Varun Kumar's blog (http://varunkumar-n.blogspot.com/2010/03/weird-binary.html)

Number system with base as –2 (minus two) is commonly referred to as “Weird Binary”. Like binary number system, weird binary also uses the binary symbols 0, 1. The bit positions in weird binary represent the powers of (-2). For example: 11001 in weird binary represents 9 in decimal system.

This number system reminds me a saying in Tamil regarding tough situations, "For every foot of climbing, Slipping 2 feet". ஜான் ஏறுனா மொழம் சறுக்குது .

So How to convert from decimal to weird-binary(base minus 2)?

But I didn't want to check-out others solutions to the problem, before trying it myself. I wanted to find a pen and paper way to calculate it, similar to the one we use to convert from decimal to binary. And found it interesting!

Just at every alternate step, instead of going for the maximum multiple of 2 less than previous balance, find the minimum multiple of 2, greater than previous balance.
IOW, at alternate steps, if the remainder was 1, add 1 to next balance(quotient).

Weird-binary can be used to represent negative numbers without any special sign-bit. But I still couldn't think of any use for this negative two base system. Can you? Is it being used anywhere?

Unclear advertisements...

2010-03-15T07:55:00.004+05:30

There are so many advertisements for TVs and DTH services on TV! In many of them, they show a blurry picture, and then as a TV frame crosses the screen, the picture inside the frame is shown with crystal clear clarity. It simply means that the TV + service, I currently have is already delivering such quality picture ?!

Or do they mean that, the picture via there products is more clear than, even watching it directly? Then all the TV production teams should buy there TV and first get the picture on it, then shoot that picture and tele-cast it. ;-)

I understand advertising for TVs via TVs do help. And today, we go for multiple-TVs + multiple service providers. This is just a joak.

Green fridge

2010-03-10T10:45:00.004+05:30

An idea to save power.

Why not have a split-refrigerator similar to split a/c?
Wouldn't fridges releasing the heat inside an air-conditioned(cooling, not heating) room would make it hard for the a/c? Or does keeping the fridge inside the a/c room reduces the power used by fridge?

Any way I don't live in an air-conditioned apartment and I believe energy can neither be created nor destroyed. But my fridge heats my apartment, which I don't like during summer. I would like it to dissipate heat outside my apartment. But during winder it can continue to serve as a room-heater.

33% Ladies and 0% gentlemen

2010-03-10T09:56:00.003+05:30

33% reservation for women. Will there be a rule to have a women PM/CM for 33% of time per-term? If it is OK to force a women representative for a constitution for a term, this should also be implemented.

At least we should implement 33% reservation for men as well, even though it is not needed right now, to maintain equality and avoid problems in the future. Also it would help hiding the gender based discrimination of law.

One solution could be the one in my school. One male representative and one female representative per constitution.

I can foresee a future protest by Eunuchs for reservation. It would be better if we can implement it now itself. Also I would like to know the basis for this particular 33%, why not 34%?

சிங்கம் stoolலதான் நிக்கும்

2010-03-09T14:18:00.005+05:30

சிங்கம் படத்துல சூர்யா அனுஷ்காவுக்கு ஜோடியா நடிக்கிறாராம். ஒயரம் கம்மின்னு Stool-ல நின்னு நடிக்கிறாராம். தில்லா உயரம் கம்மியான Hero-வாவே காட்டி படம் எடுங்கய்யா. நம்ம சச்சின் டெண்டுல்கரே, அஞ்சலி டெண்டுல்கரவிட உயரம் கம்மிதான்

What these advertisement mean to me

2010-03-08T17:34:00.008+05:30

HDFC ATM
A guy parks his car in no-parking. Before the cops could tie his car to towing truck, he gets back in the driver seat.
Probable intended meaning: No crowds at ATM, and very fast service
I understood: ATM's without parking facility and no customers except law-breaking stupids

Ashirwad Atta
A young daughter of the family is too fast and active doing like stealing chappathi's, removing clothes from the drying line, when it rains before her mother could.
Intended meaning: Ashirwad atta keeps the girl healthy and energetic
Conveyed meaning: Everyone else, who also eat the same atta are dull and lethargic.

Did you ever had such interesting mis-interpretations?

விண்ணை தாண்டி வருவாயா

2010-03-04T11:13:00.002+05:30

கடந்த வார இறுதியில் (வாரநாட்கள் அல்லாத மற்ற நாட்களை தமிழில் எப்படி கூறுவது?) "விண்ணை தாண்டி வருவாயா" படத்தை சென்னை சாந்தம் திரையரங்கில் பார்த்தேன்.

ஏ ஆர் ரஹ்மான் ஏமாற்றி விட்டார் என்றே தோன்றுகிறது. படத்தில் ஒரு கட்டத்தில் அவரது பழைய பாடலான "முஸ்த(அக்கு)பா முஸ்த(அக்கு)பா" பாடல் வரும்பொழுது அவரது இசை-யில் உள்ள இறக்கம் தெளிவாகிறது. அவரது பழைய பாடல்களில் உள்ள வித்தை(மேஜிக்) இப்பொழுது குறைந்துவிட்டதாக உணர்ந்தேன். அல்லது எனக்கு வயதாகிவிட்டது(அவருக்கும்தானே).

கௌதம் மேனன் "வேட்டையாடு விளையாடு" திரைபடத்தில் போட்டதை போல, "Another episode in a young mans pursuit of love" என போட்டு இருக்கலாம். "வேட்டையாடு விளையாடு" திரைப்படம் "காக்க காக்க" திரைபடத்தை நினைவூட்டுவதை போல, இப்படம் வாரணம் ஆயிரம் படத்தினை நினைவூட்டுகிறது.

படத்தின் உச்ச கட்ட காட்சிகள் பிடித்தது. ஆனால் படம் எப்பொழுது முடிவடையும் என ஏங்க வைத்து விட்டது. படத்தினை ஒரு அரை மணிநேரம் குறைவாக வரும் வகையில் எடுத்திருக்கலாம்.

படத்தின் முடிவில் ஒரு கதாபாத்திரம் "..நான் சாந்தம் தியேட்டருக்கு போறேன்.." என கூறுவது பிடித்தது! ஒவ்வொரு திரை அரங்கிலும் அந்த அரங்கத்தின் பெயர் வருமாறு செய்திருகிறார்களா என தெரியவில்லை!

நன்றி

2010-02-08T17:52:00.002+05:30

மாதமிருமுறை முதல்வருக்கு பாராட்டு விழா எடுத்து, சன் டிவி மற்றும் கலைஞர் டிவிக்கு ப்ரோக்ராம் செய்து தரும் அனைவருக்கும் நன்றி.

save what?

2010-02-08T15:56:00.006+05:30

World always admires great marketing shows, and we need at least one of them to be at prime, always. Of late it was the fruit seller's job to amuse the crowd. His show has made people go nuts and buy whatever he sells for a premium. But his last show missed his magic. I guess, if he had continued for some more time, people might have even booed at him. Looks like he has aged and we need a new face.

Last years NaN I/O show had an amazing presentation that created a tsunami(beta). But the buzz could not keep up. A key difference between the fruit buzz and the spider's buzz is that, those who were blindfolded by the fruit seller had committed by purchasing the crap and so they continue to cheat themselves and others by spreading good things about the iFruits. But those were caught on the spiders net were not really trapped yet and wont look like fools by admitting that the tsunami(beta) is indeed crap. But initially spider's signature idea of making one feel privileged and proud to have access to tsunami(beta) was quiet a success.

When sellers run-out of ways to excite the crowd, to sell their crap, they try to capitalize on patriotism, morality etc.. IOW attack our low EQ. They would help us save the mars, the jupiter, the sun, the ant, the rat, etc.. so that one can feel proud buying their crap. As many of them are already helping us to paint the earth pink or whatever color we like, one is unable to kindle the excitement with that anymore.

But recently a little known, once locally popular, watermolecule is able to make use of us to advertise for them, by igniting our feeling to save our cat and in process pride of our nation. Most of us don't even know that the no of cats left quoted by watermolecule is from an estimate from 2008. And by signing and repurring their message we feel that we can save the cat, but in the process we are just working for free for watermolecule. Todays educated people, like us think, that we can boil the ocean by writing "FIRE" on our amateurfile picture and sharing it on the ass-book.

I really wonder what needs to be done to make us non-idiots and not to fall for these tricks. Formal education and experiencing many successful nations is not enough, it seems. But I do admire those on the biz, who are able to come up with ways to exploit us. If you have read till this line, I think you surely are one of those who is likely to fall prey to such marketeers. BTW this post just for fun and may not reflect even my opinion.

GWUN

2009-10-27T10:29:00.016+05:30

2030 AD. For the GWUN project sponsored by UN, 8700000 instances of the distributed GWUN clients are running busily on Linux Servers.

The global warming has already had a huge effect on the earth. And it seemed to be getting worse in the last 2 years. The poles were melting, sea-level rose, many countries have sub-merged in the sea and the life on earth was fast reducing.

The goal of the GWUN project is to compute the top reasons for global warming and the ways to protect life on earth. The scientists were eager to know the results. The situation was getting worser by the day. Huge corporations around the world sponsored more nodes for the project to speed it up. After busily computing for 27 months, the results were ready.

GWUN result: GWUN project machines were hosted at the Poles, to reduce the power consumption required for cooling those machines. Reducing power consumption was considered as a key factor to prevent global warming. But that released heat directly in the polar region of the earth. If the same amount of heat was released in an already warmer place, the earth's atmosphere would have managed to release/absorb the energy and the polar ice wouldn't have melted.

Beware of Glogle warming. Unknown preventive measures could be the real culprits.

13 steps

2009-08-24T09:59:00.004+05:30

I was using the stair-case instead of lift, whenever possible, in my office, for the past couple of weeks. I park my motorcycle in 0th floor and my office is in 6th floor. Each floor has 2 stretches of 13-steps each. Even though there are even number of steps(26) between 2 floors, it was split in to two stretches of odd number of steps(13).

The problem with odd -number of steps is that, if you don't watch your step, you would make the first step with your dominant leg(say right leg) at each stretch by one-step more than the other leg. That would burden that leg by 1-step at each stretch. There are 12 -stretches to the 6th floor. so 12 -steps more than the other leg. This can create an imbalance and knee problems! Does Vaasthu take care of these stuff?

ஆயிரத்தில் ஒருவன்

2009-08-24T08:39:00.003+05:30

2009AD. இந்தியாவிலிருந்து ஐ.நா வின் கப்பலில் ஆயிரம் பேர் இலங்கையில் நிவாரண பணிகள் செய்வதற்காக செல்கின்றனர். அதில் கார்த்தி ஒருவன். கார்த்தி விஞ்ஞானி. ஆண்ட்ரியா ஒரு மருத்துவர். ரீமா சென் ஒரு பாதுகாப்பு அதிகாரி. ஆனால் வழியில் சுனாமி தாக்குகிறது. இவர்கள் மூன்று பேர் மட்டும் யாரும் இல்லாத தீவில் கரை ஒதுங்குகின்றனர்.

அங்கே இயற்கையில் உருவான டைம்-வார்ப்(Time-warp) பாறை ஒன்று உள்ளது. அதில் உள்ளே நுழைந்து அடுத்த பக்கம் வந்து பார்த்தால் காலம் கீ.பீ 209ஆம் ஆண்டில் சோழ மன்னனுக்கும்(பார்த்திபன்) ஒரு ராணிக்கும் இடையே போர் நடந்து கொண்டிருக்கிறது. இவர்கள் ஒளிந்திருந்து கவனிகின்றனர். போரில் தோற்கும் பார்த்திபன் மற்றும் அவரது 17 வீரர்கள் சிறை-இல அடைக்கப்படுகின்றனர். கார்த்தி அவர்களை காப்பாற்றி மீண்டும் அந்த டைம்-வார்ப் பாறையில் புகுந்து இக்காலத்திற்கு(2007 AD) திரும்புகின்றனர். மறுபடியும் இலங்கைக்கு அருகே உள்ள தீவில் திரிகின்றனர். அப்போது புலிகள் பயன்படுத்திய ஆயுத கிடங்கு ஒன்றை கண்டு பிடிக்கின்றனர். அவற்றை எடுத்து கொண்டு பார்த்திபன் மற்றும் 17 வீரர்கள் மீண்டும் கீ.பீ 208 செல்கின்றனர். இப்பொழுது மாடர்ன் weapon-களை கொண்டு போரை சுலபமாக வெல்கின்றனர். இதனை பார்த்துவிட்டு கார்த்தி/ரீமா/ஆண்ட்ரியா மீண்டும் தற்காலத்திற்கு(2008AD) வருகின்றனர். வந்து பார்த்தால்...

இந்தியா உலகின் மிகபெரிய வல்லரசாக இருக்கிறது. இப்பொழுது நாம் பார்ப்பதை விட அறிவியல் மிகவும் முன்னேற்றம் அடைந்து இருக்கிறது! அமெரிக்காவில் லியோ-நார்டோ டி காப்ரியோ எனும் நடிகன் "10 incarnations " எனும் லோக்கல் மொழி படத்தில் நமது அதிபர் மன்மோகன் சிங்க் மாதிரி ஒரு ரோல் செய்கிறார். அமெரிக்காவில் உள்ள ஏழை மாணவர்கள், இந்தியாவிற்கு on-site வர துடித்து கொண்டு இருக்கின்றனர். office-க்கு, வேட்டி-துண்டுடன் formals-ல்தான் வர வேண்டுமா என இந்தியன்-embassy-il கேட்டு கொண்டு நிற்கின்றனர்.

மீண்டும் கார்த்தி அந்த டைம்-வார்ப் பாறைக்கு திரும்புகிறார். அதிலிருந்து வரும் காற்றின் கார்பன் வெளியீட்டை அளவிட்டு, future-க்கு செல்ல எந்த திசையில் செல்ல வேண்டும் என கணிக்கிறார். செல்கிறார். (முற்றும். கற்பனை: Nikanth, Sankarlal)

ullae-veliyae: Live graphs for I/O, CPU...

2009-07-27T11:15:00.003+05:30

Wrote a small utility to print live graphs of I/O per-process. Find more information here. As a bonus added graphs for CPU as well.

RPM can be found here: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home://nikanth/openSUSE_11.1/noarch/

Atomic git

2009-07-08T14:46:00.002+05:30

As I wrote in git-pull-mishap-and-git-clean, the problem with git is that, operations are non-atomic. For example, if a git-pull is interrupted, or fails due to lack of disk space or network problem, the resulting repository will be in an in between state. This is problematic. It would be nice if git operations are atomic, in this sense.

A solution could be to have the git repository inside another git repository. For example, have the linux-2.6.git repo inside another git repo, say git-o-git. When you do a pull in linux-2.6.git, and if it succeeds do a `git commit -a` in the outer git-o-git. If it fails for some reason, one can go back to previous version of linux-2.6.git repo by doing a `git clean -d -f` and `git checkout -f` in the outer git-o-git.

It should be possible to add wrapper scripts to `git` and do this auto magically. May be it could be called as git WC, as it is built on top of git porcelain, which is built on top of git plumbing commands. ;-)

Has anyone tried this already?

GIT pull mishap and git clean

2009-07-08T11:11:00.003+05:30

When I was doing a `git pull` from a remote repo, I ran out of disk space, which resulted in errors like

Updating ce8a742..faf80d6
error: git checkout-index: unable to write file drivers/usb/gadget/s3c-hsotg.c
error: git checkout-index: unable to write file drivers/usb/gadget/u_audio.c
error: git checkout-index: unable to write file drivers/usb/gadget/u_audio.h

Freed some disk space and re-ran the `git-pull`. But it failed saying

$ git pull
Updating ce8a742..faf80d6
error: Untracked working tree file 'Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci-devices-cciss' would be overwritten by merge.

Some of the files were created by the previous pull, but they are considered untracked files as the previous pull failed. `git pull -f` didnt help as git was reluctant to delete my untracked files.

Deleting huge list of files one by one was a pain. I was thinking of doing a git status to get the list of untracked files and deleting them. But Jony rescued me by telling me about `git clean` which can delete all the untracked files!

But I would really like to see a way to pull/checkout and over-write the untracked files, so that other untracked files, which will not be over-written, need not be deleted. Is there a way to do it?

White ignored in India?

2009-06-17T10:57:00.000+05:30

Four coloured tri-colour flag. (நான்கு வண்ண மூவர்ணக்கொடி)

Is it because white is not considered as a colour?

No. The wheel is not considered!

It is composed of three colours with a meaning and a navy-blue wheel in the center. Mexico and Croatia also have tri-colour flags with more than 3 colours! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricolour

Cloning multiple git repos

2009-05-13T11:43:00.007+05:30

Many of the maintainers of linux-kernel maintain a git repository. I usually have clones of various such repositories.

For example I have clones of
Linus Torvalds's repo:
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git
Block Maintainer, Jens Axboe's repo:
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/axboe/linux-2.6-block.git
...

If I do individual clones of all these repositories, it downloads and maintains duplicate copies of same objects wasting disk space, and network bandwidth.
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/axboe/linux-2.6-block.git

So I was looking for a way to share the common objects so that duplicate objects wont waste disk and network. And no surprise, git has a way to do that. Just that I was unaware of a simple option, "--reference".
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git
git clone --reference linux-2.6/ git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/axboe/linux-2.6-block.git

Difference between cloning Jens' git with and without --reference to Linus's git.

# git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/axboe/linux-2.6-block.git
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/knikanth/labs-sw/linus/linux-2.6-block/.git/
remote: Counting objects: 1180249, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (295444/295444), done.
remote: Total 1180249 (delta 984716), reused 1073684 (delta 878311)
Receiving objects: 100% (1180249/1180249), 289.32 MiB | 496 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (984716/984716), done.
Checking out files: 100% (27842/27842), done.
# du -sh linux-2.6-block/
714M linux-2.6-block/

# git clone --reference linux-2.6/ git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/axboe/linux-2.6-block.git
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/knikanth/labs-sw/linus/linux-2.6-block/.git/
remote: Counting objects: 111061, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (19021/19021), done.
remote: Total 100463 (delta 84138), reused 95679 (delta 79959)
Receiving objects: 100% (100463/100463), 23.21 MiB | 1209 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (84138/84138), completed with 8189 local objects.
Checking out files: 100% (27842/27842), done.
# du -sh linux-2.6-block/
468M linux-2.6-block/

--reference automatically sets up .git/objects/info/alternates to obtain objects from the reference repository. Now I wonder whether it is possible to have circular references, multiple references, etc.. The plural file name, "alternates" suggests it should be possible, but "git clone" ignores multiple --reference on the command line!

BTW git uses SHA-1 digests to identify objects. I wonder what is the chance of a SHA-1 collision and how git handles it? The SHA-1 digest has 40 Hex-digits == 160 bits.. So at most, only 2¹⁶⁰ objects are possible. :-)

Mother's day story

2009-05-10T19:43:00.005+05:30

The story that disturbs me the most.

A monkey and its baby were caught in flood. The mother held its baby above the water level. Slowly the water level raised. Knee level, hip, chest, throat.. the monkey dropped its baby in the water and stood on top of it.

Thats why they are called monkeys.

தமிழ் புத்தாண்டு நல்வாழ்த்துக்கள்

2009-04-14T09:47:00.001+05:30

இந்த வருடம் முதல் தை முதல் தேதிதான் தமிழ் புத்தாண்டு. - வரலாற்றில் இடம் பெற துடிக்கும் கருணாநிதி

ஆனால் சித்திரை முதல் நாளும் அரசு விடுமுறை உண்டு. - வருடபிறப்பை மாற்றியது மக்களுக்கு தெரியாமல் அவர்களை பாதிக்காமல் பார்த்துக்கொள்ளும் கருணாநிதி

"சித்திரை முதல் நாள் சிறப்பு நிகழ்ச்சிகள்". - வருவாயை இழக்க விரும்பாத கலைஞர் தொலைக்காட்சி.

சன் டிவி: இரண்டு நாட்களுக்கு முன், "தமிழ் புத்தாண்டு சிறப்பு நிகழ்ச்சிகள்...". இன்று, "சன் தொலைக்காட்சி ஆண்டு விழா சிறப்பு நிகழ்ச்சிகள்..."

ஒவ்வொரு செயலுக்கும் பலன் உண்டு - நியுட்டனின் மூன்றாம் விதி

2009-04-13T12:06:00.005+05:30

ஒவ்வொரு செயலுக்கும் பலன் உண்டு

நம்மில் பலர் நாம் ஒரு விஷயம் நடந்தால் நன்றாக இருக்கும் என நினைத்தாலும், அது நடக்காது என நினைத்து நமக்கு பிடிக்காத விஷயங்களுக்கு துணை போய் கொண்டு இருக்கிறோம்.

உதாரணத்துக்கு தேர்தலில் நமக்கு ஒரு சுயேச்சை வேட்பாளரை பிடித்து இருந்தாலும் அவர் வெற்றிபெற வாய்பே இல்லை என நாமே தவறாக முடிவு செய்து, நாம் அவருக்கு வாக்களிப்பது வீண் எனவும் முடிவு செய்து, நமக்கு பிடிகாதவராய் இருப்பினும், வெற்றி வாய்ப்பு அதிகம் என நினைக்கும் நபர்களில் நமக்கு ஓரளவுக்கு பிடித்த அல்லது பிடிகாதவர்களிலேயே ஓரளவுக்கு பரவாயில்லை என நினைக்கும் நபருக்கு வாக்களிக்கிறோம். இல்லை வாக்களிகாமலேயே இருந்து விடுகிறோம். இதனால் உண்மையில் நாம் விரும்பிய சுயேட்சையே பலருக்கு பிடித்தவராக இருப்பினும் அவர் நமது பிரதிநிதியாக தேர்ந்தெடுக்கப்பட வாய்பே இல்லாமல் போய்விடுகிறது.

இத்தகைய தவறினை நாம் உடனடியாக நிறுத்த வேண்டும். அவர் இந்த தேர்தலில் வெற்றி பெற முடியாமல் போனாலும் அவர் பெரும் சில வாக்குகள் இவ்வாறு வெற்றி பெற வாய்ப்பில்லை என நினைத்து வேறு நபர்களுக்கு வாக்களித்தவர்கள் அடுத்த தேர்தலிலாவுது திருத்திக்கொள்ள உதவும். இந்த தேர்தலில் வெற்றிபெறாவிட்டாலும் அடுத்த தேர்தலில் அவர் வெற்றி பெற உதவும்.

எனவே தயவு செய்து உங்களுக்கு பிடித்தவர்களுக்கு வாக்களியுங்கள். வாக்களியுங்கள்.

Type checking macros

2009-04-01T10:17:00.008+05:30

#define to_cpumask(bitmap)                                              \
     ((struct cpumask *)(1 ? (bitmap)                                \
                         : (void *)sizeof(__check_is_bitmap(bitmap))))
static inline int __check_is_bitmap(const unsigned long *bitmap)
{
     return 1;
}


The above macro is nothing but just
#define to_cpumask(bitmap) (struct cpumask *)(bitmap)

But it also does a compile-time checking that the parameter passed is of type
(const unsigned long *). If it is defined as an function all these ugly magic is not
needed. But a function cannot be used as a static initializer. Try declaring a variable,
static int a = printf("ok");
and one would get an error, "Initializer element is not constant".

I really wonder whether gcc might one day optimize out your type-checking call to the unused
function in tha above macro?! A solution could be providing an official gcc extension to assert types?!
Also the above code compiles fine without sizeof constification as well i.e., just return a void * from the
__check_is_bitmap() and remove the sizeof and casting.

I found the above code in the linux kernel. See http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/3/25/22
for the discussion. Even the ubiquitous printf, printk or any vararg code does not check for types. So
I wonder whether kernel developers need such tricky^Wugly code just for type checking, given that
the callers would likely read the definition of the macro as well. It is not a closed api.

Any other project uses such type-checking macros?

Leanux - Running Linux on FAT just for fun

2009-03-10T12:08:00.021+05:30

Most of the flash devices assume that fat is the only file-system. And there are plenty of electronic devices that run linux on fat. So just to know what it is to run linux on vfat, I tried it myself.

The openSUSE 11.1 installer wont allow you to partition the root as vfat. So I made 2 partitions, one ext3 and one vfat. Installed on ext3. Copied the whole partition to fat. I copied original files in place of symbolic links. Added vfat filesystem module to initrd . Modified grub boot from the fat partition with init=/bin/bash.

FAT's lack of support for posix file-permissions. was easy to overcome by mounting with all permissions to everyone, without users or noexec. It doesn't support symlinks, and special files. mknod will fail. But /dev is a tmpfs and it just copies the persistent files from /dev to the tmpfs on boot, instead of copying I created fresh device files in tmpfs. `mount` failed trying lock the file /etc/mtab. Mounting with -n worked. I guess plenty of things would fail if I try to run a proper desktop on FAT as it is.

I booted only to /bin/bash. When I tried doing a "exec init 1", it complained something like cannot remove /var/run/do_confirm. I didn't proceed further. This was a fun way to kill time while getting some insight of the booting process.

Perceived Code-base quality

2009-03-03T14:12:00.019+05:30

Recently one of my friend was re-orged from a open-source product to a proprietary project. He was complaining about the quality of the code-base, especially about using hard-coded paths and the likes.

I have also worked on different code-bases of different quality. And I feel that not being very confident about the quality helps at times. For example, say if you work on Linux Kernel and believe that the kernel code is of highest quality. When a bug is filed, you won't be confident of finding the bug in the kernel code. So one would look elsewhere like the setup or other layers or the application or wont even trust the bug-submitter.

Wouldn't a bug-hunter be happy and confident if he believes that there are lots of bugs in the code-forest to be hunted. But at the same time, if one is planning to do agriculture(more code changes, features, clean-ups etc...) in the same code-forest, one would be worried that his crops may be destroyed by some of those bugs lurking out there. But a software engineer should be a farmer who enjoys hunting as well.

Farmer + Hunter+... == Software Engineer. Happy code farming^Wcoding and bug-hunting.

p.s: Yes it is easy to hunt that single bug if the code-base is clean. But a bad code-base could be a nightmare for the hunter. He would be hunting various other bugs in search of one. But don't you like the thrill?

Linux Nikanth News (2)

2009-02-19T13:49:00.006+05:30

After I posted Linux Nikanth News, the next LWN weekly edition's kernel page has Andrew Mortans reply to me as part of the Quotes of the week.

I was at the receiving end from the master for not writing good patch description. And I do not seem to have learned from it! :(

p.s: Earlier by mistake all of my posts were syndicated in planetsuse. Now it has been changed to aggregate posts with a specific label. Hopefully this post wont show up anywhere else other than in my blog. If you are seeing this elsewhere, please leave a comment.

Latest and greatest(untested)?!

2009-02-16T12:37:00.008+05:30

Linus released

2.6.24 on January 24th 2008,
2.6.26 on July 13th, 2008, and
2.6.27 on October 9 2008

Here is when it reached the users

Gentoo 2008.0 released on July 6, 2008 has linux 2.6.24 which was ~5.5 months old.

Ubuntu 8.10 released on October 30th, 2008 has 2.6.27 which was ~0.6 months old.

Fedora 10 released on 25 November 2008 has 2.6.27 which was ~1.5 months old.

Opensuse 11.1 released on December 18th, 2008, has 2.6.27 wihch was roughly ~2.3 months old.

Debian 5.0 released on February 14th, 2009 has 2.6.26 which was roughly ~7 months old.

Distros used by power-users seems to be always running slightly older version compared to the distros aimed at the layman! Yeah, but power users^Wdevelopers use the unstable/development/factory/head version of their favourite distro and not the released stable. But Ubuntu stable(!) is based on debian unstable! And debian stable is so outdated. opensuse seems to be quiet the latest but not straight from the unstable development snapshot.

p.s: I use only opensuse regularly among these distros. So any mis-information and bias is likely. ;)

Linux Nikanth News

2009-02-11T14:25:00.004+05:30

I do not post many things related to computer science or what I do. So just to update some of my friends here are couple of LWN articles where I was mentioned.

I was mentioned for kreplace - hotpatching running kernel in Nov 24. And recently for the cgroup based oom killer controller Also note that both the projects were not merged in the Linus tree, at least not yet. ksplice is superior to kreplace and it seems to be on its way for inclusion, and user-space notification seems to be the preferred approach of oom killer control.

/me plans to blog more tech stuff soon

War for wealth

2009-02-10T14:07:00.003+05:30

Back then kings sacrificed lives for wealth in the name of war... The war for wealth continues... powerless front-line soldiers...

A stitch in time saves nine, but is it time? stitches before time reduces the value and beauty of the cloth... hmm.. it doesn't! As the current fad is to wear clothes full of stitches! The share-holders are asking for it :(

Maths, Physics, Chemistry doubts

2009-02-06T11:50:00.009+05:30

There was a fire-emergency drill yesterday in my office and now I have a doubt, "What is the coldest possible flame? And how much heat does it produce and its temperature?" The flame froma welding equipment is definitely hotter than the flame from candle, So how to have a 1 square inch of visible flame with least amount of energy released. Will it be the material that can be ignited at a lowest temperature? hmm may be the material the material that would continue to burn in the lowest temperature... so what it is? How much is the temp?
My roommate plays with Rubik cube a lot. And I saw an application that solves the rubik cube for your inputs. My question is what is the minimum no of faces required as input out of the total (9 x 6) 54 faces? Does the number change based on which faces?
What is the largest number possible with two 9s? A question on a poster in my office.

9^9 (But isnt using operator allowed? But exponent can be written without operators as superscript i.e., 9⁹)

9!^9!(But if you allow unary operators, I do not even need a second 9, i.e., ((9!)!)... == 9!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think 99 could be the answer without any opertators, but I would say it is a number with base-googol or may be base-infinity ;) [In base-infinity 99 would mean 9*infinity+9]

Please tell me whatever you think could be the answer.

dot dot dot...

2009-02-02T10:46:00.011+05:30

Some random thoughts... don't think logically and connect them.

Killing oneself is a crime.
Protesting in public without permission and disturbing the public is a crime.
Giving money is either a form of encouragement and acknowledging one's good work. Or it can be an aid, in case some one was unluckily affected, not due to a mistake of his own, but say by a natural calamity.
M Karunanidhi gives 2 Lakh INR from people's money, to the person who committed suicide in front of a Government office to protest an issue in our neighboring country.
Several other people are trying to commit suicide after the first one successfully killed himself to show their protest for war in Srilanka.
Tamil Srilankans in Jafna are protesting against LTTE, not their Government.
Connect the dots is a kid's fun way to learn drawing, where they connect the dots to get the whole picture. Adults do not usually enjoy them.

Bad ECOnomy

2009-01-30T12:12:00.003+05:30

One of my friend was making a comment that, "I am buying a motorcycle when many people are getting pink slips.." Jokingly I commented, "It is said that, not spending during a bad economy would worsen the situation, and people should spend, which would make businesses prosper and economy would get better"

But this made me think about the prevalence of the pink-slip fear. I know some of my friends who are afraid of being laid-off and hence they work 24 hours doing almost 2+ person work a day, to make them valuable for the company. But the net effect is everyone does 2 people's work and the management would find that only half the number of people are enough. So they would cut the workforce!!! And most of the people who worked like a donkey to shield themselves from lay-off, would be laid-off...

Moral of the story: Prevention is better than cure, but make sure your prevention measures cannot be multiplied by a negative number.

Dropped 60000 INR on road

2009-01-28T10:57:00.005+05:30

And it is taking me places. Honda CBF Stunner

carom: one-sided game

2009-01-27T14:02:00.004+05:30

One-sided game could mean something different in some games! In carom, it could mean that all the coins are all in one side of the board!

And yes, one-sided games in carom have high probability of becoming one-sided games! :)

oneway - ஒரு வழிப்பாதை

2009-01-26T14:18:00.003+05:30

one - ஒரு
way - வழி
way - பாதை

??

way = வழி
way = direction, path
வழி != direction

way = திசை
ஒரு திசை பாதை ?

?!

hmmm may be
இரு வழிப்பாதை = 2 -lane road
ஒரு வழிப்பாதை = single lane road??

Marriage ceremony

2009-01-26T14:16:00.004+05:30

அந்த நாள் வரை யார் காலிலும் விழாதவர்களை, மாற்றி மாற்றி பலர் காலில் விழ செய்து... No one is independent என உணர்த்தும் நாள்

---
This was written on 26th Jan 2009, but was not published. It is still interesting after 10 months for me, when I read it today.

Thinking about CEOs thought processes

2009-01-09T16:39:00.003+05:30

Just wondering whether CEOs think differently?

openSUSE 11.1 is Out - Novell Bangalore Release Party

2008-12-22T10:19:00.003+05:30

Gmail Bug

2008-12-12T17:33:00.002+05:30

Workout that worked out

2008-11-26T17:09:00.003+05:30

I have been toying around with this idea of gathering disk access patterns and using device mapper to fool the filesystem to improve I/O performance. And did try this idea out in a limited fashion. I did a workout session to improve upon this work in foss.in. Despite a cricket match being scheduled on that day, people did turn up. We discussed, hacked together and made friends, which was fun. It was cool to see some well-known kernel hackers turn up for the session and were actively involved. And I also should thank some of colleagues who also participated and helped me through out the session.

We improved the performance, found bugs... it was cool. Now really looking forward for the upcoming much more interesting sessions especially the Linux Kernel Hackers Gathering and the Linux Kernel Workout. You can see the plan and results in the links. Thanks for whoever attended the session and the organizers.

Invention versus discovery

2008-11-20T17:57:00.003+05:30

When I was a kid ( I am not a kid ), I used to think there is little value for discoveries as it is just unraveling what was already present and had a fascination for inventions. But of late, I feel that understanding the behavior or properties of everything is the root knowledge and inventions are just few applications of that knowledge.

p.s: Side-effect of reading "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. Do not worry, if my thoughts are wrong or rude, it keeps changing.

Advt - acting or interview?

2008-11-12T21:06:00.005+05:30

There is an advertisement for Tata Indicom featuring Soundarya Rajnikanth where she says that she though being an actor's daughter, she pursued her dreams and works behind the scenes rather than becoming an actor following her father. But if this appearance on advertisement is considered as acting it becomes a lie (lies are not bad here as it is just acting). Or should it be considered as an interview. To me her "acting" was not up to the mark ;(

Different Era

2008-11-05T21:29:00.003+05:30

Feels bad to see my childhood photographs in B/W. Am I from a different era?

Dont stop the evolution

2008-11-05T16:27:00.004+05:30

I was chatting with my friend and the conversation was about evolution of mankind and survival of the fittest. The point was that, now-a-days even the not so fit or unfit people are also able to survive because of advancement of science(which has other effects like over population as well). To continue to evolve we should let the life to be challenging, so we should try to make the holes in the ozone layer bigger and not try to prevent it. ;-) That would make us evolve in to a creature which wont be affected by UV rays...

Letter from a software engineer to his boss who is a computer literate

2008-10-07T19:56:00.007+05:30

I am no car mechanic
The Volkswagen beetle is popularly known as bug. But there is a very big difference between fixing the car and S/W. All the bug cars have a fixed/same design. So it is like, we have the fixed/bug-free code in hand, and there is a copy of modified/buggy car. The mechanic needs to find the diff and patch which is quiet mechanical compared to fixing S/W. S/W is like making each and every car with a different design, engine etc.. (It is because they do different things as opposed to cars which do the same thing). It is like different vehicles but way more in no(infinite to be precise) than flights, ships, cars, sub-marines, hower- crafts etc... put together. Then fixing it is find the flaw of the original itself. This needs skill.

I am not changing tyres
Buying a new tyre is may not be cheaper but easier than fixing the old one. Fixing bugs is not like changing flat tyres. Fixing bugs especially in source that you didn't code can be a very hard problem. It is impossible to generalize difficulty in solving bugs or adding features. So do not measure the work done by counting the number of features added or number of bugs fixed.

Train is not a type of car
Size matters but not the way it is used. Some bug fix might require just adding one char say making "<" as "<=". But the complexity might be more depending on the size of the project, reproducibility etc... That changing a smaller wheel of a train engine might be harder than changing a bigger F1 car's wheel. I think LOC of the whole project being fixed is more relevant than LOC changed.

I am also a manager
You should know how hard(!) it is to manage multiple people. But managing multiple headless people is even more difficult. Parallelism with shared data in s/w is a beast. If there are 3 people with 3 jobs, say Aswath has to dig, Billa has to drop the seed and Chiru fills the hole with sand. Managing people is easy because they learn and adapt. But software, if there is a race, Chiru might fill the hole before Billa plants the seed or even worse try to fill the hole that is not yet dug. IOW, the programmer has to think for all these people, but you manage people who can not only think for himself but for many others as well. But yes I manage people who are obedient ;) - but I do not ask them to do what they can't.

Not all tennis players are champions
Teaching Sania Mirza to get an ace against Sharapova is difficult than making her serve right without hitting the net or out. Usually performance issues are hard which you don't count at all as they are neither bugs nor features :(

Let us make Abhinav Bindhra captain of the Indian Cricket Team
Yes, you read it correctly. That is what most of the Indian-American software companies do. People from different game tries to be a captain of a very different team game. For a team to do reasonably well, the captain needs to be an expert in the same game. There are some games where the captain can be a non playing captain, but still the team would need an expert with great knowledge of the game. The games board can be run by some sports people need not from the same sport. But still sports people. As the level goes up, the need low-level knowledge fade. Remember, baseball is still different from Cricket. And some times people who are not even sportsmen are made the captain. Please play at least few games with us. Better Learn the game.

Huge Linux

2008-08-08T11:19:00.001+05:30

I hope, this means the Linux people getting older/fatter are not leaving Linux.

Evolution of Language

2008-07-31T10:37:00.002+05:30

A friend of mine always interrupts when anyone uses the word "postponed", saying that there is no such word. It affects the actual discussion. Yeah I do agree, there was no such word. But when it is accepted and understood between all the people in India and even some dictionaries include that word as belonging to Indian English, I do not see a problem.

If someone is creative and cooks up a word in their mother tongue, they are viewed as smart people where as when you do that in a foreign language, your own people consider it as lack of fluency. The same applies for accent and pronunciation.

On the same note, there is another word: post-paid(use & pay), cooked up to be the opposite of pre-paid(pay & use) where, post-payable would have been more appropriate but, post-paid is easy to understand.

Let us keep the evolution going

Powerless India

2008-07-22T09:43:00.003+05:30

Every day power cut announced in Madras, due to power shortage. May be the consumption is going up and production is unable to keep up. If this is the problem, it could be overcome easily. Madras is the ideal place to harvest energy from the "Sun". It is always hot, four seasons a year, 10 years a decade! Hopefully this is not a gimmick to make people believe that the India-USA Nuclear deal is the only way to live normally.

A country can be called as developing only if it improves? I remember my colleague from Germany, who was surprised even by the short power failures due to technical faults which is quiet normal in India. Now add this to that, probably he wont accept India as a developing nation :(

Luxury @ my disposal

2008-07-09T15:19:00.002+05:30

Left from office by the afternoon shuttle @ 2pm from BTP to Silkboard. I was the lone passenger in the swaraj mazda 20+ seater, with driver and an attender. With the price of fuel sky-rocketing (rockets usually come down unless they escape the gravity), using the services of 2 men just for me was real luxury. I felt a bit uneasy doing so!

Also I used to wonder why Americans call Petrol as gas when it is actually liquid in state. Petrol is also known as gasoline and gasoline should have shortened to become gas. So petrol is gas which is actually liquid

10 incarnations

2008-06-16T12:25:00.002+05:30

Watched Kamalhasan's Dasavataram and enjoyed it. Only the protagonist looks like Kamal, they could have used 9 other actors for the other 9 avatars. I mean to say that I enjoyed the screenplay except the 12th century scenes are not related to the story,(James bond/high-tech + Ramanarayanan do not gel well) and it is also unreal (bad acting, very neat and clean crowd etc). I never got the feeling of awkward camera to show more than one Kamal in a single frame! But make-up sometimes doesn't fit well at some scenes. Some drops i liked

* Bush: can we drop an atomic bomb over the bio-hazard to prevent it from spreading?
* Fletcher(US) to Japanese: remember Hiroshima? Japanese: Remember pearl harbour?
* Showing that the monkey knows to press the keys first and later showing it use the passwords
* Balram Naidu's (Telugu) preference for Telugu over Tamil & Tamil over English.
* Tamil kamal on speaking in English instead of Tamil to the Telugu guy: "Some people from Andhra who learned Tamil will save Tamil"
* "It would be nice if God was true" ==> ?
* Somewhat forced God versus[why is this always versus ;)] science discussion
* Media declaring Asin as Girlfriend of the US Scientist [anyway it becomes true later]
* Is luck == god? People forced into mosque for investigation are saved from tsunami, tsunami saves more people by killing a fraction of them...
* I have the same sane ideas as of the protagonist, so I like it more :-)

What about you? Liked it?

Misproportion

2008-05-27T15:49:00.004+05:30

Management people "often" say that God has given 2 ears and 1 mouth, use them proportionately. They mean to say listen twice as much as you speak. But me a technical/logical person feel that they are asking to do the opposite. With 2 ears when you listen for a minute, it is equivalent to 2 minutes of listening, so we need to speak for 2 minutes to balance it!

Sachin walks the talk

2008-05-27T13:27:00.003+05:30

There was an advertisement on TV, which shows kids who loose on different sports and give reasons.. "because... because..." then Sachin says "Losers will always have reasons... " The News continues " Sachin accuses 3rd umpire after loosing against Mohali! Yes Sachin proved that losers always have reasons to blame

Living in the past

2008-04-22T14:34:00.003+05:30

August 14, 2003
Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz : Rs 38,000

Jan 2004:
PlayStation 2 : Rs. 15,990

Feb 2005:
iPod shuffle (1GB): Rs 12,400

today:
Intel Pentium 4 3 GHz : Rs.2699.00
PlayStation 2 : Rs. 6,990
iPod shuffle (1GB): Rs. 2,700

Yeah but today we have core2duo, iPhone, Playstation 3, right???? If we are prepared to live in the past(which is not so far behind considering the pace of gadgets evolution) the price comes down manifold, IOW if we want to be on the bleeding-edge, we need to pay more:(

So If you are a consumer, better live in the past and if you are a business, then try to lead the race, to charge a premium from your customers. BTW why all this rant? Bought a PS2 :-)

BUT PS2 doesnt feel like a gadget of the past. It might be good enough if you do not have a HDTV, for SDTV it is good enough(gr8). The first game I bought is "God of War 2". Though I hate both the God and War, I like God of War 2. I usually play driving sims and split-screen racers. But I got GOW2 just coz Gran Turismo & Burnout were not available at that Sony world.

Weak end

2008-03-11T15:15:00.004+05:30

I went out for a official-{non-official}-trip (IOW official picnic) to Bheemeshwari, a fishing camp which is around 3 hours from Bangalore. This duration, and no of people were much smaller than, what I was used to. But it was nice. Got introduced with the people with whom I would be sharing the office space here after.

Played and discussed a lot. The weekend ended with some chat about Language of thought

Corrupt People == corrupt politicians == corrupt Country

2008-03-05T11:10:00.003+05:30

If a party bribes voters with their own money, it is illegal. But if they promise to pay/bribe after they will win, that too not from their pocket but country's money, it it legal.

Political parties in India use this huge hole and bribe the voters with TV, loan waivers, unfair reservations for the majority etc... and they do win elections using these cheap means at the cost of the country.

But it is not correct to blame only the politicians, it is the cheap people who are happy, as long as they are benefiting at the cost of ones own country. As long as such cheap, stupid people are majority in a country, the nation is destined to have corrupt politicians.
But the minority who are not really amused by these bribery are at loss. That is the problem with democracy :(

Also I hope one day people would directly vote for policies rather than vote for people who will device policies. But with these kind of people around it would !@$#$%@#%$# I seriously doubt the benefits of democracy. Law should evolve for the society to evolve, but law is becoming extinct.

Money controls People

2008-02-14T11:35:00.004+05:30

Ongoing Layoffs in the Indian IT sector shows how money(read dollar value) controls man, as people were found incompetent to control money!

Layoff may be the only option in USA, but is it required in India. In US, average annual pay rise is about 2~3%. So the chances of a person sticking to a company, even when he doesn't get a pay rise is more. But in India average pay rise is around ~30%. So if you do not give a pay hike, dudes leave the company. In such a situation, not giving hike to let those employees resign themselves might save $ for the company as well as give the dude time to get a job! Also attrition is more in India. So stopping the hiring will also work!

My personal opinion(though I was never laid-off, hitherto :)), is that lay-off in India is always a loss for the company. Stop hiring/giving hike should work! I know a company which did lay-off and a year later spent huge huge $$$ to recruit sub-standard people. Total loss :(

I even doubt that using attrition and stopping pay-hike means no job for the HR dept and managers. So they will look useless to the company. But layoffs mean more work for them! No surprise, it is natural for people to decide which favors them.

Liar Liar

2008-02-01T09:54:00.000+05:30

Often we know that someone cheats/lies, but we do not bother about it when nothing is at stake. And those fools think that you did not know that they are cheating. But in the end, this makes them cheat more often and also you start loosing confidence in them.

And at times, we even advice our friends, saying why fight with the liar, when nothing is at stake. But I think, if it is worth lying, it is worth fighting against. It is worth fighting just to say that you are not stupid. So next time you find someone lying, do let them know that you are not dumb.

BTW does professional life demands lying. I would say unless you are on such a profession as a lawyer, it does not. And the benefit from lying is nothing when compared to the ill-effects of being caught lying. Don't lie, and don't let anyone lie.

Speed Governor

2008-01-23T16:16:00.000+05:30

Government is trying to mandate Speed Governors which will restrict the top-speed!

Bangalore is already jammed. Speed governors will keep vehicles on road for more time, so more traffic!

Also I wonder how some of the one-ways in Bangalore help. Unless it lets you avoid a wait at a signal/crossing, it keeps vehicles on road for a longer duration/distance which should add to the traffic jam. But some oneways are seem to be made oneways without any reason.

Anyway, I do not know, where are the roads in Bangalore to drive above the limit. I waited for the bus for 55 mins today, and I called my friend after waiting for 30 mins and came to know that it is just 900 meters away. I guess he drove it above the speed limit at 2km/h as the speed governor was not installed.

May be behind all these drama there is a company that manufactures these speed governors.
This is not an allegation, just the thought I get.

Movies and lessons - படமும் பாடமும்

2007-12-26T10:54:00.000+05:30

Watched a lot of movies recently!

Chak de India - Even though the end was predictable, it was pulse racing. Fantastic movie.
Lesson: If a coach's role is very important, and if a team has a foreign coach then the team cannot be considered as a National team.

Om Shanthi Om - It reminded me about the Jackie chan's "The Myth". It was okay.
Lesson: If you want to do something and work for it, the whole universe makes it happen for you.

ஆர்யா - எப்படி என்னால் முழு படத்தையும் பார்க்க முடிந்தது என எனக்கே ஆச்சரியமாக இருக்கிறது. மாதவன் மாஸ் படங்கள் என்றால் குப்பை படங்கள் என நினைக்கிறார் போலும்.
பாடம: நடிகர்களால் மட்டும் ஒரு படத்தை காப்பாற்ற முடியாது. அது போல ஒரு டீமில் நல்ல ப்ரோக்ராமர்கள் இருந்தாலும் புராடக்ட் சரி இல்லை என்றால் கஸ்டமர்ஸ்-களுக்கு பிடிக்காது

மருதமலை - காமெடி சீன்ஸ் பரவாயில்லை.
பாடம: உங்களுக்கு கீழ் வேலை பார்பவரை அவமதிகாதே, பிற்காலத்தில் அவர் உங்களுக்கே மேலதிகாரியாக வரலாம். அதுவும் சற்று புத்திசாலி என்றால் மரியாதையுடன் நடத்துவதே நலம்

The Pink Panther - Good Comedy. It reminded me of the dumb people around me, who think they are smart.
Lesson: Some people are made to manage a team when they are no way good enough to do that. It is done, just to make someone else managing some other team look better! Theory of relativity @ work.

Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy - Nice movie. Makes you think about purpose of life. Also makes fun of the Bureaucrats.
Lesson: Enjoy the journey of life without troubling your co-passengers, or if possible make their journey better.

T9 Reminder

2007-12-25T16:44:00.000+05:30

I set a reminder on my mobile to watch the movie, "The Pink Panther" on STAR Movies. The phone has T9 input. Guess what did it remind me about? Or try it on your phone.

T9, which stands for Text on 9 keys, is a patented predictive text technology for mobile phones, developed by Tegic Communications, recently acquired by Nuance Communications . It is used on phones from LG, Samsung Electronics, Nokia, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Sanyo, Sagem and others. Its main competitors are iTap, created by Motorola, and LetterWise, created by Eatoni.

Srilankan Tamils

2007-12-25T16:31:00.000+05:30

The difference between Tamil spoken in Tamilnadu and Srilanka is much higher than the difference between Tamil spoken in diff parts of Tamilnadu, say Madurai and Coimbatore. The difference is almost near to the difference between Tamil and Malayalam, or Tamil and Kannada, or even Tamil and Telugu. If they name their language as something else(say Elam or Elabasha or whatever), I am sure there wont be any loss of lives as it is today. The politicians in Tamilnadu will not try to play Linguistic politics as they do now.

They say that being a minority tamils are not given equal opportunities, jobs etc in Srilanka. But the same condition prevails in India, in Tamilnadu for the minorities, those who do not belong to Scheduled Caste or Backward Caste. If left alone Srilankans will find a way, themselves, to live peacefully. These cheap politicians in Tamilnadu create havoc in Srilanka to stay in power.

படித்த பெண்களும் படிக்காத ஆண்களும்

2007-12-24T18:40:00.000+05:30

படித்த பெண்கள் தம் கணவரை டேய், வாடா, போடா என அழைப்பதை பெருமையை கருதுகின்றனர். ஆனால் படிக்காத ஆண்கள் தான் மனைவியை வாடி , போடி என பிறர் முன் அழைப்பர். படித்த ஆண்கள் தம் மனைவியை பிறர் முன் மரியாதையுடன் நடத்துவர்.

பெண்கள் படித்தால் தான் படிக்காத ஆண் அளவிற்கே அறிவு வளருமோ ? இல்லை படித்தால் பெண்களுக்கு அறிவு மங்குகிறதா ?

Murdering Language - Live

2007-12-17T16:46:00.000+05:30

நேரலை, என்றால் நேரவில்லை என பொருள். ஆனால் கலைஞர் டிவி-இல் நேரடி ஒளிபரப்பு என பொருள் என நினைத்து செய்திகளின் போது போடப்படுகிறது. "நேரடி ஒளிபரப்பு" அல்லது "லைவ்" அல்லது "LIVE" என போட்டாலே பாமரருக்கும் புரியும். நியூஸ் நேரலை என்றால் நடக்காததை சொல்லும் தவறான செய்தி என பொருள். தமிழை வளர்கிறேன் பேர்வழி என கொலை செய்கிறார்கள்.

மொழி எனப்படுவது ஒருவர் நினைப்பதை மற்றவருக்கு புரியவைக்கும் கருவி ஆகும். ஆனால் தேவை இல்லாமல் புதிய வார்த்தைகளை சேர்க்க முற்படுவது தவறு. LIVE என்று போடலே அனைவருக்கும் புரியும். அட்லீஸ்ட் லைவ் என்றாவது போடலாம். இப்படி தேவை இல்லாமல் புதிய வார்த்தைகளை உருவாக்க முற்படுவதால் தான் இன்ஜினியரிங் மற்றும் மருத்துவம் ஆகிய பட்டங்களை தமிழில் பெற முடிவதில்லை. அதற்கு பதில் அவ்வார்த்தைகளை அப்படியே தமிழில் சேர்த்துகொல்வதே புத்திசாலித்தனம்.

Green Week

2007-12-17T16:22:00.000+05:30

Green Week is being celebrated/followed in my office. But conservation of energy and water was talked about a lot instead of pollution!!!

Fighting Pollution Versus Energy/Water Conservation

Though there may be a relation between consumption of water/power to the pollution, it does not constitute much. Fighting global warming is a good cause if we know it for sure. I personally believe that man do not have good understanding of those. If we cannot predict the tomorrow's weather, how can we predict the climate after 100s of years. Even consuming plastic saves forest, only that we should dispose/recycle it properly. Creating awareness of how to reuse/recycle/dispose them is much better than simply asking people not to use plastic bags. Paper bags costs lots of wood!

Instead we should work for proper recycling/disposal of water. Improve scientific ways to generate¹ power. No one knows the purpose of life², but we tell not to waste power, water. The term wastage depends on the person. Some people will define anything not absolutely required for life as waste. For example movies, TV, Books, A/C etc.. may be considered as waste. And even letting the bulb glow even when I am not there is useful for me as I do not have to take the pain of switching it off and on!

1 - Generate is a wrong word here as it can be mistakenly understood as create. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. "Convert" should be more suitable.

2 - If you know, please do let me know

Consuming without contributing lacks courtesy

2007-12-07T15:52:00.000+05:30

Consuming FOSS but not contributing is like enjoying the nation's facilities without paying tax. The realization came to me only after beginning to contribute(pay tax). But if we can make everyone realize this..... zzzzzzzzz

Democrazy

2007-10-04T15:46:00.000+05:30

Democracy - Do what the majority wants?

In case of Sethu Samuthiram Canal Project, as an atheist and a strong believer of science I want the project/society to progress. But the majority treats it as an ego problem of the Hindus. As long as the majority does not want to go ahead with the project no one should force it... No one is dying without this project. But Karuna is hosting his Drama! :-( In fact everyone knows that providing TVs with taxpayer's money is injustice, but the majority voted for it.(Assuming no malpractice in the election) It is time for him to shut-up and listen to people of India.

At best he can try to convince the majority, good luck Karuna. I will give it a try now.

If Rama existed, he is a man and not God. If he did not exist, then he did not build it. Also even if he was God and built it, what is the problem with removing it? Is anyone using the bridge(?) now? If he built it and needs the, let them build it again after we dig it? after all he is the GOD

Assuming God built the Earth, we dig it to build buildings, lay cables etc...?

Gandhi Jayanthi

2007-10-04T13:56:00.000+05:30

Forcing people not to eat(sell) meat and consume liquor is itself against Gandhian principle and democracy. It is also some form of violence. The people should themselves restrain from those if they respect Gandhi__ji__.

The history book says that Gandhiji got us the freedom, but in reality he took away my freedom to get drunk on Oct 2 ;-)

do not buy

2007-08-25T11:38:00.000+05:30

'We don't need Reliance'
Dr S Ramadoss, the Pattal Makkal Katchi leader, is spearheading the opposition to Reliance Fresh on the ground that it will break the backbone of the rural economy in the southern state.
http://in.rediff.com/money/2007/aug/24binter.htm

if you do not want their shops... do not buy... but you cannot tell them not to sell... this is a democratic country I believe...
Those people are one of the top tax payers in the country... a large percentage of public projects are dependent on their money... we should support them...
these small shops do not even file returns:(

Laws are made by the people, for the people

2007-08-24T11:12:00.000+05:30

HC acquits Soren in murder case
NEW DELHI, Aug 22 – Former Union Minister and JMM leader Shibu Soren was today acquitted in the 14-year-old murder case of his private secretary Shashi Nath Jha by the Delhi High Court which held that CBI “miserably” failed to prove its case

They cannot punish someone because, he is not proved guilty. If someone is not proved to be guilty, how can they make statements like "CBI failed to prove", which means that they know he is guilty. If they know he is guilty they should have punished him. If they are not sure that someone is guilty how can they blame CBI for not proving him as guilty - very funny but sad...

Rules and Laws may not be perfect or even correct as they themselves are made by our ancestors, who surely did not have the intelligence as we do have or gen-next will have. In fact some cunning old politicians want to enforce dumb old rules even now... think laws on reservation/quota here ;)

India united

2007-08-01T17:01:00.000+05:30

If Tamilnadu and Karnataka were a single state and every one spoke the same language, and if there was one government what would be the solution to the Cauvery problem?
My guess: FCFS?! People in the front of the queue would be fed and whatever remains only will flow to the tail of the queue. Let us go with that solution.

We are being divided and ruled :-(

India, collect rent, do not tax me... please

2007-07-27T10:46:00.000+05:30

We read a lot of news about the wastage of People's tax. We know the ways in which tax is being wasted. But only those few who pay tax cries and the majority does not bother as it was not their money:-( [ this is the situation in India]

Why tax?
Tax is collected for the common expenditure of the citizens.

Why tax me more than some one who works less[earn less]?
:-(

Why tax some one who works more [i.e., earns more say Ambhani, Rajnikanth, etc... ] more than me?
:-(

Instead of taxing the citizens, country should collect rent from them. If you are a family of 4, you pay the rent for 4. If you are a family of 8, you pay rent for 8. As simple as that. Just like we paying road tax for each vehicle!

This way, the population will be controlled, voters list will become perfect, ration cards will have correct details, people will fight if they find their money being wasted as everyone pays for it!

Everyone should pay for only what he gets, otherwise this is totally unfair. One day I would like to see world currency, all people voting for every decision instead of their representatives[MLA, MP] doing[?] the job, rent per person, equality to all, understanding that not all are same etc...

confused by equality to all & understanding that not all are same ? I meant that not all are equal but there should be no special privileges.[ reservation]

Till then this remains as my dream...

Optimist cries always

2007-07-23T09:39:00.000+05:30

When will a man be happy?
When he gets better than what he expected.

When will a man be sad?
When he gets worser that his expectation.

When will he be bored?
He gets whatever he predicted.

So how to be happy always?
Expect bad things. Always be pessimistic. Feel the power of sheer pessimism. Optimism is the root cause of all sorrow.

Consider the simple case of India Versus Bangladesh cricket match. All the Indians expect them to win easily, but if they loose - they are sad. If it was between Australia and India, we expect India to loose. And if India wins we are all very happy. If India wins against Bangladesh and looses to Australia, we are all bored.

Choose between the Sadness, boredom and happiness - the choice is yours

Saving Power

2007-07-23T09:25:00.000+05:30

The advertisements calling for conserving of power, makes me laugh. As long as the sun continues to provide energy we will never run out of power. And we know that each atom has huge amount of energy, just that we just do not yet know how to harvest it. Necessity is the root cause of many discoveries and inventions. So let us create the necessity - please waste power.

And even if we consider having only limited power left, what is the purpose of saving power - to use it later to lead a comfy life. why not enjoy now itself? Live today. We are born to live, let us survive to die.

switching teams

2007-07-13T11:06:00.000+05:30

from proprietary to open source
fresh start, new dawn

Who owns the moon?

2006-08-25T16:26:00.000+05:30

If man makes moon fit for living or man evolves to be compatible with moon... who will own the moon. will the countries get proportional space on it based on the population/money/power/land size on earth? Will there be nations which are moon only? will there be a war between countries in the moon and the countries on earth?

Will there be Passports and visas between them? Will there be films where the girl belongs to the Moon and his lover is from earth?

Even if land is shared between nations or owned by a nation, how will the people divide them. Will everything be owned by the government or alloated by Karunanithi's grand grand son to the citizens? Will there be quotas for SC/STs and OBCs for land on moon?

India

2006-07-12T11:57:00.000+05:30

First it was AGNI III... not so damaging... Next it was GSLV+INSAT.... very much upset... next it is Mumbai Trains... Totally depressed... what next? afraid... fear and tears

Does the next moment of sorrow cures the pain of the previous one? or adds to it? The media acts as if it erases the older one... :-( Now the reservation issues looks ridiculous... So if you are running for life... you forget about the lesser ones

Lets us hope that we will be in a state where we fight for even more ridiculous issues

XBOX 360

2006-07-06T11:23:00.000+05:30

Last sunday(2 July 2006) I had a chance to play on an XBOX 360 much before its launch in India. :-) And today I got free passes to SKOAR 2006 Gaming expo from my office but cant go as I am going to Madras this weekend:-(

The XBOX 360 felt good except for the price. The game was FIFA. BTW this is the first time I am playing a current gen machine. I was a owner of a 8-bit gaming machine. But I play lot of games on my PC which has a decent Nvidia GeForce MX440 on it. I have played the FIFA on it as well. The XBOX version seems to be more comforatable just because of the controller which I could add to my PC

Reservation/Quota

2006-06-01T12:23:00.000+05:30

No Quota -> No Caste -> No cheap Politics

Why not give reservation in Buses also....
30% of seats are reserved for OBCs
20% for SC/STs
and remaining 50% again its open competition where SC/ST and OBC's will take lions share

It killed my patriotic feelings for the country. It feels as if we are not a single nation but 3,4 groups just sharing resources

Burnout

2006-05-08T10:16:00.000+05:30

Rotation the answer to burnout, says Dhoni

Why should one rotate players and prolong their careers? Let them burnout and let us use new people after that?

1.2.1.2.1.2 ???? (Will affect team composition etc....)
1.1.1.2.2.2!!!! < fine isnt it?

Rajkumar

2006-04-18T12:34:00.000+05:30

Rajkumar passed away - got me an additional holiday.
But didnt make my life easier. I cant figure out why people are asked not to do usual business. If those people are interested in observing @$%@% let them do it. Why do force others who dont even know the person who died?
I had booked my ticket to chennai for thursday night train. So I wasted a day on bangalore. And even on thursday it became a nghtmare to reach the railway station from BTM. No buses.. so walked till Silk-board junction, go a bus. The conductor yelled majestic. I boarded with literally hundreds of people and from everyone he took Rs.10 for Rs.8 tickets and marked 2 on all tickets. Then he stopped the bus on midway to make sure everyone has got a ticket. then the bus went without stopping inthe next 2 stoppings and finally halted in Double-road and said thats it...it wont go to majestic.. and the conductor was not ready to pay the change itself dont thing of any refund... Autos were rare and which ever went was full.. so started walking and walked to majestic -good exercise

Bangalore looked deserted that gave me an idea of how beautiful this city would have been a decade ago... Now I am awaiting the mail which will ask me to come to office on a weekend as compensation... Thankyou Rajkumar fans. BTW I would like to know in which way he changed your lives?

Creative Innovation - Innovative Creativity

2006-04-07T09:17:00.000+05:30

"Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things."
-Theodore Levitt

But all this can be result of simple crossovers and mutations - there could be nothing out of the box. Do you agree?

But everything should be possible just by modifying the existing/known things - Or is there something totally out of the loop?

Boo..chin Endulkar

2006-03-28T09:12:00.000+05:30

One of my most admired hero... the fall has started...

It is one's pride, if his record is broken after his retirement! But Ponting is fast approaching Sachin's record...If Ponting breaks sachin's record when he is still playing, it is !$!$%!%^@$%#!@

I strongly believe that each and every match is important and the best possible 11 should be fielded... Why cant the selection process be automated based on ranking the players? And please please make sure even if it is sachin or yuvi, they should play local matches before jumping in to internationals when returning from an injury

Google Penetrates

2006-03-15T09:07:00.000+05:30

Now the GMail beta features sponsored links, a revenue generator....
Can Beta services generate revenue????
It looks like google's max revenue will be through advts in its webpages...
Sure web is becoming like a TV channel and Google is the Prime channel

People who curse successful business men for being monopolies, are you guys ready with any anti-google law? Oh, may be you will wait till it becomes the leader...

But I feel like MS and Google are in different business and both are leaders in their respective ones!

Hit-list

2006-03-09T19:14:00.000+05:30

It looks like Kaif and Laxman are the next 2 in BCCI/chappell's hitlist.
Dropped after scoring a match saving(it is) inning's will break anyone's heart. And giving his place for yuvi returning from injury, defies any logic.

Why is that yuvi still being a favourite of Team BCCI, even after the demise of his guardian, saurav? Why is BCCI targeting individuals? They escaped from the bad name with the help of Dhoni and Pathan's success. Had they failed, BCCI would have been in deep trouble. Failure in the sense, even just performing upto the expectaion. Hatsoff to them for exceeding the expectations. But dont know how long they can sustain that.

Why cant, Saurav, Kaif , Laxman, and all other talents in multiple levels affected by the BCCI start their own Indian team? say a ACCI - Academy for Cricket Controversies in India.

Resisting the change

2006-02-21T09:29:00.000+05:30

I resist changes... Though changes are the way of life. Evolution and improvement are the side-effects of change... I know changes are mostly for the good but dont know why I resist... may be the tamil saying - "The known devil is better than an unknown god", haunts me
In the past 8 months, I have worked under 4 Managers - dont know why they are running away from me... And I have been under the mental pressure of the possible lay-off!!!
Hopefully & Probably now I am mentally much stronger to take on this world with confidence and enthusism

Business of sports

2006-02-09T11:10:00.000+05:30

Sachin is respected as God, at best what can he do? Belt the leather ball some 60- 70 yards with his willow. But we all love that act more than a farmer who ploughs to make food for human-kind. He gets paid a megre amount for his work but these sporting heroes, film-heros etc who dont provide us with anything essential but just the pleasure gets a lumpsum

But What is the use of sports? Why are we attracted to that? What gives it this much of importance? ? ?
sports gets the importance mainly because its not that important!!!
We can loose but we are not ready to loose in reality... We can defeat somebody to get the pleasure... We can proove that we are the best...best in what? skill to fight for the control of a ball.. In essence it gives a way to shed the mental pressure... We learn to give less importance to the things that bothers us and get a free, lighter mind. The advantage of physical fitness is infact a positive side-effect...

In my office we had the annual sports meet last weekend and it was total fun... And the cricket tournament is in progress... It proved to me as an oppurtunity to know the people around me in the work-place and now I feel to have more friends around me... sports act as a catalyst in the teaming process

My hero is changing track

2006-02-03T10:52:00.000+05:30

Valentino Rossi is planning and trying to break into the F1... May be coz of the F1's strategies to pull crowd as it is loosing out because of new rules, schumie's fall, A1 etc I wish all success for Rossi with the additional wheels

Local Tinsel

2006-01-18T18:45:00.000+05:30

In my previous post I forgot to tell about the tamil thiruttu VCDs that I saw recently. The roll includes frames from ABCD, Kanda naal Mudhal, Sandaikozhi, Thavamai Thavamirunthu, Aaru, kasthuri maan, sivakasi, adhu oru kanaa kaalam etc... Might have missed some!!! Isnt it too many?! But I am already queueing up for the next string of pongal movies! I didnt like most of the masala gore with no comedy movies like aaru. Thavamai... and ABCD, are for the elders... but I dont know, I was able to enjoy them... so am I getting aged ops matured!

Yearend fun

2006-01-11T11:11:00.000+05:30

It was very relaxing and joy to go on a 9 day holiday to my hometown. I enjoyed it with LAN Parties and Animated Movies. It was fantastic watching the search for nemo, the ogre rescuing the princess, the ants fighting the caterpillars with the help of the circus bugs, and the second episode of the adventures of Andy's toys. It was also fantastic to experience the spectacular collision with my brother on a high speed Porsche, gunning down my friends and brothers in a very real tournament and building my army against a very weak men of my brother. The hangover didnt descend easily after coming back to routine. I was compelled to watch the adventures of the monster monkey.

Earlier Just before the end of the year had a oppurtunity to read the sherlock holmes way of finding the mystery behind the hounds of Baskerville. And now for the first time had an oppurtunity to experience John Grisham through his, 'The Summons'

I am telling all these just to explain what prevented me bloging for some time

Reservations and quotas

2006-01-10T16:42:00.000+05:30

If some one expects reservation or quota, isn't that accepting that they are inferior?
33% reservation for women does exactly that. If that happens women are inferior to men for sure.