Saturday, December 08, 2007

iRack

Thursday, December 06, 2007



Jujubi!!!

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Sunset @ Arabian Sea


Sunset @ Arabian Sea
Originally uploaded by Ananth Narayan S
One of the many (probably the best :-D) photographs taken during the visit to Karwar, Kaiga and Dandeli over the last weekend. Click on the image to navigate to my Flickr page and view the rest.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Pirates of silicon valley

IMDb page : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/

Google Video Page : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1552555273778978142
Yes, the movie. All 1.5 hrs of it.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Boycott.....

An anonymous reader on /. says that he/she can't bear to buy Lenovo laptops (a Chinese company) due to the atrocities and human rights violations committed by the Chinese.
Going by that, probably the whole world must boycott IBM, Credit Suisse and other big names since they had very close business alliances with the Nazis during WW2.

Related:
Boycott Made in China
Banking with the Nazis (Google Video)

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Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Yes, Minister Developer

Have been feeling like James Hacker (the eponymous minister from the famous Yes Minister series) at work for quite some time now. Why? Coz there has only been "lots of activity, no actual achievement"!

Looks like all I can do is to ROTFL at myself, the "enlightenment" that has dawned on me and at the comparison I have come up with.

Revolution OS



Google Video Link

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Skandgiri


The Hillock
Originally uploaded by Ananth Narayan S
Last weekend, bunch of us went to scale Mt. Skandagiri. :-) Well... it is a hill ~70KM from Bangalore and not too far from Nandi Hills. The hill is in Kalavara village, so is also referred to as Kalavara Betta. We left @ 2 A.M. and reached the base at around 4.

We were hoping to catch the sunrise from the hilltop, but it was so foggy we could see the sun only when we were half way through our descent. Added to the fog was wind, so strong we had trouble walking steady.

A flag post marks the summit and signals the end of the trek. On the top is a temple that also doubles up as a shop to enterprising people who sell water, tea, bajji, even puliyogare!!

Any time later in the day, the ascent is a non event, but climbing the hill at 4 in the morning in heavy fog, darkness & faulty torches was a different experience.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Cumulate labs

Cumulate Labs (courtesy Stumble Upon) has this neat Web 2.0 based online drawing software called Cumulate Draw. This, I speculate, is the kind of application that a company like Google would like to acquire. Google already has online documents and spreadsheets; and the Google SketchUp drawing/modeling tool. Cumulate Draw could probably be the online version of MS Visio.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Inside the Digital Dump

Inside the Digital Dump (opens in new window), an essay in pictures on the effects & economics of dumping of old computer hardware in developing nations.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Un-Green Apples

Greenpeace's Green Electronics listing ranks mobile and PC manufacturers on their green policies, i.e. eliminating harmful chemicals and taking responsibility for discarded products.

Apple has been ranked last. See the irony. ;-)

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Novell has come up with some cool Linux ads.







This is IBM's earliest Linux ad.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Kumaraparvata trek

Kumara Parvata Trek
Way To Kumaraparvata
Originally uploaded by Ananth Narayan S.


A bunch of us went on a weekend trek to Kumaraparvata near Kukke Subrahmanya. Pretty tough trek with a steep climb. The heat and humidity didn’t make it any easier. Walking inside the forest areas was better, atleast there was some shade. But the complete stretch past "Giri Gadde" (mountain grassland) was grueling. With hardly any trees, we were exposed to the sweltering heat of the midday sun. Reaching Bhattara-mane seemed to restore all the energy that had been spent climbing all the way there.

An awesome meal later and the trek resumed. At one point, the guys who were ahead stopped at a peak and started to cheer and clap. At last we had reached. No, not quite. At that peak, one person pointed to a flag in a distance and that the peak where the flag was planted was the place we had to reach. It was so far, I almost gave up. Well, somehow we all found the energy to walk ahead. Surprisingly the walk was not as far as expected.



Solar Eclipse



Kumaraparvata - shrouded in clouds, sight to behold. We spent the night on the peak. No tents though. :-) The next day morning we were able to catch a glimpse of the solar eclipse. A five hour descent followed by an 8 hour drive by my bike back to Bangalore. An enjoyable weekend!

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Outlook Error

Outlook Error
Outlook Error
Originally uploaded by Ananth Narayan S.

This is the error message Microsoft(R) Outlook (R) spat out when I attempted to close a PST file. What a descriptive error message!!
But what takes the top spot is neat little popup message I got from Microsoft (R) Windows Media Player 10 (R) that said "God Damn Exception". I never encountered the "God Damn Exception" again.

Yahoo results and Google results for the query OUTLOOK SUCKS !

Saturday, March 03, 2007

When I bought an iPod shuffle, I presumed that it would be like any consumer electronics device. Charge the device, copy the MP3s, start listening. Didn't know that the iPod needs to be "initialized" using iTunes software and iTunes is needed even to transfer MP3s to the device. It seemed that the device wouldn't even charge before the initialization. Pathetic!

The bigger problem is that there is NO version of iTunes for Linux. Running iTunes on probably Linux requires Wine or CrossOver Office.

Also, iTunes seems to multiplex songs before copying them to the iPod. Files copied through Windows Explorer are just files. Occupying space on it. This was another thing I didn't like.

DEATH TO PROPRIETARY INTERFACES!!!

Interesting, I haven't seen any 'open source' efforts to engineer an MP3 player. Well... such a player must also support Ogg Vorbis, maybe FLAC too. I am waiting. :-)

Monday, February 19, 2007

Bad Indian Railway Coaches -> Death Trap

The biggest problem with the coaches in Indian trains is that in cases of accidents like today's fire on the Samjhauta express, people can't escape in time. A second class sleeper coach can house 72 people. And there are 4 narrow doors and a narrower aisle and one or two windows marked as emergency exits. All windows have a metallic grill. So if the doors were to get blocked or jammed, there is no escape route.

Actually, shouldn't each window be an emergency exit, whose grill can be removed easily and quickly to allow people to escape?

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Moto Perl

Motorola has a naming convention for its mobile phones quite easily evident in the names Razr, Rokr, Pebl, Rizr etc. Suppose they were to create a phone inspired from pearl, what would they name it? Moto Perl? Hmmm.... What will Larry Wall say to that?

Btw, RIM has a new BlackBerry Pearl model.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Yahoo! IndiChat plugin rocks. From the first version that had only Tamil and Hindi support to the current one with support for as many as 9 languages. I am impressed!

Friday, January 05, 2007

Microcosmos

Microcosmos, a documentary about the insect life in our backyard. Similar in genre to movies like Baraka, The Qatsi Trilogy (Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, Naqoyqatsi), Microcosmos has only natural sounds (suitably amplified). There are just one opening statement & and one closing statement made by Kristin Scott Thomas on voice-over.