What!er

Basha vs. Anthony - Paper Presentation

Ahem! Ahem!

Photo in the Deccan Herald newspaper (1st May, 2009) after the 3rd phase of polling in the general elections.

Passport

Searching on Google Image Search for 'India passport' threw up a page from Frogview among others. It was captioned 'The Most Beautiful Passport in India'. That page had the image below. Would this not account as an invasion of one's privacy?

Axiomatic love theory

प्यार किया नहीं जाता. प्यार हो जाता है.
As you might have realized, this is a typical Hindi movie dialogue.
Happened to be watching a Hindi movie. And in the course of the usual melodrama, Som proposed: Axiomatic Love Theory(ALT).

The first axiom of ALT has already been shown.
Axiom 2: प्यार करने वाले से निभाने वाला बडा है.

Okuribito

Okuribito (Departures) won the US Motion Picture Academy Award for Best Foreign Film - 2008. Recommended!

"ಒಕುರಿಬಿತೋ" (ನಿರ್ಗಮನಗಳು) ೨೦೦೮-ನಲ್ಲಿ ಉತ್ಕೃಷ್ಟ ವಿದೇಶಿ ಚಲನಚಿತ್ರ ಆಸ್ಕಾರ್ ಪ್ರಶಸ್ತಿ ಪಡೆಯಿತು. ತಪ್ಪದೆ ನೋಡಿ!

R

A quick and dirty intro to R statistical package (by me).

ಪೇಟೆಂಟ್

ನನ್ನ ಪೇಟೆಂಟ್ ಅರ್ಜಿ ಯುನೈಟೆಡ್ ಸ್ತೆತೆಸ್ ಪೇಟೆಂಟ್ ಕಛೇರಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ದಾಖಲಾಗಿದೆ. ಭಾರತದ ಪೇಟೆಂಟ್ ಕಛೇರಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಕೂಡ ಅರ್ಜಿ ಸಲ್ಲಿಸಲಾಗಿತ್ತು. ಆದರೆ ಹುಡುಕಿದರೆ ಏನು ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಸಿಗುತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ.

ಯು.ಎಸ್.ಪಿ.ಟಿ.ಓ. ಅರ್ಜಿ ಸಂಖ್ಯೆ 20090080442

Smale's Paradox

Happened to find this video on another Ananth's blog. Awesome video. Math, topology and stuff.

Vijay Dhobi

Awesome! Vijay Dhobi is probably the standing round the corner with his pushcart pressing clothes at Rs 2 per piece of clothing. And Vijay probably does not know that his store had made it to Google Maps and he 'world famous'.


View Larger Map

Novell's Linux ads

All 3 ads.

Lenovo X-300 vs Apple Macbook Air

Macbook Wheel

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Wait for the new version. It comes with no keyboard, no display, no hard drive. Wouldn't that be awesome? ;)

Everyone wants a piece of apple.

TV Classics - 1

Ek Titli...

Sameera Reddy's character got admitted into University of Berkeley, San Francisco. Should be a new one. ;-)

Dada and Jumbo hang up their boots. Big shoes to fill. Literally too in Anil Kumble's case ;).

Natwest Series Victory


Anil's 10 wickets @ Kotla

Election in Canada

Elections were completed in Canada and the result was that the Conservatives led by Steve Harper are back in power. Fine. Nothing I will be concerned about much as long as my funding stays. :)
The interesting part is that there is none of the election fanfare that one sees back in India. Elections (especially the campaigning) in India are loud, colourful, fun even bizarre at times. Here, the elections are so quiet, I didn't know when it happened.

Knetwalk

Knetwalk is a new game I came across in KDE 4. Timepass game, where you need to connect all the client machines to the server using the connecting elements. This is one solution I hit where all clients are connected, but the game isn't over! Is that a bug? If I can connect all the clients to the server with fewer connecting elements, isn't that better?

A month in Canada

It is just more than a month since I came to Canada. Still remember the Sunday when I saw the rising sun just above the horizon at Bangalore and landed here, with the setting sun, just above the horizon. Sights to behold, both of them.




The photos above were taken at Deer Lake.

The weather has been pretty good for most part of the last month. Bright and sunny most of the time. But things are changing. Incessant rain is the typical winter weather here I understand.

The colours of fall are beautiful. Trees turning from green to yellow to brown.


Maple leaves however seem to turn a beautiful red. Now I know why the Canadian flag has a red maple leaf on it. :-)

MiG 35

Julley!

I had been to Ladakh recently, to have a short holiday and for a little bit of trekking. The first step in that was to get to Leh, the current district headquarters of Ladakh. From there onto Manali in HP and then driving to Leh.
In Manali, I visited the Hadimba temple. This temple is dedicated to the demoness from the Mahabharata. She Bheema marries and later gives birth to his son Gatothkacha.

The ride to Leh
The ride from Manali to Leh goes through multiple valleys in the Himalayas and one gets to see 4 mountain passes (Rohtang, Baralachala and Taglangla are the three I remember), atleast 2 (Chenab & Beas) of the 5 rivers that goes through Punjab, 3 high altitude lakes (Surajtal, Chandratal, Deepaktal).

Taglangla	Surajtal
Deepaktal

It is an 18 hour journey. Picturesque. But the road is not good in some places and can get uncomfortable. One can't complain though. The Border Roads Organization gets about 3-4 months of conducive weather a year. And that are the exact 3 months when there is heavy traffic on the roads with large numbers of visitors driving in and out.

The ride in a shared taxi will cost each person about Rs. 1200. It goes through the beautiful Kullu & Lahaul valleys in HP before entering Jammu & Kashmir.
The change in the terrain & the vegetation is clearly visible. From largely green mountain faces in Kullu and Lahaul, things change to barren mountain face post Lahaul, in Spiti and Kashmir.
The are patches of terrace farming & shepherds leading their sheep along the mountains for grazing.

Erosion


By the time we reached Taglangla (~5000m above sea level), the winding mountains, the heat and dust had already given me a severe headache. We stopped to get medical help at an army camp setup specifically to help civilans.

Other ways of getting to Leh:
- Do a 15 day cycle ride from Manali.
- Drive your own bike.
- Fly to Leh from Delhi.
- Take a 45 day walk to Leh.

Leh
Leh, is not as rustic as I expected it to be. It is no different from any other Indian town. It even boasts of a tennis court and golf course.

The Trek
The first day of the trek starts at Spituk. It follows a jeep train from Spituk to Jianchen. The interesting thing is that the trek begins by crossing a the river Indus. Lots of trekking groups are around in Leh. Almost all are from European nations (French, Dutch, Spaniards, Italians).

The camp at Jianchan is along a tributary of the Indus. The camp sites are owned by locals. There are small patches of cultivated land where wheat or jowar is grown. The rent at the camp site is Rs 100 per day per tent.
We were accompanied by 3 folks, cook Passang Bhutia from Sikkim, guide Ghulam Qadir (from Nubra Valley, Ladakh) and pony man Sonawangdeo.

The second day of the trek would take us from Jianchen to Gandala base. Gandala base is ~4500 m above sea level. And the pass itself is another 400m higher and after a steep climb. It was a particularly nasty day for trekking. It was bright and sunny initially, but the moment a cloud covers the sun, the temperature drops. One can sense it the heat-to-chill change clearly. Not that such a thing is uncommon at high altitudes. I had experienced this during the Saurkundi pass trek. But added to that was the intermittent rain.
The climb didn't seem tough till Rhumbak village.

House at Rhumbak

But from Rhumbak (3700m) to Gandala base (4500 m)is one tough climb. On the way we pass a 1 house village Urutse.

House at Urutse


The interesting thing about this section is the colour of the mountains we walk on. from white, to grey, to blue, to purple, it is one mindblowing experience. Not for the chromatically challenged ;).


Gandala base has 2 camping sites. Our tents were setup on the higher one. I was already drained and I don't know what energy reserve my body tapped into, to climb the rest of the way to the tent.


Each camping site has a restaurant run by the locals. It is a large tent where one can buy soft drinks, tea, fruit juices, omelettes, noodles, biscuits etc. There are no tent stays like the ones on the way to Leh. Tentstays allow people to stay overnight and provide mattresses and blankets.

Gandala base

Solar panels find a lot of use along the way to Ladakh and in interior regions where electricity cables cannot be laid.

Another construction to note is Ladakhi toilets. These are composting pits. After use, one has to dump a shovel full of mud into the hole. Over time, the decomposition leads to manure which gets used as a fertilizer.

Reaching Gandala base gave me severe altitude sickness, so I had to return. The main cause being the lack of aclimatization in Ladakh.

Returning from Leh to Manali was eventless, till we reached around Gulaba, a small village 20Km from Manali. A mudslide had blocked the road and bull dozers would not come till the next day. So a large number of people in cabs, jeeps, trucks had to spend the night in their vehicles. So I was in the Qualis for 32 hours straight, spending 2 nights in it. That was some event!! :)

On the return from Manali I saw a most beautiful sight. A layer of mist over the Beas for quite some distance. Unfortunately, the camera was in the luggage hold, so couldn't take a snap.

Earthlings

Earthlings.....

Warning: Viewer discretion advised.

Happened to venture into a Reliance Fresh outlet. Must say, there was nothing fresh or refreshing about the store. Most of the fruits & vegetables had wilted and wrinkled. Fresh? Not even remotely.
I took the name of the store to signify fresh natural produce. No synthetic stuff. No packaged stuff even. But some things, fresh fruit extracts say, need to be packaged. But there was enough synthetic stuff and packaged stuff to bring me down to reality.

Reliance Fresh is Unreliably Stale!

All Too Human!

The Beeb has a series titled "Human, All too Human" that discusses the life and works of philosophers Sartre, Nietzsche & Heidegger. Hope they feature more people, say, Wittgenstien, Godel and without doubt Immanuel Kant.

I Want My Father Back (Part 2). A highly recommended documentary on farmer suicides, the events over the past 3-4 decades that led to it, globalization, MNCs & industrialization of farming.
A must watch for all the people who believe globalization & technology are good things. Specially the city bred no-nothing-of-the-world "Westernized" consumerist.

Shettihalli

Church
Originally uploaded by Ananth Narayan S

Me and a friend biked to a small village called Shettihalli near Hassan recently. Shettihalli's claim to fame is an old, abandoned church. The structure gets submerged in the river water during the monsoon. But since it is summer now, the water has receded.
The place is ~20KM from Hassan, off the Bangalore-Hassan-Mangalore highway. On the bypass, one can see a board that reads "Gorur 22". The approach to Shettihalli is the next left turn. There are lots of people around to ask for directions. So one can't get lost. :)
From the main road, only the top and the water are visible. Makes for an amazing view. The ruins of the church are pretty impressive too. Unfortunately, as is the case with most of our old buildings, this one too is vandalized :(. But it is a place where one can spend a few mins in silence and solitude.
Apart from the place, the journey itself is quite nice. 400 KMs in a day is definitely tiring, but enjoyable nevertheless.
If anyone is driving past Hassan, I would strongly recommend them to take a short detour, visit the church and then resume their journey. Just make sure NOT to dirty the place.
Photos from along the journey and from the church itself @ my flickr stream.

Happened to find this interesting photograph through Stumbleupon. Not sure if it is real or a hoax, but powerful nevertheless.

Poor quality news

I like The Inq's style of writing. Adding a humourous & witty twist to every news item they post. Like the one on the BBC not being able to handle criticism. The BBC might have drawn lot of flak, for instance its iPlayer not being supported on Linux and Mac. It is however, respected for the quality of news. Our own "BBC Wannabe" NDTV however has to improve manifold.
First stop plagiarizing the layout and color scheme from the BBC.
Second get the closed captions at the right time.
Third get the names of people displayed at the right time. Almost always, the name of the person is never displayed when the person is on screen.
Finally, stop misinterpreting and misrepresenting. 2 simple instances recently seen:
A Tibetan national says that their struggle is going to get more aggressive. The news reader says "Tibetan struggle is going to get more violent". Violence and aggression are not the same. Like Denzel Washington says in Cry Freedom to the lawyer in court "I see confrontation here, I see no violence".
Second Kiran Bedi doesn't want to carry the torch since the extreme security "cages" the torch. News headline reads that "she feels like a caged human".

The XKCD domain is throwing me a page from Questionable Content (another comic). But trying to load a previous comic. So trying to load comic 404 gives a HTTP 404. Now that would make a straight out of HTTP geek-dom.

Wierd "Also try"

Searched for a self portrait of surrealist painter Salvador Dali. And Yahoo threw an interesting set of "Also try" links. Orson Welles, fried bacon, french television. No idea how these are related to Dali.

Meanwhile, Santhosh Guru has decided to start www.sangoo.org. A non profit portal. SANthosh's answer to Google and Yahoo! Sangoo- Sounding the death knell for both.

Google-kkum, Yahoo-kkum sangu daan! :)

When cartoon life captures real life!
Read this: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/WaterCooler/story?id=4323900
And have a look at the Dilert comics from 20th-26th Feb.

2 Treks

Happened to go on 2 treks in the last 3 weeks. Both in the Western Ghats, around the Charmadi Ghat region. The first one was to a mountain named Amedikallu near a town called Shishila. Shishila is ~20 KM from the holy place of Dharmasthala. The trek didn't involve covering much distance, like Kumaraparvata. But was real steep & extremely tiring. And things don't get better if one gets multiple bee stings, do they? It is one trek I would definitely think more than twice before attempting again.

The second one, more recent was from Durgadahalli (the village of the fort) to Ballalarayana Durga, to Bandaje falls and terminating at Mundaje (near Dharmsathala). Ballalarayana Durga was built by Ballala Raya (as the name suggests), but apprently was later captured by Tipu Sultan. The trek was via Bandaje Falls. About 600 feet high. The view looking down from the top of the falls was awesome.

The trek was planned so that it would be mostly climbing down. So it was not tiring. But as usual, the ankles and knees took a severe beating.

Photos of both treks on my Flickr page.

Fat? No food!

StumbleUpon happened to throw up a Mississippi State Legislation (HB 282) which prohibits food establishments from serving food to obese people.
Link : http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/2008/pdf/history/HB/HB0282.xml

Forget freedom of choice, privacy, liberty for a moment. It is ridiculous, hilarious and scary that people require legislations to make them eat healthy.

iRack

Jujubi!!!

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.

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.

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)

Adblock

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

Good Copy, Bad Copy

Good Copy, Bad Copy
A documentary about copyright and culture. (~1 hour)

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.

The strongest argument in favour of social networks.

PhD Comics - Comic 877

Saw this image on Boing Boing.
ROFLMAO!!!

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.

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.

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. ;-)

Richard Dawkins and Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Petronas Ad

Petronas Ad. Enjoy!

Novell has come up with some cool Linux ads.







This is IBM's earliest Linux ad.

Kumaraparvata 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.

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!

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 !

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. :-)

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?

Balloon with a tin foil in a microwave oven

Explosive!!!

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.

From StumbleUpon.

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!

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.

Remember Shakti Concert was simply awesome. Mind blowing. The concert should have ended with a display of fireworks. That would have been something. ;)
Only problem (as 'Ktk' pointed out) is with Shankar Mahadevan pronounced "Giriraja suta" (daughter of the king of mountains - Parvati) as "Giriraja sudha" (whatever that means).

Remember Shakti

RememberShakti
Originally uploaded by Ananth Narayan S.

Remember Shakti on an India tour is playing at the Palace Grounds in Bangalore today. A wonderful fusion of jazz, hindustani and carnatic music, with some really big names in music circles performing.
Go and savor the musical experience. :)

Google Video - Different browser, different page

Google Video throws me a different page depending on whether the browser is IE or Firefox. For what reason? I have no idea. It's bloody bullshit by Google!!
Take a look at the screen shots below.
[Click on the image for all sizes option]



Observe the listings below the search box, viz Top 100, Comedy, Movies.. etc. Right next to the category name is a small downward arrow, a drop down list actually. Mouse-over on any name and a list appears.

On FF (below) the drop down doesn't show up. Why this 'differential treatment'?


P.S. Hope this not an issue with FF Javascript engine.

XGL

More on XGL....

Linutop and lost opportunities

Linutop is a Linux based diskless computer whose main purpose, according to the makers is to surf the internet. It got featured on Reg Hardware.
OK. So what's the big deal? Well... I had something similar (and bigger actually) in mind when I wrote this post back in August. I had just replaced a monitor with a TV as the display device and mentioned the whole thing in the context of Ultra Mobile PCs.

I feel like an idiot... and am jealous!! Wish I had a Venture Capitalist as a friend.

Y! Desktop Search doesn't seem to support Case sensitive, Whole word and Regex based query strings. I am impressed with the speed of retrieval though.

The new Yahoo! Desktop Search (YDS) is good. Much better than the (alpha/beta) version I had installed earlier. Couple of problems I saw were installing the extension pack seemed to mess up indexing of my Outlook folder contents. Might be just that some settings got changed.
Another thing is logging in with my Y! credentials failed. This is required to index Y! Messenger archives. I have no trouble logging into Y! services though.

YM Weather Plugin

YM_Weather
Originally uploaded by Anthroponym.

A really strange tool tip that popped up. Why is it showing Sunday's weather (according to the tooltip) on Monday?
Also, the tool tip has partly covered the forecast area. In that it shows forecast for Sunday and Monday. I would expect Monday and Tuesday instead.
It could be that the weather data server is in a different time zone. But the plugin must handle such minor things.

Lets do some cooking!!!



Well... the cooking in the video was on an XBox 360.
If you don't like to cook on a gaming console you can alternatively use the 'coolest stove in the world' - A MacBook.

Novell + M$

What does the M$ & Novell pact have in store for FOSS developers? How does the community, which doesn't necessarily love M$ view this? So far there doesn't seem to have been any opinions expressed by FOSS heavyweights like RMS, ESR, Linus etc. There don't seem to be any benefits to the community by this deal. Will this alienate Novell from the community?
Will SuSE be rechristened?

The Uniqueness of the Human Brain

XGL

XGL is an X server built on OpenGL. And it is impressive. :)

WOW!!!

Is it not possible for a Yahoo! or Google to show me online (on IM) whenever I am using any of their services? Well.. Must not be a problem. This is when I am actually not logged into IM using either the IM client (or mail as in GMail).
Now, first question : How will I receive a message sent to me when am not logged into IM? This is where toolbar can come into the picture. The toolbar can show a flashing icon when someone is attempting to get in touch with me. I can then (obviously) choose to either login to IM and respond or switch my status to offline. The default will be to show a person offline.
Second question : Usage model / Users. I have no idea who will find this useful or what usage models can be developed around this. If any readers of this post have ideas, leave a comment or blog about ur ideas. Don’t forget to leave a link. :)

Can web based email clients (Yahoo! Mail, Google Mail etc) split large attachments into smaller pieces on the fly when an email is being sent, and at the receiver's side, recombine the parts on the fly into the whole.
There's one feature in GMail that I liked a lot, multiple photo attachments in a single mail are archived downloaded as one zip/tar file. Was cool.

Is there any software that allows one to send SMS using their mobile phone connected to the notebook/desktop? It must allow me to type the message and the recipient's phone number on an application installed on the computer, and send the same using the mobile phone connected to it.
There are sites that allow one to send SMS, but those also allow unsolicited messages to be sent. In this case there is no unsolicited message, just that i type on my 102-key keyboard and not on one that has12 keys.

Suddenlee nostalgia.. suddenlee old post : Meese Mama.

Google Image labeler.. sequel

In my previous post I had termed Google Image Labeler as a great way to beat post lunch drowsiness. What I seemingly didn't realise is that I feel quite drowsy after lunch. Why? Well... Google says I am 19th in the all time ranking. Might drop, might rise. Who knows.

[Click image for all sizes]

I just hope my senior management doesn't see this. They will say "We don't pay you to label images for Google!!" .

As usual, emoticons courtesy Yahoo!.

Google Image Labeller, a great way to beat post lunch sleepiness.
Google is attempting to use the "Wisdom of the Crowds" to improve its image search results. This is not unlike initial search engines, where content was classified by human readers and not bots. Only difference, people who participate consider this a game and Google gets the job done free of cost.

Emoticons courtesy Yahoo!

I had discussed some product ideas with a colleague. And then both of us unanimously chucked it out thinking it would not find any users and was a bit cumbersome to engineer, mainly due to external dependencies. Today, I understand it is actually being productised.

Audio CD players, VCD, DVD players etc are consumer devices that can play content off optical storage devices. However, there is a lot of content available on the internet. Movie-On-Demand and streaming models of content distribution also use the internet as the distribution medium.
But I can’t watch these on TV, unless my TV is ‘internet enabled’. And my TV needs to have all the software in place in order to play the content viz. protocols for streaming media (Real-time Transport Protocol, Real-time Transmission Control Protocol ) and codecs for the zillion proprietary and open formats in which the content gets distributed.

So, would be neat if there is a consumer electronics device, which can stream content from the network, and also provide audio and video line-out functionality so I can connect it to my existing home entertainment system. Due to the nature of the device, it might be necessary that the device have a processor of some kind, either a general purpose low power processor or one specific to the application in mind.

Nowadays a lot of noise is being generated about Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs). These are computers that (seem to) fall somewhere between a smart phone and a tablet PC. UMPCs are ‘internet enabled’ and have all the software support needed for streaming media content. So it can get be used exactly for what I just mentioned. Actually what is needed is a modified version of it. We can probably strip the display unit off the UMPC, since the display is external in any case.

It can connect to a network, either home or external to stream content and also provide for any buffering so as to eliminate jitter and give smooth uninterrupted playback. Maybe it can even download and store the streamed content for playback at a later time. This is like the ASUS WL-700gE router, which can download torrents with the PC turned off.

Now, if the device has a normal low power processor and a general purpose OS running, then I can probably have a browser installed on it too. So I can check mail on a BIG screen. :)
And since the device can connect to a home media server, it might also fall in place with entertainment solutions like Intel® Viiv^TM.

Open Source Company

The Original Open Source Company talks about using the model of open source software ( I presume the author actually means Free Software) in different areas, specifically in establishing and running a company. Will be definitely interesting to see how far this idea goes and what the company achieves. I believe the biggest hurdle will be in decision making, since it wil get tougher as the company grows and the description by the author says 'decisions about the day to day operations of the company are voted on by one ‘n all'.

Open source seems to be the buzzword of today. With people 'Open source'-ing everything, we will have soon have an open source spectrum of products.. spanning from open source software to 'Open Source Underwear'!

Coming back, as the (above) company grows won't a hieracrchy (however rudimentary) tend to establish itself? (Err... is there a name for this phenomenon?). I am unable to think of examples. Even in case of demorcracy, there is the government and the governed. And once a hierarchy is established, there is going to be reduction in the information that flows from level to level (quality/amount/importance).

Consider any existing company. There are enough and more barriers that cut the flow of information from the `higher` to the `lower` levels. If there is a question asked on corporate decision making some kind of half hearted information is given. Why? Because the information requested was 'need to know'. But then everything in such an establishment will probably be 'need to know'. Worse still, information doesn't seem to flow smoothly inside a team in the company, irrespective of the team's size.

If the proposed company does not fall prey to hierarchy-dom, it will be a one-of-its-kind. And I might invest in it. :-)

Linux on USB flash drive

There are many sites providing USB pendrive distros, most notably PendriveLinux. But what I was unable to find was a step-by-step procedure. So began experimentation and I created a Linux installation on a 128 MB USB flash drive. And its pretty simple.
So here goes...
You need :

• A linux box, with sources, gcc & binutils.
  
• ExtLinux bootloader.
• A USB pen drive (also called USB stick, USB key, USB etc etc).
• Busybox

Configure the kernel and compile it. Especially, USB support must be part of the kernel and not a module. In my configuration, all h/w support was part of the kernel image. Nothing was included as a module.
Also, this means that we need to specially customize the kernel for the target hardware on which the USB installation will be used. So we have all the necessary support without increasing the kernel image size.

The USB drive needs to be partitioned and formatted as an ext3 partition. I created a single bootable ext3 partition.
Next is to install extlinux on the USB device. Extlinux is a bootloader that can boot linux of an ext2/3 partition. The steps to do this are in the syslinux site.

Once this is done, copy the bzImage and the initrd file to the boot directory on the USB drive and also create the extlinux.conf file. The initrd file gets created in /boot directory of the linux box when 'make install' is run. Once can choose to create their own initrd too.

I extracted the initrd and then copied the directories created onto the USB drive. This had the directories bin, lib, proc, root, sbin, sys, tmp and a init shell script. Linux needs an init (or a linuxrc) which it executes as the first process.

Now that the files are copied, reboot the box and get it to boot from the USB disk. :-).

Busybox can be used instead of the various individual binaries. Busybox is a lightweight console app that provides for the various binaries needed on Linux.

Next experiment: get X server & Window Maker on the USB drive.

Got Yahoo! Mail Beta recently.
And one thing I happened to notice was that on Internet Explorer, an ad would come up on the right hand side. A 'skyscraper' ad. But on Mozilla Firefox, no ad on the right side. Just a blank area. The inbox pane and the reading pane did not expand to fill up the space though. Maybe Firefox Adblock plugin is the reason.
By the way, get your name in the source code of Firefox by getting a friend to download it. How? Details @ Firefox day site.

One one side is Corporate ( a MUST AVOID under all circumstances), *ing Bipasha Basu and Kay Kay Menon among others ; and on the other side is The Corporation, starring Noam Chomsky, Micheal Moore, Peter Drucker etc.

I am suing my colleagues for making me go through emotional distress and psychological trauma.

Lucky Eddie..

Lucky Eddie
Originally uploaded
by Anthroponym.

A colleague of mine reminds me a lot of Lucky Eddie, from Hagar, The Horrible cartoon strip. Both share a few traits including long hair.

Y!oogle

YM Google
Originally uploaded by Anthroponym.

Installed YM 8. And it had an annoying ebay ad. So I got hold of a registry hack that was supposed to remove the ad from the main window.
Now the hack said i need to put a '*', but i put a * followed by a space and restarted YM.
What do I see? In place of an ebay ad, I see a Google page. With a * in the search box. Now I can enter a search query and hit 'Enter' to trigger a google search too, and view the results in the same small rectangular area. The display was all jumbed up though.
And Google is not even my browser home page. :-o
Hmmm... interesting.

Update 1: While Google is not my homepage, it is the default search engine on IE.

Update 2:It seems YM uses IE to render the ad. And the URL i put in the registry was mangled. In IE, bad URLs become searches and a Google search was done.
So it doesn't seem to be some easter egg on YM.

My company has a spacious parking space. So, lets put it to good use. I want to drive to work in a lorry. Pakka goods transportation lorry, an Ashok Leyland one, with 'Horn Ok Please' written on the back.
All this just to see and enjoy the bewildered faces of site security personnel and colleagues. Think it will be fun.

Y! personalized services

I didn't know that Yahoo serves personalized requests :-). At times laziness can be the source of a cool little hackY!ack. If you don't want to add calendar entries for the matches in the Football World Cup 2006, then this cool Y! Calendar thing is for you.
They say 'Be careful what you wish for, You might just get it!'. Next thing in wish list konfabulator widgets for live scores from Wimbledon/Cricket World Cup.

Dinner last saturday, a feast for the ears by Pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, son Salil Bhat and Ramprasad Mishra on the tabla.

Saurkundi Pass - Part 2

Part 1 was an account of the experience on the Saurkundi trek. Part 2 just has a list of shared photos taken by me and fellow trekkers on the same trek. See them and enjoy the beauty of the Himalayas.

• My Photo stream.
  
• Jayanth's Photo stream.

Saurkundi Pass - Mazaak nahin hai!

Originally uploaded by Anthroponym.

The last 2 weeks I was in the Kullu valley, trekking across the Saurkundi Pass in the Pirpanjal range. Atop the Saur mountain, 13000 feet above sea level is the Saurkund lake. And the pass that goes beside it is the Saurkundi pass.

The trek was organised by the Youth Hostels Association of India (YHAI). The base camp is located at Babeli village along the banks of the Beas river, which is the lifeline of the Kullu valley.

The first day of the 7 day trek took us to Segli camp at 7100 feet. A climb of 3000 feet. Phew!! The camp was in an apple orchard, and not too far from the Segli village. Next day, next camp at Hora Thatch, 9200 feet, in the middle of a forest. Unfortunately no animals or wild forest people. Day 3 took us to Maylee Thatch at 10000+ feet. We hit small patches of snow and had to walk across them. The more experienced trekkers giving advice to us first timers how to place the leg on the snow so as to get a firm grip and not slide down the mountain face into the ravine below. Day 4 ended with the group reaching Dhavra @ 11000+ feet. This was the highest camp where we spent the night. On the way one smart alec tried something stupid and ended up sliding down the snow a good 100-150 feet before the guides (luckily) caught him and prevented him from going further. That was scary. Dhavra was lashed by heavy rain, hail and winds so strong, one of the tents broke in the middle of the night and the occupants had to be accommodated in the remaining tents.

It was adventurous all right. The greatest 'adventure' was to get up early every morning and go to find a place for egestion. Strict instructions, nothing to be done near water or near the path that the locals took to go up & down the mountains. The worst was at camp Dhavra, where we had to walk across a glacier for 10 mins to get to the place. I pity the groups that reported for the trek on later days.

The water was numbingly cold. One contact and hands would go numb. We had abandoned all hopes of washing our hands, feet, even our lunch boxes and plates. Even thinking of taking a bath was an act of bravery. This was the time I understood the importance of the paper "A greedy approach towards optimizing usage of externally intangible resources". The motto in the tent was to "Share (the antifungal powder, the deo, the talcum powder, the cold cream) and share alike".

We woke up on day 5 to find a fresh layer of snow glowing in the morning light. We left camp to cross Saurkundi pass. Steep climb on the snow took us to the top of the Saur mountain. The view from atop is a sight for Saur eyes. Snow capped peaks all round and the hill town of Manali down below.

The fun part was after crossing the pass. We had to slide down on the snow, 300 feet or so. From the point where the slide started, we could see 4 feet of snow ahead, and the people who had slid down already standing down below. In between was a steep drop. End of day 5, we reach Longa Thatch.

The last 2 days of the trek were the toughest. Descending the mountains on a narrow path takes a heavy toll on your legs and back. Especially the ankles and knees. Day 6, we camped at Lekhni village, in a pomogranete orchard. Day 7, back to base camp, followed by a well deserved bath. Still in cold water.

A bunch of us visited Manikaran, piligrimage spot for both Sikhs and Hindus, located on the banks of the Parvati river. Our main motivation was that we could take bath in the hot water springs. They say it is the journey to the destination and not the destination itself that is more important. Defenitely!! Sitting atop the bus, going on a narrow road, one side you can drop down a precipice, on the other side you can get hit by a large stone protruding from the mountain face. End result...

The field director at the base camp had said 'You are going to Saurkundi pass. Koi mazaak nahin hai. You must always be in discipline'. And I must say, crossing Saurkundi, koi mazaak nahin tha!!!