Was it worth the sweat, sleep, and stocks?

Dec 14th, the day when I ended my MBA, atleast from my side. I completed my last presentation of my last project and there by ending a roller-coaster ride of 16 months. Looking back was it one of my best decisions? Who knows, opportunity cost cannot be measured ? Really ? NO

Here are some positives
- A psychopathic (not Psychological) relief of being away from Infosys and its politics (onsite, offshore, hierarchy, blah blah blah)
- Alienating myself for IT (application development), which my colleagues used to treat
as a matter of life and death (may be thats what is required to excel, which I never could
attain)
- A new world of fuzzy knowledge - I love this , this is my domain, there is no single
correct answer. Anything and everything is dependent on perspectives. This models real life.
This is where the action is. Returns are correlated to risk and you chose your path in
decision making
- Analytics and problem solving are key
- Socializing is a bane though, which I have avoided to the maximum so far
- Traveling to different countries was fun, will do more of it in the future
- An opportunity wide open to explore Asia fully, North, east, south and west
- A possible travel to different continents (africa-egypt, Aus -nZ, South America-Chile, NA- Canada Trinidad and Tobago)
- High expectations, hope they get delivered
- A lot on personal front - its personal rite...no more explanations

From Jan 14th it shall be a new day, a new life.
Until then holidays.. ( just one more week of erratic sleep and stock selling)

Taare Zameen Par

One line advice - Don't miss it.

Its CLASSIC

Phewww, just incredible.

Are bankers paid to bring down the Economy

In the earlier years of this century, there was a dramatic shift in the finance industry. Actually the pre-cursor was set in the 1990s. Prestigious banks started to face competition from boutique companies and independent financial firms, many of which were established by ex-employees of these big banks. The innovation in products in the big banks were slowing down, and these smaller firms were creating newer attractive products. The big banks had the customers and smaller guys had the most creative products.

So an era of "open innovation" started, where the big banks started adopting the creation of the smaller banks, by distributing the products from these smaller guys. Previously the industry used to be rewarded based on the %age of returns they generated. But now, this could not be done anymore with the big banks having no rights on the products returns. This probably gave rise to the new way of compensating managers - %age of assets managed.

With this new compensation structure, bankers were pushed to sell more and more, and accumulate assets rather than concentrating on returns. The amalgamation of different industry players left customers with few choices of going elsewhere and look for people who had a different structure of operations. Almost all banks issued 3rd party products.

Well bankers kept on innovating products by wrapping up different layers of structured financial methods. One such product is the CDO - collateralized debt obligations. With the compensation structure tied to assets, all it mattered was raising money. The process of due diligence took a back seat. Evaluations were left to third parties. Bad debts were projected as AAA securities and sold to investors. The frenzy caught on, and no banks could resist such an opportunity.

It is estimated that in the $15 trillion US debt industry (this itself is a staggering number) 20% is subprime (not only mortgage it includes everything from credit card, car loans, student loans etc) and in this 90% is bad debt, which will be written down mostly. That mean nearly $2.5 trillion. Till now the total write down is around $100 billion probably. So there is still a lot to come. Embrace bankers embrace. The numbers might be wrong, but it is still huge.

The question is are bankers paid to bring down the Economy?
- the Internet bubble, where the banks issues so many overhyped IPOs
- Now the housing market

History repeats for sure in the banking industry, and mistakes are soon forgotten. Whats the next frenzy wave boys?

disclaimer - this is totally out of my ignorance. I might be grossly wrong

After one really hectic week I am back on a saturday blogging about things happened/happening. First things first. I thiunk Richie will be in India this week. With four of us here, it would be a nice December season. Nothing much happening in life. Mysore Tata, I love you and I am grateful to you.

I am expecting major team changes in the beginning of the first quarter in 2008. Let's see how this whole thing goes. Keeping my fingers crossed! Work had quite a bit of a lull this week and me committing a stupid compile break because of a CFLAG. This whole compile-break issue has been bloated and blown out of proportion. Hmm. It is strange that each manager or client has his own philosophy. Some people prefer Timeliness over quality in Software, and some people prefer quality over timeliness. I am good at delivereing first and keeping on adding patches , but I have to get used to the people who want things picture perfect at first shot.Change is constant in life and we have to learn to move on.

Caught up with Om Shanthi Om. Didn't like it so much, because I was aware of almost all the gags. Ruchira has started driving the car around everywhere in the first and second gear. Thats about from me now .... signing off with work increasing exponentially (for sure) the next week ....
:-(

TWTW (The week that was)

Better late than never....

Because of blogger and blogspot being blocked in office, it has become quite a task to blog!!!!

The beginning of this week I had been to three weddings all in and around Shimoga. The beginning of this week , witnessed a lot of different bakshagaLu and tested my gastronomic limits.

The creme-de-la-creme was me having a little bit of tambaaku (with some excruciatingly fiery betel leaves) unknowingly. It was like a shot in the head to say the least.

Last week, Tejaswi, Kumar and me packed our bags to Shivamogga, Nadahalli and the nearby places. I will upload a few photos for your viewing. We had been to Teju's very old house in Nadahalli. (the above one).

Teju had a quiet birthday , most of it was celebrated using phone calls ... :-)

There are a lot of things to say abt the trip, but I gotta go !!!

State of Higher Education in India

Stumbled on this article on Outlook.

http://outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20071122&fname=harsh&sid=1

Found this piece of cliched quote and stopped reading further

"If we leave aside the IITs, the IIMs, and some other institutions such as the AIIMs, the Indian Institute of Science, and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, we will find a higher education sector that is increasingly unwilling and unable to bear the weight of the rising expectations of an emerging India. "

Agreed IITs and IIMs are institutes of High reputation which have contributed greatly to the Academic circles and the industry, but there are people from other institutes too who have made some kind of contribution. What about the IISc, the RECs(NITs), the UVCEs and RVCEs of different states, the Delhi university, ISBs, SPJAINs, FMSes etc? and the many numerous schools of a decent reputation?

Enough of cliche. The obsession of maintaining exclusivity of IITs and IIMs have really crippled the higher education system, and limited the infrastructure for many talented students. ( I think this is what the author is cribbing about). 2 lakh people for 2000 seats for IIMs? That sucks really. It presumes the 97 percentiles are not worthy enough compared to the 99s. I do not know if it is the lack of infrastructure, or the mentality of maintaining EXCLUSIVITY that is more prevalent or both.

Dont Repeat the Same Mistake..

Is an advice almost provided by everyone, but rarely followed. If rumors were to be true, Yahoo really paid a high price by doing it

First before 1997, the founders of Google went to Yahoo for a seed money for the search technology. Yahoo did not believe there is a market for information searching, as they were overwhelmed by banner ads. - Well this is part of history Google boasts on its website

Second time, Yahoo had an option to buy Google for $1billion in 2003 before the high-profile Google IPO. Rumors has it Yahoo dint acknowledge Google was worth it and some bankers were behind the deal being withered out

Hmm.. same mistake baby (well almost)

Sustainable prod development - REally funny

TOday we had a class on Sustainable product development. The professor presented some envelopes made up of papers from used magazines and commended on the creatitivy of the person who did this. She was so amazed of this massive reusability, recycling whatever she coined it and passed the envelopes around the class to have a deep look into it :-).

I found it really funny. This is a huge industry in India Damnit :D

Read This Please :-)

Think it is a good post in response to Consumerism :-)

FLAT WORLD

America needs a ‘patriot tax’ on gasoline

THOMAS L FRIEDMAN

Two dates — two numbers. Read them and weep for what could have, and should have, been. On Sept 11, 2001, the OPEC basket oil price was $25.50 a barrel. On Nov 13, 2007, the OPEC basket price was around $90 a barrel.
In the wake of 9/11, some of us pleaded for a ‘‘patriot tax’’ on gasoline of $1 or more a gallon to diminish the transfers of wealth we were making to the very countries who were indirectly financing the ideologies of intolerance that were killing Americans and in order to spur innovation in energy efficiency by US manufacturers.
But no, George Bush and Dick Cheney had a better idea. And the Democrats went along for the ride. You’d think that one person, just one, running for Congress or the Senate would take a flier and say: ‘‘Oh, what the heck. I’m going to lose anyway. Why not tell the truth? I’ll support a gasoline tax.’’
Not one. Everyone just runs away from the ‘T-word’ and watches our wealth run away to Russia, Venezuela and Iran. I can’t believe that someone could not win the following debate: Republican Candidate: ‘‘My Democratic opponent, true to form, wants to raise your taxes. Yes, now he wants to raise your taxes at the gasoline pump by $1 a gallon. Another tax-and-spend liberal who wants to get into your pocket.’’ Democratic Candidate: ‘‘Yes, my opponent is right. I do favour a gasoline tax phased in over 12 months. But let’s get one thing straight: My opponent and i are both for a tax. I just prefer that my taxes go to the US Treasury, and he’s ready to see his go to the Russian, Venezuelan, Saudi and Iranian treasuries. His tax finances people who hate us. Mine would offset some of our payroll taxes, pay down our deficit, strengthen our dollar, stimulate energy efficiency and shore up Social Security. It’s called win-winwin-win-win for America. My opponent’s strategy is sit back, let the market work and watch America lose-lose-lose-lose-lose.’’ If you can’t win that debate, you don’t belong in politics.
‘‘Think about it,’’ says Phil Verleger, an energy economist. ‘‘We could have replaced the current payroll tax with a gasoline tax. Middle-class consumers would have seen increased take-home pay of 6-9%, they would have had to pay more at the pump. A stronger foundation for future economic growth would have been laid by keeping more oil revenue home, and we might not now be facing a recession.’’
As a higher gas tax discouraged oil consumption, the Harvard University economist and former Bush adviser N Gregory Mankiw has argued: ‘‘the price of oil would fall in world markets. As a result, the price of gas to (US) consumers would rise by less than the increase in the tax. Some of the tax would in effect be paid by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.’’
But US consumers would have known that, with a higher gasoline tax locked in for good, pump prices would never be going back to the old days, adds Verleger, so they would have a much stronger incentive to switch to more fuelefficient vehicles and Detroit would have had to make more hybrids to survive. This would have put Detroit five years ahead of where it is now.
We simply cannot go on being as dumb as we wanna be. If you hate the war in Iraq, then you want a gasoline tax so you can argue that we can pull out of there without remaining dependent on an even more unstable region.
If you want to see America thrive by becoming the most energy productive economy in the world — a title that now belongs to Japan, which doesn’t have a drop of oil in its soil — you want a gasoline tax, which will only spur US innovation in energy efficiency.
NYT NEWS SERVICE

Consumerism

I am writing this out of sheer desperation of doing something different for the day, apart from browsing, refreshing inboxes, and surfing channels. It has really been killing :D

The fear is officially declared. Americans are spending less due to various things credit turmoil and rising oil costs being at the forefront. There is no dreadful event as this one - Americans spending less. Worldwide companies, governments, and now a days even ordinary people are worried about this phenomenon and this clearly sucks.

Here is a sect of people who are over draft on their credit, and enjoying a quality of life better than majority of people across the world. And the people supplying Americans are worried, working hard, in order to give these people a over decent life. (much more than they deserve)

With almost no savings and drawing heavy personal debts on undervalued assets, the life enjoyed by the people here is unrivaled. Their consumption cannot be satisfied. They never have heard of conservation, efficiency and similar words. This leaves the whole burden on the companies to innovate incessantly to produce products which can be suited to this consuming behavior and indeed achieve sustainability too.

Lets talk about the energy crisis. With crude kissing $100/barrel, what should be the focus ?
The Energy efficiency bill has so much hurdles getting approved. Everyone blames the Auto and Oil companies for this. But I think deep under its the attitude of American consumers which drivers the Auto/Oil companies not to think of Efficiency.

Now this has given some explosive growth to alternative energy systems in the US, ranging from Solar to biofuels. Somewhere it is wrong economics and somewhere else its rattling the food markets. But who cares of millions of hunger stomachs across the world, compared to vrooming SUVs across the roads of the US. Even people like Mr. Vinod Khosla is pitching so hard for Bio-fuels ignoring the fact that Bio fuels like oil is a global market and will disrupt food markets across the world. Well who cares? When bio-fuel is pitched it is all about energy security, farmers in the US, Green House Gases etc. Who cares what happens to other parts of the world.

Americans are overdrafted and its high-time they spend less and concentrate on savings, efficiency, preserving etc etc etc as there is not enough money to lend more for bad assets.

Spending without having money is stupid, but this country is currently having a gala time.

Diwali

Happy Diwali guys!!!

It was a great 3 day fun starting from Thursday and I had a gala time. Super oota for three days but very loud and noisy diwali everywhere here in Bangalore.

For me, it was the first diwali and it was fun and nice too. Two weeks ago I drove to Hosur, bought MANY crackers at 95% discount and also got a taste of Electronic City traffic. The elevated highway is a huuuuge project (it is more than 8kms, I guess) and the government has done a wise thing by splitting the project by giving it to 4 different contractors. There will be mutual competition and nobody can give a silly reason and escape.

Also, as I have seen many diwalis in my life, I notice that the crackers are getting more innovative every year. Nowadays, Diwali is not just about flower-pot, sur-sur bhatthi and lakshmi pataaki. There are much more innovative stuff. The Standard Fireworks factory has tied up with Chinese firecracker companies and have started crackers which launch something and there is an aerial display of color.

But of course, there is a lot of noise and smoke. I feel very bad about the pollution levels in the city. There are assurances that the noise levels are not more than some prescribed limit of decibels and there are prints saying that no child labor has been exploited. But something has to be done about the smoke. Or I guess, we should start using less fireworks ?

And this weekend, managed to catch the movie "Wag the Dog" on DVD. It's been quite a while since I watched an English movie and enjoyed it. If you find it , it's worth watching.Today there's Teja's wedding. Hope Kummi's Electra 5s has arrived. I am looking forward to see Kummi on it.

Small notes for memory's sake! :-

• Chola Batoora - Day0 with kalsdanna for Dinner
  
• Bisibelebaath, Holige and champaakali - Day1 (Naraka Chaturdashi)
  
• Veg Ravioli Tomato Sauce and Banana Walnut Cake - Day 3 (At Herbs and Spices, Indiranagar)
  
• Gobi Mutter and Chapathi - Day 3 (Bali padya)

Next week we have booked a rail ticket for Shimoga, in view of Avinash, Harsha Ramangagoudr's wedding. And hoping to enjoy some Nadahalli food also.

There are still good people in the world....

The day before yesterday, as I was driving near Chinnaswamy stadium, a car collided at a medium speed to my car's bumper damaging the rear bumper. I stopped my car and I was very angry because, just a week ago in the same place my bumper was damaged by a mammoth sized army truck. I had got it repaired and paid quite a bit for the damage.

Now this time by a Wagon-R !!! As I went to talk to the driver, the driver told that he will call me and took my mobile phone number and drove away. I realized I had not even taken his car registration plate.

Then after 1 hour, he got back to me identified himself as a Software Engineer working for Iflex. He transfered 4000/- from his account within half an hour. (The charges were 6000/= and I told 3500/= would be enough from his side, but he gave me 4 grand)

Kishore ... Thanks pal.
He also thanked me for trusting him in that situation.

Meanwhile my car, sports a grin with a broken tooth .... I will have to leave it to the garage within 10 days after it came out :-(

Bangalore rains suck... Bangalore Traffic sucks harder (especially when it rains) .... It is very difficult for aam-junta to brave a different kind of traffic problem everyday. I hope there is a permanent solution to this ever increasing problem.

Lead India

The initiative looks pretty good, but I guess it could become a case in which a leader is chosen by the media.

The leader might become a "media-groomed" leader. Moreover, using internet-print and TV could help them gain recognition and all that but the advertisement claiming to "Do something" doesn't work at the top level especially when we get hung scenario and one guy is desperately ready to get the power at the cost of losing all his morals and principles. To all the intellectuals out there, talking English and education won't help. Street-smartness is required up there. Otherwise we would have had ALL the double-degree and the triple-degree people in all the discipline vying for the top post!!!!!!

I understand the power and importance of Media in democracy, but media actually helping people to select a leader just shows people are ready to believe what the Times Group "informs" them. What if whatever the Times Group is giving to us is a fake ?

I would rather vote for an experienced and betrayed Yediyurappa than someone else.

PS :- Office alli blogger block maad-bittidaare...Olle goLu :-(

The so many things we've learnt

This Saturday I caught with Tejaswi and we were discussing about "those old and enjoyable college days". We were discussing about some subjects we studied like Instrumentation and Transducers, Karnaugh Maps , some Zener diodes etc. Of course it is a long distant memory (as far as I am concerned), but I missed the feel of sitting on a bench and listening to a professor.

And yesterday I had a dream about learning Calculus (i.e. Maths) in some old thatched roof engineering college in Bhopal. (Bhopal was on my mind for some other reason, of course...haha).

But today before I start my work, I kinda miss subjects like Pure Maths (like Calculus). Are they directly or in-directly affecting my performance. I am intrigued and in a mood of self-retrospection. My skills of Algebra, Calculus, Trigonometry and Arithmetic definitely needs a brush up. I feel you should keep your basics sharp and your mind alert.

I am looking forward for some study program of such sorts. Any pointers on this ? Any active internet group might be good enough.

More importantly, Does anyone feel the necessity of high school Arithmetic, Algebra, Calculus and feel and also "sense" its necessity of application ?

Confusion that never stops
The closing walls and ticking clocks,

-- Coldplay

puzzle

The absolute value of a real number is defined as its numerical value without regard for sign. So, for example, abs(2) = abs(-2) = 2. The maximum of two real numbers is defined as the numerically bigger of the two. For example, max(2, -3) = max(2, 2) = 2. Express: (a) abs in terms of max; and (b) max in terms of abs.

I could think of a). Simple.
abs(x) = max(x,-x)

What about b) ?
Can we do without a "flower bracket if{}" ?

Scientists

I should really salute these scientists. I thought Physics (in particular "basic Physics") is dead and gone. Let me pose a question:-

In today's world, what kind of truth (truth in a "Physics" context) can you find out with a beaker full of water, or half water ?

If you ask a question like this to a boring normal guy(like me) who has acquired ignorance and arm-chair philosophy due to daily-routine inertia, I would probably tell you about the story of a thirsty crow who dropped pebbles into a beaker so as to make it full. Or probably I would tell about Archimedes principle (buoyant force and all that).

In other words, I would say All that, which can be discovered with a beaker full of water, has been discovered by Newton (and his dog, diamond?) or Archimedes or Bernoulli.

But hang on!!!!! People still manage to do interesting things with a beaker full of water.When exposed to high voltage, water does some interesting things. From the article :

'water in two beakers climbs out of the beakers and crosses empty space to meet, forming the water bridge. The liquid bridge, hovering in space, appears to the human eye to defy gravity. Upon investigating the phenomenon, the scientists found that water was being transported from one beaker to another, usually from the anode beaker to the cathode beaker. The cylindrical water bridge, with a diameter of 1-3 mm, could remain intact when the beakers were pulled apart at a distance of up to 25 mm.'"

Well I guess it is just a question of having a "research attitude" and that keen eye. It's all about seeing whether the glass is half empty or half full ! These kind of properties will definitely have some application.

Have a look around the world around you. You will find at least some questions : (If not answers)

Hmmm...Now I guess I should think what happens if you dip a Compact Disc in a beaker full of water mixed with Salt and pickle and give a high voltage!!!

Have a look at this article : Water forms floating 'bridge' when exposed to high voltage

IT IT IT

And there are more unpleasant realities expected to come in the near future of the IT Industry. First is the falling dollar. I understand inter-dependence is of high importance for a national economy to flourish. But a falling dollar in reality indicates yet another recession in the heavily dependent services-based Indian IT sector. Moreover, it can be a hit for both small scale and large scale software companies with news like these :-

What worries IT firms more is that the STPI scheme, which exempts their export earnings from tax, will be withdrawn in 2009. The industry is lobbying hard with New Delhi and even BPO firms have raised the demand for similar benefits. So far, the finance ministry has given no indication of warming to the idea.

The STPI scheme has special benefits like "Duty Free" Import for Hardware and Software, exemption for Corporate Income Tax etc. The IT industry has been pampered atleast for the past 2 decades. In 2009, we have to see how things shape up. But I believe that the Indian Economy will kind of stabilize, with a software job becoming another normal chaakri naukri.

Read the related article Why IT chiefs are nervous about the future

Manorama 6 ft under - * * * *

Here's a movie which is a VERY good creation of a new director. The acting is ekdum first class with Abhay Deol, Sarika (whatte voice!), Raima Sen doing good justice to their roles.

Well, the plot of Manorama... is from Chinatown. I have a book of the script of Chinatown. I loved the multi-layered plot of Chinatown. Jack Nicholson as JJ Gittes..man! what a script. I am still hunting for a DVD version of the movie.

Manorama is a fitting adaptation of Chinatown, one of the best screenplays written. Chinatown was a multi-layered script.

Since I love the multi-layered script concept, let me give an "rough" example of a multi layered plot.

paragraph-1
A ragged cat goes to a pond, catches a goldfish with its paws, and chews it and is delighted with its catch. The another small fish watches the goldfish disappear in the cat's mouth with tears in its eyes.

paragraph-2
A few minutes later,the "small fish" is seen celebrating with joy with its friends. WHY????? The small fish was actually an enemy of the goldfish because the goldfish had eaten the small fish's lover, an hour ago. The cat had not eaten for three days and had fought vainly with dogs. The goldfish was a tyrant. The small fish actually shed tears of joy, when the cat ate it!

Okay that was a stupid plot , I agree, but I hope you get the gist! As you can see in paragraph-2, you are adding a layer below to the peripheral outer layer. It is not just a twist, but a whole story which was covered-up!

In Manorama..., the action happens in Rajasthan. The film itself has such a feel of the desert and the tagline "Nothing is what it seems" is a befitting title.

Folks, Grab your tickets before the film vanishes!

Bangaloreans : The woe is that you have to shell out a monstrous 200/= for a ticket on a weekend. Something has to be done about such ridiculous rates.

ayyo Rama !

Regarding the Sethusamudram Project, it is a tough job to take a definitive stance on whether the Bridge should be actually demolished.

The reason to see why the bridge should be tampered :-
A ship channel across the Palk Strait will be created allowing ships to pass through the channel instead of having to go around the island of Sri Lanka. 30 hours of shipping time will be saved.

The reason why the ship should not be tampered :-
It is a heritage monument. Moreover, it is a pilgrimage place. By demolishing this bridge, they are actually playing with beliefs and sentiments of millions of Indians in general and Hindus in particular.

The Central Government issued a statement of blunder (based on Archaelogical Survey of India's survey) saying No proof of Lord Rama . I am sure the BJP will fight it to the end. Sonia Gandhi might have withdrawn the statement, but in doing that she has made another blunder by provoking the atheist Karunanidhi's DMK party.

From the Central Government point of view, they should not have opened the Pandora's box of troubles.

However, the Nuke deal and its implications, is keeping the Left's useless morons and the whole Lok Sabha busy. So this issue might not blow up. But they may have strained relations with the DMK.

Have people gone crazy ?

It seems they are developing a web-server on a mobile phone. This is getting ridiculous. It may work, but why ?

From the article :-

Running a server on your phone is, at the moment, more of a proof of concept demonstration. However it has interesting potential uses. For example it offers away to gain access to information about where the phone is, what is stored on the phone (both contacts and pictures), as well as providing a personal web server that is more intimately connected to an individual.

Bollocks. When a phone is mobile why would the owner login to the phone when he carries it around ? (unless his whole world is centered on that goddamn phone and he is a forgetful person).

My advice to people who are students who want to come to software.
Give up the software dream; People have run out of ideas and have become stupid. Go back to farming. This is of no use.

Wow!

It was 1956 and these guys were trying to dispatch this hard disk somewhere.
The hard disk weighed 1 ton and it could store 5 MB of data.

This was one of the early hard disks. Have a look at the IBM 350 Disk Storage Unit.
We have come a long way.I somehow feel the oldies(ppl in the industry till the end of millenium) of CompSci were the real innovators...Can someone give the scientists a 4GB pendrive, please ?

B Grade

There is something REALLY to look forward about B-Grade movies. The movie itself has a kind of charm. If carefully watched B-Grade movies are a source of great entertainment. Be it any language, they are fun!

My first tryst with the B-Grade movies started probably when I got Star-TV installed in my house. Some of these exploitation based themes do have good stories and of course good ahem.... But it maybe the camera or the direction which gives the "B-Grade character". But there is some degree of honesty and effort by the B-Grade directors (in at least some movies).I really appreciate that and it is a lesson on production values/direction and shots for all aspiring writers and directors.

The Best B-Grade movies from India were from the Ramsay house, who went on to produce a popular serial called the "Zee Horror Show".They featured some weird kind of Draculas , mandirs and Kali maatah and all that. There was also a VERY interesting story in a Kannada B-Grade movie called "Tulasi Dala". Amazing story by a Telegu writer woven into a Kannada movie.

Well I stumbled into some Hollywood retro B-Grade flicks which are referred to as The Grindhouse.

Have a look at some of the Dialogs from B-Grade movies :-

Narrator(introducing the hero to the audience) : He wears a 600-dollar suit and drives a 10,000-dollar car. He has two guns. One to stop Trouble and the other gun to make trouble.

hahah.

Have a look at the Grindhouse trailers on youtube. The music is a real beauty.

Oh yeah and a scene from the worst movie of all time (according to imdb) :
Manos: the hands of Fate

Enjoy B-Grade movies!!!! (At least once in a while)

Amadeus

The movie "Amadeus" is strong movie. You need patience and a sense of cinema to appreciate it. Deeply.



Well, to be frank, for sometime, when the director goes into all the details of staging operas and the librettos, you'll end up bored.

But the essence of the movie is about : Are men created equal ? .

The director tends to answer this question through a comparatively "inferior man" who's done things the hard way.

The movie is essentially a conflict or a case of rivalry between a genius and a textual, orthodox hardworker.

Consider this in real life:

You have worked for twenty hours and come up with a great piece of work (whatever field you are in). Now your immediate rival because of his genius (who keeps just frolicking away to glory is able to do everything in the last moment.) You are left slack jawed thinking how was this possible ?

Is he a genius ? What the eff is wrong with me ? I work so hard...Why is god so unkind to me?

Well, the story is between Rivalry between Mozart (who was the genius) and Antonio Salieri (who was the inferior conductor).

Caution : It is a very heavy movie and is a work of genius. If you like movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and TaxiDriver and movies with ulterior meanings, this will leave you affected.

More than the direction, it was the acting. Salieri was AWESOME!

The top 5 common dreams

It seems the top 5 common dreams are these :-

1. Being Naked (lol!!)
2. Being Chased
3. Flying
4. Losing Teeth
5. Falling

As far as I am concerned, I get from the above list : 5(frequent),4,3,2(rare) in that order.

Nonetheless, this article regarding "Top 5 Common Dream Themes" is a good read. But don't know how much all that is true....

But some of my dreams are ridiculous...Just plain nonsense...

Which ones do you get ?

Outsourcing Mania..

New elections, new candidates, but the issues remain the same... I-raq and Outsourcing are some of the hottest topics, besides trade deficit with China... The outsourcing of manufacturing to China dint cause much furore as IT/BPO jobs are being moved away to low-cost centers mainly in India, western europe, china, philliphines, brazil, mexico etc..

Ofcos the target nation is INDIA .. the mania has outgrown the actual problem. Phrases like 'Bangalored' were discovered and there will be many more such words and phrases. It has become such and issue that Michael Bay could not resist dedicating a scene in his latest movie - The Transformers.

The soldier fighting a transformer in Qatar tries to contact US security through an international call. The call gets re-routed to the phone service company and the guy answering the call is India, who promptly asks for credit card info, for payment. And this becomes a mockery scence as the Indian doesnt not understand the importance of the situation :-) :-). Well my question is would a customer respresentative from the US would have understood the situation?

Imagine you rush into Wal-mart to buy some emergency stuff and you try to run out to resuce without paying the bill, (assuming these Wal-mart jobs cannot be outsourced) and utter words "US security office + emergency + defence secretary", I am damn sure they let you go with their patriotic spirit
their understanding of the aliens from the numerous movies they have watched,
the sense to save save the world,
the urge to attack Iraq and protect humans and oil wells
blame China and India for uncompetitiveness
blame Honda , Toyota , Nissan for producing better cars
blame Samsung for producing cheaper memories
north korea and iran for missiles
cuba and venezuala for having too much oil and not giving
blaming mexcio for immigration problems.......

oh might amercian, u r so knowledgable.

ps:- The movie is a good watch

Music is in everyone's dna

The DNA molecule is probably one of the most complex molecules which can be created. In fact, it contains the blueprint (or genetic instructions) of how a living organism can be constructed. It is basically an "information storage" molecule.

But there is a strange co-relation between DNA and music! In simple words, when DNA sequences are converted to music, it sounds musical :-)

There are many ways in which a DNA can be interpreted as music. Two ways in which DNA sequences which I could decipher were pretty interesting.

1. The DNA sequences (the ATCG sequences ) can be mapped to octaves and played, and it sounds musical. Some software guy has already gone ahead and has written a software for doing this. Go ahead and check out the Bio2Midi Genetic Music Translator

2. Another way a live DNA molecule could be interpreted as music was by mapping molecular vibrations into sound frequencies and getting music. Have a look at this article here : Listen to your DNA

There are some links related to "DNA and Protein Music" here.

There might be some applications of these methods like this one (which is my idea ...heheheh :-) make way for Pseudeep the bio-researcher) ...

Given a DNA music you can study the co-relation between the haromonies and distortions and maybe enhance the music and get a better DNA sequence by the process of reverse engineering!

But the creme de la creme is that "Two lawyers have patented generating music from a DNA sequence." . %^!@$#%$@

Do we owe anything to our ancestors ..

The present lies in the debt of the future, atleast in the context of the envirnoment. By using, polluting and making environment hostile for living the present and past, has in terms borrowed from the future. In that sense the present does not owe anything to the past, rather it has obligation towards the future.

This probably explains parenting in a sense. The present taking care of the future, and the future of their futre. In Asian countries the present even bears some debt to the past generation and we do fulfill our rights by taking care of them.

Some instances where we owe big time to the past are a. parenting (nothing can be fulfill this), b. freedom fighters, Human rights and social right activists (like raja ram mohan roy, Martin Luther King Jr etc). Most of the corporates owe a big deal to the future and there should be a mechanism where in they should really pay the future.

Have to watch Inconvenient Truth sometime soon.

Caught up with Uppit, Bisi Bele Bath and Transformers this weekend. Unable to decide which was the best part :-). It was an awesome saturday.

The Indian IT Industry

There is this huge baloon called the Indian IT Industry which was being inflated right from the year 2001, as soon as the word "Outsourcing" gained momentum. For the companies, it was a good thing to do to save themselves from being doomed.

As you already know, for a company, the bulk of the expenditure is salary. The giants in the Financial Software, Retail Software and Banking Software and (particularly) the Telecom Sector started their outsourcing model (some of them also gave names like Offshore-Onsite model) to reduce the company expenditures by cutting down the task force responsible for the software implementation and execution arm. These jobs were outsourced to India/China/Romania/Vietnam/Brazil etc.

Outsourcing was a definitely a success in some sorts , it did bring out a sigh of relief for the software giants like IBM, HP , Accenture and also established India as a popular outsourcing destination for these companies.

Outsourcing made the Indian Software Industry unnaturally big. But, how long will this model survive ?

As the Indian Software Industry has matured (has it?), there are a large number of problems which are plaguing the Industry. The first problem is to find the "right compensation" for a particular engineer (or "IT Professional" ). Since companies are trying to get software projects by hook or crook, the competitors are ready to pay any amount of money. The job market is so lucrative that you stumble across news like these :-
10,000 quit TCS, Infy, Wipro, Satyam in Q1 . This is in fact, not such an alarming number because in effect, it accounts to 15% annual attrition.

The Indian Software Industry still seems to focus on Engineers with expertise in C, C++ or JAVA or EJB or J2ME or some thing who can be roped in to do sub-standard maintenance. Writing Software is not just about knowing some languages or platforms or perhaps even Data Structures and Algorithms or the ability to understand a cryptic programming language syntax. It is like asking a guy who is a master of English to explain the theory of Supernova explosion. This is something which has to be drilled into both the heads of job seekers and job givers.

That is definitely important, but it is profoundly important for Indian Software Engineers to develop an understanding of the Domain and build an expertise on a particular domain. otherwise the industry won't mature. India cannot have its own killer product.

For example :-

If you are an architect of a banking software, then, based on experience, you should be able to either modify, redesign or re-engineer your solution in a new company. You should be able to lead a team of, say, 40 engineers and direct them to your solution.

With frequent switching of domains, I'm afraid, we won't gain the domain knowledge to call yourself a true designer/engineer. We can't even dream of becoming an architect who conceptualizes and gives a life to the product.

Moreover in the Indian Software Industry, for technical people, the corporate growth ladder is very vague , unlike his counterpart who has a flair for management. We wont have many architects, if they are, then most of them are namesake guys.

But Most Software Professionals I know, get dissatisfied by /frustrated by /bored of their job in a span of 3 years. They find/invent reasons and move out.

Thats why I state this rule

At least 70% People in working Software Projects move out withing 3 years quoting some excuse (which may be valid)....They may move out to higher studies/ America/new job etc

Now the big question is :-

How long does this shift(from India Services to India Products) happen ? How long will our domination in ITeS remain ? What if all these outsourcing jobs move out to China (sob!) ?

How long will it take to have 100% Indian Product Software Companies delivering killer apps ? How long will the Sales guys try to invent ways to keep the monies circulating (instead of stagnating) ?

We do have a massive Internet muscle. We showed how patriotic we were when we wanted Taj Mahal to be the new7wonder. Now why dont we have an Indian Google or a Inaian Yahoo like baidu (the google of china....for china...by china...to china).

Time will tell...I am cross-eyed.....Let's wait and watch... And there are rumours of a 6day working week .... hahahah....

NICE

NICE is the name of the corridor project which runs between two important cities of the state : Bangalore & Mysore.

It can take off some of the burden on the existing, beautiful "Mysore Road". And the fact is that it is shorter than Mysore Road by atleast 9km.

On top of that, it is an expressway (no humps, no signals) and it is designed for safe travel at a speed of 120km/hr. That's a WOW. Because the road itself is 111km.

As of now, I know many drivers who can reach Mysore within 1.5 hours. That's more of a half an hour reduction!

On top of that, it is a toll based expressway. And it is parallel to Mysore Road.

I believe it comes near the RR-Nagar and I hope it mitigates some traffic !! I am curious where exactly it comes near RRNagar. I believe it comes 1 km from Zeedy's site.

Visit the official site of NICE and also check out the NICE Road and Mysore Raod (SH17) map

7 AM

* Is the time when I get philosophical about life, living, existence, work etc
* Envy people like Sudeep, Daniel, Haerin (both from MBA), who wake up much before 7 Am and wait for 7AM
* Contemplate seriously about Phd, with the option of taking classes in the afternoon or night
* Curse the birds chirping away to glory, and the sun shinging bright piercing my eyes
* Shrug at my helplessness of not not avoiding work
* Promise myself I will not get into a Banking jobs, some of which demands me to be present at office at 7am
* Have a home close to office, so I can sleep more and travel less
* Have enough money so I need not work
* Curse the fact that I have put blades on my face for 10 minutes and peel my skin(hairs actually) off

and at 8:30 am,things are back to normal , well almost .. :D

much ado abt nothing.

0. Warning : Read this post when you are jobless and listless. There is nothing in this post.

1. I want to write a post today, but I dont have any topics in my mind to blog about. THe fact is that I don't have anything to blog. Read all my subscribed blogs too. (Of course excluding the News and the Tech Feeds).

2. Today morning I saw a snail stuck to a stone pillar. The snail is such a boring animal, I thought, as I ate the salty hot pongal which a vada and sambar in our canteen.

3. I also saw the first few episodes Season#1 of Friends. That was a good entertainment and I look forward to finish seeing the whole DVD.

4. Meanwhile, my josh to read one book (which I shall not mention now) is slowly decreasing. I cannot appreciate some aspects of that book at all.

5. The mobile phone is a wonderful invention. But sometimes, I feel disconnectivity is essential for any animal/human.

6. I got this wonderful creative idea yesterday while coming back in the shuttle, I wanted to make a novel out of it, but it was fully diluted because of an icecream i had in cornerhouse. I forgot about my idea fully.Just imagine stopping the shuttle bus going home and having icecream. We did that.

7. The FORM-16 thing has to be done. Returns have to be filed. I keep procrastinating things to intolerably nauseating level.

8. Life in the first floor of Fac-Z has been very borring. Coffee , COffee and more coffee. Grandma caterers are no more good. Maybe the mess committee must bring "Grandpa Caterers" to end this food torture. Keep going to good hotels in kormangala every now and then.

9. Heard about this concept called Halal meat. This is inhuman to say the least. Bleeding a hen until it is dead, so that there is no more blood in its veins, it seems. At least they should give the hen a chloroform.

10. Saw an eagle swooshing and picking up a rat running on the road. I thought it was a neat catch. But the rat was squeaking really loudly.

11. My newest PJ :-
What technology comes after 4G ?
Answer :- Parle G

12. I will come back with more boring stuff today.

Found : A perfect baby mammoth

There are conflicting opinions among scientists whether this could be cloned.

Some scientists have speculated about an attempt to clone a pure mammoth by fusing the nucleus of a mammoth cell with a modern elephant egg cell stripped of its own DNA.

Dr Ian Barnes of Royal Holloway, University of London, believes that, in the light of the new find, it will be possible to clone a mammoth "in my lifetime". But Dr Adrian Lister of the Natural History Museum, who was also at the Yakutsk meeting, said that the DNA would be too "shot to pieces" for this to be done easily

These creatures would be as majestic as the elephants, if they are cloned. But no idea about the habitat of the wooly mammoth.

Read about this article here.
A A perfect baby mammoth has been found in Siberia.

Topics I had in mind for blogging..

Its just half a day and I have already had so many topics in my mind to blog about..

1. Southern India.. I wrote so much about this just to loose everything cos of this stupid editor on which I am typing.. DONT hold the shift key and scroll upwards.. it deletes the contents ..
after u have reached the first character..

2. Upscale coffee shops .. in India, and why not serve local snacks .. from idli vada, bonda in south to dokhla parathas vad pavs else wehere, with capuccino, latte, filter coffee etc .. let me make some big cash and experiment these stuff sometime

3. McDs vs Sub-way, Sub-way is pure joy forever even after eating, for ppl like me, NO GUILT, good taste.. McDs always drips oil and guilt

4. Love thyself, the single most important truth in the world ..

5. Trader requires risk apettite, thats where the money is and not in research. From the past two weeks I am following a stock .. It has risen 20% in 2 weeks. Never had the guts to invest. I always found excuses to retain my money in the bank .. (though its not much)

6. Silence == 1000 confrontations !!!!!!!!!!! .. but why cant I/everyone follow it ??

back to research... oops not the Phd types ..

Concept of HIGH Heels

The concept of High Heel (also High Healing .. what I call the AOLs, ashrams, sadyoga, vinyoga, *yoga) baffles me. It is one of the most lucrative concepts in the Fashion industry.

Disclaimer :- I am not pointing fingers here please. Ladies please dont start terming me as a MCP etc etc etc

90% of women and 10% of men, or say 80% of women and 20% of men ( semi-fashion literate) wanna wear heels, as it would make them look taller. (lets not deal with the obsession about tallness here ). and sexier (in case of girls, I presume .. excuse me if this is a bias)..

Recently I observed almost every woman in my company have two pairs of shoes in the office, a high heeled one and one flats. I had recommended this idea to a dear one who witnessed immense pains in walking long distance in high heels. At that time, I felt this was an innovative idea, flats till office(preferably walking shoes) and then heels in the office environement. Well it turned out to be a bland idea.:-(

Coming to the lucrative part - High heels are designed attracitve, they look glossy and sexy, making almost every girl craving for it, at the same time it is designed to be painful. (probably on purpose, by the cartel of shoe companies). The physical design itself is the root cause of it.
With this deadly combination the consumer is constantly looking for shoes which are sexier, which will make them look sexier, but at the same time causing lesser pain (which is a like a mirage). And some feminists put the whole blame back to men, indicating men are dictating the terms here.

What triggerred this post.. A friend of my from the MBA bought 4 pairs of high-heeled shoes recently each of which costs 1000HKD+ (Rs 5000 INR) and a hand bag worth 10K HKD (50,000). Now hand-bags are a different topic altogether. I also witnessed a friend who had several wounds on her feet, which was caused due to high-heels. What's the whole purpose of paying for pain?? Adhu yeno artha ne aagolla ..
( now I know ppl will think about men and cigarettes, cars, alcohol, video games, etc etc etc)..

well everyone have their own addictions rite :)..

disclaimer:- I am not pointing fingers here please...

Why do people in the world like me don't like changes ? Change and adaptability are very essential for a good enriched life.

Most of the time I prefer to avoid a change especially in the workplace ... And sometimes prefer to live in the past than to look forward for the future. Gawd knows....Signing off ...

Taj Mahal is a new 7 wonder

When this email about voting the Taj Mahal into the new "7 world wonders" came back in 2005/06 I thought it was some kind of an elaborate idea used by a website to just increase the number of hits. Sometimes even the BBC uses this kind of online voting to elect superstars of the milennium just to increase website hits and sensationalize something.

Later, sometime in 2006 I also visited the new 7 world wonder website. Just to see if the website already exists. This was because of a jingoistic spam email which declared something like this :-

"Shame on Indians, everyone is voting but our Taj is far behind...Vote for Taj Mahal in the new7wonders.com website and help it make into the new 7 world... Jai India!!"

Later, I checked out the website. The only thing which caught my eye was :-

The New 7 Wonders of the World were announced during the Official Declaration ceremony in Lisbon, Portugal on Saturday, July 7, 2007 - 07.07.07.

07-07-07 was a neat idea and it was pretty far away (in 2006). I also thought they had organized an event for it. Good.

Somewhere during early July, I began rj's asking people to login and vote and convincing people that your vote counts. And then Media Coverage in CNN-IBN and NDTV and then, the Leaders asking people to sms/vote. Woah...This was a little too much.

Not just in India, governments and prime ministers across the world are urged people to vote their own country!!!

But I wondered what was the motivation of the organization ( The New7Wonders Foundation) , which organized an event in Lisbon calling many famous personalities across the globe to announce the wonders.

The New7Wonders Foundation, which is the body behind the New7Wonders campaign, has the express aim of documenting, maintaining, restoring and reconstructing world heritage under the motto: "OUR HERITAGE IS OUR FUTURE."

The Foundation was created in 2001 by Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber, with a mission to protect humankind's heritage across the globe. The initial stages of the New7Wonders campaign were financed by Weber himself, aided by a small number of committed N7W Members.

Okay, now I think it is a very persistent and good cause. Excellent sense of event anagement. I would like to say the same in the case of the Global event "Live Earth Concerts". Tune in to the Live Earth Concerts on Radio Indigo or see it Live! on VH1.For the cause of Live Earth, just visit this link.

Hilarious

This joke began doing rounds because of a punctuation error (comma) in a popular dictionary. I can't stop laughing.

A panda walks into a restaurant, sits down, and orders a sandwich. He eats the sandwich, pulls out a gun, and shoots the waiter dead. As the panda stands up to go, the manager shouts, "Hey! Where are you going? You just shot my waiter, and you didn't even pay for your sandwich!"

"Hey, man, I'm a PANDA!" the panda shouts back. "Look it up!"

The manager opens his dictionary and reads:

Panda: A tree-dwelling marsupial of Asian origin, characterized by distinct black and white coloring. Eats, shoots and leaves.

Profession

Each person is entrusted with a role and responsibility to the society. But more often, we always find that some jobs which are very valuable (which can be compared in terms of intrinsic value) but are sometimes thankless (in terms of recognition).

For example :-
1. Consider Clint Eastwood, a film actor.
2. Consider C.A.R.Hoare or Djikstra, a mathematician and a computer scientist.
3. Consider an unknown NGO teacher who goes into the depths of Africa to distribute food.

C.A.R.Hoare has invented quicksort because of which many sorting programs may have become efficient. Djikstra has done so many things in the field of computer Science.But nobody bothers whether they are dead or alive (Okay some of their own folk do bother). But it is such a difficult task to do!!!! Who appreciates that ?

Why is it like that ?

Somebody can shoot to instant fame just because of one of their work of art. Some guys write one best seller and they are already millionaires. But there is no such concept called "instant fame" for many jobs in science/tech etc.Some jobs may have so much value which may be disproportionately unrewarding.

A serious of thoughts are going on in my head after I read this quote by Warren Buffet :-

I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I've earned. If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru or someplace, you find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil... I work in a market system that happens to reward what I do very well - disproportionately well. Mike Tyson, too. If you can knock a guy out in 10 seconds and earn $10 million for it, this world will pay a lot for that. If you can bat .360, this world will pay a lot for that. If you're a marvelous teacher, this world won't pay a lot for it. If you are a terrific nurse, this world will not pay a lot for it. Now, am I going to try to come up with some comparable worth system that somehow (re)distributes that? No, I don't think you can do that. But I do think that when you're treated enormously well by this market system, where in effect the market system showers the ability to buy goods and services on you because of some peculiar talent - maybe your adenoids are a certain way, so you can sing and everybody will pay you enormous sums to be on television or whatever -I think society has a big claim on that.

Today's Headlines on Rediff and my opinion

• Will Musharraf declare emergency in Pakistan?•

Hasnt Pakistan always been in some kind of emergency..?? atleast once in a decade

UK terror plot: Indian doctor could be innocent•

Explore Pak Newspapers for their views :)

Is this the Indian doctor held for UK terror plot?•

No .. you will link his roots to Pak some how


Pak: Explosion rocks Lal Masjid; 10 killed

Truly sad, the way we blame ISI, Pak papers blame RAW for this incident

Pix• Kraft, Danone deal excludes India

And China ?? what about the drink controversy, Kraft intrested only in biscuits ??

Top 25 MFs• Japanese majors to invest $10 bn Quiz•

Ignore , Ignore , Ignore...

Champion Mauresmo shocked Images•

Images not good.. Mauresmo, tell me who watches wimbeldon for Mauresmo ;-).. or venus or serena.. Its the age of russians

Sania Mirza-Shahar Peer in 3rd round

this is an achievement indeed ..

Add on your views.. it should be fun..

This is getting ridiculous

I understand that Apple Iphone is a very good gadget and it looks good and all that. But why do people go crazy and queue up to buy a mobile phone. Is it really THAT good.

Look at the headlines :-

Techies pull apart iPhone; shares of parts-makers rise [1]
Up to 700,000 iPhones have sold [2]
Most buyers like new iPhones [3]
Of course after shelling out so much money, you always will tell my decision is the best one on the planet to justify your action
Apple's iPhone isn't perfect, but it's worthy of the hype [4]
iWait : Some experts advise iPhone buyers to wait [5]

And a quick review stolen from a news site :-

5 things I like
1 - Terrific widescreen iPod and clever Cover Flow feature.
2 - Smart sensors that change the orientation of the screen from landscape to portrait mode
3 - Gorgeous 3.5-inch multi-touch screen does exceptional job displaying pictures, Internet, maps, e-mail etc.
4 - Flicking through contacts and pictures, pinching to make pix and the Web larger, and tapping on the intelligent virtual keyboard is fun (once you get the hang of it).
5 - Phone is easy to dial despite lack of physical keypad. Visual voicemail.

5 things I'd like to see
1 - Faster "3G" or "third generation" data network
2 - Removable battery
3 - Greater storage (through storage slot)
4 - Extra features including GPS, IM, voice calling, Adobe Flash , and using your own music library for ringtones.
5 - Lower price


This is mega-hype. This is something like a Rajni movie. Now as I type this sentence I realise many people (including me) succumb to the mega hype and I may probably end up buying it.

But it really makes me wonder. Sometimes you just want to be different when you want to buy a new phone.

Nokia N95 looked and was something REALLY fabulous. I loved it. But come on, Rs.40K is too damn expensive. You can buy a bike for 40K.

But yeno artha aagolla...Smart phone is a tertiary need for mankind (atleast in 2008).

Off-beat cinemas

I have watched a few very good comedies in the past few weeks/months. These cinemas prove as to why you can make good movies without much expense and stop betting on big stars (Jhoom bara bar Jhoom). A treand set by Nagesh Kukunoor this is becoming a mainsteam ??

This is an alernative market, which can have substantial returns considering the amount of money invested. And can inspire the likes of sudeep :). I heard Shivaji, had a budget of 80 crores. I am not sure anyone apart from Rajinikanth (with his hysteric fan followers) can affford to breakeven such a budget. (even Baba couldnt rite ??). The tickets of Shivaji were too exhorbitnat in Hong Kong ..:(. looking forward for the DVD .. :d ..

back to the list of movies .. You can catch all these on either
irani-chai.com or videoduniya.com..

not in order of any preference...

Bheja Fry - absolutely hilarious.. one man show .. cheers to Vinay Thakoor
Khosla ka Ghosla - anupam kher, bomman irani .. rock in this struggle of a middle-class delhiite in the hands of real-estate mafia .. the Software engineer here is a reflection of us :)
The Angrez -- The hydrebadi Urdu ..mann its just amazing..not very polished by script .. I stil love this movie..
Hyderabadi Nawabs - From 'The Angrez' team. They have improved a lot in flim-making here
Ek Chalis ki Last Local - I am so glad Abhay Deol is not following the path of his elders'
Chennai 60028 - for those who can understand tamil and love gully cricket

these are just a few and there are a numerous of them... just keep your eyes open wide and clear..

signing offf from Chinki land..
cheers
gd

Stories of Feral Children

Yesterday, I was going through an India Today book in a good, upscale restaurant near Koramangala. The cover was fantastic and a copy of a very popular Beatles album called Sgt Pepper....There was a series of Photos which told the story of India through the 60 years of Independence.

But one photo caught my eye. It was a boy who was "captured" and brought back to the human society after being brought up by Wolves in 1958. The India Today referred to him as "Ramu, The Wolf Boy".

The photo remained in my mind the whole day.

Mowgli from the Jungle Book, Tarzan are all examples of "feral children".

In reality, there have been a lot of documented stories, where children have been raised by animals, and there is a term for them called "Feral Child". The behaviour of a Feral Child is a very intriguing study. They are not exactly "human", if you understand what i mean. It seems they lack empathy, joy, laughter (which come due to social environments)

When completely brought up by animals the feral child exhibits behaviors (within physical limits) almost entirely like those of the particular animal-carer, including its variety of instincts, fear or indifference to humans

The website Feral Children.com contains all the documented Feral Children.

One helluva really interesting read was the story of Amala and Kamala : The Diary of the Wolf-Children of Midnapore (India) (which is more than 40 pages with lots of photos.) You can find it here.

Puzzle

You have two boxes full of pills.
- Box A contains pills of type "A"
- Box B contains pills of type "B"

Both Box A and Box B have equal number of "A" pills and "B" pills respectively.

The "A" pills and the "B" pills are physically identical and one cannot differentiate between them.

You are supposed to take one "A" pill and one "B" pill everyday exactly .
Any other combination ( AA, BB or just A or just B) will have disastrous side effects.

One day, you take one pill from Box A in your hand, and accidentally 2 "B" pills falls on your hand. (So your hand has the pills A, B,B ) and these are indistinguishable from each other.

How will you avoid any disastrous side effects ?

PS :- Found this on Outlook (the magazine) this month. :-)

Underground Music Radio

India is a country where Rock and Metal bands have it real difficult to make it big. So how can they break it and make it into the business. Here's how :-

RadioVeRVe started in June 2006 as a means to aid independent musicians across the country promote themselves. Started by a group of friends it was predominantly rock music from around the country. As the team members gained more and more expertise they realized that there were a lot more genres and artists who needed a platform for their talents. This lead to the birth of new and improved RadioVeRVe, which not only plays rock music but also Classical, Gospel and Konkani.
Music, especially contemporary music in India has been progressing at a stupendous rate over the past few years and today it has reached a point where one cannot but sit up and take notice. A wave of freshness and originality has been welling up for sometime now which should soon reach its peak

RadioVeRVe was formed at the beginning of this wave and has been trying to take the goodness of this music to the masses in a form that is appealing to them.

Today, RadioVeRVe is all set to ride this wave and change the face of entertainment in India. Drawing on the experience of the many years of intimate involvement with the music scene, the technology advantage and the limitless possibility of the world wide web, RadioVeRVe aims to be at the forefront of the “Indian Independent Music Revolution”.

And as I log into this radio station, there is a band by name "Avial" (lol!!) playing some song. I am glad about this initiatives. Then there was Pentagram and other songs....Awesome! I don't understand why popular Radio stations don't promote Indian Western Music....Really they should try that. We have had good musicians like Garry Lawyer and Colorblind, TAAQ, Pentagram, Parikrama and so on.

As far as the software programming aspect, I could recognize one name , "Atul “Toolz” Chitnis"...He is a prominent blogger on Livejournal. And there was another guy from PESIT who is also there in the board.

Good, I'll try this online radio station.

Log in to :-
http://radioverve.com

Cheeni Kum

Teju :
Didn't I say that I had heard the Title Song of Cheeni Kum somewhere ?
Yes! finally i found it.....It is from an 80s film called Mouna Ragam.

This is the original song. It was a complex movie, complex & sophisticated music .... Illayaraja was at his best in this movie.

And of course, there is Jothe Jotheyali from Geetha in the movie too. Illayaraja has recycled his old numbers.

But they sound awesome in Cheeni Kum.

Wonderful Wonderla

If you have the time (on a weekday) , I suggest you to visit WonderLa. Out of the ten rides I went to six of them....Boy! it was fun. On weekends, it seems the place is (costly + crowded).

The place is extremely well-maintained. Lots of sporty, high thrill rides and super fast water sports (all water sports are based on water rides).

There were a few rides which were really awesome. My favorite was a ride called Mixer. It was like taking a drug and floating in air :-). We were tightly fastened with some clamps.

Another one was called Maverick. Maverick was a complicated swing like device which turns in every imaginable direction. I felt like a WW2 pilot who had lost the control of his plane and hanging on to dear life.

And then I saw a ride called Insanity. The ride had Rammstein's "Du Hast" as the background music and was really fast. This was the ride which I did NOT want to venture in. But they say this ride was AWESOME.

And then there were the Watersports. They are all side based and super fast. You can go and enjoy the speeed in almost all the rides.

It was a super Team "Outing" exercise (Rather than a team "building" exercise) !!!!

Puzzle

What is the size of the largest square that will fit in the unit cube?

I was trying for an answer for the above question and I found an answer after googling.

Boy! I was surprised to see that Richie has answered correctly....I just happened to see his name.....I think that is you only, right?

Check this link

Jag, yeno maadta irthya .... irli...

I can't see my blog without any activity for so many days. Not that I didnt have anything to say.

Started using my company shuttle. Some primary reasons to switch to shuttle :-

* It is affordable. I spend a fraction of my monthly fuel cost for the car.
* Driving in the evening is a pain. But when you are in shuttle, I can close my eyes.

Disadvantages :-

* Routine is really tight. Should not waste a minute at office,
* Very long duration for commuting by shuttle. In car it is quicker.
* I cannot stop for my favorite hotel/ gaadi when i am using a shuttle.
* I miss my daily dose of radio
* Car has to be taken out atleast three times a week. Otherwise, I feel bad for not
maintaining my car.

Hmm .... Waiting for work is raelly boring sometimes.

Meanwhile I have started observing the stray dogs in Bangalore as I travel in a shuttle. This is a small observation I made.

If you see a well settled dog*, just look around. Within a few yards, there will be one of these :-

a) bakery
b) hotel gaadi serving chitranna and chutney
c) pani puri shop
d) pork/mutton shop
e) Darshini
f) Cigarette shop which also sells tea and buns.

If there are a few of these shops on the same lane, you find a pack of dogs. I think these dogs would have formed an alliance and they allow NO OTHER FOREIGN dog in their territory. They drive the foreign dog away.

Strangely all the dogs are male. God knows where are the female dogs.

Was checking out the latest youtube videos. I was hearing about a certain Esmee Denters a youtuber from Netherlands, who became extremely popular because of her "soulful" voice.

She has become so popular just because of youtube, that she got signed by a major record company in the US.

Her voice is really like magic. Check this video out. Awesome voice.

Also catch the Kannada song Hosabelaku by a youtuber with music and all that here!

Titbits of conversation yesterday :-

Me : "Pallakki" film channagi idya ? ]

Bhel puri wallah : Saar aa film nod bedi.....Adaralli Hero kai alli heroine chappli ethsthaare... Director obba huchcha ansathe...

:-)

Another incident where audience was allergic to the non-macho scene was in the movie "Padayappa".

In the famous "swing scene" of Padayappa, many people started calling Ramya Krishna bad/profane names. They could not digest the fact that Rajni had to stand in front of a proud woman.

People cannot accept a non-stereotypical change in any form of art.

Touch

There are a lot of techie companies who are going gaga over touch-based technology/ computing. The touch sensitive input devices and all that.

I guess, I seriously considered touch based technology after seeing the yet-to-be-released Apple's iPhone. Motorola quickly came up with a Moto-Rockr and this phone is pretty good too.

But what about the next step of evolution of a personal computer ?

Now I see two more devices which are in the pipeline which are creating a major hype and hooplah. Both are from Microsoft. Both are REALLY expensive. They call the technology as "surface computing" and the devices as "surface computing devices".

Bah.

Here is a quick hasty google result of the products :-

Microsoft Surface. Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a black table base, topped with a 30-inch touchscreen in a clear acrylic frame.

Microsoft Milan. The tabletop computer, for which Microsoft has created both the hardware and the software, is entirely driven by touch — there is no mouse or keyboard.

Although a mouse can become obsolete, the concept of a keyboard can become more of a software than a physical keyboard in the future.

That is all okay, but everything is driven by money, if you ask me.

$5000 is a little too much for a PC, (which is, at this moment, of history of mankind) a tertiary necessity.

Working Class Heroes

This was a song written by John Lennon with Yoko Ono. Green Day have covered this as a part
of their contribution to the Darfur Campaign. Check the strong and impacting video here

And of course the lyrics by John Lennon is like a shot in the head .....

As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear
A working class hero is something to be

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and class less and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be

There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be

If you want to be a hero, well just follow me

John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band

Whenever I turn to read interesting news like the science feeds, I find news like these :-

Team finds 28 planets in faraway solar systems : ALL TOO COLD OR HOT FOR LIFE, BUT CONFIGURED LIKE EARTH, SUN

It's okay, we are making bigger better telescopes, but seriously this planet/star finding science exercises by astronomers and physicists might turn out to be a futile exercise.

The point is:-

1. Most of the stars and planets may be several light years away.

2. We may have accelerated a bunch of photons more than the speed of light, but still a spaceship traveling at the speed of light is definitely not gonna happen for sometime.

So my question is, why bother to make discovery of planets and stars a science headline ?
It keeps happening almost every other day.

Isn't there any other news which is essentially science related ?

I would be interested to read on research like nuclear powered / Hydrogen powered vehicle or a method which reduces green house effect etc. Okay I realise and agree all of this is "application of science" related news.

But what about Theoretical Physics ? Has it reached a dead end ? Why is research nowadays in theoretical physics more concentrated towards the quantum particles and quarks and the like ? Not sure whether the mysteries of "nature's laws"(like Dynamics/Kinematics ), as far as Physics is concerned, have been solved ? Is theoretical physics heading for a dead-end ?

Maybe I should be enlightened on this.....

The internet only talks abt astronomy (which is interesting, but nowadays it is dominating all the science news. There is Biotechnology and Genetics too.)

God knows.

But one thing for sure, I do know is scientific research (especially basic sciences) is looking weak.

Address Book chamaks

Dear reader : Take some time and browse through your address book.

If you think about it, you will realise that browsing through your address book in your mobile phone ("crawling" through your address book to find out yaar yaar number nann hatra ide ) is as important updating your address book frequently. You will have a knowledge of whose numbers you have.

As I was lazing today morning, I randomly started playing with my mobile phone and had a look at my address book, I realised that there were so many contacts in my address book and I didn't even know that I had them in my address book.

So, the next time if you have a knowledge of the numbers in your address book, you can immediately dial his number rather than figuring out how to get his number.

For probability afficionados.

Given N Red and N Blue balls, arrange all the balls in 2 baskets, such that given the event of a blind-folded person selecting a random ball from a random basket, the probability of getting a Blue ball is > 0.5.


I couldn't think of an answer, but there is a clever answer suggested by one of my colleagues.See the comment.

Rains

Rains have started and they are exposing the technical weakness of tar roads....There are sharp stones everywhere and my car had a flat tyre yesterday (sob!)....

But I was able to change the tyre with a little help from my program manager(yes, he is a cool chap!) and my friends.....

The rains also make me leave the office at 6:00 in the evening and currently I am light on work...and busy with "other" works....

heheheh :-)

Programming question 2.

There is an array containing both +ve and -ve numbers. Can you write an algo/prog to find the subarray having the maximum sum ?

For eg :-

Consider
12, 32, -154, 50 , 60 , 888, -10000, 3

In this array, the subarray which has the maximum sum is 50,60,888.

My only solution is a brute force approach...Check out the comment for my ans.

Interesting : Found this on a programming board.

You have a special linked list which 3 elements


struct Node {
int data;
Node * next;
Node * random;
}

where data is the data, next is a pointer to the next node in the list and random is a pointer to any other node in the list. The random pointer may NOT point to unique nodes in the list, which means many random pointers of different nodes could point to a same node.

Create a copy of this linked list.

recommendations ..

I love them ..

not the ones we approach and obtain from our professors (the process is really sucky.. especially for undergrads).. its different at this level though..

back to basics .. I depend on recommendations for a lot of things, I think I am not adventurous in these aspects ..
a. Good food, would love to have someone tried before I venture in .. especially east asian cullinary
b. Books, I am not a voracious reader, hence would prefer my friends remove the bad ones
c. Movies - again some are really stupid and hence require good reviews here from known ppl..
but I am more adventurous here, can bear 2-3 hours torture ..

so anything new and good ?? let me know ..

The song from the Kannada movie "Duniya" drives me mad...The lyrics are pathetic. But the key notes are not bad

Kariya I love you
Karunaada mele aaNe
Belli I love you
Bili moDada aaNe

Ningondu premada patra,
bariyakke nanagaase
naane iruve hatra
bidu aase oh koose

The first paragraph is racist in a weird way.

The second paragraph is surely written after a tune has been composed and the lyrics have been just added to "finish off" the song. Koose ? who would address a girl as "Koose" (baby) ? I know it sounds ok in English songs when a guy/girl address each other as baby...But in Kannada songs it sounds awkward (or am I just resisting a change in the lyrical sense ? )

Adyen lyrics barithaaro....Uninspiring and stupid.
But it is my bhel puri wallah's favorite song and he has put that as his mobile ringtone....

But, I have to see Duniya...It's got rave reviews

Bad move

MK guy should not have ousted Dayanidhi Maran out of the cabinet. He was the polished and sophisticated guy in the party and could also function as a party spokesperson.

The Maran family actually operates the entire Sun TV network and as far as I know they are also related to Karunidhi's family.

Azhagiri is the first son of MK and there was sibling rivalry between Azhagiri and Stalin, the second son of MK. As far as I know , Stalin is more capable and is given more importance (something like our JD(S) scenario, itself ).

And when Sun Network, which runs Dinakaran daily, that M K Azhagiri was behind the attack on its offices in Madurai, Karunidhi just expelled Maran out of the party. I think it was a bad move and MK could have handled the situation better.

It's one of those days

when I am a li'l cribby and philosophical. The work seems too monotonous and the environment is a little eerily relaxed with little work.

I just wonder,
Is this what we are going to do for the rest of our life ?

Sometimes, I just wonder, Where to Go after a five year stint in IT?

Hmm...lemme stop cribbing. I hope some truck load of work comes up to keep me occupied like hell.

0x1C

Happy Birthday Zeedy boy .... Eega gnaapka banthu ....
Have a nice evening dear ....

The impact of Web 2.0

A lot has been said and written about Web2.0. But, a question always arised to my mind :-
Is web2.0 all about YouTube, profile websites like myspace and orkut and Blog websites .

What are the implications on the hardware and what are the implications of the software ? With the advent of interactive Television sites like joost.com , the traffic on the internet is always going to be jammed like hell ? Consider the bandwidth required by emerging economies like BRIC countries apart from the US/UK/GER/FRA/JPN etc....

Companies have already started aggressively investing into products to meet the demans of the applications involving improvements to Web2.0. Definitely there will be new improved packet based networks and as I expected, Cisco is already working on one of the hardware versions of Web2.0

One of the interesting things which Cisco is working on is a router which does "deep packet inspection of multi-gigabit stateful and stateless application traffic flows." Such "packet inspection " might probably deal with "error correction" software too I guess. But Web2.0 has a LOT of streaming applications and a retransmission is something NOBODY desires. I am too quizzical to comment on this. Honestly, I am not sure where the bottleneck for the IP traffic is ? Is it in the transmission media (like optical fibres or coaxial cables) or is it in the intermediate routers and other gateways ?

The other software application which is making a lot of news is a Microsoft Product called Silverlight. It is very similar to Adobe Flash, the de-facto application (currently) for Youtube. MS strategy looks simple. Take this player and port it to various Platforms like Windows and Mac OS (note : The application is conspicuously missing for Linux - But, why ? ) Also it is available for many browsers like Firefox, IE , Safari, Opera etc. etc.

But what edge does it have over Adobe Flash ? is the question which naturally comes to my mind. According to reports Microsoft claims that content created with Silverlight would be more searchable and indexable than that created with Flash as it is not compiled, but represented as text!!!!!. Sakkath hot maga !!! And on top of that, it is planning to open source some parts of Silverlight.


The future looks good for Web2.0

The AOL site for India is a decent job. But somehow, Indian Websites are a shade boring than their US counterparts.

Check out the latest website :-
http://www.aol.in/

Sudden torrents in the waters of mind are abating...But their windy impact is unsteady , irrational mind.

Mano Murthy

The music director of the movie, "Mungaru Male", Mano Murthy was a part-time composer who came on breaks to India to compose music to movies.

His songs are catchy but I see a pattern. His hit films include America, America , Nanna Preethiya Hudugi, Mungaru Male , Amrutha Dhaare and so on.

Mano Murthy says, "During my college days in UVCE Bangalore, we had a pop band. I have composed some Kannada pop songs and many tunes. America America was the first film in 1995-96 to have my music. I used to work for one movie every two years and from last year I am working on one movie per year. Music is something that keeps me busy and brings freshness every moment. High tech world is routine for me but music is something that I can work on all the time."

Oh by the way, he was a graduate from Stanford and he is the founder of 3 Network Companies and 2 of them went public and one of them was bought over by Cisco.

Check out this poem by a person on Bangalore :-

I love this city and love to hate this city

Mungaru male review (not by me)

Mungaaru Male (First Rain)

- Swarupananda Bissoyi

It takes 110 days in theatre for a kannada movie to be watched by a
non-kannadiga guy like me. Its not that all my kannada friends vouched
for the movie ( for the first time in four years of my staying in Bangalore),
its the soul-stirring songs that took me to watch Mungaaru Male.

Well, watching such a nice movie in a saturday evening with a Rs. 30/-
balcony ticket in a non-AC-but-DTS theatre was altogether a different
kind of experience. Of course a magical one.

Not everytime you watch a good movie! This movie, I would say a great
movie.

A gently crafted piece of work, with sheer brilliant execution by actors, director, cinematographer and above all the music director. Sonu Nigam should think himself lucky enough to sing such an ecstatic song. Mungaru Male was all about defying boundaries. Boundaries that exist within ourselves, boundaries that created kannadigas and non-kannadigas, boundaries that defines how to distinguish between good and bad films. It crossed all boundaries but it didn't dare to touch the boundaries created by the family that separates the protagonists of the movies Preetam and Nandini. A very usual love story - boy sees girl, love at first sight, a hooligan pursuing the heroine and our karate master hero doing everything for the
sake of love blah blah blah..

Expressionism at its best, the movie tries to depict the true character of our a Indian looking, tough but yet soft at heart young man. You don't need a deadening shahrukh to cry in a sheep-ish voice to limn pain ! Our local hard drinking guy delivers far better. You need not understand kannada to understand this kannada movie. A little rabbit Devdasa who symbolizes the immortal concept of love in the movie tells you the story. Not many times you find symbolism finding its way to filmdom.

For the two and half hours, the movie was extra ordinary and rhapsodic. But last two and half minutes of the movie will stir your soul, will make you somber. Suddenly you'll cry for you'll find yourself hard trying substituting in place of Preetam, when he was burying Devdasa wrapped with jasmine petals at one high point on earth where it all started. Love.

Land of sorrows, Ocean of tears, Valley of truth, End of life. Did our Preetam knew it before falling (he falls into a gutter at the first sight) ? Why on earth Nandinis do not understand Preetams ? (Or do female understand male beyond male understanding female ?) Everybody loves a love story, but why nobody loves lovers ? Why they couldn't meet at the end ? Is sacrifice - the highest form of love ? If yes, what love tries to achieve? If no, then what love will achieve ? Elton John puts it; and its no sacrifice/Just a simple word/Its two hearts living/In two separate
worlds/But its no sacrifice/No sacrifice/Its no sacrifice at all/Mutual misunderstanding/After the fact/Sensitivity builds a prison/In the final
act.

But why love never reach its end ? Why great lovers on earth have never meet? Famous oriya poet Ramakant Rath answers this phenomenon in his book Sreeradha - "once you achieve success, that becomes the end of your desire, after that nothing remains like love, you will feel empty within, coz the cause that drives you to this point no more exists and you will fail to imagine your success minus that cause". Hence, true love is all about the passion unadulterated by the desire of success. The moment you realize that, you opt for sacrifice. Mungaru Male tells at the end - Preeti Madhura, Tyaga Amara. ie Love is sweet, but sacrifice - immortal. But not everybody love to
sacrifice for love.

Heart strings playing on the wind....In the first rain of Madikeri

Haage summane ......

---Swarup