Monday, December 31, 2007

Long trip home

We went on a long trip to Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Udaipur and Ahmedabad. 10 days, 2 flights, 4 train journeys, countless rickshaw and traffic rides. I ended up 2 kg heavier but 25K rupees lighter. That's not including the train + airfare. Whoever said India is a cheap place to travel.

Despite the large number of great places we visited, I have to say that the main highlight of the trip was the food. We had the best samosas that I had ever eaten at Gopaldas Pethe wale near the Jama Masjid in Agra. And the best jalebis ever, cooked in pure desi ghee at Dilli Haat. This was followed by a traditional Rajasthani feast at Lakshmi Mishthan Bhandhar in Jaipur and an amazing Gujrati thali at Pakwan in Ahmedabad. When I think back, I count myself lucky to have got away with just a 2 kg increase.

I was also really impressed with the cities that I visited, especially Jaipur and Ahmedabad. They both have seen a lot of development, but it seems to be a lot more planned than Bangalore. Ahmedabad, in particular really impressed with its wide and good roads, lush greenery and the general prosperity that I saw there.

It was a good end to 2007 and I feel happy that I am starting 2008 on a happy note.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Computer Woes etc

It has been rough over the past few days. I came down with cold and fever on Thursday, which continues till today. Though it was mild, it totally wrecked my plans to take part in the half marathon this year.

To top it off, the new computer that I built had been behaving very badly since Wednesday. It would start up fine, but if I left it running for more than a couple of hours or did anything memory intensive, it would almost always end in a Blue Screen of Death. I tried a number of things likr refixing the RAM, removing the video card and uninstalling software that could have caused the error, but it was all in vain. Finally, as all indications were pointing to memory errors, I decided to run a memory test on the RAM modules, and voila, came up with almost 2 million errors!!! I then did a check on each module individually and identified the culprit, a bad RAM stick. I removed it and have been running Vista with 1 GB since this morning and no lockups. Funnily enough, despite all the stories I've read about Vista being a dog on 1GB, it isn't all that unusable.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Upgraded PC

My old pc, an AMD Athlon 2000XP was getting on in years, it was the slowest processor available in 2004 and though I had no problems with mundane stuff like browsing etc, it was struggling to run anything more processor intensive. I'd considered upgrading for many months, but somehow it was always the lowest priority and I never did. Finally, I got to it last weekend and took the plunge.

I went for the high end this time. For the CPU, I was torn between Intel and AMD. I've been an AMD fan for many years and have been rooting for them to come back strong over the last year or so, ever since Intel came out with the Core2Duo. The prices are that much better on the AMD as well, but the performance difference is significant. I finally decided to go for the Core2Duo E6750, which is the fastest non-Extreme dual core processor available today. To it, I added 2 GB RAM and a mid-range graphics card (Nvidia 8600GT based) and I got one hell of a beast.

Last year, I had made a resolution not to run any pirated software on my pc. I'd gone out and bought an original WindowsXP license and wanted to transfer it to this PC from the old one.
That's when I realised a) I'd bought an OEM version which was non-transferable and b) I'd kept the certificate of authenticity in such a safe place that I couldn't find it at all!! I decided to go with Windows Vista, as I felt that it would be more future proof, despite all the negative press and my previous bad experience with it.

The OS installation went off very smoothly and I was done in a little over an hour. I was amazed by how sweet Vista runs on this machine as compared to my laptop, which is also a dual core with 2 GB of RAM. Must be the faster processor, RAM and hard disk. I'm really excited because now I'll finally be able to play the Orange Box games that I bought recently:-)

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Connectivity to Bangalore Airport

The new airport in Bangalore is almost complete, but the connectivity to the city is a total mess. The proposed expressway is mired in litigation. There is no rail link to the airport. The existing highway (Bellary Road) is already a mess and will only get worse when the airport opens.

BMTC is planning to launch a Volvo service from various points in the city. They plan 40 buses in total, which I think will be inadequate. Here's my reasoning. The buses will only run at hourly intervals. I think they will find it difficult to live up to, considering that they only have 5 buses from each location and the round trip to the airport may easily exceed that during peak hours, but . Assuming a 4 hour round trip, each bus carrying out 6 trips per day and a capacity of 50 passengers per bus, this just works out to 24000 people who will be able to use the service (40 buses x 6 trips x 50 passengers x 2) at peak capacity. With a projected 50000 passengers per day expected to use the airport daily, that's just half the number. The problem gets worse when you consider that the traffic will not be uniform, the peak hours traffic (6-9 am and 5-9pm) could easily double.

BMTC has also taken a stupid decision to have multiple stops for each service. I don't know what they were smoking when they came up with this brainwave. Not only will the stops increase the travel time tremendously (remember we are talking about passengers with a lot of luggage here), but very likely the buses are going to be full at the starting point itself, making the stops meaningless.

Despite these issues, I still think this is the best solution, both for the short and long term. Let's hope they fine tune this, increase the number of buses to 100 and price it competitively (around 250 per passenger).

A wonderful weekend

So far, it has been a weekend to remember. It all started on Friday. Nisha's school has a competition (sort of), where the kid with the highest number of stars gets to take home a toy monkey (named George). She's come close many times, but last weekend was the first time that she brought it home. The joy on her face as she announced it to us will remain forever in our memory.

On Saturday, I woke up to read that the Bangalore marathon has been scheduled for the 16th of December. This was one of my resolutions earlier in the year, to run the half-marathon. I started the training with a 10K run, which I managed in around 72 minutes. I was half-dead at the end of it. At this point, I'm sure I will not be able to "run" the full distance, but I feel confident that I will be able to run-walk the complete distance. I'm aiming for a time of 3 hours.


Later, we went to an old friend/colleague's kid's first birthday. I got to meet all my old friends from Infosys. In the evening, we went to Capgemini's annual event, Jashn 2007. They definitely know how to throw a party, it was held at Bangalore Palace, with amazing food and drinks. There was a dance show by the employees, which was so well done that we actually thought they were professional dancers. We had a couple of professional performers as well, one good (Mahalakshmi Iyer) and one bad (Neha Bhasin from Viva, someone needs to ban North Indians singing in Tamil).

All in all, a weekend to remember.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Investing in stocks

The Indian stock markets are becoming a gambler’s den. Knowing when to buy, and more importantly, when to sell is more a game of chance than science. I’m increasingly coming to the view that this is something best left to professionals. For the retail investor, sifting through the volume of information (and dis-information) that is available and arriving at a right investment strategy is virtually impossible. To boot, many of us don’t have the nerve to hold on and sell too early in a rising market, or in a falling market, we don’t know when to sell and continue to hold on to stocks way past their sell by date.

A case in point is my investment in the three oil marketing companies, BPCL, HPCL and IOL. I had made good profits in these stocks in the 2003-04 period. Sometime last year, when the market tanked, I thought that I would take a contrarian bet on these stocks, after all, the demand is ever increasing, they were well off 52 week highs and the market was totally ignoring them. To my misfortune, the market conditions became extremely negative for these companies, crude oil prices spiked, the government did not allow them to hike prices and their losses mounted. Though they were compensated for their losses, the markets took an extremely dim view of their prospects and the stocks lost almost 35-40% from the prices that I bought them. I had completely stopped looked at their prices as it seemed like I had no hope of ever making any money on them till 2025.

And then suddenly last week, the stock price of these companies went up by almost 25-30% each. There was absolutely no trigger for this, crude oil prices were rising to all time highs, there was no sign of the government allowing them to increase fuel prices, nothing to indicate that their prospects were getting better. To me, it looks like the other stocks had got so expensive that the punters were looking for something cheap to buy. Whatever the reason was, I didn’t care. For the first time in almost 2 years, they hit my purchase price. I sold and exited with no profit or loss.

It’s not just these stocks. In the mid 90s, I’d invested in a company called VBC Industries at Rs 20/share. After the IPO scam, the company disappeared and I got so frustrated that in 2001, I tore up the certificates and burnt them. Recently, I found that their shares were trading at Rs 35.

These are just a few of the companies that I know about. I wonder how many more are out there and when investors are going to get burnt. I'm not waiting around to find out.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Fancy dress video

Fancy dress competition at Nisha's school

Monday, November 12, 2007

Satisfaction

You're stuck in yet another horrible big Bangalore traffic jam on the
Outer Ring Road. You decide to play by the rules and sweat it out behind
countless vehicles on the main road. All around you, you see people
trying to beat the jam by getting on to the service road. Suddenly, the
jam magically clears on the Ring Road. The service road is now horribly
jammed. What satisfaction!!!

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Stupid stupid BBMP


The rain that we received over the past few days have made a total mess of the roads in Bangalore. In HSR Layout, where many of the roads were laid just a few months ago, the rain has exposed the shoddy workmanship. What takes the cake is how the authorities deal with the problem. There is a stretch near my house which is particularly pothole ridden. Some genius thought that the best way to deal with it is to dump a lorry load of mud on to the road.


Saturday, October 27, 2007

Monday, October 22, 2007

Kimi - World Champion 2007

Wow, what a way to finish off the most closely fought championship in recent memory. Before Shanghai, only the most optimistic (and foolish) Kimi supporter would have given him a chance of being world champion. At Brazil, the odds shortened but it was still a very long shot. How it all came together is something that we will be wondering for a very long time.

With this win, Ferrari also move away from the Schumacher era into the Kimi era. Massa was very brave in the press conference hoping that his time will come, but I think that it is very unlikely. Kimi is now comfortable with the car, is the fastest driver out there still and as world champion, there will be a definite tilt towards his side of the garage. Massa should resign himself to playing the second driver role and collect a few wins, poles, fastest laps and a few million dollars along the way like Rubens and Eddie Irvine did.

With the championship over, all talk is going to be about Alonso and Mclaren. Everyone says that he will be leaving Mclaren to Renault. Renault are not even announcing their driver lineup until this plays out. It should be an interesting few weeks, keeping fans interested through the winter break.

I really enjoyed the world championship fight, but cannot say the same for the races. The only ones that will stay on were Canada, Nurburgring, Fuji, Shanghai and Brazil. Three out of those five were rain races, that speaks a lot about how boring F1 is nowadays.

My picks for the drivers this year were





A+ Hamilton came up way beyond expectations
A Rosberg, Kovalainen, Heidfeld, Raikonnen, Alonso, Massa All of
them had flashes of brilliance but their fair share of mistakes
B Webber, Vettel, Sutil Each of them could have done far better if
their car had been better
C Kubica, Button, Coulthard, Liuzzi, Speed, Sato, Davidson, Trulli
All of them were disappointing, did nothing of note
D Fisichella, Wurz, Barrichello, Schumacher career ending
performances for this bunch

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Infosys

After the somewhat disappointing (??) quarterly results from Infosys, one of the irritating TV anchors on CNBC asked an equally obnoxious analyst, "Is this the end of Infosys as a bellwether stock?". I wanted to strangle both of them and tell them to cut out the rhetoric, but thinking about it now, it is a good thing.

For too long, the importance of Infosys has been wildly exaggerated and many other companies that were doing equally well (TCS comes to mind) never got their fair share of recognition. I also think that the Infosys management plays too much to the markets, which is not a good thing for the longer term. So, if the markets write it off completely and start focusing their attention elsewhere, it will give the management the freedom to take decisions that will help them in the long term.

In other news, the market touched 19000, just 4 days after it touched 18,000. People are now talking about 20000 and 25000 levels by the end of the year. I wonder if any of them recall the famous words "Irrational exuberance".

Zuma

I was checking out Zapak for some new games the other day and discovered Zuma. It has since become an addiction, I find that I've devoted many hours to this over the past few days. Check it out at your own risk:-)

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Airtel broadband

Airtel has announced a 8 Mbps broadband offering. That's good news, but as I expected, they are announcing a puny 7-8 GB download limit. Essentially, this means that if you use your connection to full capacity, your monthly quota is over in a little over 2 hours. You have to wonder at the special breed of dimwits that we have in allthe Indian telecom providers.

It'll be interesting to see the kind of pricing that they will have for this speed and whether it will translate into lower pricing for the lower speed plans. I'd also like to see them change their download policy, rather than charging extra for the excess downloads, they can throttle the connection to a lower speed of 512 kbps or 1 Mbps. If that happens, I would definitely consider moving to the higher speed plans. Until then, I'm sticking to my pathetic low speed unlimited plan.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Sensex at 18000

Just when I thought that the market was ripe for a massive fall, it rises by almost a 1000 points in a single day to blow past 18000. Truly unbelievable. I think it is all part of a grand conspiracy to ensure that Mukesh Ambani becomes the richest individual in the world, even if it is only temporarily.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Thrilling climax to 2007 F1 season

The final two races of the 2006 season promised to be a thrilling end to
a hard fought season, but that evaporated in smoke along with Michael
Schumacher's engine. When the circus moved to Brazil, Alonso's title was
a formality. That did not stop Michael Schumacher from producing one of
his virtuoso performances for which he is well known for.

This year, there was no such expectation. Lewis Hamilton came into the
Chinese grand prix with a 10/17 point lead over Alonso/Kimi, expecting
to wrap things up over the weekend. He did his chances no harm by
bagging pole (albeit, as we found out later, with a much lighter car)
and built up a 9 second lead in the first stint. At that time, I thought
it was just a formality, as even if Kimi caught him, he was well ahead
of the rest of the pack and would finish 4th at worst. It all started to
go wrong after the first pit stop as the advertised rain never came down
hard enough and the track started drying up. The front runners who did
not change their tyres after the first stop started going slower and
slower and lost upto 12 seconds a lap to those who took the gamble of
going on to dry tyres. Lewis was the worst hit as he had pushed a lot in
the opening stages and his tyres were in bad shape. Kimi caught and
overtook him easily (I think, as the power went off just when this
happened) and Fernando started catching him at 6-7 seconds a lap.
Instead of bringing him in, Mclaren asked him to stay out for another
lap and by the time they came to the long back straight, Fernando was
right on his rear. Lewis kept him off and headed into the pits but went
in too fast and instead of making the right turn onto the pit lane, got
stuck in the gravel trap and that was the end of his race.

Kimi won and Fernando came 2nd and in doing so, cut Lewis's lead down to
7 and 4 points. This leaves us with a mouthwatering possibility of any
of the three being crowned champions.

Kimi needs to win and hope Fernando finishes 3rd or lower and Lewis
finishes 6th or lower to become champion. If not, he needs to finish
second and hope that Lewis finishes 8th or lower AND Fernando is 4th or
lower. IMO, this is a very slim chance as even if Ferrari are
comfortably faster and Massa covers his rear, Mclaren should be ahead of
the rest

Fernando needs to score 4 points more than Lewis. If he wins, Lewis must
be lower than 4th, if he's second, Lewis must finish 5th or lower. If
he's third, Lewis must finish 7th or lower and if he's 4th, Lewis must
finish 8th or lower for him to be champion. If he finishes 5th or lower,
he is out of the championship.

Lewis is in the best position as he doesn't need to go all out for the
win. However, one could turn that on its head and say that he has the
most pressure as it is all his to lose. In fact, Kimi and Fernando
started their mind games right at the post race press conference by
setting the expectations very low for themselves and putting all the
pressure on Lewis.

It promises to be very exciting weekend in Brazil. I wish the next two
weeks goes off very very quickly.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Commute to office

For long, I've been advising everyone who would listen that there is no
better solution to beat the traffic stress than to drop our cars and
start using public transport. I have been guilty of not following my own
advice, always justifying it with the "my office is so close, I don't
think I am contributing to the mess" argument.

I finally decided to do something about it. I decided that I will start
taking the Volvo bus to work at least once a week. I have been doing it for
the last two weeks. It's a lot more expensive than driving, very crowded
and inconvenient (with a wait time of upto 30 minutes), but I have the
satisfaction of contributing to the greater good.

And who knows, if more people start doing this, the traffic in Bangalore
may start getting better.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Fuji Grand Prix

It was an amazing race yesterday, after 2-3 processional races. Every time there is a rain race, we seem to have such drama and I wonder if Formula One should have artificial flooding of the track every weekend to make things interesting!!! Lewis won, Alonso crashed and the Ferrari drivers came from the back of the grid to finish 3rd and 6th.

Finally, it looks like Lewis Hamilton is pulling clear in the race to the World drivers championship. Kimi is in with a mathematical chance, but to gain 17 points in 2 races is virtually impossible unless Hamilton retires in both. Alonso is 5 points closer, but it's still a tough ask. Hamilton can easily play it cool, settle for 4th and still win the championship. With the kind of advantage that Ferrari and Mclaren have over the other teams, that wouldn't be too hard.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Cash awards for Indian team

I am appalled to hear about the cash awards announced by politicians of
various states to our cricketers. Cricket is a self sustaining sport
with large amount of sponsorship. The players have contracts that
guarantee them big bucks. Where is the need to spend public money on
them?

If the politicians wanted to get their name in the papers and go one-up
on each other, couldn't they just restrict it to a felicitation
ceremony? With people like this ruling, we are condemned to forever be a
second rate nation.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

A moment of madness

Misbah-ul-Haq lost the Twenty20 world cup for Pakistan in a single moment of thoughtlessness.

Today, on my way to work, I saw a ghastly accident just outside my office gate. A motorcyclist was lying on the road, dead, his skull smashed. He had skidded and lost control. Unfortunately for him, a truck was coming at that very moment and it ran over him. If only, he reached that place a few seconds later.

Almost everyone in my office saw this on the way to work. The euphoria of the World Cup victory was gone.

All that work...

...and still no real results to show for it. I started keeping tab of my exercise details since Feb 18, 2007 through the website Traineo. Since, then, I've exercised 153 days out of 217 burning a total of 71814 calories!!! Sadly, my weight which was 78-79 kg at the start of the year is still at the same level. I think its time for me to seriously start looking at my diet:-)

Thursday, September 20, 2007

An inspiring story

Sometimes, you come across an inspiring story just when you least expect it. I had gone to an engineering college for campus interviews. Given that we are late going to campuses this year and the colleges that we are going are not in the top echelon, I wasn't expecting too much.

Then, I came across a candidate who simply blew me away. It was not because he was brilliant. It was because of his background and what he had achieved. His father was a daily wage worker, who delivers bricks on a bullock cart. He has realized that education is the only way out and borrowed through his nose to get his son through college. We found that this guy was easily the best of the lot and offered him a job.

This reinforced to me the point that India has so much of talent, which goes unnoticed due to a lack of opportunity. Instead of opening up and providing everyone equal access to opportunities to improve the life, our politicians seem intent on shutting them out further.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

An Indian win

It did not happen in the Twenty 20 world cup, our overhyped bunch yet again proved unequal to the task. But an Indian won yesterday in the GP2 championship. I was lucky to catch the last part of the race while channel surfing and it felt amazing to hear the Indian national anthem at a major motorsports event. I'm hoping this happens a few more times, with Narain Karthikeyan taking a full place in the A1GP championship.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Apple's new ipod range

Apple has formally launched its ipod range in India. The prices and the corresponding prices in the US

Model Price in INR Price in USD Converted Price in INR Premium
ipod Nano 4GB 8800 149 6000 2800 (45%)
Nano 8GB 11400 199 800 3400 (42%)
Classic 80GB 14500 249 10000 4500 (45%)
Classic 160GB 20400 349 14000 6400 (45%)
ipod Touch 8GB 17700 299 12000 5700 (47%)
ipod Touch 16GB 23600 399 16000 7600 (47%)

I wonder what the justification is for such a premium on what is already a premium line of products. Where is the incentive for anyone to buy it in India, they will just pick it up on their next trip to the US or Singapore.

T20 world cup

Watching the Twenty-twenty world cup, I can't help but feel that the days of one day cricket are numbered. The same excitement and thrills but in half the time, how can it fail? I'm surprised that it has not taken off in India yet, maybe we have a lot of people without much work to do and need sometime to keep us occupied the entire day:-)

Bangalore drowning

It's been raining heavily for the past two days and Bangalore has descended into chaos. Flooding, traffic jams, the same story repeats itself. There was a silver lining for me this morning. The traffic situation at Jakkasandra and Silk Board was so bad that most of the vehicles coming on to the Ring Road got stuck there. I left for work expecting an hour long commute, but reached office in 12 minutes flat!!!

Here are some shots of the storm water drain at the intersection of HSR 14th main and ring road.

 

DSC01133

 

DSC01129

 

Only wish there was a way to get all that water into Agara kere and fill it up

Thursday, August 16, 2007

The race ...

DSC01021 (Small)

for the first to complete 20000 km was on between my car and bike. For a while, it did  seem that I would reach 20K on my Pulsar first, but the trip to Chennai in July meant that my Santro reached it earlier. Yesterday, my Pulsar also completed the milestone. The date:16-aug-2007. Location: Sarjapur Outer Ring Road

 

Monday, August 13, 2007

Nokia N800 tablet

I recently got a Nokia Internet Tablet N800. After a couple of days playing with it, I am truly loving it.

DSC00998

At first, one might wonder about the point of an internet tablet. It's not quite as powerful as a laptop and not as mobile as a mobile phone. Why have it at all? I think that it has defined a niche market for itself, to provide a full featured web experience in a gadget that you can hold in your palm and can easily get out of the way when you don't need it. Try finding a laptop or a mobile phone that does it at this price point. Here's a brief review of the device

Hardware

The device looks super cool. I think I have fairly large hands, but still found it difficult to hold it lengthwise. It's dominated by a large 4.1" touchscreen LCD with a resolution of 800x480. The 800 pixel horizontal resolution is important, because it means that virtually all mainstream sites can be displayed without any horizontal scrolling.

DSC01000

It has 2 memory slots to add additional storage capacity. With the latest software upgrade, it now supports upto 8 GB memory cards (SD, micro SD, MMC etc), making a total of 16 GB of memory if you want. A rocker button on top adjusts the zoom from 80% to 200% in a seamless manner.

The buttons on the left aid in scrolling horizontally and vertically. In addition, they can also be used to jump between hyperlinks on the page that is being displayed.

DSC00999

It supports wi-fi connections and can also connect to a cellular network through your mobile phone using Bluetooth.

Software

This device runs a modified version of Linux and comes with the Opera browser with Flash 9 support. At this time, there is no support for Java.

DSC01003

It comes with a media player (supporting mp3 and many other audio formats and mp4 video support). The media player acts as a uPnP client, so you can stream media from your PC to the device, provided it is in the right format. There is a news reader, email client and a few games that come out of the box. In addition, there is a fairly vibrant community at www.maemo.org that has developed many more applications for this device.

User Experience

When i first started using it, the experience was a bit underwhelming. The rave reviews that I read on the Net had pumped up expectations to such an extent that the device could not possibly live up to them. But, once I reconciled myself to the fact that this was not a PC replacement but a complementary device, I really started appreciating its features.

The browser works great, but this is Opera and though its fully standards compliant, it will not work as well as Firefox on some sites. I found Web 2.0 Ajaxy sites to be less than optimal, Google Reader was almost unusable. Youtube was not as smooth as on a real computer, but was usable. The clarity of the screen was phenomenal, text and images were razor sharp and even sustained bouts of surfing on the small screen did not cause any eye strain.

The other application that I used extensively was the media player. The player is fairly basic without any advanced features like playlists. I specially liked the uPnP support, I was able to browse the media collection on my desktop without any problems. Audio streaming worked flawlessly, but I didn't have much luck with video streaming. Mostly, it was due to the fact that most of my video collection is in Divx/xvid, which this does not support. I copied a couple of mpeg videos and it played them without any problems.

When I discovered how bad Google Reader was, I thought of using the built in feed reader. However, I found that it does not offer the ability to import OPML files. That was the last time that I used that one!! Luckily, a bit of Googling revealed that Mobile Google Reader is a much better bet for devices like this. I've tried it and found that it works really well.  It doesn't offer all the cool features, but will do atleast till Google gets it working with Opera.

The latest version adds Skype to the device. It really works well and the calls sound great.

I haven't had time to install any additional apps or play with any of the other applications.

Gripes

I'm still in my early days of usage, but a few things that I'd like to see improved really stand out
- Firefox: I'd like to see Firefox ported to this device. I believe that it may have already been done, I need to check it out.
- I've sometimes found that tapping on a link does nothing and you really have to tap multiple times to activate it
- I've mainly been using it on wifi and find it much slower than my laptop. I'm not sure if its just a processor thing, because once a page starts loading, it proceeds fairly quickly. But the initial load can take a while, maybe its due to the overhead of establishing a connection.
- i wish it had Java support. Lack of it means that I still need to use my laptop to follow F1 Live timing:-(

Monday, August 6, 2007

Hungary F1 GP 2007

The Hungarian GP epitomized what F1 was all about. Deceit, politics and
intrigue were in abundance as was the lack of ontrack action. The
weekend started with the shadow of the espionage scandal hanging over
like a thick cloud and ended with the atmosphere in the Mclaren team
totally breaking down. It all happened in Q3, Hamilton went out followed
by Kimi and Alonso. Apparently, he was supposed to let Alonso through,
but that would have meant letting Kimi through too. So, he didn't and
Alonso had to slow down to get a clean run. With around 1:30 to go,
Alonso was in for his last tyre stop and Lewis was right behind. Though
Alonso was given the all-clear, he refused to leave staying on for a few
more seconds. This meant that Lewis wasn't able to complete his out-lap
before the flag came down. Alonso just made it through and promptly set
pole. This didn't go well with Lewis who exchanged a lot of swear words
with Ron Dennis over the radio. Later, we found out that the stewards
had taken a dim view of the incident and docked Fernando 5 places, which
effectively finished his chances for the race.

The person who benefited most was Kimi, who moved from 3rd to 2nd. More
importantly, he moved to the clean side of the track and was able to get
past Quick Nick at the start. From then on, the race was from
snoresville. The interesting thing was that people predicted that
Mclaren would run away, but instead it looked like the Ferrari was the
faster car and Kimi would have easily won had he started ahead of Lewis.
I also feel that Ferrari should have tried something different, maybe
converted it to a 3 stop, put Kimi out on hard tyres in the second stop
and told him to go for it a la Schumi. Chances are that he would have
still finished second, but atleast he could have tried. Maybe, with all
the retirements, they preferred to have a safe second instead of a
potentially risky strategy.

The championship now looks like Hamilton's to lose. The next few tracks
(Turkey, Monza, Spa, Suzuka, Shanghai and Brazil) should heavily favour
Ferrari. Even assuming that they score 1-2 everywhere and Kimi wins the
next five, Hammy would only need to finish 3rd to keep up Kimi and take
it to the final round at Brazil. Massa is one further point back and
since Kimi now seems to have the upper hand in the team, it's hard to
see Ferrari swinging his way. Alonso is the closest just 7 points back.
But, Hamilton seems to be just as fast as him everywhere and since I
expect Mclaren to fight for 3rd and 4th everywhere, even if he beats him
in every single race, he will still not be able to catch him. A
retirement for any of the top four could change everything though. Any
way it goes, it promises to be a fitting end to what has been an
enthralling season. And we haven't heard the last of the spy scandal
yet...

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Once a coder

I have learnt how much I love coding. And how much I have missed it all these years.

Over the past few years, as I flitted between various roles, Project Manager, Business Support Manager, Service Delivery Manager, I moved further and further away from the technical line. I was doing presentations, writing documents, proposals, doing various administrative tasks, basically everything except some honest technical work. The one uniform thread across all of those roles was that my satisfaction with my work was very low. I don't think I am particularly cut out to be a good Manager.

Last year, when I took up a development project, I didn't expect much to change. Due to various resource limitations, I was forced to get involved in writing code. Luckily for me, it was Oracle and Unix, the stuff that I had cut my teeth on. I was a bit rusty, but once I got into the swing of things, I found that it was like I was never away. I really enjoyed it.

Over the past few months, I've reacquainted myself with technology. I've learnt a bit of C#, some Java and am developing J2ME applications and deploying them on my cell phone. What joy.

Come to think about it, I wouldn't mind getting full time into coding. But the way things currently are, the job prospects of a 35 year old coder in India are pretty limited. So, for now, it's mainly going to be hobby stuff, but who knows what the future will bring...

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Polar Heart Rate Monitor

A heart rate monitor is invaluable in getting better results from your exercise. The theory is simple, there is a certain heart rate range that results in your body burning fat to meet the energy needs (fat burning zone). Beyond that stage, it feeds on the glucose in your blood, which is the readily available fuel (aerobic zone). Once you cross a threshold, the body cannot replenish the glucose as fast as you can burn in (anaerobic zone). To get maximum benefit out of the exercise, you therefore need to always have your heart rate in the fat burning or aerobic zone.

I wanted to test this theory out and asked a colleague to get me a heart rate monitor. I read the reviews on the Net and learnt that the Polar brand is the most well known and after much research, I settled for the the Polar F6.

The monitor consists of two components

1) A sensor+transmitter that you strap onto your chest

DSC00903

2) A receiver that you wear on your wrist like a watch

DSC00902

The sensor has electrodes that monitor the electrical signals that determine your heart rate and send this continuously to the receiver.

To start off, you input details about yourself like age, weight etc. This is used to calculate your Maximum Heart Rate (usually 220-your age). In exercise mode, you can specify the zone that you would like to maintain your heart rate in. There is an automatic mode, where you can set it to Easy (fat burning), Moderate (Aerobic) or Hard (Anaerobic). You can also set an alarm that beeps whenever you move out of this zone. As you are exercising, the monitor also keeps track of the calories burnt (using the heart rate and the body weight, I think) and the percentage of fat calories.

Before I started using it, I was never sure of what my heart rate during exercise was as stopping to measure it resulted in a break and loss of rhythm. I was also kind of worried that I wasn't exercising hard enough. Once I started using this, all my doubts were cleared immediately. I found that I had a resting heart rate was between 65-70. When walking briskly, I was able to get it into the 130-140 bpm zone. Jogging takes my heart rate over 160 bpm. The maximum I have been able to take it up is 183 bpm.

What I find invaluable is the direct and continuous feedback. If I find myself going above the zone, I can immediately slow down a little and allow it to get back into the zone. Earlier, I was always reluctant to slow down. This will definitely allow me to exercise longer, I think. Another benefit that I see is the feedback on my overall fitness level. As I get fitter, my heart rate at a given level of exercise intensity should trend lower and this will allow me to measure it.

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Monday, July 9, 2007

British Formula One Grand Prix

This was a race with a difference, for me atleast. I had driven to Vellore/Chennai over the weekend and totally missed the qualifying (on TV atleast). I was following it on formula1.com, it was a real exciting one with Alonso going P1, then Kimi going faster and then LewHam besting them all. Later, I saw the ending part of the qualifying on youtube and learnt that Kimi had almost gone off at the last turn and could have potentially got pole position. I also had to witness the disgusting spectacle of Lewis' dad make an utter fool of himself after he got pole.

I was in a race of my own on Sunday. We'd left from Chennai at around 10:30 and reached Vellore at 1:00. We had lunch at Vellore and left at 2:00 pm. I had taken 2:45 to reach Vellore on Friday evening. However, that day, I was averaging 100-120 kmph speeds. Yesterday, I consciously went a bit slower and restricted myself to 90-100 kmph speeds. Along with a fuel stop that took longer than I expected, we we found ourselves in Krishnagiri at around 3:50 pm. We had a coffee break that took around 15 minutes, so by the time we left Krishnagiri, it was after 4:00 pm. We had around 85 km to cover in an hour and half, including the 30 odd kilometers from Hosur to Bangalore, where 80 kmph is as fast as you can safely go. I was constantly monitoring the clock, driving as fast as I could within the 100 kmph limit I had set. Luckily, there was relatively less traffic even after Electronics City and we finally reached home at 5:28. I rushed upstairs, switched on the TV hoping to see the start and found to my immense disappointment that the cable was out. So, I had to follow the race too on live timing.

And what a race it was. I was following Massa's progress through the field and it was truly fantastic. The speed with which he disposed off the lower cars was truly amazing. As expected, he hit a roadblock when he came upon the faster cars, but their pitstops played into his hands and he found himself in second place at one stage. I'm sure that had he not stalled, he would have jumped LewHam and even Alonso.

Kimi was outstanding, I couldn't get an idea of how long Alonso's first pitstop was, but it did seem to me that he had the race won. However, after he pitted, Kimi unleashed a series of ultra fast laps, almost in Schumacher style, and came out comfortably ahead after his pitstop. After that, it was just a matter of holding station, which he and Alonso comfortably did.

With this, the championship is quite evenly poised. Lewis is on 70, Alonso 58, Kimi 52 and Massa is on 51. While Lewis has a comfortable lead, one should remember that only he has not had a problem so far. Kimi has had 1 DNF at Spain, Alonso had the pitlane penalty in Canada and the problem in France and Massa had the qualifying problem in Australia, the black flag in Canada and the stall here. Surely, the good luck cannot continue forever and one DNF could bring the others in contention quickly.  I also feel that Alonso is slowly gaining the upper hand speedwise(as is Kimi at Ferrari) and we could see Lewis pushing more and more leading to a mistake.

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Upgraded my broadband speed

Airtel has launched a new scheme with 512 kbps speeds and unlimited downloads costing a whopping 1999 Rs/month. It is a total ripoff, but there is just no other alternative in our poor country. All the higher speed plans have a ridiculous download limit that you exceed within a few hours of watching videos on youtube or other sites. I was earlier on the 256 kbps unlimited, but the experience was so bad that i would just pause and wait for it to download completely before I would start watching it. I'm hoping that the new speed would ease that pain...

UPDATE: The speed upgrade was applied over the weekend. I'm getting close to 500 kbps on a consistent basis and it is a really big difference from the 256 kbps. However, in Chennai, my f-i-l has a 2 mbps BSNL plan and having experienced that, even the 512 just seems so sllooow:-(

Monday, July 2, 2007

Motogp at Assen

One of the best races I have seen. I seem to be saying this of just about every Motogp race, such is the level of competition and the intensity of the racing nowadays. After the qualifying, I was quite disappointed to see Rossi back in 11th. Though I was sure of Rossi being able to get to the front, I thought that by the time it happens, Stoner would be so far ahead that Rossi would never be able to catch up. It did sort of play out that way, but luckily for Rossi, Stoner did not have the kind of advantage over the others (Suzuki, Honda), so when Rossi finally got to 2nd, it was just around 4 seconds between himself and Stoner. For the first time, I was following the live timings from motogp.com and it was fascinating to see how close Rossi was getting with each lap. The way Rossi was hounding him, I thought that it was a foregone conclusion that he would pass him at some stage. It did come as a surprise that Stoner was just not able to respond and Rossi finally cruised to a easy victory.

I also liked the live timing quite a bit. The difference between this and the F1 timing is that the F1 timing is sector wise, whereas the motogp one is only updated at the end of the lap. While sector wise timings can give you more information, they also take your attention away from the action on the screen. I guess that's ok for F1, as nothing much ever happens on track, but in motogp, you would be missing a lot.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Buying a car

In the 3 years since I bought my Santro, I’ve been quite happy with it, but there are times (especially on the highway), when I wish I had a car that feels more at home on the highway. I’ve been thinking about upgrading for the past few months, but it has been an exercise in frustration.

I want a car that is a size bigger than the Santro, not particular about a sedan or a hatchback. But, I definitely want it to have a powerful engine that will go from 0-100 in less than 12 seconds and a top speed of around 180 kmph. Not that I would ever do 180 on Indian highways (maybe when the NICE road is completed:-), just that a car capable of reaching those speeds will be extremely comfortable at the speeds I drive at (100-120 kmph). It should have space for 5 adults, safety features like airbags, ABS, disc brakes all round. I absolutely want a car with alloy wheels, an Ipod compatible music system so that I can plug in and control my ipod from the HU. Good mileage is a must, atleast 12 kmpl in the city and 16-18 kmpl on the highway. I don’t care about petrol or diesel. And I want all this at an affordable price (max 7 lakhs on the road). But, I find it frustrating that a Hyundai Accent costs 14000 dollars in the US, while we pay almost 800,000 rupees or 20000 dollars. Manufacturers price their lowest end model with no frills at an attractive price and gouge for everything from diesel engines to interior trims to safety features that should be mandatory to begin with.

I've gone through 2-3 cycles. It always starts with me thinking that I should just stop bothering about the robbery and go ahead and buy the damn car. But then when I start thinking about options and digging deeper into road tests and user opinions, I find compromises in every single choice.

Indica: love the space, but engine is too rough, image is an issue

Chevy-UVA: love the looks, but can’t get it with a powerful engine beyond the 1.2L

Palio: really want the Palio Stile 1.6, pricing is attractive, but am still not comfortable with Fiat

Swift:interior too small, don’t like the styling

Getz: lprobably the closest I've come to liking a car, it's just wonderfully packaged and the one car I've driven a bit, but it’s too expensive, the 1.3L option

Fusion: great car at a good price, but why did they take out the frills like alloy wheels? Where’s the new Fusion+?

Ikon/Esteem: good cars, but are 10 year designs. Only an idiot would buy one of them at this time

Coming to the C-segment

Aveo/Fiesta/Verna Petrol: their loaded version costs 8 lakhs!!! And no safety features like airbags, ABS.

City: the only one I want is the VTEC and it costs 9.5lakhs, out of my budget

Fiesta Diesel: only 68 bhp. Indica DICOR is going to have more

Verna Diesel: base model at 8.5 lakhs lacks even basic equipment. The SX version has more but its almost 9.5 lakhs

I also briefly considered a couple of C+ segment cars

Elantra: seems a good value at 8.5 lakhs, but then you realize that it’s the lower end model that lacks many essentials. It does not have a reputation for good mileage. The diesel is better but its over 10 lakhs

Optra : the magnum diesel is new and initial impressions are good. But the loaded version is way over my range at 11.5 lakhs

One car I haven’t mentioned till now is the SX4. I really like this car, it has everything going for it, fully loaded, good safety features, Maruti’s service and it comes at a price of 8 lakhs. It has really exposed the way in which the other manufacturers are ripping off the Indian public, which is why it has a 3+ month waiting list. I am leaning towards it, but then you can’t get one right now unless you’re Sonia Gandhi. Another car I’m looking forward to is the Getz with a CRDi diesel (hopefully the Verna’s diesel at a decent price).

At this time, it does look pretty bleak, maybe I will just wait a a few months until the landscape changes and make a decision. Until then, it’s up to Santro KA-19-P-1615 to keep me entertained…

Saturday, June 23, 2007

हिन्दी में टेस्ट पोस्ट

This is my first test post in हिन्दी
I am learning/getting back in touch with தமில், so expect a few posts...

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

US Grand Prix

This was one exciting race. I really enjoyed the battle between Alonso and Hamilton. Especially after the first round of pitstops when it did seem that Alonso was much faster. But in Formula One, position is everything and try what he did, he could not get past. Position is indeed everything, as Kimi found out. If he had not lost out the positions at the start, I think he could have easily been on Massa's tail, which is less than 2-3 seconds behind Alonso. As he had almost 3-4 extra laps on his first stint, it is quite likely that he would have jumped Massa and possibly Alonso on the first stop and potentially won the race. Unfortunately for him, he got stuck behind Kovy, Rosberg and Massa and eventually finished almost 15 seconds behind. The one positive for Kimi fans like myself is that he does not seem to have lost his natural speed and when things come together, he is really going to fly!!!

A few friends have also asked me about my thoughts on the Indian Grand Prix. Firstly, I think it is extremely unlikely that it will happen. Formula One is all business and only money speaks. I doubt that India can come up with the required investments or the guarantee money to be paid to Bernie. Secondly, the infrastructure. In a typical race, the teams bring planeloads (I think 7-8) of equipment on Wednesday and fly out on Sunday. Can you imagine Indian customs clearing all of that in this short time? I didn't think so. Also, as the playground of the rich and famous, it will require hundreds of hotel rooms, which are in short supply in India. And somehow, I don't see Indians paying the 10-20K to see a F1 race in large numbers. So, the audience will end up mainly being those with the right "connections" and influence who will pull off free passes. It will make for a huge financial disaster, which the Indian government can ill afford. My advise to Mr Kalmadi will be to concentrate on the 2010 Commonwealth Games at first and once we make a success of it, think about Formula One.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

My first 10K run

I last ran more than 10K sometime in 1998. I've been able to run for close to an hour for quite a while now, which is around 8-8.5 km. But the hour mark has been like a psychological barrier, somehow when I get close to an hour of running, I start to slow down and down and then just stop.

Today, I decided to take a different approach. I run around the Agara Lake, a round of which is around 2.5 km and I decided to aim for 4 rounds. I also decided not to look at the time throughout. At two rounds, I really felt like stopping, but after 3 rounds, I was really flying and when I finished the fourth, I felt that I could go on for another round or two.

When I looked at the times on my ipod later, I found that I was remarkably consistent, all the rounds were around the 18 minute mark. In total, I took around 1 hour 12 minutes to do the 10K. That's around a 8.5 kmph speed, which I'm quite pleased about.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

In sporting heaven

It started at 2:30 pm and ended at 12:30 in the night. 10 hours of pure sporting bliss, that left me totally exhausted from all the adrenalin rush at various times.

It started with the Motogp. The 125 cc race was thrilling with over 8 riders all within 2 seconds of each other. The amazing thing is just how these kids (most are below 20 years) race so fast and so close without crashing or falling. This year, I’ve felt that the 250 cc races were even better and closer than the 125, but it was not to be yesterday. Though Lorenzo had 2 riders close to him until the very end, I always felt that he had enough in reserve and I was proved right in the end.

Motogp was thrilling as always. Even when the racing is not close, it’s a privilege to see a magician like Rossi. He now has two worthy opponents in Stoner and Pedrosa. Rossi’s Yamaha was able to keep up with Stoner when he was in the slipstream. But, when he moved to the front, it was a different story, Stoner just motored past. Still, it was a lot closer than in the first round at Qatar where the difference was just stark. The problem for Rossi is that Stoner is almost as fast as him through the twisty bits and on the straight, it is a no-contest. So, Rossi always has to push over 100%, whereas Stoner looks more calm and composed on his bike. The last 10 laps were truly edge-of-the-seat stuff, some of the best racing I have seen (I seem to say this of almost every single Motogp race)

The amazing thing about the events yesterday was the timing. The motogp finished at around 6:15, just in time for the French open final to start. I missed the first 5 games as I had to go out and complete the weekly shopping. The match was a bit of a letdown. The tennis was brilliant, with both players producing some amazing shots. But, I felt that Federer just made too many unforced errors and his first serve % wasn’t good enough. Also, a theme I’m always noticing when I see Federer play is the commentators complaining about how his game is a little predictable and how he should mix it up a little more. I tend to agree, for someone who has won Wimbledon for the last 4 years and has such a good serve-and-volley game, he really doesn’t come into the net as often as he can. I feel that he needs to dig deep and do something different, his current style of play is just not good enough to get the better of Nadal on clay. Sure, he’ll beat him (and everyone else) everywhere else, but then he really wants to win the French more than anything else.

I was expecting a lot from the Formula One race, but it was a bit anti-climactic. There was a lot of drama with the various safety car periods which really screwed up the race for many of the drivers (especially Ferrari). But really the racing was just not there at the front. Mclaren now seem to be much faster than Ferrari on race pace and BMW too seem to have the edge. Kimi really needs to pull up his socks, I can’t believe that this is the same driver who famously caught and overtook Fisi in Suzuka 2005. He seems so lackluster and definitely not worth the gazillions that he is being paid at Ferrari. The moment of the race for me was when Sato caught and overtook Alonso. Who would have thought this would happen? I was also really worried that Kubica would have a serious injury or even worse with his accident, but amazingly he was totally unhurt. Just shows how strong the cars are today.

Friday, June 8, 2007

What a Sunday in store

Motogp at Barcelona - will Rossi build on the momentum or will Stoner blow past him on the ultra long front straight? Will Dani drive the Spanish fans wild?

French Open - Federer vs Nadal Round 3 - what more can you say...

Canadian F1 Grand Prix - just can't wait to see how the balance of power will shift.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Who needs movies

when nature can throw up such drama...




Thursday, May 31, 2007

My daily office commute

I was playing around with the "My Map" feature of Google Maps. Here is a map of my daily trip from home to office.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Dominos Pizza

We love Dominos pizza in my house, especially their Cheese-burst pizza.
On Sunday, we decided that we will get pizza for lunch. In the past, we
had ordered from Dominos Sarjapur Road for delivery. When I called them,
they took my telephone number and said that they are no longer
delivering to my area. I tried the outlets in Koramangala and BTM
Layout, but they too refused to deliver. The infuriating part is that
they deliver to HSR Sector 6&7, which is just a couple of minutes drive
from my place. I asked to speak to the manager at the BTM Layout store
and he gave me a story like how they recommend a maximum drive time of 9
minutes for the pizza to remain fresh. I asked, in that case, what
happens if there is a traffic jam, will you not deliver the pizza? Or
what if I take the pizza and don't eat it immediately? At that point, he
changed his line and said that the pizza would remain fresh for an hour.
I told him, in that case, my house is just another 2 minutes from your
delivery area, there is no other outlet delivering to my house, I am
ready to waive the free pizza offer if you don't deliver within x time,
just send me the pizza. Amazingly, he refused.
I promptly called up Pizza Corner, who delivered within 35 minutes. The
pizza didn't taste as good, but they got my 500 rupee order and Dominos
didn't. I'm planning to write to Dominos that while their pizzas may be good, their attitude to the
customer really sucks.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Monaco GP 2007

I am slowly getting out of the Formula One craze that I have had for the last 15 years. It’s not that I’m losing interest, no, far from it, but the desire to see every minute of every race is fading. Part of it is due to the live timing from the FIA, I usually have my laptop on during the race and qualifying and I find myself spending equal time on that that on watching the TV. Also, nowadays, the races have become so boring and processional, that especially after the second pitstop, you can just tune off and not miss anything.

The Monaco GP was as dull as the previous race in Barcelona. I think the Mclarens were great and the skill of the drivers were breathtaking, but let’s be honest, they was never going to be any overtaking there. Even Massa, I think just decided to cruise after the first pitstop as he saw that he had no chance of beating the Macs and there was no chance of Fisi catching him. Kimi was unlucky, if he had not had Nick coming up in front of him, he could have got 7th place.

I’ve read reports that the Ferrari was never going to be good at Monaco due to its long wheelbase configuration which is not suited for tight and twisty circuits like Monaco. The next two races in Canada and Indy will be different. I’m thinking now that Kimi is a rank outsider for the championship, it will be like a weight off his shoulders and he should really be able to unleash the raw speed that lies within at these two tracks.

Friday, May 25, 2007

Lucky engineers

Yesterday, I visited one of the engineering college campuses in Bangalore (a bit of a stretch, it was atleast 30-40 km away). For some strange reason, this college was selected, it would be a stretch to even place it in the third rung of colleges in Bangalore, but that's another story atlogether. We did not go with high expectations, but even then were amazed with the results. We were one of the first companies to come to the campus (this is for students in their 6th semester, who will be passing out in Aug-Sep 2008). Out of the 120 people who wrote the written test, not one of them got the 50% cut-off. We considered reducing the cut-off to 40%, but even then only 2 people would have made the cut-off. Disgusted, we called off the whole thing and came back.

There wasn’t too much of disappointment, as the attitude of many of the students was “So what if these guys didn’t pick us up, with all the huge expansion happening, we’ll definitely get placed somewhere”. Our salary at 2.75L was also considered to be on the lower side!!!!

I have to say that this batch of engineers are among the luckiest people on earth. They’re getting placed even before they complete their 3rd year at fancy salaries. And they don’t even have to be particularly good at whatever they do, such is the demand. I wonder how big their egos will be when they actually come to work and what the fate of the IT companies will be when they have to depend on them to get some actual work done.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Weekend movies

After a long break, we caught up on some movies over the weekend.

First, we saw Just Married, which is a supposed romantic comedy about 4-5 honeymoon couples in Ooty. There was hardly anything of note in the movie and the only thing of interest to me was how Easha Deol gets to act in movies. She is too plain looking, can’t act to save her life. Movie Rating: C-

Next up on Saturday was Spiderman 3. I had read a lot of reviews about how bad this was. I think that they got their inspiration from bollywood and tried to pack in everything, action, romance, heartbreak, many holes in the plot etc. The overall effect was disappointing, but then I don’t think they had a choice. They’re already on the third movie and they had to do something different. Hopefully, there is no Spiderman 4 for some time atleast. Rating: B-

On Sunday, we finally got around to seeing The Devil Wears Prada (I’d bought the DVD at National Market almost 3 months back). I remember people raving about Meryl Streep’s performance, but I don’t really understand why. The movie plot was so predictable, we could see where it was going 5 minutes into the movie. The only thing that held my interest was the absolutely fantastic print. The overhead shots of New York looked absolutely stunning on my LCD TV. Despite that, it was very disappointing. Rating C

F1 Spanish Grand Prix

After what seemed like an eternity, the Formula One season resumed in Barcelona. Like other F1 fans, I was eagerly waiting for the weekend, though on past record, I should have known that the race is usually a procession. And it was easily one of the lamest grand prix I have seen. Other than the first corner, where Alonso went off and a little after that, when he appeared to make a move on Raikonnen, there was a monotony to the proceedings. If Raikonnen had continued, I have no doubt he would have jumped Hamilton in the pits but it was not to be. There was also the possibility that Heidfeld could have got one over Alonso, but the wheel nut put paid to that.

The only other bit of excitement during the race was whether Heikki Kovalainen would jump David Coulthard by going for an aggressive 3 pitstop strategy. At that time, I was thinking that it is a brilliant move, but alas, it turned out to be a fuel nozzle problem.

Lewis now leads the championship and has the edge on Aonso, who would have thought of that a couple of months ago? At Ferrari, Massa seems to getting the upper hand on Kimi. Kimi really needs to work on his start, it is compromising his races and preventing him from showing his true speed. Mclaren and Ferrari seem to have pulled away a little from BMW. The other midfield teams seem to have made progress, especially RedBull. The grid appears tighter than ever before, but F1 must really do something about the racing

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Long weekend in Ooty

The May 1 holiday on Tuesday made a long weekend possible, so we started planning on a trip. Vidya’s father had a timeshare that he had taken in the late 90s and had not been using for a while. He invited us to avail of it and looking at the hotel rates at Ooty, we were happy to accept this.

Ooty is around 320 km from Bangalore, a 6-7 hour journey. Rather than cover it in one go, I decided to split it into two halves. So, we set out for Mysore on Friday evening. The road from Bangalore to Mysore is just fantastic now, four lane all through and 6 lane at the towns along the way. The biggest challenge, as always, is getting to Mysore Road. As we had discovered the previous weekend, on our trip to Wonderla, it takes over an hour to cover the 15 odd kilometers to Mysore Road. I was suggested an alternate route on the partly completed BMIC Peripheral Road. So, we set out on Hosur Road till Electronics City and took the BMIC road from there. The road is fantastic, no traffic (atleast for now). The intersections at Bannerghatta Road, Kanakpura Road and Mysore Road are incomplete, so you have to take a detour. The Bannerghatta Road detour is really bad, but the others are not too much of a bother. Overall, I don’t know if we saved much time, as the route does seem to be a bit longer, but it was totally stress free and that’s a big plus when you’re setting out on a holiday. I only wish Deve Gowda and family would stop letting their personal interests hold the city to ransom and allow BMIC to complete the road, Bangalore would be much better for it.

We covered the distance to Mysore in around 2 hours. We stayed at a hotel called Ginger. This is a new budget hotel chain promoted by Tatas, which promises clean modern rooms at affordable prices. To do this, they cut down on the frills like room service. They definitely delivered on that, as the rooms are really good, spacious with comfortable beds, LCD TVs, wi-fi (not free!!!) everywhere. There is only one restaurant and they only have a buffet, it is somewhat high priced (175 for the buffet) but the food was good. Overall we had a very pleasant experience and I will definitely stay there again.

We set out to Ooty on Saturday morning. I was hoping to see some wild animals as we went through Bandipur and Mudumalai forests. However, they seemed to totally avoid the area around the roads and other than a couple of deer, we saw absolutely nothing. The roads in Karnataka were really good, except for a 20 km stretch from Gundulpet to Bandipur. Once we crossed into Tamil Nadu, we were at the Mudumalai forest. A well known secret is that you can cut the journey by almost 35 km if you’re willing to brave narrow roads and 36 hair pin bends and go though Mudumalai. The alternate route via Gundalur is much flatter. We decided to take the narrow road. The journey was quite uneventful, except at the ghats, where I discovered just how underpowered the Santro is. At the hairpins, I had to switch to 1st to get any momentum going and avoid slipping backwards. To be fair, this was among the steepest roads I’ve been on, much steeper than Nandi hills or Yercaud where I’d driven before. This is probably one place where a diesel with its higher torque would be useful. All the low gear driving did tell on the mileage, when I topped up in Ooty, I found that it had just gone 14 km to the litre.

We had quite a time finding the resort in Ooty. It wasn’t in Ooty proper, but at around 7 km from the town, it wasn’t too far. The resort was beautiful, it was built on a hill with each cottage at a different level. The resort had definitely seen better times, and wasn’t maintained very well. The rooms were dingy with poor lighting and carpets falling apart. The cottages further up the hill were half complete and it did appear that only around 15 of the cottages were in use. In fact, the waiter told us that at peak, there were almost 45 staff and now there were only 6 people in total.

We had planned to go sightseeing on both days, the first day in Ooty and nearby areas and the second day to Connoor. We first went boating early in the morning. The experience was ok, it would have been nicer if the lake was cleaner. There is also a children’s amusement park, where we went hoping to persuade her to go on some rides. She flatly refused to go anywhere alone, just like she had done at Wonderla. We finally decided that it was pointless and proceeded to Doddabetta, the highest viewpoint. Unfortunately, it appeared that everyone in Ooty had the same idea and in India, if you put too many people together in a small area, chaos is inevitable. There was a massive traffic jam on the hill. As it was a narrow road, we could not do anything as vehicles were stopped in both directions. After almost 20 minutes, we decided like everyone else to just leave the car there and walk up the hill. We started off, but luckily after 15 minutes of walking, we could see the traffic clearing. I ran back and got the car and we drove the rest of the way. The views were fantastic, the area is very green and Coonoor is very picturesque. There was a viewpoint called Green Valley viewpoint, where you can see a valley totally covered with vegetation, which was beautiful. On clear days, you’re supposed to be able to see until Coimbatore, but we did not have any such luck.

We had a quick lunch and proceeded to the Botanical Gardens. The Ooty Botanical Gardens are quite different from Lal Bagh in that it is in a much smaller area but set on many different levels. As you enter, the view is absolutely magnificent, tall trees towering above you. Like everywhere in Ooty, it was totally full with people, but I’m sure that in the off-season, it would be a fantastic place to get some peace and quiet. By then, we had had enough sightseeing for the day and went back to the resort.

On Monday, we had planned to go to Coonoor but dropped the idea and decided to take things easy. I decided to take a walk around the resort and came across a small densely wooded hill. There was some kind of a path going into the jungle, which I decided to follow. Once I went in, I found that it wasn’t as dense as it had appeared from the outside, just a lot of trees and not much undergrowth. I went right to the top of the hill and got some really good views of the surrounding countryside. On my way back, I went off the trail and started to follow a few other trails, but they just went around aimlessly without leading anywhere, and after a while I decided to just head back. It was a really good experience, my first trek in many years, and left me wanting more. Maybe, I’ll join a trekking club and plan on atleast a few more soon.

After I got back, we decided to go to the Rose Garden, which supposedly had 2800 different varieties of roses. Like the Botanical Gardens, this too was set at many different levels, 5-6 in all. There definitely were a lot of roses, I didn’t bother to verify if the number added up to 2800. They all looked the same to me anyway. It was quite hot during the day, so we didn’t really explore all the different levels. On the way to the rose garden, we took a horse ride. Nisha was initially very afraid to get on to the horse, but after some persuading, she got on and enjoyed it quite a bit.

On the way back, disaster!!! Near the lake, there was a small traffic jam due to a bus reversing to park. As I didn’t want to risk anything, I went to the extreme left of the road and stopped waiting for him to reverse into the parking lot. The idiot, however, was only looking to his right and didn’t notice our car at all, despite one of his helpers banging on the side of the bus and me honking away. He made contact with the right front panel. Luckily, he realized right away and came to a stop immediately, before he could cause more damage. The damage was done though, after 3 years of no scratches and dents, I had a fairly big dent on the side and a lot of scratches. There were a lot of arguments with him and his helpers. Afterwards, we went and relooked at the dent and realized that the panel had just gone inwards due to the thin sheet metal and could be brought back to shape very easily. One of the bus passengers, who owned a workshop in Bangalore, offered to do it free of charge and also touch up the scratches. We finally agreed to it, after taking a security from the driver of a couple hundred rupees. I don’t intend to go to the workshop, but am hopeful that the repairs should not cost more than 200-300 at most.

We finished off by buying some chocolates and Varkey (a snack popular in Ooty) for both mine and Vidya’s teams in the office. The next day, we started off to Bangalore around 11:00 am and reached home by 5:30.

You hear a lot about how Ooty is totally commercial but I really ended up liking the place. It is crowded, polluted, dirty, chaotic etc etc, just like most Indian cities. But there is enough beauty just waiting to be discovered, if you're willing to go off the beaten path.

Photos on my Picasa web album


Ooty April 2007

Monday, April 16, 2007

Story of my ancient computer

Last weekend, I was finally able to dispose off my Celeron(P3) computer. It was the first computer that I built from scratch. I first built in in 99-00 and over the years upgraded many of the components. We started with a 4 GB hard drive and 128 MB of RAM and by end 2004, it was up to 384 MB of RAM, a CD-RW and 80 GB of memory. Through our stay in Mangalore, this was the primary computer that I used and it ran without skipping a beat (well, if you exclude 1 crashed hard drive and a couple of failed optical drives). When we returned to Bangalore, we found ourselves with 2 computers, and since the other was a Athlon 2000+XP, that I assembled in 2004, I couldn’t really find a reason to continue using this one. I stripped out the parts as best as I could and distributed them to various people. I bought a HDD casing and made an external drive out of that. I found a buyer for the monitor and speakers in late 2005, but there were absolutely no takers for what was remaining.

I toyed around with the idea of converting the computer into a file or media server but space is at a premium at my house. So, the computer was gathering dust. When my brother’s computer went on the blink, I took back the memory I had given him and advertised for the case+mb+cpu+memory bundle on various sites like craigslist, indiaconnect etc. Nothing happened for a few months, but then last week, I got a call from a prospective buyer. He finally came down on Saturday and bought the computer for the grand prize of 1000 rupees. Imagine, parts which cost me over 20000 rupees just 8 years back now worth little more than scrap value.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

2007 F1 season

This is turning out to be one of the best Formula One seasons so far. We have two teams that are equally matched with four drivers at the top of their game. It has produced three fantastic races full of tension, uncertainity and intrigue, just the kind of thing that makes Formula One so special. Yesterday, just before the start of the race, I was so keyed up that I could feel my heart pounding away, easily over 135 bpm. I know because that's how I feel after a very intense exercise schedule. No wonder they say that the F1 drivers heart rate goes to almost 200 bpm at the race start.

A few things that really stand out for me
- Lewis Hamilton is really the real deal. He drives like a true veteran, I really felt that yesterday, there was no way that he would make a mistake, he was that good. Reminds me of Schumi at his best. I think I am becoming a fan. It helps that I don't have to listen to the ITV commentators whose praise of Lewis would be puke-worthy (in the grand tradition of most British commentators), though the Star Sports guys are bad enough.
- I think Alonso would be shell shocked by his performance. In the last couple of years, he's had the measure of Fisi pretty much everywhere and has never been beaten in a straight fight. I think the last time it happened was with Trulli at Monaco 2004. But as he is a true champion, I fully expect him to regroup and eventually he will get the better of Lewis.
- Kimi really needs to rework his strategy. I still believe that he is faster than Massa and since the Ferrari is the fastest car, he should be the fastest guy around, but he is not getting a chance to run in clean air. For the next race, he needs to qualify light on pole and just run away from the group.
- I've always admired Quick Nick, a humble no-nonsense guy who gets on with his job with minimum fuss. However, I felt that he was never capable of really breaking into the top tier. Looking at his performance yesterday, I could be wrong, his pass on Alonso was fantastic.

There's a four week break now until the next race at Barcelona, it'll keep all F1 fans on tenterhooks throughout.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Catching up...

There was a time when I had so much of time but so little to do. Nowadays, it seems like there is so much to do, but no time to really do them.

With so many information sources at our disposal nowadays, we are seriously suffering from information overload. Just sample all the items in my queue

Books
The Monk who sold his Ferrari - Robin Sharma
The Road Ahead - Bill Gates
An area of Darkness - VS Naipaul

I haven’t even started on all my digital media consumption. I just about manage to keep up with all the podcasts that I subscribe and listen to during my workout at the gym. But, I’ve got a backlog of around 50 episodes (over 7-8 hours worth), mainly from CNN-IBN, BBC’s Documentary Archive and NPR’s Science Friday.

I’ve got around 10-12 DVDs that I have yet to watch, including the Departed, Devil wears Prada, Dor, Kabul Express etc. There’s atleast 3-4 downloaded movies still. I’m 5-6 episodes behind on Lost Season 3. I just started watching a new series Heroes, and have to catch up with that too (it's currently at Episode 18 of Season 1). Luckily, I hardly watch much TV nowadays, or else I would be even further behind.

At work, in addition to the daily tasks, I'm reading a couple of technical books, Excel 2003 Bible to brush up on my Excel skills and also an introductory book on IBM mainframes so that I can make sense of what my team is telling me. I also started learning Visual C# by downloading the eval copy, but never got around to finishing that.

I wish we had summer holidays at work too, so that I can catch up…

Monday, March 19, 2007

LCD TV Cool features

One of the really cool features of the Panasonic 32LC500M LCD TV is the ability to record to flash based memory as MPEG4 files. I tried it yesterday with an old SD card that I had lying around. It can fit around 60 minutes on 128 MB, which is really neat. The downside is the poor resolution and the fact that it can only record from RF.
It’s utility as a DVR is fairly limited, but its atleast better than nothing while I wait for a proper DVR to come into the Indian market. Until then, the old Sony VCR will still have some work to do.

Government at work

The good people at BMP/BDA finally paved the road in front of our apartment last week. The problem is that these geniuses left out the intersection between our road and the road running perpendicular to it (19th Main road). Until that 60 feet of road is paved, the dream of a smooth drive from home to office still remains out of reach. Soon, hopefully...

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

LCD Televisions - Update

I had posted a while ago about LCD televisions and how bad they looked. I was quite categorical and called it crap. Well, last weekend, we were just going around Koramangala and happened to drive past the Panasonic brand shop. For a change, it was Vidya that suggested that we go and take a look at the Plasma televisions. They didn't have the Plasma high definition set, but he showed us the LCD sets, both in 32 and 26 inches. The demo made me realise that all LCD brands are not made the same. The earlier one that I had seen, Samsung was crap. On the Panasonic, the same Tata Sky broadcast looked wonderful. The salesman also played a demo DVD, upconverted to 720p and that looked mindblowing as most demo DVDs do.

Given my misgiving earlier, I didn't want to jump in without doing some more research. I came home, did some research on the web and on Sunday, we went an bought it. Its a Panasonic Viera 32LX500M. It cost around 70000, a little above the average price, but then its a slightly higher end model.

We've had it for 3 days now and I'm quite happy with the performance so far. The colours look fantastic. We've mainly used the 4:3 mode for watching TV, as the 16:9 mode makes everything look stretched. We don't have an upconverting DVD, but even standard DVD's look fantastic.

Friday, March 2, 2007

Exercise update

I have been extremely regular with the exercise ( I did 23 days in February), it does not seem to be helping on the weight loss front. Part of the reason could be my diet, the Hershey Kisses dark chocolate that Denish brought from the US. I also felt that my workout has become monotonous and need a bit of variety to maake it interesting again.I’ve made a few changes to the routine over the past week

- Instead of a 45 minute jog, I do 25-30 minutes on the exercise cycle, followed by 10-12 minutes of jogging at 9 kmph on the treadmill. This is followed by around 10 minutes of weight training and 30 situps
- I also came across HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). The idea is that your body gets used to a certain routine and fat burning potential diminishes over time. With HIIT, you constantly vary the pace of exercise. Today, I tried it for the first time on the exercise cycle, 3 minutes of warmup, 1 minute of extremely high activity (as fast as I could go) followed by 2 minutes of cooldown. I wanted to do 8 rounds, but I couldn’t really do it beyond 7. I’ve read that HIIT is fairly hard on the body, so I intend to restrict it to once or twice a week

I’m thinking of the following schedule
- Day 1: cycling 25 minutes at constant pace + 15 minutes on the treadmill
- Day 2: running 30-35 minutes on the treadmill + weight training
- Day 3: HIIT workout for around 30 minutes + weight training
- Day 4: cycling at steady pace for 25-30 minutes
- Day 5: long run 7-8 km on the Ring Road
- Day 6: Brisk walk for 1 hour plus
- Day 7: rest