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...

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

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

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.

Technorati Tags: gadgets

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.

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:-(

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.