| | 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 |
I recently got a Nokia Internet Tablet N800. After a couple of days playing with it, I am truly loving it.
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
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.
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.
It supports wi-fi connections and can also connect to a cellular network through your mobile phone using Bluetooth.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
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:-(
