Planet TCE_beta

The film starts with these words, which is its theme:

“My friend’s friend is also my friend…”

I went to the film-without any expectations-just to enjoy a day out with my friends. But at the end, I felt I didn’t waste Rs.50

Plus:

Sasi kumar’s acting, Heroine’s innocence, Comedy of Kanja karuppu and ‘kalloori’ guy and especially ‘Chinna koundar’ politician.

Sasi kumar’s sister – Though she is deaf and dumb, her acting was really good.

The characters and the story’s screenplay can be very much related to real life.

Nadodigal, as a whole, adorned with nice camera angles, insists everyone to be honest in their life.

Minus:

Since Samudhrakani, director of this film, is also a mega serial director, he could not hide his unwanted lengthy shots .

Upgraded to lenny about three weeks back. But it took three weeks for a blog post on it. Could not get enough time to post about it(Belive me ) When i moved from Ubuntu to Etch, i had faced a lot of issues. First issue was with Wireless card. Next one was with ALSA. Not sure what the issue was, but at times the volume remains at 0 and when tried raising goes upto 100 with a lot of noise. Running alsaconf fixed the issue everytime, but i could not get enough time to set it right. Badly needed Firefox 3.0, but it required GNOME higher version hence the rendering was not all that great. So was waiting for Lenny for a very long time.

Once Lenny was released, i started the download but took so many days to download it. Finally it was done. I was a little worried about the upgrade, since saw fw issues in mailing lists. But the upgrade went smoothly without troubles. I had copied all the DVDs to the disk and made sources point to the filesystem dump. Booted expecting to see some issues, but till now, it has been great. Impressed with the look and feel.  Actually it looks great. Though the packages are not the latest, i am happy with the versions available. Totally impressed with Debian this time

It started as a highly spirited trek. The photos from other blogs added a lot of excitement to the already excited mind. So thus started the trip to Kemmanagundi, with most of them belonging to the usual gang(Nilamagal Kadhalargal) and without few. We started off in Shimoga Express that starts from Bangalore at 11.30PM. Reached Tarikere at around 5.45 since the train was late by around 1.15 hours. From Tarikere took a bus to Lingdahalli, from where we paid 500 to a mini vegetable van to take us to Kemmanagundi. The driver chose the shortest route, but it has to be the worst one i guess. With 11 packed inside it a little difficult one. Anyway thats the only option left to you since the first Bus to KG is only around 9.30AM. We started the much awaited trek after refreshment at Traveller’s Bungalow.

The weather at KG was unbeatable. Neither too cold, nor too hot. With the mists, caressing the grasses at will, it was a wonderful sight. And the mountains covered with green lush grasses, i am seeing it for the first time. Occasional drizzling, ran out of words to explain. Now the excitement level crossed 100% with ease. Finally the trek started. The tall grasses and the drizzling raised some suspicion about leeches, the tiny insects we dread the most. But we didn’t find any then, so the trip started with a lot of enthusiasm. First point of confusion came, when paths(looked like) diverged towards left and right. We took the right one and thats where it was not right. Little did we know we are invading the leech territory and there are millions of armed warriors waiting for the taste of blood. Worst part was we were unarmed, or not prepared. Worstest part was two of the gang were not wearing shoes Courage disappeared, panic stroked, in the rush of adrenalin think we reached the top in few minutes Thanks to the leeches!!!

Two in the gang, Mani and Peter were the feast for the leeches. I suffered a small one, where a determined leech has started sucking blood through my socks. But it was nowhere when compared to the attacks Mani, Peter and Pramod has suffered. Next hour wasted in cleaning the leeches, soaking the socks in dettol, applying tobacco mixed in castor oil to the legs etc etc. Make it a point to remember that, tobacco mixed with castor oil when applied prevents leech attack to an extent. Good that leeches have not caused much damage. Bad that this was enough for the courage in people to disappear. Adding to all these, there was a small forest cover to cross. Done. Few wanted to take the risk, few did not. Taking the risk and safety, the end of group discussion saw us retreating with the trek put on hold and with plans of continuing it next day from a different location.
The best part of the trek was the lunch. We had burnt some energy, and even bread and pickle were delicious. We were left with just few bread packets.

Next plan was to go to Gallikere by bus. Went to the bus stop to find that there are just two buses to KG one at morning 10.15AM and another one at 4.15PM. With nowhere to go, decided to stay in KG and started setting up our tents. To our dismay, one of our tent was in a very bad shape. This time we had tried renting out tents from “Adventure Era” or something and we had to pay the price. We setup two tents and decided to just sleep inside sleeping bags with the tent just spread out. Luckily we rented out a room in the dormitory available there and the night went without further troubles.

The next day, woke up early and started to Hebbe falls. Adding to our woes, wheel of a jeep we went got punctured. But that gave opportunity to trek for two KMs to few of us. We had to walk few more kilometers, crossing three small streams and tackling the leeches to reach the falls. Bath in the falls was awesome anyway. Managed to catch the 10.15AM bus from KG, reached Lingdahalli, caught bus to Chickmagalur, finishing the lunc there and started the trip back to Bangalore.

Bababudangiri, Mulainagiri remains unexplored. Few misses, few hurdles, but the trip was great and enjoyable one. What matters the most is the crowd with which you go. We have a great gang which rocks everywhere. Blog cant end without mention of the the people involved, it was Prabhu, Pramod, DP (Deepy), Thirukumaran Annas and Mani, Musi, Praveen, Bharathi, Peter, myself and our Captain, Muthukumar.

KG offers a great scope for photography, since you get a glimpse of virgin nature in purest form at few spots. So every photo looks beautiful without special efforts. Check out mine at http://picasaweb.google.com/sens2003/KemmanagundiTrip#.

Waiting for the next trip/trek.

A mild pain at the tip of the nose, my lips tend to curve and the tear glands finally yield under pressure. This was how felt when I had the first glimpse of Sai Baba at Shirdi.

My parents had wished to visit Shirdi over the last two decades but couldn’t make it. They say its God’s will. This is something I don’t understand and would never argue with my parents.

I am a believer in God. But, unlike our family circle, prayers and hymns are alien to me. So, my motivation to visit Shirdi was driven more by my parent’s wish than my own.

My brother and myself did all the planning. This was a trip of so many ‘firsts’. Made my first air travel. Between Bangalore and Pune. Pune to Shirdi… bus was at 12:30 a.m. So once I boarded the bus, I don’t know what transpired for the next 5hrs.

Reached Shirdi on a Sunday morning. Most hotels read House full and the pricing was exorbitant (as expected). Finally we got a room close to Dwarkamai for Rs.1200 ! It was really pathetic.

Sunday is not really a good time to be at shirdi, it is over crowded. So dropped plans of visitng the samadhi mandir. The shirdi temple is one big complex now. The Dwarkamai, Chavadi, Lendi bagh and other places are in and around the temple complex. We visited all these places on the first day.

We got a lot of help from Mr.Vichu Iyer, Sai Madras Hotel. He pointed us to “Dwaravati Bakthanivas”. It is run by the Sai Sansthan Trust itself. We got the rooms there on Monday. The price was Rs.550/day for 4 people. The hygiene was excellent as well.

We went to visit the samadhi mandir on Monday, early in the morning. Stood in the queue for 1Hr and after the darshan went again for another darshan. It was really heart filling. Another good aspect was, there was only one single queue; I mean, there was no economy class and business class queues in here.

Another thing was the dogs. You could find dogs roaming inside the temple, they were well fed, clean and very social too

Shanisingnapur… Its a almost 70km journey from Shirdi. Cars ply to this place, they charge you Rs.70/head to and fro. They will take you to there and will ‘command’ you to take bath, rent a dhoti and buy ‘puja’ stuffs. Beware, they are cheats. Before gettng into their car better tell them that you won’t buy their stories. I read in web about this and paid no heed to their flimsy rituals.

If you wish to perform Abishekam, you need to bath and come in dhoti. That too, I am not sure, better check with the security office. But, don’t listen to the car driver.

So Tuesday morning was spent in visiting Shanisingapur. We had a darshan of Baba again in the evening. It felt very content.

Need to mention the Bhojanalaya. The complex could server thousands in one sitting. Well maintained. And the charge is Rs.6/adult. Its a bit far from the temple.

We had the flight from Pune to Bangalore in the evening so left shirdi by 8:45am. The Prasanna tours vehicle…. this was the worst part of the trip. The bus actually left Shirdi only 9:30am. Till then … sigh… 6hrs of travel for a distance of 180km. The road and the bus were horrible but it was much better when compared to the driver’s attitude.

At the end, I felt fortunate enough to have visited Shirdi. In my parents’ words, it was Gods’ will.

Sairam Rajaram.

After reading about Mr.P.Kakkan in an article in The Hindu (here) today, I thought of writing something which I had heard from my father. But a brief search gave me what I intended to write (here).

It is said, he didn’t have the money to pay for a special ward and was lying in the veranda of the Govt Hospital, Madurai. Dr.M.G.Ramachandran was on a visit as Chief Minister, he noticed Kakkan and helped him.

Some time back, I visited Thirumogur (an old temple near othakadai). It was late in the evening, a convoy of SUVs made a halt opposite to the temple. The lead car had two dobermans ( no pun intended!) enjoying the view of the road; for a second I thought it could be some minister. But the person was just a ward head of some ‘local’ party.

Mr.Kakkan was really a great man. The sad part is, in contemporary terms, people would call him “pozhaika theriyadha manushan”.

If I have to give a word of advice to the current politicians, I would quote from the Tamil movie Roja Kootam, Raghuvaran’s advice to Srikanth; But, who am I to advice them?

Hello folks, I attended my first BOSUG meet last Saturday(13th June, 2009) at the Sun office(Divyashree chambers).  Though the turnout was less, it was really a nice meeting and learnt quite a bit. And of course had the chance to attend the session of Max Bruning and had a chat with Moinak.

Went to the meeting a bit late, because I had trouble identifying the building. Then took Sriram’s help and reached Sun’s office, just in time to attend Max’s presentation. At least, I was not too late. Max gave a talk on wrting a module for wacom tablets and told how they need to be treated differently from mouse. Well, to put it simply, in a mouse, you need to move the mouse pointer on the screen for delta x and delta y. But in a pen tablet, it is always absolute.(I understand my simplification is misleading though). He spoke about streams and the issues in integrating the module into the solaris OS. And I didn’t really understand the part on streams very much, the effect of attneding a meet without any background on the topics. The good thing about his presentation was that he put most things in a nice manner that could be understood easily, if we know some basics about the topic and he didn’t make it look very technical.

Then Sriram spoke on his experiences from CommunityOne that he had participated. He gave a brief update on the various events and incidents at the conference. Learnt that Belenix had a good following in South Ameraican nations. Also learnt a lot of other things for the first time during the various conversations that took place during his talk.

Then Moinak gave updates on the current status of KDE 4.2.4 integration in Belenix. His talk was really in a casual manner and really liked it. Also learnt a lot of things during his talk.

And above all, they provided nice snacks in between (No, please don’t tell I went only for that )

In general, the meeting was really informal in its approach and though it was my first meet, the people were really nice to me. Had a chat with Moinak, Anil, Shriram and others after the meeting as well. Hmm, time well spent

A book with a flower name and all  about  a mother Materena’s as a listener .It was a story about a family and the traditions in t Tahitian island from a Tahitian author Vaite.Author coveys a deep respect for women’s strength.
While reading her words any woman cannot stop thinking about her mother or herself.Materena learns she’s pregnant with her second child,but at that time her husband Pito leaves her over a pay dispute.Then she takes professional cleaner as her job for “financial independance”.When the traditional needle test confirms she is carrying a daughter Materena is thrilled .She shares a lot of things to her daughter Leilani even before she indroduces her to the world.’Girls hurt their mother from the day they come into this world…. Girls are a curse,’ say some island women, but Matarena is delighted with her baby, Leilani, who soon grows into a free-spirited, curious, and sometimes troublesome girl.
“Welcome to Womanhood” speech to her daughter is an epitome of her motherhood.But Leilani is an exceptional little girl with a bright intelligence and an analytical mind which constantly challenges Materena’s knowledge as it taxes her patience.
Materena’s character is given the opportunity to develop into more then a mother and homemaker which allows her to accept Leilani’s decision to leave Tahiti in pursuit of her love and dreams.She is a best except for her loving daughter Leilani.
Frangipani-a story about the ongoing tension between a mother and daughter,husband and wife ,with the society.I enjoyed all the warm lines of the book and made me to feel “I have searched so long for you ” Frangipani.

“Be strong,We ‘re not women for nothing”  Sensible words from Materena to Leilani

The English Language has acquired an immense number of words and is the first truly global language.Today, English is spoken by some 1.53 billion people as their first, second or business language.Austin, Texas-based, Global Language Monitor (GLM) documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language the world over, with a particular emphasis upon Global English.

The Global Language monitor announced the word  Web 2.0 became the millionth word of the English language today at 10:22 Stratford-on-Avon time and   “JAi ho!” from  our Slumdog millionaire became 999,999 th word!.Slumdog also entered this competion.Based on the PQI (Predictive Quantities Indicator) score ,the words are selected.This PQI is the Glogal Language monitor’s proprietary algorithm which tracks the frequency of words and phrases in the global print and electronic media, on the Internet, throughout the Blogosphere, in social media as well as accessing proprietary databases.

Here’s the fifteen finalists

• 1,000,000: Web 2.0 – The next generation of web products and services, coming soon to a browser near you.
• 999,999: Jai Ho! – The Hindi phrase signifying the joy of victory, used as an exclamation, sometimes rendered as “It is accomplished”. Achieved English-language popularity through the multiple Academy Award Winning film, “Slumdog Millionaire”.
• 999,998: N00b — From the Gamer Community, a neophyte in playing a particular game; used as a disparaging term.
• 999,997: Slumdog – a formerly disparaging, now often endearing, comment upon those residing in the slums of India.
• 999,996: Cloud Computing – The ‘cloud’ has been technical jargon for the Internet for many years. It is now passing into more general usage.
• 999,995: Carbon Neutral — One of the many phrases relating to the effort to stem Climate Change.
• 999,994: Slow Food — Food other than the fast-food variety hopefully produced locally (locavores).
• 999,993: Octomom – The media phenomenon relating to the travails of the mother of the octuplets.
• 999,992: Greenwashing – Re-branding an old, often inferior, product as environmentally friendly.
• 999,991: Sexting – Sending email (or text messages) with sexual content.
• 999,990: Shovel Ready – Projects are ready to begin immediately upon the release of federal stimulus funds.
• 999,989: Defriend – Social networking terminology for cutting the connection with a formal friend.
• 999,988: Chengguan – Urban management officers, a cross between mayors, sheriff, and city managers.
• 999,987: Recessionista – Fashion conscious who use the global economic restructuring to their financial benefit.
• 999,986: Zombie Banks – Banks that would be dead if not for government intervention and cash infusion.

———————————————————————————————————————————

• 1,000,001: Financial Tsunami – The global financial restructuring that seemingly swept out of nowhere, wiping out trillions of dollars of assets, in a matter of months
• Source:http://www.languagemonitor.com/

More about web 2.0 :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0.
Blogs, rss,wikis,social networking technologies ,they all come under web 2.0

It was in one of the IPL matches when Haiden was run out by Dravid and I am presenting the photograph here.

From this picture, I just could not imagine how he might have been run out. If you see the picture, the ball is touching the keeper’s gloves and the bills are off the stumps. If Haiden is trying to reach the crease, why is he heading in the opposite direction of the stumps?

Could anyone explain me this picture? I am really confused…

Yuri Gurevich from Microsoft Research [1] gave a very erudite and somewhat interesting Google Tech Talk on the Church-Turing thesis today. The reward for patiently listening to a poor video quality H.323 session across the Atlantic at midnight was the discovery of something totally new: Abstract State Machines.

Update (The Video is Up):

I have trouble understanding ASMs as a fundamental model for computation like Lambda Calculus or Post-Turing Machines. But apparently “States” and “State Transitions” are good enough for universality. The advantage over the Standard Models is supposed to be the expresiveness and better mapping to high level structures and algorithms. This makes them very suitable for Formal Models , Verification and Validation. The video of the talk should be out soon and I will post a link when that happens. But the two most interesting personal takeaways from the talk were totally unrelated to ASMs:

- Kolmogorov’s physical view of computation, entropy and information is completely fascinating. I should really find a readable text on Algorithmic Information Theory.

- Donald Knuth once remarked on Artificial Intelligence: There are two great unsolved problems in AI – What is A ? and What is I ?

Even if I didn’t make out much else from the talk, Don’s snide humor was totally worth an hour

[1] Yes, we do let people from Redmond into Googleplex – Stan needs to be fed once in a while.